Massey - The Natural Genesis
Massey - The Natural Genesis
Massey - The Natural Genesis
NA TURAL GENESIS:
OR SECOND PART OF A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS,
CONTAINING AN ATTEMPT TO RECOVER AND RECONSTITUTE THE LOST ORIGINES
OF THE MYTHS AND MYSTERIES, TYPES AND SYMBOLS, RELIGION AND LANGUAGE,
WITH EGYPT FOR THE MOUTHPIECE AND AFRICA FOR THE BIRTHPLACE.
BY
GERALD MASSEY.
VOLUME I.
Leeds
CELEPHAÏS PRESS.
2019
ŖIn the customs and institutions of schools, academies, colleges, and similar bodies destined
for the abode of learned men and the cultivation of learning, everything is found adverse to the
progress of science. For the lectures and exercises there are so ordered, that to think or specu-
late on anything out of the common way can hardly occur in any man. And if one or two
have the boldness to use any liberty of judgement, they must undertake the task all by themselves:
they can have no advantage from the company of others. And if they can endure this also, they
will find their industry and largeness of mind no slight hindrance to their fortune. For the
studies of men in these places are confined and as it were imprisoned in the writings of certain
authors, from whom if any man dissent he is straightaway arraigned as a turbulent person and
an innovator.ŗŕBACON.
They needs must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken
Authority for truth.
The Shadows of the past, substantialized,
Environ us; we are built about from birth
With life-long shutting out of light from heaven.
ŖThe few who had the courage to call the child by its right name, the few that knew some-
thing of it, who foolishly opened their hearts and revealed their vision to the many, were always
burnt or crucified.ŗŕGOETHE.
řTis a truth, howe‟er unheeded
Work least wanted is most needed.
There is, however, an incredible tendency in human nature, however few may cultivate
it at one time in the same direction, never to rest short of the attainable; and however mini-
mized its value may appear in the process of attainment, we cannot rest until we know
the truth.
Certain insects have developed the instinct to lay up food for their offspring which they
never live to see.
In Africa the natives still dig round about the modern gum-trees to find the buried treasure
that oozed from other trees which stood on the same spot in the forests of the far-off past.
Ŗð ¢maqe‹j ¢nqrwpoi, did£xete »m©j, t… ™stin Ð qeÕj ™n to‹j ¢pokekleis-
mšnoj ?ŗ
ŖBind it about thy neck, write it upon the tablet of thy heart, ŘEverything of Christianity
is of Egyptian origin,ř ŗŕREV. ROBERT TAYLOR, Oakham Gaol, 1829.
ŖIt is easy to show that this fabulous relation borders on the verity of physical science.ŗŕ
PLUTARCH.
ŖAs for wisdom, what she is and how she came up, I will tell you, and will not hide
mysteries from you; but will seek her out from the beginning of her nativity, and bring the
knowledge of her into light, and will not pass over the truth.ŗŕWisdom of Solomon,
chap. vi. v. 22.
ŖWhy does not some one teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry
heavens, which are always overhead, and which I do not half know to this day?ŗŕCARLYLE.
ŖThe time is come when these mysteries shall be revealed.ŗŕSOHAR.
“Now Joseph, the son of Rabbi Joshua, being sick, passed into the state of trance. His father
inquired of him, „What seest thou?‟ He replied, „The world turned upside down. The lofty
are laid low, and the lowly are lifted up on high.‟ When his father heard this, he said unto
him, „Verily, thou hast seen the age of Salvation.ř ŗŕPesachim, f. 50, I.
DEDICATORY
GERALD MASSEY.
EGYPTIAN PLANISPHERE OF ZODIACAL AND NORTHERN SIGNS .
(According to Kircher.)
EXPLANATORY.
ŖTHE NATURAL GENESISŗ contains the second half of ŖA BOOK
OF THE BEGINNINGS,ŗ and completes the authorřs contributions to the
new order of thought that has been inaugurated in our own era
by the writings of Darwin and Wallace, Spencer and Huxley,
Morgan and McLennan, Tylor and Lubbock. It was written by an
Evolutionist for Evolutionsts, and is intended to trace the Natural
Origines and teach the doctrine of development. The total work
is based upon the new matter supplied by the ancient monuments,
ranging from the revelations of the bone-caves and the records of
the Stone Age to the latest discoveries of hieroglyphic inscriptions,
the cuneiform tablets, and the still extant language of gesture-signs.
The work is not only one of original research, it is emphatically
aboriginal, and the battle for evolution has here been continued
amongst the difficult defiles and mountain fastnesses of the enemy.
After reading the first two volumes, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace
expressed the fear lest there might not be a score of people in
England who were prepared by their previous education to under-
stand the book. Few of its reviewers could be included amongst
that number; and some of them were as remote from the writer and
his meaning as the apes from man, gibbering across the chasm of
the missing link. But the authorřs mode of treatment, which was
deficient in the art of bridge-building, and the exigencies of
publishing according to a plan that (so to speak) caused the Exodus
to precede the Genesis, may have been unfortunate.
Much of the matter is pre-eval, so that the method could not be
historical; nor could it be chronological, because of the links missing
in series and sequence. The method is typological; and these two
volumes of ŖTypologyŗ are necessary to the proper understanding of
the previous ones, which were written with the matter of these in
viii EXPLANATORY .
mind. In the preceding part of the work the author took very
extended views of Egyptřs enormous past and the age of her pre-
monumental mythology. Some of the conclusions set forth therein
were characterized by Dr. Samuel Birch as interesting and ingenious.
But at that time these suggestions and conclusions were announced
in direct opposition to the accepted authorities. Since then, however,
the inscriptions discovered at Sakkarah have come to corroborate the
present writer. They contain allusions to Sirus the Dog-star, which
show that at least two Sothic cycles of 1,460 years each had been
observed and registered previous to their timeŕeven if they are not
copies of indefinitely older documentsŕwhich carry the chronology
back to some 9,000 or 10,000 years from the present day. Various
myths, hitherto supposed to have been the growth of later centuries
or of Asiatic origin, including the most important of all, that of Sut-
Horus, were then extant and of immemorial antiquity. In this case
it is but just to say that ŖA BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGSŗ happened
to be the farthest advanced upon the right road.
The German Egyptologist, Herr Pietschmann, who reviewed the
ŖBOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS,ŗ was startled at the many Ŗunheard-of
suggestionsŗ which is contained, and thought the work was Ŗinspired
by an unrestrained thirst for discovery,ŗ but he adduced no evidence
whatever to rebut the conclusions, and gave no hint of the authorřs
being wrong in his derivation of facts from the monuments upon
which those conclusions in a great measure depend. The writer has
taken the precaution all through of getting his fundamental facts in
Egyptology verified by one of the foremost of living authorities,
Dr. Samuel Birch, to whom he returns his heartiest acknowledg-
ments. He also sincerely thanks Captain R. F. Burton and
Mr. George St. Clair, F.G.S., for their helpful hints and for the
time and labour they have kindly given during the progress
of this work. As a matter of course, the author will have
blundered in manifold details. Discoveries are not to be made
without mistakes, especially by those who do not cultivate the
language of non-committal. But up to the present time I have not
been shown nor do I perceive any reason for doubting the truth of
my generalization that Africa and not Asia was the birthplace of
articulate man, and therefore the primordial home of all things
human; and that the race which first ranged out over the world,
including the islands of the north and the lands of the southern
seas, was directly Kamite; the Blacks of Britain (who left the
EXPLANATORY . ix
SECTION I.
Physical BeginningsŕKnowledge kept Concealed on Account of its Primitivenessŕ
Unification of the one God from manyŕConversion of Physics into Metaphysics
ŕSymbolic Stage of UtteranceŕConsequent MisapprehensionŕGenesis of
Ideographs in acted SpeechŕComparison of Hieroglyphic and Natural Gesture-
SignsŕPersistence of these Primates of ExpressionŕNatural Origin of
Zoötypes as Living IdeographsŕTheir Reduction into Phonetic Signs and
LettersŕArican Origin and Egyptian Perpetuation of a Typology that became
Universal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pages 1ŕ58
SECTION II.
Totemic Typology and CustomsŕZoötypes made StellarŕThe Zoölogical Masque-
radeŕPeople acting in the Character of their Totemic Prototypes show what
Beasts they areŕAnimal Modes of Salutation continued by Primitive Manŕ
The Sneeze a Sign of SoulŕCustoms of CovenantingŕOpening at Pubertyŕ
Modes of Distinguishing the SexŕTypes of VirilityŕConsequent Customs and
Surviving SuperstitionsŕCapture in MarriageŕRites of PubertyŕTransfer of
Customs from the time of Young-man-making to ChildhoodŕTheir Loss of
MeaningŕReckoning from the Left Hand firstŕPrimitive SociologyŕInterpre-
tation of ŖCouvadeŗŕOrigin of the Trinity in Lunar PhenomenaŕAncient
Customs explained by Egyptian Symbolism. . . . . . Pages 59ŕ134
SECTION III.
Origin of the Myth in a Twofold Phase of FactŕBeginning Identical with
Opening and Bifurcating into DualityŕHence the ŖTwo Truthsŗ of Egyptŕ
Difference in Sex enacted before Languages could denote itŕExternal Phenomena
Expressed according to the Two TruthsŕWater and Breath the two Factors of
BeingŕExistence a Breathing out of the WaterŕConsequent Customs and
BeliefsŕHeaven the Water aboveŕThe Two Waters of Light and Darkness,
Life and DeathŕThe Pool of the Twin Waters Localized in various Landsŕ
Mystical Feminine Phase and Bloody Sweat of the Solar GodŕThe Two
Truths in Masonry and Metaphysics . . . . . . . Pages 135ŕ184
SECTION IV.
Beginning with Bifuraction Demonstrated by Digital ReckoningŕThe Hand and
other Types of NumbersŕThe Mother First, Child Second, Pubescent Male
Third in SeriesŕFour QuadrupedalŕThe All represented by number 10ŕOne
Name for Divers Types of Pubescence in many LanguagesŕThe Tree-type of
Oneness and Thigh-type of the BranchŕOpening and Dividing being Identical
with Founding . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pages 185ŕ234
xvi SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.
SECTION V.
Origin of Language in Gesture-Signs and Involuntary SoundsŕRudimentary
Articulation extant in AfricaŕExamination of Grimmřs LawŕThe Ideo-
graphic Phase of Language preceding LettersŕEmbroyonic Unity and
Specialization on Lines of VariationsŕPersistence of Primary Typesŕ
Limited Nature of Primordial OnomatopœiaŕOrigin of Words in conscious
Repetition of the same SoundŕAboriginal Sounds that passed into Wordsŕ
Only Seven needed for the Roots of LanguagesŕThe Regenesis in the Mor-
phology of later WordsŕThe Kaf-Ape as Typical Hand and Tongue of Speech ŕ
The Evolution of Seven Vowels form Seven Consonants and from Seven Words
first formed by Repetition of the same Sounds, preserved and practised
as one of the Religious Mysteries . . . . . . . . Pages 235ŕ291
SECTION VI.
Darkness the first Adversary, Deluder, or Devil, typified as the SerpentŕThe
Serpent WisdomŕOrigin of other Elementaries as Representatives of the
Elemental ForcesŕPrimitive Mode of expressing External PhenomenaŕOrigin
of the Genitrix and her Seven Children who are Universal in Mythology as the
Primordial Powers of Space and ChaosŕPassage of the Zoötypes into Krono-
types, and Conversion of the Evil Serpent into the Good DæmonŕThe Mystical
Serpent-Mother of all FleshŕThe Celestial Dragon and Tree of the PoleŕThe
Serpent or Dragon in its Eschatological PhaseŕTransformation of the Old
Dragon of Physical Phenomena into the Modern Devil . . Pages 292ŕ370
SECTION VII.
The Mount and Tree as Feminine Types of the BirthplaceŕThe Tree as Giver of
Food and Drink, the Nursing Mother of Life, Teacher of Time and Periodic
Return, hence the Tree of KnowledgeŕThe Tree of Earth and HeavenŕPassage of
the Tree into the Cross as a Figure of the Four CornersŕUniversal Type of the
Solstices and EquinoxesŕUnity of Cross and CircleŕVarious Forms and
Meanings of the CrossŕThe Cross earlier than the Male ChirstŕCross and
CrucifiedŕCross of Life and of DeathŕCross on the pre-Christian Coins and in
the Roman CatacombsŕZodiacal Cross of the Ram, the Fish, and the Christ
who was earlier than the year 255 B.C. . . . . . . . Pages 371ŕ455
SECTION VIII.
Mythology the Mirror of Primitive SociologyŕPriority of the Motherhoodŕ
Consequent CustomsŕThe Mother as the first AbodeŕThe Mother that Divides
as the Two Sisters of one Blood, and becomes Dual in Heaven and EarthŕThe
Twin-Child that became the Typical Sut-Horus who, together with the Mother,
formed the TrinityŕThe Twin-Brothers whose Contention is World-wide, traced
through various Phenomena and followed into the Catacombs of Rome ŕTheir
Division the Origin of the first two Castes or Classes of Mankindŕ
The Two Sisters in Mythology continued in the Christian IconographyŕThe
Male-ess or Mother-MaleŕNatural Genesis of the Biune, Triune, and Tetradic
BeingŕLate Individualization of the Fatherhood and of God as the Fatherŕ
Origin of the Triads Male and Female and of the TrinityŕSurvival of the
Mythical Types in the Dogmas of the Final Religious Phase . Pages 456ŕ552
THE NATURAL GENESIS
ŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕ
SECTION I.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY.
was later than Ptah, Atum, Horus, Seb, Shu, Osiris, and Sut, and his
birth was as a Time-Keeper. In the inscription from the Temple of
El-Karjeh it is said that he was Ŗself-produced,ŗ and that in Ŗmaking
his body,ŗ and Ŗgiving birth to it,ŗ Ŗhe has not come out of a womb—he
has come out of cycles.ŗ1
Like Taht, the moon-god, and Seb, the star-god, he too was a birth
of time. This is the Ŗonly one,ŗ as the sun-god, of whom the Osirian
says, ŖLet me cross and manage to see the Only One, the sun going
round, as the giver of peace.ŗ2
The language of monotheism reaches its climax in the hymns and
addresses to Amen-Ra, the one god, one in all his works and ways.
Yet he was a god with a beginning, and his piety to his parents is on
record. He paid an annual visit to the Valley of the Dead, and
poured out a libation to his father and mother on the altar of pro-
pitiation. The one god is simply the culminating point of all the
immeasurable past of polytheism.
The world of sense was not a world or symbol to the primitive or
primeval man. He did not begin as a Platonist. He was not the
realizer of abstractions, a personifier of ideas, a perceiver of the
Infinite. In our gropings after the beginnings we shall find the
roots of religious doctrines and dogmas with the common earth, or
dirt even, still clinging to them, and showing the ground in which
they grew.
Metaphysical explanations have been the curse of mythology from
the time of the Platonists up to the present. All interpretation is
finally futile that is not founded on the primary physical phenomena.
Fortunately, this basis of the earliest thought is more or less
extant in the types that have been left us to interpret as best we
may; and on this concrete foundation we have to build. Nor is there
any origin of religion worth discussing apart from these foundations
of mythology which are verifiable in the phenomena of nature.
Instead of a monotheistic instinct, or a primeval revelation of the
one god, mythology exhibits a series of types as the representatives
of certain natural forces from which the earliest gods were evolved,
and finally compounded into a one deity, who assumed their attributes
as his manifestations, and thus became the supreme being and god
over all. It will be demonstrated that Egyptian mythology began
with the typifying of seven elements or seven elemental forces, such
as fire and water, earth and air, born of the Typhonian genitrix, as
the Abyss. These were the eight in Am-Smen, the place of prepara-
tion, who were born of space of chaos before the formation of the world,
or the establishment of order and time. Their types were continued
in the secondary phase—that of time—as intelligencers to men.
The primordial, or supreme deity in Egypt, then, was not a god
one, or one god of the beginning, but the one who had been com-
1 Records of the Past, vol. viii. p. 137. 2 Ch. cxlviii.
6 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
pounded and elevated to the supremacy as solar type of the godhead
and representative of a pleroma. Neither Ra, Atum, Amen, nor
Ptah was one of the eight original gods. The process will be shown
by which the latest deities were compounded or developed from
characters previously extant, who were gods of the earliest time, as
these were of the latest.
Ra, as a total god, comprises the seven spirits, or souls that pre-
ceded his creation, as the seven spirits of the Bear.1 So the one god
of the Avesta, Ahura-Mazda, is made up of the seven spirits, or
Amshaspands, who preceded his supremacy. One title of the sun-god
Ra is ŖTeb-Temt,ŗ and temt means totalled, from tem, the total, as in
the English team. His total, as Teb-temt, consists of seventy-five
characters. These seventy-five manifestations of Raŕwhich cor-
respond to the seventy-five zones of suffering in the Hades, whence
came the cries of those who were in greatest need of knowing a name
to call uponŕare repeated in number in the Ormazd-Yasht of the
Avesta, where the divinity gives to Zarathustra his seventy-five
names. The Parsees say the number should be seventy-two, cor-
relating them probably with the seventy-two Decans, but the seventy-
five correlate with the original Egyptian unknown to them.2
The primordial god, as Ptah, was not divided into four couples as
M. Pierret argues, but the four couples, or the eight great gods
previously extant, were represented by Ptah; they were resolved into
his attributes, or manifestations, when Ptah as a solar god had been
created. Everywhere, inevitably, the non-evolutionist reverses the
process of development.
Canon Rawlinson has lately re-affirmed the statement that there
was an esoteric and exoteric system of teaching, by which the
Egyptian priests, with whom the Ŗprimary doctrine of the esoteric
religion undoubtedly was the real essential unity of the divine nature,ŗ
taught the people at large Ŗa polytheism of a multitudinous, and in many
respects, of a gross character.ŗ3 This is the portrait of the Egyptian
priest commonly presented by modern monotheists, who surreptitiously
interpolate the ancient texts.
Here, however, the seventeenth chapter of the Ritual, which is
designated the gospel or faith of the Egyptians, and is the kernel of
their religious creed, contains a complete refutation and reversal.
It happens that in this chapter we have the text mixed up with the
glosses, which were intended to be kept oral; the two corresponding
to the written and oral law of the Hebrews. That, for once the
exoteric and esoteric teaching appear together. A text or saying is
announced, followed by the ŖPetar ref su,ŗ Ŗlet him (the esoterist)
explain it;ŗ and in many instances he does explain the text. The
result is that the announcement contains all the monotheistic matter, the
1 Ritual, ch. xvii. 2 Litany of Ra, cf. Bleeck, vol. iii. p. 23.
3 History of Egypt.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 7
supposed esoteric doctrine, whereas the glosses which secreted the hidden
oral wisdom relate to the materialistic beginnings, and tend to identify
the abstract god once more with the origines in phenomena, the spiritual
god being explained physicallyŕmark, not in the exoteric but in the
esoteric teaching.
The theosophy is continually rendered in terms of physical
phenomena. The deceased speaks in the person of various gods.
He says, for example, ŖI am Tum, the only being in the firmament.ŗ
Now Tum is the Ŗone god,ŗ the father of souls. But the abstract
idea is in the text, and the commentary, gloss, or esoteric teaching
keeps the mind anchored fast to the natural genesis in physical
phenomena. The god of the exoteric teaching is all through the
actual sun of the esoteric.
The Ŗsun in his rising,ŗ the Ŗsun in his disk,ŗ the Ŗgreat
godŗ in the pool is the Ŗsun himself.ŗ The Ŗfatherŗ is Ŗthe
sun.ŗ The one who Ŗorders his name to rule the godsŗ as Horus,
the Ŗson of Osiris,ŗ is explained to be Ŗthe sun himself.ŗ
These explanations, which usually remained unwritten, show that the
cause of concealment in later times was the simple physical nature of the
beginnings out of which the more abstract ideas had been gradually
evolved.
There is undoubtedly a dislike in the later stage of ideas to having
them expressed in those terms of phenomena which serve to recall the
physical origines, and a great desire to keep their primitive nature clothed
and out of sight, requiring all the unshrinking honesty of modern science
ŕŖwhose soul is explanationŗŕto counteract such diffidence. Yet it
was necessary for the learned to retain a knowledge of the beginnings.
This it was that led to the hidden wisdom, the Gnosis, the Kabalah,
the inner mysteries. The knowledge was concealed because of its
primitiveness, and not on account of its profundity.
According to the statement of the Bishop of Cæserea, the learned
Egyptian Chaeremon acknowledged no intellectual principles in the
earliest mythology of Egypt. This shows that he knew the matter
to the root, and the nature of the eight Elementaries whose origin
was entirely physical.
It is certain, then, that Egyptian polytheism was not monotheism
intentionally disguised with various masks for one face, and equally
sure that the image of the one god and supreme being was evolved
from many preceding gods, and that the process of this evolution can
be followed and fixed.
Cicero asks, ŖDo you not see how from the productions of nature and
the useful inventions of men have arisen fictitious and imaginary
deities, which have been the foundation of false opinions, pernicious
errors, and miserable superstitions?ŗ1
And he affirms rightly that the sacred and august Eleusina, into
1 [De natara deorum] Book ii. 28.
8 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
whose mysteries the most distant nations were initiated, and the
solemnities in Samothrace and in Lemnos, secretly resorted to by
night, if they were properly explained and reduced to reasonable
principles, would rather explicate the nature of things than discover
the knowledge of the gods.1
A few hints may be found in Plutarchřs ever precious fragment ŖOf
Isis and Osirisŗ; also in the ŖHieroglyphicsŗ of Hor-Apollo, which
have been considerably undervalued by certain Egyptologists. But
the mysteries remained unpublished. The Greeks could not master
the system of Egyptian mythology, and the hieroglyphics were to
them the dead letter of a dead language.
What Herodotus knew of the mysteries he kept religiously con-
cealed. What Plato had learned made him jealous of the allegories
to which he did not possess the clue; but he would have banished the
poems of Homer from his republic, because the young would be unable
to distinguish between what was allegorical and what was actual;
exactly on the same ground that many sound thinkers to-day would
banish the Bible from our schools for children.
Outside of their own mysteries the Greeks stood altogether outside
of the subject. They, as their writers allege, had inherited their
mythology, and the names of the divinities, without knowing their
origin or meaning. They supplied their own free versions to stories
of which they never possessed the key. Whenever they met with
anything they did not understand, they turned it the more effec-
tively to their own account. All that came to hand was matter for
metaphysics, poetry, statue, and picture. They sought to delight and
charm the world with these old elements of instruction, and with
happy audacity supplied the place of the lost nature of mystic mean-
ing with the abounding grace and beauty of their art. Nothing,
however, could be more fatal than to try to read the thoughts of
the remoter past through their eyes, or to accept the embellishments
of these beautifiers for interpretations of the ancient typology; and
the reproduction of the primitive myths from the Aryan stage of
language in Greece is on a par with the modern manufacture of
ancient Masters carried on in Rome.
In his Commentary on Platořs Politics, Proclus, speaking of the
symbolism of the ancients, and their sacerdotal system, says truly
that from this mythology Plato himself derived or established many
of his peculiar dogmas.2
The utterly misleading way in which Egyptian physics were con-
verted by Plato and his followers into Greek metaphysics, makes
Platonism only another name for imposture. Time, says Plato finely,
is the moving image of eternity. But the foundation of the image is
planetary, or stellar motion, and on this basis of visible things he
sought to establish all that was invisible, and build up the human
1 On the Nature of the Gods, book i. c. 42. 2 Taylor, p. 372.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 9
race which has been divided into ever so many tribes. These differ
totally in languages, but they preserve a primæval relationship in the
use of certain peculiar sounds, of which the clicks constitute the
essential part.1
Among the Tembus, Pondos, Zulu, Ashantis, Fantis, and various
other African tribes there are many people of the same family title.
These are unable to trace any relationship with each other, but wherever
they are they find themselves in possession of ceremonial customs which
are quite peculiar to those who bear that name. Thus the particular
customs observed at the birth of a child are exactly the same in
different parts of the country among those who have the same family
title, although they have never heard of each otherřs existence, whilst
their neighbours of the same clan, but of different family names, have
altogether different customs.2 Here the name and the typical custom
lead down to that unity of origin which is lost sight of on the surface.
This equally applies to such typical customs and names on a far larger
scale than that of the Kaffir tribes. Also it shows how the name, the
mark, and the custom have persisted together from time immemorial.
So is it on the American continent. Not the remotest affinity can
be detected by grammarians between the languages of the Pawnees
and the neighbouring Mandans,3 but when it comes to a type like that
of the four quarters and the cross, together with the customs and super-
stitions associated with the type, then the earlier connection becomes
apparent and the possession is found to be in common.
James describes the Kiawa-Kaskaia Indians as nations united
Ŗunder the influence of the Bear-tooth,ŗ yet they were totally
ignorant of each otherřs spoken language, and when two individuals
of different nations wished to converse they did so freely by the
language of gesture-signs.4 That was the earlier and simpler medium
of communication reverted to when the spoken language was dispersed.
The primal unity was shown by the Totemic ŖBear-toothŗ and by
gesture-signs. Here, then, we get down to a record of the past that
lies beyond spoken language, the living memory or man, or of the
tribe, the local race, or the human race itself. This record is the
language of symbolism, a skeleton of all other forms of human speech,
whose bones are like the fossil remains that exist as proofs of an
original unity between the lands that are now severed, just as the
bones of the Mammoth in Britain and France show that the two
lands, though divided now, were originally one.
As Emerson has it, Ŗa good symbol is a missionary to convince
thousands.ŗ When Europe was first converted to Christianity, it was
by making use of the same symbols that were hallowed to the Pagan
1 Hahn, Tsuni Goam, p. 2. 2 Theal, Kaffir Folk-Lore, p. 198.
3 Briston, p. 71.
4 James, Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. iii. p. 52. Burton, City of the
Saints; Gesture Signs. Tylor, Primitive Culture and Early History.
12 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Cult; the rooted Types being indefinitely more postent that any later
sense engrafted on them.
Whether for good or ill the symbol has proved all-powerful. The
hold of symbolism is in its way as strong in civilised society as in the
savage world. CRESTOLATRY is as nearly a form of devotion as
Christolatry, Totemism, or Fetishism, except that a Briton who had
the fish, stag, or vine in his coat-of-arms, would not now-a-days
think of totally abstaining from fish, venison, or wine in consequence;
as would the Bechuana of Southern Africa or the Kol of Nagpore;
although the time was, in these islands, when he would have done
so, as may be seen by the non-eating of the pig, hare, and eel in
the past.
The king, as sacred ruler, acquired the vesture of his divinity and
the halo of awful light because he was made to personate or reflect
the deity on earth, and thus became vicariously divine. Kingship
in this phase, was not founded on the human character, however
supremely able, however exalted in the forms of chieftainship, but
on the typical and representative character. Hence the Ŗdivinity
that doth hedge a king,ŗ which did not emanate from him but was
conferred upon him; he wore it from without, as a lay figure
invested with the drapery of deity.
The Ank (Eg.) or the Inca (Peru.) represented the living and ever-
living one, who was therefore not a human being, and on this ground
was based the fiction of the king being the undying one. So the
king never dies. This was not directly derived from the natural
genesis, but is in accordance with the typology formulated in Egypt
and extant wherever the title of Inca, Ying, or King is found.
Hence the king becomes the life and the master of life to his
people, as in Siam, in a very literal later fashion, where the typical
character is superstitiously interpreted. The king in Egypt was the
living image of the Solar God. He was the divine chief, the Repa,
god-bcgotten, who grew up into the god in person on earth. And
just as the king was glorified as the sun, so were the earlier rulers
glorified under more primitive types of power. In Madagascar the
monarch, like the Pharaoh of Egypt, was the potent bull. The
king of Ashanti is glorified as the snake and the lion; the Zulu
king as the tiger, lion or mountain. In Guatemala the king was
the tiger of the wood, the laughing jaguar, the mighty boa, the op-
pressing eagle. The Norse king Gorm was the great worm (or Crom)
the dragon-king. The chief in a Kaffir folk-tale is a snake with five
heads. By the earliest titles the bearers were assimilated to the most
terrible types of power and the most primitive forms of force, and,
therefore, to the elementary gods, which preceded the sun, moon, and
star gods of the cycles of time.
When the symbol has lost its significance, the man or woman still
remains to receive the homage of ignorance: and the sacrifices that
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 13
once were offered intelligently to the visible and living image of the
god, as it was in Egypt, or to the demon in Africa beyond. So potent
is the influence of symbols over the mind that the worldřs welfare
cannot afford to have their indefinable appeal perverted by cunning
or ignorance.
Symbols still dominate the minds of men and usurp the place of
realities. A symbol may cause humanity proudly to rise in stature
or grovel pronely in the dust. Who has not felt the flutter of the
flag in oneřs pulses and been stirred with rapture to horripilation
at sight of some war-worn, shot-riddled remnant, stained with the
blood of its bearers, which had braved and beckoned forward the
battle on some desperate day, that made all safe once more for the
dear land of our love? Whether used for good or evil the symbol,
that outward and visible shape of the idea, is supreme. Most helpful
of servants, most tyrannous of masters. Expression still attains
the summit in a symbol. It belongs to the universal language,
the masonry of nature, the mode of the immortals.
In the case of the flag the link betwixt the fact and its sign is not
lost, but precisely where it is lost and we have no clue to the natural
verity signified, the origin is there claimed to be supernatural, and
credited with the power of conferring a divine sanction on all sorts
of devilry. The same influence will prevent the Hindu, if starving,
from tasting a bit of cow, or killing the monkey that is devastating
villages.
The ancient symbolism was a mode of expression which has be-
queathed a mould of thought that imprisons the minds of myriads
as effectually as the toad shut up by the rock into which it
was born.
The human mind has long suffered an eclipse and been darkened
and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas, the real meaning of which has
been 1ost to the moderns. Myths and allegories whose significance
was once unfolded to initiates in the mysteries have been adopted in
ignorance and re-issued as real truths directly and divinely vouchsafed
to mankind for the first and only time! The earlier religions had
their myths interpreted. We have ours misinterpreted. And a
great deal of what has been imposed on us as Godřs own true and sole
revelation to man is a mass of inverted myth, under the shadow of
which we have been cowering as timorously as birds in the stubble
when an artificial kite in the shape of a hawk is hovering overhead.
The parables of the primæval thinkers have been elevated to the
sphere, so to say, as the Ŗhawkŗ or Ŗserpent,ŗ the Ŗbullŗ or the
Ŗcrabŗ that gave names to certain groups of stars, and we are in
precisely the same relationship to those parables and allegories as we
should be to astronomical facts if we thought the serpent and bull, the
crab and hawk were real animal and bird instead of constellations
with symbolical names. The simple realities of the earliest time were
14 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
expressed by signs and symbols and these have been taken and
applied to later thoughts and converted by Theologists into problems
and metaphysical mysteries which they have no basis for and can only
wrangle over en l‟air, unable to touch solid earth with one foot when
they want to expel opponents with the other.
The Greek and still more modern misinterpretations of ancient
typology have made it the most terrible tyranny in the mental domain.
Much of our folk-lore and most of our popular beliefs are fossilized
symbolism. The fables and allegories that fed the minds of the
initiated, when interpreted, became the facts of the ignorant
when the oral teaching of the mysteries was superseded by letters
and direct reading, because the hidden wisdom had never been
published. Misinterpreted mythology has so profoundly infected
religion, poetry, art, and criticism, that it has created a cult of the
unreal. Unreality is glorified, called the ideal, and considered to be
poetry, a mocking image of beauty, that blinds its followers, until
they cannot recognise the natural reality.
In the great conflict of the age between the doctrine of evolution
and the dogmas of mythology, between the Marvellous and the
Impossible, our art and poetry are continually found on the side of
the mytholators. The myths still furnish lay-figures for the painter
and poet and lives are spent in the vain endeavour to make them
live by those and for those who have never known what they signified
at first. Youth yet falls in love with them, and has the desire to
reproduce; Humanity is re-cast in the present according to a lion-
browed, ape-toed Greek type of the past (described later on), and
the humanly heroic is superseded by the counterfeit divine. The
prostitute of primitive intercourse, the great harlot of mythology, is
continued as a supreme personage in poetry, whether as Helen of
Troy or Gwenivere of Britain, or Iseult of Brittany, the Welsh
Essyllt, onc of the Ŗthree unchaste maidensŗ of British mythology.
It is on the assumption that these lay-figures of poetry, art, or
religion, were human once that an interest is taken in them now.
But the assumption is false, and falsehood, however attractive, is
always fraudulent.
These divinities of the bygone time may serve to beguile the
children of to-day as dolls for dandling, but they are outgrown by
all who have attained the stature and status of real men and women.
Shakspeare, we are told, has no heroes. Happily to a large extent
he drew from nature instead of the models of mythology.
The Jews are caught and confined in a complete net-work of
symbolism, so closely woven round them that they are cramped and
catalepsed into rigidity from long keeping of the same postures, and
the interstices are almost too narrow for breath to pass through.
So is it with the Muhammedan and Parsee ritual of rigid rule and
ceremonial routine; a religion of form in which the trivial is stereo-
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 15
rather than thinkers. The men who first employed signs had not
attained the art which suppIies an ideal representation of natural
facts; they directly represented their meaning in visible forms. The
signs enter a second phase as the representatives of ideas when they
become ideographic and metaphorical.
The figure of an eye directly represents sight and seeing, but the
eye as reflector of the image becomes a symbol. The eye of Horus is
his mother as mirror and reproducer of the babe-image. The Uta eye
signifies health, welfare, safety, and salvation, because when placed
with the mummy in the tomb it denoted reproduction for another life.
The Macusi Indians of Guiana say that when the body decays in
death the ŖMan in the eyes. will not dieŗ the image reflected by
the eye being emblematic of the shadow or soul. The Nootkas of
Nootka Sound were found, by Lord, to be in possession of a precious
medicine; a solid piece of copper hammered flat, and of an oval or
eye-shape, the chief device on which was an EYE represented in many
sizes. This medicine was most carefully preserved and shown only
on extraordinary occasions.1 This was identical with the symbolic
eye of health, welfare, and salvation in Egypt.
The Hottentots to this day will take the root of a shrub called
kharab, cut it up and pound it on stones. When one is hungry he
takes a pinch of the dust and goes to the house of his neighbour
where instead of asking for food, be throws the powder on the fire
and expects food to be given to him.2 The charm is known as the
food-provider. Here the action is elaborately symbolical. In the
earliest stage of sign-language it would have sufficed to point to the
mouth and the food. Again the tip of the crocodileřs tail is the
hieroglyphic sign for black, not because it was black, for it is but
slate-coloured when darkest, and is often of a reddish brown. The
type therefore in this case does not depend directly on the complexion.
According to Hor-Apollo the tail of the crocodile signifies dark-
ness because the animal inflicts death on any other animal which it
may have caught by first striking it with its tail (?) and rendering it
incapable of motion.3 That is one idea. The crocodile likewise
denoted sunset. Its two eyes typified the sunrise, its tail the sunset
or darkness. All day long the animal lay on land and when the
night came down it disappeared in the waters. The tip of its tail
was the end of it, and the black signified was night; the colouring
matter, so to say, was mental and this sign became its ideograph.
The crocodile, his mark! that had been made on their minds by
actual contact, and the wrestling for supremacy during ages of
watching of this intelligent one of the deep, or the deep one,
not unmixed with a sense of relief at the nightly-vanishing tip of
its tail.
1 It was seen by Lord, Naturalist, vol. ii. p. 257.
2 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 83. 3 Book i. 70.
18 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
A distinct statement of the symbolic nature of the sacred fish
may be quoted from the Ritual. 1 One of the forty-two sins was
the catching of Ŗthe fish which typify.ŗ These then were sacred
because symbolical.
The meaning of many curious customs and rites cannot be directly
ascertained, for the memory is lost and the ritual of the cult was
unwritten. Nor can it be directly derived from nature. which has
outgrown that infantile age of humanity, however lucky the guesses
we may make. True, the evolutionist is able to affirm that such
customs as we now call symbolical are not accounted for until we
can trace them to their natural genesis. Here is the imperative
need of the typological phase of these things to interpret that which
was once the natural; the directly representative, which is still
reflected for us by the older races of the world in the primitive
customs, religious rites, superstitious beliefs, folk-lore, and fetishes;
also in the mirror of mythology. Betwixt us and the natural genesis
of ancient customs, rites, ceremonies and religious beliefs, lie the
culture represented by Egypt, America, Babylonia, and China, and
the decadence and obliviousness of the dying races; and at least we
need to know what Egypt has yet to say on these earliest simplicities
which have become the later mysteries; she who is the contemporary
of time, or rather its creator; the chronologer, the revealer, the inter-
preter of antiquity; the sole living memory of the dark oblivious
land (the very consciousness of Kam), the speaker for the dumb,
unfathomable past; who gave, in graven granite, permanence to the
primitive signs of thought, and types of expression; whose stamp or
mint-mark may be found generally on this current coinage of the
whole world. Without some such clue as Egypt offers, any direct or
literal rendering of that which has become symbolic, is likely to be
erroneous. The decaying races can but seldom tell us what is the
intention underlying the type. They have their symbols without
the means or desire to interpret them for us. They have their
thoughts, for which they do not find expression; their feelings, that
may not be transfigured into thought; but for us they are dumb
in the awful shadow of the past that hangs over them, and they
cannot explain. the meaning of its mystery ; they have no interpreter
between themselves and us for their language of symbols, and until
these are understood we shall never understand them. We English
mix with 250,000,000 of natives in India, and can rule over them, but
cannot comprehend them. Yet those natives who read the present
work will penetrate its significance far more profoundly than the
writerřs own countrymen, whose knowledge is too late a creation, and
whose minds live too extensively on the surface of the present for
them to get en rapport with their remoter ideas, and establish any
real camaraderie of relationship with the peoples of the far-off past.
1 Ch. cxxv.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 19
3 Book of the Beginnings, vol. i. p. 88. [Quoting Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. 24. s. 62-3.]
22 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
This is a gesture-sign to be read at sight. The left hand being the
lower and inferior, this is the attitude of humility, or an act of worship.
Whether the object be human or divine must be determined by the
surroundings, but the gesture-sign belongs to gesture-language, and
tells its story according to one system wherever found.
The significance of giving the Ŗright hand of fellowship,ŗ and in
making a covenant, or of being seated on the right hand still depends
on the origin in gesture-language, the right being the superior hand.
The symbolism of the left hand is also applied by the Indians to the
representation of death, in which it is held flat over the face with the
back outwards, when the right hand similarly held is passed below the
other, gently touching it (Wied).1 This sign likewise denotes the pas-
sage under; death itself being described as Ŗgoing under.ŗ In the
representation of Ŗdying,ŗ the left hand is held as in the sign for dead
and the right is passed under it with a slow, gentle, interrupted
movement.
The signs for death point to drowning as the typical end and mode
of Ŗgoing under.ŗ One illustration is by reversal of the hand, which
reads Ŗupset,ŗ Ŗkeeled over.ŗ Water is the most primary and perma-
nent of types, one of the Two Truths of Egypt; the natural opposite
or antithesis of breath. The Egyptian ideograph of negation, no, not,
without, deprived of, is a wave of water; and the Indian representations
of death include a downward movement of the hand outstretched with
the palm upward. The hand is lowered gradually with a wave-like
motion. In another sign the palm of the hand is placed at a
short distance from the side of the head, and then withdrawn gently
in an oblique downward direction, at the same time the upper part of
the body bends, leans, and the sinking motion is thus imitated twice
over. The word ŖKe-neebooŗ is pronounced slowly. Colonel Mallery
points out that in Ojibwa the word Nibo means he dies, he sleeps, the
original significance being he leans, from Anibeia, it is leaning;2 but
the leaning, keeling over, and sinking, all indicate death by water,
and in the chief Indian languages, Nibo, for Ŗhe diesŗ is the type-
name for water, as
Neebi, Ojibwa. Nepee, Knistinaux. Nippe, Massachusetts.
Nebee, Potowatami. Nepee, Skoffi. Nip, Narragansetts.
Nipish, Ottawa. Nepee, Sheshatapoosh. Nape, Miami.
Nipi, Old Algonkin. Nabi, Abenaki.
Death by drowning was a form of sinking and going under that was
obvious to the earliest perception, and this negation of life by means
of water is figured in the hieroglyphic sign of negation.
It has been said that there is no negative in nature 3 but the men
Mallory, p. 86.
1 2 Collection, p. 83.
but yet one which covers with its influence half the realm of language. This is
the apparatus of Negation. . . . Where in the outer world is there such a thing as a
Negative? Where is the natural phenomenon that would suggest to the human
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 23
who made water the sign for no, en, or nun had observed that it was the
negation of breath, and the hieroglyphics show the type of negation
in running water. Also the word skhet (Eg.) which means to slay,
signifies to capsize. Khem (Eg.) is a form of no, not, and the word
likewise means dead.
With this waving and sinking of the hand to indicate death we
may connect, and possibIy interpret, the Indian signs of no, the
emphatic negative. One of these is made by moving the hand in
front of the face; another by oscillating the index finger before the
face from right to left. This latter sign, made by the Pah-Utes; is
said by Canon de Jorio to be in use also among the Neapolitans,
and in many parts of Southern Europe. Oscillation shows negation
whether made with the head or the hand. This sign is extant among
the Japanese.
The shake of the head is another mode of negation corresponding
to the wave and the waving motion. Also the natives near Torres
Straits have a gesture of negation in which they hold up the right
hand and shake it by turning it half round and back again two or
three times,1 which corresponds to our shake of the head as a sign
of Ŗno.ŗ The essential feature is the waving or wave, which imitates
the wave of water that constitutes the hieroglyphic no, emphatic
negation, none (Nun).
A Chinese character signifying law is composed of Ŗwaterŗ and
Ŗto go,ŗ why is unknown; but, as water denotes the negative, the
two signs read Ŗno go,ŗ or Ŗthou shalt not,ŗ which was the earliest
formula of law.
Darwin, on The Expression of the Emotions,2 remarks that Ŗthe
waving of the hand from right to left, which is used as a negative by
some savages, may have been invented in imitation of shaking the
head; but whether the opposite movement of waving the hand in a
straight line from the face which is used in affirmation has arisen
through antithesis or in some quite distinct manner, is doubtful.ŗ
The left hand in the Kamite typology is the negative, feminine, nether,
underhand; the emphatic negative being expressed by both hands
held low down, whilst the straight is the right and thus the right hand
waved in a straight line has the value of yes.
Straight is synonymous with true or right and true, that is with
Mâ, which also means Ŗcome,ŗ Ŗyou may,ŗ and is therefore an affirm-
ative. So the Dakota signs of yes and truth are identical. Possibly
this sign of Mâ or Mâi, for Ŗcome,ŗ Ŗyou mayŗ can be read at root
by ŖMaauiŗ (Eg.) which signifies Ŗin the power of.ŗ More fully
ŖYou may come, I am in your power, truly, or empty-handed; see the
palm of my hand.ŗ
mind the idea of Negation? There is no negative in Nature.ŗŕEarle, Philology
of the English Tongue, pp. 421-425.
1 Jukes, Letters &c., p. 248. 2 Ch. i.
24 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
In the Egyptian ideograph of the verb to pray and beseech the
palms of the two hands are presented outward, showing that the
hands are empty.
In a similar manner the sound of ŖCooeyŗ which the Australian
settlers have adopted. from the natives, affords its intimation. In the
Yarra dialect the word Kooo-ey signifies ŖAlone,ŗ or ŖI am alone;ŗ
and this intelligence is first uttered by the messenger from one tribe
to another whilst he is yet a mile from their place of encampment.
In the Apache, Comanche, Kaiowa and Wichita sign, the palm of
the right hand is afterwards thrown against the horizontal palm of
the left hand, showing in another way that both hands are empty,
although only one was lifted in invitation.
This reading may be illustrated by the Yoruban saying, ŖThe
Palm of the hand does not lie,ŗ or it never deceives one. The same
fundamental meaning survives in the phrase of clear or Ŗclean-
handed.ŗ
The Egyptian Ideograph of peaceful and gentle actions is the
arm with the hand fallen thus « . Whereas the determinative of
forcible actions is the clenched hand uplifted.
The Indian intimation of No, Not, Negation, is conveyed by the
hand being waved in refusing to accept the idea or statement pre-
sented. This action is in keeping with the hieroglyphic sign for No,
Not, Negation, with the two hands waved apart and extended palm-
downwards ¤ . In the Dakota sign (67) the hand is held flat
and pointing upwards before the right side of the chest, then thrown
outward and pressed down. Also there is a strong coincidence be-
tween the negative particle ŖMa,ŗ given by Landa, and the Egyptian
emphatic negative.
According to Fornander, the same gesture sign for ŖNoŗ prevails
throughout Polynesia. He says, ŖAsk a person if he had such or
such a thing, and, two to one, instead of saying ŘNo,ř he will turn his
hand or hands palm-downwards, in sign of a negative answer.ŗ1
This figure of negation, of forbidding and prohibiting represented
by the hieroglyphic ¤
is yet made by our railway signalmen for
staying the train and preventing it from starting. It is still the
ŖNoŗ of gesture speech.
The explanation as given by Captain Burton of the Indian signs
for Truth and Life is sufficient to affiliate the gestures to the ŖTwo
Truthsŗ of Egypt; which are manifold in their application as two
aspects or phases of the one idea, such as yes or no, before and behind,
good and bad, right and wrong, the dual justice or twofold truth.
Captain Burton says the forefinger extended straight from the mouth is
the sign for telling truth, as Ŗone word,ŗ whereas two fingers denote
the Ŗdouble-tongue,ŗ or a lie. Truth is that which comes straight from
the heart or mouth. Speaking the truth is straight speech. 2 Among
1 Vol. i. p. 243. 2 Mallery, Ojibwa, i.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 25
for silence and the child, are both expressed by the one word
Khart (Eg.).
Mrs. Barber says the Kaffirs and Fingoes express astonishment by
a serious look and by placing the right hand upon the mouth,
uttering the word ŖMawo,ŗ1 which is the Xosa exclamation for
wonderful! prodigious! The word also signifies Ŗalas.ŗ The fuller
form of the expresssion in grief is ŖMame-Mawo,ŗ or ŖAlas! my
mother!ŗ In this the mother is added to the type of the child. So
in Egyptian the Mam, Mum or Mu is the mother, and Mahui
denotes wonder, to be full of astonishment, like the vulgar English
ŖO moy!ŗ The word Ŗadoreŗ really means Ŗwith hand to mouth.ŗ
For the sign of companion, as the husband, or to accompany, the
forefinger of each hand is extended pointing straight to the front
and joined, all other fingers of both hands being closedm the hands
held horizontal, with the backs upwards, signifying Ŗinseparable,
united, equal.ŗ2 A similar sign is made by the native Australians
when they offer the woman to a visitor as a rite of hospitality, the
fingers of both hands being closely interlocked. In the hieroglyphics
Teka, to join, adhere, mix, and multiply with the sign of the cross X
is equivalent to the two or the ten digits, or to the two hands being
interlaced to signify conjunction. To denote a basket, or wicker-
work, the separated fingers of both hands are interlaced in front of
the body.3 So Tekar (Eg.), the digit, is the type of teka, to join,
cross, cleave, twist, intertwine, as do the fingers, or the withies in
making baskets.
The sign of counting, and of enumeration in general, is made by
stretching out the ten digits. Also many, much, quantity, multiplicity,
are expressed by stretching out the fingers and clutching at the air
several times. This action, says Kohl, is often confounded with that
for counting. The native Australians likewise denote many, multi-
tude, large numbers, by holding up the hand, spreading out the fingers
and shutting and opening them rapidly.
Now the first and most universal reckoning was digital, and the
name of the digits and the number ten of many languages is Tek,
or Tekh (Eg.). Tekh is a title of the reckoner, who was both Tekhi, the
goddess, and Taht. Tekar is the Egyptian digit, a finger. The sign
of TEK is the cross X, the Roman figure of ten, or Decem, and this
is the hieroglyphic symbol of multiplication.
One sign of ALL is made by moving both hands horizontally, palm
downwards, in a large circle, two feet in front of the face. 4 The
Egyptian ALL, as NEB and TEMT, is a total and a circle of two
halves.
Among the signs for Day, one is described by Titchkemátski,
the Shienne Indian, as ending with the palms of the hands being
1 Quoted by Darwin. 2 Mallery, p. 71.
3 Dakota, i. 4 Dakota, iv.
32 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
outspread upward, to indicate the opening out of day. Wied also
describes this gesture as consisting in both hands being placed
apart, some distance from the breast, with the palms upward. This sign
for Day, or this Morning, is an Egyptian gesture. It is made with
lifted hands, and the palms outspread upwards, signifying Ŗall open,ŗ
Ŗeverything is open,ŗ the reverse of the sign for Night or Ŗevery-
thing is closed.ŗ This is the hieroglyphic for Tuau, or Seb, which
has the meaning of the opening day, morning, morrow, and also to
worship. So certainly is the sense of Ŗopening outŗ conveyed by
the words Seb and Tuau, for the dawn of day, that they also denote
the gateway of the light; the gate or gate-opener being a star.
One sign of the night is made by the two hands crossed horizon-
tally.1 The cross is a well-known Indian sign of night and darkness.
This is connected with the crossing of the sun by night, who is
represented as the black god.
It was the custom in Egypt to reckon the year by the Inundation.
The month of Mesore is named from the new birth of the waters.
In like manner one of the Indian signs for rain or snow is the ideo-
graphic sign for a year.2 The year as a rain marks the same mode
of computation as that of the Unyamwesi and the Hottentots, who
reckon time by the rainy seasons, as the Egyptians did by the
inundations.
The hand and language have one name in Egyptian, as ŖTut.ŗ
Also the tongue and hand are the two Egyptian hieroglyphics of
speech. The sign-language of the Indians is known as Hand-Con-
versation. Burton says the open hand is extended from the mouth.
Various other gestures of hand and mouth likewise denote speech.
The Egyptian sign of Kâ, to beckon, call, and say, with the
uplifted hands, agrees with the Oto sign for an interviewŕŖApproach,
I will open myself to you, I will speak to you.ŗ One Egyptian
determinative for Tet, speech, address, to tell, shows both hands
held up and waving level with the mouth.3 Both hands are used
for conversation in the Arikara and Hidatsa gesture-signs. An
Egyptian tradition, recorded in Plutarch, tells us that until the god
Taht taught men speech they used mere cries like other animals; and
it is true that Taht, the Lunar Logos, is later than the god Shu, or
Kafi, and the Typhonian genitrix Kefa. The Kaf ape was a type
of Ŗhand-conversationŗ and gesture-language. The ape is the hand
of the gods, has the name of the hand, is the hand personified, and
its name, Kaf, is the earlier form of Kâ, for calling and saying; thus
the hand is an earlier sign of speech in Egyptian mythology than
the mouth or tongue as Taht, the Lunar Logos.
In the scenes of the Hades appear four monkeys, each holding an
enormous hand.4 Moreover, the descent of the hand-type can be
1 Dunbar. 2 Burton.
3 Bunsen, vol. v. p. 520. 4 Book of the Hades, 11th division.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 33
because they returned and told of time and Season on the earth.
Karshipt is the Roc, the Persian Simurgh.1 This bird is said to be
the first created, but not for this world.2 Its resting place is in the
tree of life and of all seeds; and every time it rises, its wings shake
down the seed of future life:3 which the hieroglyphics will explain.
The Egyptian Rukh is a form of the phœnix, and a type of immor-
tality. More than one bird served as a phœnix. The bennu is
pourtrayed in the Asru tree over the tomb of Osiris.4 The Rukh
represents the pure spirits; it may be termed the phœnix of
3,000 years, in relation to the life in Hades.
It should be noticed that the mythical Roc of the Arabian tales
(and the Sim-urg, or Kam-rosh of the Persian scriptures) has been
lately discovered in reality. Captain Burton says: ŖThe French mis-
sionaries brought to Zanzibar from Udoe, on the Upper Wami, the
tips of the flippers measuring two and a half feet long. They declare
that the bird is said to have had its habitation about the equatorial
African Lakes; and Herr Hildrebrand, a well-known naturalist
and traveller, accepts the discovery.ŗ5
Thus the real Roc or Rukh of Inner Africa, although extinct, has
been preserved as an ideographic type in the pictographic museum
of Kam, and was set in heaven as the phœnix. The ŖRukh of
Madagascarŗ lays an egg said to contain the equivalent of 148
hensř eggs.6 With us the type of the long-lived blackbird is extant
as the rook
Hor-Apollo says, ŖWhen the Egyptians would symbolise an aged
minstrel they portray a swan, for when it is old it sings the
sweetest melody.ŗ7 The usual form of the tradition is that the
song of the swan when dying is the perfect sweetness of music:
this has to be interpreted. The Swan constellation of the Greeks
was the Bennu, or Phœnix of the Egyptians, in which the
dog-star Sirius was so conspicuous a luminary. From being a
celestial type of Repetition in time the phœnix or swan became the
symbol of continuity or immortality, and the more imminent the end
of the cycle that it represented, the more near was the new era
which it prophesied; hence the death-song was the sweetest on
account of the future life proclaimed by the bird of resurrection.
The reason given by Hor-ApolIo8 for the hawk being adopted as
the type of soul is because it did not drink of water, but drank blood,
by which, likewise, the fœtal soul is fed, nurtured, and sustained.
This agrees with the name of the hawk-headed Kab-sennuf, whose
refreshment is blood.
The Gembsbok, now found chiefly in the Karoos of South Africa, is
1 Bundahish. 2 Ib. xxiv. 11.
3 Ib. ch. xiv. 11, 23; ch. xxiv. 11; Minokhird, 62, 37ŕ39.
4 Wilkinson, fig. 194. 5 Camoens, Commentary, vol. ii. p. 405.
8 B. i. 7.
44 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
the Oryx of the hieroglyphics. This was a Typhonian type, and as
such was turned into an image of impurity. Hor-Apollo says the
Oryx shows such antipathy to the moon that when she rises the
beast howls with anger and indignation. This it does so punctually
as to form a kind of gnomon.1 It would be honoured at first as a
time-teller in the pre-lunar or Typhonian stage, and then superseded
as a bad character. one of the unclean animals.
Darwin says, ŖIt is a remarkable fact than an ape, one of the Gibbons,
produces an exact octave of musical sounds, ascending and descending
the scale by half-tones.ŗ And Professor Owen has observed that this
monkey, Ŗalone of brute mammals, may be said to sing.ŗ2 This, then,
was the first teacher of the scale in Africa.
Possibly the typology may tell us something more of the cause
and origin of the apeřs singing. Hor-Apollo3 says of the Cynoce-
phalus, the personified speaker, singer, and later writer, that the
Egyptians symbolised the moon by it on account of a kind of
sympathy which the ape had with it at the time of its conjunction
with the god. ŖFor at the exact instant of the conjunction of the moon
with the sun, when the moon becomes unillumined, then the male Cynoce-
phalus neither sees, nor eats, but is bowed down to the earth with grief,
as if lamenting the ravishment of the moon. The female also, in addi-
tion to its being unable to see, and being afflicted in the same manner as
the male, ex genitalibus sanguinem emittit; hence even to this day
Cynocephali are brought up in the temples, in order that from them may
be ascertained the exact instant of the conjunction of the sun and moon.
And when they would denote the renovation of the moon, they again
pourtray a Cynocephalus, in the posture of standing upright and raising
its hands to heaven with a diadem on its head.4 And for the renovation
they depict this posture, into which the Cynocephalus throws itself, as if
congratulating the goddess, if we may so express it, in that they have
both recovered light.ŗ5 This presents us with a picture of the ape in
the act of crying or singing, and supplies a motive for the music,
such as it is, in the loss of the lunar light. Want or desire must
have been the earliest incentive to the development of the human
voice. Virility becomes audible in the voice of animals and birds
in their respective breeding times, whether this be in spring or in
autumn, as with the rutting deer. The call of the male to its mate,
and the mother to her young, is incessant in their seasons. The joy
of various animals becomes vocal at meeting and greeting each other.
But the sharpest sounds, the tones of highest pitch, are evoked at
parting, and by the sense of loss. The bleat of the parent in pain
for her lost young ones; the cry of the bird that hovers wailing
round the robbed nest; the roar of the lion rising higher and higher
1 Hor-Apollo, B. i. 49. 2 Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 332.
illustrates this sense of loss, and the consequent increase of the higher
tones when the loss is that of the lunar light. The sense would be
still more quick, and the voice more emotional, when the companion
of life was lost.
Thus we may infer that sitting in the darkness of night and of the
deeper darkness of death the Gibbon evolved and by degrees formu-
lated his voice, his scale of sounds, until at length the notes by which
he had expressed his perception of darkness and loss of companionship
became a solace and a source of pleasure through constant repetition,
and he was like a poet who transmutes his sorrow into the music of
his song. The ape was certainly the predecessor of man, and the
singing of the Gibbon was therefore an earlier phase of utterance than
human speech; and as the ape has been continued for the typical
singer and divine bard it looks as if a form of musical sounds may
have been practised by the primitive man in imitation of the ape, who
was not only the first singer, as the bewailer of the lost light and
saluter of the re-illumined orb, but the earliest teacher of a musical
scale and composer of songs without words.
The hieroglyphics of Egypt may not contain all the signs made by
the ape-men in their earliest phase of mimesis, but the essential types
have been continued. The Hand KAF bears the name of the Kaf
monkey, which is the typical Hand on the monumentsŕthe hand of the
Gods. From this we may gather that the Kaf idea was derived from the
Kaf animal, that could climb and made such dexterous use of its fore-
paws; and that the hand-type of speech was identified with the language
of gesture-signs, beginning with the Kaf, who presented the picture of
hand-conversation and demonstrated the idea of Kaf to seize with the
hand, which is registered by Kaf becoming the name of the hand,
and by the monkey and hand being two types expressed under one
word. The Kaf is likewise the clicker, and was continued in Egypt
as the Image of Language, the Word of Speech, and type of the
Lunar Logos. The Clickers were the earliest articulators of sound,
which could he understood before the formation or evolution of
verbal speech. They are identified by name with the Kaf as
the Kaffirs.
In the hieroglyphics the Ibis which cries ŖAah-Aahŗ and supplies
the type of ŖAah-ti,ŗ became finally a phonetic A. The eagle and
a bird of the goose kind, also the fish, became signs of the letter A.
The sparrow-nawk, Nycticorax, and Ram are forms of the letter B.
46 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The Cerastes snake supplied the phonetic F, and its horns are still
extant in the shape of that letter. The lion furnished one of the
signs for H; the frog and beetle two others. The jackal and perch are
found as forms of the T. The ape and the crocodileřs tail supply two
shapes of the K. The owl and the vulture figure as signs for M.
The fish and another kind of vulture appear as N. A water-bird
and the lioness are variants of the letter P. The R is a. lion; later
this was the phonetic sign for L. The goose and jackal supply a
form of the S. The Třs include the snake, a bird, and the beetle.
The chicken, swallow, and hare are among the different Uřs. The
fish is a supplementary K (Kha or Gha.) as well as the calf (Kha
or Aâ). These are ideographs reduced to phonetics.
With them we may compare the Kamilaroi Ŗsayingsŗ (Gurre) or
ideographic letters.1
B. Bundar, Kangaroo. K. Karagi, duck. P. Pilar, lance.
D. Dinoun, emu. M. Mullion, eagle. T. Tulu, tree.
G. Givir, male. N. Nurai, snake. W. Waru, bird.
I. Inar, female. . arumbon, stork with fish. Y. Yaraman, man going.
J. Jimba, sheep.
Now, we can understand how these types and symbols got mis-
interpreted in popular beliefs and superstitions.
The connecting link of the beast fables of Europe and Inner Africa
is not only extant in the Egyptian ideographs, the fables themselves
as found in Æsop are Egyptian. In one of these the mouse is
about to be devoured by the lion, whereupon he reminds him
that when he was caught in the net of the hunters, he the mouse
released him.2
Enceinte women in Hertfordshire still hear with alarm of a lioness
having brought forth young; the present writer had proof of this a
few years since, when an accouchement was announced at the
Zoological Gardeng that caused great consternation in the country.
It was held to be an unlucky omen for all who were child-bearing.
This is the result of misinterpreting a nearly-effaced type. The
Egyptians, says Hor-Apollo, when they would symbolise a woman
that has brought forth once, depict a lioness, for she never conceives twice.3
The lioness having brought forth, bequeaths the blank future to the
woman not yet delivered.
The Little Earth-Men of the German folk-lore are said to have
the feet of geese, the print of which they leave on the ashes
that are strewn for them. This may be explained by the type of
Seb, who is the representative of the earth, and whose image is
the goose!
The ancient Peruvians used to beat their dogs during an eclipse to
make them howl. In Greenland the women also pinched the ears of
Ridley.
1
Lauth, Moses der Ebräer, p. 14; Munich Site. Ber, 1868, vol. ii. p. 42;
2
their dogs during an eclipse; and if the animals howled lustily, it was
a sign that the end of the world had not yet come. It was the dogřs
duty to howl at such a time. For this reason, the dog in Europe
took the place of the Dog-headed Ape of the Mysteries in Egypt,
the howler during the moonřs eclipse, and was bound to fulfil the
character, willy-nilly.
Many games are typical, and constitute a kind of picture-reading,
as well as picture-writing of the past. The cockchafer still suffers in
another symbolical ceremony belonging to the cruel rites performed
by boys. The chafer, in Egypt the scarab, called khepr, was a type
of time and turning round. It was the turner round. And it is
a pastime with boys to thrust a pin through the middle of the
cock-chafer, and enjoy his spinning round and round, as the
circle-maker.
All who have ever suffered mentally from the misinterpretation of
ancient myths in the name of Theology, and felt its brand of degra-
dation in the very soul, ought to sympathize with the treatment of
the ass, for it is a fellow-victim who has likewise undergone unmerited
punishment, and had its fall, and still awaits its redemption. The
ass was once in glory, sacred to Sut, and a type of the Hebrew Deity.
But Sut was transformed into Satan, and the ass who carried the
Messiah in the Mysteries, having borne him for the last time, was
degraded and assailed with stripes, kicks, and curses. The ass that
carried the mythical Messiah was treated as the beast that bore the
real one, or carried the Cross at the time of the Crucifixionŕas
proved by the mark between its shouldersŕand Ŗbeating the assŗ
became a Christian sport, a humorous pastime in which the pagan
past was figuratively kicked out in the real kicking of the ass. The
animal being cast down from his primitive estate was associated
with all that was ignominious. The adulterer and the cuckold were
mounted on the ass with their faces turned to its tail, when the animal
received the rain of bountiful blows, and suffered the worst part of the
punishment.
The hare is considered unclean in various countries; the animal
whose form was assumed by the witch, solely on account of its
having served as a type. It is the sign of UN (Eg.) to open. Un is
also an hour, a period. The opening period is that of pubescence,
whether of the male or female. When the Egyptians would denote
an opening, says Hor-Apollo,1 they delineate a hare because this
animal always has its eyes open.
In relation to feminine pubescence, it signifies Ŗit is lawfulŗ or
Ŗunprohibited,ŗ therefore open. But the hare, as the emblem of the
period, had a double phase, and delivered a double message to men.
It is likewise related to the egg of the opening that was laid at
Puberty.
1 B. i. 26.
48 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
According to Pliny, the hare is of a double sex. It was simply the
type of periodicity which had a double phase, whether lunar or
human and these two are signified by the hare and egg, the hare being
considered a feminine, and the egg (of puberty) a masculine
symbol.
ŖThe Easter Hare,ŗ says Holtzman, Ŗis inexplicable to me; pro-
bably the hare is the animal of Astara; on the picture of Abnoba a
hare is present.ŗ1 Easter was the opening of another year, hence the
emblem of the hare of March or Easter.
It is on this account that the hare is associated with the egg of
Easter, which is broken as an emblem of the opening period. In
Saxony they say the Easter hare brings the Easter egg, and in Swabia
children are sent in search of the hareřs egg. In some parts the
Easter eggs are made into cakes in the form of a hare; in others the
babies are said to come out of the hareřs form. The uncleanness of
the hare was solely symbolic.
Rats and mice in Germany were held to represent the human soul.
One story relates that at Saalfeld, in Thuringia, a girl felt asleep
whilst her companions were shelling nuts. They observed a little red
mouse creep from her mouth and run out of window. They shook the
sleeper but could not wake her, so they removed her to another place.
Presently they saw the mouse creep back and run about in search of
the girl, but not finding her, it vanished, and at the same moment the
girl died.2
The goddess Holda was said to lead an army of mice, and she was
the receiver of childrenřs souls. Now, in Egypt, the shrew-mouse
(mygale, mus araneus) was consecrated to the Genitrix Buto, and
the mummies, together with those of the solar hawk, were buried in
the City of Buto.3 The animal was held to be blind, and the hawk
was the personification of sight. These furnished two types of the
soul or being, only to be understood in accordance with the ŖTwo
Truths,ŗ one of which will account for the red mouse.
Plutarch4 says the mouse was reverenced for its blindness because
darkness was before light. The hawk was the bird of Light. Buto
was the nurse who concealed Horus, and the mouse was a type
of Horus in Skhem, the hidden shrine and shut-place, also known as
a region of annihilation.5 The mouse typified the mystery of shutting
up the red source of life, the flesh-maker, which was looked upon
as the first factor in biology. And it was by its being shut up and
transformed in the region of annihiiation that the future life was
created. The mouse thus represented the soul of flesh, so to say, the
mother-soul, the eyeless and unseeing soul before the fatherhood was
acknowledged; the first, the blind Horus, who had to be blended
1 Deutsche Mythologie, p. 141.
2 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, vol. ii. p. 159. 3 Herodotus, ii. 6
4 Plutarch Symp. iv. Quæ 5. 5 Mon. Brit. Museum.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 49
with the second, as the two halves of the complete soul. According
to this primitive mode of thought and expression we can account for
the shrew-mouse in England being made the victim of sacrifice.
It is well known that amongst other charms for healing and saving
the shrew-mouse was selected to be offered up on or in the tree; the
shrew-ash or elm being the most popular for the purpose. A deep
hole was bored in the bole, and a shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, the
hole being plugged up behind the victim.1 This represented the
Horus in Skhem, the saviour-victim who was sacrificed in the physio-
logical, solar, and lastly Christological drama of redemption, according
to the doctrine of blood-sacrifice. ŖTo denote disappearance,ŗ says
Hor-Apollo, Ŗthe Egyptians pourtrayed the mouse.ŗ And the disease
or ailment prescribed for was supposed to disappear with the im-
prisoned and decaying mouse.
It came to be believed of this type of a disappearance, that if
the heart were cut out of a mouse when alive and worn round about
the arms of a woman, it would prove fatal to conception.2 The
Hebrew abomination described as Ŗeating the mouseŗ may have had
a kindred significance. On the other hand, during an eclipse of the
moon, the Mexican women who were enceinte and terribly alarmed
lest the unborn child should be turned into a mouse, were accustomed
to hold a bit of istli (obsidian) in their mouths or in their girdles
to guard against such a fatality.3 The moon in eclipse repre-
sented the period opposed to gestation. The stone was a symbol
of founding and establishing, and the mouse an emblem of a
disappearance.
The shrew-mouse in Britain is a sufferer from the later sense
read into words. Shrew in Anglo-Saxon means to curse (cf. Eg.
sriu, curse), and denotes something wicked; hence the poor shrew-
mouse is accounted wicked and accursed. But this is not a primary
meaning or form of the word, which is skrew in Somerset, and scro
elsewhere. The animal was named as the digger; so the Gerrman
Schormaus and the Dutch Schermuys are the mole as the digging
mouse, named from schoren or scharren, to dig. The shrew is the
earlier scro-mouse, and the digging is retained in the Gaelic sgar
and Breton skarra, to tear open, to dig. In Egyptian, sru is to dig,
with a prior form in skru, to cut and plough, the plough or digger
being the ska, whence skru and screw. The .shrew-mousc would not
have typified a disappearance but for its being the digger. The
digging to bring forth its young was the cause of its adoption as a
sign of the Shut-place in Skhem, the mythological shrine of re-birth
for the Solar God in the Underworld, where the sun disappeared to
be re-born on the horizon of the resurrection.
1 Brand, Physical Charms.
2 Richard Lovell, Panzoologicomineralogia, 1661.
3 Sahagun, Hist. Gen. tom ii. lib. viii. p. 230.
50 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
There is a Bohemian legend in which the Devil creates the mouse
to eat up ŖGodřs corn,ŗ whereupon God creates the cat to destroy
the mouse.1 This belongs to Egyptian Mythology, where we find the
cat that killed the rat that ate the malt in the house that Jack built.
It appears as the Ŗabominable rat of the sun,ŗ which was looked after
by the cat-headed Great Mother, Pash (whence the Arabic Bisseh or
tabby); the cat being a type of the moon as the luminous eye of the
dark.
To a great extent modern superstition is symbolism in its state of
dotage, when it cannot remember what the types originally meant.
The Abipones are said to see the souls of their ancestors in certain
birds, the widgeon or other water-fowl that fly by night and make
their cry; and in the hieroglyphics, not only is the bird a symbol of
the soul but one of these, the Pâ, a sign of the soul of breath, is the
widgeon or a wild goose in the act of hissing as the bird of breath
issuing from the waters. So that the hissing duck or goose was the
symbol of a soul in Egypt, and as Pâ (or Pepe) means to fly, of
a flying soul. The hieroglyphics are still unwittingly preserved by
the Abipones.
The Eskimos say that all living beings have the faculty of soul, but
especially the bird.
The Hurons of North America are reported to believe that the
souls of their deceased friends turned into turtle-doves. The turtle-
dove, in Hebrew rwt, bears the name of the Genitrix Tef; English
Dove. The dove as well as the hawk was associated with Hathor;
who was the habitation of the hawk (Horus, her child) or more literally
the birdcage of the soul.
The priestesses of Western Sarawak make the figures of birds
which are said to be inhabited by spirits. But the bird as a type of
the spirit or soul must be read all round.
The Egyptians did not think the soul turned into a bak-hawk
when they depicted or embodied the Ba (soul) in bird shape. It is a
mode of expression which may be variously interpreted according to
the mental stage. The hawk of fire, or spirit, is the one of the seven
elementaries which became the solar Horus; and in Britain we
have seven spirit-birds that fly by night, known as: the Ŗseven
whistlers.ŗ
The: learned and conscientious Montesinos relates that when the
worship, or veneration, for a certain stone had ceased, a parrot flew
from that fetish and entered another stone, which was held as an
object of adoration instead. In this story the parrot takes the place
of the hawk, the bird of soul, or the dove, the bird of breath. The
soul (or spirit) is thus represented as typically passing out of the
one type into the other. The bird imaged the object of worship,
and the fetish-stone its dwelling place.
1 Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, p. 330.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 51
men. I am the crocodile whose soul comes from men; I am the crocodile
leading away by stealth. I am the great fish of Horus, the great one
in Kam-Ur. I am the person dancing in Skhem.ŗ The crocodile (as
Ta-urt or Typhon) was the earliest form of the Fish-mother. the
Derketo, Atergatis, Hathor or Venus, who brought forth from the
waters. The speaker personates the crocodile who leads away the
souls of men by stealth. The Skhem is the shrine of re-birth, and
this therefore is represented by the crocodile. He is in the crocodile
(or is the crocodile), and so crosses the waters as did the sun-god.
whether as Horus or Herakles, inside the fish during the three days
at the winter solstice. Thus the tradition of the crocodiles seizing
the souls of men in the shape of their shadows, can be traced to the
typology.
ŖIn North-west America,ŗ says Dr. Tylor, Ŗwe find some Indians
believing the spirits of their dead to enter into bears, and travellers
have heard of a tribe begging the life of a wrinkle-faced old grizzly
she-bear as the recipient of the soul of some particular grandame,
whom they fancied the creature to resemble. So among the
Esquimaux, a traveller noticed a widow who was living for conscienceř
sake upon birds, and would not touch walrus-meat which the
Angekok had forbidden her for a long time, because her late husband
had entered into a walrus.ŗ1
A Chiriquane woman of Buenos Ayres was heard by a missionary
to say of a fox: ŖMay not that be the spirit of my dead daughter?ŗ2
These were thinging their thought according to the ancient typology
which is yet interpretable by means of the Kamite Mythology.
In this the Great Bear Constellation (the hippopotamus, seal, walrus,
or other water-type) was the Great Genitrix who became the repro-
ducer of souls in a later phase of thought, because she had been the
mother of the revolutions or time-cycles in heaven, and of the
Elementary Gods.
From being the mother of the beginnings in space and time, she
was made to impersonate the womb of a new life. She formed the
principal Car (Urt) in Heaven which the thought of man mounted to
ride round and .ascend up out of the darkness of the depths when the
constellation was the Ŗdipperŗ below the horizon. It is the bearer
still, as the Wain of Charles. It was the car of Osiris in Egypt, and
the Coffin which the Osiris deceased entered to be re-born in the
eternal round.
Thus the souls of the Egyptian dead entered the bear or hippo-
potamus as with the American Indians, among whom the aged
she-grizzly represented the most ancient Genitrix, the recipient of
souls, who bore them and brought them to re-birth. The same type
is continued in the Arabic daughters of the bier (Ursa Major)
and the Chinese coffin of the seven stars in which a board is placed
1 Prim. Culture, vol. ii. p. 6. 2 Brinton, p. 254.
54 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
for the dead to rest on. This board contains seven holes which are
regarded as representing the seven stars, and it is therefore called
the Ŗseven-stars-board.ŗ It is fluted as well as perforated, and a
quantity of lime and oil is deposited between the board and the
bottom of the coffin.1
The fox or jackal was a type of Anpu, the conductor of souls, who
led them up to the horizon of the resurrection, as the divine em-
balmer, chief of the mountain in which the dead were laid. The
jackal in two characters tows the bark of the sun and the souls, and
these two are called ŖOpeners of the way.ŗ One opens the road of
darkness to the north, the other the road of light to the south.
The spirit of the dead girl being identified with the fox in Buenos
Ayres is the exact parallel to the souls of men becoming jackals in
the belief of the African Marawi.2 With them, however, there is
another connecting link. It is the soul of the bad man that becomes
the jackal; the soul of the good man becomes a snake. The jackal,
or seb, was a type of the earth; the lower world of two, whereas the
snake was a symbol of renewal and immortality.
The practice of killing and burying a dog with a deceased person
is not uncommon, and the custom can be read by the hieroglyphics.
Cranz relates that the Esquimaux laid the head of a dog in a childřs
grave as the type of the intelligent animal that was sure to find the
way. Bishops used to be buried in this country with a dog lying at
their feet. One of the chief funeral ceremonies of the Aztecs was
to slaughter the Techichi, a native dog which was burnt or buried with
the corpse, a thread being fastened round its neck, and its office was
to guide the deceased across the waters of Chiuluahuapan on the
way to the land of the dead.3
The custom of bringing a dog to the bedside of a dying person, as
an escort and guide to the soul, was common with the Hindus and
Persians.4 A corpse which had not been seen by a dog was held capable
of polluting a thousand men. But when the corpse had been shown to
an observant dog, that removed the power of pollution. The dog
was supposed to be its guardian against the fiend of corruption, by
the Parsees. In Egypt, the dog as Anubis was the embalmer and
preserver of the dead. Hence the protection afforded to the corpse
by the presence of the dog.
In a recent work on Japan, the dog of the dead is described as
being the messenger of spirit-mediums, whose stock-in-trade consists
of a small box (supposed to contain some mystery known only to the
craft) of somewhat less than a foot square. It is said that, in the
south, a dog is buried alive, the head only being left above ground,
and food is then put almost within its reach, exposing it thus to the
1 J. H. Gray, China, p. 283. 2 Waitz, vol. ii. p. 419.
3 Tylor, Prim. Culture, vol. i. p. 426.
4 Shayast La-Shayast, ch. ii. 65; ch. x. 33.
NATURAL GENESIS OF THE KAMITE TYPOLOGY. 55
cruel fate of Tantalus. When in the greatest agony and near death,
the head is chopped off and put in a box. 1 This cruel treatment is
intended to make the animal return in spirit, and thus the dog (which
was the wolf-dog, or the golden dogŕthe Egyptian Mercury) fulfils
the character of the Psychopompus.
So the hound of Hermes, in Greece, came to guide the passing soul
to the river Styx. And still, when the soul of the dying is about to
go forth, the dog is supposed to utter its howl with prescient instinct.
This intelligent friend and faithful companion was sacrificed to
become the guide of the poor cave-dwellers when benighted in
death.
The Barrow at Barra was a central room with seven other chambers
that contained the skeletons of men and dogs.
The bones of a dog were found buried with the human skeleton in
a cave of the Pyrenees, showing that this faithful friend of man, at
that remote time, was looked upon as a kind of Psychopompus, an
intelligent shower of the way through the dark. Here it may be
thought that a creature so intelligent as the dog might be indepen-
dently adopted in various lands. But the dog was a creation of man,
who made the animal domesticated. The dog is a civilized descend-
ant of the wolf and jackal, and both these types are earlier than the
dog, in the Egyptian mythology as in nature.
Colonel Hamilton Smith in opposing the theory of the dogřs
descent from the wolf and jackal, suggested by Darwin, has rashly
asserted that a thorough philological inquiry would most assuredly show
that in no language and at no period, did man positively confound the
wolf, the jackal, or the fox, with a real dog. This of course could only
apply to the name. And it happens that the name of the wolf in Greek,
Lykos, is confounded, or is identical with the Akkadian name for the
dog, Likku, which again answers to Arigu, the dog in the Ai-Bushman
tongue. The names of the wolf and dog are found to be equivalent
in the pre-historic language.
Tsip is the dog in Inbask (Yukahiri), and in Egyptian Tseb, Arabic
Dib, is the wolf. In the Hottentot language the jackal is named
Girib, and in the abraded form Arib is the name of the dog. In
Egyptian one name of the dog is Anush or Unnush, and this is like-
wise a name of the wolf; which not only confounds the dog with the
wolf, but tends to show the derivation of the dog from the wolf, as
is acknowledged by the continuity of the name of the wild animal
for that of the domesticated dog.
The star Sothis is the well-known star of the dog. The dog was
identified as its type when there came to be a dog, but its still earlier
forms were the jackal (or golden dog), the wolf, and the fox-dog of
Abyssinia, called the Fenekh. All three preceded the domesticated
dog, and all three meet in the dog of the Dog-star. Before this
1 Fu-So Mimi Bukuro, by C. Pfoundes.
56 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
domesticated dog could have been adopted as a type Anubis as
jackal, wolf, or fenekh, was the still earlier guide of the sun and souls
through the under world. Anubis is designated the Ŗpreparer of the
way of the other world.ŗ ŖI have made away,ŗ says the deceased,
Ŗby what Anup has done for me.ŗ1
The Osirian in the Ritual,2 in the 10th gate of his passage to
Elysium, brings with him the head of a dog as a kind of talismanic
toll. He pleads with the gatekeeper; ŖI have anointed myself
with red wax. I have provided myself with a dog‟s head.ŗ The
keeper replies: ŖThou mayst go: thou art purified.ŗ
The Kamite types are to be found the world overt in one stage
or another. They can be traced to Upper Nilotic Africa as their
birthplace; and wheresoever they are extant, Egypt alone is their
interpreter.
The Khoi-Khoi declare that if the jackal discovers an ostrich nest
he will scream for the white vulture. This bird then follows him,
and when they come to the nest, which is covered by the ostrich hen,
the vulture claws up a stone and ascends the air vertically over the
nest to drop the stone down plumb on the breeding hen. The
ostrich, startled and frightened by the blow, scuttles off, and then
Reynard breaks the eggs, and both he and the vulture feast on them
in the most friendly manner.3
These sly rogues furnished two divine types. The vulture is
Egyptian (Neophron perenopterus), and a representative of the great
Mother Neith, whose guide and companion, her Mercury, is the
jackal! The vulture is also a prophetic bird with the Khoi-Khoi as it
was in Egypt. The jackal, Anup, who was such a subtle thief in Inner
Africa, was the typical thief, and god of thieving, and he became the
Greek Hermes and Roman Mercury.
The fainche is a fox in Irish-Keltic and the fenekh is the fox-dog
of Abyssinia, which was a type of the dog-star, the announcer of
the Inudation.
In Europe the fox is still the announcer, the prophesier, as was
Anup, the jackal or fox (fenekh) in Egypt. When the fox is heard
barking in the woods at night in England, he is said to prophesy a
sharp winter.
Egypt, who brought on certain types of things in the simplest
condition from Inner Africa to develop and send them forth into the
whole world at different stages in her own development, can still give
the sole intelligible account of their origin and significance.
Thus in Inner Africa the chief type-name of the lion and leopard
is gfa. In Egyptian kafa denotes force, puissance, potency, the
abstract forms of power. But it also means to hunt and seize by
force. The kafau are the destroyers and desolators. Kafi (Shu),
1 Ch. cxlviii. 2 Ch. cxlvi.
a divine type of power, who forces the sun along, wears on his head
the hind quarter of the 1ioness as the emblem of his force.
The lion and leopard were the live types first-named, and Egyptian
shows the later application of the same word to a more abstract or
recondite meaning.
Gray describes the treatment of a Mandenga who had killed a lion,
and who was considered guilty of a great crime because be was only
a subject, whereas the lion was a lord or sovereign.1 This status of
the animal was continued in the ideographs where the lion (Ha)
signifies the lord, the ruler, the first and foremost, the glory (Peh),
a type of the double force.
The tail of a lion suspended from the rcof of a Xosa-Kaffir chiefřs
hut as the sign of his power has the same meaning when worn by a
Rameses as Pharaoh of Egypt. Other animals (as already mentioned)
which were first named in Inner Africa can be traced by those names
in Egypt where they have become divine types in mythology, that is
gods and goddesses. Nome is the serpent in Bidsogo and the deity
Num is serpent-crowned in Egypt. Nam is a goat in Kiamba, and
the goat in Egypt is another type of the god Num.
The Numu, is Vei, is an enormous kind of toad. Num (Eg.) is
called the king of frogs, and Hek is his frog-headed consort in Egypt.
The monkey is named Kefu in Krebu; Kebe in Kra; Efie in
Anfue. In Egypt this is the Kaf ape, a figure of Shu (Kafi) and
Hapi, a type of one of the seven elemental gods.
In the Makua language Paka is simply the cat. In Egypt Pekha
is the cat-headed goddess. She is also known as Buto (Peht), and
the cat is named Boode in Embomma, and Boude in Malamba.
Asi is the cow in the Kaffir dialects; Esu in Isiele. This is the
type of Isis the cow-headed Genitrix called As or Hes as the Egyptian
goddess. Gbami is the cow in the Pika, and Khebma is the water-cow
the most ancient type of the Genitrix in Egypt. The type-name for
the woman in Inner Africa isŕ
Manka in Ekamtulufu. Menge in Bayon. Mangbe in Momenya.
Manka in Udom. Mengue in Pati. Mengue in Param.
Manka in Mbofon. Mengue in Kum. Mans-Nube in Kisawahili.
The position of the woman was that of concubine and slave, like
the Kaffir Ncinza, rather than of wife, and in this double character
she is namedŕ
Manka in Ekamtulufu. Mengu in Param. Mangbe in Bagba.
Manka in Udom. Mengue in Bayon. Mengbe in Momenya.
Amanka in Mbofon. Mengue in Kum.
(The symbolical and superstitious phase of customs once primitve can only be explained by means of
their natural genesis.)
THE thesis here maintained is that inner Africa was the birth-place
of the animal typology, which is at the base of the hieroglyphs, of
heraldry, totemism, and of the so-called beast-epic of the Red
Indian, Australian, and Aryan folk-lore.
It is the original home of various natural prototypes, which became
the earliest symbolic types, and Egypt remains interpreter of the
land of the origines.
The animals, reptiles, birds and insects, which talk in the tales of
the Bushmen and in the beast-stories of Europe, Australia, America,
and India were adopted amongst the earliest means of expression for
the primitive man, because they had been his tutors. We know what
they said to him, for they continue to say the same thing as types.
He adopted them out of necessity, made use of them for himself,
stereotyped them for us, and we have but to learn this language of
animals to know that the same system of typology which has spread
all over the world and been eternized in the stars of heaven, must
have had one origin and emanated from one centre, now claimed to
have been African.
Totemism and heraldry are two extant modes of making signs by
means of external typology. According to Boece the ancient Britons
used the figures of beasts after the manner of the Egyptains, Ŗfrom
whom they took their first beginning,ŗ more particularly in the Ŗin-
scriptions above their sepulchres.ŗ These are still to be found on the
stones, the coins or talismans, and in the hieroglyphics of heraldry.
Herodian mentions the Ŗshapes of the heavenly bodies and of all
kinds of beasts and birdsŗ as the tattoo-marks of the Picts.
The zoological nature of British naming is shown even by the
following coats of arms in Canting Heraldry:ŕ
Keats, 3 cats. Heron, 3 herons. Cunliffe, 3 conies.
Head, 3 unicornsř heads. Ramsden, 3 ramsř heads. Lamb, 3 lambs.
Coote, 3 cootes. Colt, 3 colts.
60 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The warriors who fought at Cattraeth included bears, wolves, and
ravens.1
The Bibroci were the biber (Cornish befer, Gaelic beabhor) or
beaver tribe. The Brockdens are the badgers (unless named from
the den of the brock), the Gledstanes are kits or hawks.
The mertæ of Sutherlandshire were the cow-men, whose mother
was possibly represented by the British goddess Rosmerta.
The luga were the calves. The men of Essex and the Isle of
Wight are still known as the Ŗcalvesŗ; the Ŗcalvesŗ were also
located near Belfast. Some of these totemic types became the blazons
of counties.
People were once known is these islands as the taverns are now,
by their signs; each being the symbol of the group, clan, or tribe. The
formative suffix in numberless names shows them to be derived from
the Ŗtunŗ and Ŗden,ŗ the Ŗhamŗ and Ŗcombe,ŗ the Ŗleigh,ŗ
ŗford,ŗ Ŗworthe,ŗ Ŗing,ŗ Ŗstockŗ or Ŗstow,ŗ which were place-
names before they became personal.2
The first name was given at puberty to him of the totemic mark.
Next to him of the common land, the tribal settlement. There is a
form of the Řhamř extant at Gloucester with peculiar common
rights and liberties. Even when land was made several, and became
individual property, the man, like John-oř-Groats, was called after
the land, and the right to bear a crest is based primarily on a claim of
descent from a particular tem, ham, ing, tun, or other group which
was known by its totem. Heralds still profess to trace back the
branches to the stem of the family tree, if they do not penetrate to
the root than once grew in the place so named.
Totemism was as purely a form of symbolism as English
heraldry and coats of arms, and both emanate from that inner
African system of typology which was continued by the Egyptians,
North American Indians, Chinese, Australians, British, and other
ancient races.
Sir John Lubbock has called totemism a Ŗdeification of classesŗ;
but it originated in the need of names and the adoption of types for
the purpose of distinguishing the groups from each other. The
Aneurinřs Gododin.
1
It may be very deceiving where the earliest place-names have become the later
2
race-names. Take that of the Menapii for example. They are found by name in
Menevia (St. Davidřs, Wales), at Dublin, and at the mouth of the Rhine. Were
these Menapii then of one race? That depends on whether the name be a race-
name or a place-name. My contention would be for the place-name. Men in
Egyptian means to arrive, warp to shore, and anchor. The Mena is a landing-place, a
port, or harbour; Persian Minâ. This is continued in the Cornish Min for the coast,
brink, border, boundary. Thus Menapia is the place of landing, and would be so
named in the language of the first comers. Ap (Eg.), is the first, and Apia as country
denotes the first land attained. This would apply to the first landing-place on any
coast, Welsh, Irish, or Belgic. ŖMenapiiŗ as a folk-name, the Menapii of Cæser,
is more probably derived from the Kamite Menefia, for soldiers, as the German is
the war-man. If the Menapii as later settlers were named from the place, their
name can be no clue to their race.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 61
Nap or nephew. Nap (Eg.) is the seed. In the inner African languages the
2
boy is the napat in Kanyon; nabat, Sarar, and nafan in Bola. Both the brother
and sister are named nofi in Anfue; novi, Mahi; anaefi, Hwida, and nâwie in
Dahome. In English, the knave is a lad.
3 Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 123. 4 Pol. 2, 39.
5 Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, vol. i. p. 175.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 63
wolf Gens;1 the figure of a serpent was the totemic sign of the
Tuscaroras.
The original of the word totem is supposed to be the Algonkin
Do-daim, the type or mark of the Daim, as a town. The Daim, as the
especiaI name of the town, is still extant in Central Africa, where the
people are divided into the dwellers in ŖTembes.ŗ In dispersing the
mob at Ugogo, and sending them to their homes, the chief shouted,
ŖTo your Tembes, Wagogo, to your Tembes.ŗ2
The town is also the
Edume, in Adampe. Demgal, in Goboru.
Diambo, in Kisma. Dsamei, in Buduma.
Coast.
70 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The Hottentots, in blessing or cursing, will say, May good or evil
fortune fall on you from the star of my grandfather! 1 This was a
totemic type, however, before it signified a translated soul.
The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac are totemic with the Chinese.
These are
Shu . . . . . . Rat . . . . . . . Aries. Ma . . . . . . Horse . . . . Libra.
Niu . . . . . . Ox . . . . . . . Taurus. Yang . . . . . Sheep . . . . . Scorpio.
Hu. . . . . . . Tiger . . . . . . Gemini. Heu . . . . . Monkey . . . . Sagittarius.
Tu . . . . . . . Hare . . . . . . Cancer. Ki . . . . . . Cock . . . . . . Capricorn.
Lung . . . . . . Dragon . . . . Leo. Kwen . . . . Dog . . . . . . Aquarius.
She . . . . . . Serpent . . . . Virgo. Chu . . . . . Boar . . . . . . Pisces.
The twelve signs are likewise represented by or in connection with
the Chinese horary of twelve hours.
Each of the animals is still recognised as a totem, and they are all
believed to exert a great influence on the lives of persons, according
to the hour and its special sign under which they were born.
Star-totems were in use among the ancient Peruvians. Acosta
describes the people as venerating the celestial archetypes of
certain animals and birds found on earth. It appeared to him that
the people were drawing towards the dogmas of the Platonic ideas. 2
Speaking of these star-deities he says, the shepherds looked up to
a certain constellation called the Sheep, and the star called the Tiger
protected them from tigers. His theory is that they believed there
was an archetype in heaven of every likeness found on the earth
in the animal shape. This was the Platonisation of the starry hiero-
glyphics, the archetypes of which were found on earth, and the types
that had been configurated in the heavens for totemic signs; these
being reflected back again in the minds of men; and this platonisation
of mythology is the ground-rootage of Platořs system of celestial
archetypes carried out in the region of more abstract thought. It
is but a step from the celestial to the spirit world. The origines,
however, are visible and physical, although the earlier type is
employed to convey a later signficance. We have to take the
prior step from the natural animal to the celestial, and also to read
the thoughts and things of earth at times by means of the imagery
Stelled in the heavens.
The chief totemic signs of the: North American Indians are to be
found in the heavens, ranging from the Great Bear to the Stone of
the Oneidas (the Stone or Tser Rock in Egyptian), but the Indians
did not figure them there as constellations. These are the eternal
witnesses above to the Kamite origin of mythological typology.
It has already been suggested that the first mapping out
of localities was celestial before the chart was geographically
applied, and that an common naming on earth came from one
common naming of the heavens, commencing with the Great Bear
and Dog. The mapping out of Egyptian localities, according to the
1 Tsuni-Goam, p. 85. 2 Tylor, Prim. Culture, vol. ii. p. 222.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 71
or dog; the eye of the hawk; the nose of the vulture; the claw or
nail of the lion; the horn of the rhinoceros, and tooth of the bear;
because they offered types of superior powers. Such types are preserved
in mythology. The hawk of Horus represents Sight; the sow and
hippopotamus, the mouth of the Genitrix Rerit; the ear of the
jackal, Sut-Anup; the nose of the kaf-ape, the God of Breath; the
tooth of Hu, the Adult.
The Kamite typology can also be traced into the domain of
primitive practices which are symbolical, to be read by the hiero-
glyphics. Some of these strange customs and consequent super-
stitions originated in zoological typology, and the acting of a
primitive drama according to the animal or totemic characters.
Specimens of them were extant to a late period in British plays
and pastimes, and survive at present in the Ŗpantomime.ŗ
In the Kanuri language of Bornu (Africa), the name of the hyena is
Bultu, and from this is formed the verb bultungin, which sigmifies
ŖI transform myself into a hyena.ŗ There is a town named Kabultiloa,
the inhabitants of which are said to possess this faculty of transfor-
mation.1 These doubtless originated in the hyena Totem, and the
donning of the hyena skin in their religious masquerade. The hyena
is one of the transformers or phœnixes (the Benn) in the Ritual.2
Hor-Apollo3 says when the Egyptians would symbolise one that
is unsettled, and that does not remain in the same state, but is some-
times strong, and at other times weak, they depict an hyena, for this
creature is at times male, and at times female. This belief is still
held by the Arabs. It originates in the shedding and transforming
phase being considered feminine.
It was the practice at certain ceremonies, as we know from various
sources, for the totemic people to masquerade in character, and
appear as the typical beasts of the Totem, transformed into the
earliest images of the gods or prototypes. Among the North
American Indians, the Buffalos wore horns, and danced as buffalos. 4
The natives of Vancouverřs Island had a religious ceremony in
which the performers stripped themselves naked and plunged into
the water, no matter how cold the night, and crawled out again,
dragging their bodies along the sand like seals, then they went into
the house and crawled around the fire, and at last they transformed
and sprang up to join in the Ŗseal-dance.ŗ5 They represented the
seals, as the Mangaians did the crabs: in character when they danced
the crab-dance.
This transformation, and the meaning of their names, may be con-
sidered to constitute two factors of the belief in the magical powers
possessed by the Munda of India for changing their shape into wild
beasts at will. In these customs the symbolism is acted and becomes
1 Koelle, Afr. Lit. and Kanuri Vocab. p. 275. 2 Ch. xxiv. 3 B. ii. 69.
4 Carlin, vol. ii. p. 128. 5 Sproat, p. 66. 6 Gill, p. 256.
74 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
a drama of typology, scattered fragments of which are now found in
the form of inexplicable superstitions and beliefs.
In writing of the Guatematlecs, old Gage delivered himself on this
matter thus:ŕŖMany are deluded by the devil to believe that their
life dependeth upon the life of such and such a beast (which they
take unto them as their familiar spirit), and think that when that
beast dieth they must die; when he is chased their hearts pant;
when he is faint they are faint; nay, it happeneth that by the devilřs
delusion they appear in the shape of that beast.ŗ
Plutarch refers to the idea Ŗthat the gods, being afraid of Typhon,
did, as it were, hide themselves in the bodies of ibises, dogs, and hawks,ŗ
and repudiates it as Ŗa foolery beyond belief. This, however, is a
matter of interpretation.
We know that such representations were part of the drama of the
Mysteries. Many descriptions might be quoted to show that in their
religious ceremonies the actors performed their masquerade in the
guise of animals.
Diodorus has it that the gods were at one time hard pressed by the
giants, and compelled to conceal themselves for a while under the
form of animals, which in consequence became sacred. In this version
the giants displace Typhon, the gigantic Apophis, or dragon of the
dark, as the representatives of dissolution and chaos.
The gods taking the shape of animals to oppose the Typhonian
powers means the typification of the time-keepers and celestial intelli-
gencers, as the hippopotamus, dog, ape, ibis, hawk, crocodile, lion,
ram, and others by the aid of which the time-cycles were made out
and order was established (or the world was formed); but for which,
chaos,Typhonian discord, dissolution, and destruction would have
prevailed for ever. The lunar goddess assumed the form of the cat
as a watcher by night. Horus escapes through the nets of Typhon
as a fish, or soars heavenwards as a hawk. The sun-god is seen
taking the shapes of animals that represent time (Seb), and thus
comes between men and chaos, or timelessness. Ra passed through
the signs, and this in the language of symbol was designated his
transformation into the shape of the signs.
It is not more than three or four centuries since, in England, the
Zodiac was called the Ŗbestiary.ŗ The sun then passed through the
bestiary, as he did in Egypt. In the Pool of Persea he made his
transformation into the cat; in the height of his power he transformed
into the lion; at one equinox in to the hawk, and at the other into the
phœnix, the emblem of rising again from the Hades. In the Ritual
the deceased who transforms into the various animals, fishes, or birds,
emphatically states that he himself is the respective intermediate
type which he adopts in the process of being assimilated to the
highest. He flies as a hawk, crawls as a serpent, cackles as a goose.1
1 Ch. 17.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 75
rather not have known the fact that the dog should have been vivisected to prove it.
2 Royal King, 1657.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 79
ŕanswering to our ŖGive me a kiss,ŗ and they place the mouth and
nose upon the cheek to inhale the breath strongly.1 This is breath-
ing rather than merely smelling, so that ŖBreathe meŗ is really the
true rendering.
Timkowski describes a Mongol father who from time to time kept
smelling the head of his youngest son, a mark of paternal tenderness,
he says, among the Mongols, instead of embracing. This reminds us
of Isaac smelling his son in salutation and saying, ŖIt is the smell of a
field which the Lord hath blessed.ŗ
The custom was still kept up by the conservatives of Egypt for us
to find it in the Book of Genesis. It cannot be directly shown from
the monuments that taking a good hearty sniff of each other was an
Egyptian mode of salutation. When they come into sight they had
probably attained the custom or art of kissing, though the smelling
of the lotus as a means of indicating and giving delight is universal.
Also the name of the nostrils, sherau, is derived from sher, meaning to
breathe with joy.
In the hieroglyphics, sen is breath and to breathe. It is associated
with smell by means of the nose determinative. The nose, senti, is
the double breather. Sent is the English scent; sen is the French
sentir, to scent. ŖSen-senŗ has the signification of to fraternize, in
brotherly (and sisterly) union, and it is an equivalent for Ŗbreathe-
breatheŗ and for the transmigration of spirits as breaths. Also sen,
to breathe, denotes the act of profoundest respect, compliment, and
homage, which, in the ceremony of Senta, is paid by breathing the earth;
bowing down and breathing the ground by inferior persons having
taken the place of sniffing the person among equals; prostration
on the earth adding profoundness to the homage of inferiors.
Mr. Spencer finds the origin or ceremonial obeisance in the in-
trinsically coercive character of militant rule, and he deduces polite-
ness from the prostration of slavery and inferior station. Here,
however, the genesis of the act of smelling from animal desire (the
smell of blood, &c.), the primal phase, and, next, out of compliment
to the person, is nearer to nature. It belongs to the language of
lust, later affection, in the lowliest range or expression, at the
meeting-point of man and the less specialised animals.
The custom was then applied to sniffing the ground as an obeisance
of later law and ceremonial, after men had made their own masters and
elevated their human (or inhuman) lion, panther, snake, thunderbolt,
Moon-God or Sun-God to wield supreme power over them, as chief of the
tribe or people. For example, when Jacob bowed himself to the ground
seven times in presence of his brother, the number has a recognised
significance to be sought for in the astronomical symbolism.
The Chinese at the present time make eight obeisances, increasing
in humbleness, the eighth being the highest in number and the lowliest
1 Lewin.
80 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
in posture, due only to the emperor and to Heaven. This number
answers to the Egyptian eight adorations to the eight great gods. The
Chinese eight, being represented by Heaven and the emperor, probably
personate the genitrix of the seven stars and the son, whose name
was Sevekh or Seven; also the seven primary and elementary
powers, which were born of her. In Bootan the form of obeisance
rigidly observed demands that all who are permitted to approach the
Raja, must make nine prostrations in his presence.
The number nine, sacred to the Raja (Egyptian Râ), belongs to the
nine solar months of gestation, and the sun in the nine dry signs of
the twelve. These numbers are figures quoted at their known value
in the system of symbols, and they are not to be read apart from the
rootage of ceremonial customs in mythology, where they have even
a chronological sequence, as well as diversity of religious
significance, and contain dates in their data.
In Fijian the salute by smelling and taking a good strong sniff is
named regu. It is also applied to kissing, &c. In Maorij, reka-reka
is tickling and otherwise pleasantly provoking by means of contact.
Roke in English is to scratch, also futuere. Lick is a form of the same
root-meaning. Rak in Akkadian is to beget. These are all modes of
knowing, and in Egyptian rekh is to know and denotes relationship.
This knowledge, this relationship, was once limited to smelling,
licking, and other animal modes of knowing.
Smelling and breathing were primitive means of knowing, and the
language of the animal was continued; and is traceable: in human
language, as well as in human customs.
Our words new and news; Breton, nevaz; Latin, novus; Greek,
nšoj; Gothic, ninjo; old Norse, nyr; Gaelic, nuadh, Sanskrit, nava;
Arabic, Nafs; are all related to nef (Eg.), for the breath, and to per-
ception by means of smell. To nose is to smell. The Danish and
A. S. nys, to get news of a thing, is to get wind or scent of it. The
Dutch neuselen, means to sniff after. The nose obtained the earliest
news. In Egyptian, khnum is to smell with the nose for determinative.
The same word means to choose and select with the nose. It is also
the name for the nurse, tutor and educator; the nose being a primary
teacher. Khnum is to ken by the nose, and the word modifies into
num, to guide, direct; accompany, go together, in such an act as
Ŗnummingŗ with noses, and other forms of kenning or knowing
each other.
The act of smelling passed into the domain of sacrifice, and survived
in the mysteries where the branch and other emblems were smelled.
The Divinity of Israel threatens not to continue to be led by the nose
in this way any longer. ŖI will not smell the savour of your sweet
odours,ŗ1 ŖI will not smell in your solemn assemblies,ŗ i.e. on the day
of feasting. This divinity, like the Kamite (Gold Coast) Ananse,
1 Levit. xxvi. 31.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 81
the spider-god, talks through his nose. It is the primitive god of the
primitive man.1
Charlevoix mentions a tribe of Indians on the Gulf of Mexico, who
continued the custom of blowing or breathing into each otherřs ears,2
as a mode of salutation. This is but a variation of the same
ceremony, having the same significance.
The ear, and ears, are named ankh in Egyptian, and in Inner
Africa.
Anko . . . . is the ear in Faslaha. Ngoli is the ear in Mende.
Tino-eingtu ,, Bushman. Nguli ,, Gbandi.
Engisk . . . . ,, Ukuafi. Nogu ,, Kra.
Ngou . . . . ,, Landoro.
It is a world-wide name for the ear, as for the nose and mouth.
The ear is Nakhu in Karen. The ear is Inaka in Shoshoni.
,, Nachit in Garo. ,, Inako in Wihinasht,
,, Nekho in Limbu. ,, Naksha in Mandan is ears.
,, Inkon in Maram. ,, Naughta in Osage.
,, Nak‟h in Punjabi, &c. ,, Nicroca in Moxos.
,, Ungn in Armenian. ,, Nikobko in Mongoyos
,, Yang in Honduras. ,, Ngureong in Lake Mac-
,, Nocaz in Mexican. quarie, Australia.
The food was a human ear, the type of hearing; and the sacrifice
was a mode of prayer, with the ear for an ideographic determinative.4
In like manner, motoi, in Maori, means to beg, to pray. And this
1 This mode of stating a Scriptural fact may be considered offensive by those
who never consider the offensiveness of the fact itself. I repudiate the Voltairian
mode of treatment; but it was not unwarranted.
2 Vol. iii. p. 16.
3 Taylor, New Zealand, p. 182.
4 When the Egyptians would symbolize a man who hears with more than
customary acuteness they pourtray a she-goat, for she respires (or hears) both
through her nostrils and ears (Hor-Apollo, B. ii. 68). Of course the sense of
perception was one, the organs varied.
82 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
is also the name of an ear-ornament made of green stone, which,
placed in the ear, like the ankham flower, becomes a visible prayer, a
gesture-sign addressed to the unseen power as the hearer.
In the following illustration of the ankh-sign, the nose and ears
have a remarkable meeting-point. If a cow during the night is
heard to groan in her sleep, it is a custom with the Hottentots to
catch her next mornings, and a piece of skin ju.st above her nose is
cut so that it hangs down in the shape of an ear-ring or eardrops. If
this be neglected the owner will die. 1 Therefore the eardrop shape
is a symbol of life or the ankh (Eg).
The name and tribe-sign of the Arikara. Indians denotes them to
be the wearers of Ŗbig earrings.ŗ2 The name of the Oregones or
Orejones is derived from or-ejo, the ear, as the large-eared people,
and the large-ear supplied a type-name to various American and Euro-
pean tribes from the lobe of the ear being perforated and artificially
enlarged in accordance with a most ancient and world-wide custom;
the size of the hole being a sign of the hero who had bravely borne
the pain and suffering.
The Incas had this type-name of the ear; and they only permitted
the Aymaras to cultivate the large ear-lobe a long while after the
conquest. The jackal, the fenekh and the ass were typhonian
representatives of the hearer.
In Johnřs Gospel we readŕŖAnd when he had said this he breathed
on them, and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Spiritŗ (ch. xx. 22).
This was a survival of the breathing in the ear and the rubbing noses
of an earlier time, and only in the primitive stage can the typology
be fathomed. In this aspect the invitation ŖCome smell me,ŗ or
Breathe me, signified, give me life, inspire me. It was the language
of the female animal converted into verbal speech. The general object
of these salutations is to wish or to give life and health, and in the
custom of the people; of Carmana, mentioned by Athenæus, they
used to offer life itselfŕthe blood being the lifeŕby Ŗbreathingŗ a vein
and holding forth the red drops to drink. This was the exact
equivalent of the Egyptian practice of offerting the ankh, the emblem
of life; the blood being an earlier reality. Ankh (Eg.) life, liquid
of life is the name of blood in the Garo anchi.
Hunga means medicine in the Omaha (Indian) language and in
the African tongues.
To be well, or healthy, isŕ
Nga in Kanuri. Inga in Nřgodsin. Nkindei in Nalu.
Nga in Munio. Nga in Bagrimi. Aingete in Nřkele.
Nga in Nřguru. Ngo-dodo in Tiwi.
breathing, the name being chiefly found in the duplicated form. The
doctor is designatedŕ
Ngange in Isawu. Nganga in Kanyika. Nganga in Kisama.
Nganga ,, Kum. Nganga ,, Mutsaya. Ngana ,, Nřkele.
Nganga ,, Kabenda. Nganga ,, Bumbete. Ngan ,, Konguan.
Nganga ,, Mimboma. Nganga ,, Nyombe. Nanga ,, Kiriman.
Nganga ,, Musentanda. Nganga ,, Basunde. Ngan ,, Eafen.
to have been imprinted on the walls by placing the human hand on the
clean stone and spitting some colouring matter all around it, and so
leaving the impress of a hand.1 The hand and spitting were two signs
of tatting or establishing a covenant to which the hand would remain
a witness. The word tat, for hand and typing, abrades into tâ, and
tā in Maori is a name of the tattoo; to imprint and paint! Tete is
to stand fixed in the ground; titi to stick or stamp in and make fast.
Tutu, a messenger; also to summon and gather in a solemn assembly.
Captain Cooke says the natives of the Tongan Islands Ŗhave a
singular custom of putting everything you give them to their heads, by
way of thanks as we conjectured.ŗ2
Here the head was the Ŗtat,ŗ and tat (Eg.) French tête, is the head.
The Ashantis had a war-custom of sending a head with the
Messenger-Sword (this head was found to show considerable likeness
to ancient Egyptian work, especially in the beard3), said to intimate
ŖI mean to cut off your head.ŗ Head, messenger, and sword4 are
each named the tat in Egyptian.
The young Sioux Indian is obliged to take a head or scalp to win
Ŗthe featherŗ before a girl will marry him. So the young Somali of
Africa, or the Dyak of Borneo must take a head in order that he
may take a wife. ŖIf need not,ŗ says Mr. J. G. Wood, Ŗbe the head
of an enemy;ŗ it is a token, not merely a trophy, showing the typical
nature of the head. This is an ancient symbolic institution, conflict-
ing with later law, as both tribes award punishment for murder.
As late as the seventeenth century, a Russian petition began with
the words ŖSo and so strikes his foreheadŗ and petitioners were termed
the Ŗforehead strikers.ŗ5 The custom was Kamite, and Egyptian will
explain it. The forehead, temples, ears and nose were struck by the
petitioner. The meaning (which may vary) is then interpreted by
a gesture sign. To strike the flag is to lower it; and ŖI strike my
head,ŗ means I bow to you; I acknowledge you as my head! But
the gesture was voluntary before it was made compulsory, and only
when the custom becomes coercive do we reach the degradation of
smelling the earth or striking the ground with the forehead.
The personal member or feature had to stand in place of a personal
pronoun in gesture language! In Egyptian, he who speaks to himself
is he who speaks to his head.6
1 ŖThe hand-print on the wall is commonly used by the Jews to avert the evil
eye; care is taken to put it in a conspicuous place outside the house before a
marriage, birth, or other festival. In the ruins of El Barid, near Petra, Professor
Palmer and I found a cistern whose cornice was decorated with hand-prints
alternately black and red. At the present day both Moslems, Christians, and Jews
hang hands, rudely cut out of a thin plate, of silver or gold, round the necks of
their children to preserve them from the evil eye.ŗŕC. F. Trywhitt Drake, in
Qtly. Statement of Pal. Explor. Fund, January, 1873, p. 16, note.
2 Voyage towards the South Pole, vol. i. p. 221.
3 Archæological Journal, vol. xxxi. p. 29.
4 Bowditch, On Superstitions Common to Egyptians and Ashantis. Paris.
5 Spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, v. p. 141. 6 Litany of Ra, 7 and 57.
88 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Lifting the hands to the forehead or temples is also a sign of
obeisance. The oriental salute of an inferior includes the putting of
his fingers to his forehead. The Sumatrans touch the forehead or
temples. This gesture may be read by the Egyptian name of the
temples of the forehead, Teb, a word that means to pray, implore,
seal, answer, be responsible for.
The Fijian Teb or Tobe is a kind of pig-tail, and when tributaries
approached their master, they were commanded by a messenger to
cut off their Tabes, and all of them docked their tails. 1 This was a
sign of subjection, or token of ownership. The Egyptian ŖTebutŗ
is likewise a sign of hair cut off, a lock of hair.
The Khonds have the custom of holding their two ears in their
hands as the symbol of submission, or as it is here represented, the
token of a covenant, a mode of swearing by the Ankh, which de-
notes the two ears, the oath and covenant, in Egyptian. Such a
custom would lead to cutting off the ears of the outlaw.
ŖNo one,ŗ says Mr. Spencer, Ŗcan suppose that hand-shaking was
ever deliberated fixed upon as a salute.ŗ2 Such customs grew by
degrees, and the type was passed on from one thing to the other as
the special ideograph of the gesture-sign. The Egyptian Ŗtattingŗ
had become handshaking. ŖTwo men joining their hands denote
concord,ŗ says Hor-Apollo.3 The sign is found as the determinative
of amity, covenant, alliance.4
Dogs and apes will spontaneously offer the paw. Here at least we
can shake hands with our predecessors. In offering the paw, or hand,
they were tatting, making the present, and establishing an under-
standing of friendship by this mode of invitation; a stage in advance
of smelling and licking. The custom of making presents is based as
lowly as this in the desire to make friendsŕa desire evinced by the
animals the more they enter into a mixed condition, and are drawn
out of their primal isolation. Mixing together is for them a mode of
civilisation.
The hieroglyphic ŖTat,ŗ as hand. denotes the offspring presented,
to give and take possession. The next phase is the clasp-sign of a
covenant (Ank, Eg.); in this the give-and-take are enacted. Then
the clasp and shake of the hand becomes a symbolical custom in the
covenant of good-fellowship. Deep down in the English nature there
yet lingers the ancient sense of its almost superseded sacredness. It
is a form of tat-ing with the hand as in the other cases with the
tongue or head. ŖBy the Haft,ŗ is a common English oath, and
ŗloose in the haft,ŗ means Ŗnot quite honest.ŗ In this the handle
follows the hand as the type of a covenant.
The Egyptian Ank, to clasp and squeeze, is found in the Maori
1 Erskine, Capt. J. E., Cruise among the Pacific Islands, p. 454.
2 Contemporary Review, May, 1878, p. 7ŕ89. 3 Book ii. 11.
The arm-ring is a
Lenke in Lubalo. Longa in Orungu. Nlunga in Nyombe.
Longa in Baseke. Nlungo in Mimboma.
It is the same word as LINK and ring, and the name coincides with
those of the other types of puberty, the hair, bone, and stone
which we shall find retaining the same name in the most diverse
of languages.
The Hindu Langi is a peculiar boddice, and Langiam means fit to
be joined (or linked) in marriage.
In the Parsee ŖShayast La-Shayastŗ instructions are given for the
woman, the moment menstruation begins (not for the first time) to take
off first her necklace, then her ear-rings, then her head-fillet (Kambar),
and apparently she is prohibited from wearing leather coverings or shoes.1
These are the very ornaments put on by the most primitive races
in token of the female having attained pubescence.
The Kustik girdle of the Parsees is assumed at the time of pu-
berty, when they have turned fourteen years of age. Until then
there is no sin in the male or female running about uncovered,
as in Egypt and Inner Africa.2
The hieroglyphic Khekh (Eg.) is a collar with nine beads, the
sign of gestation. Khekhru is a generic name for Ŗornaments.ŗ
These are founded on the necklace and collar, the ornaments of
the pubescent maiden and the enceinte genitrix.
In the portrait of a Lobah woman, figured by Schweinfurth in
the ŖHeart of Africaŗ the plugs that fill the holes with which the
ear is perforated are nine in number; the same as the number of
beads (bubu) worn in the sacred collar of Isis. This many-plugged
female likewise wears a round disk in the upper, and a pointed cone
in the lower lip.3
1 Ch. iii. 2, 3. 2 Shayast La-Shayast, ch. iv. and x.
with the statement that she has peace-offerings to proffer. One mode
of proferring peace-offerings was by exposure of the person in the
dance; a primitive form of which survives in the French Ŗcan-can.ŗ
The Fijians dance the can-can called gini-gini, a religious ceremonial
dance with which women welcome back the returning heroes with
wanton gestures and motions, or those peace-offerings that were the
reward of the warrior, the bull of battle, proffered with the simplicity
of gesture-language.
It was a feminine form of kotouing to the male, or the bull. The
North Americans likewise danced a can-can. Penn said the worship of
the Lenape Indians consisted of sacrifices and cantico, the latter being a
round dance performed with shouts and antic gestures. ŖGentikehnŗ
in the Algonkin Delaware means to dance a sacred dance.
The Maori also dances the can-can. Kani-kan is to dance and
to move backwards and forwards. Kanu-kana, in Kaffir, is to
lust after one another. The Hindus call the Wag-tail (Montacilla
alba) Matta-Khanjana; but more particularlyŕthat is, typically
ŕat the pairing season. The Wag-tail in love as the ŖMatta-
Khanjanaŗ dances the can-can of love. Khanjana denotes going,
moving; the secret pleasures of the Yatis; the cohabitation of
saints. Khan-khana (Sansk.) is the tinkle-tinkle of a bell.
The Egyptian kan-kannu is to dance and leap; kan is to dance,
and kannu is victory. It has survived because it was a sacred dance
and it was sacred because it was sexual.
The Egyptians continued the leaping dance, or kan-kannu, from
Inner Africa, and gave to it a symbolic significance. Plutarch tells
how they represented generation by means of motion, though less
grossly doubtless than in Africa beyond. He says of the Sistrum
of Isis, an emblem of the female in two phases, those of Isis and
Nephthys, Ŗthey tell us that the Sistrums frighten away and avert
Typhon, insinuating that as corruption (i.e. the menses) locks up and
fixes nature‟s course, so generation resolves and excites it by means of
motion.ŗ1 And so the Sistrums were shaken, and the waving to and
fro of their limbs and bodies was a sign of Typhonřs dismissal, and the
time of peace-offerings.
In the sacred dance the idea illustrated was that with the departure
of Typhon all need of secrecy and seclusion was gone, hence the
motive of the festival, and freedom of the dance.
The universal name of the dance and dancing in Inner Africa will
tell us where the can-can came from. This is:ŕ
Kina, Mbamba. Kina, Songo. Gani, Kanem.
Kini, Ntere. Kena, Kisama. Kina, Lubalo.
Kini, Mutsaya. N‟kan, Limba. Kina, Nyamban.
Kine, Babuma. Gani, Tumbukta. Yani, Salum.
Kena, Bumbete. Kan, Padsade. Yini, Krebo.
Gina, Kasands.
1 Of Is. and Os.
98 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Partial exposure of the person is still an African mode of showing
homage, because it is a return to the status of childhood, intended
to be a contrast to the person who is clothed with dignity, which first
began with the investiture of pubescence, the toga virilis. Moreover,
the wives of the Zulu King, Dingairn, said that when he was present
they were only allowed to appear on all fours, and always moved
about on their hands and knees. In Loango this was the prescribed
attitude for wives in general in presence of their husbands. Captain
Burton says the Dakro, a woman who bears messages from the King
of Danome to the men, goes on all fours before him, and Ŗas a rule
she goes on all fours to these men, but only kneels to smaller men.ŗ So the
oriental women are not compelled to veil the face before slaves or
men of inferior position, they being more on an equality as mere
women.
The earliest Genitrix went on all fours, as she is pourtrayed in
mythology, and personified as the hinder part; a type continued
from the time when woman was the female animal.
In Africa it is found to be almost as at first in the action of the
woman, who goes on all fours to the male. That which was once
natural is continued wholly or partially as a typical mode of doing
honour. The wives of a great man among the Soosoos bend their
bodies to him with one hand resting on each knee. This attitude is
also assumed when he passes by.1
Among certain African tribes the women greet the menŕand even
half-grown youthsŕby bending their backs until the tips of their
fingers rest on the toes of their feet; or, by turning their bodies
sideways, clapping their hands, exclaiming wake, wake, waky, waky,
huh, huh.2
In some parts of India3 and in certain of the Pacific Islands it is
considered a token of respect and an act of homage to present the
back-side to a superior. The most precious offering to the Deity of
Israel even when the male idea dominated, continued to be the rump
(Aliah)4 the hinder thigh which from the beginning had been an
emblem of the female, a sacrificial type of that which was once
offered in the custom of the feminine Kotou, the hieroglyphic
ŖUr-hekaŗ the great magic power, or potent charm of primitive man.
The most striking feature in the females of the Bushman race is
their protuberant hinder part; this is peculiar enough to cause
perplexity to the Anthropologist. Descriptions have been given that
recall the saying of Proclus in Timæus, Ŗimmense nature is suspended
from the back of the vivific goddess.ŗ But the doctrine of sexual
selection and the customs of Kotou may suggest an explanation of
1 Winterbottom, Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra
constituted the first rank of the male, and founded his supremacy
over the female.
The Welsh Rhenc or Breton Rhenk is primarily the status
attained at puberty which afterwards became the rank in the Male
line of descent.
The name of the man was originally conferred, like the white stone
in the Mysteries, at the time of puberty. Thus the name, the stone,
and pubes or hair, were homotypes. According to Hans Stade the
Tupi warrior took away the name of the man whom he slew and bore
it himself; and when the young Creek Indian brought in his first scalp
he won his war-name, and became a Brave.
The Osage Indians are reported as killing an enemy on purpose to
suspend his scalp over the grave of their own buried warrior, with the
view of sending the murdered manřs spirit to him as his slave in the
other world; and this interpretation is supported by the fact that
when the Chichimec scalped his enemy alive, the vanquished man
became the conquerorřs slave by the loss of his scalp and hair, the
tokens of his manhood. Childhood, widowhood, bereavement, igno-
miny, and slavery, were all indicated by the hairless condition.
With some races the woman shaved her head on losing her
husband. The same word Mundai in Toda, is the name of the
widow and the bald. In the Hieroglyphics the determinative of the
Kharu or widow, is the detached scalplike tress of hair. Also
plucking out the hair was a gesture-sign of grief and mourning.
Loss of hair was degrading and humiliating, whether voluntary or
enforced, and shaving is the symbolic act of rendering non-virile,
monkish, unsexual, whether applied to the pubes, beard, or crown,
as it was in Egypt, and still is in the Cult of the Virgin Mother and
her impubescent Bambino in Rome.
This is recognized by Isaiah who threatens Israel with a razor that
will shave it at both ends and Ŗit shall consume the beard.ŗ1
As hair was the emblem of virility and reproduction, baldness was
the natural antithesis; and the loss of the hair was enforced as a
later form of penalty, because it had been held so sacred as a
voluntary offering. The hair being a symbol of reproducing potency,
this will account for the lock of a personřs hair being considered the
representative of the personal self, when his life is sought to be taken,
or blasted by magic, i.e. enacting of the malignant desire in gesture-
language according to primitive usage.
It is believed that the hair and nails ought never to be cut on
Sunday, the day of Khem-Horus, or on Friday, the day of the
Genitrix.
The Lion Paru in the Ritual is called the ŖLord of numerous trans-
formations of skins,ŗ i.e. repeatings of the hair; and time was, in
England, when people would make a point of having their hair cut
1 Ch. vii. 20.
102 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
whilst the Moon, the female reproducer, was in the sign of the Lion
or the Ram;1 two chief types of male potency.
When we know the symbolic value of nail from the origin
we can understand the reason why biting the nail by way of scorn
should be considered an insult.2 The act was equal to plucking
the beard or cutting the hair; it was aimed at the personřs manhood,
on the ground of nail being a representative of virility in gesture-
language and the primitive typology.
The nails as an equivalent for the hair, a type of Ŗrenewal coming of
itself,ŗ will account for a custom like this:ŕŖThe ancient French-
men had a ceremony that when they would marry, the bridegroom
should pare his nails and send them to his new wife; which done
they lived together afterwards as man and wife.ŗ3 The act had the
same significance as when the pubes or locks of hair were offered
to the divine Genitrix, or the foreskins were piled in the circle of
the twelve stones at Gilgal. Each was dedicated to re-production.
Captain Cook describes the Maori as wearing the nails and teeth
of their dead relations.4 These were equivalent to the phallus worn
by the widows, as a type of re-production.
It was an Egyptian custom to gild the nails, teeth, and membrum
virile of the embalmed mummy. These were glorified in the gloom
of the grave because, as types of production, they served in a second
phase as emblems of foundation, and visible bases of renewal and
resurrection.
It was a theory that the hair, beard, and nails of the Japanese
Mikado were never cut. They had to be trimmed furtively while
he was sleeping. This corresponds to the assumption that the king
never dies. He was not reproducible. He only transformed. He
was the living one, like the Ankh (Eg.); an image of the ever-living,
a type of the immortal.
The male emblem of virility, like the scalp, was a trophy to be
cut off in battle. On the monuments there are heaps of these col-
lected as evidence of conquest. In one instance the Ŗspoils of the
Rebuŗ consist of donkey-loads of phalluses (Karurnatu) and severed
hands. 12,535 members and hands were cut off from the dead after
the battle of Khesef-Tamahu, and deposited as proofs of victoryŕ
an enacted reportŕbefore the Pharaoh Rameses.
By aid of the hieroglyphic values conferred on the image in life,
we can read the significance of the emblem in death. By its
excision the enemy was typically annihilated; the last tribute paid
thus was the forfeiture or his personality in a spiritual sense; for
without the member the deceased, according to Egyptian thought,
could not be reconstructed. He would not rise again; resurrection,
1 Brand, The Moon. 2 Brand, Hand and Finger-nails.
All turns on the skin, whichever way the transformation may take
place. When the Finn woman is once in the power of the Shetlander,
it is because he has possession of her skin, without which she can
never transform back again or escape from her captor.
In the ŖOrphic Fragmentsŗ we read, ŖNo one has seen Protogonos
with his eyes, except the Sacred Night alone; all others wondered when
they beheld in the ether the unexpected light, such as the SKIN of the
immortal Phanes shot forth.ŗ1 The skin is here the same type of
transformation as that of the Fenn. The type is one whether it be
the wolf-dog or jackal of Anup, the lion of Shu or any other form of
the Phœnix-skin including the Seal of the Shetlanders, and of the
Ahts of North America.
The natural origin of all the transformations, by assuming the skin,
hair, or feathers of the animals or birds, may be traced to the ritual
and ceremonial of puberty. When the boy became pubescent, he
transformed into the hairy one. The first clothing was hair, and this
was followed by fur and feather, and the skin with hair on, worn in
later times. He made his transformation in the likeness of the
totemic animal, and became a bear, a wolf, a bull, a dog, a seal, a
crow, hawk, or other tribal type of the ancestral descent. This mode
of transformation was then continued in the religious mysteries, and
applied to other changes. For example, we speak of a Ŗchange of
heart,ŗ but the Egyptian Ŗchange of heart,ŗ was represented by
taking the old heart out of the mummyřs breast to embalm or
preserve it apart; and replacing it by the beetle, a type of change and
transformation.
That which we can talk, say, and write was first enacted, and the
most primitive customs were the sole records of such acting by men
who performed those things that could not otherwise have been
memorized. These customs had their origin in gesture-language;
they constitute the drama of dumb humanity, and volumes might be
filled in showing the (to us) unnatural-looking results of an origin
that was quite natural.
Seeing the primitive importance of the skin as a type of prowess
and a symbol ef reproduction adopted on account of its shooting the
hair and renewing itself, it is more than probable that the custom of
throwing the old shoe after the newly-wedded pair is connected with
the skin-type of repetition (Nem). We have to think back beyond
leather to the time when the sandal was made of skin, and worn with
the hair on. The shoe of Vair fur or hair which fitted Cinderella was
of the same symbolic value. The Prince was in search of the
reproducer. The shoe is thrown for good luck, which in this case
means progeny. For the typology is actively identified by the
Esquimaux, who seize an old shoe of the English with great avidity,
cut it up into strips, and turn them into talismans to make barren
1 [Ancient Fragments] Ed. Cory, p. 296.
106 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
women fertile, or teeming.1 This may be adduced as the connecting-
link still extant, with the custom of throwing the old shoe for good
luck in marriage, and the non-wearing of skin or leather during
menstruation by the Parsee women.
Such an application of the skin of the animal in the shape of the
shoe will also explicate the custom of putting shoes on the dead or
burying a pair with them, as was done in England and other northern
countries. In Scandinavia the burial shoe is called helskô or Hell-
shoe. The shoe would have the same significance as the skin in
which the Inner Africans still inter their dead, and the Bes or Nem
skin that was held to give warmth, protection, and the hope of a
joyful resurrection. or reproduction to the mummy in Egypt. At the
famous Duke of Wellingtonřs funeral a pair of boots were carried to
St. Paulřs Cathedral in the stirrups of the dead warriorřs horse; as is
the rule at the burial of a field-marshal.
The shoe-skin being a sign of supremacy, as shown, for instance,
by the declaration of the Hebrew Deity, ŖOver Edom will I cast my
shoe,ŗ2 this will account for its being taken off as an acknow-
ledgment of inferiority. The earliest skins worn were trophies of
the victor and types or his virility, proofs of his potency.
The pubes supplied a supreme type of male power. The vesture,
the shoe, and hat, were made of skin, fur, or feather, which are
interchangeable as symbols. These being worn proudly, were
doffed in humility. The Cossacks of the Don elected their Hetman
by casting their skins or hairy caps at him, which were reckoned
as votes.
The hat is put on by the Speaker of the House of Commons as
the chief sign of his authority. The hat, or beaver, was also a form
of the skin. The bear-skin Busby continues the Bus-skin of Egypt,
which was a sign of protecting power and of transference; it is a
genuine relic of the primæval skin wherewith the conqueror clothed
himself, and sought to frighten his foe. The tall silk hat is an
imitation of the hairy one, and in this the man still tries to look
martial, and the boy pubescent. In the shape of the hat the skin is
still a type of transformation from boy to man.
The relationship of the skin to the hair and renewed life is demon-
strated by the ancient custom of presenting a pair of gloves to
the culprits who had been condemned to die, but who received the
kingřs pardon, whereby the glove became the type of life renewed.
This custom was followed by a pair of gloves being given to
the judge before whom no prisoner had been capitally convicted at
what is termed a ŖMaiden Assize.ŗ The same theory of origin will
also explain why gloves should have been given at weddings. In the
time of Queen Elizabeth the bridegroom wore gloves in his hat
as the symbol of good husbandry, and this identifies the type.
1 Egede, Greenland p. 198. 2 Ps. lx. 8.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 107
The glove hung up in churches and in the pews of those who had
died young is a sign of the same significance as the skin buried with
the dead as the symbol of a future life.
Some amorous pleasantry is connected with the belief that if a
woman surprises a man when he is sleeping, and kisses without
waking him, she is entitled to receive a new pair of gloves. It
was especially applicable on Valentineřs Day, when lovers were
chosen by lot or captured. The covertness of the act has the look of
the ladyřs having earned the right to be covered, or to become the
femme couverte, as if it were a form of feminine capture.
The skin was made use of in the ceremony of bride-capture; the
bride in some instances being carried off in the symbolical skin. In
the Sutras it was provided that at one important part of the marriage
ceremony, the bridegroom and a strong man should compel the bride
to sit down on the skin of a red ox. The skin was the same emblem
of reproduction as if thrown after the wedding pair or buried with
the dead. Nor is the type limited to reproduction. Bus, the skin,
also signifies transference, to pass, change from one to another.
Thus the skin or shoe is a double Ideograph when applied to
the bride.
Much has been written of late years on the subject of capture in
marriage. The present writer, however, is not concerned with tribal
endogamy and exogamy. The act of capture goes back of necessity
to the state of utterest promiscuity. The capture of the female
by the male is so ancient that it may be compared with the capture of
the hen by the cock. Next lawless capture was regulated and applied
to periods of time and to persons within and without the Totemic
tribe.
Under the sign of Fekh in the hieroglyphics, we have the meaning
of to capture, inclose, clasp, untie, undress, denude, burst open,
and in short ravish the female as was done even in accordance with
the regulated customs of capture.
The hieroglyphic tie, noose, or knot, is the determinative of Fekh,
and all the ideas connected with capturing, tying, making a bond
and covenant. It is the determinative of Ark and Ankh to surround,
envelop, clasp, pair, couple, and duplicate. The knot then is the sign
of capture and covenant, which include all the various modes of
marriage. The knot is still the symbol of marriage, described as
tying the knot. The ring, the wreath, the scarf, are other circular
and corroborative symbols. But the knot did not originate with the
ceremony of marriage, whether of capture or covenant. It is the
hieroglyphic sign of life and reproduction. As such it was carried by
the Great, the enceinte, Mother, as her emblem. It is the ideograph of
periodicity, and was primally the determinative of Ark, the end of a
period, to end, be perfected; and applies to the period of feminine
pubescence. It is the determinative of Ankh, to put on clothes,
108 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
to dress, the nature, of which is shown by linen hung up to dry.
The first Ankh-tie was put on at puberty, by the leaf-wearers,
some of whom still clothe themselves with a leaf-girdle to-day,
as do the Juangs of Indiaŕdescribed by Colonel Daltonŕwhose
name is possibly based on their early type of the Ankh-tie, whence
the Juang. This tie is stiII made of leaves in the Kaffir Cacawe.
Fekh (Eg.), the tie, girdle, band, or knot is identical with the
Zulu Foko, a womanřs top-knot, the sign of pubescence, and the
status of womanhood. The origin of the tie then can be traced
to the simplest necessity of nature. It was next adopted as the
sign of reproduction, because it had become the token of feminine
pubescence, and the period of possible pregnancy; therefore a symbol
itself. The type was continued in the Egyptian and Inner African
custom of tying up or snooding the hair after that period. Here
again the tie, or knot, signified that the wearer was capturableŕready
for marriage, and it constituted a primitive means of distinguishing
between the right and wrong, according to the rude inter-tribal code
of ravishing.
The laws of regulated capture are illustrated by the Narrinyeri
tribes of Australia, with whom members of the different clans are
present at each otherřs ceremonies of young-man-making to see that
they only enter those youths who are of the proper age, so that they
may not claim more females from another tribe than properly belong
to them, or than they have the right to take.1
The Arku (Eg.), tie, is represented by the Fijian Liku (a variant
of the word Arku), or loin-cloth which is assumed at the time of
puberty. The Liku is likewise known to the Australian Aborigines.
The young females of Victoria put on a girdle or very short skirt
made of opossum fur, called a Leek-Leek.2
When the daughter of a Fijian chief was betrothed in infancy, the
mother carried a Liku as a present to the intended husband in token,
and as a pledge that her daughter should be his wife. The Liku is
the feminine loin-doth, zone; girdle and apron all in one. The message
conveyed to him by this sign would tell him that when the girl put
on the Liku at puberty she would become his wife. In return, he
presented to the mother some whalesř teeth as his pledge, and sign of
the covenant.3 The tooth emblem of AdultshipŕHu (Eg.), tooth,
ivory, and the Adult Solar God,ŕwas one with the Nails of the
Frenchmen, or the lock of hair sent in later times, to be worn by the
woman. The tooth, and loin-cloth, were typical of pubescence in the
two sexes, hence their relationship to marriage.
The Fijian Liku and Victorian Leek-Leek, is Inner African, as the
Lok, Waist-cloth, Wolof. Loga, Shirt, Kore. Halak, Shirt, Soa.
Liga, Shirt, Kano. Lugod ,, Dsarawa. Halak, ,, Wodai.
Liga ,, Kadzina. Ariga ,, Mbarike. Melagiye ,, Beran.
Dolokie ,, Timbo.
1 Smyth, vol. i. p. 65. 2 Smyth, vol. i. p. 272. 3 Williams, Fiji, vol. i. p. 168.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 109
Also the Ark and Ankh Nooses are names for cord or rope:ŕ
Orugba, a Cord, in Igu. Olugba, a Cord, in Egbria-Hima. Aruba, Ear-ring, Ebe.
Orugba, ,, ,, Opanda. Oruka, Ear-ring, Ife. Armlet or
Uroka,
Bracelet, {
Nupe. }
The Ankh tie is likewise Inner African, as
Ngoba, { Rope or
Cord, }
Landoro. N‟ket, { Rope or
Cord, }
Bamom. Nek, { Rope or
Cord, }
Konguan.
into the symbolic custom, loses its sense; and it becomes cruel in
its dotage.
The custom of shaving the head of an infant, or cutting its hair at
the time of conferring the fatherřs name, can only be explained by
the first intention. The Peruvians also cut the babeřs hair cere-
monially with a stone knife when the name was conferred at the
age of two years. It is a common Moslem custom in Africa for
the child to have its hair cut when the name of the father is given
to it.
Park in his travels into Inner Africa says it is a custom among the
Mandcngas for the child to be named when it is seven or eight days
old, and the ceremony commences by the priest shaving the infantřs
head. In Europe too cutting the hair of the child or young man was
a mode of adopting and fathering. Clovis offered his beard for
Alaric to cut in token that he adopted him for his son, and Charles
Martel sent his son, Pepin, to Luithprand. the Lombard king, that
he might cut his first locks and thus adopt him as his son.1
The custom was continued as symbolical. but the transfer of the
rite from the time of puberty leaves the natural genesis so far behind
that it is lost sight of. At the period of young-man-making the
shaving and hair-plucking represented a typical return to infancy, and
the pubescent male was thus reborn and adopted into the community as its
child. But when the ceremony is enacted in infancy it is meaningless
and becomes inexplicable.
There is abundant evidence to prove that the earliest tattooing was
done by cuts in the flesh, and that these were totemic signs. Burton
testifies that in Abeokuta every tribe, sub-tribe, and family had its
blazon printed on the body ranging from great gashes down to a
diminutive pattern-prick.
The totemic preceded the individual ancestor as father; and
affiliation to the Totem was first. At a later stage such symbols
became ancestral, but they originated as tribal marks and were
primarily adopted for use in the earliest societary phase. They were
signs of the bond of fellowship before they were turned into the badges
of bondage to an individual tyrant.
The same less of sense occurs in transferring the rite of baptism
from the age of puberty to that of infancy. The Kaffir and Hottentot
girls undergo the baptism of water at this time. Casalls describes
one form, yet to be quoted; Dr. Hahn another. It is a Hottentot
custom for pubescent girls to be exposed stark naked to the first
thunder-storm that follows their period, and, as an eye-witness, he
describes them running to and fro in this manner when the thunder
roared incessantly, and the sky appeared to be one continued flash of
lightning, and the rain drenched them in a deluge.2
1 Spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, p. 63.
2 Tsuni-Goam, p. 87.
112 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Baptism at puberty was also a rite of consecration by means of
blood, because blood was the announcer of the female period of
pubescence. So lowly of status was the Ŗprimæval revelation.ŗ
Nature herself wrote the first rubric; and her red was blood. This
was next applied to the male at puberty by the bond made in his
blood. Adult baptism, whether with water or blood, was a consecra-
tion of the generative powers to righteous use and a cleanly life. But
a baptism of the unconscious babe as a rite of re-generation by
ministers who are profoundly ignorant of its origin and significance,
becomes an imposture, all the greater for its sanctity. The con-
tinuity of the custom is shown by the childřs taking the fatherřs
name instead of the tribal one of old. The re-generation doctrine,
however, is nought but a delusive shadow of the past, the Manes of a
meaning long since dead. Indeed, the whole masquerade of Roman
Ritualism in these appurtenances of the past is now as sorry a sight to
the Archaic student as the straw crowns and faded finery of the kings
and queens whose domain is limited to the asylum for lunatics.
Not that the evolutionist can justly complain of these specimens of
survival. ŖAs it was in the beginning,ŗ is the gospel found to be con-
tinued by them; and no written record in the present can compare
with the unwritten records of the past which are preserved in
symbolical customs.
When we know that the human race first dated from the dark,
the lower side, and reckoned the place of darkness in the north by the
left hand, that will explain numerous customs connected with the
left hand.
The Talmudists assert that man was created from the left hand.
Sut was born from the left side. In the Roman worship of the Great
Mother, a left hand was borne in the sacred procession with the palm
expanded,1 because the left hand was a feminine type. The Vama-
charis, or left-hand worshippers of Siva are Yonias, those who recog-
nise the female as primary. In English churches and chapels the men
used to sit on the south side, or right hand; the women to the north on
the left hand, which is precisely the same symbolical custom as that
observed in the burial of the Bongo dead. A custom like this yet
affects the Ritualistic controversy. The followers of the female still
lean to the left side and the place of the Genitrix in the north. In
the year 1628, Prebendary Smart, in preaching against certain innova-
tions made in the Ritualistic practices of the Reformed Church says the
Communion-Table must Ŗstand as it had wont to do. Neither must
the table be placed along from north to south, as the altar is set, but
from east to west as the custom is of all Reformed Churches, other-
wise the minister cannot stand at the north side, there being neither
side towards then north. The Lordřs table eleven years ago was
1 Apuleius.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 113
turned into an altar, and so placed that the minister cannot stand to
do his office on the north side, as the law expressly chargeth him to
do, because there is no side of the table standing northward.ŗ
As in the Hebrew arrangements, the north side represents the birth-
place of all beginnings, the mouthpiece of emanation. Prebendary
Smart was an English Vamachari, and the Eucharistic table standing
Ŗin the sides of the northŗ represented the Virgin Mother just as
surely as if she had been the Vāmorū-tarā. of the Tantras. When
the ŖSoharŗ declares that the left side will have the upper hand
and the unclean will be the strong, till the Holy God shall build the
temple and establish the world; then will His Holy Word meet with due
honour, and the unclean shall pass away from the earth, it is
the same conflict of the male with the female, that is yet current
in modern Ritualism.
It is the English rule of the road in driving for each to take the
left side, because that is the inferior hand, and thus each offers the
place of honour to the other. The Toda Palal (priest), who has
always used the right hand for the purpose of washing, when exalted
to the divine office, always uses his left hand to wash his face and
teeth on first rising in the morning.1
The left hand being first, the earliest progression was made from
left to right. This was illustrated in the ceremonial of the ŖSabbathŗ
when the witches always went ŖWiddershins,ŗ i.e. from left to right
in their circular dances, and thus represented the Ŗbackward wayŗ
of the moon which passes through the stellar heaven from west to
east, contrariwise to the apparent diurnal motion. In the later Solar
Cult this was reversed; the worshippers went Ŗdeasil,ŗ from right to
left. The right hand had become foremost of the two.
As with the left hand, which is the inferior put first, so is it with the
lower that preceded the upper, andŕto take one illustrative custom
ŕthe lower is so sacredly the first with the natives near Lake
Malo, that if a child cuts its upper teeth before the lower, it is
killed as unlucky.2 Captain Burton tells me the custom is
common in Africa. A practice like this is unconsciously typical,
and all such customs have unwittingly registered facts for the
evolutionist.
Also as certain animals like the ass, the cock in the springtide
pastimes, and others have suffered for the parts they once played in
symbolism, so has it been with woman, as the widow, the step-mother,
and others, who have been victimized on account of their typical
characters in mythology, which reflected the pre-monogamous status
of woman.
ŖDon‟t have the mother-in-law to live in your house,ŗ is a prevalent
piece of advice at the time of marriage. Dislike to the mother-in-
1 Marshall, A Phrenologist among the Todas, p. 141.
2 Livingstoneřs Last Journals, i. 276.
114 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
law is cultivated by such sayings, independently of the person. The
mother-in-law is thus a generalized character.
The Zulu Kaffirs have a custom which is termed being Ŗashamed of
the mother-in-law,ŗ and the Kaffir and his mother-in-law are taught
to avoid each other, not to look each other in the face when they
meet, and not to repeat each otherřs names. Should they chance to
pass each other, he will hide his blushes behind his shield, and she
will seek the protection of a bush.1
This is current in Zululand, in Ashanti, and other parts of Africa.
With the Beni Amer, the wife, as well as her husband, hides herself
at the approach of the mother-in-law.2 The custom belongs to the
laws of Tabu. According to Richardson, when any of the Cree
Indians live with the wifeřs parents after marriage, the etiquette of
the family demands that the husbandřs mother-in-law must not speak
to him nor even look at him.
Philander Prescott, writing of the Dacotahs, says he had heard of in-
stances in which a violation of this law had been punished by stripping
the offender piecemeal, and leaving him stark naked by casting every
rag of clothing away.3 This, too, would be a typical custom.
With the Arawaks of Guiana, it was unlawful for the son-in-law
to look on the face of his mother-in-law. They were partitioned off
from each other in the same house, and sat back to back in the
same boat.4
Among the Australian Aborigines, the son-in-law must shun his
mother-in-law, and she may not look on him. If they chance to
meet he will hide behind his shield, and she will squat down in the
bush-grass. If she is near her tribe when he goes by, they endeavour
to screen her, but they do not mention his name. It is believed that
if they were to look on each other, both would become old prema-
turely and die. This strict etiquette commences from the moment
the female child is promised to the man, and belongs to the same
class of ideas as that of the Liku being presented by the future
mother-in-law to the intended husband.5 In the lowest caste of
Hindus, however, the man sleeps with his mother-in-law until the
promised bride comes of age.
There is an Indian story of the man who looked on his mother-in-
law, or, in other phrase, made love to her, whereupon she threw a
handful of ashes at him. These scarred his face forever. The man
was the lunar god. Hence when it is new moon he turns the burnt
and blackened side of his face to us and the blots are still to be
seen. The custom had become typical, but there is a natural
genesis beyond.
Certain rules of courtesy and etiquette look ridiculous to us, chiefly
1 Wood, Nat. History of Man, ŖAfrica,ŗ p. 87. 2 Munzinger, p. 325.
3 Schoolcraft, vol. ii. 196. 4 Tylor, Early History, p. 285.
5 Smyth, vol. i. pp. 95-96.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 115
a mere relation of parentage, affection, and duty; but that their very
bodies are joined by a physical bond; so that what is done to the one acts
directly on the other.ŗ If so, surely some of the parentřs sufferings
attending the ceremony were calculated to kill any number of chil-
dren; and this fact is fatal to the reason assigned for the one part of
the performance which was intended to insure the safety and well-being
of the child.
Bachofen suggested that the custom of couvade originated as a
ceremony that was typical of a transfer in the line of descent from
the motherhood to the individualised fatherhood, as if the male parent
were performing an act symbolical of his superseding the female
parentage. But with the Macusis of Guiana, amongst others, the
father and mother both lie in, and there is no transfer from the mother
to the father. So with the Arawacs. The act did not transfer the
child to the father;1 they continued to trace the line of descent
from the mother.
The custom shows that the parent identifies himself with the infant
child. He takes no more nourishment than would keep a mere child
alive, and this is limited at times to the most infantile food. If the
child dies, it is because of some sin of omission or commission with
which the father is chargeable. He has Ŗneglected to shave off his
long eyebrows,ŗ2 or he has handled metal, or injured his nails. For
the Macusis of Guiana might not scratch themselves with their own
mails (a type of pubescence), and a rib of the palm-leaf was hung up
for use instead. An Abipone resisted the luxury of a pinch of snuff
for fear it should make him sneeze and the sneeze bring some danger
upon the child.3
When the child is born the father exhibits the offspring as his.
He receives the congratulations of friends instead of the mother.
The father not only takes the motherřs place in bed with the child;
He makes a typical transformation into the character of a child. He
becomes as a little child in his habits and diet before the child
is born.
Among the Coroadas as soon as the woman was known to be
pregnant the strict regimen began and the man lived chiefly on fish
and fruits; his infantile diet. The men of the Carib and Acawoid
nations abstained from certain kinds of meat lest the expected child
might be injured in some mysterious manner by the fatherřs eating
of them.4
Thus the father represents or impersonates the child before birth and
religiously abstains from everything that could hurt an infant. He
did also take the place of the mother, but the still more arresting
phenomenon is found in his becoming as the child.
1 Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, vol. ii. 247.
2 Dobrizhoffer on the Abipones. 3 Dobrizhoffer.
child crying?ŗ The daughter replied, ŖI hear; but let big men help
themselves as big men do.ŗ1
This is the myth according to naked nature, and to naked nature
we must go to read it. Nor does it contain any irrational element
when once it is fathomed in phenomena. The irrational or insane
element is introduced only when the mythical is assumed to be
historical and human.
In this myth Heitsi-eibib personifies the male moon. As a child
his mother carries him on her back in the Hottentot fashion.
The moon reproduces itself visibly, but the first part of the re-
begettal is out of view. It occurs when the friends of the mother
are all gone out of sight. He is said to throw her down to commit
the rape on her.
In the Ritual the lunar goddess or mother of the moon describes
this re-begettal on herself: She says, ŖI have prepared Taht at the gate
of the moon,ŗ i.e., the young moon-god who, in the Khoi-khoi myth, is
Heitsi-eibib. Previously she has said, ŖI kiss, I embrace him, I come to
him, I have fallen down with him in the Eastern Valley.ŗ ŖI have united
Sut (the Child) in the upper houses, through the old man with him.ŗ ŖI
have brought my orb to darkness, it is changed to light.ŗ2
As the genitrix preceded the fatherhood in mythology, the first
mother is the Virgin Mother, and the god or child begotten of her
is self-begotten.
The Moon in Egypt, as Taht, was male, and the male Moon,
transforming into the child, affords a natural genesis for couvade.
From the origin in lunar phenomena, the type of the male child
renewing himself was evolved as in ŖHeitsi-eibib.ŗ It was applied to
Sut, Shu, Ptah, but especially to Horus, who is pourtrayed with
the god Bes standing behind him. This representation shows us the
Ŗold man who becomes young,ŗ and the custom of couvade offers
the best interpretation of the meaning of that group in which the
grinning jolly Bes acts the part of the male gestator or reproducer
of the child by transformation. The word Bes signifies to change
from one to the other.
Bes was a great favourite with Egyptian women as an ornament to
the toilet-table, and a symbolic figure at the head of their beds. My
conclusion is, that his wide-legged pose, his protruding tongue, and
parturient expression (cf. Bis, Sans. to split; Bishkala, parturient),
are intended to pourtray the bringing forth of the child; as the
old one who becomes young.
The particular transformation signified by the Bes-Horus group is
that of the Elder Horus into the youthful Virile one, at puberty and
therefore only typical.
In Egypt the doctrine appears midway between the primitive
nature of the Hottentot myth, and its culmination in the christology
1 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 69. 2 Ch. lxxx.
122 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
of Rome. A theosophical doctrine like that of the Virgin Mother
and the Child-Christ, as commonly accepted, can find no explanation in
science, and has no foundation in human nature. It must be
referred back to the mythical origines to be understood for the first
time, by the aid of known phenomena. In its latest inexplicable
phase it becomes a part of the grossest superstition the world has
ever seen.
It is in accordance with the natural and mythological origin here
suggested, that in Germany similar superstitions cluster around the
godfather, who partially plays the part of the father in the couvade.
ŖIt is believed that the habits and proceedings of the godfather and
godmother affect the child‟s life and character. Particularly the
godfather at the christening must not think of disease or madness lest
this come upon the child; he must not look round on the way to the
church lest the child should grow up an idle stare-about; nor must he
carry a knife about him for fear of making the child a suicide; the
godmother must put on a clean shift to go to the baptism or the baby
will grow up untidy.ŗ1
Not until we have penetrated to this depth in an artesian attempt
to bore to the bottom, do we get at the origin of religious doctrines
into which far other meanings have been interfused. Here we find
the indefinitely earlier form of the only-begotten Son, and the real
origin and primæval illustration of attaining eternal life by conversion
ŕthe later name for transformationŕŖinto a little child.ŗ In the
couvade that conversion was religiously enacted, with a pathetic
childlikeness, by the male performing the two characters of the child
and the pubescent male, as well as that of the mother, and thus
representing a trinity in unity, which became the later theological
mystery.
The wonder is not that the father and husband was made to
suffer so much in the Ŗcouvade,ŗ but that he was not altogether
effaced. The old moon or sun never emerged again from its lying-in,
except in the regenerated shape of its own child; and some ap-
proximation even to this phase of utter effacement and extinction
appears to have been attempted, and may be at the root of other
primitive custom.
The Bechuanas in public orations call themselves sons of the late
king.2
The passing away of the father would be actually realised by the
arrangement of the Andamam islanders, in which the father and
mother remained together until the child was weaned, when they
separated as a matter of course, and each sought a new partner.3
In the celestial allegory the son preceded the father as bull of
the mother, and the boy became the husband of his own mother.
1 Tylor, Early History, p. 304, 3rd ed. 2 Spencer, A. R. table 21.
to disinter the bones of the dead, and remove them to their last
resting-place), in which the bones of the deceased chief are taken
up and scraped clean. They are then re-fleshed, as it were, with a
coating of red earth, wrapped in a red-stained mat, and placed in a
box or a bowl smeared with the sacred colour, and deposited in a
painted tomb.1
The Australian black warriors are anointed with grease and
embalmed or ornamented with red ochre. The corpse is then
doubled up, and tightly wrapped in the Opossum-rug, like the Bongo,
Bari, or Bechuana of Africa.
After the body has lain in the ground for some months it is
disinterred, the bones are scraped and cleaned, and packed in a
roll of pliable bark. This is painted and ornamented with strings of
beads. It is then called ŖNgobera,ŗ and is kept in camp with the
living. It had undergone a transformation which, in Egyptian, is
denoted by Khepra.
And just as the Egyptians had their mummy image carried round
at the banquet as a type of Khepra, a reminder of immortality, so the
Ngobera is still brought forth by the Australians into the midst of
the domestic circle at the gathering of relatives and friends. 2 The
custom and mode are indefinitely older than embalmment in Egypt,
and these have persisted both in Inner Africa and Australia, all
through the ages during which the long procession of Egyptian civili-
sation was slowly filing past. The typology is the same, and the
Ngobera is identical, even by name, with the Egyptian Khepra
(Ptah), the transformer, the divinity who re-fleshes the dead with
his red clay.
The strings of beads correspond to the network of beads with
which Egyptian mummies were wrapped as the symbol of the Net
that recovered Horus or Osiris from the waters of the Nile; the beads
that were worn by Isis, during gestation, in the Collar containing
nine in number.
The bones of the dead were buried in the ancient British middens
after they had been rudely embalmed and preserved in red earth and
sea-shells. An old name of the English midden is a Miskin; the
Muschna, a heap or pile in the Grisons. Now the Meskhen is the
Egyptian place of burial and re-birth, and the typology of the burial
customs shows that the dead were buried for their re-birth.
Further, in the eschatological phase, the Meshken became the place
of re-birth for the soul. It was the Egyptian Purgatory, and the Irish
have the Miskhen as the Purgatory.
In the comical Pilgrims‟ Pilgrimage into Ireland, it is said, ŖAn
Ignis fatuus the silly people deem to be a soul broken out of
Purgatory;ŗ and in a Wonderful History (1704) we are told that in
superstitious times the Popish Clergy persuaded the ignorant people
1 Taylor, New Zealand, p. 95. 2 Smyth.
130 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
that the ŖWill-oř-the-Wispsŗ were souls come out of Purgatory all in
flame, to move the people to pray for their entire deliverance.1
In Ireland the ŖWill-oř-the-Wispŗ is known as ŖMiscanne Many,ŗ
as may be seen by an allusion in the story of Morty Sullivan and
the Spirit-Horse in Crokerřs Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland.
ŖMan-in-the-Oakŗ is an English name for the Ignis fatuus, and
Miscanne repeats the Egyptian Meskhen, which is the name of the
Purgatory, as the place of burial and re-birth for the Stars, the Sun,
and the Souls, in the region of the under-world.
The Inner African mode of burying the dead wrapped up in the
skin of an animal is identical with that of a remote age in the British
Isles. General Sir J. Alexander has described the most ancient
woman in Scotland who had been buried deep in a bog, and was
well-preserved in a deer skin. The Bongos and Bechuanas still wrap
their dead in a cowřs skin.2
The ritual and hieroglyphics of the Egyptians contain the typology
of the skin. The Nem (skin) means repetition, to renew, a second
time or form.
The deceased whose body has been laid aside, says to the God.
ŖThou makest to me a skin,ŗ and ŖI make to Thee a skin, my soul.ŗ3
This part of the ritual is especially Inner African. It comes from
the land of Kena or Nubi.
The skin was of course a preservative in itself. But the deer-skin
goes with the deerřs horn as a type of renewal, and so the natural
image of preservation becomes symbolical.
It has often been a subject of wonder why the men of the Neolithic
age should have buried the axes and other amulets of green stone, the
polished jade, with their dead. The custom was Kamite; and if
the Egyptians had no jade for the purpose, they had other green
stones called Uat. We read again, in the Ritual, ŖI have said the
opposite of evil. I have done what they (the wicked) could not when I
was (or when I represented) the amulet of green jasper protecting the
throat of the Sun.ŗ4
This is the chapter of propitiating the Ka, or double of a person,
in the spirit world.
In the ŖHall of Two Truths,ŗ the Egyptian judgment hall, the
reason for this custom was explained. It is said in the 125th chapter
of the Ritual, ŖExplain to him (the deceased) why thou hast made for
him the amulet (handle) of green stone after thou buriest him.ŗ And it
must be admitted that they are the right authorities to consult in such
mystical matters, who can explain them.
The axe of the Stone Age was Egyptřs especial emblem of power
1 Brand, Will-with-a-Wisp. It likewise looks as if the Egyptian Mammesi,
another name for the place of burial and re-birth of the Mam (Mummy), had
survived by name in the Gaelic Mamsie, a tumulus.
2 See Book of the Beginnings, vol. ii. p. 664.
3 Rit. ch. clxvi. 4 Ibid. ch. cv.
TYPOLOGY OF PRIMITIVE CUSTOMS. 131
heaven, the male being before, and the north is behind, the female
being considered the hind part. Hor-Apollo tells us that when the
Egyptians would denote an amulet, they pourtray two human heads,
one of a male looking inwards the other of a female looking outwards.
This is a type of protection, for they say that no demon will molest
any person thus guarded. Without inscriptions they protect them-
selves with the two heads.1 Here the typology is identical with that
of the Bongo burial, and explains it. So the Dayaks will make the
rude figures of a naked man and woman and set them face to
face with each other on the way leading to their farms as a mode of
protection against evil influences.2
The Hottentots, the Bongos, and other African tribes still
raise the same memorial mounds of stones over their dead, or above
the grave of their god (or chief), who rises again, as did the earliest
cairn-makers of the remotest past. The nearest likeness to the
British long-horned cairns, is extant in the long cairns of the Hotten-
tots, one of which was seen by Alexander in a cleft between two
eminences. This was a heap of stones eight yards long by one and a-
half high. And these ŖHeisi-Eibegaŗ are found scattered wherever
the Hottentot race has lived in East and South Africa.
Lastly, it is possible that some of the Cup-markings on the British
stones may be read by the Egyptian typology. Many of them are
oval or egg-shaped. The egg was a most primitive type of birth and
re-birth. ŖOh! Sun in his Egg!ŗ is an exclamation in the Ritual.3
The sun, or the dead returned as it were to the egg-stage in the under
world for the re-hatching or couvade.
Now the Egg ˜ is an Egyptian ideograph of enveloping and
embalming the dead; and these egg-shaped signs are incised on the
cap-stones and coverings of the dead.
It is also noticeable that many or the cups are dotted at the centre,
and in the hieroglyphics the eye is the ideograph of watching, to be
watched over, to sleep; to dream. A plain circle also served as an
equivalent for the eye; and twin circles were the same as a pair of
eyes. These cups or eyes are known to have received offerings,
especially of fat! And if the dotted circles represented eyes, then
we are able to read the custom of filling the cup with fat or oil by the
Egyptian doctrine of Ŗfilling the eye.ŗ Filling the eye of Horus is
synonymous with bringing an offering of holy oil. In fact Dr. Birch
reads, ŖI have filled for thee the eye of Horus,ŗ where M. Naville has
it, ŖI have anointed thee with the offering of holy oil.ŗ4
The eye, as reflector of the image, was turned into a type of re-pro-
ducing. The year was re-born from the eye, whether at the vernal
equinox, as in the zodiac of Denderah, or at the summer solstice.
1 Hor-Apollo, B. i. 24. 2 St. John, Far East, vol. i. p. 198. 3 Ch. xvii.
4 Birch; Ritual, ŖAddress of Horus to Osiris,ŗ line 39; Naville, Records, vol. x.
p. 164.
134 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Hence it is said of the deceased, ŖHis eye (his spirit) is at peace in its
place or over his person at the hour of the night; full the fourth hour of
the earth, complete on the 30th of Epiphi (June 15th). The person of the
eye then shines as he did at first.ŗ Here the eye and spirit are
identical; so that to feed the eye with fat was to feed the spirit; a
primitive mode of glorifying and causing to shine, which, like anoint-
ing the body with fat, was pre-eminently African.
The Osirified deceased boasts that he obtains assistance by his
eye, i.e. the eye filled with oil or fat;1 and this becomes a Lamp to
dazzle and daze the powers of darkness.
In the North of England the pupil of the eye is called the candle;
and in the hieroglyphics the ŖARŗ is both the eye and the candle.
This serves as a link between the lamp of light and filling the
symbolic eye with oil or fat.
The offering of fat or oil to the eye would be made with intent to
make the spirit of the person shine in glory. Supplying the eye with
fat was an earlier mode of feeding the lamp of light which was
placed in the graves of later times after lamps were made. In like
manner the pot or cruse of oil is carried by the Ram as the light of
the dead in the iconography of the catacombs. Also, some of the
Roman lamps have the shape of an eye.
Thus the Ritual or ŖBook of the Dead,ŗ which was so sacredly
buried with the Egyptian mummy, becomes a live tongue in the
mouth of Death itself, the interpreter of the typology of the tomb
and of customs the most primitive, most obscure, most universal.
1 Birch, ch. cxlviii.
SECTION III.
NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS.
THE words myth, mythos, and Mythology are derived from the
Greek mÚqoj, Muthos, which is usually taken to mean a saying, a
word, and is sometimes equivalent to Logos. In consequence, Mytho-
logy has been declared to have originated in mere sayings, the clue
to which was lost before Mythology proper could have existed. For
it has been affirmed by Max Müller and maintained by his followers
that the radical meaning and primitive power of certain words (and
sayings) must be obscured or lost for them to become mythological;
and that the essential character of a true myth consists in its being no
longer intelligible by a reference to the spoken language.1
Such teaching of Ŗcomparative Mythologyŗ is the result of its
being limited to the Aryan area; and if the myth be no longer
intelligible in the later languages we must look for it in the earlier.
The Greek Muthoi, for sayings, represents the Egyptian Mutu, for
ejaculations or brief utterances. Mutuni (Eg.) means Lo it is, or It
is verily so. In a similar sense, ŖSo Mote it beŗ is used by our free-
masons, which brings on a saying and an ancient mode of saying
under one word. Mut (Eg.) signifies the pronouncing of conservative
formulas. And these formulas and wise sayings were part of the
Muthoi in Egypt. The muthoi or myths did not begin in Greece or
originate in any Aryan language; nor with the sayings which
are the fading metaphors of Mythology and the utterances of its
second childhood. Nor is the Myth a mere word in Greek. Mutheo-
mai is not simply to say, but to feign and fable, represent and invent.
MuqikÕj signifies that which pertains to fable and Myth in an early
sense; Muqologew, is to recite fables. In Attic prose the Myth
was commonly a legend of early Greek times, before the dawn
of history. The Mythoi were no mere sayings in a modern sense;
1 Comparative Mythology. Chips, vol. ii. pp. 73-77.
136 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
they were mystical. In them the mysteries were uttered by word
of mouth to the ear alone; like the Smriti of India. The myths
are sayings because they were only to be said, not written; hence
Muthos denotes anything delivered by word of mouth. They are
myths because uttered by word of mouth alone, but they were so
uttered because they contained the hidden oral wisdom and dark
sayings of old. The Mythoi are the Logia, and the Logia, or sayings,
are assignable to a Sayer or Logos, who was personified as the utterer
in the Mythology which preceded Theology. The Sayings, or Logia,
in Egypt, were assigned to Taht, the Moon God, who was the measurer
of time; the reckoner and registrar of truth in the hall of the Two-
fold Truth, or double justice. In consequence of his being primarily
a representative of the dual lunation, Taht was the Sayer, Utterer
of the divine words, and a Logos, tongue, or Word in person.
The Sayings or Logia were likewise attributed to the youthful
Solar God Iu-em-Hept (the Egyptian Jesus of the Book of Ecclesias-
ticus),1 and the Ŗsecond Atum,ŗ who was another of the Sayers of
whom we read, ŖI have heard the words of Iu-em-Hept and Hartataf.
It is said in their Sayings,ŗ etc.
The ass (Aai) and the cat (Peht) are the Sayers of great words in
the house of Pet, or Heaven.2
The Christian Gospels were founded on and originated in the Logia
or sayings as Papias emphatically declares. The Christ of John is
the Word, Logos or Sayer in person. His teaching, according to John
and Matthew, was conveyed by the Sayings, Logia or Mythoi. 3
Now, it is immaterial whether the Greek Muthoi or Mythoi be
connected at root, not merely etymologically, with the Egyptian
Mâti, who represents the ŖTwo Truths,ŗ but Mu and Ma are inter-
changeable, and these Sayings were held to be the words of truth
and wisdom personified. When Paul speaks of a true saying he
means one of the sayings of Truth, of Aletheia.
So far from Egyptian Mythology being founded on words that
have lost their senses, it is the science of Truth in a twofold phase
or character, called Mâti. Mâti, as Divinity, is the goddess who
presides in the hall of the twin Truth. Mâti is also a title of Taht
in relation to the two Truths. The two Truths (or twinship of
Mâti) appear in the Sanskrit Mithuna, a twin couple, the zodiacal
Gemini, the state of being dual, Greek Meta; and one form of the
Mâti as Ma and Shu was that of the zodiacal Gemini in Egypt.
Mati in Sanskrit signified measure and exact knowledge. In
Egyptian Maât as a noun means an inflexible rule of right; that
which is strictly accurate in measure, and perfect as the poise of
scales, the straightness of the plumb line, or the stretcht-out finger.
Mythology properŕby which is meant its relation to time as
1 Book of the Beginnings, vol. ii. pp. 106-109, 290-302. 2 Rit. ch. cxxv.
3 Matthew xv. 12; xiv. 11. John vi. 60; vii. 36; viii. 51; xv. 20; xviii. 9.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 137
this way the genders were dramatized, and the human being was
made twain, as were the two castes in other languages.
In the American Indian dialects woman use different words from
the men to denote various degrees of relationship, the custom being
confined to such words and to the interjections.1 For example, among
the Araucanian tribes the brother calls his brothers Peni, and his sisters
Lamnen. But the sisters call both sexes Lamnen.2 In the womanřs
mouth the distinction based on sex is effaced.
Peni, as in other languages, denotes the male organically, and this
name the female avoids, not primarily from shame or modesty, but
because it was representative of the male at first, and was afterwards
prohibited to the female. The Kaffir women are forbidden to pro-
nounce the names of any of their husbandřs male relatives in the
ascending line, or to use any words in which the chief syllables of
these names occur.
The Fijians have an interjection Neu, which is prohibited to the
men, and is used only by the women. This is a universal form of the
negative; and in the hieroglyphics Nnu is No, Negation, and the
woman menstruating. The woman was being limited to her own
negational sign expressed in sound; just as she was the hinder part,
as Liontail to the Ha, or front; or as the North to the South for the
front. Although the first, she became negative to the male. In
Egyptian the feminine article is also found to serve for the neuter
one, which preceded sex.
The Apaches ŖNyauŗ is an exclamation strictly limited to the
females, whereas ŖAhŗ is the exclamation confined to the males. In
the African Hausa language the two genders of sex are distinguished
by the terminal Ia used for the male, and Nia, the force of which
has not been determined, for the female. So in a Murray dialect
(Australia) the word Purragia signifies ŖYou lieŗ when addressed
to a man; and ŖPurragagaŗ is ŖYou lie,ŗ when addressed to a woman.3
The reason for this is unknown.
Ia and Nia are common forms for Yes and No. In Egyptian, Ia
is Yes, positively, certainly. Na is No, negative; these contain the
Two Truths, however applied. Hence they served as signs of the
male and female nature; the mle cames to be the superior one,
according to the Two Truths, a division answering to that of the
Ŗnoesŗ and Ŗyeasŗ of the two castes of people in Australia. Even
when the genders of language had to be expressed by gesture-signs
and interjectional sounds or clicks, the Two Truths or diverse aspects
of the one were represented by signs and clicks; for with the Zulus, to
this day, the woman expressed contempt by a sound like that of the
C click, whereas a man does it with the X click, and this is according to
the secret signs or sounds of ŖNci-fila,ŗ and a very primitive Gnosis.
1 Archæologia Americana, v. ii. p. 163. 2 Ibid. p. 264.
3 Smyth, Aborgines of Victoria.
142 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Such a manner of distinguishing the sexes was developed in the Ibu
ŖNna,ŗ for the father, and ŖNneŗ for the mother; and in the Kooch
Nana for the paternal grandfather, and Nani for the paternal grand-
mother, by means of a vowel-intonation in a name instead of a
personal click, or sexual gesture-sign. In the Sonorain dialects of
America the gender is indicated by the addition of words denoting
the Man-word and Woman-word, which took the place of earlier
signs, on the way towards a sex-denoting terminal for single
words.1
In the hieroglyphics the natural ideographic Signs of Sex can be
traced into sex-denoting suffixes. The feminine terminal and
article ŖTheŗ is the sign ° of the female sex; it is onc of the two
Mammæ separated from the body. This phonetic T is an ideo-
graphic Tt. the English Teat and Titty, for the female breast. The
masculine article The is Pâ, ideographic Paf (The); and Paf signifies
the Breath. This sign then denotes the Breath-giver who was at first
the quickening female and afterwards the causative male, Pepe having
the same meaning as Ŗengender,ŗ the papa as Engenderer. These
signs are related to the ŖTwo Truths,ŗ and to the breath and liquid
of life, and they became the two masculine and feminine articles and
sex-denoting suffixes. Thus Gesture-Signs of Sex were first; next
the Words of Sex; lastly the Woman-Sign, the teat or mammæ,
becomes a terminal t, to denote the feminine gender of words.
In the Nagari alphabet there are two peculiar signs for symbolic
sounds which may also be related to the Two Truths of the Water and
the Breath. The one . represents N and is the symbol of nasal sounds.
The other : is the symbol of H, and the sibilant called Visarga.
N denotes the negative element (water) in many languages, including
Sanskrit, Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, Akkadian. Visarga is a dis-
tinctly audible aspirate. This and the H therefore represent Breath.
The Rabbins have a saying that all came out of the letter H.
The Two Truths appear in the Chinese division of the roots of their
language, the full and the empty words, designated Chi-tsen and
Lin-tsen. Grammar, they say, is an art which teaches us how to dis-
tinguish between the full and the empty words. Full and empty
have great nearness to the original nature of the Two Truths, the Yes
and No, Positive and Negative, Breath and Water, Light and Darkness,
of the primitive typology.
The Melbourne blacks used to distinguish their language as
Nuther galla. Galla is language, and Nuther means No. Judging
from the Egyptian Nuter and the English Neither, it may be inferred
that this is negative in the sense of the Neuter that becomes either.
The language of ŖNoŗ is equivalent to the ŖNoŗ or Negative people of
Australia. The Egyptian Nu-ter contains the elemenu of Nnu,
Negative; and ter, for the type, image, or status. The pre-pubescent
1 Buschmann, Abhandlung d. Berlin. Akademie, 1869, i. 103.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 143
period of the child was neuter in this sense ot neutral which became
dual at puberty, and the language formed before Homo could be
sexually distinguished by the name, would be Nuther or Neuter
speech.
In the Kamkatdal and Koriak dialects or the Aino language, man,
as Homo, is called Nuteira and Nuteiran. The name included both
sexes, but distinguished neither. It was because the Nuter preceded
sex that it became a type of divinity beyond sex and the Neuter
remains the sexless gender. The Neuter of deity is either he or she;
in the negative sense neither, but potentially both. At this primitive
stage the type of a biune deity was founded in the likeness of the
child, which is of either sex, as the dual being. It has been said that
in no language does the plural precede the singular. But the one, as
group, was earlier than the personal I, and the bifurcation and indi-
vidualization from the group or from the typical one, the Mother, who
preceded the dual child, is one of the Cruxes of all beginning. Those
who date from the Mother, the Negative one, are the No-people.
They who begin as her children are both Yes and No, male and
female, no longer Neuter. With them there is a dual that precedes
the singular. It belongs to the pre-pubescent period of the child.
The Egyptian ŖHeir Apparent,ŗ the Repa, has a name that signifies
either, the Repa being the royal or divine Child of either sex, of
two characters, or typically of both. The twofold oneness of the
primordial Neuter is still attained or preserved in the various duals of
dignity, the ŖWe,ŗ ŖOur,ŗ and ŖUs,ŗ of Royalty, which is an equivalent
for the Cow-tailed Râ and is represented in literature by the infallible
ŖWeŗ of the Reviewer and Editor. In Samoa this is continued to the
extent of asking the single chief, 1 ŖHave you Two come?ŗ ŖAre you
Two going?ŗ Thus ŖYour Twinshipŗ is a perfect plural of dignity.
This plural is pourtrayed by the hieroglyphic sign of Nakh (or Ankh,
the pair), the type of pubescent power in the male, who has doubled,
and become ŖYou Two.ŗ
The personal pronoun, I, is a dual in severaI ancient languages, as
in the Hottentot. The Egyptian Ank (I) is plural in Ankh, a pair.
U, the I or Me, is also a plural for they or them. Penti in Egyptian
is emphatically the one, because the word is plural and indicates a dual
nature, like that of the pubescent male, the doubled Horus, or the
female in her second phase of the Two Truths.
Here, as elsewhere, the dual does precede the singular in language
and was necessitated by an earlier stage of expression, the I being
twin in sex. The human being was broken in two (as it were)
to be divided into male and female. This led to the primitive
legends of the split men, the half men, the one-legged race, who
fancied the Zulu maiden must be a pair of people. ŖYou Two,"
or the Twinship, restores this onginal unity. The parent when
1 Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 340.
144 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
enacting the Couvade might also have been addressed as ŖYou
Two!ŗ
The Baroling regard their god as a person with only one leg, and
they hop round in his image on one leg in their sacred dances. The
Single Leg, says Rowley, is emblematic of Unity. This one-legged
divinity was continued in the mummy-type of Ptah, which type includes
the male and female, and shows the process of individualizing. 1
In death the Egyptians returned to the type beyond sex. The
mummies were bound up in the undivided image of the single-legged
Ptah, or Osiris, whose legs were at first undivided. The Shebti or
double of the deceased shows no distinction of sex for the male or
female, but served for both. The unity of the lower part corresponds
to the pre-pubescent period of the child in which the sexes were as
yet undistinguisbed, or as they called in, undivided.
In the sacrifices to the Mexican god Tlaloc, children were selected
who had two whorls in their hair, or were what we call Ŗdouble-
crowned.ŗ2 These were held to be the most agreeable offering to the
gods, because as we read the symbol, the double-Crown, like that of
the divinities and kings of Egypt represented the Two Truths of the
biune one. This the present writer considers to have been the reason
why Twin children were especially chosen to be offered up in sacrifice
and not from any absurd notions connected with the infidelity of the
mother and a double fatherhood. Such customs and ideas date from
a time when there could be no such thing as female fidelity. Hoho
was the Dahoman god of Twins. These being sacred to him would
be sacrificed to him. The Twin Being in Mythology is the com-
plete one, the dual child, and the Twins according to the same idea
would furnish the perfect offering. The same typology is continued
in the custom of ŖWishingŗ over the double kernel found in a fruit-
stone called a Ŗphillipine.ŗ
When words become sex-denoting in themselves we are out of
the thicket of Mythology or Typology; and the ŖTwo Truthsŗ of Egypt
relate to this primary phase, short of which there is no beginning.
The ŖTwo Truthsŗ may be said to commence with the natural
antithesis of the positive and negative. As Day and Night embrace
the whole world in two halves, so do ŖYesŗ and ŖNoŗ cover the two
hcmispheres of the world of language; and these may be indicated
even by the nod and shake of the head in Gesture-language.
The ŖTwo Truthsŗ originated in there being but one name or type
for the dual manifestation of an object, person, or thing. Shen (Eg.)
for instance, is a circle, an orbit, a whole. It was the circle of the
year. But Shen is also Twin, and Two; the circle of the year, being
first divided into the Two Times; and the Shen, Tunic, was first put
on at puberty when the second of the two phases was attained. The
Shen as the brother and sister were Shu and Tefnut (also the Shenti)
1 Rowley, Religion of the Africans, p. 24. 2 Bancroft, iii. 332.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 145
the Lion-Gods of the two gates North and South in the earliest
halving of the circle.
This form of the bi-une one was finally fixed in heaven as the Twins
of the Zodiac. Thus the Shen (as one) includes both sexes, two
halves, two times; and the Shen-ring is a symbol of reproduction or
duplicating. The knee-joint and elbow are both Shena (Eg.), or
Shenat, the equivalent of joint, as the hinge or juncture and point of
unity. Shen and Sen are interchangeable. Sen is Two or Twin.
Also Sen (Eg.) means Blood and Breath, the dual foundation of being,
the Two Truths in a biological sense; the Twin as two principles of
life under one and the same name. Sen means to be made, to become,
to be founded, by means of the Mother-Source, and secondly, by the
quickening breath or spirit, first observed through the Mother, and
lastly assigned to the Father.
The Serpent, on account of its sloughing became a pre-eminent type
of the Twin Truths, or two manifestations of the one, especially in
the two phases of the female. In India, the Serpent still images
the two primary Truths represented by the elements of Wind and
Wet; it is invoked in the one character for fine weather; in the
other for rain. In the time of Hioun-Thsang, that traveller records
how the people of Cashmere would go to the spring acoompanied by
the priest, and Ŗsnapping their fingers would invoke the Dragon and at
once obtain their wishes.ŗ1
The rootage of Language and of Mythology has to be sought here
where the oneness bifurcates in duality according to the Egyptian
doctrine. The Ojibwa signs or hieroglyphics contain a unique
symbol of the Two Truths, consisting of a serpentine double line which
represents the River of Words in a twofold flow. This serves as a
visible figure of unity bifurcating into duality.
It is an Accra saying that men have Two Ears but these do not
hear Two Stories; and when the one tongue spoke falsely that
became the double-tongue. In like manner the Human Being was
named as one, before the two sexes were distinguished by genders.
There were two forms of the primary one. The genus had to be
identified before sex and species could be distinguished by name.
So that the root of the present matter is not reached on any line of
research until we have attained the starting-point in a twofold oneness.
The name of the Goddess Aahti is the name of the womb, the
moon, and a pair of bellows, legs or shanks. Aah denotes the
house, moon, or the thing which is duplicated by the ti. Thus the
womb Aahti is the dual house, the place of the Two Truths of the
Water and Breath, or or duplication in reproduction. The Lunar
Aahti is the manifestor of the Two Truths in the waxing and waning
of the moon. The Ibis Aahti was Black and White, thence repre-
sentative of the dark and light of the lunar orb.
1 Voyage, Vol. ii. p. 152.
146 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The two eyes of the crocodile denoted sunrise, the tip of its tail
was an ideograph of sunset.
The earliest division of the human being is founded on sex,
whatsoever the terminology; and the ideographic signs are the
members. The He is the head and She the tail of the first dual
coinage as well as in the latest currcncy. The He is before, in front,
and She is the hinder haIf. He is the outer and the right hand, She
the inner and the left hand; He being the type of out, and She of in
and within. He is the upper and active; She the lower and passive
when the one becomes Twain.
All the earliest imagery in the Planisphere is arranged acording to
these Two Truths, or the dual one. There are two Bears, the Greater
and Lesser; two Dogs, the Major and Minor; two Lions, as the Lion-
Gods; the double Anubis or dual form of Sut; two Fishes; two
Mothers, the Virgin and Gestator; one in the sign of Virgo, the other
who brings forth the Solar Child in the sign of Pisces. The Twins
(who in Egypt were the two Lion-Gods); the Ass and its foal; the
Polar Dragon, North, and Hydra, South; with the Scales figured
at the equinoctial level, the division as the connecting link of two
heavens and the express emblem of the Two Truths.
One of the symbols of Ma is the Ostrich Feather, which is the
sign both of Light and Shade, Ma and Shu. There can be nothing
older than Day and Dark, and as the Ostrich Feather was an inner
African sign of the Two Truths, and as Hor-Apollo says the symbol
was adopted because of the equal length of the ostrich feathers, it has
been suggested that the type was first made use of in a land of equal
day and dark, or equatorial Africa.1
This would be a form of equal poise and of the balance before the
equinoxes were made out in higher latitudes.
With the Chinese the Two primal principles called Yang and Yin,
the Male and Female, or Father Heaven and Mother Earth, were
originally known as Light and Shadow.2 These are the Two Truths
of Ma and Shu, or Mâti, in Egypt.
The Hebrew deity is represented according to the Two Truths,
studying in the Scriptures by day and the Mishna by night. 3
Also it is said that when Moses was with the Lord during forty
days and forty nights he was taught the written law; then he under-
stood it was day, and when he was taught the oral law he knew
it was night. These also are the Two Truths of Light and Shade,
i.e. of Ma-Shu (Eg).
The White and Black ermine worn by English judges continues
the typology of the Two Truths or the dual justice, and corresponds to
the feather of Light and Shade which was worn by the Goddess Mâti
1 Book of the Beginnings, vol. ii. p. 484.
2 Chalmers, Origin of the Chinese, p. 14.
3 Midrash, f. xcvii. c. 3; Buxtorf, Synag. Jud. c. iii. p. 54, Basil, 1661.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 147
in the Judgment Hall. The ermine, says the Bundahish, was the first
of the fur animals that was produced.1
The Two Truths of Light and Shadow appear in the Bundahish
represcnted by Two antagonistic spirits, personified as Ahura-Mazda
(the spirit of Light), and Aharman (the Angro-Manyus, or Black Man
of the Avesta). ŖThe region of Light is the place of Ahura-Mazda,
which they call endless Light, and his omniscience is in vision (sight) or
revelation.ŗ Aharman Ŗin Darkness, with backward understanding
and desire for destruction, was in the abyss, and it is he who will not be
(he only exists negatively), and the place of that destruction, and also of
that Darkness, is what they call endlessly dark.ŗ2 In the earliest
phase these two were simply the Light and the Darkness.
In many lands the waxing and waning moon conveyed two mes-
sages to men as its form of the Two Truths. According to a Lithuanian
precept, boys should be weaned whilst the moon is waxing, and girls
during the wane. The Orkney Islanders prefer to marry when the
moon is waxing. The present writer has personally met with a
prejudice entertained by English villagers against killing the pig in
the wane of the moon, because the meat will waste so in cooking!
The Two Truths conveyed by the moonřs message to men, are set
forth in the Hottentot legend.
The Moon once sent an insect to men with this message:ŕŖAs I
die and dying live, so ye shall also die and dying live.ŗ On its way the
insect was overtaken by the hare, who, being a fast runner, proposed
to convey the message to men. The insect consented. When the
hare arrived she said, ŖAs I die and dying perish, in the same way ye
shall also die and end.ŗ The hare then returned to the Moon and
told her what she had said to men. This made the Moon so angry
that she struck the hare on the mouth and slit it.3 So the hare-lipped
mouth became a type of the double (cf. the double tongue) or lying
lip. ŖWe are still angry with the hare,ŗ said an old Namaqua, Ŗand
dislike to eat its flesh because of the message it brought.ŗ4
Shu, the feather of Light and Shade, also reads Ma; and Shu-Ma or
Shu, and his sister (Tefnut) represent the Two Truths of Breath and
Moisture. These in one form may be the Breath of heaven, and its
Dew, as Tef is to drip and drop. They likewise denote the breath of
soul and the blood of source, the mystical water of life. Also, Shu-
Ma is a name for the ŖPool of the Two Truths.ŗ
When Thales, the Milesian, said water was the mother of life, he
did but formulate the first perception of the primitive man in a
thirsty land. Water and Breath were the two elements of life earliest
identified; and water, having to be sought for and supplied as drink,
whereas the air came of itself, would make the earliest appeal and first
1 Ch. xxiv. 12. 2 Bundahish, ch. 1, 2, 3. West.
3 Bleek, No. 31. 4 Ibid, p. 7.
148 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
demand for recognition. Hence, in Mythology, Water is the primal
Element. All begins with or issues from the Water, the first of our
Two Truths. The ŖRevelationŗ concerning creation in the forty-first
chapter of the Korân, says the Lord set His mind to the creation of
Heaven, and it was darkness or smoke. Al Zamakshari affirms that
this smoke or vapour of darkness ascended from the waters under the
throne of God and rose above the waters and formed the heavens.
In the Hindu creation it is said that ŖFrom the foam of the water was
produced the wind,ŗ1 that is the Breath or Anima, the Egyptian Pef
(or Beb), the exhalation.
According to the Vishnu Purana,2 the creation proceeds from the
quality of Darkness, called Sesha. Sesha shows that Breathing out
of the Waters which is represented under the waters by Vishnu and
Ananta. And in Egyptian, Ses is to breathe; Susu, in the Inner
African languages is smoke, and to breathe. The god Shu, who
represents the element of breath and air, is the born child of Nun,
the firmamental water. The doctrine had a natural genesis, and was
derived from observation. Breath, or vapour, is a secondary con-
dition of water in the form of mist. Heat is a means of converting
water into breath or vapour. The Breath of Heaven is born of the
firmament, which was called the celestial water; water in its second,
upper, aerial or ætherial condition.
The name of the Genitrix Uati signifies both Wet and Heat, and
the water was converted into breathing life by the Mother when in
heat, or gestating, i.e. life-making. The soul of man, say the
Australian blacks, was breathed into him through his navel. The
two primal principles of Wet and Heat are the bases of beginning in
the Vedic Hymns,3 as everywhere else, however mystified by later
rendering, and obscured by still later translation. The one like Uati
consists of the water and heat; and although the latter may be
expressed as fervour and desire, fervour, desire, and heat are yet
synonymous. We read in the Ritual, ŖOh the Being dormant within
his body, making his burning in flame glowing within the sea, raising
the sea by his vapour. Come give the fire, transport the vapour to the
Being.ŗ The vapour was the breath, the later spirit or soul.
In drowning it was observed that the vapour was transported from
the being, when the breath of life ascended in bubbles of air. Beb
(Eg.) is to exhale; and they saw the Beb or Pef (gust or wind) was
exhaled in bubbles or in foam, and so the earliest wind, breath, the
second element of life, came visibly from the water. Hence the
element had two aspects, the Water of Life was also the Water of Death;
for water as the drowning element would impress the primitive man
as profoundly as did the deadly sting of the Serpent. The Two
Truths of life as the first and second are well illustrated in an inscrip-
1 In the M. Bh. S‟antip. 6812 ff. Muir, San. Texts, vol. v. p. 357.
2 B. ii. ch. 3. 3 Rig-Veda, 129. 4 Ch. clxiv.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 149
is a form of Ankh (Eg.) the liquid or water of life. The goddess Ank
represented the mystical water, with her crown of hemp, as the clother
in flesh, and the casting of the image into the waters was typical of the
human formation from the waters.
One of the Hawaiian expressions used to designate the death of a
man was ŖHe has gone to the moist earth and the muddy water (soil)
from which he was made.ŗ2
Images modelled in honour of the Genitrix were a symbolical
offering of the human form which was clothed and shaped by her in
the womb. It was a commuted kind of human sacrifice, once fulfilled
by offering a virgin to the water as the Bride of Nile, which we hear
of in Egypt and can read by the images made to be resolved by the
Nile or the Ganges as a mode of return by proxy to that source from
whence we came. The Romans at one time used to make fetish
images or dolls to cast into the river Tiber as proxies for the earlier
sacrificial victims.
The confusion of vapour that rises from the water with spirits
or apparitions ascending from the lakes is common in Africa. For
instance; in the Vei language Dsina is a Ghost, Spectre, or Wraith.
Dsi is water, and Na means to come. Thus the Dsina comes from
the water. The Vei ghosts manifest from the water as one of their
1 Gods of Greece, Italty, and India. 2 Fornander.
150 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Two Abodes. The other is considered to be on the summit of Cape
Mount, their aerial abode,1 the high land of Breath.
The Maori have a race of beings called the Ponaturi (from Pona,
the joint, and turi, the knee,) who are literally the people of the
division, the join of the upper and lower worlds, typified by the knee-
joint. Their country was underneath the waters, but every night they
ascended to sleep on dry land in a large house called Manawa-tane,
or breath fot the suffocated. They were obliged to come up to
breathe, and the place was at the division or crossing, the level of the
Two Times, where land or breathing-place was attained. But they had
to leave before sunrise under penalty of death; for, like the Norse
Trolls, if the sun saw them they perished. Exactly the same expedient
is adopted in the Maori legend of ŖTawhaki,ŗ and the Norse story
of ŖLord Peter,ŗ to kill the Ponaturi and the Troll. The myth belongs
to the division by two of a world of water and breath, and the Beings
of the water-half ascend by night to breathe the air of the upper
half, but as they are mere vapour-spirits the sun consumes them with
its glance.
The Two Truths of the Inner African beginnings were further
emphasised and enforced by the peculiar conditions found in Egypt.
Every year when the new inundation had poured forth its water of
life, the welcome wind of the north arose with its breath of life and
spread the tide of the stream out over the thirsty soil. The beatitude
of Paradise pourtrayed in the Ritual is to drink of the Nile and
breathe the bliss of the vivifying wind of the north which had
brought coolness to the burning land.
ŖShe‟s hit between wind and waterŗ is a provincial English
expression for one who is more likely to be a mother than become
a wife. According to that typology the dead in Egypt were buried
between wind and water, or in the womb of a new life. The Great
Pyramid was a symbolical sepulchre containing a Well supposed to
have some communication with the Nile. Where there was no water,
this was still represented by the well. The wind or breath was
allowed for in the small air-hole of the serdab left open to the north
quarter from whence came the revivifying breath of life.
These Two Truths of Life are illustrated by the wind and water; the
two primary and supreme elements of Life, the givers of breath
and bringers to life, in the American myths. The Quiché four
ancestors, are four forms of the spirit of breath as males, who were
created by Hurakan, the air in motion; and their four wives the
mothers of the buman race were four forms of water, Falling Water,
Beautiful Water, Water of Serpents, and Water of Birds.2
At this mental stage the primal biology was formulated. In relation
to the Two Truths of water and breath Empedocles may be quoted
1 Koelle, Vei Grammar, &c. p. 161.
2 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Le Libre Sacré de Quichés, &c., pp. 203-205. Note.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 151
who said:ŕŖThe earliest breath was drawn by the first animal when
the moisture in infants was separated and by that means an entrance
was given to the external air into the gasping vessels from which the
moisture retired.ŗ1
In the beginning all came out of the Nu (Nun) the waters of the
firmament; and existence is Nuti or Enti (Eg.) as entity. Enti
means out of; froth; existence in a negative phase; Water being the
negative of Two Truths when the Breath is included. Nuti as froth
shows the breath of life issuing from the Waters as it might in frog-
spittle or the breath-bubbles of the Submerged Water-cow, or Aphro-
dite personified as kindling into breathing life and beauty as she rises
from the foam. Nuti, for froth, is the same word as Neith, and
Aphrodite was the froth or breathing life of the waters. Neith is
Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, Aphrodite from the froth or Nuti (i.e.
Neith) in whom the breathing power was entified and named as that
which came Ŗout ofŗ and was aItered and personified or represented
as tha mother of life, who bad two characters derived from the liquid
of life and the breath of being. The primordial image of power and
type of time was set in heaven as the Hippopotamus (Ursa Major)
the great breather in and out of the water.
One form of Mâti signifies to float on the surface at the water; to
be going jn the cabin, which denotes the second phase, that of the
breathing life. Water also imaged the visible type of existence; air
or breath the invisible; hence the priority of water.
The Ŗsecret of Horus in Anŗ is how his mother made him or
caught him in the water. Neith, or the Net, as it were, fished the
child from the water. The Fish being a type of the Breather in the
water.
In several languages birth, beginning, Natalis, is identical with
swimming. This is seen in Latin as well as in the Egyptian Enti, out
of (the water), and Mâti, to float, in the cabin or Argha-Yoni. In
Tamil Nid or Nitt is to swim and also to be born. Being born of the
water is equivalent to being borne upon it. Man was not a born
swimmer and never could live under water, hence this type of birth
and existence was found in swimming on the water and in coming
out of it.
In the most ancient typology (the Typhonian) life was emaned
from the waters by the genitrix imaged as the Water-cow. There
were no human fishers then. When the goddess Neith was created,
men had learned how to catch fish. The perch on the head of Neith,
or Hathor, is a symbol of birth from the waters. Neith also carries
the Shuttle or Knitter of the Network. Her name is synonymous
with Net. So Ank, the goddess who wears the bundle of hemp or
flax on her head shows that men were weavers when she was created.
Neith was the Knitter or Netter and typifies the mother as the
1 Plutarch, Morals, Sentiments of Philosophers, ch. xxiii.
152 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
catcher of fish who netted Horus from the water, or in other words
gave him birth under the type of the fish. She is pourtrayed as
suckling her fish in the shape of a crocodile.
Being, existing, then is figured as an escape (Net) out of the waters,
a drawing out (Net, to draw) and thence a Netting as the means of
being born, saved, fished from the drowning element. The Maori
language has various forms of ŖNetŗ with this primary meaning;
Noti, is to draw together with a cord; Nati, to make fast, hold firm;
Ngita, to make fast, secure, carry, bring forth; Noto, is to shut.
Notan, an oyster that keeps shut and safe under water. That which
could breathe and keep its life under water was the object of deep
attention to the earliest observers.
The West-Australians used the term ŖNetingarŗ to signify their
ancestors or beginnings. They also reckoned to come from the waters.
A Maori meaning attached to the word ŖEweŗ or Uho, the Pla-
centa, retains the idea of the primæval land, earth and foothold; the
Mud of the mythical waters. Ewe, the placenta, the after-birth, is
likewise the Ŗland of one‟s birth.ŗ Whenua, another name for the
placenta, also means oneřs own land, country, native place. The
Whenu is a warp, a form of the Net. Ea, to appear above water,
means to be performed, to be produced, or evolved.
This mode of attaining land and breathing-place gave especial
significance to the placenta and the umbilical cord. Tangaenga
(Mao.) the cord, and Tangahangha, the, fish, are both derived from
nga, to breathe, the breather, to take breath. Likewise Nef (Eg.)
for breath and the navel, as breathing-place, are identical. Nef (Eg.)
is the sailor, and the aboriginal natives of Australia consider that
children with large navels will be famous swimmers.1 The navel is
the Bilyi (belly) and a good swimmer is called Bilyi-Gadak, that is
having a good navel. One name of the navel in English is the
Nathe.
When the umbilical cord drops off the child, the New Zealanders
put it in the mussel-shell with which it was severed, and place the
shell with its freight on the water. If the shell should swim it is a
lucky omen; but if it capsizes that portends an early death.2 Others
cast the cord into the waters as an offering.
The Placenta (Lat.) is a cake, and the cake sign is the Egyptian
ideograph of land. The goddess Hathor (Venus) in the tree of life
pours the water with one hand from the vase, and in the other she
holds the cake emblem of land3ŕthe two types of the Two Truths of
the beginning. Hathor was that Queen of Heaven to whom the
Israelite womcn offered their cakes, which are called Placentas in the
Vulgate.
In Kanuri oneřs native place is na dabu kambe, or literally, where
1 Moor, Aust. Vocab. 2 Hooper, Journal of Ethnological Society, 1869.
oneřs umbilical cord was buried. The Placenta thus identifies the
place of birth, in relation to oneřs native land. Amongst the Wan-
yamwizi, when a child is born the father cuts the cord and travels
with it to the frontier of his district, and there buries it. If the
frontier be a stream (the natural boundary) he buries it on the bank.
Then taking the root of a tree (in exchange), he carries it home and
buries it at the threshold of his door. 1
It was this beginning that gave such importance to the navel as a
kind of mesmeric disk which the Ecstatics and Seers of India gaze at
until they enter the state of trance. They concentrate their thought
or vision on the navel because it was one of the first oracles; it taught
them how the child breathed in the womb, and we shall find the early
men were very loyal and worshipful to every educational fact of this
kind that offered any response to their wonder, and they gave it
apotheosis. ŖHear, O sons of the Gods, one who speaks through his
navel (Nabha), for he hails you in your dwellings,ŗ cries the Brahman
Seer.2 Whatsoever his idea of the Gods and their dwelling, the
imagery belongs to the simplest beginning of human thought and
expression. Through the navel was the first manifestation of Nef, or
breath. That way the life was held to be inspired into the child by
the mother, or the later God. And that way they sought the breathing
power.
The navel was one of the earliest doorways between two worlds,
and as such maintained its symbolical value. Through the navel
men were told of the breathing source, and they made the navel a
type of foretelling. Naba, in Hebrew, is to prophesy, to utter forth.
This is a secondary sense, apparentiy unknown in Egyptian. It was
the oracle of one of the Two Truths, that relating to Breath, and then
made the type of another meaning. Both Pliny and Solinus say that
when Apis was led in the solemn procession if children could get to
smell its breath they were thought to be thereby gifted with the power
of predicting future events.
The navel of the waters is personified in the Avesta. It is said to
take possession of and to guard the imperishable majesty, i.e. the
soul of breath, which is preserved amid the waters by means of this
Mount. In the Sirozah,3 a the navel appears as the navel of the kings,
or more anciently, the Ŗnavel of women,ŗ the feminine producer being
first. This navel of the waters was the typical mount and mound,
the navel-mound, as breathing-place. The Hindu Nabhi-Yoni was a
dual type of the Two Truths of the breath and the waters of life; the
navel being an image of breath in the waters of the womb.
When the male Vishnu takes the place of the female the sacred
navel loses significance, because the male has been made the source
1 Stanley, How I found Livingstone, p. 544.
2 Nabhanedishtha Hymn, v. 4.
3 Zamyad-Yasht, viii. 51.
154 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
of breath, or soul, whereas the female was first. There is no male
Vishnu, however, without the female nature.
Nef (Eg.) not only means the sailor, it is likewise a type-name for
the knitter, spinner, and weaver in the Sanskrit Nabhi and Nabha;
Greek, Nabh; Maori, Nape, to weave (also a fishing-line), Egyptian
Nebt, a basket of woven wicker-work; Napet, in English, woven
linen. Hence she who inspired the breath of life into the child
was the weaver or spinner of the web of life personified in Mytho-
logy. She was both Argha and sail (the Egyptian hieroglyphic of
breath), and the sail and mast were afterwards given to the god as
Argha-Nautha. In the Athenian festival in honour or Athena, called
the ΠΑΝΑΘΗΝΑΙΑ, the ark or boat was carried in a procession, and
on it was hung, in the manner of a sail, the sacred garment of the
Goddess, the peplum that no man had lifted. This sail, the Egyptian
sign of breath, derives its name from Pef (Eg.), breath. The Two
Truths of breath and water were being celebrated, as shown by the
boat and sail and the water-pots following the sign of breath.1 The
sail was a ladyřs smock or body-garment, mystically a veil, the veil
of Isis or Neith.2 And this sign of breath, the Net of Neith, is to be
realized at last in one form, as the caul. The caul in which some
children are enveloped at birth is the network of Neith.
In this they were netted and fished from the waters. The caul in
English is synonymous with the smock. It is an old saying, ŖOh, you
are a lucky man; you were wrapped up in a part of your mother‟s
smock,ŗ when born in the caul. The caul was the work, and the type
of Neith the knitter, and Athena the weaver. One English name of
the spiderřs web is a caul. Also the caul was a head-dress in which
the hair of the pubescent maiden or married woman was Snooded, as
was the mythical Gestator.
Egyptian mummies awaiting their re-birth in the tomb were invested
in a network of bugles or beads, that represented the net of Neith,
in which the child Horus was fished from the Nile. Buckley states
that the Australian mothers likewise made nets of hair and twisted
bark, in which they placed the bones of their dead children, and wore
them tied round their nccks by day, and laid them under their heads
by night. The net-type is the same in both cases. It represents the
caul of birth and afterwards of re-birth.
The caul of fat that forms the network of the kidneys was to be
especially offered to the Hebrew deity.
1 Potter. Antiq. vol. i. p. 421.
2 The most occult signification of the saying of Isis, at Saïs, that no man had
lifted her veil or peplum may now be interpreted. The first clothing or veil was
assumed on natural grounds at puberty. Isis or Hes is the liquid of life person-
ified, the flow which ceases with generation. But Isis always wore her veil
as divinity. She came from herself, and the Generator had not put aside her
mystic veil. In the same sense, the Nun (cf. nun (Eg.), for negation) takes the veil
that remains unlifted by the male in marriage. The profoundest mysteries are the
simplest.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 155
ŖThou shalt take the caul that it about the midriff and the two
kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar as
a Řsweet savour.ř ŗ1
The same caul of fat is still sought for and highly prized by the
Australian blacks; but it must be human. They make an incision
in the flank of the live victim, and extract a portion of the kidney-caul
to anoint themselves with, leaving the sufferer to die slowly.2
It is in this connection that the caul, or network, and sign of
saving from the waters, acquired such significance for sailors. Mid-
wives used to sell the caul to them as a preservative against drowning;
also to Advocates, for the purpose or making them eloquent. The
first connects it with the saving from the flood; the second, with the
Nabi, because it was a sign of the revealer and maker known. Navel,
naval, and nautical, are derived from this origin, and the sailor still
holds on to the hieroglyphic signs.
On launching a canoe a Fijian chief has been known to slay several
men for Ŗrollersŗ to facilitate the launching; the Ŗrollersŗ being
afterwards cooked and eaten. Time was when a chief would kill a
man, or men, on laying down the keel of a canoe, and try to sacrifice
a life for every fresh plank added. Why was this? It was because
the life was the breath in one aspect, the blood in the other. Nef
(Eg.) breath, is the sailor, the wind, the breeze. The dead men
were eaten as Ŗfood for the carpenters;ŗ but the souls let out were
the breath that was to fill the sails, and make the voyage prosperous.
If a chief did not lower the mast of his vessel within a day or two
after arriving at the place, some poor creature was sacrificed, and
taken to him AS the Ŗlowering of the mast,ŗ3 or letting out the
breath of his sail. When a canoe arrived at a place for the first
time after the death of a chief, the mast was not only lowered, the
sail was also flung away into the water to be scrambled for. The
typology is the same when the English or other ships still make the
death-salute with lowered masts or flags at half-mast high. The sail
was an Egyptian symbol of breath and soul, and the lowered flag
now takes the place of the earlier sign.
The Two Truths of the water and the breath are especially oper-
ant in certain primitive and traceable customs, some of which are
universal.
When the Brandcnburg peasant empties a pan of water on his
doorstep after the coffin has crossed it on the day of the burial, to
Ŗhinder the ghost from coming back,ŗ to the custom is based on the
antithesis of Water and Breath, and on the spirit or soul being
founded on the breath. So is the belief that the ghost cannot cross
a running stream without some kind or bridge, if only formed of a
single thread.
1 Ex. xxix. 13; Lev. iii. 4, 10, 15. 2 Smyth.
3 Williams, Fiji, vol. i. p. 206.
156 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Dapper, in his description of the Hottentots,1 says some of them
wear round the neck certain roots, which they find in the rivers far
inland. When on a journey they set light to these in a fire, and then
blow the smoke and ashes about, believing that the fumes or smell will
keep off wild animals; or they chew the root and spit out the juice
around the spot where they encamp for the night to ensure pro-
tection. When the Hottentot goes out hunting, his wife will kindle
a fire, and she must do nothing else but tend it and keep it alive, for
if it should go out, her husband will not be successful; or, if she elects
the other element, she must pour water on the ground. When she
is tired, her servant, or some one, must pour the water ceaselessly,
or the hunter will not be lucky.2 We shall not find a simpler application
of the Two Elementary Truths.
On the last night of the year the Strathdown Highlanders form
themselves into bands and fetch home great loads of juniper bushes,
which are ranged round the fire to dry until morning. A discreet or
wise man is then sent to the Dead-and-Living-ford to draw a pitcher
of water in profound silence; without letting the vessel touch the
earth. On his return they all retire to rest. Early on New Yearřs
morning the usque-cashrichd, or water of the Dead-and-Living-ford, is
drunk as a charm that is potent till the next New Yearřs Day. One
of them then takes a large brush, with which he performs an act of
lustration by sprinkling the occupants of all the beds. When this is
ended, the doors and windows are completely closed, and every crack
and cranny carefully stopped. The juniper collected in the various
rooms is brought in and set fire to, and a rite of fumigation is per-
formed by aid of the suffocating vapour. The more intense the
Smuchdan, the more propitious is the solemnity. Horses, cattle, and
other live-stock, are then smoked to preserve them from evil or in-
imical influence during the coming year. The effusion of the spirit
following this baptism of water is also represented by the drinking
of whisky. As soon as the gude wife has sufficiently recovered her
breath to reach the bottte dhu, she does her best to regenerate the
wheezing, coughing, nearly choked sufferers.3
These Two Truths of the Water and Breath are illustrated in like
manner by Herodotus, who describes the way in which the Scythians
made use of Indian hemp in their rite of purification after the burial
of their dead. He says ŖThe Scythians having buried their dead,
purify themselves by washing their own bodies. Then they set up
the tent of fumigation.ŗ ŖWhen the Scythians have taken some seed
of the hemp they creep under the clothes, and then put the seed on the
red-hot stones; this smokes, and produces such a steam that no Greek
vapour-bath could surpass it.ŗ The Scythians, transported with the
vapour, shout alound with delight.4 He likewise relates how the
1 P. 621. 2 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 77.
3 Stewart, Superstitions of the Highlanders. Dyer, p. 17. 4 Book iv. 73, 74.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 157
element of life; the fire that vivifies; the solar or masculine fire.
It is also an English custom for the parturient woman to breathe in
her left hand to bring away the after-birth.
In ancient Mexico the first act of lustration took place at birth.
The child was washed by the nurse in the name of the Water Goddess
to remove the outward impurity. Next she blew her breath on water
held in her right hand, and prayed the invisible deity (the Holy
Spirit) to descend upon the water for baptism of the inner nature and
deliverance from sin, foulness, and misfortune. Four days later there
was another ceremony (the Nem, or second festival of Egypt), at
which the babe was named, and it is said the child was passed four
times through the fire.1 These customs were continued in the
Mysteries.
Modern writers may begin their account of the religious origines
with the ŖPerception of the Infiniteŗ; but such thinkers, whose
ŖNimble souls
Can spin an insubstantial universe
Suiting their mood, and call it possible,
Sooner than see one grain with eye exact
And give strict record of it,ŗ2
and John identifies the later three as the Water, Blood, and Spirit.
ŖThe Christ came,ŗ he says, Ŗby Water and Blood.ŗ The Alexandrine
version distinctly says He came by Water and the Spirit. Another
version gives the Water, Blood, and Spirit.
This uninterpreted Gospel mystery is only explicable by aid of
the Two Truths, and by distinguishing their variations. John has
taken the Two Truths of the Water (male), the Blood (female), to
evolve the Spirit as the third witness of his Trinity; Ŗand these three
agree in one.ŗ There were but Two Truths, but these were blended
to produce the Son who was a third to the preceding two as the one
in whom they united and were reproduced; the Spirit of Life being
here evolved from the Two Waters, male and female.
The negroes of St. Croix, West Indies, on becoming Christianized
objected to be baptized by the water from the earth, they insisted on
using rain-water which came down from heaven.1 Such a superstition
belongs to an earlier form of faith than the Christian, which, especially
in the Protestant phase, is smilingly ignorant of any distinction
between the two. The Catholics sanctify the water of earth by
adding salt, and this turns the water of Hesmen (blood) into the
Pool of Salt according to the Egyptian Ritual.2
When the Two Waters are distinguished as male and female,
existence, healing, and purity are made dependent upon their not
being mixed. Various legends inculcate the never mixing of the
white source with the red. The Talmudists say the waters of
Jordan are unfit for healing the unclean because they are mixed
waters. This is a relic of naming from the Two Waters considered
as male and female continued from the time when distinction of
season was first taught.
In the Book of Enoch, when the world is destroyed it is described
in the same typical language. Destruction depends upon the Waters
mixing, the water above being considered as masculine source.
ŖThe water which is above shall be the agent (male), and the water
which is under the earth shall be the recipient, and all shall be
destroyed.ŗ3
Unlike the Jordan described by the Rabbins, the Welsh Bala, on
going forth from the source at the head of the twin river Dee was
famed for not mixing its dual waters which ran into one lake but
were reputed to pass through it in separate currents that never
blended together. The same was said of various other waters. Homer
describes the river Titaresius flowing from the Styx as pure and
unmixed with the waters of death; and gliding like oil over the
surface of the waters by which the gods made their covenants.
The Twin Waters are also localised in Dumfriesshire, where the
river Esk takes the double form of the white and black Esk. The
1 Contemporary Review, 1875, p. 773. 2 Ch. xvii.
3 Book of Enoch, ch. liii. 7-10.
164 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
place where the one water bifurcates was once sacred to most an-
cient rites; a fair was formerly held there annually, at which it was
the custom for unmarried persons of both sexes to choose a companion
with whom they were to live for the year following. This was called
hand-fasting. If they liked each other they were then united for life,
and if not they separated and made a fresh choice.1
The Kabala Denudata says there are two dews, the dew of Macro-
prosopus (the primal cause) and the dew of the Seir.
In the inscription of Darius at El-Kharjeh the two waters appear
as the young and the old Han or Mu; Youth and Age being the two
aspects there assigned to the same element for typical purposes.
The Twin Waters are found at the centre of all in the Assyrian
place of beginning, in the realm of Hea and Nin-ki-Gal, the Great
Lady of the earth, or the Great Mother Earth. Here, according to the
Assyrian mythos rose the stream Miebalati or waters of life, and here
also the Ŗwaters of death which cleanse not the hands,ŗ in consequence,
probably, of being like the Egyptian tesh and pant, the red source.
The Basutos have a mysterious region in the world of spirits called
Mosima, the Abyss. The Baperis on the northern shore of the Fal
river affirm that the entrance to this region is in their country.
Here the universal Two Waters are located; one is a kind of Styx,
the river of death; the other, in a cistern, is the water of life and
nectar of the gods.2
The natives of Millbank identify the water with Two rivers guarded
by two huge portals and flowing from a dark lake. The good enter
the stream to the right hand, this is the water of life from which they
are eternally supplied. The wicked enter the water on the left hand
and suffer from starvation and perishing cold.3 In this, the Two
Waters appear just as in the Ritual, and the myth presents the eschato-
logical aspect of the Egyptian judgment. Even the island answers
to the Isle of the Blessed in the celestial Nile.
The Water that divides in space is a type of bifurcation in the
beginning. The heaven or firmament, (the Nun) was first appre-
hended, or named as the water above. This was divided in creation
as we find it in the Hebrew Genesis where the water is separated
into upper and lower, and was represented by the two manifestations
of day and dark, the water of life and water of death. Various
legends may be read by an application of this type. The Chinese
have a saying that Chaos opened and unfolded at midnight, and
therefore they date their day from that hour; the one time of the
ŖTwo Truthsŗ of Light and Shade.
The separation was next marked on the two horizons of dawn
and darkness. The one water that is divided in the Ritual be-
came twain in forming Two Lakes;4 the Northern being the lake
1 Sir John Sinclairřs Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xii. p. 615. 1794.
2 Casalis, The Basutos, p. 248. 3 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 519. 4 Ch. cix.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 165
not only wherc the Moon fell but where both Moon and Sun were
renewed. In accordance with which doctrine the deceased seeks the
well to receive baptismal regeneration and be purified and renovated.
He says: ŖI wash in the Pool of Peace. I draw waters from the
Divine Pool under the Two Sycamores of Heaven and Earth. All
Justification is redoubled on my behalf.ŗ1 ŖThe Osiris is pure by that
Well of the South and of the North.ŗ2
The water of Zem-Zem is sent forth to Muhammedan devotees
abroad as the water of life and spiritual healing. And it is very
literally the water of death; for a late analysis made by Dr. E.
Frankland showed it to be sheer sewage Ŗseven times more con-
centrated than London sewage,ŗ and containing 579 grains of solid
matter per gallon.3
The division of the water is likewise pourtrayed on the monu-
ments by the figure of Hapi-Mu. Hapi, being of both sexes,
denotes the one in whom the two were united (Hapi), hence the
epicene personification. From the mouth of Hapi issues the one water
which enters two other figures that emane it from their mouths in
two separate streams.4 Thus the one water is visibly divided into the
two waters of Mythology just as the one Nile became two in the Blue
Nile above and the Red Nile below, in the land of Egypt. Hapi-Mu
is painted red and blue. One source of the Two Waters of Hapi-
Mu called the ŖAbime of Kartiŗ was localized at the Ivory Island,
Elephantine.5 This personification of the Waterer was finally fixed as
the Waterman pouring out the Two Streams in the zodiac. But long
hefore the zodiac was formed the Two Waters were said to issue from
the mount, a figure of the height, sometimes called the Rock of the
Horizon. The Ŗtwo-topped mount divineŗ was a form of this rock
that divides in two in various myths. The double rock which
marked the Solstices first, and afterwards the Equinoxes. The well
or pool of Ma-Shu (Eg.) bubbles up from this mythical mount or rock
of the horizon in a legend of the people called Shu-Paropamisans,
south of the Hindu-Kush. At the top of a rock near the fort of
Khomushi there rises a spring of brilliant water, hot in winter and
cool in summer, in a basin always brimming. ŖNu-Shuŗ is said to
be the sound made by the murmur of the water. Shu having been
the opener of the rock from which the water sprang at first. In this
legend Shu appears as the grandson of Noah. Nu (Eg.) is water and
a variant of Mu or Ma; thus Nu-Shu is equivalent to Ma-Shu, the
name of the pool in Egyptian. Shu was the divider of the rock
whence came the water as the god of the two Solstices or divisions in
1 Ch. xvcii. 2 ch. cxxv.
3 Report in Times newspaper, Sep. 9, 1881.
4 Pourtrayed on the tomb of Rameses III.
5 Inscription of Seti I. at Rhedesieh.
170 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
heaven. This, like the Hebrew legend of Moses or Mashu smiting
the rock, is another version of the same original mythos.1
In Maori the Two Truths of Mati find expression the most perfect.
Matua signifies the first; the parent and parents. Matauai denotes
the fountain-head. Matatu is to begin to flow. Matahae means the
stream diverging from the main channel where the water becomes the
Two Waters. Mata-mata is the source of all, the bifurcating or dual
point of beginning; an exact equivalent for the dual Mati (Eg.).
Motu means dividing, to be severed; and Matahi is the name of
the two first months of the year.
One ancient Egyptian name of the birth-place in the beginning
where the water divided into twoŕas in the double stream of the
Watermanŕwas Mat, the middle; later Ann, and this is extant by
name in the Mangaian and Maori mythology. Rangimotia, or the
centre of the heavens, is the point of commencement marked by a
hill,2 as it was in Mat, the boundary, division, middle of the heaven.
It was on Rangi-Motia that Ru, the sky-supporter, planted the trees
upon which the heaven was raised up from the earth. The division
of Mangaia was based on that of the hill Rangimotia; the centre of the
heavens; and in accordance with this mapping out of the land it was
the custom in ancient times, whenever a large fish was stranded, to
divide the fish in two, straight along the back-bone, and then appor-
tion it in shares, the head going to the two eastern chiefs, the tail to
the two western, and the middle to the two central chiefs of Mangaia.3
Again, the divided fish typifies the one fish of the primordial division
which is represented for us by the twin fishes of the zodiac. Also the
Annamese consjder it bad luck for a fish to leap out of the water into
the boat. When this happens the fish must be cut in two and
thrown into the water again, one half on each side of the boat.4
Such customs are correlative, however widely scattered. The whole
round of the world is a reflector of the celestial imagery.
In the kingdom of Udyana, or Ŗthe garden,ŗ a form of Eden, near
Cashmere, there is a sacred mountain called ŖMount Lan-po-loŗ by
Hiuen-Tshang. At one time it was identified with Mêru. It is the
source of the waters as is Alborz, in the Bundahish, and the Gan-
Eden in Genesis. The Buddhist pilgrims describe the tree of life, or
periodicity, Kalpatura, as growing on the summit, where there is a
lake from which a large river issues, and in the water lurks a dragon.
In many mythologies the ŖTwo Watersŗ are localised along with the
tree and the great serpent (or dragon). The Three are inseparable
in the Ritual where the Pool of the Two Truths is also the pool of the
two trees as well as the two waters, and the Apophis serpent that
lies in the Pool of Pant.
1 Latham, Comparative Philology, p. 241, note.
2 Gill, Myths and Song, p. 58. 3 Ibid., p. 128.
affirms that ŖMarrow (cf. the Hebrew }m`) is the Father of Blood.ŗ
Observation had then extended to the region of causation, and the
male principle had been made primary. The Bât (Eg,) is the Father
as the Inspirer of the Breath or soul, called the Bâ, eatlier Paf. And
the male as Bat or Pater, the Inspirer of Breath, is strangely illustrated
in an Indian sculpture from the Cave Temple of Elephanta, now in
the British Museum. The critic of the present work should take a
lesson in symbolism from this sculpture. To the eye that is un-
familiar with, and the mind that is uninstructed in such teachings of
the past, it is ghastly in its grossness; a fragment from Sodom, a
damning proof against the carnal heathen mind. Yet denuncia-
tion is altogether beide the mark. Such things, of course, are not
reproducible now, but they have never been explained. Once the
meaning of these representations was piously expounded in the Caves
of the Mysteries, where the primitive pictures were drawn on the
walls of the Chambers of Imagery. The group here referred to very
simply sets forth the male as the supplier to the female of the Breath
and the Water of Life, as in the dual emanation proceeding from
Khem in the drawings at Denderah. The male is the breather of life
in a twofold character, and the act of natural congrcss could not
have represented the meaning as does this biological allegory. 1
When this repellent subject was carved it was to demonstrate
the idea that a male source was the nourishing potency of nature,
and the breather or inspirer of the female; and both the Water and
the Breath of Life are here assigned to the male, as the active agent
of a Biune nature, in which the female, as the passive recipient, is
being fertilised. The Hindus reduced the feminine to mere nonentity,
and here ascribe both the breath and the liquid vivification to the
male: the female being now pourtrayed as the receiving instead of the
emaning double-mouth. This transfer of the breathing-source from
the female to the male can be traced in Egypt.
In the Ritual the speaker in the new life says he has been
Ŗsnatched from the Waters of his Mother,ŗ and Ŗemaned from the
nostril of his father Osiris.ŗ At this stage the father had become
the breather of life. But the mother was primordial.
When the two Divine Sisters invoke Osiris, to come to them to
Kha, as the beloved of the Adytum, the Lord of the sixth day‟s festival,
the fructifying Bull, Isis says: Ŗthou comest to us from thy retreat to
spread the water of thy soul; to distribute the Bread of thy being, that
the Gods may live, and men also.ŗ2 Bread and Breath are homotypes,
and thus the Male Divinity is here the Lord of the Two Truths, and
supplier of the Water and the Breath, as in the Indian drawing.
The Two Truths of Water and Breath were likewise represented
by the God Num or Khnef. He is the Lord of the inundation; the
1 In the British Museum. Copied by Payne Knight [Worship of Priapus, pl. xi].
2 Records, vol. ii. p. 122.
176 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
King of Frogs; the Sailor, the Spirit breathing on the waters in
creation. He is characterised as the Great God making (like a Potter)
the Son of his race with the good Breath in his Mouth.1
In the Hebrew version of the Mythos the water of life flows from
the Rock Tser until the time of Miriamřs passing away. She
represented the feminine source. The change to the masculine occurs
when the water gushes for the first time from the Rock Sela, by
command of Moses.2 This was the Water of Meribah, and in
Egyptian Meri is water, and Bah signifies the male. In Cbinese Fu-
Mu for the parents is now understood to mean the father and mother.
Both, however, were feminine names at first, and Fu (Chin.) is still a
name of the wife; Fu (Eg.) signifies dilatation, swelling, bearing, the
mother as gestator. Mu is water and the mother. Fu, fuf, or puf,
denotes the breath of life, whether represented by the male or female,
and the two parents are identical by name with the two elements of
breath and water.
When the masculine deity had taken the place of the mother, and
the sun had been adopted for the creative type, the same imagery of
the Two Waters and the Twin Source was applied to the Solar God.
We read in the ŖMagical Textsŗ: ŖWhen the sun becomes weak he
lets fall the sweat of his members and this changes to a liquid; he bleeds
much.ŗ3 Then he was called the sun in linen; he was bound up as a
woman; or he was Osiris-tesh-tesh in his bloody sweat, in Smen.
In another of the sunřs weepings or sheddings he is figuratively
said to Ŗlet water fall from his eyes; it is changed into working bees;
they work in the flowers of each kind, and honey and wax are produced
instead of water.ŗ Shu and Tefnut (an equivalent of Shu and Ma)
are said to weep much. ŖShu and Tefnut give it (the liquid) to the
living members.ŗ4 But the sun is the deity who in the later Mythos
sheds one water that turns to blood, and a liquid source of life which
is typified by wax or sperm. The English Ritualists still cling to
their long sperm candles as the sign of the Light of the World, the
Solar Messiah; the red source being symbolised by the bloody wafer
of the Papists. The tallest wax candle in Rome is the same,
symbolically, as the most elongated Linga of Siva in India, and both
meet where they can be explained in the typology of Kam. The
Hebrew deity is also represented as shedding two creative tears, a
more abstract form of the primæval Two Waters.5
In a Hindu picture6 of Mahadeva and Parvati, the waters of Soma
are seen issuing from the head of the male deity, and from the mouth
of the Cow, the feminine personification. Siva is the mouth of the
Male Source, and Parvati, the great Mother, the Mouth (Mut) of the
feminine source.
1 Birch, Gallery, p. 9. 2 Num. xx. 8.
3 Records, vol. vi. pp. 115-116. 4 Ibid.
5 Bartolucci, tom i. 596. 6 Moorřs Hindu Pantheon, pl. 17.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 177
Sushein), the Lily and Lotus in one. Sush is to open, to unclose; and Nn or Nu
is the Water. Also Sushen was continued in Arabic, and as the English female
name of Susan. 5 Jebamoth, 49 b.
180 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
prophesied. Paul alludes to this black mirror when he says we see
as in a glass darkly. That is, we only see in the non-luminous
mirror of the Mysteries. Ma, to see, is also to mirror with the eye
for the mirror. The water of life and of death was a form of the
Twin-Mirror of Ma. Also a mirror of steel and one of water were
employed, as in the temple of Neptune, described by Pausanias. The
steel, Ba (Eg.), identifies the one with Ba, the soul; the water repre-
sented the female source. The Initiates in the Greater Mysteries
were designated magicians of the steel mirror. The Ba or steel was
also a type of the Blue Heaven.1 The Two Mirrors also represented
the Two Treesŕof Life and the knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Mysteries of Masonry are founded on the ŖTwo Truthsŗ of
the goddess Ma, who survives in them, even by her name. ŖHow
few newly-made Masons but go away (from their initiation) imagining
that it (the word communicated with mouth to ear, and at low breath)
has some connection with the „marrow in the bone.‟ What do they know
of that mystical personage known to some adepts as the „venerable Mahř?ŗ
This question is asked and left unanswered in ŖIsis Unveiledŗ2 by an
Initiate in various mysteries.
The essential idea of Masonry is that of a Company or Brother-
hood of builders working under the Master Architects, just as the
Company of the Seven Khnemmu work under the direction of Ptah
and Mâ; Ptah being the artisan who built with Truth; that is, with
Mâ. The Seven Khnemmu are their operatives. Egypt will re-
identify Masonry as a mystic craft, with foundations in facts that go
beyond the religious Mysteries of the Hebrews, Romans, or Greeks.
Here, for example, is Masonry. An Egyptian scribe addresses the
gods as the ŖNutriu, who test by their Level (the Masonřs level) the
words of men; the lord of law (i.e. Maât). Hail to you, ye gods, ye
associate gods.ŗ3
A mason in Egyptian is a Makh (Makht), and Mâ has an earlier
form in Makh, for rule and measure. Also the goddesss of rule and
measure had a prior personification in Makha (or Menka), who came
1 Mirror. The Mother of the Gods was their Mirror. Tef is the genitrix and
the Pupil of the Eye, and the Eye was a Mirror. The Japanese make much of
this type. A correspondent sent me the following:ŕThe Japanese have an
ancient myth to this effectŕIn the beginning the earth was comparatively dark,
because the sun-goddess was concealed in a cave, and would not appear. The
gods decided to entice her out by means of her own image shown to her in a
mirror; for this purpose they made a mirror with steel got from heaven, and hung
it on a tree opposite the cave, whose petulant tenant was to be aroused by the
dancing and singing of a certain lovely goddess, while all the gods made music.
This goddess danced, like David, Ŗwith all her might,ŗ and her excitement and
her action rising together, loosened her dress, thus revealing more and more of her
loveliness, till at least, to the intense delight of the gods, her garment slipped from
her altogether! The laughter of the gods shook the heavens (šsbestoj gelwj!),
and the sun-goddess rushing out of her cave, saw her beautiful image in the mirror,
and rushing up to it, was caught, and obliged ever after to perform the office of
light-giving.
2 Vol. ii. p. 388. 3 Text cited by Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, p. 208.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 181
Hampshire.
2 Potter, vol. i. p. 391.
TYPOLOGY OF THE TWO TRUTHS. 183
tion may be found in the English game of skittles with either nine
pins or ten pins.
The one Truth of all Beginning is probably extant under the
name of Nuter. In the ancient languages of India this is the
name for blood, as Netru, Sudugur; Netturu, Canarese; Netteru,
Telugu; Netra, Kohatar, and others; and this source was typified by
Neith (Isis) who was designated Nuter.t, the feminine Nature, out of
whom all issued in the beginning; the One Blood of the Motherhood
which became dual through the typical ŖTwo Sistersŗ when the
fountain-head was divided into the first two Totemic lines of descent.
By degrees the first of the Two Truths in the primitive biology was
degraded from its primacy of place. When the soul was assigned to
the male, the water as feminine source was made the passive factor;
the negative element that only served to give life by vanishing away.
It became the Unreal one of the Two, and on this was founded the
doctrine of Maya or illusion in India, and in Egypt, of Annihilation in
the Pool of Pant, or the Red Sea of the Ritual. Further illustrations
of this natural genesis of primitive ideas might be adduced.
There are Two Times, says the Sûrya Siddhânta.1 Time the de-
stroyer of worlds, and another Time which has for its nature to bring
to pass. This latter, according as it is gross or minute, is called by
two names, real (murta) and unreal (amurta). That which begins with
respirations (prana) is called real, that which begins with atoms (truti)
or matter, is called unreal. The real and unreal applied to time is
akin to the Parsee doctrine applied to Vohu-Manyu, the Good Mind
that dominates the hemisphere of Reality, or of all things good, perfect
and true; and Akem-Mainyu, the Extinguisher in the hemisphere of
Non-reality.
The ŖTwo Spiritsŗ of the Parsee writings also illustrate the Two
Truths, or the Truth in its twinship. Ahura-Mazda is the teller of
Truth, and the evil spirit the teller of lies, hence the double tongue, as it
is represented by the Indian gesture-sign with the two fingers diverging
from the corners of the mouth. Two minds or intellects and Ŗtwo
livesŗ are also spoken of in the Gathas. These two intellects are
called the First and the Last, which came to be applied to the here and
hereafter. The Two Lives correspond to the Two Truths as Matter
and Spirit, or Body and Soul.
The origin of Good and Evil in the nature of man considered as a
being of flesh and spirit, and as the embodiment of two opposite
principles with a spontaneous tendency toward good, supposed to
originate in the spirit, and an antagonistic impulse towards evil assumed
to be engendered by the blood (or flesh) which are destructive of indi-
vidual responsibility, not to say of personal identity, has no other
foundation except in the perversion and misapplication of the dualism
of the primitive Two Truths.
1 Book i. v. 10.
184 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
There was no new point of departure in phenomena, nothing added
to nature or human knowledge in these later views of the Metaphysi-
cians and Theosophists. It was but the transformation of Mythology
into Metaphysics, Philosophy, and Theology, in which the supposed
revelation of a newer truth was largely founded on a falsification of
the old.
From these ŖTwo Truthsŗ of all Beginning the total system of
Typology and Mythology was telescopically drawn out joint by joint,
and as we shut up the glass again in the return process and attain the
early stand-point and focus of vision we perceive with more or less
exactness what the early thinkers saw.
SECTION IV.
NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS.
The limits are here identical with the origines; and to demonstrate the one is to define the other.
Here the digital origin is likewise shown by the name for the hand
itself, which is
Napai, Yankton. Nomba, Omaha. Nimel, Shabun.
Nahbeehah, Winebago. Numba, Osage.
But there is more than one way of duplicating, and the earliest is
by division of the one, not by addition to it. The Gallas obtain their
two as two halves of the one, by breaking a cake of salt; a broken
piece, from Tchaba, to break, having the meaning of one-half. This
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 189
The Ankh (Eg.), as Ear, is both one and two. So is it with the
Hand or Panka (Sanskrit). In the Portland dialect (Australia) the
ear is named Wing, which reminds us that the wing also duplicates
and becomes a pair, like the ear or the hand. Pankti (Sanskrit)
number 5, a set or cluster of five, is also the number 10, because
the Pair, as Arms, sub-divides into 5 and 10 as fingers.
Ango is five in Dofla, and Inge, in Abor (the same group of
languages), is Number 10.
Onger in Amberbaki. Wonka in Tshuvash. Ongefoula in Cocos Island.
Inge in Abor and Miri. Iangpono in Tagala. Nokolou in Fonofono.
Ongus in Teniseian.
1 Book i, 11.
194 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Mbo in Tumu. Moi in Bute. Mô in Nřgoala.
Mbo in Aro. Mô in Mbe. Mô in Bamoin.
Mfu in Isiele. Mô in Pati. Mô in Balu.
Umot in Penin. Mô in Papiah. Mô in Bagba.
Émot in Konguan. Mô in Momenya.
Îmo and Mo in Param. Mô in Kam.
In the Tungus dialects:ŕ
Mu, ômu or
momu } is No. 1. Moe in Ka is No. 1.
Moe in Khong is No. 1.
Mue in Mon is No. 1.
the word this becomes Mâ, Mu, or Mo, for the Mother, and for the
number 1. In Egyptian the reduced Mâ or Mû takes on the feminine
terminal t to become the Mât or Mût, the Mater and Mother;
whence came those words. The Mother being the first person
recognized as Primus, we may expect to find hers is the first personal
name, or the pronoun of the first person. This appears in the
African languages as
Mom, I, in Yagba. Mem, I, in Nki. Mem, I, in Mutsaya.
Mam, ,, Legba. Momi, ,, Idsesa. Memfo, ,, Param.
Memi, ,, Mbamba. Mumi, ,, Dsebu. Mem, ,, Bushman.
Mampe, ,, Padsade.
}
Nge Nge ,, ,, Songo. Ngi ,, ,, Bola.
and ,, ,, Gbandi. Ngini ,, ,, Fulup. Nko ,, ,, Marawi.
Nya Nga ,, ,, Kise-Kise. Ngi ,, ,, Mimboma.
Ngo ,, ,, Landoro. Ngo ,, ,, Gbere. Ngi ,, ,, Musentandu.
Ngo ,, ,, Kasande. Ng ,, ,, Mahi.
196 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
This supplied a universal form of the first personal pronoun,
ranging through
Nge in Æthiopic. Naika in Kamilaroi (Ngui Noika in Chinook.
Ank in Egyptian. is My) Hang in Thara.
Anaku in Assyrian. Ngo in Chinese. Nga in Burman.
Anakhi in Hebrew. Ink in Palouse. Ngai in Tarawan.
Nga-Nga in W. Australian. Inga in Limbu. Ayung in Cherokee.
Ngai in Port Lincoln. Ung in Khaling. Nak in Gundiŕ
Ngatoa in Wiradurei.
and numbers more. This root of The One gave the name to the Ank
(Eg.) for king; Greek Anax; Peruvian Inca; Maori Heinga; Irish Aonach
(prince); Arabic Anuk; Malayan Inchi (master) ; the Basque Jainco
(Jingo) for the divinty. These were applied to the male who came
to the front as the chief one, the ruling I of later times. The earliest
male Ankh, however, was not the father, but the uncle, the Kaffir
Nakwabo or sisterřs brother, on account of the blood-tie; he who
became Nakh Or Ank (Eg.) at puberty. With the Hottentots the
Uncle is the Naub or Ancestor. The Mother of Life, Ank, the god-
dess of life in Egypt, and the Ankh or Hank of people, were still
earlier. The female was the first known reproducer of the particular
child, and therefore was recognised and named as the primal parent,
the one, the eariest Ankh or Ancestor.
The primary mode of duplicating in language was by repeating the
word, syllable, or sound. And Ankh (Eg.) to duplicate, to double, a
pair, is the name of the mother in the duplicative stage, as
Nâ-nga and Ngu, Tene. Nŷongo or Nyongongo, Diwala. Ngqangi, in Xosa, is the
Nyang, Mende. Nguâtu, Mu-entandu. first in time.
Nînge, Landoro. Nyangei, Nalu.
Again, water, drink, or suck, is another form of the first one, as the
element of life derived from the Mama and Mammæ. It is the
primary truth of the Two in Mythology. And water is
Mema in Lubalo. Mmeli in Isoama. Mambia in Biafada.
Mmi in Isiele. Momel in Fulup. Mambes in Padsade.
Mmeli in Aro. Momel in Filbam.
With many variants and worn-down forms in ômi, ûmi, âmee, and
mâ. Blood, the mystical water of life, is Mme in Abadsa; Mmei in
Aro, African. Mum in Japanese signifies that which is primordial,
the first, and in the Assyrian creation the Mumu or Mami are the
waters of creation. Mamari in Polynesian is the spawn of the waters.
This Inner African type-name for Water and the Mother-source still
survives, as
Mem, Upper Sacramento. Momi, Tsamak. Mimeil, Reindeer Tshuktshi.
Mehm, Copeh. Mumdi (River) Sekumne. Mimlipil, Karaga.
Mem, Mag Readings. Mimal, Korika. Mampuka, Wiliamet.
Momi, Pajuni. Mimal, The Kolyma. Mimpo, or Ampo, Lutuami.
The Mother and Water are one in Mythology, and both have the same
name in the earliest stage of languageŕthat of the mere duplication
of sounds to constitute words.
It is now suggested that Ma-ma signifies the mother (bearer) in
Egyptianŕ
Momo in Chinese. Mama in Fin. Mamma in Australianŕ
Mam in Welsh. Memi in Barre (American).
and others.
The Param language shows that Pipa is a modified form of Mpipa
or Mbipa; as Befai is the abraded form of Mbefai in Afudu. The
Mb of the primitive pronunciation having been worn down to the
simple B in ŖBefai.ŗ As abraded forms of the original Momo for
number 1 and Mbefa number 2 we have
Mô, No. 1; Mba, No. 2; Pati. Mô, No. 1; Mbê, No. 2; Bamom.
Mô, No. 1; Mbê, No. 2; Bagba. Mô, No. 1; Mba and Pipa, No. 2; Param.
198 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The father in Africa is a type of Papa or Mbefa, number 2.
Paps, Father, Songo. Mfa, Father, Vei Baba, Father, Yagba.
Papa ,, Limba. Mba ,, Kanem. Baba ,, Eki.
Papa ,, Landoma. Mba ,, Basa. Baba ,, Dsumu.
Papai ,, Filham. Baba ,, Bidsogo. Baba ,, Oworo.
Papa ,, Bola. Baba ,, Wun. Baba ,, Dsebu.
Paba ,, Sarar. Baba ,, Gadsaga. Baba ,, Ife.
Papa ,, Pepel. Baba ,, Nalu. Baba ,, Ondo.
Bapa ,, Baga. Baba ,, Bulanda. Baba ,, Karekare.
Fafa ,, Kabunga. Baba ,, Barba. Baba ,, Nřgodsin.
Fafa ,, Tene. Baba ,, Tumbuktu. Baba ,, Doai.
Foba ,, Mose. Baba ,, Bagrmi. Baba ,, Kamuku.
Mfafe ,, Kisekise. Baba ,, Kadzina. Baba ,, Kiriman.
Mfa ,, Toronka. Baba ,, Timbo. Baba ,, Biafada.
Mfa ,, Dsalunka. Baba ,, Salum. Baba ,, Wartashin.
Mfa ,, Kankanka. Baba ,, Ota. Baba ,, Goburu.
Mfa ,, Bambara. Baba ,, Egba. Baba ,, Kano.
}
Mba, Baba ,, Idsesa. Abba ,, Wadi
Ba, ,, Gurma. Baba ,, Yoruba. Aba ,, Arabic.
Miba
Here the father coincides by name with the number 2, and as the foot
is also a figure of two, this will account for its being named Pupu,
Ipupo, etc. in the Carib languages, as well as for
Bofo, No. 10 in Kafen, Papa, No. 10 in Padsade, Baba-
lnecrahuk } No. 10 in Timboras.
But the primordial type of the one that divided to become two is
the female or uterine abode, which is the
Bed, in English Patu, in Malay. Fud, in Baverian.
Butah, in Basque. Baat, in N. W. American. Pudendum, in Latin.
Beth, in Hebrew.
We have now got Pat, put, fut, for the typical Two, in place of
Papa; and Pat (Eg.), for two handfuls, when applied to the digits,
is equivalent to Number 10. Thus Putolu, two hands or two feet,
is Number 10 in the Micmac Indian. And this will explain why
Number 10 has the same name, especially in the old non-Aryan
languages of India.
Bud is 10 in Khotovzi. Padi is 10 in Telegu. Patte is 10 in Kohatar.
Pade ,, Gadaba. Patta ,, Malayalim. Avaturu ,, Thug.
Pothu ,, Yerukali. Pattu ,, Tulu. Paduri ,, Thochu.
Pudth ,, Gundi. Pattu ,, Irular. Petiran, two feet, Australian.
Patta ,, Tamul.
just as Bakie and Bat are two names of the winged mammal in
Scotch.
ŖThe Bat,ŗ says Hor-Apollo, Ŗwas an Egyptian image of the
mother suckling her child.ŗ2 It represented that biunity of being
which was first seen in the mother who had Ŗbaggedŗ; and next
was typified in the Bach or Bacchus, the Child of both sexes.
Bak and Pak, to be dual or divide, will explain the name of the
foot; asŕ
Pog, foot, Avar. Pog, foot, Tshari. Bisi, foot, Ceram.
Pog, ,, Antshukh
Bêl (Cornish) is the Navel; Bal (Akk.), the Axe or Hatchet; Palû,
Assyrian, an instrument for dividing.
The first instrument used for dividing was the Stone; and this in
the African languages is the
Pulag, in Kanyop. Pulak, in Bola. Fulagu, in Bulanda.
Pulak, in Pepel. Palak., in Sarar.
Sher (Eg.) for the Adult, the Male in his second phase, also agrees
with and accounts for the names of Number 10 asŕ
Ashiri in Kaffa. Assur in Hurur. Asar in Hebrew.
Ashur in Tigré. Assir in Yangaro. Sher in Egyptian.
Assur in Arkiko. Ashar in Arabic.
Tutu (or Tet) in Egyptian is the Child, the Son of the Mother.
This is an Inner African type-name for the young one, as
Toto, Ota O Tutu, Oworo. Tito, Dsekiri.
Tutu, Dsumu. Tuto, Eki. O Tito, Oudo.
Tutu, Dsebu. Tuty, Ife. Teto, Idesa.
The name is applied to the young, renewed Moon, which was repro-
duced by the old Moon (Cf. Ishtar, as Goddess 15), considered to be
the Mother of the Child; the full Moon representing the Genitrix who
was the one alone. The young Moon is
Tutu, Egba. Tutu, Dsebu. Tutu, Ife.
Toto, Yoruba. Teto, Yagba. Tito, Dsekiri.
Tutu, Oworo. Titu, Ota.
In Egypt, this name of the new Moon was continued in Tet, Taht,
or Tahuti, the God who carries the young Moon on his head. Tet,
Tat, or Tahuti, is a dual form answering to two or the second of two,
°
the young one of two. Ti written ´ shows the duplication of the T, and
the inner African Tutu is just the sound of double T. So that the
name of the young one, the child, the repeater, the second of two, is
expressed by repetition and duplication of the T-sound, and Tet
(Tutu) is afterwards depicted by one T, with the sign of duplicating as
a terminal. Because it was the sign of the one reproduced as the Child,
Tut or Tat could be, and was, extended to become the name of the
Reproducer as the individualised Father in later times. In Egyptian,
Tat is the generative organ; it also means to engender, to establish,
and denotes the Begetter; the Welsh Tat, English Dad, Scottish
Dod, Omaha Dadai, and Kaffir Doda.
In forty different dialects of Inner Africa, the radical Tat furnishes
the same name for the Father as for the number 3, and the Begetter
is the Third by namc, as he was in the reckoning of the Mother
(number 1), the Child (number 2), and the Adult Male (number 3).
Tata is father, Babuma, and Tet, No. 3.
Tata ,, Bumbete, and Mitatu, No. 3.
Tata ,, Kasands, and Tatu, No. 3.
Tata ,, Nyombe, and Tatu, No. 3.
Tata ,, Basunde, and Tatu, No. 3.
Tata ,, Pangela, and Tatu, No. 3.
Atate ,, Marawi, and Tatu, No. 3.
In like manner the Boy-name as Bach becomes a later type-name
for the man, or Virile Male. The Boy was, literally, father to the
Man, and just as the father took his name from the child, according to
one custom, so he continued the Boy-name tor the man or Head as
Boie in Nertshinsk. Boya in Tunguska. Bash in Teleut.
Beye in Mantshu. Boyo in Mangasela. Bash in Baraba.
Boye, Yakutsk. Bas in Kirghiz. Bash in Tshulim.
Beye in Lamut. Bash in Uzbek. Pash in Tobolsk.
Boya in Yenesei.
Naturally enough the Boy and Man meet under the one name of Bar,
on account of the Male principle and the Boy‟s Second Character.
Boro, in Sena is the Membrum Virile; Phallos in Greek; Beron in
208 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Tasmanian. Bala in Sanskrit, and Bura in Fiji, are the masculine
Source. Bara, in the Mandenga dialects, signifies pubescence, the
pubes or beard. This is a type-name for the male as Vir, which is
Viri in Kusi-Kumnk. Fir in Irish. Veres in Zirianian.
Vir in Latin. Feru in Magyar.
In Inner Africa the Male also attained the Status of Man (Vir) under
the name of Bar (the Boy) as
Baro in Yura. Abalo in Legba. Fela in Guara.
Balga in Babuma. Abalo in Kaure. Vale in Kambali.
Bala in Bagbalan. Ebala in Kiambu. Baro in Yula.
Mbal in Koama. Balera in Bumbete.
{
In the Batta, Lonco (Man and Pubes), Auraucanan.
Orang ,, ,, Malay, and Loonkquee Oneida.
other groups Lango, Virile Male, Sanskrit.
These names of the Man are one with the Sanskrit Linga, and the
Linch-pin of the stag; the Zulu Hlanga, or Lungu, a reed; the
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 211
typical Reed from which the human race originated, the Male
Member. Other primitive emblems of virility can be traced under
the same type-name.
In the Australian and other languages
Lung, is Stone, in Yarra. Long, is Stone, in Kakhyen. Along, is Bone, in Abor.
Walang ,, ,, Wiradurei. Lunggau ,, ,, N. Tunkhul. Along, ,, ,, Miri.
Longu ,, ,, Tasmanian. Ngalung ,, ,, Luhuppa. Irang, is Teeth, in Bathurst.
Orungay ,, ,, Tuscarora. T‟hullung ,, ,, Khoibu. Irang ,, ,, Wellington.
Nlung ,, ,, Singpho. Khlung ,, ,, Maring. Irang ,, ,, Wiradurei.
Talong ,, ,, Jili. Lung ,, ,, Thoung-Ihu. Leeangy, is Tooth, in Borsiper.
Ta-lon ,, ,, Sak. Arung, is Horn, in Sak. Leenag ,, ,, Yarra.
Ka-lun ,, ,, Kami.
Among the Australian names for the Beard and Hair types of
Virility are
Tearnka, Menero Downs. Ooran, Regentřs Lake. Yarren, Sidney.
Yerreng, Morton Island. Uran, Wellington. Wurung, Lake Macquarrie.
In Inner Africa
Nlenge, is Hair, in Basunde. Elungi or Eluni, is Hair, in Oworo.
The Nail of the finger or toe is
Lenyal in Mutsaya. Kentoli in Bumbete. Orunyara in Pangela.
Lenyala in Babuma. Lunsoana in Lubalo. Serene in Gadsaga.
But the Second of the Two in Sex was Third in the Series of
Mother, Child, and Vir. Hence Khem or Khemt signifies number 3.
Khemt, Egyptian. Angom, Abor. Sam, Siamese.
Shemt, Coptic. Kasami, Gyarung. Sami, Abom.
Kumot, Tsheremis. Som, Murmi. Sam, Khamti.
Chami, Cochetimi. Swem, Brambu. Tsam, Shan.
Kuim, Zirianian. Sumsho, Chepang. Zam, Canton.
Kacham, Mihjhu. Sumya, Karata. Sium, Tanguhti.
Kimsa, Aymora. Syumsh, Limbu. Semi, Suanic.
Kimisa, Cayuvava. Sam, Lepcha. Sami, Georgian.
Yameenee, Yankton. Sum, Takpa. Sumi, Mingrelian.
Yakmani, Dacotah. Sum, Lhops. Sam, Canaan.
Homka, Kulanapo. Sum, Milchan. Asaw, Nowgong.
Hamuk, Cuchan. Sum, Theburskud. Asam, Tengsa.
Hamuk, Dieguno. Som, Thaksya. Asam, Khari.
Hamcha, Cocomaricopa. Sam, Changlo. Asam, Joboca.
Mamoke, Mohave. Sum, Tibetan. Asum, Mitham.
Hum, Sumcha. Sam, Laos. Masum, Singpho.
Dshumi, Lazic.
Basnage says the World was formed by analogy to the Hebrew
alphabet, which is numeral.1 The first three letters of this, Aleph,
Beth, and Gimel, are types of our numbers, 1, 2, and 3. Aleph is
called the Steer in Phœnicianm, the Calf' in the hieroglyphics, an
image of the Primordial One, who was Cow-headed, as Hathor;
Calf-headed, as Ahti (Typhon); and the Water-Cow, as Kheb. The
Beth is Both, Twin, Two. Gimel is the Camel, a type of potency
answering by name to the Third, who is Khemt (3) in Egyptian.
This origin of the Three is not only shown by names, it is visibly
demonstrated in the shape of our figures 1, 2 and 3; the NUMBER 3
being third in series and dual in form. The same law governs our
1 History of the Jews, p. 190.
212 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
three first Notes of punctuationŕthe comma (,), semi-colon (;), and
colon (:); in which the colon is likewise third in series and an ideo-
graphic two in shape. The duadic-triad is also figured in the Hebrew
letter Shin c. This sign is a Tooth. The Tooth, Hu (Eg.) is a type
of Adultship, and the name signifies the Adult. The Shin is a
Double Tooth; its fangs made it a figure of the trinity in unity, and
its numeral value is 3 in the series of hundreds. Khemt (Eg.) is also
the Trident, another figure of the triune being. The author of the
Book of God gives the sign of 30~ for the mysticat Ao as the Hindu
Aum; and No. 30 is the numeral value of ŖKhemtŗ expressed in
Tens; the symbol of the triune one.1
Tree and Three are also synonymous. First, the Tree was the
Mother, as Producer; the Child was the Branch. But number 3
implies the notion of Cause, or the Root of the Tree. This was
masculine. The Ren, as Renpu (Eg.), is the male root or plant of
renewal. In Inner Africa the Root is
Ran in Nso. Aron in Anan. Lun-ganzi in Kabenda.
Ren in Wolof. Lun-Kandzi in Nymobe. Lingi in Tumbuktu.
Erona in Okam.
The Root likewise agrees in name with the Sheru (Eg.) for the
Adult or pubescent Youth, and with the Tser Rock or Stone, as
Sila, the Root, Mandega. Suru, the Root, Vei. Zori, the Root, Pika.
Suluo ,, Kabunga. Suro, ,, Kra. Nzoran ,, Dsarawa.
Sulu ,, Koso. Suro, ,, Krabo. Osire ,, Akurakura.
The number 3 and the Tree are identical in the Hottentot Nona,
Three, and Nonas, the Root, the radix of the tree.2 The third digit
counted either way, is the root-finger. Here it may be noticed that
the Morindo Citrifolia Tree, which has the most Ŗwonderfully tena-
ciousŗ root, is called by the Mangaians the Nono tree.3
The genealogy of the first family Tree was the Mother (number 1
as Stem), Child (number 2, as Branch), Adult (No. 3, as Root). This
may explain why the Egyptians wrote their first plural with the sign
of 3 instead of 2; and why the Greeks used the oath, or typical
expression, ŖBy Three am I overthrown.ŗ Three is likewise identical
with Throw, and a Throw is Three in number with the Letts, who,
in counting crabs, throw three at a time; the word METTENS meaning
Three, or a throw. Three is the first and Nine is the full Egyptian
plural, the highest number on the right. The masculine Hand, as
Ten, resolves once more into the Twin-total, the Two-One, the Alpha
and Omega of the Beginning. The word Three (as well as Tree), in
its various forms, is a universal type-name, derived from this origin.
The Third was the Adult Male, and Ter (Eg.) is to engender, Turreti,
1 Introduction, p. 327.
2 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 14.
3 Gill.
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 213
In his explanation of the cardinal numbers Bopp says Ŗhe does not
think that any language has produced especial original words for the
particular designations of such compound and peculiar ideas as
three, four, five, etc.ŗ He admits that the appellations of numbers
resist all comparison with the verbal roots, and he tries to explain
them by the prcnominal roots. Being limited to the Aryan group he
is compelled to derive the Gothic Fidvor for number 4 from the
Sanskrit Chatwar for number 4. 1 But if Fid were derivable from
Chat there would be an end to all foothold in language. It is possible
of course for these to become equivalents in later language because
both may be derived from an earlier word that will account for them,
Ch (or K) and F being the twin phonetic deposits of an original
ideographic Kf.
The Gothic Fid, in Fidvor, is one form or the type-name for
number 4 to be found in the most ancient and diverse languages. It
is Inner African, to begin with, asŕ
Fudu, Hausa. Fudu, Bode. Ufade, Mandara.
Fudu, Kano. Fudu, Nřgodsin. Fadyg, Bishari.
Fodu, Kadzina. Fudu, Doai. Fat, Batta.
Fedu, Karekare.
It was continued asŕ
Feto, in Coptic. Pidwar, Fethera and Feother, in English (Betty-
Futu and Aftu, in Egyptian. Phedair, in Welsh. Bodkin, the 4th finger).
Erbaht, in Tigré. Patzar, in Cornish. Effat, in Malagasy.
Aybatta, in Gafat. Fidvor, in Gothic. Pi-ffat, in Guebé (Papuan).
Arbat, in Arabic.
(Pi is a prefix, as in Pi-leure for five).
Po-bitz, Yengen. Puet, Atshin
Boat, Amberbaki (New Guinea). Opat, Toba Batta.
Fat, Salawatti (New Guinea). Mpat, Sasak.
E-vatz, or Ta-vats, Mallicollo (New Opat, Bima.
Hebrides). Apat, Bissayan.
Tbait, New Caledonia. Apat, Tagala.
Eppat, Iloco.
This type-name for number 4 is one of the primaries of the present
work, one of the radicals of language, one of the words of the world.
The types that lead to the one proto-type of the number 4 are pre-
served in the hieroglyphics. Fetu and Aft (Eg.) are variants for the
number 4, the four quarters or the four-legged thing. Aft is the
hinder part or quarter of the four-legged animal. The four-legged
crocodile was one type of Aft or Apt (as goddess). We have the
same figure of 4 by name in English as the Eft.
The hippopotamus is another type of Aft (Apt), and this four-legged
animal has four toes on each foot. The word foot, pat, or pode is
identical with Fut for number 4, and thus points to the origin of the
1 Bopp, Comparative Grammar, vol. i. p. 427. Eng. Tr.
216 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
type-name in that of the four-footed animal the Aft or Fut or Egypt.
Thus, by name and nature, the type of number 4 is Quadrupedal.
And the reason why the type-name of number 2 and the two feet
is also a name for number 4 is because in the latter case the type was
four-footed. Every primitive word has to be determined and differenti-
ated by the type intended. Aft or fut may be the chair, the couch with
four legs, the abode with four corners, or the heaven of four quarters.
When the type is human the heaven above is represented by a woman
arching over and resting on the earth with her hands and feet. In
this case the quadrupedal typt is pourtrayed by the two hands and two
feet. It may be the four-footed fyl-fot Cross of Thor is named from
the four as Fut. But the great type of number 4 was the ancient
Typhon, the Mother of Beginnings.
Aft is an abraded form of Kheft (Variant Khept) for the hind
quarter which was the north in the heaven of the two halves, and
west in the heaven of four quarters.
The Khept is the hind quarter of the Quadruped, and Fet (or Aft)
is number 4 and the four quarters. By return to the earlier Khaft
or Khept we reach an orignal for Chât as well as Fid. Khaft modi-
fies into both Khat and Aft (or Fet), and thus furnishes two different
words with one meaning to later language. The Khât (Khept) as
the hinder thigh is the seat nearest to nature. So the Kati in
Sanskrit is the seat or buttocks. In English we have the Fud
for the tail. Both are contained in the word Khaft, equally
with Chat and Fid. One form of the seat is the chair, and the Irish
Ceathar and Manx Kiare for number 4 agree with the Chair, Kadair
and quadrangular Caer, the seat-type of the four, and therefore with
Khept the hinder thigh of the beast, and with Aft the seat, hinder
part, also to squat or go down, as the animal on all fours. The proto-
typal idea of number 4 then is quadrupedal, and the Quadra, Quad-
ruped, Chatwar, and Ceathar preserve the fact in their names.
The Assyrian Arbata, lrbitti or lrbit, for number 4, is usually
derived from Rab, to be great. But the Rep (Eg.) is the typical
quadruped.
Rabe, Wolot, Cattle. Laboi, Greek, Bear. Rabi, No. 4, Manyak.
Rabu, Coptic, Lion. Lup, Victoria, Sheep.
Also, obr applied to the couch, 1 and to the lying down of four-
footed things, agrees with the Egyptian Rep.
And that in the Yesso dialect, one of the Aino group, Fambe is the
1 Ps. cxxxix. 3.
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 217
name for Number 10. These are explained by the hand itself. In
old English one name for the hands is fambles. This agrees with the
Egyptian dm or fam for the fist, and the Botocudo tmpo for the hand.
The hand is called a bunch of five. To five or to fim, pemp£zein, is
to make the fist; the Egyptian âm (or fam); and five, fimf, fim, or
fam are variants of one original word. In English Pimp is applied
to coupling together; hence the pimp as a go-between and as a faggot
of sticks. So in Xosa Kaffir Famba means to heap, pile, cluster
together, as in making the fist. The radical is Inner African.
Poma is the hand in Mende. Asi Pome in Adampe. In Xosa
Kaffir the Pambo is the handle or handles of a pot or other vessel.
Fumbata is to close the hand in the form of a fist; to grasp in the
closed hand and hold fast what it contains.
The Egyptian âemf (or famf) is a handful of food, and as âm is
the fist as well as to eat, this is the equivalent of the Gothic, Greek,
Breton, Cornish, Welsh and other names for Ŗfiveŗ as the handful
of digits, or one fist. Here the Numbers 5 and 10, the fist, fambles,
the clustering and handle, are all related by name to the hand and
there is as surely a unity of origin for the word and types as there
is for the numbers in the digits.
Under the name of Tat (Eg.) the hand is the type of offering and
giving. So, here, the hand as a type of giving is related by name
to the Inner African words for giving.
Pem in Yula. Fima in Soso. Femao in Tumu.
Fema in Tene. Fiumo in Momenya. Wema in Baseke.
Fima in Kise-Kise.
In Egyptian, one name of the finger is Teb; the fingers are Tebu,
and Tebu is the name of the number 10 in the series of Thousands.
Also four Tebu make one Palm, and seven palms (twenty-eight
fingers) make the Royal Cubit, or Sutem-Mah.
In Inner Africaŕ
Tubo is the finger in Kam. Ghala Sara is the finger in Pika. Ozubo is the finger in Opanda.
Mo Topo ,, Param. Kobo-bui ,, Tumbuktu. Saba ,, ,, Adirar.
Gbehi ,, Bini. Kafo-Gabone ,, Nřki. Saba ,, ,, Beran.
Igbe ,, Ihewe. Kpira-bo ,, Egbele. Osba ,, ,, Wadai.
The African, Tch, with its variant sounds (explained later on)
will account for Kep, and Tep being equivalent for the fist and
the fingers in Egyptian. Tef (Tua) is a name of Seb, the Star, and
the Divine Father; also of the number 5. These interchange in the
names of numbers 5 and 10, as
Tuf, No. 5 in Batta Dsowi, No. 5 in Pula. Gubida, No. 5 in Biafada.
Dsif
Kif } ,, Bulanda.
Dsowi,
Dsowi,
,,
,,
Goburu.
Kano.
Kobeda
Khuba
,,
,,
Padsade.
Absné
Tsaf
Ksof } ,, Limba
218 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Other African variants for Number 5 corresponding to the Hebrew
Qams, a fist, Assyrian Hamsu, for number 5, are found in
Gumen, No. 5 in Banyun. Hm, No. 5 in Basa. Hm, No. 5 in Gbe.
Tsamat ,, Baga. Hmu ,, Krebo. Mhm ,, Dewoi.
Semmes ,, Berber.
In the Baniwa and Coretu dialects Kap, the hand, is the base of
Nucopi, hand, Maipur. Nucabi, hand, Baree. Tchonpumau, hand, Juri.
Nucapi ,, Isanna. Em-Kiape ,, Uaenambeu.
This last is founded on the fingers, that is, on the bunch of five.
Tchoupei, fingers, Juri. Nu-Capi, fingers, Uaenambeu.
The Constellation of the Seven Great Stars (Ursa Major) was pro-
bably the primordial figure of Seven. Seven was often called the
perfect number. Its name, as Hept (Eg.) is also the name for Plenty,
a heap of food, and good luck. The Seven were the great heap, or
cluster of stars, an image of plenty, or a lot that revolved together.
The Hottentot Hongu the grouped or confederated ones for the
number 7, points to the Great Bear as the celestial figure. The Bear
also supplied the pointer hand to the Horologe of time in heaven.
In fact, as Pythagoras says, the Two Bears were the Two Hands of
the Great Mother, who was Kep (the hand) or Kheb in Egypt, and who
as Teb bears the name of the Finger. The first star of this constella-
tion, Dubhe, is Teb (Eg.), the finger or pointer. Now with the Kaffirs,
pointing with the forefinger of the right hand is synonymous with
number 7. In answering the question, ŖHow much did your master
give you?ŗ they will say, ŖU Kombile,ŗ he gave me seven, literally
he pointed with his forefinger. And in describing seven horses they
will say, Ŗthe horses have pointedŗ (amahashi akombile) that is, there
were seven of them.1 Such a mode of expression is based on finger-
counting. The Zulu begins his reckoning with the little finger of his
left hand and continues with the thumb on the second hand, so that the
forefinger becomes a figure of seven. The verb Komba, to point,
which denotes the forefinger as the pointer, is founded on the name of
the number seven, and the Seven Stars were the primordial Pointers.
It is quite possible, too, that when the North American Indians
make the sign of Good2 with the thumb and forefinger of the right
hand in front of the mouth the other fingers being closed, it is as the
1 Tylor. 2 Burton.
220 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
sign of number 7, the figure of good, luck, plenty, lots of food, in
the hieroglyphics.
There is nothing more common than the interchange of the
numbers 7 and 10 under the one root-name in the African and other
groups of languages. This is on account of the digital origin of
numbers and the naming in the stage of gesture-sign. Both hands
held up were the first sign of ten, and Seven was indicated by one
hand and two digits, or the second digit on the right hand.
Kepti or Kabti in Egyptian denotes two arms, two fists, or two
hands. From Kepti we derive Hepti and Sebti, number 7. Kep-ti
may be read 5ŕ2, or twice 5, because the ti adds 2, or it may dupli-
cate the hand. These were distinguisbed by the different gestures.
A perfect parallel to Kepti (or Seb-ti) for either 7 or 10, as hand
(Kep) and ti for two, or twice one hand, may be found in the Jower
dialect of the Papuan group in which Rebe is number 1, Redoe is
number 2; Brai-a-rebe, or five-and-one make the number 6; but,
Brai-a-redoe, actually 5 and 2, is the name for number Ten. To make
the ten out of Brai-a-redoe, or 5ŕ2, the 2 must duplicate the 5 or the
hand just as the ti in Kepti would have to duplicate the hand to make
the value of the number 10 out of a word otherwise signifying 5ŕ2
or number 7.
The general Kamite or Inner African mode of compounding the
7 is by 5 + 2. In the Vei, Sumfela; Gbandi, Ngofela; Menda,
Wo-fela, &c., for the number 7; the fela denotes Two. Dsowe-didi,
for number 7 in Gobboru and Kano, is 5 + 2. Tan-na-peli, is 5 and 2
for 7 in Matatan, and Tanu-na-Beli in Kiriman. Hem-leso in Krebo is
number 7 as 5 + 2. Here the Sum, Hem, and Dsowe for 5 are identical
with the Egyptian Seb (5) and Assyrian Hamsu.
The Egyptian number 7 as ŖSefekh,ŗ is found to be written by
5 + 2 in the style of the goddess Sefekh with the seven rays or horns,
and this can only be read as Sef, 5, and kh, 2, from khi, the duplicate,
the second or two, seven being the second digit on the second hand. The
Two Hands of Heaven were the Two Bears. The Bear constellation
is Kep, and the two are Kepti. Kep or Keb is the earliest form of
Seb (Time, Xaip in the Namaqua Hottentot), and she was the Mother
of all time, as goddess of the Seven Stars. Sebti becomes Sothis
the Manifestor of Time, named from th etwo hands of time Kep-ti,
whence Hepti and Sebti for number 7. The Two Hands turned
round and Sebti (Sothis) struck the hour of the year. To this origin
in the handŕ2, or Keptiŕmay be traced the type-name for number
7 as:ŕ
Keopits, Witshita. Hepti, Egyptian. Heft, Duman.
Chappo(t), Minetari. Hapt, Biluch. Saptan, Sanskrit.
Sambag, Runda. Hapta, Zend. Septem, Latin.
Shebata, Kaffa. Epta, Greek. Efta, Tater.
Subhat, Amharic. Haft, Brahni. Avita, Koro.
Sate, Hurrur. Half, Persian. Fitu, Malagasy.
Sabata, Gonga. Heft, Khurbat Vitu, Fiji.
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 221
Whitu, Maori. Fito, Mayorga. Pito, Tagala.
Fitu, Batta. Fetto, Wahitaho. Pitu, Cayagan.
Fitu, Malay. Pitu, Ceram. Pitu, Sasak.
Fiet, Salawatti. Pito, Bissayan. Petu, or Pedu, Savu.
Fitu, Magarei. Pito, Iloco. Pidu, Bima
of the Moon-God and the Calculator, also means the full; and in
Inner Africa the Full Moon is Etako in Wun; Etago in Bidsogo.
The two crossed hands or fingers depict the cross sign of Tek that
became the Tau and the letter T which was not, as de Brosses thought,
unconsciously used to designate fixity, for Teku (Eg.) signifies to make
fixed. Another cross, the Tat, is a sign of fixity, and to establish for
ever, whilst Teta is the Eternal. Tat is also the hand-type. The Tek
Cross X is one figure of 10, founded on the Crossed Tat (or hand)
which first signified Ten as the extreme limit, the Infinte or Im-
passable. It is probable that the origin of the gesture made by
clasping the hands in the postute of prayer or beseeching, may be
traced to the act of digital reckoning. The Ten or both hands, that is
the total, thus indicated the All. When the Zulus count a hundred
the open fingers of both bands are crossed and clasped together at
the completion of each 10, as the sign of totality.
So in the clasp or hands in prayer or propitiation, the sign
would be one of tenfold and total submission to the superior power,
and therefore the symbol of utter beseeching.
The Hebrew Rabbins speak of the Ŗprimitive existence contained in
the letter Jad,ŗ which is Ŗunspeakable, incomprehensible, unapproachable,ŗ
because, in reality, it is related to the most primitive beginnings, the
utter simplicity of which supplied the later ineffable mysteries of the mental
twilight. The Jad is the hand, and it has the numeral value of 10, or
of two hands, and was therefore made a type of the biune one, applied
to Deity.
The two hands (Kepti) clasped together and cut off at the wrists
make the: hieroglyphlc sign of No. 10, Í; and the most archaic
Phœnician or Etruscan form of the letter Jad Í is evidently the
hieroglyphic Ten; hence the Jad, called a hand, has the value of two
hands, or No. 10.
According to Menasseh Ben Israel the name of Jah is not only that
of the dual divine essence itself but it also designated the Atziluthic
World, or the World of Emanations which contained the Ten Siphi-
roth. Jah is the Hebrew form of the Twin IU, AO, or IAU, and the
Two-one and Ten are identical in the Kabalist scheme, just as they
are in the two hands. Hence the power of the Mystical Jad-sign of
the Two Hands.
Ten was synonymous with the All, the Infinite or Impassable, as
two had once been in Neb (Eg.) for the All. Hor-Apollo makes an
uninterpreted allusion 1 to the ten-sign of the clasped fingers. He
says ŖSeven letters included within two fingers—™n dusˆ daktÚloij
symbolize a song, or Infinite.ŗ It has been suggested by De Pauw that
he meant daktulioij, rings, or within a ring. But the reference is to
the sign of the two curved hands which were determined by the two
Leipzig, 1853.
226 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
broad arrow of A 1 at Lloydřs. 1 Thus our A 1, broad arrow, twin
rays, or Cyfriu sign # is identical at last with the Egyptian Au
(a calf of either sex) the AO of the Mexicans and Greeks; the IO of
the Mangaians and Maori, and with the I, the one being, two hands
and ten digits, which were the first forms of the two and the ten in
figures, or in letters.
The Ogham marks are in sets of fiveŕthe single stroke, double stroke,
three strokes, four strokes, and five strokes. The group of five is the
aieme, Irish, or qv in Welsh. Both Kef and Aem in Egyptian denote
the hand as a fist of five. The Ogham is based on hand-reckoning and
on the straight and oblique strokes which turn to either hand; the one
that becomes twain in the two rays or two hands. Thus the Ogham is
the circle of hand-reckoning, the earliest form of that by which time is
still reckoned on the face of the clock. It is from this concrete base
that the more abstract Ghuaim, Guaim, or Wisdom, through which the
Barddas were able to compose, was derived, not vice versâ. Finally, as
before said, the Cornish Dek, Breton Dec, and Welsh Deg, for Number
10, repeat the hieroglyphic Tek, the sign of which is x, the figure
of 10 or ten (Tekari) fingers represented by the double stroke.
The Chinese ŖThree Lightsŗ are likewise identical in origin and
significance with the ŖThree Shoutsŗ of the British. The radical
ŗKiŗ or ŖShiŗ is the sign of the Three Lights, according to
Chinese etymologists, and this figure includes the Triadic
form of the biune one. It is also employed to indicate the
supernatural or revelation, as was the Cyfrui sign of the
Barddas. Moreover, in the Amoy dialect, IU signifies origin, the son
and the masculine soul.
This will show that the Kabalists and Athanasius Kircher, who
claimed a most ancient origin for these figures and types of the
Kabalah were right, and the modernisers of the Kabalah are in a
great measure wrong.
The worshippers of Iau (or Hu) were the Iaus or Jews by name,
whether in Cornwall, Palestine, China, Egypt, or Mangaia. They
must have gone out of Africa when the Number 10 was reckoned on
two hands; the two named IU in Egyptian, which as two hands are
the hieroglyphic 10, the digital sign of the Deity.
The following summaries will show at a glance the relationship of
the hand to numbers and naming, and how the 1 and 5, the 2 and 10,
may have the same name, for reasons already explained. As
numbers and their names originated in the phase of gesture-language
it was by gesture-signs that the different values of the same word
were determined.
Achup in No. 1 in Panos. Kabti is two arms in Egyptian. Kep is the Hand in Egyptian.
Acap is A (one) in Irish. Kabdo is a pair in Galla. Kepu in No. 10 in Landoro.
Kafto is No. 2 in Mordvin. Kif in No. 5 in Bulanda.
And these types are correlative under one name because of the
digital origin in the limb. This base of beginning is well shown in
the Celebes Ternati dialect where Rimoi is Number 1; Romo-didi,
Number 2; Roma-Toha, Number 5.
The African languages prove the paucity and the persistence of
primitive words. One radical does duty for several parts of the body.
Thusŕ
Keba is the hand in Kra. Gumen is the hand in Banyun.
Kaffun ,, ,, Adirar. Kamba ,, ,, Tumbuktu.
Kaf ,, ,, Egyptian. T‟koam ,, ,, Korana.
N‟Kepa ,, ,, Papiah.
The Arm is
Gobo in Oloma. Kova in Koro. Kobeda, in Padsade.
Gibo in Bayon. Kafe in Gadsaga. Sabu, in Momenya.
Gubu in Boritsu. Gubuda in Biafada.
The Shoulder isŕ
Kape in Padsade. Gaba in Mandara. N‟Gamana in Munio.
Kaban in Filham. Kafada in Kadin. N‟Gamana in Kanem.
Gaben in Fulup. Gibar in Boritsu. N‟Gamana in Nřgura.
Goba in Mano. Gema in Gio. Kambo in Param.
Gbo in Gura. Gema in Mu-u. Kambo in Bayon.
Igabo in Sobo. Komba in Pika. Kamba in Momenya.
Gapta in Nřgodsin.
The Finger is
Kobi-bui in Tumbuktu. N‟gibo in Ekamtulufu. Suba in Adira
Ozubo in Opanda. Osba in Wadai. Saba in Beran.
That is because the limb or branch of the body was named first, not
the particular limb, and one limb or part of it may bear the type-
name in one group of languages, and a different limb in another.
This principle of dispersion can be followed under the type name of
the limb.
228 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The number 5 is
Lime in Malagasi. Lima in Batta dialects. Lima in Sandwich Islands.
Lima in Ende. Lema in Savu. Lima in Rotuma.
Lima in Sasak. Lema in Tiomur. Lima in Cocos Island.
Lima in Bima. Lema in Manatoto. Lima in Fiji.
Lima in Sumbawa. Lam in Tonquin. Rima in Maori.
Lima inMangarei. Lima in Ceram.
because
Liman is the hand in Macassar. Lamh is the hand in Irish.
Liman ,, ,, Kiesa. Lamh ,, ,, Scotch.
Liman ,, ,, Baba. Lave ,, ,, Manx.
Liman ,, ,, Keh Doulan. Lof ,, ,, Cornish.
Liman ,, ,, Buton. Alemade ,, ,, Dumagat.
Liman ,, ,, Solor. Rima ,, ,, Favorlang.
Leima ,, ,, Satawal. Rima ,, ,, Sida.
Lima ,, ,, Fakaofo. Rima ,, ,, Ende.
Lima ,, ,, Malay. Rima ,, ,, Bima.
Lima ,, ,, Wokan. Rumeni ,, ,, Betoi.
Lima ,, ,, Mandahar. Rimani ,, ,, Saparua.
Lima ,, ,, Bugis. Rima ,, ,, Bauro.
This radical of language had not only passed into the British Isles,
but is also found as
Ramo, the finger, Sunda. Lima, the finger, Port Praslin. Limak, the arm, New Ireland.
Lima ,, Bati. Oulima, ,, New Ireland.
The Carib name for 10, or the fingers of both hands, is Chounoucabo-
raim; and for 20, or the fingers and toes, it is Chounougouci-raim.
The hand leads us to the limb, as arm or shoulder. The Egyptian
Remen is an arm, the shoulder, to touch the shoulder, a measure, a
span, an extent, as far as the limit, which shows the Remn or arm
in relation to measure by the limb; an early mode of determining
the limit. The Bohemian Rameno for the shoulder, arm, and branch
retains the full form of Ermennu (Eg.) which signifies the shoulder as well
as the arm. The Russian Ramo is the shoulder, the Latin Ramus the
branch or arm. Armeus (Lat.) is the shoulder-joint, particularly of the
animal, from which the arm is the branch. The English arm (earm)
and limb represent the general type.
The Rim, Lim, or Limb is various. In the Anfue (African) dialect
the arm is the Alome; in Takpa the Lem is the foot. Remmu in the
Galla languges is the type-name for number 2, answering to the two
arms or Rems. Baram is number 2 in Wolof; Moa-lembo in Undaza.
This name was also applied to the paddle or oar. The hands of
Horus are designated his paddles, and the oar is the
Remi, Latin. Ramh, Gaelic. Leamnh, Gaelic.
Rem, French Romance. Riem, Dutch.
Following the paddle we have the helm from the same origin.
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 229
The African Remen or Lemen deposits both Rem and Ren (or Len)
hence the interchange, and the hand is
Aranine in Mare. Lengye in Biajuk. Lango in Tibetan.
Renga in Kupuas. Lingan in Menadu. Lango in Serpa.
Rongo in Murung. Ranka in Lithuanic. Lang, No. 5, in Cochin China.
The Renn (Eg.) is the child, and the branch or shoot of the tree.
Lan in Chinese Amoy, is the type-name for branches, as in Renpu
(Eg.) for the brach. So in the African Gadsaga the Lemine is the
boy, the branch. The child is the human branch of the mother
(whose type was the tree) and in provincial English is often called a
limb. With the Kamilaroi people the limbs of a tree include the arm,
but the thick branch is a thigh, which points to the genitrix, as the
Tree of Life. In Egypt she was Rennut by name, the mother of the
Renn or child.
In the North American sign-language the idea of offspring or
human branches is pourtrayed by a peculiar gesture which is made
by the two hands drawn downward from the loins or reins, at time
with an added illustration of the mother bringing forth or branching in
parturition.
Lastly the Rima or five branches of the hand, together with the
reckoning of five thereon will explain why Rim in Icelandic is a com-
putation, a reckoning; the calendar; why Riman, in old English is
to number; Riomh or Riamh, in Irish, is numeration, reckoning; and
the Ream in English is a reckoning of twenty quires of paper.
Here the prototype was the Tree and its limbs; and the Limb and
its branches, one body with two limbs, whether these are reckoned
as arms or legs, and five branches to each limb; the tree being a
primal figure of the mother. And the Tree itself, as the African
Cotton-Tree, is
Limi in Bagrmi. Limi in Bornu. Limi in Kandi.
Limi in Housa. Limi in Munio. Eram in Papiah.
Limi in Kadzina. Limi in Nřguru. Aram in Param.
This naming of the one that becomes twin is at the very bifurcation
of all beginning. When the ear is called Duas in lrish and Scotch,
that is from its twinship. In Egyptian the ear is named Ankh (as it
is in many other languages), and Ankh also means a pair. Kaf and
Kab are the hand and arm, and Kab (Eg.) signifies double; Kabel, in
Kaffir, to part in two. The knee-pan is a Kap in Egyptian and Cap
English. That also is a dual type. The mouth as the Gab or Chaps
is another, and the twin-type in each case determines the name.
The chief hieroglyphic of the one who divided to produce the Two
is the hinder (feminine) thigh, the Khepsh type of the genitrix Khep
or Kheb; and in the Inner African languages the thigh as type of her
who divides and doubles is namedŕ
Gba in Mano. Ghari in Gbandi. Kebel in Mutsaya.
Gba in Mende. Kufa in Bode. Kebele in Ntere.
Gbara in Toma. Kebei in Nao. Kebele in Mbamba.
Gbara in Landoro.
230 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The Gba or Khepsh thigh was the Divider in parturition. And
here we quote a specimen of the beginnings which are so simple as to
make the explanation appear incredible, and the too-knowing will be
sure to denounce me as over simple.
We read in the Ritual, ŖI come forth as his child from his sword,
accompanied by the Eye of Horus,ŗ i.e., the feminine mirror.1 Such
language is extant in other sacred writings, and has never been inter-
preted. But how can a child be born from a sword?
In Egyptian the sabre or scimetar is a Khepsh, 7 a Sanskrit
Kubja (Greek Xiphos), a crooked sword, a scimetarŕand this has
the same name as the hinder thigh, which is represented by the :
hind leg of the hippopotamus, the genitrix of the Typhonians; the
one Khepsh being copied from the other. The hinder thigh is also a
type called ŖUr Heka,ŗ the great magic power. This identifies the
female sexual part as the great magic power of the primitive mind;
the typical Power before a sword was manufactured to be called a
ŖKhepsh,ŗ as a weapon of power. The sword or Khepsh being
named from the hinder thigh, these equate, have one name and are
equivalent as types. Next, the sword is identical with the dove
(the Yoneh), and both are blended in one image under one name,
because of the origin in the great magic power or Yoni. In the
Hebrew the allusions to the oppressing sword 2 serve to recall the
Assyrian emblem of the sword and dove, which were figured in one
image.3 Hence the sword with the divided tail of a bird that was
continued in the Greek celidèn, the sword ending in the birdřs tail.
The same symbolism is found in Japan. One of the ancient
weapons of the Stone Age is called the stone knife of the green
dragon, because the conventional green dragon has a sword at the
end of its tails. Thus the hinder part is synonymous with the weapon
as it is in the Egyptian Khepsh. In accordance with this interchange,
the Arabic name of the star Alpha in the dove (Columba) is Fakhz,
the thigh.
But this is the important point. The Khepsh sabre as the weapon
used for cutting and dividing was named from the Khepsh thigh
because that was the primordial Divider in the body and in giving birth.
Numbers and their names are based on a oneness or a one that
divides and duplicates, with the human body and its two arms as
chief illustrators in gesture-language. But the same tale is told by
every other type-name of this beginning.
The root Tan, tin, or ten is another of the type-words of numbers.
The Egpytian Ten to cut off, divide, separate in two halvesŕten
being then half-moonŕshows the reckoning by division. Ten also
signifies the amount, each and every, that is cut off and reckoned as
a total. Ten (Eg.) as 10 Kat, is the equivalent of our ten for the
1 Ch. 40. 2 Jer. xlvi. 16, and l. 16.
half score. The whole Moon was Tent cut in two (English tined) to
make the fortnight.
The Tennu (Eg.) are the Lunar Eclipses which measured time by
cutting off the light. Ten, Chinese, is to cut in two; Tanumi, Maori,
to double; English twain, to be double. Thus twain and ten are
identifiable with the aid of the two hands or two legs. The Marque-
sans reckon their fruit and fish by the Tauna, or two-one; they
take one in each hand and count by the pair instead of the unit.
Their one is twin 1 as it was in the bifurcation of the beginning. Ten,
in Egyptian, is a plural for Ŗye,ŗ and Ŗyour;ŗ Tin is Ŗtheyŗ or
Ŗthemŗ in the Motor language. This is the most common name for
the foot in the Australian dialects, which isŕ
Tona, Jervis Bay. Tina, Lake Macquarie. Dinang, Wirsdurei.
Tina, Peel River.
Tenna, Port Phillip.
Tianna-mook, Witouro.
Dana, Muruya.
Dien, or Tian, {King Georgeřs
Sound.
Tinna, Adelaide. Dina, Bathurst. Dana, Liverpool.
Tenna, Gulf St. Vincent. Dina, Meidji. Idna, Parnkalla.
Tinna, Karuala. Dinna, Kamilaroi. Dtun, Aiawong.
This radical Dsen Or Tsen (whene Sen and Ten), supplies a type-
name that runs through all language for things fundamental and
foundational. Sunn, Assyrian, signifies foundation, or fulcrum.
Sunu (Eg.) is to found, with various types and modes of founding.
One is a stone Statue, another an endless cord twisted into loops
without any tie. The types of Foundation are many; the Prototype
being one, with variants, and the Name one. In Chinese, another
type of Sin is the heart; Latin, Sinu; French Sein. The heart
offers an important ideographic type. In Egyptian the heart as Mat
and Hat is identical with another habitation, the Womb. ŖMy
Heart is my Mother,ŗ says the Osirian in the Ritual. It was a figure
of basis, foundation, beginning; abode of life.
In the Imperial Dictionary of Kang-hi. out of 44,500 words, 1,097
are founded on this radical Sin, one type of which is the Heart.
Thus the Heart may be an ideograph worth 1097 words. This
lands us in the domain of Thing, Types, and Ideographs as the
earlier stratum of language. Other forms of foundation are seen in
Sende, Kaffir, a testicle; Shin, Hebrew, a tooth; Sunu (Gael), a
wall; Son, a beam or joist; Son, Mantshu Tartar, the rafters of the
roof; Sen, French Romance, a road; Sanaa, Arabic, a water-dam;
Tseen, Chinese, a bank raised against the water. The founder as
the Bee is Soni in Pika (African); and in Chinese, the foundry, or
TYPOLOGY OF NUMBERS. 233
has affirmed that the blue heaven does not appear in the Veda, the
Avesta, or the Old Testament. It is true that language did not
commence by naming those mere appearances of things in which the
comparative mythologists take such inordinate delight; true that
colours are among those appearances and qualities, just as white is
of wheatŕwhen ground into flour. Many early languages have no
word for blue as a colour, and yet blue as a thing may be found in
them.
The Ja-jow-er-ong dialect of Australia uses the sky itself, Ŗwoorer-
woorer,ŗ for blue. That was the thing.
In Maori and Mangaian there may be no name for blue as hue
and tint; but this does not show that the people did not know the
blue heaven from the white or red heaven when they saw it.
The ŖZuluŗ name signifies heaven, as The Blue. Hence, deep
water is called Zulu. Zulura, for the blue thing, literally means
skyishness.
In Pazand the word Açma denotes both stone and heaven, and, as
shown by the Minokhird, heaven was identical with precious stone.
The Hebrew heaven is the paved work of sapphire stone beneath
the feet of the eternal.1 Samu (Ass.) is both sky and blue.
The Egyptian name for blue is Khesbet; that is, lapis-lazuli.
The Egyptian Heaven was either the Blue Stone, the blue temper-
tinted steel, or the blue sea overhead.
The water above is the blue heaven, and in the Ritual the blue
called the ŖUpper Watersŗ is identified with the blue Woof of
Heaven in the worship of Uat, Goddess of the Northern Heaven.2
If a language does not possess a word for blue as a colour, it may
for a blue stone, and certainly will for water.
A lesson in the primitive system of colour-naming may be learned
from the Hottentot language in which the word for colour itself is
īsib, signifying form, shape, likeness, and appearance. Such a word
includes various qualities and properties of things under one name.
Yellow (Hūni) means the ground-colour, the sandy soil; Brown
(Gamab) is the vley-colour, i.e. the bottom of a dried-up pond; Red
(Ava) is the blood-colour; Grey (Khan) is the colour of the Bos
Elaphus; Spotted (Garu) means the Leopard; White is egg-coloured;
Am for green, originally meant springing up and shooting forth like
the verdure.3 Hence when the rainbow is also called Am the sense is
not limited to the green-colour, because it likewise springs forth spon-
taneously. This serves to show how the primitive thinkers thought
in things when distinguishing properties, qualities, or appearances;
how things first suggested the ideas that were afterwards conveyed
by words; and how the more abstract forms of phenomena took
names in language by means of the concrete,ŕthe unknown being
expressed in typology by means of the known.
1 Ex. xxiv. 10. 2 Ritual, Ch. 110. 3 Hahn, Tsuni Goam, p. 26.
238 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Power of perceiving qualities and distinguishing things did not
depend on the possession of words to express shades of difference.
Sweet could be distinguished from bitter when the one was only ex-
pressed by the mouth watering, and a smack of gustativeness; the
other by spitting with the accompaniment of an interjection of re-
pugnance. So far from Ŗconscious perception being impossibleŗ
without a word for each colour, the one word Uat (Eg.) for water
does duty for several colours, for blue and green water, various paints,
plants, and stones. Perception of different colours did not depend on
divers words; one served with several determinatives in things. The
early men thought in things and images where we think in words, or
think we think. Plutarch says, ŖThey that have not learned the
true sense of words will mistake also in the nature of things.ŗ 1 So
we may say that those who have not learned the true nature of
things will mistake the sense of words.
Professor Sayce holds that there is Ŗno reason in the nature of
things why the word Book should represent the volume which might
just as well be denoted by Biblion.ŗ But the Ŗnature of things,ŗ
tells us the Book was the tablet of beech-bark in Britain and the
palm (Buka) of Taht in Egypt. The Biblion from Bib (Eg.) to roll
or be round, had been the roll of papyrus before it was the book.
Indeed the oldest words can only tell the most important part of
their history when re-related to things. Mere philology can never
reach the origins for lack of determinatives.
The Egyptian ŖKamŗ may be quoted to indicate the relationship
of words to things. Kam signifies black; and Plutarch tells us the
Egyptians applied the word to the dark of the eye, the Mirror. The
dark was the Mother as reproducer of light. The pupil of the eye
reproduces the image. To reproduce is to begin, hence ŖKam,ŗ also
meant to form, to create. Here the word branches out in the region
of things and modes of action; there being various means of forming
and creating. Egypt was literally created by the Nile, and named
Kam, not merely as the Black land! The sculptor forms and creates
the image by carving; and ŖKamŗ also signifies to carve. That
which is carved may become the ŖKam-huŗ (Eg.) a joint of meat,
or in the ŖCameo,ŗ a carven image, the root for which word has never
been found.2 The Word at first was but a wavering, wandering
shadow of things which are the determinatives of its meanings that
only become finally definite in the ideographical phase which the
Aryanists have entirely ignored.
There is no way of attaining the early standpoint and getting back
to an origin for words excpt by learning once more to think in
things, images, ideographs, hieroglyphics, and gesture-signs. The
1 Of Isis and Osiris.
2 Cf. Kamut (Eg.), to carve, or a carving. Lepsius, Denkmäler, &c. 48, A. Kam also
interchanges with Kan, for carving in ivory.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 239
space, when we find how few they were at first and how faithfully they
were preserved. The earliest races preserved them of necessity.
ŖNever change barbarous names,ŗ said the Chaldean oracle.1 Also,
the cry of the Greek writers was for the people to treasure up
the Ŗbarbarousŗ or foreign words in their language, although they
might not know from whence these had been derived, nor what was
their exact import. When pleading before the tribunal of eternal
justice the Osirified deceased declares that among other saving virtues
he has never altered a story in the telling of it. And such was the
spirit in which the primitive races preserved their knowledge, customs,
traditions, and words.
But we have to go beyond words to make a beginning at the
stage where the act of Sucking might have produced its own self-
naming sound in the ŖTt-Ttŗ of the suckling.
The earliest Verb would be indicated by the action; the first Substan-
tive by the sound accompanying the gesture or action. The gestures
must have been simple, self-defining, and the sounds accompanying
them would have a natural accord.
Some non-evolutionary writers on language, who, as the Egyptian
priest said of the Greeks, wear the down of juvenility in their souls,
appear to speak as if the origin of language itself depended on
ŖGrimmřs Law.ŗ Indeed, one shallow reviewer of the previous
volumes of this work thought it sufficient to condemn them if he put
forth the foolish falsehood that the author had expressed supreme
contempt for ŖGrimmřs Law.ŗ
Grimm having pointed out a law of diversity which governs the
interchange of certain phonetics his followers have further assumed
the non-existence of a law of uniformity in an earlier stratum of
language. But words did not have their beginning in any known
form of the Aryan languages, and the proto-Aryan is unknown to
them, excepting that which has been created by the Evolutionists of
the inner consciousness.
Whilst limiting their comparative diagnosis to this restricted area
they confidently affirm that when two words are spelt alike in two
different historic languages they cannot be the same; Grimmřs Law
forbids. Further research and a wider application of the comparative
process might have taught them that it does nothing of the kind.
Indeed, the true moral, the workable and profitable deduction, to be
derived from Grimmřs Law is that words do persist and retain the
same signification in spite of, and not in consequence of, the racial
or the dialect differences that may be tabulated under that Law.
The followers of Grimm have led men to believe that beyond the
little Aryan oasis there is a desert world, trackless, chartless, limitless;
and that none but they could lead in the work of showing the way;
towards which they have not yet advanced the second step. For
1 Cory, Ancient Fragments. [ed. 1832], p. 271.
242 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Grimmřs law has been to them the obliterator of landmarks through-
out the range of the pre-historic past. According to the prevailing
delusion and the preposterous pretensions of its advocates, it is not
only unsound and non-scientific but positively pitiful for any one to
compare the words and myths of two different languages which they
have not previously proved to be grammatically allied; this being one
of the Ŗfirst principlesŗ of ŖComparative Philology.ŗ
They hve come to the conclusion that hardly any relation
exists in language between the sound and the sense of words,
whereas in the earliest stages both were one; and now the fundamental
sense can only be found in that phase of unity. On the same kind of
authority it would be unscientific and absurd to compare the gesture-
signs of the North American Indians with those which survive in the
Egyptian hieroglyphics until we have first demonstrated the gram-
matical affinity of the Algonkin and Egyptian languages. Thus
stated the theory exposes its own exceeding futility.
In Grimmřs Lawŕto use a very homely metaphorŕphilologists
have found a fork and laid hold of it at the prong-end. The prongs
are known to them, but the unity beyond it is unknown and denied,
because they have not reached the handle.
One writer says the Aryan and Semitic languages may have been
originally connected, but there is no Grimm‟s Law which will allow us
to prove this. He therefore assumes that connection and relationship
can only be demonstrated by unlikeness. For Semitic let us substi-
tute Kamitic, and a comparative vocabulary in these volumes will
then show that the word-stock of Egyptian and Sanskrit must have
been essentially the same in the proto-Aryan stage.
Pre-historic and pre-Aryan words have remained the same indepen-
dently of later grammar or phonetic systems. Words coined when
we have but ten letters or yet fewer sounds, survive in their primitive
forms even when we have twenty-six. Addition did not always in-
volve transliteration or supercession, any more with words than with
races; whereas continual re-beginnings in language and in myth-
ology are assumed by the non-evolutionist interpreters of the past.
But it is only by the aid of what is here designated as ŖCompara-
tive Typologyŗ that we could ever reach the stages of language in
which the unity of origin can be recoverable. Gesture-signs and
ideographic symbols alone preserve the early language in visible figures.
We are unable to get to the roots of all that has been pictured,
printed, or written, except by deciphering the signs made primally by
the early man. The latest forms of these have to be traced back to
the first before we can know anything of the Origines; these are the
true radicals of languages, without which the philologist has no final or
adequate determinatives, and hitherto these have been left outside the
range of discussion by Grimm, Bopp, Pictet, Müller, Fick, Schleicher,
Whitney, and the rest of the Aryan school.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 243
The Cow is
Gava, in Sanskrit. Govyado, a Herd of Cows, in Sclavonic.
Gavi, in Gothic. Kaûi, or Khepsh, in Egyptian.
Khaboi-kumi, in Indo-Chinese. Geûsh, in Pahlavi.
Chuo (plural Chuowi) in High German. Gows, or Govjado, in Lettish.
Cow, in English.
The original African form that includes and accounts for the whole
of these Variants is found as
Ngompe, in Songo. Ngombe, in Nřgola. Ngombe, in Kassands.
Nkombe, in Kisama. Ngombe, in Basunde. Ngombe, in Musentandu.
Nkombe, in Kabenda. Ngombe, in Nyombe. Ngombe, in Mimboma.
Ongombe, in Pangela.
and other African dialects. But the natives are not trying to talk
Aryan!
These things were named in the stage of primitive prounciation,
when what we now know as consonants were sounded double as in
ŖNGŗ for the later N or G, and ŖMbŗ for the later M or b, before
they had been fully evolved, made out, and discreted into our
single sounds.
It is at this depth of rootage we have to seek for the reason why
M and B, N and G, T and S (or K), K and F, &c., became inter-
changeable in later language, and we shall find it is because they are
twin from the birth as aboriginal sounds, first uttered by one effort, which
were afterwards evolved, divided, and distinguished as two distinct
phonetics or letters in later language.
The process here indicated is that of Nature herself elsewhere, one
of dividing, discreting, and specializing on lines of variation from an
original form of embroyonic unity.
The Ŗorigin of languageŗ itself is not a problem to be attacked
and solved by philosophical speculations like that of Dr. Noiré.
However happy the guess or ingenious the generalisation, it can only
be one of the many may-have-beens to which there is no end. To know
anything with certitude we must go back the way we came, along a
track that only the evolutionist is free to pursue and explore.
248 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The formulaŕŖNo reason without speech; no speech without reason;ŗ
or Ŗwithout language no thought,ŗ is equal to saying Ŗwithout clothes
no man.ŗ We know now that the dumb think,1 and that man had a
gesture-language when he was otherwise dumb.
Darwinřs work on the Expression of the Emotions in Animals and
Men, and Colonel Malleryřs Contributions on the Sign-Languages of the
North American Indians, are of more value here than all that has
been written on the origin of language by philologists, philosophers,
or metaphysicians. Speculations without the primary data can
establish nothing; and these have never been collected and correlated
by those who were evolutionists.
We are now able to affirm on evidence that there have been con-
tinuity and development from the first, in accordance with the laws
of evolution, and that there was but one beginning for language, mytho-
logy, and symbolism, however numerous the missing intermediate
forms of widely scattered the nearest links.
Fortunately Nature is very careful of the type when it is once
evolved. In truth she seems to stereotype. Nothing is entirely lost
or altogether effaced. In various ways we are still the contemporaries
of primitive man. The Red Indian and Black African still pound
and eat the seeds of grasses for their bread, as did the savages before
the cereals were cultivated for corn.
The type of warfare that was founded when the monkeys first
threw stones at each other has been continued ever since. It still
dominates when the hundred-ton cannons hurl their ponderous shells.
So it has been with other types, in gesture-language, in verbal
speech and aboriginal sounds, in totemic customs, religious rites and
primæval laws. There have been development and extension, but no
one can point to entire re-beginnings.
Unity of origin in language was only possible when the human
intelligence was too limited to disagree and diverge; and the race
was a mental herd making the same signs and sounds for ages on
ages, without choice in the matter or desire to differ. The name of
the Cock, for example, may be claimed to be self-conferred, and,
according to the onomatopœist, was so given and might be given at
any time in any language or land. But this might be, this choice in
the matter, if extendend, would let in a deluge of individual differ-
ences which was not possible to a common origin. There could be
no consensus of agreement if all mankind set up as conscious language-
makers according to the principle of imitation or onomatopœia.
There was but one stage at which the principle could have wrought in
the creation of language; that was at the commencement.
The beginnings were not, as some writers on the subject would have
us believe, like mere circles in the water or the air, which give their
1 ŖIs Thought Possible without Language?ŗ By Prof. Samuel Porter (of the
National Deaf Mute College), Princeton Review, January, 1880.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 249
Considering that the human form was evolved out of or thrown off
from antecedent forms, and that Man commenced as one link of the
chain of being prolonged invisibly into the past; it may be assumed
that for a vast period of time he was but slightly growing in advance
of his immediate predecessors; and that the means and modes of
expression previously extant, were shared by him and continued in
his primary stock of sounds. We may be sure there was no such
chasm in nature as is perceptible between them now. On looking
back we see a great gap or gulf, and are apt to ask where is the bridge?
or how did man suddenly leap the gulf? Whereas there was no
sudden large leap any more than there was a vast chasm, at the time,
to be leaped. Fresh points of departure were then so fine as
to be imperceptible now.
The cries of animals and birds constitute a limited language.
The call of the partridge, the neighing of the horse, the low of
the cow, the bleat of the lamb, the bark of the dog, are a current
coinage of ascertained value, quotable for ever in their intercourse.
These are understood and answered as the language of invitation and
defiance, of want (or desire) and warning. That being so the cries
are typical, and therefore on their way to becoming recognised as
phonetic types. In fact they are recognised by the animals as
phonetic types by which passions are expressed in sounds that evoke
a kindred or responsive feeling, and this through a considerable range
of manifestation. The cry of warning is well known in the rookřs caw, the
dogřs bark, the monkeyřs chatter, when he utters the signal of danger
to his fellows. The Cebus Azara of Paraguay is credited with utter-
ing six different sounds, which are said to be capable of exciting
corresponding emotions in its fellows of the same species.1
At least Manřs predecessors uttered a language of warning and want,
as the expression of protecting power and the need of protectionŕthe
voices of Nurse and Childŕin sounds of physical sense that could be
transmitted or imitated.
Manřs earliest expression of gesture and sound was equally
involuntary, or as we say, instinctive, and the first step toward the
formulation of language was made when the natural interjections were
consciously repeated on purpose to arrest attention. Conscious repetition
of the same sound is the first visible phase in the morphology of Words.
We can explain certain evolutionary processes without being able to
tell how or why consciousness unfolded, or even what is consciousness.
1 Faldherbe, Revue de Linguistique, 1875.
250 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
This, however, applies to the pre-human consciousness as well as to
that of Man.
Personally the present writer holds that the main difference
betwixt Man and Monkey consists in the growing rapport of a more
inner relationship of life with the conscious cause and source of life, of
which Man himself becomes conscious, more or less, in the upward
or inward course of his growth, as the child does of its mother;
and that each form of animal life has its own particular relationship
to life itelf, and carries its own abysmal light in the depths of its
darkness, like the miner in the caverns of earth, or the Pyrosoma in
unfathomed seas.
That, however, is not the side of phenomena of experience with
which we are here concerned. Nor would it avail those who do not
postulate such a consciousness before or beyond (or becoming) the
human. But, we have only to start from the mimesis and clicks of the
Cynocephalus, and assume a slight increase of imitative power as a
result of growth in man, to see how in presence of his deadly enemy the
Snake, for example, he might utter his Sign of Warning in an imitative
manner. As already said, the Cerastes Snake or Puff-Adder became
the letter F; which was a Syllabic Fu and an Ideographic Fuf, our
Puff. Fu (Eg.) denotes puffing, swelling, dilating, and becoming large,
vast, and extended with breath. The Snake distended and Ŗfu-fu‟d,ŗ
and thus made the sound that constituted its name. This sound would
be repeated as the human note of warning, together with an imitative
gesture enacting the Verb, or pourtraying the likeness of the thing
signified by the sound, and such a representation made to eye and
ear would belong to the very genesis of gesture-language. It would
commence when the Ape thrust out its mouth, as it does, and fu-fu-ed
or blew at the Snake; and when Man imitated this action with intent,
the language consisted in the Man‟s becoming the living Ideograph of
the Snake,ŕfor this is the fundamental principle of gesture-language;
and here we may take a furtive glance and catch a glimpse of Manřs
likeness to the monkey, jut as Harold Transome recognised the like-
ness of his own face to that of his unknown father reflected sidewise
in the mirror.1 Naturally also when in conflict with each other or
with their foes, the nascent race having command of sounds would
try to imitate the puffing and hissing of Snakes, the yell of the
Gorilla, the roar of the Lion, or the voice of Thunder, and thus turn
their own terrors inside out to impose them on the enemy by means
of representative noises, which have been more or less continued by
the savage races and are still employed by them in battle.
Dogs, horses, and other animals are known to be so affected by fear
and terror, also by cold, that their hair will stand erect. Of course
terror will turn to cold. This action was involuntary at first, but
with the resulting growth of the arrectores pili or involuntary muscles,
1 Felix Holt, by George Eliot.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 251
came the means of erecting the hair, bristles or spines at will, with
the intention of striking terror.
The earliest natural manifestations that were produced independently
of the will were afterwards turned to account and reproduced at will,
when anger and heat took the place of fear and cold. So would it be
with the voluntary production and development of the sounds that
were at first involuntary. The earliest vocal signs ever made inten-
tionally mut have had a likeness in sound to the thing visibly imaged,
in order that the mental link of connection between Eye and Ear
might be established; and the onomatopœic duplication of sounds
would correspond audibly to the objective representation of ideas with
gesture-signs. Conscious repetition of the same sound by imitation
would constitute the earliest application of mind (or even the sense of
want) to the primary matter of language. At this stage the sound of
ŖTt-ttŗ produced involuntarily by the nursling child, as a need of
nature might have served the child of larger growth for thousands of
years, as his sign in sound for food, eating, hunger, or as the
invitation to eat, which is yet made by the nurse to her nursling in
its own language, with the reduplicated lingual-dental click.
Voluntary reproduction of the sound first made instinctively and
involuntarily would constitute the earliest phase of language. Inten-
tional reduplication which turned the Ŗtutŗ of the childřs smack into
Ŗtut-tut-tutŗ as a sign of the want that created the intent; or the
puff-adderřs Ŗfufŗ into Ŗfuf-fuf-fufŗ as a sound of warning would be
the first creative act in the morphology of words. But such simple
sounds as Ŗtt-ttŗ Ŗfuf-fufŗ Ŗrur-rurŗ Ŗmam-mamŗ may have
existed and sufficed as means of audible expression for other
thousands of years before two different consonantal sounds were con-
sciously combined to form one word.
When the sound of ka-ka was added to fu-fu and the resulting
word kkf or kâf was evolved, then language in the modern sense was
founded. We get the necessary glimpse of this earliest phase in the
prevalence of the principle of duplication still manifest in the simplest
and oldest of known languages and words.
But one fundamental mistake made in applying the onomato-
pœtic theory to language, is in supposing the primitive radicals
of language to be words. Onomatopœtists like Canon Farrar and
Hensleigh Wedgewood include words containing three different
consonants, among those held to be copied on this principle. This
shows no gauge of the problem, and leaves no room for the human
evolution of sounds, without which their value could not have been
sufficiently identified. When the magie, raven, or parrot has had its
tongue cut, and been taught to utter two different consonants in one
sound, it can speak. But the natural and involuntary sounds are
single, or they are not consciously combined; and these were the
only sounds that preceded human speech.
252 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Æons of terrible toil must have been spent in the evolution of the
earliest human sounds into a vocal coinage, during which man was
getting his lungs inflated and his Ŗtongue cutŗ for talking; and when
these were at length evolved, they had to be consciously combined
and re-combined to form words before language could exist according
to the present acceptation of the term. Sounds like fu-fu, ka-ka, and
ru-ru were common to man and animal. But no earlier animal than
man ever consciously combined two different consonants; and language
points back to the time when man himself could only produce and
duplicate the same sound to form his few words.
We say the clock ticks each time the pendulum crosses; and it has
been assumed that the word tick might be directly derived from the
sound. But this tick is a word containing two different consonants,
and not an onomatopœtic sound; that would be simple, like the
nursery gick-gack, for the tick tick. Tek in Egyptian is a measure of
time, and means to cross as does the pendulum in the tick of time.
Tick is one with touch. The touch may make a sound or it may not;
the tick or touch of the pulse does not. Thus the word tick is not the
mere expression of the sound.
The Shah of Persia laughed at the Tatar arrows that went Ŗter-ter.ŗ
Here the seem to make the sound of ter or through as they tear
through the air. But if the T and R had not already been combined
in a word, the arrow would not have said Ŗter.ŗ The arrow is a ter
by name. The hieroglyphic ter is a shoot or tree, and the shooting
Ŗterŗ that pierced through of itself was earlier than shooting with
the arrows that were named from the shoot, and had been so named
in Inner Africa, where the arrow is calledŕ
Ntere, in Matalan. Aturo, in Anfue. Adere, in Ashanti.
In the hieroglyphic the Ram and the Goat are both named ŖBa,ŗ
and the onomatopœist would derive the sound of Ba, directly from
the animal Ba; and if a non-evolutionist he would not question the capacity
of the human being to utter the sound “ba!” at any stage or time.
But this could not be until man had evolved his labials or was able
to bring his lips together. When it was first attempted to teach the
Mohawks to pronounce words with P and B in them, they protested
that it was too ridiculous to expect people to shut their mouths
to speak. F is the Inner African prototype of P and B. B and
P, says Koelle, are sounded like F, and are only employed in a few
languages which possess no real f. 1 Fuf-fut and fu-fu would thus
The Amakosas applied the same type-name to the gun, which they
call ŖUmpu.ŗ This Um is designated a prefix, and it is applied to
any new word that may be introduced into the Kaffir dialects, but it
belongs primarily to a primitive mode of articulating sounds; and
these sounds were the prefixes in the sense or precursors to all later
speech.
The earliest utterance here belongs to the primitive mode of arti-
culating; the type-word includes the Mau and Ba in one, and they
were deposited as two scparate names for the Cat and Ram in a later
and more distinct stage of utterance. We have to derive the earliest
words from the primitive mode of producing sounds, which is more
or less extant, for this aboriginal Mfu or Mpu still survives in our
interjectional ŖUmphŗ as well as in the name of the Dog itself, which
is Amp in Ostiac and Emp in Vogul.
The puff-adder could Ŗfu-fu,ŗ the birds and frogs could Ŗka-ka,ŗ the
thunder could Crack-Crack (or Ŗkak-kak,ŗ as it must have been
before the combination of K with Ru, and is so in the Maori Ngaeke), but
man alone could combine his nasal and guttural in one sound, as
ŖNG,ŗ or turn his ŖUmŗ and ŖFuffŗ into Mfu; two of the most
important sonds, we may now say words, of the Inner African
languages. It is unnecessary then to think of the pre-man as listen-
ing round like a modern onomatopœist, or a schoolboy, imitating
all he could. Imitation of each otherřs voices or sounds is very rare
in the animal world, the mocking-bird being almost alone.
the Sneeze is rendered by the word Tes (Eg. Coptic Djas) and this
word denotes a whole sentence, or so many words tied up, a case of
words; and the self-revealing, self-defining, self-naming Sneeze, or
the Click, the ŖTut-tut,ŗ the puffing or hissing contained a sentence
of words in one act, and one self-naming sound.
In attempting to trace (or suggest) the development of pre-human
sounds into verbal language it appears to me that one line of variation
may be found in the growth of a conscious manipulation of the Breath.
Conscious manipulation of the Breath lies at the origin of the Hot-
tentot Clicks. Whereas the ordinary sounds of language are now
made by the expulsion of the breath, the Clicks are produced on the
opposite principle.
The Clickers, quà Clickers, do not simply exhale their meaning in
sound; they express it by the aid of inhalation; they first lay hold of
the air and suck it in to turn it into articulated sound. The Breath is
prepensely drawn for the Click to be articulated. They are Inspirates
instead of Aspirates. For instance, we have three Aspirates, a
guttural Ŗchŗ as in the Scotch Loch; the ŖHŗ aspirate of the English
and the aspirated ŖPŗ (peh) of the Gael. These three may be
paralleled by three of the Hottentot clicks out of the four employed
by the Namaquas, which are produced by a reversal of the process.
While the anterior part of the tongue is engaged in articulating the Click the
throat opens itself to pronounce any letter that may be sounded in combination
with the click. In pronouncing the click simply by itself without any supple-
mentary vowel or consonant sound, the breath instead of being thrown out as is
usual with other articulations of the voice, is checked or drawn inward, but as
soon as it is combined with any other sound it is strongly emitted. It is difficult
to speak the Namaqua fluently or intelligibly until the art has been acquired of
clicking and aspirating without any perceptible interception of the breath.
We describe the four clicks which are heard in the Namaqua Hottentot by the
characters c, v, q, x.
C is a dental click; it is sounded by pressing the tip of the tongue against the
front teeth of the upper jaw and then suddenly and forcibly withdrawing it.
V is a palatal click, and is sounded by pressing the tip of the tongue, with as flat
a surface as is possible, against the termination of the palate at the gums and
removing it in the same manner as for C.
Q is a cerebral click according to the alphabetical system of Lepsius. It is
sounded by curling up the tip of the tongue against the roof of the palate, and
withdrawing it in the same manner as during the articulation of the other clicks.
X is either a lateral or a cerebral click; that is, it may be sounded either by
placing the tongue against the side teeth or by covering it with the whole of the
palate and producing the sound as far back in the palate as possible, either at what
Lepsius calls the faucal or the guttural point of the palate. European learners
almost invariably sound it as a lateral, and hence their articulation is harsh and
foreign to the native ear. A Namaqua almost invariably aritculates this click
as a cerebral.
The Consonants which can be combined with these clicks are h, k, g, kh, n.1
The Amaxosa Kaffirs employ three clicks which are Ŗrepresented in writing by
our letters C, Q, and X; the C being sounded by withdrawing the tongue sharply
from the front teeth; the Q by doing the same from the roof of the mouth; and
the X by drawing the breath in a peculiar way between the tongue and the side
teeth.ŗ2
1 Tyndal, Namaqua Grammar. 2 Theal, Kaffir Folk-Lore.
258 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
This mode of making the Clicks implies a more consicous manipula-
tion of the Breath for the express purpose of utterance, and shows us
the Inhalers of Air and Expellers of Sound as intentionally at work
in shaping the result as is the man who in whistling formulates a tune
out of Breath, or the player who produces the Vowel-sounds from the
Jewřs harp.
The first thing that the future speaker had to do was to get his
lungs properly developed, by constant inflation, for the utterance of
sounds. He was in a condition akin to but probably worse than that
of the congenital Deaf-Mute. We see the experiment of the Dumb
acquiring the faculty of Speech going on in our own day, and are
shown the processes by which they are taught to articulate. The first
lesson is that of blowing or expiration in order that the lungs may be
fully expanded, and the child instructed to breathe properly.
Padre Marchio says: ŖThe breathing of deaf mutes is as a rule short
and panting. The lungs have the double office of supplying oxygen to the
blood and of furnishing breath—the material of the Voice. The lungs
of the Deaf-Mute being used for only one of these purposes, are im-
perfectly developed, and their functions performed in an abnormal
manner. Hence their disposition to pulmonary disease.ŗ
In the formation of syllables the pupils practise by repeating the
same sounds, such as Pappa, poppo; etc. The word is formed, if
possible, in view of the object, which the Padre calls ŖLanguage in
presence of the Real.ŗ1
The Hottentotřs inhalation of air to produce the clicks may be
compared with the habit of the toad, the puff-adder, and others, of
specially inhaling air when angry to inflate and dilate the body and
express their feeling in a rushing volume of sound; the early in-
voluntary action being continued and repeated intentionally. But as
nothing else in nature is known to produce one consonantal sound by
inhalation and another by expulsion of the breath, and as such sounds
as ŖMfuŗ and ŖNgaŗ are produced by this double process, which
combines a nasal and aspirate in the one case, and a nasal and
guttural in the other, these words may possibly show us Homo in the
position of making a nasal sound whilst drawing in his breath and
combining it with a guttural aspirate in the expulsion of his breath, as
a continuation of the mode by which he produced his clicks; this would
yield compound sounds like Nga and Mfu. Now, supposing this Mfu
(or Mfa) to have been consciously continued as a sound produced by
a double action of inhalation and expulsion of the breath, to be after-
wards distinguished by the separate sounds of M and B, these would
be numerically equal to the singular M and plural B of the numbers
in language. Also the nasal is equivalent to in and the aspirate to out
the Two Truths of the beginning. Moreover, M and N are universally
interchangeable. In Maori, as in some of the African dialects, the M,
1 ŖEphphatha,ŗ Macmillan‟s Magazine, No. 276, p. 447.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 259
In the chapter on the Two Truths it was shown that Water was the
first, Breath the second. Breath, pef (Eg.) or puff, corresponds by
name to No. 2 as Befe (Nki). In puffing we have another of the self-
naming sounds like the Sneeze. This also is one or the prototypes
in primordial onomatopœia. What we term light and lightness being
primarily called puff or pef from the Breath, this becomes an archetypal
word with several variants in the spelling and many applications of
the name. Pef will serve as a type-name for all breath-like and light
things, elements, characters, qualities, actions, and modes of manifesta-
tion in language generally.
Countless light things may be found under this name. Papapa
in Maori is the calabash, chaff, bran, moss, the shell of an egg. The
Bubu, Zulu, is a puff or mushroom, also the down-feathers of birds.
The Abebe Yoruba is a fan. Febe, Zulu, the light person, a harlot.
Bebeza in Xosa is fibbing, or, as the Zulus say, Ŗtalking Windŗ; it may
also be called fabling. Babble is light speech. The Welsh Pabyr is
the light thing, both as the rush and the rush candle. The Puff is
a light tart; the Bap a light cake, and Pap is light food. Papa in
Russian is bread. Bofa, Brescian, to puff and breathe. In Sanskrit
Phuppu denotes panting, gasping, puffing; Pupphula, wind or flatu-
lency; and Pupphusa is a name for the lungs. Edofofo in Yoruba
denotes effervescence or irritability to such an extent that it means
literally a Liver of Foam. Boffy (Eng.) to swell and puff; Bof is a
name of quicklime. Paf (Eg.) for wind and breath, to fly, be light
and puffy, will account for the naming of the thin fluttering tremulous
flower, the Poppy; French Papou or pabeau, and for the Poplar-tree,
Latin Populus and German Pappel, the tree of light, fluttering,
palpitating leaves. This root enters into the names of fluttering
wing-like motion as in the Bavarian Poppeln, to move to and fro, and
Pfopfern to palpitate; poff (Eng.) to run fast, popple to bubble. Yeast
dumplings, which are very light, are, in this sense, termed ŖPop-
abouts.ŗ
260 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
In Kanuri (Inner African) bellows are the Bubute, and in Ife
smoke is named Efifi. Smoking the pipe is accompanied by puffing.
The fife, pipe, pibroch, and the Algonkin Pib are blown with the
breath. The Pub is a blow-tube used by the Indian bird-hunters of
Yucatan; the Bobo, Xosa, a blow-tube. A light leaf called a Pepe
in Maori is blown to attract birds by imitating their sounds. The
act of piping is also called pepe. The blown bladder was a kind of
Bauble. The pap, bubby and the bubbly-jock (turkey-cock) are so
named from their swelling-up. Fuf (fâ, Eg.), Bubi, in Vei, is to puff
or swell in pregnancy; or to puff and swell the sail. Beb (Eg,) is to
exhale, as in the bubble. In Zulu Pupama is to boil and bubble;
Pupu, Tupî, to boil up; Pupu, Maori, to boil up and bubble. In
English Fob is froth, fuf is to blow; Bub, in Scotch, is a gust of
wind. The Buffie is a vent-hole in a cask. To bauffe is to belch;
pupa, Maori, to eructate; Piphi is wind in Bantik; Afufa, Galla, to
blow; Fufai, Magyar, to blow; puput, Malay, and puba, Quiché, to
blow. Vivi, in Vei, is the tornado or hurricane of wind. Also Vovo
denotes the lungs or lights as one of the blowers. The Toad is the
Bufo in Latin and Bufa in Magyar, as puffer and blower.
Pape or Ppat (Eg.) means to fly. The Ppat or Pât are the
flyers as fowls, Pep or Pef being the breath, wind, a gust of air; this
was the first flyer, the means of flight, and the winged things were
named after it. Pepe in Maori is the Moth; Bebe in Fiji; the Papilio
in Latin is the butterfly. Ni-pupa, Makua, is the wing; Bubi,
Malay, the feathers; pubes denotes the human feather or hair. Baba,
in Xosa Kaffir, is to flutter as a bird, whence Babama, to swell and
flutter in feeling.
The Butterfly was an early type of the Soul of Breath. The Karens
of Burmah call a manřs soul his ŖLeip-pyaŗ (Leip-pfa) or his butterfly,
which is supposed to wander away when he is sick, and to need catch-
ing or hunting back into his body again. In Xosa Kaffir, Pupu is
the name of the hairy caterpillar, and Pupa is a dream and to dream,
which is significant in relation to the soul. Pabo (Eg.) is a soul; Pepo,
Swahili, a spirit or sprite; Phepo (Inner African), a ghost; Popo,
Esthonian, Bubus, Magyar; Bobaw, Limousin; Bubach, Welsh, is a
spirit or ghost; Pefumlo, Kaffir, the soul; Beba, Zulu, to inspire the
soul; as in Pepe (Eg.) to engender; soul and breath being synonymous.
Bube is breath or wind in Galla; Pefu (Xosa) to take breath.
an earlier fab. Also the Bethuck, Wobee; Cree, Wabisca; Ojibwa, Wawbishkaw;
Old Algonkin, Wabi; Micmac, Wabeck; Sheshatapoosh, Wakpou; Passama-
guoddy, Wapio, the type-name for white.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 263
childřs death, as her puppet, the type of her lost little one; and this
Pepe, Bebe, or Babe, was continued by name in the round Bubu-beads,
nine of which were worn in the collar of Isis during gestation. The
Babe, Pupa, and Puppet, are three of the homotypes by name.1
In Italian the Pupa or Puppa is the childřs baby or puppet, the
Pup or Puppy, as little one; English Poppet, a puppet; idol, darling.
The Dutch Pop is the cocoon or case of the caterpillar, and also
denotes the puppet, doll, and baby.
The African languages show us the stage at which the whole of the
Light things and things of Light could be indicated by one word
or the sound of the breath expelled in a puff to accompany the
ideographic gesture-signs which delineated the things or thoughts
intended. The words are all correlative according to one type, and a
principle previously identified with the second of Two Truths. Nor
can there be any difficulty in connecting an archetypal idea of
Pef or fuf with its expression in sound. The human being at any
stage eructated, panted, and broke wind. The wind itself as puf
made the sound of puf as it puffed. But the serpent-type impinges
more definitely than these, and its fu-fu-ing was perhaps more likely
to evoke the consciousness of a connection between the thing and sound
of puff. The serpent or snake in Toda is the Pab, pavu in old Cana-
rese. We also have the name in the Puff-adder. In Wadai it is
Debib; in Biafada Wab; in Nřki, êfi; in Koro, Bûa. But in Inner
Africa the name was generally worn down to Ewa, Iwa, Ewo or
Uwa, from Fufa. The Egyptians continued it under two names.
Thus the serpent Bâta, the soul of the earth, is from a reduced form,
like the Zulu Fûta, to puff, blow, breath venom, as the snake.
But the hieroglyphic puff-adder is the Cerastes snake. This was an
1 It was suggested at an earlier stage that the name of the butterfly might be
derived from Put (Eg.), the type, and ter, entire or perfect; but the writer is now
convinced that the butterfly is a corrupt form of Boder-fly, or the French Bouter, to
bud or put forth, as the tree does in spring. Bud or bode is our representative
of put (Eg.). Bode is a name of the Beetle, as the Sharn-bode for the Dung-
beetle, and the Wool-bode for the hairy caterpillar. This Bode is the probably
original for the Boder-fly, whence the Butter-fly. BODE means living, a Message,
an Omen; Boded is fated; the Boder, a Messenger, equivalent to Putar (Eg.) to
show, discover, explain, reveal. The Butterfly, as a messenger of time, was a type
of transformation, an image fo the Soul, a Boder or foreboder of the future life.
The Boder is equivalent to Beetle. In Devon the Black Beetle is called a Bete.
In Egypt the Beetle was a type of Putak, the opener; puth meaning to open. We
have the Pote, as an instrument for opening, still made use of by thatchers. Also
the Chicken is called a Beedy. The Tadpole, another type of transformation, is a
Pode, whence the Puddock or Frog. The Bete, Pode, Bode, and Boder-fly, were
Messengers to man of a life beyond the preent tadpole or chrysalis condition,
hence the Moths and Butterflies were called Souls, and the Lady-bird (i.e., Bode)
is a form of the living, foretelling, and pre-figuring bode or Put (Eg.)
A lowly form of the Bode survives in the Louse called Biddy, and if one is found
on clean linen it is a sure messenger of sickness or death in the family. Thus, by
means of the Types, we hope to get back to the mental region of the Thinkers in
Things, and attain a foothold beyond that of the Philosophizers in Words. The
Irish divinity called the Crom Cruach, said to signify the ŖBloody Maggot,ŗ was
probably connected with this type. Crom, i.e. Crobh, is a form of the Grub that
transforms into the Boderfly.
264 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
ideographic fuf; a syllable Fu and their sole phonetic F which
became the Phœnician, Greek, and English letter F.
The snake was a type of speech, and ŖI speakŗ is ŖI puff,ŗ in the
Inner African.
I Fof, in Timne. Nda Pobia, in Pangela. Pfova, in Nyombe.
A Fô, in Bulom.
In the present instance the links are all complete from the first
archetypal idea, through the various Homotypes and correlates, to
the finad phonetic in the snake as the palpable image of the sound
and visible sign of Ŗfufuŗ or puffing; and as an expression begin-
ning with a mere utterance of the wind and of breath Pef (Eg.),
puff, fuff, or fufu, we have in this one word or sound the interjection,
the verb and adverb, substantive and adjective of later language, these
parts of speech being really contained in true nature of phenomena and
modes of manifestation. Breath or breathing anger was also repre-
sented by the Great Ape as one of the Seven Elementary Types in
Egypt.
We have now to make what will look like a wide digression. The
Mother and Water have been compared under one name (Momo); but
the old Mother, the Great or Grandmother, has also the same Inner
African type-name as Darkness. She is
Koko, Grandmother, Ebe. Koku, Grandmother, Pangela.
Kaga ,, Kanuri. Kukuyamketu ,, Songo.
Kaka ,, Karekare. Kogwan ,, Nyamban.
Kaka ,, Nřgodsin. Kaka ,, Kandin.
Kaka ,, Doai. Kaka-woi ,, Tumbuktu.
Kaka ,, Basa. Kaka ,, Housa.
Kaka ,, Kabenda. Kaka ,, Kadzina.
N‟kaga ,, Mbamba. Okoku ,, Yala.
Kaka ,, Kanyika. Kaka ,, Kambali.
Kaka ,, Mutsaya. Kogo ,, Undaze.
Kaga ,, Babumba. N‟kikulu-Nana ,, Ekamtulufu.
Kugu ,, Kasanda. N‟kaka-Mama ,, Mimboma.
The last but one contains a type-name (Nana) which permutes in
these languages with the Mama. The last is equivalent to the Mama
Cocha of the Peruvians, who was worshipped as the Mother-Sea or
genitrix of the water, like Tiamat and Typhon. Very probably how-
ever the type-names of the Mother as Kaka and Nana were both
deposits from the Inner African primitive ŖNga-Nga.ŗ But Kaka as
the old first one, furnishes a type name for No. 1, which is
Q‟kui, or Q‟qui, in Hottentot. Quigne, in Arucanan. Atta-skeh, in Tshuktshi Nos.
Akakilenyi, in Bambarra. Kuc, or Huc, in Quicha. Atta-zhhk, in Eskimo.
Kokka, in Adampi. Chassah, in Arapaho. Yoho, in Isuwu.
Chig, in Tibetan. Chas, in Lifu. Yik, in Canton.
Chik, in Hor. Cheos, in Hueco. Jek, in Tater.
Koak, in Chemmesyau. Tchika, Fenua and Gelaio, New Yak, in Deer.
Gikk, in Gipsy of Norway. Caledonia. Yak, in Persian.
Caca, in Tagal. Dysyk, in Kamkatkan. Yak, in Biluch.
Meea-chchee, in Omaha. Dschyk, in Tanguhti. Yek, in Pakhya.
Jung-Kikkh, in Winebago. Tsikai, in Mallicollo. Yks, in Fan.
Pey-Gik, in Old Algonkin. Atuu-chik, in Kuskutshewak. Yks, in Esthonian.
Quen-Chique, in Bayano. Atton-sek, in Labrador. Juksy, in Karelian.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 265
Juksi, in Olonets. Ogu, in Oloma. Ek, in Hindi.
Yaguit, in Vilela. Guih, in Teruque. Ek, in Darahi.
Wakol, in Wiradurei. Chhi, in Newar. Ek, in Kuswar.
Wakol, in Lake Macquarie. Kaki, in Sandwich Islands. Ek, in Kooch.
Wikte, in Sekumne. Ka, in Sunwar. Ak, in Gadi.
Ikht, in Watlala. Cha, in Tablung. Eko, in Uriya.
Ektoi, in Kirata. Ogy, in Ostiak. Ak, in Kashmir.
Akt, in Lap. Egy, in Magyar. Ek, in Singhalese.
Akhad, in Arabic. Ikko, in Gonga. Ek, in Shina.
Keddy, in Begharmi, Ikka, in Kaffir. Ik, in Tirhai.
Akhet, in Khari. Eko, in Ashanti. Eka, in Sanskrit.
Kadu, in Pwo. Gô, in Timbo. Yo, in Western Pushtu.
Kêta, in Buduma. Gôo, in Goburo. Aoh, in Keltic.
Gûdio, in Doai. Gôo, in Kano. Owe, in Caribisi.
Kêde, in Bagrimi. Eôko, in Murundo. Ai (First), in Siamese.
Kado, in Afudu. Ako, in Abor. I, in Arniya.
Kûdem, in Legba. Eking, in Tayung. I, in Kashkari.
Kûdum, in Kaure. Ek, in Kurbat. I, in Lughman.
Kûdom, in Kiamba. Ek, in Duman. I, in Pashai.
Ogba, in Egbele.
The I one; the A 1 the Ego and Ich, are deposits from an original
Kak, Ka-ka, or Nga-Nga, no initial vowel being a primary in very
ancient language.
Also as the Numbers one and five both meet in the hand, it follows
that the Number 5 will be found to range under a type-name of
Number 1. Thus Number 5 is.
Kakoa, in Mandan Indian. Gag-em, in Inbark. Cuig, in Scotch.
Chickhocat, in Crow. Geigyam, in Assan. Queig, in Manks.
Huck, in Yangaro. Hkagai, in Kamacintzi. Wuku, in Gyami.
Chak, in Joboka. Kega, in Kot. Huka, in Gonga.
Chahgkie, in Creek. Cuig, in Irish. Huka, in Kaffa.
Now that which was first in phenomena became the negative to that
which was second, or following, in the naming. Darkness was the
first, and it is the negation of Light. Water was first, and it is
negative in relation to Breath. The left hand was first reckoned on,
and it is the negative hand. The Mother was first, and she becomes
secondary to the Male. The hinder part was first, as place of birth
applied to the Female and to the North, which is negative to the
South, as front.
The earliest races like the Kamilaroi tribes of Australia, are the
ŖNoes,ŗ because they date from the female first. Coca means ŖNoŗ
in the language of the Tapuya tribe of Brazil, and their name of the
Coca-Tapuya signifies the No-people, or those who date from the
Mother, the Water, the Negation, the Darkness which they came out
of, just as Enti (Eg.) for primal existence means Ŗout of.ŗ
266 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Thus the Mama, Mumu, or Momo name was applied to negative or
inarticulate speech; to Mumming, to Silence, and the Dead; Mum,
English, to be silent or to make indistinct sounds instead of speaking;
Malen, to mutter; Momata, Zulu, to just move the mouth or lips;
Omumo, Tahitian, to murmur; Mueô, Greek, to initiate into the
mysteries; Momo, Tahitian, to be silent; Mem, Quichua; to be mute;
Mumu, Vei, to be deaf and dumb; Imamu, Mpongwe, to be dumb.
The Mum in Egyptian is the dead, the Mummy, the negative image
of life, and the Mam, or Mamsie (a Scotch tumulus), was the burial-
place of the Mum, the silent dead.1
This shows how that which was primary in time became subsidiary,
secondary, or negative in status. Further it has to be seen how
Darkness was the first devourer, adversary, opponent, recognised,
typified as the Akhakh, or Nakak monster. Kak (Eg.), Gig (Akka-
dian) is Darkness, the Shadow of the Night, a name of the Black
One, and Inner Africa is the primæval home of the Kakodæmon
who, as Kakios, was the stealer of the cows which he had dragged
into his cave, when Hercules forced his way into the monsterřs den
and, in spite of the flame and smoke which Kakios vomited, over-
came him and rescued the cattle and recovered the rest of the stolen
treasure.
The AKHAKH monster is the Devil of Darkness typified, and
Gigilen, is the Devil, in Dsarawa. Kokia, is the Devil, in Kasm.
Kogiwu ,, ,, Gurma. Igue ,, ,, Isoama.
Kekuru ,, ,, Guresa. Gwigwiou ,, ,, Doai.
Also
Khei-khai, is to darken, in Namaqua. Gije, is Night, in Osmanli.
Okuku, is Night, in Aku. Kaak ,, Kemay.
Kigi ,, Tumbuktu. Kwaiekh ,, Kowelitsk.
Okski ,, Abadsa. Kaehe ,, Jakon.
Uchochilo ,, Makua. Coucoui ,, Blackfoot.
Kak
Ukhakh } ,, Egyptian.
Oche
Weechawa ,,
,, Crow Indian.
Catawba.
Agi ,, Koro. Gaû ,, Basque.
Gig ,, Akkadian.
Tsherimis. This is Jum in English for knocking; and Jumme is Futuere. The
Voice of Thunder was a supreme expression of power.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 273
Click and Crack is Ngaeke in Maori, and the ŖKa-ka,ŗ of the Austra-
lian natives is also ŖNga-Nga.ŗ With both, ŖNgaŗ denotes fetching
breath. In Gipps Land ŖNga-angaŗ is breath, and to breathe.
Nga-a-a-a-a-h, with the H strongly aspirated, is a cry of the Aus-
tralian Aborigines, used to arrest attention. ŖNg-ng-ng-ngŗ is a
sort of prolonged grunting, expressive of satisfaction and pleasure.
Possibly the Goddess Vach would have to be consulted in her
mystical Oraculum for the most primitive human phase of the kk,
ûk, or k-sound, which became lingual in nga-nga and kaka.
In the Kk, or Click, whether sounded with a nasal utterance or not,
we find another radical by which some human action first named
itself in making the involuntaty sound, whether in eating, coughing,
or the click of copula or contact; another utterance of an act of
nature, like the ŖTut-tutŗ of sucking; or the ŖFuf-fufŗ of blowing
with the breath, and the ŖTishu-tishuŗ of sneezing.
R was called the Dogřs Letter (litera canina) by the Romans, and
is referred to as such by the Elizabethan dramatists. The dog makes
the sound or R-r-r-r when snarling and showing its teeth or open
mouth. Ari, Fin, Hirrio, Latin, is to snarl like a dog. Herr, Hyrr,
Welsh, is to incite a dog in its own language. In the hieroglyphics
the mouth ‘ is the Ru or Lu sign, and in the Inner African
languages the Mouth, Tongue, and Throat are named from this
radical in the duplicative stage. For example,
Luru, the Throat, Legba. Olulo, the Gullet, Isoama. Torolo, the Gullet, Babuma.
Leor
Ulolo
,,
,,
Dselana.
Basa.
Lilon
Lelon
,,
,,
Bayon.
Momenya
Ularua
Ule } ,, Mandara.
The Ululant type of words found in Irish, Latin, and Greek, the
Polynesian Lololoa; Zulu, Halala; Dacotah, Hi-le-li-lah; Allelu,
Lullaby, and many others may here be recognized.
The Tongue is also named,
Liliwi, in Ekamtulufu. Lilim, in Mutsaya. Orlala, in Ukuafi.
Leliwi, in Udom. Lilime, in Muntu. Rale, or Ale, in Igu & Opandi.
Lil, or Ile, in Isoama, Isiele, Lirume, in Marawi. Halla, in Fazogla.
Abadsa, Aro, Mbofia. Lelimi, in Undaza. Lilla, in Accrah.
Lelim, in Babuma. Irale, in Egbira-Himi. Lilla, in Adampe.
In Sanskrit Lal means playing with the tongue, to loll it, move it
hither and thither, to dart it forth amorously, fiercely or savagely.
Llaana is the Tongue; Lalantika a Lizard or Chameleon; Lela-
yamana, one of the Seven Tongues of Fire; Lalat is the Dog. Lill,
in English, is to loll out the tongue, which is called a Lolliker. Rara,
in Maori, is to make a continual sound, to roar; Riro is the Intensive
form. Riri denotes anger, to be angry, hence to roar. Rorea is the
rearing roaring Bore, or high tide. Ruru is to shake and quake.
Ru is the earthquake.
Lila, to lament and moun, Xosa. Lola, to lull asleep, Udo.
Lloliaw, prattle to a child, Kymric. Lellen, to tattle, Dutch.
Lalle, babble to a child, Danish. Lalein, to speak, German.
274 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Rire, in French is the Laugh, of to laugh, and this is Inner
African, as
Rere, Laugh, Gbese. Reri, Laugh, Yagba. Lela, Laugh, Nřgola.
Reri ,, Aku. Lori ,, Eki. Elela ,, Lubalo.
Reri ,, Egba. Rari ,, Dsumu. Lela ,, Songo.
Reli ,, Yoruba. Reri ,, Ife.
Many kinds of utterance are called by variants of one name, which,
in this case, is extended even to writing in the Assyrian Rilu.
Earlier than the verb forms were the names of the organ as Tongue
and Gullet in Africa. Also to ŖTongueŗ in gesture-language was
prior to verbal speech.
Protruding and lolling out the tongue is employed as a universal
sign of repulsion, contempt, or hatred. Dr. Tylor says he is not clear
why this should be so. 1 But it is simply a case of reversion to an
earlier type of expression. Signs were made with the tongue in
gesture-language before the time of verbal speech. The tongue was
used according to the feeling which sought expression by that member.
The Australian expresses ŖNoŗ by throwing back the head, and
thrusting out the tongue. Negation is one form of repelling, and the
earliest mode of repulsing is reverted to as most repellent and
effective. That which served to typify when there were no other
means of expression still serves as symbol for that which transcends
all verbal expression, and when the choke of feeling is too strong for
words, the tendency is to take to gesture-language and enact it
whether by thrusting out the tongue, the foot, or the fist.
The loud-crier, the Roarer, the rapacious beast, is a ŖRuruŗ in
Sanskrit. The dog also is a Ruru; and this is a name of one of
the Seven Rishis, who correspond to the Seven Taas (Eg.). Seven
tongues of speech, Seven notes in music, Seven vowels, and there-
fore Seven primitive sounds, out of which the vowels were finally
evolved. The Sanskrit Ril is to roar, howl, bellow, yelp, bray,
shriek, shout, wail. Roruya, to howl or roar very much, and Roroti,
to yell and roar and bellow loudly, are intensive forms of what is
considered the root. But the intensive was primary at an earlier
stage; the earliest words being made by duplication of the same
sound. This is shown by Rû, as in the Latin Rû-mour which indi-
cates the full value to be Rru (Rr), as it is in the hieroglyphics.
The dog is one of the animals that utter the ŖRer-rer,ŗ which
deposited the letter r in language. But a far more potent claimant
for the r or ŖRurŗ sound is the hippopotamus. This is named
ŖRur,ŗ or, with the feminine terminal, Rurit. Rur is written ‘ ‘, or
double-mouth. The horizon is likewise the Ruru, or dual mouth.
The female was a Ruru, or double mouth, as the Lioness-Goddess
Pehti, one of the Roarers. If we apply this to the roar of the hip-
popotamus, she is the double-mouth of sound. Raro, in Maori, is the
north, the mouth of the abyss, and Rurit typified that mouth (or
1 Tylor, Early History, p. 52.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 275
uterus) as Goddess of the North, the Roarer who came up from the
waters. She is usually pourtrayed with the tongue lolling out of her
mouth. Her name of Tep is also that of the tongue, and she is
designated the ŖLiving Word,ŗ because she was the first Utterer-forth
in heaven above and the abyss beneath. And the roar she made
with her vast mouth reverberated for ever through all the realms of
human speech. The dog (or jackal) was her son, and he too rurs out
her special letter, the phonetic R, the mystical Sanskrit Lri, which,
according to Monier Willians, is one of those things that Ŗhave
apparently no signification.ŗ But, if they had not, we may be sure
they would not have been so faithfully preserved.
The Maoris attribute the gift of language to the Old Mother, Wha-
Ruri or Whu-Ruruhi, whose name denotes the old woman that
revealed or disclosed; and her name also corresponds to that of
Ruri(t), or Urt, in Egypt; Lri, in India, and Rî (Ishtar) in Akkad,
the Old First Mother of all things, including language.
place of Ŗtut.ŗ The lowly status of Tut (Eg.) for speech or utterance
is continued inŕ
Titi, to stammer, Egyptian. Totte, to whisper, English.
Teet, and Tatel, to stammer, English. Toot, to whine and cry, Ib.
Totario, to stammer, Portuguese. Teet, the least little word or sound, Ib.
Tottern, to stammer, German. Titter, suppressed laughter, Ib.
Tot, to mutter, murmer, or whisper, Norse.
This is the name of the Nose in the Lap and Finnic languages, as
Njuone, in Lap. Ninna, in Esthonian. Nena, in Karelian.
Nyena, in Fin. Nena, in Vod. Nena, in Olonetsŕ
the Dæmon Tutivillus who is supposed to collect all the Words that are indistinctly
uttered by the priests in the performance of religious services. These abortions
of speech he carries of to Hell, which is also the Tut by name in Egyptian.ŕ
Townley Mysteries, pp. 310-319; Piers Ploughman, p. 547.
278 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
primordial Onomatopœia. The ŖKak-kakŗ is still continued in the
click stage of sounds as well as in the cough by the vulgar with occult
significance; the fufu-ing or fuffing with the breath, in snake-like
inflation and figure of repulsion, survives in the various modes of
Pu-pu-ing or Pooh-pooh-ing, including the action whereby the feeling
is uttered or evacuated in spitting out the sound. When a child is
called the Ŗspit of his father,ŗ it is in the language of evacuation.
Spit is a name for spawn.
The rer-ring, arre-arre-ing, hullilooing still exists in the frequen-
tative ŖAra-araiŗ of the Maori, or the ŖArree-arreeŗ of the Pelew
Islanders; Æthiopic ŖHur-hur;ŗ the Norse, ŖHurrar;ŗ Hebrew
ŖAllelujah;ŗ Red Indian, ŖHa-le-lu;ŗ Tibetan ŖAlala;ŗ Inner African,
ŖLulliloo;ŗ Coptic ŖHeloli;ŗ Irish, ŖHooro;ŗ English, ŖHey-loly,ŗ
and ŖHurrah.ŗ
The ŖMum-Mum,ŗ although not among the earliest sounds as a
labial may have been as a nasal; this was continued as a Mystery
in Mum-ming. The nasal of Negation has become the universal
No, Na, Nen, or None; and the name of the Ninny.
Like the primitive customs and weapons, the Totemic and mythical
types, words and sounds show the same survival of the past in the
present, and add their evidence for unity of origin and the truth of
the doctrine of Development.
Fûdn was originaly ffdu, from Fuf; and the double consonant
explains why Pip-ing is number Four in Cayus; Pev-ar in Breton; and
article or member. The Pat, or Bat, is simply the progenitor, as the inspirer
of the Ba (Breath or Soul), with the Bahu. So the Male as ŖSesmuŗ (Eg.) is
the breather of the Mother. Also Paini, for the Mistress, is the property and
possesion, the one Ŗbelonging to,ŗ as the Egyptian ŖPatni.ŗ
1 Williams, Syllabic Dictionary, intro. p. 29; also Edkins.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 283
whilst
Mut, is the Mouth, in Egyptian. Mitts, is the Tongue, in Andi.
Mot, is the Tongue, in Tshetsh. Mot, is the Word, in French.
Motte ,, ,, Ingush. Mut (Eg.), is fromed from Mumu, as Mû
Mete ,, ,, Dido. with the feminine terminal.
Maats ,, ,, Tshari.
The Inner African Mfu for the Dog or typical Beast is represented
by Mâft, the Lynx or other Beast, also, the skin in Egyptian. Mfu
becomes Mâu and the terminal T is added. Thus in Inner Africa the
Cat is named
Muti, in Gurma. Medsa-ku, in Dsuka. Omati, in Yasgua.
tongue and a hand beneath.ŗ These in the later stage were made
human. The first hand and tongue was the Kaf-Monkey, whose
name is yet followable through universal language as the type-name
for both tongue and hand. This has been shown by the names of the
hand. Tongue and Mouth are synonymous, and these take their
names from the Kaf-type, or have the same name, asŕ
Gab, the Mouth, English. Egbe, the Mouth, Puka. Kababon, the Tongue, Nřki.
Gob, a Beak, Gaelic. Oyaf ,, Bishari. Jivha ,, Sanskrit.
Geba, the Mouth, Sclavonic. Aof ,, Adaiel. Jivha ,, Pali.
Kiffe, the Jaw, Pl. Dutch. Af ,, Faslaha. Jivha ,, Kooch.
Kapiour, the Mouth, Guebé. Af ,, Arkiko. Jhibh ,, Siraiki.
Chabui ,, Tshampa. Af ,, Amharic. Jibho ,, Uriya.
Zuba ,, Pushtu. Afa ,, Danakil. Jubh ,, Gujerati.
Zuvar ,, Tshuash. Affan ,, Galla Jibh ,, Hindustan.
Yubotarri ,, Accaway. Gbe, the Throat, Mano. Jib ,, Mahratta.
Yefiri ,, Pianoghotto. the Throat Cubhas, a word, Irish
Yip ,, Korean.
Gefe{ and Gullet }
Oloma
Chava, to say, Hebrew
Hube ,, Talatui. Ggbe ,, Opanda Qaboh ,, Assyrian
Ap ,, Palaik. Egbira- Chwed ,, Welsh
Aboa ,, Basque.
Ogbe ,, {Hima. Cedeach ,, Irish
Egbe ,, Gugu.
The Kaf was continued in Britain as a type of this primitive talker,
chatterer, or clicker among animals in such words as Chaff, to chirp
and chatter; Caffe, to cavil, Chafty, talkative; Chavish, confused
chattering of birds; Chaffinch, the cheeper or chatterer, opposed to
the singer; Gaffle, Gabble, Gobble, Gabber, Gibber, Gibe, or Kibe.
Chaf modifies into Jaw and Cawŕthe Jack-daw being a Caw-daw.
To Caw is to cry or call as Daws, Rooks, and Jays. Gaowe is to jaw
or chide.
From Kaf; later Gab, the mouth, the utterer, came the names of
Jaw and Jole or Chowl, earlier Chavel. In Low Dutch Kiffe is the
jaw, and Keffen means to yelp. In the Walloon Chawer is to cheep
and Chaweter, is to chatter. Thus the status of the earliest type
of language is still preserved, and the Kaf name continued in the
Cheep-cheep of the finch, the Caw-caw of the chuff, the Gibbering of
the monkey, the Gobble-gobble of the turkey, the wide-mouthed bay
of old Chowler, the Gabble of the foolish, the Gibe of the face-maker,
who still imitates the ape and makes his jape (cf. Swed. Gipa, to wry
the mouth and make a grimace); which still testify in their status to
the lowly beginning with the Kaf (Ape) as a primordial speaker.
Also, the ape in the monuments is not only a personification of
Ŗhand conversation,ŗ and of speech, he is also the Bard, the Singer of
the gods. Evidently the singing ape had not escaped the attention
of the Kamites. Moreover, the Kaf as singer is earlier than the
speaker as Taht-Aan, the tongue, mouth or speech of the gods.
Kâ is to sing, as well as to say, and the singer as the first proclaimer is
in keeping with the order of the facts suggested by Darwin. The ape
was brought on as the singer, poet, hailer or howler of the gods whom
it salutes with up-raised hands because it hailed the New Moon and
howled in the darkness at the absence of light. Darwin inferred
286 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
that the nearer progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones
before they had acquired the power of articulate speech. 1 It is
historically certain that tones were most important if not absolutely
primary in language. This is shown by the mere vowel-change which
is sufficient to distinguish the two sexes.
The Hottentot has three tones that give three meanings to one
word, according to the intonation. Captain Burton points out that
the Yoruban languages, like the Chinese, depend on accents and tone-
variations to differentiate the meanings of the same words. These
Ŗdelicacies of intonation are inherent in monosyllabic tongues.ŗ2 They
are inherent in the most primitive pronunciation, and the Chinese
show one form of an elaborate system. The Gibbonřs scale contains
the system that was established in music. It produced, and may there-
fore be claimed as the originator of that which was perfected by man.
Lower than the ape as the evolver of the octave and admirer of the
moon, the follower of the ape could not have begun in music. And
here is the connecting link in tone-language, which language was
afterwards used as a vehicle of words whether in the Inner African
tones, or in the Chinese tonic system, or in modern music. The
number of tones in the musical scale is Seven, the eighth being a
repetition of the first. These had been rudely rendered by the ape.
Seven may be accepted as the total number of primary sounds in the
alphabet. All the remainder were evolved from these. The number
of forces, powers, gods, produced by the Mother nature, is Seven. The
Egyptians have the Seven Taas called Gods of the Word or Speech;
Seven personified forces of utterance.
Brugsch has attributed the meaning of Sage to the word Taas
(or Djas), which is analogous to the Coptic jas or gis, and the Chinese
Tze for the Teacher. The Taas are thus the Seven Sages. In the
Memoria Technica of the Hindu sages, the Sage, or Vowel, stands for
number 7, there being Seven Sages and Seven Vowels.
The Seven Sages also appear in Greece. These, then, are related
to the vowel that takes Seven forms of utterance. The utterance of
the Seven Vowels was one of the mysteries in Egypt as in India.
Savery, in his Letters,3 says that in the Temple of Abydos the priest
repeated the Seven Vowels in the form of hymns, and that musicians
were not allowed to enter the building during the performance. Like
the Gibbon they were practising their scales, but not in tones only.
The tones conveyed the Seven forms of breathen utterance, the latest
product of language, known to us as the Seven Vowels. The Seven
Vowels were known and are acknowledged to be a sevenfold form of
a dual one with was the Iu (Eg.) or Ao of the beginning, and the O,
or Omega, in the end; the AU (Eg.) that signified Was, Is and
To Be.
1 Expression of the Emotions, ch. 4.
2 Burton, Dahome, vol. ii. p. 76, note. 3 P. 566.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 287
When personfied this Biune One with the Triune character became
the God of the Seven Spirits, which were Seven Breaths, and these
made up the ten-total as in the Ten Sephiroth of the Kabalah and
the ten letters of the British IAU. Iao-Sabaoth was a form of this
combination of the Threefold One with the Sevenfold manifestation.
Sevekh (Eg.), whose name reads number 7, was another divinity of
the same time.
Sut-Nub-ti was likewise a form of this compound nature. Nub
signifies the All, that is the plural expressed by Three; and Sut
(Seb-ti) is number 7.
Sut-Nub was continued by the Gnostics, and his name of Iu or
Iao, was kabalistically expressed, and probably sung to scale by the
Seven forms of the same vowel, as ΑΕHΙΟΤΩ, which are found on
the rays of the lionřs crown of an Agathodæmon or Chnuphis serpent.1
Nef (or Nub) signifies the breath or spirit, and this was the Good
Spirit with Seven rays or emanations, which represented the Seven
Spirits whose physical origin has yet to be traced. These Seven
agree with other forms of the type brought on from the beginnings of
the Kamite typology. Spirits were breaths at first, and the vowels
are breaths. Thus the Seven forms of breathen utterance, the Seven
Vowels, represent the Seven Spirits of the Triune Nature.
The Chant of the Seven Vowels was apparently practices by the
natives of the Friendly Isles, who intone a solemn dirge at the funeral
of their chiefs. So ancient is it as to be no longer intelligible, but
its refrain consists of a wail expressed by a series of vowels rendered
by Lang as O I A O O E.2
The North American Indians heard by Adair were probably calling
on the name of the Triune Iao, which was more fully expressed by
the Seven Vowels.
Among their funeral rites and ceremonies the Todas per-
form a circular dance, in which the men by three and three peram-
bulate round and round like spokes in a wheel, all exclaiming ŖA U!ŗ
ŖAU!!ŗ in time with their steps. This likewise presents a form of
the divine triad.
Hymns were addressed to a god, ŖWho,ŗ by the Hindus, and
called the ŖWhoishŗ hymns. This mystical name is resolved by
Max Müller into a mere interrogative pronoun. But there is nothing
more certain or more pathetic than that God was sought for under
this name of ŖWho,ŗ the Unknown.
The Abipones expressed the name of some deity by their interro-
gation ŖWHO?ŗ
The Hebrew name of the Very One God Alhu, hla, is a form of the
Who, the interrogative pronoun; the Who (hla, as unknown subject)
of the Kabalah. This is the Egyptian deity, Hhu, or Huh, whose
1 King, The Gnostics and their Remains (ed. 1864) p. 74.
2 Land, Origin and Migration of the Polynesians.
288 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
name signifies to seek and search after, or, as we have it, to woo.
One mode of seeking and inquiriy was by singing the name with
Seven Vowel-sounds. These the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures
have contrived to make permanent in the name of I E H O V A H.
This compound deity, as Iao-Sabaoth, was finally the God of the
Seven Planets. Each of these was represented by a Vowel and each
Vowel dedicated to one particular day of the week. So, in the
Seven notes of the scale, and the orbit lines of the planetsŕ
Si was assigned to the Moon.
Ut ,, ,, Mercury.
Re ,, ,, Venus.
Mi ,, ,, Sun.
Fa ,, ,, Mars.
Sol ,, ,, Jupiter.
La ,, ,, Saturnŕ
at Jerusalem named Zacchæus, to whom the Child was sent for the
purpose of learning his letters. The master wrote out the alphabet,
and bade the Boy say ŖAleph,ŗ and when he had done so, the master
ordered him to say ŖBeth.ŗ Whereupon the Child demanded to know
the nature and meaning of the Aleph first. The master could not
tell him, therefore the Child made known to him the gnosis of the
letter Alpha, and the rest of the alphabet. In the Gospel of Thomas
the Child says, ŖHear me, doctor; understand the first letter.ŗ And
He points out that the one letter is Ŗthree-fold and doubly mingling,ŗ
and thus is a figure of the Trinity in bi-unity, as expounded by the
Kabalah.1 The Child, no doubt, expounded His own nature as the
mythical IU who, as the Child, was the Iusu (or Jesus), Iu-em-hept
in Egypt, the Son of Iu-sû-as, and the god Tum.
The Jewřs harp remains a symbol of the divinity whose name it
bears. It is one as a total figure; dual as the Io of the male and
female, or of the number 10; and triadic in its shape, which answers
to the trinity of Iao. The correct way of playing this instrument is
by producing various vowel sounds, and it is a fact that its tongue
can be made to utter the seven variations of the vowel, according
as the player consciously shapes his mouth, without the aid of the
human voice. Thus breath is turned into seven sounds by the tongue
of the Iao, as it was in playing the flute, which has the name of
Sebti (7) or Sut; and also in blowing the Seven-fold pipe of Pan.
It is no marvel, then, that the Jewřs harp should retain the name of
the Iu, Io, Iao, or Jah, the God of the Jews.
The Typical Prayer uttered in the Seven Vowel Sounds may have
been the model of the Prayer on the Mount, in which the sum of all
seeking and request is supposed to be divinely expressd by an
invocation comprising seven petitions in one prayer.
The Egyptian chant of the Seven Vowels of the ineffable name, which
might be breathen or intoned, although it must not be spoken as a word, was
the probable origin of the Seven-fold Litany, or Litania Septemplex
associated with the name of Pope Gregory the Great. In the year
590, when Rome was afflicted with pestilence, Gregory ordered a
public supplication to God, and the people were commanded to
assemble at day-break in Seven different companies, arranged accord-
ing to their ages, sexes, and stations, and walk in Seven different
processions reciting the Seven-fold Litany and other forms of prayer
intoned. They carried with them, by express command of Gregory,
an image of the Virgin, the latest form of the Lady enthroned on the
Seven Hills, who had been the Mother of the Seven when these were
but Seven Elementaries in Chaos.2
The typical Seven were further continued by the mediæval Church
in its Matins, Prime, Tierce, Text, Nones, Vespers, and Complines, as
1 Arabic Gospel, ch. xlviii. [Infancy] Gospel of Thomas, ch. vi.
2 Baronius, Annales, 590, tom. 8, p. 6.
290 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
the Seven times for daily praise. These seven canonical hours, how-
ever, had been devoted by decree of Pope Urban II. to singing the
praise of the Virgin Mother, who was the original author and inspirer
of breath.
The Gnostic Marcus held that Seven Elements composed, and
Seven Powers expressed, the ŖWord,ŗ which could be uttered in
an ŖO!ŗ1
Lastly, the Coptic w or Ō summed up the power of the seven
vowels, and represented the value of No. 8 in hundred. Here the
Ogdoad was complete in the O as a final vowel sound, and a sign of
the God who was worshipped as the Ō in the Mysteries; the Ō or
A O of the Greek Iconography.
Thus we have the Ape in the beginning evolving his scale of Seven
Tones. The Ape, or Kaf, is the hieroglyphic type of speech, singing,
worship, and breath; Shu, the Kaf-headed, being a god of breath.
This god of breath, as Nef, is the Agathodæmon or Chnuphis, the
IAO who has the Seven-Vowelled name which was intoned by the
priests of Abydos when they employed the Seven breathen Sounds
or Vowels in their worship of the god of breath. And in the end
the Seven-fold Litany was treasured up amongst the relics of the
past in the religious Ritual of Rome.
The black Kaf Ape, preceded the black Kaffir (or Akafi) as clicker
and master of a scale of sounds. The living clickers prove that the
breath was inhaled to articulate the sound. This shows the one act
of a dual nature, which was represented by a dual sound; the air
being indrawn with a nasal noise and expelled in a guttural click.
The double action and dual sound contain the negative and affirma-
tive, the No and Yes, the Two Truths or one and two of all beginning.
Represented by the sound ŖNkakh,ŗ or ŖNga,ŗ the duality becomes
audible in a word that signifies duplication as the name for the twin-
member, the ear, hand, testis, eye, nose, or mouth, in the oldest
languages. These languages also show the priority of words that
were formed of merely duplicated sounds as the basis of speech.
The Egyptian hieroglyphics exhibit the process by which the
mimetic duplicates of sound were reduced for re-combination with
others to form words from two different consonants, and thus ex-
tend their range indefinitely. The hieroglyphics likewise show the
process whereby the ideographic signs and gestures that accom-
panied sounds in the ideographic phase were divided and reduced to
the letter-values, and thus account for that equivalence and inter-
change which are found in all later language.
The clickers inhaled the air to articulate their sounds, and the
utterers of the Sevne-Vowelled chant exhaled their soul or breath
toward heaven, the height being scaled and the summit of religious
aspiration very literally attained by the ascent of the Seven Vowels,
1 Irenæus, B. i. ch. xiv. 8.
T YPOLOGY OF P RIMORDIAL ONOMAOTPŒIA. 291
ŖThe object of our inquiry is no trivial thing; it is a diversified and complicated one. This is a various and
most questionable animal, one not to be caught, as it were, with the left hand.ŗŕPlato.
THE Serpent is one of those few great primitive types that consti-
tute the earliest objective castings of human thought when it groped in
the underground condition of its far-off past, which may be compared
with that of the earth-worms throwing up the first castings of vege-
table mould for the use of the farthest future. It was primordial, and
it is universal. The dominion of the Serpent has been wide-spread
as that of night, from the most known to the remotest parts of
the earth. The symbol has literally realized that Serpent in the
mythologies which is depicted as circling about the world and
clasping the whole wide round in one embrace.
The Serpent-type has been venerated in lands where the Serpent
itself does not exist. It was the representative of renewed life or
immortality in the Rites of Sabazios and on the doors of the Chambers
of the Dead in the Egyptian and Chaldean tombs, and it is yet a
symbol of eternity in the bracelet on an Englishwomanřs arm. It is
represented in the finger-ring, and coils about the walking-stick as it
did around the tree of mythology. It is the great Dragon of the
Celestial Empire, the Long Serpent of the old Norse Sea-Kings, the
Lambton Worm, the Dragon of St. George on our own public-house
signboards, and the old English penny-pieces. There are still no less
than 700 Serpent Temples in Cashmere alone. It is only a few years
since that buildings dedicated and devoted to its rites were found in
Cambodia, surpassing in size the cathedrals of York or Amiens, and
in grandeur the temples of Greece and Rome.1 It is not my province
however to expiate on the ŖWorshipŗ of the Serpent, but to explain
the origin and development of this universal type, as an ideograph
that guides us round the world.
1 Mohout.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 293
The ŖWay of a Serpent,ŗ and the workmansip, are among the most
amazing in all nature. It has no hands, and yet can climb trees to
catch the agile monkey. It has no fins, but can outswim the fish; no
legs, yet the human foot cannot match it in fleetness. Death is in its
coil even for the bird on the wing, which the springing reptile
snatches out of its own element. The Serpent slays with a dexterity
that human destroyers might look upon as divine.
One of the most arresting sights is to see this limbless creature
turn its coils into a hand to grasp its prey, and lift it to the deadly
mouth. The serpent in the pangs of sloughing is a phenomenon
once witnessed never to be forgotten. There is a startling fascination
in the sight of that image of self-emanation proceeding from itself,
the young, repristinated, larger life issuing of itself from the mask of
its old dead self like a spiritual body coming forth from the natural
body, the unparalleled type of self-emanation, of transformation, of a
resurrection to new life, of ŖTime, or Renewal coming of Itself.ŗ1
The Serpent has the same name at root in several groups of
languages.
Nâga, in Sanskrit. Nachash, in Hebrew. Snake, in English.
Neke, and Nakihi, in Maori. Naya, in Arabic.
Here then is the natural type of the Akhekh (or Nakak) of Darkness
in the shape of an enormous serpent. In the solar stage of the
mythos, when the sun passes down through the underworld, the
Akhekh of Darkness lies in wait to swallow or pierce the god as he
goes along, or it rises up and tries to overturn the solar boat. ŖI pass
from earth to heaven, I grow like Akheku,ŗ1 says the Osirified, using
an image drawn from the sudden and huge up-rising of the Gloom as
the Devourer. The assistants and co-conspirators of this deluding
Monster of the Dark are called the Sami. Smi says Plutarch is
Typhon. Here again Sami in Egyptian is the name of total Darkness.
In the Fijian mythology we find the same opponent of the soul and
the light who was at first the actual darkness. In passing through the
underworld, the ghost of each dead warrior must fight with Samu
and his company. If he is brave enough to conquer he will cross into
Paradise, but if beaten he will be devoured by the terrible Samu and
his brethren, just as it is in the Ritual. In Sanskrit Samani-Shada is
a Demon of the Dark; Summani, in Latin, is a name of Pluto, as King
of Hell. The Saman, in Fanti (African), is a Ghost, Demon, or
Devil. The Sami are also extant as the ŖCemisŗ of the West
Indians, Caribs, and other tribes, who regard them as the evil authors
of every calamity that afflicts the human race.2 The Monster Yaga-
Baba of the Russian folk-tales, who bears the name of Typhon, or
ŖBaba the Beast,ŗ has, for one of her types, the snake Zmei,3 which
is identical with th eEgyptian Smi, or Sami, the Conspirator, the Dark
Deluder. Sami, total darkness, has an earlier form (or variant) in Kami,
the Black; and the Basuto Sami is Kamm-appa, the wide-mouthed,
throttling, and devouring Monster, who was conquered by Litaolane,
the local ŖSt. George.ŗ4 The Apap (Greek Apophis) is another form
of the Serpent of Darkness, the deluding and devouring Monster.
The Apap reappears in the Assyrian âbu, the Hebrew pythonic bywa,
a name of the Monster who is the ŖEnemy of the Gods.ŗ The Apap
is apparently the Inner African Rock-Snake, not a native of Egypt
itself, so large as to be like the Boa. Its name signifies that which
rises up tall, vast, gigantic, as did the Darkness in its most appalling
shape.
The Platonist Damascius reports that the Egyptians began with
Darkness as the first principle of all things, the unknown, incompre-
hensible, inconceivable Darkness, from which the Light was emaned.
But the primæval Darkness was not that of Orpheus and the Platonists
which was dark with excess of light. They came in the course of
time to say there were two kinds of darkness, the one being below and
the other beyond the light. That was afterthought. The Esoteric is
the latest and not the primary interpretation of phenomena; and a
great deal of the error extant is the result of thus surreptitiously
1 Ritual, ch. 98. 2 Robertsonřs America, b. iv. p. 124.
3 Ralston. 4 Book of the Beginnings, vol. ii. p. 649.
296 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
imposing the later thought upon the aboriginal imagery. Darkness was
the first Revealer of Light in the stars, and therefore a form of the
genitrix, the Mother (Mut) who is called Mistress of Darkness and
the Bringer-forth of Light. In the last of the Izdubar Legends the
Mother of all as Ishtar is ŖShe who is Darkness; She who is Darkness,
the Mother, the emaner of the Dawn; She is Darkness.ŗ The Mexican
genitrix, Cihuacohuatl is the female Serpent who gave birth to Light,
and is the mother of the Twins, Light and Darkness. The ŖWisdomŗ
of Solomon1 is a personified phase of primordial Darkness. ŖShe is
more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars. Being
compared with Light she is found before itŗŕthe anology of Plutarchřs
saying, ŖDarkness is older than Light.ŗ We read in the Ritual2 Ŗthe
Æon or age (Heh) is the day, Eternity is the Night.ŗ In the beginning
of time say the New Zealanders was Te-po.3 Te is the, and PO is
Darkness, Night, or Hade. The same PO as the point of beginning
with Darkness is the Mangaian night; Po being the equivalent of
Avakai or Savakai, the birthplace. After Te-po, the Darkness, came
Te-ao. Ao (Maori) is to become Light.
The first conditions of existence observed by the primitive men
were precisely those that were first observable. These were the Dark
and the Day, which followed each other in ceaseless alteration. In
the beginning was the impenetrable obscurity of primæval Darkness.
The universal exclamation of mythology as its first word is ŖThere was
Darkness.ŗ All was Darkness at first and the All was the Darkness.
Primitive man came out of the night with his mind as deeply im-
pressed and indelibly dyed as was his body with its natural blackness,
because the influence of night was the first to be consciously reflected,
the first that arrested attention and lifted the look upward when he
was going mentally on all-fours.
A Maori tradition describes the first children of Earth as Ŗever
thinking what might be the difference between Light and Darkness.ŗ4
That contains a true record of what must have been a primal
subject of thought. Also it does not represent them as dreading the
dark or cowering from it in caves, but as marvelling over the alterna-
tion of phenomena. It would be a mistake to picture the primitive
man as the prone coward of subjectivity. The ancient races that
survive to-day and are mortally afraid of the gloom are not likely to
represent the earliest man who had not yet peopled the darkness with
his Terrors. These take a spiritual shake, and the very animals that
the savage most fears are dreaded most in a ghostly form. Ideas
make all the difference. Fear of the dark with children is frequently
cultivated, where it is not inherited. We see what plucky little
pigmies they were in the valley of the Thames at the time of the
Palæolithic Age, who with their rude weapons attacked and triumphed
1 Ch. vii. 29. 2 Ch. xvii.
3 Shortland, Traditions, p. 55. 4 Grey, Polynesian Mythology.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 297
over the mightiest monsters of the animal kingdom, like the tiny
cock-boats of English ships swarming round and conquering the
large galleons of the Spanish Armada.
Darkness, however, was the first Devil, Satan, or Adversary dis-
covered, because it presented the primordial form of obstruction,
whether to the light or the human being. Darkness was the earliest
monster personified in the image of ugliness, because the light was
pleasant. Moreover, Darkness, not Light, made the first appeal to con-
sciousness in feeling, and perception in thought. This, too, is on record.
The primitive myths all date from the Darkness. The starting-point
is on the night side of phenomena. Hence the earliest reckoning of
time was by nights not by days. So many Darks were counted rather
than so many Dawns. The Dark presented the barrier that was
tangible to the nascent consciousness. The Going of the light pre-
ceded the sense of its Coming, and the Coming of Darkness was the
shape in which the going of light was earliest apprehended. The
coming of darkness is felt by certain gregarious animals, including
sheep, which in hill-countries show an instinct for taking to the higher
grounds after sunset, as if conscious that the deluge of the dark is
rising round them. In the Akkadian legend the Seven Devils, or bad
spirits, who bring blackness from the abyss are said to be born in
the Mountains of Sunset. In Africa the advance of night is sudden.
There, if anywhere, Ŗat one stride comes the dark.ŗ You watch the
sun drop down, and darkness is behind you. The ŖJaws of Dark-
nessŗ have supplied a figure of speech for us, but there they are in
reality. They close upon you as if to devour their prey, subtly,
swiftly, silently. What but the serpent with its gliding stealth and
instantaneous spring could be adopted as a first fit type of the Dark-
ness of night? Hor-Apollo says the Egyptians represent the Mouth
by a serpent, Ŗbecause the Serpent is powerful in no other of its members
except the mouth alone.ŗ The serpent is all mouth, and both as the
ŖRuŗ and the ŖTetŗ it has the name of Mouth in Egyptian. In the
Inner African languages the Mouth and the Serpent are frequently
synonymous. The Jaws of Darkness are thus an equivalent for the
Serpent or Dragon. The Serpent, it may be inferred, was one of
the first external figures taken by death. It brought death into the
world. If the dark cloud lightened with death it was the Serpent. If
the water drowned it was the Serpent or Dragon that lay lurking there
to put out the light of life as the Apophis, Akhekh, Nakak, Naga,
Nocka, Nickur or Nekiru (a devil in the African Yula language), and
Nick, the ŖOld Nick,ŗ the evil being, or the ŖRaw-head-and-bloody-
bones,ŗ our English Red Typhon. One form of the Serpent running,
or rather zig-zagging, through the mythological maze is the zig-zag of
the lightning. The Algonkins were asked by Father Buteux who was
among them in 1637 as a Missionary what they thought of the nature
of lightning. They replied that it was an immense serpent that the
298 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Manitu, their great spirit, was vomiting forth. ŖYou can see the twists
and folds that he leaves on the trees where he strikes, and underneath
such we have often found snakes.ŗ When lightning enters sand it will
fuse and convert it into a solid tube of serpentine shape, which is
sometimes called a thunderbolt.
The Chinese believe in an elemental Dragon of enormous strength
and sovereign power which is in Heaven, in the air, in the waters,
and on the mountains. The Caribs speak of the god of the Thunder
storm as a great Serpent or Dragon dwelling in the fruit-forests.
The Shawnees called the Thunder the hissing of the great Snake.
And Totlec, the Aztec God of Thunder, was represented with a
Golden Serpent in his Hand. Here the lightnings are identified
with serpents because the serpent in the earliest coinage of human
expression was a type of the Lightning. The serpent having
made its mark on the mind of man by the exercise of its fatal
force became an ideograph of Death. The Serpent utters a hiss,
so do the Lightnings. The serpentřs hiss supplied a definite
sound that was for ever connected with a distinct idea. This idea,
this sound would serve to express Lightning and its fatal flash, and
thus both Lightning and Serpent came under one type and could
be expressed by the same noise. The Thunder is said in an Ameri-
can myth to be the hissing of a fiery flying serpent, in accordance
with the mode of interpreting the unknown by means of the known;
and the lightning-flash is depicted as the Spit-fire with the head
of a serpent in some figures found on the walls of an Estufa in
Pueblo de Jemez, New Mexico.1 The Lightning-dark of the darkness
is the forked tongue and sting of the Serpent. The first of the
Seven Akkadian evil powers is the Scorpion, or the sting-bearer
of heaven, and therefore representative of an elemental force,
apparently that of sunstroke.
The Hiss of the Serpent or the Puff of the Adder is but magnified
in such a title as the ŖWind of nine Snakesŗ; a Miztec mythical
name. In a Kaffir folk-tale when the Chief comes home the sound
of a great wind is heard. ŖThat wind was his coming, and he was a
big Snake with five heads.ŗ2 In these we see the Serpent type
applied to the wind. Thus we watch the unknown taking shape in
images of the known. The Lightning as unknown subject could be
represented by the Serpent as object; the voice and sting of the
unknown by the hiss and sting of the known. We have this postulate
more directly illustrated by the Lightning as unknown object with
the Thunder-stone of Aerolith as a Fetish image of the power that
flashed and fled; for what the flash revealed besides itself was the
thunder-stone.
In manřs state of mental darkness the serpent-image of the destroyer
and of the darkness of death had made its mark on the human being
1 Mallery, Sign Language, fig. 188. 2 Theal, Kaffir Folk-lore, p. 51.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 299
and its deadly folds had imprinted on the race the figure of the dark-
ness coiling round by night with death lurking in its embrace. The
serpent drew its own symbol in the mind like its own circle on the body
of man, and this is what man tells us when he in turn had learnt to
draw the serpent-symbol. As man was a dweller in caves and trees
his most mortal foe was the serpent, the forked tongue of the Darkness
that darted death; and what form so fit as to image this appalling
power whose habitation was Blackness and whose voice was Thunder,
and who, when angry, would look out with eyes of lightning and
shoot forth the forked blue flashes that could lick up forests with their
tongues of fire and the lives of men like leaves? The fearful fasci-
nation and appalling magnetic power of certain snakes over man,
bird and beast has often been described. The Serpent is the Mes-
merist and Magician of the animal world, who evoked the earliest
idea of magic power. A deluding snake in the Ritual is called the
Ru-hak, the reptile which makes use of this magic power (hak) to
draw the victim towards his mouth. ŖGo back Ruhak! fascinating or
stiking cold with the eyes,ŗ1 exclaims the contending spirit. Ra
the sun-god, in his old age or decaying force, speaks of the evil
serpents as the subtle enchanters who have enchanted him beyond
the power of his own self-preservation, so that he needs to be sus-
tained against them. In the ŖAvestaŗ the Ŗlookŗ of the mythical
serpent is synonymous with dealiest opposition. The good god
Ahura-Mazda says, Ŗwhen I created this beautiful, brilliant, admirable
abode, (the Earthly Paradise) then the Serpent (Anra-Mainyus) looked
at (that is opposed) me.ŗ 2 ŖCharmingŗ was the great mode of
exhibiting power. ŖThese are the gods who charm for Har-Khuti
in Amenti. They, the Masters of their Nets, charm those who are
in the Nets.ŗ3 Those who are in this scene walk before Ra, they
Charm Apap for him. They say, ŖOh! Impious Apap! Thou art
charmed by us through the means of what is in our hands!ŗ The first
star in Ophiuchus is known in Arabic as Ras-al-Hawwa the head of
the ŖSerpent-Charmerŗ not merely the Serpent-Holder.
The influence of the Serpent over the mind of primitive man can
never be understood apart from the abnormal conditions of what are
termed Mesmerism and Mediumship. The present writer has had a
personal and profound experience of the abnormal in nature, as
manifested by one of the most marvellous Sensitives ever known.
This face to face familiarity with the mysteries of its phenomena
enabled him to apprehend the part played by the Serpent as the
Mesmerizer (Charmer) in the mysteries of the past. The disk of the
Mesmerist and the look of the human eyes have no such power in
inducing the comatose and trance conditions as the gaze of the
Serpent! The Africans tell of women being Ŗpossessed,ŗ seized
1 Ritual, ch. cl. 2 Vedidad, Fargard 22, lines 3, 4, 5, and 24.
West and East, and we learn that all evils that have ever affliected
the blacks of the southern and south-eastern tribes of Australia
have come, they believe, from the north north-west. The Myndie was
dominated by the power of the God Pund-jel, and in the Ritual the
Mehnti draws the Boat of the Sun, to which its tail is securely
attached.
Disease being typified by the Serpent of Evil, any power over
disease was described as influence over the Serpent. The Healer,
Doctor, Medicine-man, Magician or Manitu was a charmer of the
Serpent. ŖWho is the Manitu?ŗ is asked in an Algonkin Chant, and
the reply is, ŖHe that goes with the Serpent;ŗ that was the conqueror
who could charm the Serpent into subjection; magic being the earliest
Medicine and the first healing, a mental operation supplemented by
fetish images, and lastly by drugs. The Medicine-man, as the Manitu,
is the Charmer of the Serpent of evil or disease. The root of this
name is widespread. Mana, Maori, is magic influence and power.
In Irish, Manadh is magic, incantation; Mantra, Vedic for magic
incantation; Moniti, Lithuanian, incantation; Manthra, Pahlavi,
magic incantation against disease. It denotes the primary form of
Mind. The Blacks of Australia have their Manitu in Min-nie Brum-
brum, who is able to arrest and pull back the Myndie with a wave of his
hand or a movement of his finger; but none know his secret, no one
can arrest Myndie but Min-nie Brum-brum. A family named Min-nie
Brum-brum was the only one that ever set foot on Myndieřs
territory. Mr Thomas says, ŖA sorcerer, celebrated as a man
possessing great power, a very old black, and a member of the same
tribe as Min-nie Brum-brum, was a prisoner in the Melbourne gaol
many years ago for having committed some depredations on the
flocks of the settlers. The news of his arrest was carried to tribes far
and near even to 200 miles off. Telegraph fires were lighted.
Messengers from seven tribes were sent to my blacks, who importuned
me to set free the black stranger. Finding I would not they urged
me and all the settlers to leave the districts and go to Van Diemanřs
Land or Syndey. Some hundreds of blacks were in Melbourne when
the old man was imprisoned, and they all fled in terror fearing he
would move Pund-jel to let Myndie loose, who they believed would
spare no oneŕand what is more, they did not return until the prisoner
was set free, some months after.ŗ1
In Egypt, Taht was the divine doctor, the God of Physicians, and
his medicine is magic. The Stele of Metternich informs us that Taht
has magical words to bewitch poison and prevent it from doing serious
injury, and by his words he betwitched the Apap Serpent and all the evil
enemies that for ever fight against Ra. The same power is assigned to
Horus the healer or saviour of souls, when he is depicted in the act
1 SMYTH, Aborigines of Victoria, from MS. of the late William Thomas.
304 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
of holding the Serpent, Scorpion, and other Typhonian types of evil,
helpless and harmless through the power of his charming.1
Here we can further see how AGE itself became identified with
sorcery, because the Aged and the Wise were synonymous. In
Egyptian, Aak the Aged Man, and Aak the Mage or Magician are
identical. The Aged were the wiseacres, wizards, and witches. Hence
the Hottentot tribes used to leave their old people behind to die the
Ŗdevilřs deathŗ and be devoured by vultures, because being aged
they were all the greater sorcerers, and the awe-stricken tribe were
so fearful of witchcraft, that friends dared not keep their own
relations alive.2 So, in Europe, old women were naturally considered
to be witches, and were persecuted accordingly. The Amazulus
generally regard the grandfathers as the dead;3 and in Egyptian the
Akh is the Dead, the Manes as well as the Aged one, or the Mage.
These three are one by name. Moreover the Akhekh becomes our
Hag for the snake and the old witch, Russian Hexe, Polish Yega, the
sorceress or fiend. The Egyptian form of the word as Hekau means
magic and to charm. The same word signifies a net, snares, and the
serpent is the ensnarer as the magnetiser and lier-in-wait. It is like-
wise the name for intoxicating drinks in which the enchanter lurked.
Hekau is Beer, containing the alcoholic Spirits, and in Chinese, Hak is
a name for distilling spirits. This also was a mode of magic. Hekau
for Magic is a name of Thought. So Hugi, according to the Prose
Edda is Thought in person. The ŖSerpent-charmerŗ who was
primally the Serpent itself, made so early an appeal to thought by
means of its magic power, that Thought, Mind, and Magic were
named after it, and this will help to explain why the Serpent became
a type of Wisdom, Knowledge, occult influence, the Wise Hag, Yaga,
or Khekh, synonymous with the Wise Woman or Wise Man. Though
not particularly profound, yet it was the first Thinker or Magician to
the primitive sense, on account of its deluding and eluding subtlety.
The Hottentots still believe that a particular Snake, the Dassies-Adder,
can detect the criminal among hundreds of people and kill him
unerringly, without turning its avenging ire on the innocent. 4
Amongst the types of the ŖElementariesŗ perceived as active forces
of the material universe, the Serpent naturally rose to supremacy as
very crest of crests on account of its subtle craft and glozing guile.
The Hippopotamus and Crocodile were wider-mouthed, but manifested
no such commanding cunning as the Serpent with its secret sorcery.
Hence, in Egypt, it became the one universal symbol of the Gods.
This beginning with the Darkness, symbolised as the deluding and
1 ŖAnd he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold,
I give unto you power to tread on Serpents and Scorpions, and over all the power
of the enemy.ŗŕLuke x. 18, 19.
2 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 74. 3 Ibid. p. 86.
4 Ibid. p. 108.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 305
1 Ta Ywa places the god Shieoo under the earth to support it, and whenever he
moves there is an earthquake. Shieoo corresponds to the Egyptian Shu, who is the
supporter of the nocturnal heaven.
2 Mason, Journal of the As. Society, Bengal, 1865.
the conflict was between the dark power and the lunar light, during
the waning half of the Moon. One character of Osiris is that of the
Lord of Light in the Moon, the reflector of the Solar light. The
fourteen parts are the fourteen days or nights from Full to New
Moon, the Ŗobscure half,ŗ during which the Dragon of Darkness was
dominant. Hence the type of a feminine Dragon-slayer. In various
versions it is the Woman, and not her Son, that crushes the Serpentřs
head.
The Australian blacks tell of a mysterious creature, the Nar-gun,
a cave-dweller that inhabits certain places in the bush, especially the
Valley of the Mitchell in Gippsland. He has many caves, and if any
one should incautiously approach too near one of these, he is dragged
in by Nar-gun and seen no more. If a spear is thrown at Nar-gun,
the spear returns to the thrower and wounds him. Nar-gun cannot
be killed. He dwells in a cave at Lake Tyers. A native woman once
fought Nar-gun at this cave, but nobody knows how the battle
ended.1
In the Chippewa tale of the ŖLittle Monedoŗ it is related that
there was a tiny boy, who grew no bigger with years, but who was
mighty powerful and performed marvellous feats. One day he waded
into the lake and shouted, ŖYou of the red fins come and swallow
me.ŗ Here is may be remarked that red fins, or the red, i.e. Typhonian
fish, appears in the Egyptian Magic Papyrus.2 The fish came and
swallowed him. But seeing his sister standing in despair on the
shore, he called to her, and she tied an old moccasin to one end of a
string, the other to a tree and threw the shoe into the water. ŖWhat
is that floating on the water?ŗ asked the monster. The boy said to
the fish, ŖGo take hold of it, and swallow it as fast as you can.ŗ
The fish darted towards the old shoe, and swallowed it; the boy-man
laughed to himself, but said nothing till the fish was fairly caught,
and then he took hold of the line and hauled himself to shore. When
the sister began to cut the fish open she heard her brotherřs voice
from inside the fish, calling to her to let him out, so she made a hole,
and he crept through, and told her to cut up the fish and dry it, for
it would last them a long while for food.3
On the monuments it is the genitrix herself in the character of
Isis-Serk, who is placed in command over the Apap Dragon by night,
and when he is seen fettered and fast bound, the end of the cord or
1 Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i. p. 456.
2 Records of the Past, vol. x. p. 145.
3 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 343. This is a form of the Mythical
Jonah, whose phenomenal origin was the Sun, or Fire, that was carried across the
Waters by the Fish, probably Piscis Australis, which marked the passage of the
sunken Sun. A writer in the Dictionary of the Bible (Article, Jonah) remarks
with much simplicityŕŖWe feel ourselves precluded from any doubt of the reality
of the transactions recorded in this book (Jonah) by the simplicity of the language
itself, and by the thought that one might as well doubt all other miracles in Scripture
as doubt these.ŗ Oh! Sancta Simplicitas!
310 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
chain is held in her hands. The genitrix also triumphed over the
Darkness, as the ŖWomanŗ of the Moon who Ŗguards the forepart of the
orb at the paths of total darkness.ŗ She boasts that the Twin
Lion-gods are in her belly, and says she has deprived the darkness of
its power. ŖI am the Woman, an orb of light in the darkness. I have
brought my orb to the darkness, it is changed into light. I overthrow
the extinguishers of flame! I have stood! The Fiends have hidden
their faces. I have prepared Taht (the young Moon-god) at the gate
of the Moon.ŗ1 In a Chinese Myth the Dragon devours Nine Maidens
consecutively. Then Kî, the daughter of Li Tau, volunteered to go
to the monsterřs cave. She took a sword and a dog that would bite
snakes; and placed rice and honey at the mouth of the monsterřs
den. At nightfall out came the Dragon with its head as big as a
rice-rick, and its eyes like mirrors, two feet acrss. The mess
attracted it; the dog attacked it in front and Kî hacked at it behind
until it was mortally wounded. Kî then entered the cave and
recovered the skeletons of the Nine Maidens whose fate she bewailed,
and then she leisurely returned home. 2 The Prince of Yueh on
hearing of her exploit, raised her to become his queen. This is a
Lunar form of the Mythos in which the Woman spears the Serpentřs
head, instead of Horus, her son and seed. Kî and her dog answer to
Isis and her dog in the under-world; and in relation to the Dragon
of Eclipse, the Nine Maidens may possibly represent the Nine
previous Moons; the Tenth the genitrix, as the bringer-forth of the
young Sun-god at the time of the Spring Equinox (Nine Months from
the Summer Solstice), when the Moon in her travail wrestled with the
Dragon of Eclipse, and this time conquered for the year; or the
Nine Months reckoned from the Harvest Moon of the Autmn
Equinox to Mesore (Egyptian), the Month of re-birth at the Summer
Solstice. It is noticeable that the Marquesans had a Year which was
reckoned as Ten Moons, and that in Egypt the Year consisted of Ten
Moons, or Nine Solar Months, with an Inundation (which was the
Child of Isis), that flowed during Three Months.
There was a stone in the north end of the Parish of Strathmartin,
Forfar, called Martinřs stone. Tradition affirmed that this was erected
on the spot where a Dragon had devoured Nine Maidens, who had
gone out on a Sunday evening one after the other to fetch water from
the well or spring. The Dragon was said to have been killed by
Martin.3 At Lambton Hall the Worm4 was reputed to drink the Milk
of Nine Cows, which correspon to the Nine Maidens or Moons.
1 Rit. ch. lxxx. Birch.
2 A Chinese Story. Notes and Queries, vol. i. p. 148.
3 Brand, Midsummer Eve.
4 The ŖWormŗ was the Dragon in Britain. The Worm is the Krimi in Sanskrit;
Kirm, Hindustanti; Kirmele, Lithuanic; Cruimh, Irish; and in Inner Africa the
Alligator is the Karam in Kanuri; Karam in Munio; Karam in Nřguru; Karam in
Kanem; the animal being a real Dragon of the waters.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 311
In one Myth the Light is rescued by the Sun-god, and in the other it
is re-born of the genitrix. The ŖWomanŗ in the Ritual boasts that she
has Ŗmade the Eye of Horus, when it was not coming at the fifteenth
of the Month.ŗ The Eye was the Mirror or Reflector, and the Full
Moon was an Eye of Sight that reflected the Sun. This was in
connection with the origin of the so-called ŖEye-goddessesŗ in Egypt,
such as Tef-nut who is named from Tef, the pupil of the eye.
The imagery pourtrayed in the planisphere shows the Woman as
the bruiser of the Serpent. On Christmas Day when the Christ, the
Buddha, or Mithras was born, the birth-day of the Sun in the Winter
Solstice, the constellation of the Virgin arose upon the horizon; she
was represented as holding the new-born child in her arms, and being
pursued by the Serpent which opened its mouth just beneath her
in the position of being trodden under-foot. The symbolism was
applied to Isis and Horus in Egypt; to Maya and Buddha in India
and China; to the Woman and Child in Revelation, to Mary and
Jesus in Rome; and is still to be read in the signs of heaven, where
it is old enough to prove a unity of origin for the several myths.
Alexander Henry in his travels among the North American Indians,
relates that when the Mother was travailing sorely in the pangs of
labour, like the Woman in Revelation, or the Mother-Moon in Eclipse,
and the Midwives grew fearful lest the Child should be born dead,
they hastened to catch and kill a Serpent and gave the Woman its
blood to drink. 1 Here the origin of the Serpent-type alone will
enable us to interpret the custom. The Dragon of Darkness had to
be cut in two at the crossing for the orb to pass through or the light
to be re-born. In Kanuri, ŖDinia fatsar kamtsi,ŗ for the Day dawns,
signifies the Day has cut through. The Solar conquerer, as Horus
the cutter-through, is pourtrayed as the wearer of the Serpentřs skin
for the trophy of his triumph. So in the Algonkin Myth, Michabo,
the Solar god, is represented in conflict with the Prince of Serpents
who dwells in a deep lake; he destroys the reptile with his dazzling
dart, and clothes himself in the skin of his fallen foe.2 It was at one
time common in England for people to believe that the skin of a
snake bound round a woman in travail would ease her labour pains.3
The Serpent that was slain was the Dragon of darkness, which be-
came the Serpent of Life and Healing as a type of sacrifice when
1 Travels, p. 117.
2 Brinton, M. N. A. p. 116.
3 The Egyptian Magical Texts show that hair, feathers, the serpentřs skin, and
the Ŗblood of the mystic eyeŗ were used as charms of protecting or destroying power.
ŖShu takes the shape of an Eagle‟s wing.ŗ ŖA lock of hair is made to
strangle the soulŗ of an enemy. Shu prevails by carrying the Ŗhair of a cow,ŗ
the hood of a serpent, and the Ŗblood of the mystic eye.ŗ The latter denotes what
is known amongst certain of our peasantry as ŖDragon‟s Blood,ŗ (not the chemical
compound used as a kind of size) which is employed as a potent love-charm or
philtre according to instructions still or lately given by the Wise Woman.ŕ
Records of the Past, vol. vi. pp. 119-120.
312 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
the Serpent that was severed at the Crossing was Ŗoffered upŗ on
the Cross.
Mr. Ruskin speaks of the ŖTrue Worship,ŗ which Ŗmay have taken
a dark form when associated with the Draconian one.ŗ He assumes
some Ŗprimæval revelationŗ vouchsafed to a chosen people from the
truth of which men lapsed into error; but the Dragon is part and
parcel of all the primæval revelation there ever was; the Draconian
was the first as the Dragon at the Polar centre still bears witness, and
it was the fetishism of the dark because it was primæval. There has
been a mental evolution corresponding to the physical, and Mythology
retains the means of tracing the progress from the vague darkness
through the Stellar, Lunar, and Solar phases of thought into the
later light of Day.
When Sanchoniathon says the First Men Ŗconsecrated the Plants of
the Earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped the things upon which
they themselves lived, and to which they made libations and sacrifices,ŗ1
his statement is made according to the later thought and mode of
expression. ŖConsecration,ŗ ŖGods,ŗ ŖWorship,ŗ must have been
very remote from the minds of the First Men.
Augustine has remarked of Hermes Trismegistus, that he affirms
the visible and tangible images to be as it were the Ŗbodies of gods,ŗ
because there are within them various invited spirits. By a Ŗcertain
artŗ these invisible spirits are made visible in a vesture of corporeal
matter. ŖThis is what he calls making gods.ŗ2 Hermes was the great
Hieroglyphist of Tradition, the supposed Inventor of Types, and of
Typology; the earliest mode of representing things, or making gods.
We are now in a position to prove that the earliest Ŗgodsŗ were Ŗele-
mentary powersŗ which were directly apprehended at first; and
to show how they were represented by natural types, in short, how
the first gods grew. The Egyptian divinities, as the Nenu, of which
there is a figure of 8,3 are only the types, or representatives, the
fetish-images of powers considered to be superior to man.
It has been assumed that the early Man projected his own spirit
upon external nature as the mirror which returned the shadow of
himself. But if so, the earliest personifications of natural forces
ought to have been in his own likeness, whereas the Devil or
Divinity in the human form does not belong to the primary Mythi-
cal formation. Powers beyond human were recognized in external
nature,ŕfuries of force in whose presence man was by an image
of helplessness altogether inadequate to express them. The powers
were super-human; their likenesses are pre-human, and with the human
advance the types were humanized. We see the Beast transfiguring
into the Beauty, when the Mother Nature, who was once a Dragon,
a Lioness, a Hippopotamus, a Milch-Cow, a Serpent, changes into
1 Eusebius, Præp. Evang. i. 10. 2 Augustinus, De Civ. Dei, 8ŕ23.
Uati, Hathor, Neith, or Rennut, as the Goddess who wears the shape
of Woman. It is another mistake to imagine that primitive Man
began personifying, and, so to say, entifying the elements by con-
ceiving the eidolon of Fire, Wind, or Water. Typology proves that
he did not personify, as his mode of representation. His process was
mainly that of objective comparison. He represented one thing by
another; the invisible force by a corresponding type of power.
The process of representation was that which the logician terms
in another application of the words, the Ŗsubstitution of similars.ŗ For
instance, having no name for the moon, he saw it as the eye of the
dark, and called it the Cat, earlier Lynx or Lioness, whose golden
eyes were luminous by night. This was in the natural phase; but
the image still served for typifying, when it was known that the Moon
was only a reflector of the solar light, because the eye is a mirror.
Hence, the Lunar Cat-headed, or Lioness-headed Goddess, became
the Eye of the Sun.1 The primitive man did not animate the dark-
ness or the water with any abstract spirit of destruction. But he
realized the less definite Swallower in the most definite form of the
Dragon, because he was compelled to think in things. He did not
know how the Earth gulped down the stars, or the Water devoured
the life, but he adopted the Crocodile and Hippopotamus as forms
most palpable. Earth was the visible cause of darkness, and there-
fore it was represented by the Crocodile that swallowed the lights as
they went down into the darkness. The Serpent was that which darted
death, so was the Lightning. The Hippopotamus was the power of
the Deluge broken out of bounds; the howling wind was the Great
Ape in its wrath; the fire was the flaming Yellow Lion or the Golden
Bird that soared aloft fearlessly in the flames of the Sun.
This mode of expressing phenomena was the origin of the primor-
dial types which were continued as mythical, Totemic, divine, and
thus we are enabled to see that typology and mythology are twin from
the birth and one in their fundamental rootage. Primitve men were
forced to typify in order that they might know by name these Ele-
mental Energies and non-intellectual Powers, even as they represented
their own Totems, and named themselves by means of the animals.
According to the laws of evolution, cognition of the unapparent
power as cause of phenomena must have belonged to the latest per-
ception, not the primary; and it is an axiom of the present work that
religious feeling originated in awe and admiration of powers superior
to those possessed by the human being, but that the nearest and most
apparent were the earliest. The first so-called deities of primitive
man may be named Weather-gods. The god and the weather, the
1 The Catŕas Peht or Buto in Egyptian; Pâtu, Mandura; Patu, Nřgodsin; Budi
These are the Genitrix and the Seven Pitris, or Fathers, who were
born as her Seven Sons.
In the account of creation inscribed on the Bark Record of the
Lenape Indians, the primal power (or powers) rises from the waters
eight-rayed. This precedes and does not represent the Sun. 1 The
number likewise agrees with the Quiché creative powers, who are
described as eight in number. These, however, are called half male
and half female. The Quiché legends, which tell of the struggles
between the rulers of the upper and nether realms, also relate that in
Xibalba, the realm of disappearing, the rulers or lords are ŖOne Death
and the Seven Deaths.ŗ The One and the Seven, just as we find them
in the Dragon and her Seven-fold progeny, in Sut Typhon (or the
Eight Gods), and in the Divinity of the Templars, Mete, whose Ŗroot is
One and Seven.ŗ Ximenes says of these eight reduced deities who had
been superseded, as in Akkad and Egypt, ŖIn the old times they did
not have much power, they were the annoyers and opposers of men, and
in truth they were not regarded as gods. But when they appeared it was
terrible. They were of evil, they were owls, things of darkness, fomenting
trouble and discord.ŗ2 It was in the old times, however, that the Eight
had all power, and only in later times were they relegated to their
native hell as the Devils of Theology.
In the Latita-Vistara 3 eight heavenly beings are enumerated as
the Gods or Devas. These are the Nagas, Yakshas, Gandharvas,
Asuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, and Mahôrgas, which are submerged like
the ruins of Yucatan beneath whole forests of aftergrowth; but they
correspond fundamentally to the Eight Elementaries of Egypt, and
can be recovered by the comparative process, because in them the
earliest types are retained.
The Vedic Aditi is a form of the primordial genitrix, called in the
vague stage of thought the boundless, the INFINITE. She also pre-
ceded Time and the established order of things that followed Chaos.
The infinite Aditi is really the non-established, the unopened, or
undivided. She has seven sons called the Seven Adityas. The Eight
ŕthe genitrix and her seven-fold progrenyŕwhen compared with the
Egyptian Eight, will be found like them to be the gods of chaos, who
existed as Elementaries before the creation of Time. The Elemen-
taries of Egypt are likewise represented by the Asuras in India. The
Mahābhārata4 says that in the battle which they fought with each
other, the Asuras were the elder brothers and the gods the younger.
The gods were of the same parentage as the Asuras, but from a
footing of equality they became superior to them.5 The Asuras
were primarily the product of an earlier phase of thought, and were
afterwards considered non-spiritual on account of their physical and
1 W. W. Beach, Indian Miscellany, p. 21.
2 Ximenes, Or. de los Indios de Guatemala, p. 76; cited by Brinton, p. 64.
3 Foucaux, p. 250, et passim. 4 SřAntip, 1184. 5 Muir, Sans. Texts, v. 15.
316 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
material origin. It is the same with the inferior and superior Heb-
domads of the Gnostics.
The Seven who are the Evil Progeny of Tiamat in Akkad, the
Seven-headed Thunderbolt, and the Seven-headed Serpent, are also
the Seven-fold Storm-wind as one of the Tempest-types of fatal
force. They are said to rush from the four cardinal points; they
swoop down like a violent tempest in heaven and earth; they are
the destroying Tempests, the fiends of stom on their way to becoming
the Maruts of the Indian mythology, who are Seven at first, corre-
sponding to the Seven in Akkad. They are described as the ŖSeven
with spears.ŗ The embroyo of the genitrix Aditi was divided into
seven parts, and from these sprang the Maruts of the Vedas. As the
story is told by Sāyana, the Embroyotic Seven were born of Diti, the
Divider.1 In India the Seven were developed into the Seven Troops of
the Maruts, but they have the same sole origin in nature, and in the
typology. It was they who Ŗstretched out all the terrestrial regions and
the luminaries of the skyŗ; they who Ŗdivided and held the Two
Worlds apart.ŗ The Maruts have the same development form the
status of evil destroyers who became supporters of the good god. They
fight on the side of Indra just as the Seven Spirit of the Great Bear
become the supporters of Osiris. They are likewise particularly asso-
ciated with the Seven Rishis of the Great Bear. Seven Elements
were identified with these Seven Elementaries or later spirits; also
Seven Properties in Nature, such as Matter, Cohesion, Fluxion, Coagu-
lation, Accumulation, Station, and Division.
And although the present writer is unable to fathom or follow the
subject in India, he is satisfied that a mass of mysticism in Budd-
hism is the result of this beginning with the Elementaries. For
example, A-Kāsa is called the Fifth Element, the subtle ethereal fluid,
which is the vehicle of sound, and the peculiar vehicle of life. Then it be-
comes the Creator (Brahma or other god) identical with Ether. As Kāsa
(Sans.) is the becoming visible or apparent, A-Kāsa is the invisible
or unapparent. But in this Elemental stage the unapparent is not
God; it is only atmospherical. Ether is represented by the Cone as the
fifth sign in the diagram, in which the square signifies earth; the circle,
Water (heaven as the water above); the pyramid or triangle,
Fire; the crescent, Air, and the, cone, Ether, which as fifth was
once the quintessence of the elements. The full number of
these is Seven in India, Egypt, Britain, and other countries.
The Seven Elements from which came the Seven Spirits of
mythology, are identified by the British Barddas, as Earth,
Water, Fire, Air, Ether (or Vapour), Blossom (the Seminal
principle) and the Wind of Purposes (or the Ghost). A sixth element
was identified by the Hindus with Bala-rama the representative of
1 Sanaya on Rig Veda, 8, 28, 5. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 256;
vol. v. 147.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 317
Elementals the Seven (with the Mother, Eight) were not Intelligencers
to men; they were seven overpowering, overwhelming forces recog-
nized in the dragon, the scorpion, the leopard or lion, the lightning,
the hurricane and their kindred agents of violence, destruction,
deluges, diseases, and death, who were the born children of the dark-
ness, external and internal. The types themselves suffice to demon-
strate the fact that they do not represent any personal beings conceived
behind phenomena., and causing the on-goings amid which man found
himself to be going on. The Serpent emaning itself from its own
mouth images no personality but a condition of being, perceived by
man, an existence for ever self-emaning and self-renewing which the
Egyptians termed ŖRenewal, coming of itself.ŗ
Primitive Man did not begin with concepts of cause beyond the
visible phenomena. He did not postulate a Devil that made the
darkness. Darkness from the depth was the Devil. And the darkness
brought forth its brood of baleful beings, inimical to him. As the
female was the obvious bringer to birth it followed that nature or space
or the abyss of night should be first represented as the genitrix. In
Egypt this abyss, the source of all things, also called the hole of the
snake, serpent or dragon, is the Tepht; Tepht modifies into Tet (Eg.),
the English Depth; Welsh Dyved; Cornish Defyth, for a desert,
wilderness, and the Toyt, as the Shetlanders call their mystical sea,
with the same meaning. These are Inner African names for the
abyss of darkness, the night.
Defid, Night, Nřgodsin. Tétan, Night, Bagbalan. Dûdu, Black, Eki.
Dofid, ,, Doai. Otîtan, ,, Mbarike. Dûdu ,, Dsumu.
Itoafiu ,, Mbe. Dûdu, Black, Egba. Dûdu ,, Ife.
Têto ,, Kum. Dûdu ,, Yagba. Dîdu ,, Dsekiri.
Têtan ,, Koama. Dûdu ,, Yoruba. Didi ,, Ebe, &c.
The Egyptian Tepht is one with the Tavthe of the Babylonian cos-
mogony. Tiamat and Tavthe are the same name by interchange of
m and v, and the Tavthe, as place is the abyss or source, the hole of the
dragon. Tavthe personified is the Mother of the Gods. Tiamat per-
sonified is the dragon, Mother of seven wicked spirits. This was the
Egyptian Tep, Teb, or Typhon, one of whose types was the crocodile,
Sevekh, the dragon of the deep. It was a dragon from the deep that
first taught Fo-hi the distinction of sexes, as it is stated in the Chinese
sacred books. The Hottentot snake called the Gâbeb, or the one
which lives in a hole, is likewise the typical snake of the abyss. It is
the snake supposed to dwell in every fountain of the land, and if it be
killed the fountain will dry up.1 This FLOW-ER forth identified with the
1 Hahn, p. 77. Dr. Hahn, explains that in Khoi-Khoi, Au, is a root, meaning
to flow, or bleed, from which he derives Aub, the Snake, and Aus, a Fountain.
Then the Khoi-Khoi forgot this original signification and ŖMythology got hold of Aub
and Aus, and made sure that in every fountain lived a snake,ŗ p. 79. This
is the Müllerite interpretation of Mythology as a disease of language, and a
misapprehension of the meaning of their own words made by all the people of the
past. The motion of the Serpent made it a type of that which flowsŕwater flows,
320 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
issuing water of source is one with the dragon Tiamat, or Typhon, but
it has not yet passed out of the serpent phase into that of the genetrix
of the abyss. In Egyptian, however, the beb is the hole of the abyss
and Kebeb signifies the source.1
At the spot in Syria where Typhon went underground the river
Orontes had its origin. In German folk-tales, when Winkleried kills
the dragon, a rivulet issues out of its hole. When the swollen torrents
rush down from the Swiss mountains after a thunderstorm, the people
say the dragon has come out. This identification of the dragon with
the water shows the beginning with the water-flood as the destroyer!
The water comes out of the abyss, the Tepht (Eg.) which is the ŖHole
of the Snake.ŗ Thus the beginning with the dragon or serpent of
source in the abyss is common to Akkad, China, Shetland, Egypt and
Inner Africa. The serpent and dragon became interchangeable as
type, but they can be distinguished from each other.
Professor Fraas of Stuttgart has reconstructed the Swabian Lind-
wurm for the Natural History Museum of that capital. This dragon
combined the bird, lizard, kangaroo, and pachyderm; and could fly,
crawl, leap, and swim. It is very curious for these Four are a form of
the Hawk (bird), Crocodile (lizard), Ape (kangaroo), and Hippopotamus
(pachyderm), which represented the Four elements and Four quarters,
and the four (with variants) were compounded in Typhon the mythical
dragon. The Monster of the abyss in the beginning, the crocodile or
dragon of the west, that swallowed the setting stars, was preserved in
the eschatological phase as the devourer of the souls of the damned.
The Egyptians had their museum of monsters in the underworld of
the dead. Here the primitive types of destroying power served as
imagery in the eschatological stage, where they were intended to strike
terror as they had done on earth. This may be gathered from the
following text, ŖGreatest of spirits, red-haired Monster, coming from
the night, correcting the wicked by creation of reptiles.ŗ 2 Amt, the
devourer in the Hades is depicted with the head of the crocodile,
the fore part of the lioness, the hind quarters of the hippopotamus.
The ancient genitrix of the abyss was thus turned into the evil
Typhon of the Egyptian hell. Another compounded monster, the
Sesh-Sesh dragon, is a crocodile in front and a serpent behind. The
crocodile is the dragon of the waters. In Revelation, when the young
solar god is born, the dragon is described as emaning a flood from
its mouth; that is equivalent to the end of a period called the
deluge. Hydra, the sign of the inundation in Egypt, will also
blood flowsŕhere we shall find the flowing Serpent in a mystical senseŕand the
Serpent flows along the ground. When the fount dries up the typical Serpent ceases
to flow, and is said to be found in the fountain dead. This is according to a mode
of typology, not a disease of language. Cf. the \ymd rwqm or fountain of blood for
the feminine pudenda, Lev. xii. 7, which is likewise the Tepht of the snake.
1 Pierret, Vocab. 2 Rit. Ch. cxlvi. (14th Pylon.)
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 321
explain why the serpent or dragon is the symbol of the flood. Also
the red dragon of fire or lightning will account for the alternative
type of ending in a conflagration.
In times of drought the Chinese beseech the dragon of rain for wet
weather. They affix to the houses pieces of paper containing prayers
and also the likeness of the dragon of rain. Images of the dragon are
carried in procession, and if no rain follows the dragon is smashed 1
into small pieces. The symbolical dragon is somewhat of a croco-
dile with wings, and the crocodile was a type of Typhon, the genitrix
of the Seven Stars. Sevekh, the crocodile, is the capturer. This
image of the genitrix was continued in Sevekh, her son. The
crocodile was a type of darkness, even to the tip of its tail, which is a
sign for black. Therefore it is feasible that the mythical dragon of
the abyss, the waters of source, was founded on the crocodile, if not
on the geological dragon. There was a great fish which the Greeks
called a ŖDracon,ŗ and the crocodile is the fish and dragon under one
type.
We find another reason why the crocodile should have been the
natural prototype of the mythical dragon with the lidless eyes.
Plutarch tells us one of the Egyptian reports was that the crocodile
Ŗis the sole animal living in water that hath his eyesight covered over
with a thin transparent film which descends from his forehad, so that he
sees without himself being seen by others, in which he agrees with the
First God.ŗ2 The crocodile was a type of the first goddess, Typhon.
And if there be a first god in Egyptian mythology it is Sevekh, her son,
who bore her image as the Crocodile. That is Sevekh (or Khebek,
whence Kek) was the one of the Seven (the Eight with the Mother
induded) who was elevated to the primacy in the oldest, the Typho-
nian, Cult, as Sevekh Kronus the earlier form of Seb Kronus.
Assuredly no apter image of the jaws of darkness, as the earth or
grave, silent, wide open, and waiting to devour, could have been
adopted than this figure of the tongueless Crocodile to form a basis
for the mythical Dragon. Darkncss being the first producer per-
sonified as the Dragon or the Genitrix, and the earliest modes of
phenomena that most impinged on primitive man being inimical and
opposed to him and therefore Evil, the first Adversary as the Dragon
of Darkncss was accredited with a progeny of adversaries. These were
reckoned as Seven in number; the Genitrix herself being either the
First or the Eighth. From these we shall derive the Dragon with
Seven Heads.
The Egyptian mythology begins with the Eight Gods that ruled
in Am-Smen, the place of Preparation or of Chaos. Their domain
was the timeless Night which preceded the reign of Order and the
dawn of day. Egyptologists term them ŖElementaries,ŗ faute de mieux.
They are looked upon as elementary forces of nature personified as
1 Huc and Gabet. 2 Of Isis and Osiris.
322 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Gods; or, rather, some French Egyptologists,1 who are not Evolu-
tionists, look on these primordial figures as mere types that were
adapted by the Egyptians to express the various attributes of the one
God.
The allusions to these ŖGodsŗ of the Beginning are obscure and
obscured; but they were the birth of Chaos, they were primary, and
they were Typhonian. They are denounced as the Betsh, the Children
of' Revolt and of Inertness, corresponding in the latter phase to
what Taliesin terms the ŖSluggish Animals of Satan.ŗ The same
place of birth and rebirth in the Ritual is called Smen, the place of
the Eight, in the Stellar phase; Hermopolis or Sesennu in the Lunar,
and Annu (Heliopolis) in the Solar Myth, in accordance with the
order of development from the Elementary stage. The Eight then
are composed of the genitrix Typhon and her brood of Seven.
These re-appear in Akkad and Assyria as the Dragon Tiamat and
the Seven Children of Revolt, the Seven Wicked Spirits that con-
stitute the Seven Heads of the Dragon of Eclipse, or the Devouring
Dark. The first is a Scorpion, or the Sting-bearer of Heaven, the
second is the Thunderbolt, the third a Leopard or Hyena, the fourth
a Serpent, the fifth a raging Lion, the sixth a rebellious Giant who
submits neither to god nor king, the seventh the Messenger of the
fatal Wind. The scorpion, serpent, leopard, thunderbolt and typhoon
are sufficient to prove the representation of those powers that were
adverse to man. That the Serpent was his mortal enemyŕwhence
he became a supreme type of his immortal enemyŕthat the Scorpion
stung, whether called the scorpion of the dark or of fire, or the Sting-
ray of the sun, that the Thunderbolt carried death in its stroke, and
the burning breath of the Typhoon or Simoom was fatal, were among
the simplest, most fundamental facts in nature. And of such were
the seven-fold progeny of the Dragon of Darkness. The Seven ap-
pear in the Egyptian Ritual, where two lists of their different names
are given. In one they are called, Het-Het; Ket-Ket; The Bull, who
never made smoke to dwell in his flames; Going eating his hour; Red
Eyes; Follower of the House of Ans; Hissing to come forth and turn
back, seeing at night and bringing by day.2 These may be paralleled
with the Akkadian Seven, thus:
AKKADIAN SEVEN. EGYPTIAN SEVEN.
1. The Scorpion or sting-bearer of heaven. 1. Het-Het.
2. The Thunder-bolt. 2. Ket-Ket.
3. A Leopard or Hyena. 3. The Bull (or Beast) who never made smoke
to dwell in his flame.
4. A Serpent. 4. Going eating his hour.
5. A raging Lion 5. Red eyes.
6. A rebellious Giant. 6. Follower of the House of Ans.
7. The Messenger of the fatal Wind. 7. Hissing to come forth and turn back;
seeing by night and bringing by day.
This being a synonym for fire and Hell, will show us how and where
the Solar Horus began as one of the Elementals who were considered
to be the foremost enemies of man. The Sun was the physical
fount of theological Hell-fire. The name of Hell, in Yagba,
signifies the ŖHeaven of Ashes,ŗ and Heavcn was often looked on
as a Hell of fire. Thus Har (Horus) the later Solar God, was one
of the Seven Elementaries as the terror of fire, and the word Har (Eg.)
signifies terror, to terrify, as did the zig-zag lightning and the deadly
sting-ray of the Sun. Har then was a primary power born of the
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 325
Hell of Inner African Heat, who became the Sun-God Har, or Horus,
in the Egyptian Mythology.
What was the Earth to the primitive perception? Another form of
the Devourer and Swallower of the light and the lights as they went
down from heaven. The Egyptians denote eating, says Hor-Apollo,
by pourtraying a crocodile with his mouth open.1 The Stars are
represented as being swallowed by the Crocodile of the West. This
was the Crocodile of Earth, the Swallower, when it was not known
that the earth was a rotating globe. The crocodile is Sevekh, the
Capturer. Sevekh signifies to noose, catch, the place of execution.
Sevekh was the Terror of Earth, and another of our Elementaries.
The Element of Air was potential death before it could be
recognised as the breath of life. The burning blast, the simoom
or typhoon, first made itself felt and acknowledged, in such forms
as the African hurricane, known as the terrific Kamsin, which
stirs the desert to its depths, sets its surface moving in a vast
suffocating, overwhelming storm of sand, and mixes up the elements
of wind and water, fire and dust, in a chaos of confusion that blots
out heaven for the time being and seems to blind the sun. This
was the air in motion, personated by Hurakan, the Quiché deity.
The rudest awakeners appealed to the dawning consciousness of man,
not the gentle breeze and genial warmth, not the fertile fruitful earth
and fostering dews of heaven; not the light but the lightnings; not
the voice of birds and murmuring of rippling waters, but thunders,
the voice of tempests, and the roar of devouring beasts.
One of the Elementaries is the Monkey-God, the Kaf, or Kânt. As
Hapi he is one of the Four Genii, and Hapi is the earlier Kafi, the
Giant-Ape, a type of Shu. Shu, as a god, is a representative of
Wind (later Breath and Soul), and Wind, in its fury, is the Typhonian
tempest. This type of the Kaf-Monkey is the personification of
anger or fury in the hieroglyphics, and the Kafau are the Typhonian
Desolators by name. Water was not first appreciated as one of the
two Elements of life. On the contrary, it was that which devoured in
drowning, and swallowed up life like the hippopotamus. Hence the
hippopotamus that couId crush a canoe in its ponderous jaws was the
typical terror of the Waters, and yet a form of the Bringer-forth from
the Waters, the Dragon of the Abyss, the Mother of the Seven.
Water was that which broke forth wide-mouthed as the Dragon of the
Deluge. The indefinite beginnings of Mythology are defined enough
in physical phenomena like those in which the working types originated
as representations of the seven primary forces of the Mother Nature.
We can also perceive how some of these Elementaries found a repre-
sentative Voice for their power. The great Ape is such a howler that
it was continued as a Voice of the Unknown, a speaker for the gods of
later times. So that the Image of Anger, which chattered or howled
1 B. ii. 80.
326 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
furiously, represented in visible form the passion, dwelling in the
throat of destroying Power and the howling of the Hurricane. The
Kaf-Ape was the animal type of the Breathing Power when it was a
fiend of the storm, the Element that was the origin of the God of
Breath or Soul, as Kafi-Shu.
The fire of the sun in Inner Africa found fitting voice in the Lion,
with its yell of rage, awful as if the sky had gaped audibly, and the
solar furnace was heard to roar. Wind and heat were ungraspable,
ungaugeable, inexpressible, thence the need of the Ape and Lion as
sensible equivalents; hence, too, the origin of that typology which
preceded verbal speech. The Lion is another of the Four chief
elementary types. One of the first voices of Darkness, or the Un-
known, that arrested attention and awakened terror would be Thunder.
It has been said that Thunder was the primordial divinity. Un-
doubtedly it was the voice of one of the earliest Elementaries or
powers recognized in external nature. Hor-Apollo says, ŖWhen the
Egyptians would symbolize a voice from a distance, whick is called by
them Ouaie, they pourtray the voice, i.e., Thunder, than which nothing
utters a greater or more powerful voice.ŗ 1 In the Magic Papyrus the
ŖBad Dogŗ is addressed thus: ŖUp, bad dog! be thy face the gaping
sky! Usaf-Hu thy howling.ŗ That is, be thy howling Thundrous. 2
The Thunder would be the Dog, Jackal, or Wolf of howling Dark-
ness, the voice afar off. Captain Beechy describes the Ŗsudden burst
of the answering long-protracted screamŗ of a pack of jackals Ŗsucceed-
ing immediately the opening noteŗ and being Ŗscarcely less impressing
than the roll of the Thunder-clap immediately after the flash of
lightning.ŗ So thought the early men who made the Jackal a typical
announcer, a voice of darkness, of prophecy in heaven, that foretold
the coming night and the inundation in the distance. The Jackal,
or Dog, is also one of the seven types, which were continued when the
Elementaries had passed in to the Star-Gods of Time.
A divinity like Baal-zebub was a devil from the first; a devil in
physical phenomena before he became the Satan in a later sense. He
is called ŖGod of Flies.ŗ But the Zebub Fly makes the name more
special, and shows the Inner African origin. The Zebub is described
by the Rabbins as a fly that stings to madness. It is one of the chief
plagues of the stinging things produced by nature when in heat at the
time of her midsummer madness, that settle on man and beast like
showers of fire, or darts of death, or serpents of the air. Bruce gives
us a striking account of the Æthiopian and Abyssinian Fly, called the
Zimb, which is a frightful scourge. As soon as the Zimb appear, and
their buzzing is heard, he says, the eattIe forsake their food and fly,
until they drop at last and die of fright and fatigue. The natives are
1 B. i. 29.
2 Rendered Ŗtremendousŗ by M. Chabas (Records of the Past, vol. x. p. 156), who
did not compare Hor-Apollořs explanation.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 327
compelled to quit the Ŗblack earthŗ and take refuge on the sands of
Atbara, and there remain until the plague has past. The elephant,
rhinoceros, and hippopotamus are forced to roll themselves in mud to
coat their hides with an armour that will resist the stings.1 The
Zimb is identical with the Hebrew Zebub, the m in one word inter-
changing with b in the other. In their translations the Arabs ren-
dered Zebub by the Zimb. So in Assyrian the word Zumbi appears
as a variant of Zebeb. In the Deluge Tablet, when the sacrifice is
offered, it is said, the gods swarmed over the sacrifices like Zumbi, to
devour the offerings. In which the Zimb, or Zebub, is thus cited as
the typical Devourer. This is the Fly mentioned by Isaiah, ŖAnd it
shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the Zebub that
is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt.ŗ2 It is the Zebub of
Death.3 In the Inner African languages the Zimb is synonymous
with the Devil and Hell. Nsumbi is the Devil In Kasands; Ndsumbi
is the Devil in Undaza; Ndsombau is Hell in Bumbete; Zume is Hell
in Dahome; Ozokim is Hell in Igu; Simo is Hell in Nalu. The Sami
(Eg.) are the typhonian Devourers, the Devils that swarm and buzz
and torture, like the Zimb (flies) in the Egyptian Hells. The Hebrew
Tsamim are the Devourers,4 and the Zamsummim5 are the mythical
giants. The Zimwi in Swahili is an ogre, ghoul, or other evil being
said to devour men. The Zimu in Zulu-Kaffir are cannibals believed
to live in the far North, as a race of long-haired people. The Sami
buzz and sting as spiritual beings in the Hells of the Damned because
the Zimb first made hell upon earth in Africa; and in Baal-zebub (or
Bar-Typhon) we find the devil-type on its way to divinity.
Monumental Egypt can tell comparatively little of the vague
period. The Shadow of Darkness and the terror of the physical
Typhon had passed away when her monumental record comes into
view. The prior phases of feeling and thought are only reflected for
us in the types with which she speaks to us of the remoter past. Her
Eight Elementaries born of chaos, as the genitrix and her Seven-fold
brood of nature-powers were superseded as the Children of Inert-
ness, the Demons of Revolt, or, rather, their types were transformed
into the Vahans of later ideas. But outside of Egypt, all round the
world, we find races still under the shadow of the early darkness, who
yet utter the fears of the human chiidhood, for whom the Akhekh is a
real terror, and not a type to interpret. We see by the old Ukko of
the Fins how the Akhekh or Dragon of Darkness would pass into a
God of Thunder and Lightning. So closely is Ukko, the old one asso-
ciated with thunder and lightning, that the Fins call a thunderstorm
Ŗan Ukko,ŗ and when it lightens they exclaim ŖThat is Ukko, there
he is striking fire.ŗ6 This god in Egypt was Kak, or Khebekh whence
G
minative of water pouring straight down from Heaven,
and Khan is water. Typhon and Typhoon are identical.
Hushtoli, the Storm-wind, was the original Choctaw word for Deity.
ŖMixcohuatlŗ the ŖCloud Serpent,ŗ a chief or the chief of the Mexican
gods, bears the name of the tropical whirlwind. Such representation
was primal and the later God of Air and Breath was a modification
of the demon in his first fierce phase of the terrible tornado. Light-
ning, with its crooked fires, world-shaking voice, and dart of death,
made its first appeal to fear. In a Hottentot Hymn of Thunder we
read
Ŗ Son of the Thundercloud !
Thou brave loud-speaking Guru !
Talk softly, please,
For I have no guilt !
Leave me alone !
I have become quite weak with terror,
Thou, O Guru !
Son of the Thundercloud !ŗ1
By degrees it was answered with defiance. The Namaquas
still shoot their poisoned arrows at the Lightning and bid it be-
gone. The Khoi-Khoi and the Damaras are reported to curse the
Thunder, and to shoot their arrows at the Lightning, dart for dart.
So the black Tatar tribe of the Urjangkut were in the habit of
threatening the Thunder and trying to scare off the Lightning. 2
Lastly, it was observed that Thunder was the especial announcer of
Rain, and the beneficence of this deadly power was recognised. The
Hottentots think that its downpour of deluging water has a fertilizing
effect on the female. In accordance with which idea it is the custom
for the girls, after the festival and rites of their coming of age have
been celebrated, to run about quite naked in the first thunder-storm
that follows. This wash of rain over the whole body is held to make
them fruitful and to ensure lusty children. The Hottentot custom
shows the baptism of Fire and Water as a rite of generation and
fertilization. The Lightning represents the fire that vivifies and the
Thunder-Rainŕwhich some Africans call a ŖHe-Rainŗŕthe Water
of Life. English boys have a game called ŖRunning through Fire
and Waterŗ in which the runner is beaten and buffeted as he hurries
down their ranks. Here, then we can trace another of the ŖElemen-
tariesŗ (if not twoŕfire and water) passing from the first stage of
destroying power into that of the fertilizing and beneficent influences
or Gods. The Crocodile, Sevekh the Capturer, becomes a type of
tractability in Egypt, and is considered the purifier of the sacred
1 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 59. Guru, is Thunder. cf. Kheru (Eg.), a voice, to
utter.
2 A. Bastian, Zeit. für Ethnologie, p. 380. 1872.
332 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Nile. The howling Jackal (Sut-Anup) typifies the messenger Mer-
cury, the prophet of the Dog-star and Inundation; of Sunset and
Sunrise. The Ape-image of Ire and Choler serves as a type of
Shu, the God of Breath.
A great mass of the primitive Mythology remained in the vague
and elementary condition in which the principal figures are powers
of the Earth and Heaven, Wind, Water, Fire, and Thunder, Scorpion,
Lion and Serpent. But, in Africa these became definite in their
Egyptian Type, by means of which we can follow their development
from the elementaries of Chaos and Space into Celestial lntelligencers;
the tellers and fore-tellers of time and season to men; the Divinities of
the later Pantheon. The primary Seven (or Eight) were continued
as Types of Power and adapted to convey other ideas until at
length they attained the status of Gods in relation to the celestial
phenomena in the sphere of Time, where ŖThe Gods were seen in their
ideas of the stars, with all their signs, and the Stars were numbered with
all the gods in them.ŗ1 Seb, the Star, is the sign of god as well as
the Soul or Spirit. So the idea of god expressed by the Assyrian
word Ilu was originally represented by the sign of a star. The star
is also the symbol of Seba for worship and adoration. In this
phase the gods (or types) became Kronia; the Ili, Ali, or Elohim,
who werc the auxiliaries of Kronus.
Damascius in his ŖPrimitve Principlesŗ says, ŖThe Magi and
the whole Aryan nation (or the Medes) consider, as Eudemos writes,
some SPACE and others TIME as the universal cause out of which
the Good God as well as the evil spirit were separated; or as others
assert, Light and Darkness, before these two spirits arose.ŗ2 These
Ŗtwo spiritsŗ being the Ahura-Mazda and Angro-Mainyus of the
Avesta.
Plutarch fears that if he unfolded the secrets of certain constella-
tions it would be declaring war against length of time.3 The Serpent
called ŖGoing eating his hourŗ (one of the Elementaries) was a sort
of time-symbol, but the first perception of time was that of mere
lapse and Ŗrenewal, coming of itself,ŗ when there were no means of
measuring its periodic return. ŖThey (the human race) had no certain
sign for Winter, for the flowerly Spring, or fruitful Summer,
but did everything hap-hazard, or without judgement, until I showed
them the risings of the stars and their settings.ŗ4 The Divinities
proper, then, were born in the second stage as keepers or tellers
of Time and Season. The Elementaries, or brute forces of Nature,
may be said to have obtained their Souls in the Stars. Hence, as
Plutarch says, the Dog-star is the Soul of Isis; Orion is the Soul
of Horus; and the Bear is the Soul of Typhon,ŕSoul and Star
being synonymous in the Egyptian word Seb. In this way the seven
1 Hermes Trismegistus, b. iii. 6. [C.H. III. 2.] 2 Haug, Essays, p. 12. West.
skin presently after the fall of man, the Creator made a garment of
it to clothe Adam and Eve.
The Kaffir story of the girl who disregarded the custom of Ntonjane
shows the serpent in relation to the pubescent period. When the
girl came of age, instead of remaining the customary twelve days in
seclusion, she was tempted by her companions to go with them and
bathe in a stream. As they came out of the water they saw a snake,
near their clothes, covered with black blotches. This the girl made
a mock of, and scoffed at it, whereupon it grew angry and would not
restore her mantle, but bit her and caused her to become of the same
hideous colour as itself. She was cured and made beautiful as at first
by being washed white with milk.1 The riddle is easy to read, according
to the typology of the Two Truths. The fountain of milk was the
sign of Motherhood, a natural prototype of the White Crown, which
was the symbol of the Second Truth of Time.
The Serpentřs visit is responsible for various stories like the follow-
ing: The wife of Publius Scipio was barren for many years, until she
despaired of issue. One night when her husband was absent she
found a large serpent in his place, and the soothsayers informed her
that she would bear a child. A few days after she showed signs of
conception, and in ten months (lunar) gave birth to the Conqueror of
Carthage.2
The Serpent which determines the chastity of Priestesses, as in the
Temple of Lanuvium,3 sixteen miles south of Rome, was that which
proved they had not entered the period of gestation or earned the
right to wear the double Uræus of the Maternal Crown. In short,
they were not pregnant, and therefore not disqualified to serve as
chaste virgins; this fact being revealed by the mystical Serpent.
The Serpent type of periodicity in its most hidden mystery and
meaning may be seen in the Hindu sculptures. In these the Nâga is
pourtrayed at the back of the human figures, with its hooded crest over-
topping and overlooking the human head. Sometimes it is single, at
others the serpent has five heads. In one of these pictures the back of
the body is turned towards the spectator, and the Naga Snake, single-
headed, is visibly proceding out of the human body. The serpentřs
head towers over the human, and its tail is in the place of
the Two Truths in their most secret significance, and of the dual
phase of feminine periodicity.4 The Serpent thus issuing, if five-
headed, would denote the five daysř flow; if nine-headed, the nine
solar months of gestation; if ten-headed, the ten lunar or menstrual
periods that make the nine solar months. In this picture the Serpent
is finally unwound to its last hiding-place, with the tail in the human
tepht (Eg.), the hole of the Snake, the ru (Eg.) of life, the abyss of
1 Theal, Kaffir Folk-tales, p. 64. 2 Aulus Gellius, lib. vii. cap. i.
are Eight in number; and in the 17th Chapter1 the Seven Spirits, or
Genii, who are stationed behind the constellation of Ursa Major in
the Northern Heaven, are called the Crocodiles. According to my
interpretation we have to look on the Seven Stars of the Lesser Bear
as representative of these elementary gods, who were Seven as the
heads of the Dragon, but who were also one as a constellation repre-
sented by Sevekh. For example, at the centre or the zodiac of
Denderah we see the Hippopotamus and the Dog, Jackal, or Fox.
These two were a form of Sut-Typhon. ŖThe Little Bear,ŗ says
Dupuis, Ŗwas also known as the Fox.ŗ The Egyptian Fox was the
Fenekh-type of Sut, the Fox-dog. Thus the Two Bears represent
the Mother and Son at the centre of all. In Cicerořs Aratus the
ŖLittle Bearŗ is called Cynosura, not from the Dogřs Tail, but as the
Dog of the hinder part, North, and the opposite to Sothis, the Dog of
the front or South. The Dog, Wolf or Jackal, is the Seb that stands
opposite the Great Bear. Moreover, the Arabs caIl the Star Alpha in
Draco, the wolf (Dzib), or Jackal, as well as Thuban, the Dragon.
Thus the Wolf, Seb (Eg.), and the Dragon meet in one constellation,
and Sevekh, whose name signifies No. 7, is the Son of Typhon, and
his type is the Crocodile or Dragon. Now Mr. Proctor, the astronomer,
considers the Lesser Bear to have once been a portion of the Dragon
which has been made a separate constellation. This view is corrobo-
rated by the Mythos; by the figure of the Polar Dragon,2 and the type
of the Seven-headed Dragon when this is interpreted by the Crocodile.
The Crocodile was one form of the old genitrix, and the Eight
Crocodiles represent her and her Seven-fold progeny.
In the Book of Enoch Leviathan (the Arabic Tannim for Draco)
is called a female monster, and Behemoth is a Male, whereas the
Egyptian Bekhmut is the Great Bear (Hippopotamus). But, in spite
of any shifting, the double type of Sut-Typhon remains in the Great
Bear and the Seven-headed Dragon. Proclus (second book of his
Commentary on Euclid) says Ŗthe Pole of the World is called by the
Pythagoreans the Soul of Rhea.ŗ This was Rerit or Typhon in
Egypt. Here, then, in the Seven-headed Dragon of the Pole we have
the Tan of Darkness and Eclipse with Seven Stars for its heads
called Seven Crowns in Revelation, taking a starry shape by Night in
what was assuredly one of the first figures set in Heaven. One
group of Seven Stars repreents the Mother, and one her Son, or her
Seven-fold progeny, as the Seven-headed Dragon.
In ŖOld Deccan Daysŗ3 the narrator says; ŖAll the Cobras in my
grandmother‟s stories were Seven-headed. This puzzled us children, and
we used to say to her, „Granny, are there any Seven-headed Cobras
now? for all the Cobras we see that the conjurers bring round have
only one head each.‟ To which she used to answer, „No, of course there
are no Seven-headed Cobras now, that world is gone. But you see
1 Ch. xxxii. 2 See Plate in this Vol. 3 P. 27.
350 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
each Cobra has a hood of skin, that is the remains of another head.‟
Although we often looked for Seven-headed Cobras we never could find
any of them.ŗ
In Sanskrit the Naga Snake is synonymous wirh the mystical
Number Seven. There is no Seven-headed serpent in Nature, but
there is a Polar Dragon whose coilings round and round on itself,
when a-Draconis was the Pole-Star, were made at the pivotal
Centre or Motion in the Planisphere; and with the Lesser Bear
for its Seven heads we can identify the Seven-headed Dragon of
the Mythos.
The natural genesis of the Seven-headed Cobra, Naga, Dragon,
Crocodile, or Akhekh has (together with other Elementaries) now
been traced from its birth in mere Darkness to the transformation
into a Constellation with Seven Stars for its heads. And this process
of evolution will further explain the reversion of the Starry Dragon in
its fall to the black lurid monster of the beginning, the Akhekh Dragon
of the Deep.
The Sesha-Naga of India begins in the Dragon of Darkness. Its
black body and black tongue especially tell of the Akhekh of Night.
But it is clothed with JeweIs, as heaven is with stars, one of which
is larger and more lustrous than all the rest, as if it might represent
the Pole-Star Alpha Draconis. The Black Jaga-Naut is sometimes
depicted in the form of the Seven-headed Serpent. Sesha has Seven
heads which identify it with the Dragon of the Seven Stars. It is
also the Seven-headed serpent of Eternity. As Ananta it typifies
the Vague Infinite. Its Jewels are the Variegated Scales which
bespangle the Egyptian Symbol of the Infinite or the serpen-
tining Universe. The Dragon that was cast out of Heaven had
been the base of all beginning, and in India it was continued
as a foundation of the later Solar Creation. The Serpent with
Seven heads forms the support of Vishnu in the Abyss of the
Waters when he dreams or muses in the Intervals of Creation, with
the lotus springing from his Navel, and Brahma issuing forth to effect
his Thought anew.1 In this picture the Seven-headed Sesha is a
figure of Mythology akin to those Dragons of the fore-world which
preceded the Earth of Man; it represents the pre-solar Creation, now
sunken below the waters; the leavings. remains, residue of the
remotest past. Sesha signifies that which has been rejected, cast, or left
out, as was the bygone Dragon of Earth and of Heaven, buried as the
forgotten foundations of later worlds.
The Great Bear, the Constellation of Typhon, still continues the
name of Tep or Teb (Eg.) in the Star Dubhe. In like manner the
Arabs have preserved the Typhonian character of Draconis in calling
the old Pole-star Thuban or Al-Thuban the Dragon; the Carib Tupan,
the god of Darkness and Thunder. This name further identifies the
1 Moor, Hindu Pantheon pl. 7.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 351
with a wonderful Horn which it would sometimes turn to the left and
right, at others raise and then again depress.ŗ1
Because the Horn was an emblem or foundation, and duration, and
the Unicorn was placed at the centre of the northern Heaven as a
support, the heraldic Unicorn remained the typical supporter in coats
of arms. The fact is that both the Unicorn and Lion were represented
by the old Typhon at the Polar centre, for these are two of her types.
She was the Unicorn in front and the Lion in her lower part; she is
also pourtrayed with the head of a lion.2 Consequently the national
arms of England contain a copy of the earliest figures set in Heaven
by the Kamite typologists. Moreover the ancient ŖHorn-Bookŗ was
ornamented with a rude drawing of St. George and the Dragon,
which as Tiamat and Typhon first wore the horn. The Horn-Book
or ŖA.B.C.ŗ thus contained the A.B.C. of the Book of Beginnings.
One mode of representing the central support was by means of the
Unicorn pourtrayed with its horn struck into, or pointing to, a tree.
The Tree signifies the Pole; the Celestial Roof-Tree. The author of
the ŖGreat Dionysiak Mythŗ has well shown how common in symbolism
is the ŖUnicorn and Tree.ŗ3 So The Tree which was guarded by the
Dragon in one form of the Mythos is supported by the Unicorn in
the other. No better illustration can be found in Egypt, Assyria, or
Greece than the one on the Horn of Ulf which he has copied. The
Unicorn is depicted with a bird-beaded serpent for its tail; this
identifies it with the Dragon, the Akhekh of darkness, and with
Tiamat who has a beak, wings, and a single horn. The Horn of the
animal is thrust into the Tree. The Dog appears beneath the
Unicorn. By the Tree we identify the Pole of the Heaven; the Dog
is one with the Lesser Bear. This being the child of Typhon, the
Unicorn represents the genitrix herself with her dog in position as
first guide and announcer in heaven.
The Unicorn has but one large round Eye, corresponding to its
single horn. This prominent single Eye of the Unicorn regardant is
as common as the Horn and the Tree. It is the Eye of the picture
that turns on the gazer in all directions; the Eye of Heaven at the
centre of all. It is the Pole-star in the Dragon or the Bear, according
to the period. We are expressly told that in figuring the serpent
Circle with the tail of the reptile in its mouth the Egyptians made the
inner Eye very conspicuous at the juncture and centre of the coil. It
was essential to the symbol of the coiled-up snake, says Philo, that the
eye should be visible inside the Circle. This figure was represented
in the Planisphere, at the centre of all, by the Seven-headed dragon
turning round on its inner Eye, fixed as the polar pivot of the starry
revolutions.
1 Penny Cyclopedia, ŖUnicorn.ŗ
2 Pierret, Panthéon Egyptien, figure on p. 37.
3 Robert Brown, Junior, The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation.
354 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The typology of the Tree has yet to be traced and interpreted.
Here it is affirmed that the Mythical Tree, like the Pillar and the
Mount, is a type of the celestial Pole. Lucian asserts that a virgin
delivered the oracle at Delphi (whence the symbolic Constellation Virgo),
and a dragon spoke from under the Tripod because of the Constellation
Draco among the stars.1 The Tripod was also a form of the Tree.
The Tree with Seven Branches appears as the Tree of Knowledge on
the cylinders2 accompanied by the Sun, Moon, and Seven Stars.
This is the Tree of the Serpent and the Pair, male and female, as in
the Book of Genesis.
The Assyrian Asherah-tree or grove is based on a central pillar
or Tree with Seven heads or hoods of a conventional Nâga-snake,
which identifies it with the Seven-headed Naga and the Seven-headed
Dragon of the Pole. In the Nâga sculptures the Tree of the Mount
(or Pole) is identified at the bottom by one tree, and at the top by
another, and between the two there is a kind of ladder with a series of
steps or stairs which ascend the tree in place of a stem. These denote
the Tree of the Ascent, Mount, or Height, 3 now to be considered as
representing the Pole.
In the Avesta the Star-Serpent is said to make a road between the
sky (heaven) and earth. One type of this Road was the Mount;
another the Tree. These offered physical foothold and tangible
means of ascent, and were applied on a vast scale. The primitive
man climbed the tree in thought to attain the summit, just as Jack
mounted the bean-stalk. The Tree of the Pole is extant in Celebes,
where the natives believe that the world is supported by the Hog,
and that earthquakes are caused when the Hog rubs itself against
the Tree.4 The Hog (Rerit) was an Egyptian form of the Typhonian
genitrix, who, as the Great Bear, revolved about the Pole (Tree), and
is here said to rub up against it.
At Ephesus they showed the Olive and Cypress Grove of Leto, and
in it the Tree of Life, to which the Great Mother clung in bringing
forth her twin-born progeny. There also was the Mount on which
Hermes announced the birth of her twins, Diana and Apollo. 5 The
imagery is at root the samr: as the Hog rubbing against the Tree of
the Pole. The Tree which the earliest people leaned against for
mental support. and hung their signs of besecching and tokens of
gratitude upon, and garlanded with the flowers of spring, and fruits
of harvest, or set alight with candles in imitation of the stany fires,
was the Tree of Heaven, and it was the Tree of Heaven figuratively,
because of the celestial Pole at the fixed centre, on which their eyes
whilst the Dragon moves round over the places which contain vessels
of the drink-offering,ŗ1 in which description we find the ŖMountain
of the Worldŗ and the Twin Lakes.2 It is an artificial mound, as
is that of Silbury Hill. The starry Dragon moving round the mount
was Draconis serpentining round the Celestial Pole. The Mount was
intended by the mound of stone or earth on the top of which the
dragon-flag, the magical magnum sublatum was unfolded by the
Druids with the figure of the great red dragon on it, the type of
a deity that preceded Hu, the Solar God.
Silbury Hill is a stupendous cone containing 13,558,809 feet
of earth. Sir R. C. Hoare says: ŖThis artificial hill covers the space
of five acres and thirty-four perches of land.ŗ It measures 2,027 feet
round its base, runs up 170 feet perpendicularly, and the top is
165 feet in diameter, which, according to Stukeleyřs measurement, is
the exact diameter of Stonehenge. North-east of Avebury is the
ŖHakpenŗ Hill, a natural mound, or head of the Dragon. Still
north of Silbury Hill is the artificial Dragon (or Serpent) the figure
of which, as copied by Stukeley, Duke, and others, corresponds
exactly to the Dragon of the Pole in an Egyptian Planisphere; 3 and
it has now to be suggested that this lofty mound, with its serpent or
dragon, is another image of the Celestial Mount of the Pole. The
Mythical mount was the initial point of the geocentric system of astro-
nomy, the earth-centre of motion before it was known that the earth itself
was a rotating and revolving globe. Colonel Drax, who very carefully
opened Silbury Hill under the direction of the Duke of North-
umberland with a company of Cornish miners, found some remains of
oak wood in the earth, and he fancied the mound might have been raised
over a Druidic oak-tree.4 The author of Druidical Temples of the
County of Wilts considered the bits of oak discovered were the
remains of one entire bole or log, and he tells us, from his own
observations, that heart of oak immured in chalk is almost im-
perishable.5 The Temple of Ŗthe Great Treeŗ was a very ancient
institution that had been continued in Babylon from time immemorial,
and the Tree and Mount are identical as figures of the Pole. 6 The
evidence all points to Silbury as being the Mound of the Tree or Pole.
The name of Sil agrees with the Egyptian Ser or Tzer, which was the
typical Hill of the Horizon especially designated the Ser (or Sel) as the
Bury, or the ŖBurial Place.ŗ Thus the mythical Tzer Hill was the
1 Marwnad Uthyr Pendragon, Davies, p. 557.
2 So, in the Chinese Bamboo Books it is said of the genitrix K‟ing-too, that when-
ever she looked into any of the three Ho there was to be seen a dragon following
her. One morning the dragon came with a picture and a writing, the substance of
which was, ŖThe Red one has received the favour of Heaven.ŗ The red dragon having
made Křing-too pregnant, she gave birth to the yellow-pupilled Yaou, who corre-
sponds to the British god Hu.ŕLegge, Chinese Classic, col. iii. part 1, p. 112.
3 See plate in this vol. 4 Douglas, Nenia Brittannica, p. 161.
5 Duke, Druidical Temples, p. 42.
Darkness, under its open-eyed starry type, which had superseded the
blind monster of chaos.
In many lands the Serpent has been looked upon as the curator of
supernatural treasures of knowledge and the type or medium of com-
municating wisdom more than mortal. So much so, that one mode
of obtaining this was to eat the serpent, or a part of it and drink
the dragonřs blood. Philostratus in his life of Apollonius of Tyana
asserts that the natives of Hindustan and Arabia ate the heart and
liver of serpents for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the
language and thoughts of animals.1 So, when Sigurd the Solar
Hero was roasting the heart of the Dragon, Fafnir, he tried it with
his finger to see if it was done, then he put his finger into his mouth
and accidentally tasted the blood of the Dragon. Whereupon his
eyes and his ears were opened and he understood what the birds sang
and the swallows chattered to each other. ŖThere thou sittest, Sigurd,
roasting Fafnir‟s heart; eat it thyself and become the wisest of men.ŗ
The temptation of Eve is here repeated by the swallows in place of
the Serpent! Then Sigurd ate the heart and became a god in
power, the most famous of men, learned in all runes, the master of
magical arts. A version of the Kamite original of these stories is
found in the Tale of Setnau.2 In this there is a precious book of
wisdom spoken of, which was written by the hand of Taht himself.
It contained the divine mysteries and charms so potent that if two
pages of it, those on the back, were recited they would charm heaven
and earth, the abyss, the mountain, and the seas. ŖThou shalt know
what relates to the birds of the sky and the reptiles, and all that is said
by them. The divine power will raise the fishes to the surface of the
water. If thou readest the second page it will happen that if thou art
in the Amenti thou wilt have power to resume the form which thou
hadst on earth.ŗ This marvellous book had been placed in a box of
iron, inside a box of brass, inside a box of bronze, inside a box of ebony
and ivory, inside a box of silver, inside a box of gold, and concealed in
the middle of the river of Coptos. Iron, brass, bronze, ebony, ivory,
silver and gold make up the symbolical number Seven, equivalent to
the Seven coils of Fafnir the Dragon. Also, there was a live serpent
shut up in the box guarding this treasury of learning. The hero
finds the box and has to kill the serpent. Having a knife with him
he slew it, but it came to life again and again, and all he could do
was to cut it in two and place sand between the two parts to that the
serpent could not join together again or resume its former shape. So,
in one of the Norse tales a troll who has carried off the princess is
killed, together with his companions, by one grain of sand which is
1 Philostratus, De Vita Apollonii, lib. i. c. xiv. When vaccination was first
introduced into India, the country-folk held that those who were vaccinated
partook of the nature of the cow (Vach), and were more cowardly than other
people.
2 Records of the Past, vol. iv. 133.
362 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
found beneath the ninth tongue in the ninth head of a certain dead
dragon.1 Then the hero reached the writing and read; he charmed
the heaven, earth, abyss, the mountains and the seas. He understood
what related to (or was said by) the birds of the sky, to the fishes of
the sea, and to the four-footed beasts of the mountain. It was
spoken in it of them all. A copy of this magical manuscript was
made by the brother of the finder, who wrote down every word, then
dissolved the papyrus in water and drank it, whereupon he knew all that
it contained.
The Serpent is identified by Taht as the guardian who watched
over his treasures. He says to Ra, ŖKnow that my Law and my
Science are with Ptha-nefer-Ka: he hat gone into my dwelling. He
hath taken my box beneath my . . . (lacuna). He hath slain my
guardian serpent that watched over it.ŗ The Serpent is here the
Warder of Letters and the Types of Taht. The Revolution of the
Dragon and Great Bear about the Pole constituted the first cycle or
year of time, and thus the Serpent or Dragon became the author of
knowledge and the type of Wisdom as the starry Intelligencer to men,
the sign of the solstices and equinoxes, the indicator and guide of
the recurring seasons. Gradually the starry Heavens were filled
with the earliest hieroglyphics and became a vast volume of hidden
knowledge, which the Dragon circling at the northern centre was
fabled to possess and to pore upon in secret with its lidless eye. The
knowledge was also the fruit upon the Tree that he protected. And
from this genesis arose the Dragonřs mythical love of letters in the
later legendary lore.
The Serpent-Type has three phases. At first it was the repre-
sentative of physical evil in nature, as the mortal enemy of man,
the dart of lightning, the sun-stroke, the sting of death. As
such it was the Kakodæmon, the Bad Black Serpent, the Evil
One of external phenomena. Next it was made a type of Time,
periodic renewal, eternal circulation, life, salvation, immortality.
This was the Agathodæmon, or the Good Serpent. In its third phase
the type of Evil in the pbysical domain was reproduced as the Evil
One, the Dragon, the Devil in the moral or spiritual sphere. In this
the Eschatological stage, the ancient Dragon Typhon who had been
the Nurse of Souls in the present tife- was turned into their devourer
in the future state. Her son, Sut or Sevekh, is identified with the
Apophis Monster, the Akhekh of darkness, and changed into the
personal Satan of theology, who had that origin and was Ŗrevealedŗ
in no other way. Sut was formerly the divine Messenger, the earliest
Mercury, the: character afterwards assigned to the Moon-God, Taht.
He is termed the Great Warrior, and the God who watches always;
the Good God, the Star of the Two Worlds. At Thebes he was pour-
trayed as the Enemy of Apophis, instead of Apophis the Enemy. Sevekh
1 Asbjorasen, new series, No. 70, p. 39.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 363
there was war in heaven, and the dragon was cast out. The writer of
Revelation reproduced the matter from the Parsee scriptures or
Mithraic writings, but the original mythos is Egyptian. Sut-Typhon
the cast-out Satan of Egypt, had been degraded into the Apophis
type of darkness as the Accuser of Souls in the Hades, and it is
again and again proclaimed in the Ritual that the ŖAccuser Sutŗ is
overthrown. ŖThe Apophis and Accusers of the Sun fall overthrown.ŗ
ŖOverthrown is the advance of the Apophis.ŗ ŖThe tongue that is
greater than the envious tongue of a Scorpion has failed in its power for
ever.ŗ ŖThe Great Apophis and the Accusers of the Sun have been judged
by Akar.ŗ1 This will be found en bloc in the Book of Revelation.2
ŖAnother beastŗ succeeds the casting out of the Dragon with Seven
Heads and Ten Horns (these will be identified hereafter). ŖAnd I
saw another Beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two Horns
like unto a Lamb (the Ram), and he spake as a Dragon. And he
exerciseth all the authority of the first Beast in his sight, and he maketh
the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first Beast.ŗ3 ŖHe
that hath understanding let him count the number of the Beast; for it is
the number of a Man; and his number is Six-Hundred-and-Sixty-
Six.ŗ4 Now, in the original myth, there are in fact three forms of
the Dragon or Beast. The first of all is the genitrix Typhon of
the Seven Stars. The second is her son Sevekh, the Dragon or
Crocodile, also of the Seven Stars and of the Seventh Planet,
Saturn. The third is the same Dragon (Beast) in his final character,
as Sebek-Ra, the Solar God of the Typhonians, who was worshipped
especially at Ombos and Selseleh in Egypt. The Dragon and
Ram were both united in him whether we take the Serpent or
Crocodile for the typical Dragon. The Star-God Sevekh was con-
tinued as the Sun-God Sebek; even the mode of spelling his name
was changed. Sevekh reads number 7, but Sebek may have been
read number 6 as Seb is number 5, and k Ù signifies one more.
This change could scarcely have been unintentional. Sevekh, the son
of Typhon, was degraded by the Osirians in Egypt, and turned into
an eschatologicaI image of the Evil One. The Crocodile was hurled
into Hades, where he is a follower of the Apap of Darkness, and is
blended with it under a type called the Shes-shes, or Sessi, to whom
it is said by the defenders of Ra, ŖThou art destroyed, crushed,
punished (Serpent) Sessi.ŗ5 This Beast is a Dragon-like Crocodile with
the Apap for its tail, and as the Crocodile is Sevekh this Typhonian
Monster is a form of the Dragon that was cast out of heaven. The
Apap identifies it with the Dragon of Darkness, and the Crocodile
shows the original type of the mythical Dragon, Sevekh of the Seven
Stars. Again, we have the Beast whose name was number 7 turned
1 Ch. xxxix. 2 Ch. xii.
3 Ch. xiii. 11, 12. 4 Ch. xiii. 18.
5 Book of the Hades. Records, vol. x. pp. 130, 133.
366 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
into a possible figure of six. For Ses (Eg.) is the number 6, and he
is called Sessi. According to Jambichus, 60 was the number of the
Crocodile.1 This seems a strange statement to Egyptologists, who
would reply that Sevekh is the Crocodile, and it has the name of
number 7. But the ŖWisdomŗ of Egypt has not yet been fathomed
by mere transcription of the hieroglyphic language. Plutarch also
tells us that the Crocodile lays sixty eggs, is sixty days in hatching
them, and lives sixty years, this being the first or foremost measure
employed by the Egyptian astronomers. When Sevekh of the Seven
Stars became the Crocodile Solar God, he was forthwith associated
with the number six, as the number of the four corners, and the Nadir
and Zenith. Like Anu, the Babylonian Heaven-God, he was the
one-six, on this cubic foundation. Moreover, in his change from a
Star-God into a Sun-God, Sebek combined the two planetary charac-
ters of Saturn and Ra in the Solar Dragon. These two being
blended in one, there were but five other planets, or six heads alto-
gether. A similar reduction of the old Dragon might be traced in the
Hindu mythos by means of Sesha who is the Teacher of Astronomy
to Garga. Sesha began as the Serpent of Infinity, the Egyptian
serpent of the universe and the annual renovation. Next it was
the Seven-headed Nâga that upheld the Seven Patalas on its heads.
Then it became incarnated in Bala-rama who is the essential Soul
of Vishnu.2 Bala represents force considered as the Sixth organ
of action. Thus the Seven-headed Sesha is related to the No. 6,
Vishnu being the Sun-God of the under-world, after the Three Regions
and Six directions of space had been founded. This same continuity
of the serpent or Draconian type may be traced in connection with
Vishnu with Hea, with Num, and with Sut-Nub or Chnubis. In each
instance it becomes the representative of the Solar God in the Sixfold
heaven; and in each re-adaptation of the type the Seven-headed ser-
pent or dragon might be described as losing one of its heads and be-
coming a symbolical figure of Six or S, which when thrice repeated and
joined together in accordance with the three regions is SSS or 666, the
ŖBeastŗ in the final planetary phase. We shall trace Sevekh in the
Seven-rayed Sun-God of the Gnostic-stones on which the Dragon of
the Seven Stars, still identifiable by the seven rays, becomes the Serpent
Chnubis. Enough at present to point out that on these stones the Solar
Dragon with the Seven Rays appear with the sign S S S (triple Sřs)
with a bar for its reverse.3 The Greek S, like the Copic, has the
numeral value of six. As an ideograph, this is Ses (Eg.), whence
the phonetic S retained that value. Thus, three Sřs may be read 666,
the number of the Second Beast in the Book of Revelation. The
Beast is doubly identified on the same stone as the Beast of the
Seven Stars with the Seven Rays on the one side and the
1 Jamblichus, De Myst., sect. v. ch. viii. 2 MahaBh. Santi-p. 9895.
3 Kingřs Gnostics, pl. 3.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 367
numerical value of 666 on the other, the Abrasax stone being the
six-sided cube-figure of the solar foundation. Chnubis the Golden
is a continuation of the Egyptian Sut-Nub. We are compelled to
employ the type-name of Sut as well as Sevekh for the Son of Typhon!
And in Coptic the S is Sut by name. Thus Sut is also identified with
the number 6. Again, in Chaldee the name of number 6 is Shet. Now
it appears from the inscription of Shebaka, who bears the name of the
Crocodile God, that one of the most ancient traditions of Egypt
alluded to in an obscure legend of the 15th Choiak regarding the
once venerated Sut derived him from the south (which still bears his
name), and affirmed that his birthplace was in Su-su-su (or S S S).1
Brugsch Bey also cites other inscriptions in which SSS is mentioned
as the birthplace of Sut, and he gives the hieroglyphs as †††‚ (S S S).
Here the birthplace of the Beast is named 666. The Birth-place in
time would be the beginning of a Cycle, to which the number related.
S S S, or Su Su Su, is also the Ŗname of a Manŗ as a Pharaoh, who
is number 43 on the Karnak tablet. Niebuhr tells us how in the year
of Rome 666 the Haruspice announced that the mundane day of the
Etruscan nation was drawing to a close. This points to a form of
the Saros under the number of 666, and the name of the Saros in
Chaldee has the numerical value of 666. Thus:
c (S) . . . . . . 300
o (A) . . . . . . 70
r (R) . . . . . . 200
w (O) . . . . . . 6
x (S) . . . . . . 90
666
t T . . . . . . 300
e E . . . . . . 5
i I . . . . . . 10
t T . . . . . . 300
a A . . . . . . 1
n N . . . . . . 50
666
s S . . . . . . 60
t T . . . . . . 400
w U . . . . . . 6
r R . . . . . . 200
666
The Second Beast whose number was 666 commanded those who
dwell on earth that they should make an Image of the Seven-headed
Beast that had the stroke of the Sword and yet lived after it had lost
one of its heads. This therefore would represent the number Sixŕ
Ses, Egyptian, Shesh, Hebrew, Shash, Sanskrit.
The Beast that Ŗhad Two Horns like unto a Lambŗ and Ŗspake
as a Dragonŗ is the express image of the Crocodile-and-Ram-headed
Sebek-Ra; Ŗand he exerciseth all the authority of the first Beast,ŗ
identifies him with Sevekh of the Seven Stars, the Son of the Red
Dragon, Typhon, the genitrix of the earliest Gods.
The change from the type of Seven to that of Six is indicated by
the loss of one of the heads of the Beast that had Seven heads.
ŗAnd I saw one of the heads as it were wounded to death, and his
deadly wound was healed.ŗ2 This would leaven Sevekh of the Seven
Stars and Seven heads with only Six when the wound was healed.
The change from the Beast that was, and is not, and yet is, explains
the change of Sevekh from the stellar to the solar phase as well
1 Theogony, i. 207; ii. 717, 729. 2 Rev. xiii. 3.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL SERPENT. 369
as the loss of the horn. The Woman and the Seven Kings are the
ancient genitrix and her Seven Children, who were the Gods of
Seven Constellations yet to be described. In treating of Sebek as
the Gnostic IAO we shall see how the Beast that was and was not and
yet is took two of the Seven Characters, those of the Sun and Saturn
on himself, and so brought the Seven Planetary types under the six
heads of the Dragon.
The Third Beast, then, is the same as the Second in a new phase,
that of Sevekh the Star-God turned into Sebek the Sun-God, Ŗwith
two Horns like a Lamb,ŗ who Ŗspake as a Dragon,ŗ i.e., a Crocodile.
This is the protrait of the Ram-(lamb)headed Crocodile or Dragon in
his Solar Character!
The Woman who sat on the Seven Hills,
which were also Seven Kings, the Seven
Crowned Heads of the Dragon, still sits on
the Seven Hills of Rome, where she has
never been dethroned.
The old Sut, Sevekh, Satan, or Satur,
the Beast of the Number 666 (Stur) came
to a curious double ending in the Christian
continuations. He was canonised as a saint
in the Romish Calendar under the name of
St. Satur; March the 29th1 being the Fes-
tival of ŖSt. Satur, the Martyr.ŗ So that the
Divinity of one cult, the Devil of a second,
was continued as the Saint of a third.
The Tan that rose up in revolt as the
natural Darkness, called the Dragon of the
Deep, became at last a spiritual terror as
the Satan, }fC, the rebel against the God
of light, the adversary of souls; and thus
the Old Serpent or Dragon of physical phenomena has been trans-
formed into a supposed spiritual Being,2 a Vice-Dieu of the dark
1 Chambersřs Book of Days, vol. i. p. 435.
2 Elliot1 has observed that the Kabalists used to ask ŖWhat is the Lily?ŗ
(Shushnah) in the Book of Esther, rendered by Shushan as a proper name in the
A.V., Ŗbecause both words contained the same numerical value.ŗ This is given as the
No. 661.
` 300 a 1
w 6 s 60
` 300 t 400
n 50 r 200
h 5 ŕŕ
ŕŕ 661
661 ŕŕ
ŕŕ
But this is to miss the secret meaning. It may be supposed that the Kabalists
would use the He for Ŗthe Lily,ŗ and also write the name Hesther in accordance
1 Horæ Apocalypticæ, vol. iii., p. 203, note
370 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
who, on the whole, is considered a greater power than the divine;
and who has evoked the more assured belief; for Theology has made
the primal shadow substantial and permanent in the mental sphere;
and from the darkness of the beginning it has abstracted the Devil
in the end.
with that of Hadash. The He adds five, making the number 666. Thus,
Hřshushnah for Ŗthe Lilyŗ has the numerical value of 666. Hesther is the Hebrew
form of Ishtar or Shetar (Eg.) the Betrothed, and the character of the Betrothed
is performed by Hesther for twelve months.1 The Kabbalistic conceit of Ŗthe
Lily,ŗ Hesther, and the mystical number is precisely the same as that of the Beast.
The Lotus-Lily was a symbol of the genitrix or Virgin-Mother, who sat upon
the Waters as the Scarlet Lady of mystery and abomination. The Sistrum was
another symbol of the Beast Hes, Isis, or ŖSeses,ŗ a Gnostic name of Isis.
Its name of Seshesh contains the three Sřs, value 666. These were repre-
sented by the three wires, that make it a figure or image of the number 666.
Astarte, also, in a dual or compound character called Isis-Minerva, has
been found under the title of Saosis or 666 when the Sřs are read according
to the numerical value of the letters. The Beast was of both sexes, according to
the double Constellation of the Seven Stars. M. Renan is of opinion that the
ŖManŗ identified with the Beast is Nero, whose name, when written on the coins
and standards as Nšrwn Ka‹sar, or rsq }wrn, which, if each Hebrew letter is given
its proper numerical value, amounts precisely to 666. The present identification,
however, is only concerned with the mythical Beast. The ŖBeastŗ is primary;
it belongs to the Astronomical Allegory and the Gnosis in two forms. In one
of these it had the feet of a Bear. In the second it becomes six-headed. The
allusion to the man is merely en passant. Nothing can be got out of the letters
cx$, as they stand; unless we identify the Beast with Kakos, the dragon of
darkness, the Egyptian Kek. But there can be no doubt the riddle is numerical.
1 Ch. ii., 12.
SECTION VII.
NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MOUNT,
TREE, CROSS, AND FOUR CORNERS.
The mythical heroes of the Parsees were born of the Mount Ushi-
Darena, from which they are said to descend with the glory shining
on their faces.
The Navajos claim the Mount for their birthplace and attribute
their deliverance from the underworld dwelling in the heart of it to
the Moth-Worm that mounted and made a way out of the Mountain
when he found himself in a world all water. 1 The world all water
was the heaven above; the Moth-worm is a symbol of the breathing
power. The Indians of Guinea venerate the Tree and Mount
under the figure of a great rock that rises sheer up for fifty feet
like the trunk of a gigantic stem; this is designated ŖPure-piapaŗ
or the Ŗheadless Tree.ŗ2 In Platořs Timæus the prototypes of our
race are spoken of as being inclosed in and developed from the Great
Tree, which is not to be understood, except by knowing the history of
the Tree as a type of the genitrix. The Lenni Lenape Indians relate
that Manitu at the beginning floated on the water and shaped the
earth out of a grain. He then made a man and a woman out of a
tree. The ŖPopul Vuhŗ describes man as being created from a tree
named the Tzité. Woman, according to the same authority was
formed from the marrow of a reed called Sibac. The Hindus still
ascribe genders to the bamboo, reed, or cane; and the female one
contains the pith, the male the hard substance. The Sioux Indians
have a myth of the primal Man who stood for many ages with his feet
made fast in the soil and growing like a tree. Near him grew another
tree. A snake gnawed them off at the root, whereupon they walked
away as human beings.3 The Serpent that gnaws at the root of the
Tree re-appears as Nidhogg beneath one of the roots of Yggdrasill.
But in neither instance can anything be made out of such statements
until the typology is interpreted.
The Philippine Islanders narrate how the world at first consisted of
Sky and Water, and between these there was nothing but a Glede,
which, finding no place of rest, and being weary of flying about set
the Water at variance with the Sky; this he did in order to keep it
within bounds; and, to prevent its getting uppermost, he loaded the
water with a number of islands to settle on and leave the Sky at
peace. Then mankind sprang out of a large Cane with two joints
that floated about in the water and was thrown by the waves against
the feet of the Glede which stood on the shore and opened the Cane
with its bill. A man issued from one joint, a woman from the other. 4
The Tree or Cane with two joints denotes the two sexes that were
divided first at Puberty. So Tiri split the Tree into Man and
Woman. The one that split the Tree or opened the Cane represents
a type of pubescence like the Stone of Pundjel or the Tortoise of
1 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 81. 2 Brett, pp. 314, 375 and 447.
3 J. G. Müller, p. 109.
4 Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 303.
374 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Fohi. Here it is the Glede or Hawk, a Kamite symbol of Soul
which as the soul of pubescence did divide to distinguish the sexes, or
split the double-jointed Cane in two.
As the three sons of Bor were one day walking along the sea-beach
they found two stems of wood floating on the waters. Out of these
they shaped a Man and a Woman. Odin breathed into them the
breath of life; Honir made them to go, and Lodur caused them to
speak, hear, and see. The Man they called Ask (or Ash), the
Woman Embla. From these two descend the whole human race. 1
A tree was pointed out to the traveller Erman as an important monu-
ment of an early epoch in the history of Beresov. When the Ostiak
rulers dwelt there in former times this tree was a particular object of
adoration. It was a larch about fifty feet high, and its peculiar
sacredness was connected with the singularity of its form and growth.
For about six feet upward from the earth the trunk had divided into
two equal parts and then united abeve in a single bole. 2 Thus the
tree offered an obvious image of the door-way of life. ŖHonour your
paternal Aunt, the Date-Palm (says Muhammed), for she was created
in Paradise of the same earth as that from which Adam was formed.ŗ
The Stake, that is a reduced form of the Tree, still represents the
first mother and the later ancestors in the sacrificial feasts of the
Damaras; they stick this type of the tree and primal parent into the
ground and offer the first portions of the feast to it.
The Veddas who dwell in huts made of bark live in a primitive
form of the tree-ark, and their name for the house Rukula, means the
hollow tree in Singhalese. The Tasmanians returned their dead to
the motherřs arms under this type, by burying them in a hollow tree.3
The hollow tree or Cos was also a British coffin. The inhabitants
of Thebes in the eleventh dynasty, many of whom are negroes,
were buried in coffins formed of the hollowed trunk of a peculiar
kind of tree, which is no longer met with except in the Soudan.4
The Tree of the birth-place is yet extant in Germany, north and
south, as ŖFrau Holda‟s Tree;ŗ the common name for old decayed and
hollow boles. A hollow tree in or overhanging a pool is still recognised
1 Prose Edda. 2 Erman, Travels in Siberia, v. i. p. 464.
3 The recent fall of an enormous puketea tree near Opotiki, New Zealand, dis-
closed the fact that the hollow interior from the roots to the first fork, about
forty-five feet from the ground, had been filled with human bones. A confused heap
of skeletons burst out of the butt of the tree when it fell. A local paper says:ŕ
ŗA more extraordinary sight that this monarch of the forest lying prone and
discharging a perfect hecatomb of human skeletons can scarcely be conceived.
Some are nearly perfect while others are mixed up in a chaotic mass of heads,
hands, feet, and arms, indiscriminately. All the Maoris here seem to have been
quite unaware of this natural charnel-house, and declare that it must have been
filled long before their or their fathersř time. Indeed the appearance of the tree
fully justifies the supposition that it must have been some hundreds of years since
this novel family vault was filled with its ghastly occupants.ŗŕKnowledge,
August 4, 1882.
4 Mariette, Monuments of Upper Egypt, p. 147.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MOUNT AND TREE. 375
3 Tamarisk, vide Book of Enoch, ch. xxxi. 4 Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris.
Maurice observes that Ŗit is a fact, not less remarkable than well-
attested, that the Druids in their Groves were accustomed to select the
most stately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity they adored,
and having cut off the side branches, they affixed two of the largest of
them to the highest part of the trunk in such a manner that these
branches extended on each side like the arms of a man, and together with
the body, presented the appearance of a huge cross, and in the bark in
several places was inscribed the letter Tau.ŗ1 On the central upright
stem he says they cut the word ŖTaramis,ŗ on the right hand branch
the name of ŖHesus,ŗ and on the left hand one ŖBelinus.ŗ Taramis
represents the Daronwy of the Druids. Taliesin celcbrated this tree
as the great refuge from the flood. ŖWhat tree is greater than he,
Daronwy? I know not for a refuge around the proud circle of Heaven
that there is a mystery which is greater.ŗ2 Belin, it may be remarked,
is an Inner African type-name for the Young one, the new thing, the
Rennu (Eg.).
Buk modified into Buh, is food, bread. The Buka-tree furnished food
with its fruit and wine with its liquor. Pekh (Eg.) is another form of
the word for food, as in the English ŖPeckŗ for victuals. Bag (gb)
is food in Hebrew; Bhag, in Sanskrit; Fagus, in Latin, is the beech-
tree; fhgÒj, in Greek is the oak. Both meet under one name as the
bearers of food, peck, or victuals. Fek (Eg.) is produce, plenty, and
the food-producing tree is of various kinds which may be traced under
one name. The food-tree is Buko in Kanyop (Af.); the palm is the
Bukeem in Bola; Bukiam in Sarar; Bekiame in Pepel; and Buka in
Egyptian. The fig is a form of the same name, and in the African
Filham, the ground-nut instead of the tree-fruit is the Fukui. The
corresponding name of the genitrix and giver of food in Egyptian is
that of the goddess Pekh. To denote ancient descent Hor-Apollo
says the Egyptians depict a bundle of papyrus, and by this they
intimate the primæval food; for no one can find the beginning of food
or generation.1 This is the papyrus roll or book. The root of the
papyrus was eaten for food and the plant, like the lotus, is a form of
the typical tree. It is carried in the hands of the mother-goddesses
as the Uat-sceptre of the genitrix who produced the food of the
childřs life in her own blood (the red food of Source) and nourished
it afterwards at her breast. Thus the book and food were both found
in the papyrus plant, as they were in the tree. Such an origin as this
will explain how Ŗeating the book,ŗ as in Revelation,2 could be spoken
of as synonymous with receiving knowledge. Many illustrations
of this mode of eating of the Tree of Knowledge might be quoted
and traced to the beginning of the Tree as the producer both of
food and information. It extends among the Mexicans and other races
to the swallowing of the written letter as white manřs medicine or
fetish-food. The tree that told communicated the information first of
all by meaus of its fruits and its juices.
Hor Apollo asserts that Education was called Sbo (Coptic for
learning), i.e. Seba, by the Egyptians, which, when interpreted,
signifies sufficient food.3
The primitive man did not begin by book-making but the later
men developed the tree as a type of the Intelligencer which became a
book at last, and continued to be known by the same name. Primi-
tive man did not eat of the tree and straightway personify it as the
Divine Mother. But the tree gave food and drink as the mother
does, therefore, it was the Mother of Life and so survived as a
typical mother, exactly in the same way that the milch-cow, or goat,
or ass was a mother, only the tree was first as it did not need to be trained
or domesticated. It is noticeable that the palm-tree of the primæval
world was the immediate precursor of man in the garden of earth.
It was in the shape of the palm-tree that nature first gave her mater-
nal milk to man, with such a dash of spirit in it as made him wink and
1 B. i. 30. 2 Ch. x. 9 and 10. 3 B. i. 38.
384 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
wonder, and feel like the farmer whose glass of milk had been slily
mixed with whiskey, and who on drinking it off exclaimed lustily,
ŖLord! what a Cow.ŗ The Toddy Palm of equatorial Africa was a
cow and a mother indeed! The palm-tree was not only an in-
telligencer but an inspirer of men; a strange illuminator of their
dawning minds.
In Egyptian Sukh (or Uskh) is liquid, drink; Sukha, the flood-time.
This is our English Suck; the Euskarian Uisge, for Water; Chinese,
Sok (Suck); Latin, Sugo; Sanscrit, Sić, for drink, wet, liquid, or
liquor. But just as whiskey is a kind of Uisge, the suck of the toddy
is a natural sort of whiskey, and the Motherřs Milk was found to be
koumess, ready fermented, when drawn from the tree. In the Zulu
Kaffir language the good wife who fills her husbandřs cup is designated
his Zikisa. Zugia was a title of Juno. Now this root, Zug, Sukh,
or Sakh (cf. English Sack), denotes fermentation and spirit. Sakhu
(Eg.) is to be fermented. Sakh is to inspire, illuminate, mental
influence, the illuminator. Sekht (a name of Pekh) is a divinity of
intoxicating drinks. Thus drink and divinity are found under one
name, the first spirit as a mental inspirer being alcoholic. sukoj is
the Greek name of the fig-tree, from the fruit of which the divine drink
was also made. This root, Sk, is an Inner African type-name for
Divinity; the deity or demon is
Tshuka, in Ibu. Soko, in Nupe. Sogei, in Kise-Kise.
Dsuku, in Isoama. Soko, in Esitako. Sokwo, in Nufi.
Dsuku, in Mbofia. Seakoa, in Puka. Suge, in Susu.
Soko, in Basa.
In some African languages there is but one name for God and
Devil, as in Marawi, where both are called Tsoka. In that country of
Kivo the intoxicating Palm-toddy is named Zogga. In Dahome the
Soko is a poison-tree. Both bear the name of the Spirit, which is a
Divinity in one language and a devil in others. Poison being one of
the active principles first recognised because of its effect, that would
identify the tree of death; and in opposition to this the tree that bore
the good fruit was the Tree of Life. The typical tree has descended
in the Hebrew Genesis as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
that is, the tree as a natural Intelligencer to men.
The ŖTree of Knowledgeŗ in Egyptian is known as the Kat.
This is also the name of the feminine abode, the womb, and is a title
of the genitrix as Kat-Mut. Another name of the feminine interior is
identical with that of the fig-tree, which is Kent (Eg.), a type of
fertility, abundance, plenty. In several languages the female, or
womb, and the sacred-tree have the same name, just as in English
the Pudendum femine is called a plum-tree. In Spain the plum-
tree furnishes an especial wood for images of the Virgin. This arose
naturally from the mother being the bearer of the food. She was the
Tree of Life.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MOUNT AND TREE. 385
Kat, the Welsh Gwydd, in the Hebrew form ({o) Getz, is the typical
Tree of Life and of Knowledge planted in the Garden of Eden;
and this feminine type will show us how the tree is related to the
Fall, because it bears two different kinds of fruit, one of which may
be called good and one evil. The typical tree in Hebrew has
preserved an Inner African name, Getz ({o) being identical with
Kedsi, in Nso. Odsi, tree, in Opanda.
Ketsi, in Nřki. Odsi ,, Egbira-hima.
Kedsi, in Kore. Etze ,, Param.
Ekedsi, in Boritsu. Itsi ,, Okam.
Heitsi, tree-like, in Hottentot. Keti ,, Mfut.
Yetse, tree, in Baseke. Kat, tree of knowledge, Egypt.
Odsi ,, Yals.
The young wife perceived that the noise came from the side where
the old manřs grave was, and said, ŖUrisip, go and look.ŗ Then the
son went to the old manřs grave, where he saw traces which he
recognised to be his fatherřs footmarks, and returned home. Then
the young wife said:
ŖIt is he alone, therefore act thus:
Do so to the man who ate raisins on the windward side,
Take care of the wind that thou creepest upon him from the leeward.
Then intercept him on his way to the grave,
And when thou hast caught him do not let him go.ŗ
He did accordingly, and they came between the grave and Heitsi
Eibib who, when he saw this, jumped down from the raisin-trees and
ran quickly, but was caught at the grave. Then he said ŖLet me go,
1 Fornander, vol. i. p. 80.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MOUNT AND TREE. 387
for I am a man who has been dead, that I may not infect you.ŗ But
the young wife said, ŖKeep hold of the rogue.ŗ So they brought him
home, and from that day he was fresh and hale.1
Dr. Hahn says he has eaten the fruit of this so-called wild raisin-
tree, and the result was an attack of dysentery. The natives, having
no medicine, often succumb to such attacks. Hence the natural
genesis of the type in relation to this particular tree that brought
death into the world.2 Dr. Hahn derives the name of Heitsi from
Heii, the tree, but admits that he cannot account for the Ŗts.ŗ One
meaning of it is Ŗto come.ŗ This tends to identify Heitsi with the
branch, which is his especial symbol. The tree itself is feminine.
The child god is everywhere the branch, the coming one. This
god, their first man, is continually rising again as the branch
from the root; a primitive sense of the resurrection that might
suit the modern agnostics. The imagery is also applied to the
renewal of the moon, as well as of the human race. In consequence the
green branch is still laid on the cairns of the dead, whether considered
as the grave of their first man, who is renewed in them, or of their
more immediate relatives. Of course, in a later phase, the ancestral
tree or root is assigned to the male. Thus the root and the grandfather
become synonymous. When this root is personified it is as Khū-
nomab, the Mimosa-root, of whom the Lion say, ŖMimosa-root has
killed me.ŗ3 Now a book of the origines is concealed in this, for the
Mimosa is the Sensitive plant. One of their typical roots used as
charms for protection and images of divine power is the Giraffe-
Acacia. The acacia is the Tree of Life in Egypt. The wood is so
vital that when dried and planed down in door-sills, it has been known
to sprout again. But the Sensitive root offers a mental clue to the
primitive thought. When they set fire to this root as they lie down
for the night and murmur, ŖMy Grandfather‟s-root, bring sleep on the
eyes of the lion and leopard and hyena; make them blind that they
cannot find us; cover their noses that they cannot smell us out;ŗ4
and when they give thanks to their Grandfatherřs-root next
morning on finding themselves in safety, and we remember this is
the Mimosa-root, the Sensitive-root, we also can lay hold of it as a
first link in a chain of that consciousness which culminates in appre-
hending or divining the mind beyond pbenomena to which the 1ater
human appeal is made.
Um Nga, in the Kaffir dialect, is the name of the Mimosa-tree,
and Nga means to wish. It is the root of all that implies potentiality
and forms the potential mood of the verb. Wishing by the Sensitive-
tree, then, is primitive prayer. So the Egyptians wished by the Ankh,
the life, the living one, when their Nga was the king, or the still
earlier knot; or the clasped (Ank) hands.
1 Hottentot Fables, by Bleek, p. 82. 2 Tsuni-Goam, p. 103.
3 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 73. 4 Ibid., p. 82.
388 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Heitsi Eibib, as divinity or spirit of the tree identifies himself,
not only with, but as the tree when he says, ŖI shall infect you.ŗ
Here we see the spirit of the tree communicating the knowledge of
good and evil in the act of warning them against the evil, whereas
the subtle Serpent or the sly Moopela tempts them to eat of the tree
of death. Thus the spirit of the tree is demonstably based on the
quality of its fruit, and afterwards a motive is assigned to this as an
active agent personified.
Alcoholic drinks were taken in the ancient mysteries to induce an
abnormal condition and excite the power of prophecy and divination.
In the Rig Veda the gods are said to get drunk and to obtain
immortality by drinking the ŖImmortal Stimulantŗŕamartyam
madam. They all drink copiously the first thing in the morning, are
drunk by mid-day, and dead-drunk by night with the third libation.
Their followers also drink the Soma-juice to attain the privileges of
immortality and to know the gods; and in their consequent exaltation
sing:
Ŗ Weřve quaffed the Soma bright,
And are immortal grown.
Weřve entered into flight;
And all the gods have known.ŗ1
Maghava who follows the Kavayas from his possession. The Mag-
hava and Kavasakha are thus synonymous and in Yasna 51, 15, the
Zoroastrians are designated Maghavas.
ŖZarathustra assigned in times of yore as a reward to the Mag-
havas the Paradise where first of all Mazda himself had gone.ŗ
ŖKava Vishtapa obtained through the possession of the spiritual
power (maga) and through the verses which the good mind had revealed
that knowledge which Ahura Mazda himself, as the cause of truth, has
invented.ŗ1
The casting out (or transformation) of the Kavi corresponds to the
kindred change in Israel. Kep has a variant in Sep (Eg.) for the
Spirit of Wine; and this is the root of the Greek word Sophia, which
signifies wisdom and originally meant wine, as the juice of the grape;
the vine being one of the trees of knowledge that were Ŗto be de-
siredŗ to Ŗmake wise;ŗ the sap or juice is one by name with Sapiens.
Also, the Assyrian cuneiform characters which designate the ŖVineŗ
or wine are traceable to the compound Ges-tin in Akkadian, which
means the Tree of Life.
The connection of the fetish idol with a Ŗspiritŗ is curiously shown
in the religious rite described by Columbus who relates that the West-
Indian natives used to place a platter on the head of the divinity.
This platter contained the intoxicating Cohoba powder which was
snuffed up the nostrils by means of a double-branched cane.2 In this
way the Gods inspired them through the powder.
Roman Pane also describes the native priest as coming to the sick
man, and then putting himself in communication with ŖSpiritsŗ by
snuffing cohoba powder that Ŗmade him drunkŗ or induced the
abnormal condition in which he saw with opened vision, and foresaw
and divined, because in this state of trance he was talking with the
ŖCemis,ŗ i.e. the dead; the Khemu in Egyptian.3
The Spirit was first discovered in the Powder of the fetish herb,
hence tobacco became the Holy Herb because it inspired the Seers;
next, the Spirit was discovered by means of the powder, in the
consequent ecstasy, delirium, trance or dream. Then, it was believed
that a window had been opened into another world, through which
the Medium conversed with the dead, who went on living, despite the
evidence of the external senses. Primitive Spiritualism was based on
the trance-vision now called Clairvoyance. As before said, the present
writer has had many years private experience of the Abnormal
Condition which could be induced by the look, whether of a serpent
or the human eye, a disk, a light, a looking-glass, by anæsthetics,
narcotics, or by ecstatic sensation. In this trance the Sensitive
believed that she saw and talked with spirits, and observers also
considered that other Intelligences than her own could commingle
1 Haug, Essays, West, 169. 2 Pinkerton, vol. xii. ch. lxii.
We shall find that the Tree, the Pillar, and Mount, are interchange-
able as types of the motherhood and place of birth. The Paphian
Venus was typified by a conical stone pillar, respecting the significance
of which, says Tacitus, we are left in the dark. It was identical with
the pillar or pyramid of Isis-Sothis; a type that is masculo-feminine.
A conical pillar or stone called Lovekaveka was consecrated to a
Fijian goddess, Lovekaveka, near Thokova, Na-Viti Levu. It was
a round black milestone with a Liku, the female girdle of pubescence
tied round the middle.1 The Natchez of Louisiana likewise worshipped
a conical stone.2
Kubele was held to lie concealed as ŖMother of the Godsŗ in the
Pessinuntian Stone sent by Attalus, King of Phrygia, to the Romans. 3
The tree, the pillar, and the cross are all three combined in the
Assyrian Asherah or Grove; a far more primitive form of which is
found in the Hittite or Khetan Hieroglyphics, where it is in the next
stage to the pudendum muliebre itself.4
It has been thought a confusion of metaphor when, in the First
Epistle to Timothy, Paul likens the Church to a house and a pillar,
as basis of the truth. But, the pillar and House were both symboli-
cally the same. Pillar, Seat, Mount, Tree, or Abode, was each
representative of the Motherhood, whose latest type was the Mother
Church. In a Greek myth described by Pausanias the tree, the mount,
and the horn are confounded together. The Garden of Dionysos
contains a kind of Mount Meru which resembles a horn, it is called
the Hesperian Horn, and produces the Golden Apples and every
delicious fruit of the Tree of Life. This shows the phase of confusion
in which the mythologists appear to be insane to their interpreters,
who are innocent of eating from the tree of the Ancient Knowledge.
1 Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 228, fig. 20. 2 Lafitau, vol. i. p. 146.
3 Al-Korân, ch. liii. 4 Douglas, Monast. Anglic. vol. vi. p. 2; N. ii. p. 906.
ning as were the signs of the Deaf Mutes to the Chinaman who found himself in a
European city where no one spoke Chinese.
2 Fung-Shui, by Ernest F. Eitel. London: 1873. 3 2 a.
400 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Italian Ninna and Nan, Modern Greek Ninion, which is negative
because impubescent. So the Nun and the Nanny are negative
compared with wife and mother. But the Nun (Eg.), Irish Nion, as
the Heaven or Firmament was actual; so was Nun, as the water or
the infant. These were not non-extant. Hence Nun (with its
variants Han and An) signifies to bring. The Nun (Eg.), which is
the firmamental water in the first vague stage, gives a name to Nun
or Nin the fish in the stellar phase. Nun in Chaldee is the Great
Fish; Nuna in Syriac is the constellation Ketos. This shows the
passage from the vague phase of water to a definite water-type
in a constellation. The Nun (Nnu or Nu) was heaven personified as
the bringer of the water and the breath of life. And this Mother-
Heaven as bringer, had been the Inner African Mother from the
beginning.
Nna, Ina, or Na, is the Mother, in Kabunga. Nnu, is the Mother, in Yula
Nna, Ina, or Na ,, ,, Dsalunka. Nne ,, ,, Isoaoma.
Nna, Ina, or Na ,, ,, Kankanka. Nene ,, ,, Isiele.
Nna, Ina, or Na ,, ,, Mandenga. Nne ,, ,, Abadsa.
Nina ,, ,, Bola. Nna ,, ,, Mbofia.
Nna ,, ,, Padsade. Nna ,, ,, Mbofon.
Nne ,, ,, Basa. Ninge ,, ,, Landoro.
Ninu ,, ,, Kra. Nina ,, ,, Balu.
Nande ,, ,, Krebo. Nen ,, ,, Bamon.
None ,, ,, Anfue. Nene ,, ,, Pulo.
Nna ,, ,, Gurma. Inna ,, ,, Goburu.
Nna ,, ,, Koama. Enna ,, ,, Okam.
Nau ,, ,, Bagbalan. Anen ,, ,, Kanyop.
Nana, as person, is one with the Mama, and Kaka; as name it is from
a primordial Nga-Nga, the earlier sound of Na-Na. The Kaffir
Nina is either her, his, or their Mother. This was the Mother at the
head of the line of descent trom whom the Mother-name has been
extended to the sense of nationality which is Um-Nina or Nini in
Xosa Kaffir. This type-name is also Vedic, as Nana, the mother;
Nana is the Babylonian genitrix; Nin, the Assyrian lady; Nini, the
Mother in Malagasy. Mother and Woman are often synonymous,
and the Woman in Africa is
Nenu, in Gbese. Onya, in Yala. Anye, in Opanda.
Nyonu, in Hwida. Onyui, in Isiele. One, in Egbira-Hima.
Nyonu, in Dahome. Unwai, in Aro. Nô, in Boko.
Nyon, in Mahi. Oniye, in Igu. Ne, in Bagrmi.
The cow was another form of the bringer of the liquid of life
whence the Cow of Heaven; and this bringer in Inner Africa is
Nina, the Cow, in Gbese. Ningei, the Cow, in Kise-kise. Una, the Cow, in Timne.
Nan ,, ,, Koama. Ningi ,, ,, Kono. Ina ,, ,, Mampa.
Nnan ,, ,, Bagbalan. Ningena ,, ,, Soso. Nao ,, ,, Legba.
Enan ,, ,, Anan. Nnara ,, ,, Biafada. No ,, ,, Kaure.
Nankuye ,, Ashanti. Ana ,, ,, Baga. Nao ,, ,, Kiamba.
It must be explained that the mythical Mount and Tree fulfil their
types in the image of both sexes. The Mount as birthplace was
feminine at first, as the Brû, Navel, or Mam, the Mamma-shaped
1 Gill, Life in the Southern Seas, p. 171.
2 Bahman Yasht.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MOUNT AND TREE. 403
Ormiegill, Caithness.ŗ
2 Plate, vol. ii., Book of the Beginnings. 3 Maffei, Gem. Ant. vol. iii. 64.
TYPOLOGY OF THE FOUR CORNERS. 405
Mythos in which the four brothers, genii, spirits, or other figures of the
four are stationed at the four different quarters to bear up the heavens
no matter in what land or language we may find it. These four are
universal. They belong to the first circle that was quartered according
to the cardinal points. To quarter is a common term in English.
Troops are quartered when they are lodged, and a quarter is a fourth
part, whether the quartered get a fourth or not. Our heraldry
proclaims the same origin and social stage in the quartering of arms
as is found in the four quarterings of the Kamilaroi. It is related by
the Iroquois concerning the introduction of their religious mysteries,
that the first Mother had four Sons at a birth and died in bringing
them forth. These are the four Good Spirits placed at the four
quarters to which they point in their ceremonies.1 Thunder is the
voice of these four to whom the Iroquois offer the smoke of Samau
(Tobacco). With the Algonkins, Creeks, Dacotahs, Natchez, Arau-
canians, and other Indian tribes, it is an indispensable formula,
preliminary to any business, to puff tobacco-smoke to the Spirits
of the four Corners. The same religious custom has been observed
among the Tartars of Siberia.2
Brinton has called the Cult of the Red Indians an Adoration of
the Cardinal Points, identified with the Spirits of the Four Winds,
who were the ancestors of the human race: he points out that the
Indian speaks as if he carried the cross inside of him, and expresses
himself according to the cardinal points even within his own
wigwam. The four ŖLineagesŗ of the Tlascalans who occupied the
four quarters of the Pueblo of Tlascala; and the Aztecs, who also
occupied the Pueblo of Mexico, can in like manner be traced to the
same sourcc. The Inca of Peru was ŖLord of the Four Quarters of
the Earth.ŗ According to Prescott the natives had no other epithet
by which to designate the large collection of tribes and nations who
were assembled under the sway of the Incas than that of the Tavin-
tinsuyu, or Four Quarters of the World.3 In the Maya, Moscos, and
Huasteca languages the names of the four winds or spirits are the
same as those of the four quarters. The Dacotah word Tate-ouye-
toba, for the four cardinal points, literally means whence come four
winds.4 The four gods of the showers also dwelt at the four corners
of the earth. Four mighty Manitus were worshipped by the
Delaware Indians, and sacrifices were offered to them as gods of
the four quarters, the west, south, east, and north. The Algonkins
and Dacotahs traced their origin to four ancestral personages, not
completely identified either as gods or men, but positively with the
four winds and four quarters.5
The four brothers in Algonkin were designated Wabun, Kabun,
1 Schoolcraft, vol. i. pp. 317-319. 2 Nuttall, Travels, p. 175.
3 Conquest of Peru, b. i. ch. ii. 4 Brinton, p. 75.
5 Schoolcraft, Algic. Res. vol. i. p. 139.
408 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Kabibonokha, and Shawno, and these are the names of the four
cardinal points as well as the four winds. 1 Shawno was a Spirit that
presided over the south in the Iroquois mythology; his station being
between the Twins and the Crab. Kabun was the west and Wabun the
east. The Mexicans had four spirits of the wind who carried the dead
to heaven, and Brinton refers these to the Cruciform Graves ascribed
to the Mexicans.2 The Eskimo Abode of the Dead was Sillam
Apane, the House of the Winds (or Spirits), and Sillam-Innua
was owner of the four winds. The Mayas of Yucatan looked back
to four parents or leaders called the Tutul Xiu.3 The Xiu are
spirits, chiefs; and in Egyptian Khi or Khu is a spirit, a Ruler.
Moreover, the Khi or Khiu are the four supports of the Heaven
at the four corners, who are. therefore, identical with the four Xiu
of the Mayas. But the Khu is an earlier Keb as a lord of the
Angle or Corner, and the Four Keb (Kabiri) are the four repre-
sentative Genii of the four quarters and of the sarcophagus of the
Great Bear, the coffin of Osiris. These are the Four Assyrian
Kubur which were stationed facing the ŖFour Celestial Regions,ŗ as
mentioned in the inscription of Khorsabad.4
The Yucatees said the sky was supported by four brothers whose
family name was Bacab, their individual name being Kan, Mulac, Ix,
and Canac. These four had been placed at the four corners of the
world when it was created, and they escaped when all else was
destroyed by the flood.5 Amongst the Lunar Mansions the Arabic
Al-Hakřah is in Orion; the Chinese Chang is in Hydra, and the
Hindu Mula is in the tail of Scorpio. These names and cardinal
positions correspond to Ix, Kan, and Mulac. According to the
Quiché Myth the four genoi were in existence before the creation of
the sun; there being no sun in Tulan-Zuiva, the birth-place called the
Seven Caves, where they had lived by star-light. The Circle of the
Seven Stars was thus succeeded by the chart of the four quarters,
four gods, or four constellations. Following this earlier world
came the creation of four perfect men, the three Balams and
Mahucutan. A god was assigned to each of the four. Tohil, the
god of fire, Avilix and Hacavitz, together with the fourth deity,
given to Iqi-Balam. It was on Mount Hacavitz, named after the
divinity, that the sun was first seen to rise, whereupon the four men
were turned into four corner stones. The transformation and the
appointment of the four gods, or men, changed into stones by the
sun, for watch and worship, simply denote the making of the four
cardinal points of the solstices and equinoxes by means of the
four great stars or constellations that first served as indicators in
the earliest zodiac of four signs.
1 Brinton, p. 167. 2 Myths, 95-98.
3 Ancient MS. discovered by Stephens.
4 See Book of the Beginnings, vol. ii. p. 469. 5 Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 122.
TYPOLOGY OF THE FOUR CORNERS. 409
collected dust from the habitation of the holy place and from the four
spirits of the world and mixed from all the waters of the world. Here
likewise the four spirits stand for the four corners of the world.
In the book of Revelation1 the four Angels stand at the four
Corners holding the four winds of the Earth in their hands.
According to Milligan the spirits or manes of the dead that returned
after death to cause good or evil to befall the living were of four
different kinds, answering to these spirits of the four corners. In the
prose Edda the four spirits are four dwarfs called the east, west, north,
and south, who are placed at the corners of the four quarters. In the
Scandinavian Mythology the four corners are represented by four horns
which support the vault of heaven. The Kabalist throne of the Divine
En-Soph has four legs and six steps. The four legs stand for the
four corners and the six steps are the four quarters, together with
the height and the depth. These form a figure of the Ten Sephiroth.
The Ŗfour props of Heavenŗ are identified by a priest of Amen,
in the time of Tahtmes III., with the four corners at the Ŗutmost
ends of the world.ŗ The Assyrian four protecting genii are re-
presented as the human-faced bull called the Sed, Alap, or Kirub;
the lion with a manřs head called the Lamas or Nirgal; the Nattig
with the head of an eagle, and the Ustur formed in the human
likeness. The same four as the symbolical creatures described by
Ezekiel.
The Mandans have the tortoises at the four corners of the earth
which spout forth the waters.2 Two tortoises are also found in the
sign Libra of an ancient Egyptian zodiac. The stag, phœnix, tortoise
and dragon, are a Chinese heraldic form of the typical four. These
preside over the Chinese empire; they coincide with the Egyptian
phœnix in the south, the tortoise in Libra, west; the dragon north,
leaving the stag for the east.
The Aztecs had four chief ideographic signs which were symbols
of the four elements. These are Tochtli the rabbit; Calli the house;
Tecpatl the flint (or arrow), and Acatl the cane. The rabbit was
dedicated to Tevacayohua, god of earth; Calli the house was dedicated
to Xiuteudi, god of fire; Tecpatl the flint, to Quetzalcoatl, the god
of air; Acatl the cane to Tlaloc, god of water; these correspond to
Seb (Tseb) or Sut, for the earth ; the hawk (Horus or Kabhsenuf) for
fire; Shu (the ape or Hapi) for air and Amset (or Uati who carries
the papyrus sceptre) for water.3 The Mexican four Great Ages are
the age of earth; the age of fire; the age of air and the age of
water; and these are based primarily on the circle of the four quarters
extended possibly to the Cycle of Precession. The Druids founded
1 Ch. vii. 4.
2 Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. i. p. 181.
3 Boturini, Humboldt, Kingsborough, Mex. Antiq. vol. iv.; Gemelli Careri, Giro
the circle, the triangle and crescent were all continued in the Christian
iconography as the nimbus, aureole, or glory of the god. ŖGod the
fatherŗ also wears the square disk in the ŖDisputeŗ of Raphael.
It often appears lozenge-shaped. The Deity wears the triangle in a
Greek fresco of the seventeenth century. He is seated on the bow or
crescent in other representations, and the circle is the common glory.1
A type once founded in physical phenomena continues for ever.
The four elements yield four spirits of the four elements. The four
corner constellations become four spirits. The four winds that blow
from the four quarters are four spirits. Four spirits are extracted
from the four metals. Four properties of matter are transformed
into four spirits. The type was continued by the Kabalists,
Theosophists and Mystics.
The whole matter of the Mythos survived with the Gnostics (in
a doctrinal phase) who begin with the Great Mother that divided into the
two sisters as Sophia below and Sophia above. From the Mother of
All Things came the first Tetrad (as it did in the fourfold Apt or
Typhon) and from her came the Second Tetrad as a Daughter, 2 a
Ŗfemale from a female.ŗ The Gnostic Valentinus derived the
primordial Four from a certain duadic being. This tetrad was like-
wise of a dual nature; it bifurcated and formed the ogdoad of a right
and left hand Tetrad, the one being called Light the other Darkness. 3
These agree with the Quiché four spirits and their four wives. More-
over, according to Irenæus, ŖThe Ogdoadŗ (composed of the four
who were dual) Ŗis understood as being hidden in the viscera,ŗ4 which
makes a curious return to the Egyptian spirits of the Four Corners
who were also the four Genii of the Sarcophagus, to whose care the
viscera of the embalmed mummy were committed to be kept in four
different Canopic Vases over which they presided. Now, when we
learn from the Berosian account of the Chaldean kings and the
Deluge that four double-shaped personages came up out of the sea to
land in the time of Daos of Pantibiblion, there can be little doubt
that these likewise represent the four keepers of the cardinal points
who comprised the Ogdoad in their dual nature. Pantibiblion, the
City of the Records, was the place of the most ancient Temple of
the Sun.
This is how Jacob Bohme applies the four-fold type to the creative
nature. ŖThe four first forms in themselves are the anger and the
wrath of God in the eternal nature; and they are in themselves nothing
else but such a source or property as standeth in the darkness, and is not
material, but an originality of the Spirit, without which there would be
nothing. For the four forms are the cause of all things.ŗ5
Irenæus shows us how the four spirits of the four corners were
1 Didron, figs. 4, 21, 22, 38. 2 Irenæus, b. i. ch. xv. 2.
3 Irenæus, b. i. ch. xi. 1, 2. 4 Irenæus, b. i. ch. xviii. 1.
5 Threefold Life of Man, chap. ii. par. 44.
414 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
continued when he says, ŖIt is not possible that the Gospels can be
either more or fewer than they are. For, since there are four zones of
the world in which we live, and four chief winds, tessara Kaqolec£
pneÚmata, or four Catholic spirits, while the Church is spread throughout
the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the
spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars. . . It is
evident that the Word the Artificer of all (who in Egypt was Khepr-
Ptah), he that sitteth upon the Cherubim (which are the two beetles in an
Egyptian ark), has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound
together by one spirit. The Cherubim were four-faced as the Scripture
says.ŗ1
A Hindu who was shown the symbolical pictures of Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John with their respective man, lion, ox and eagle,
explained these in accordance with his own system of divine
totemism as the avatars or Vahans of the four evangelists,2 because
they represented the universal types of the four quarters. The four
of the Gospels are still appealed to by incantations as the Genii of the
four corners of the Childrenřs Bed.
The present writer considers that the ŖMount of Transfigurationŗ
in the Gospels according to Matthew and Mark is the Mount of the
transformation of the solar god in the Ritual; and that the four in
the Mount, the Christ, Peter, John and James are a form of the
four Genii, the Hawk-headed Horus (or Kabhsenuf) Hapi (or
Kafi) Sut-Anup and Amset. But this thesis has to be developed
hereafter.
The ŖPantomimeŗ deserves to be preserved a little longer as a
witness to the origines of Mythology which were continued in the
Mysteries. Nowhere else have the four spirits of the four corners a
more perfect survival.
Columbine, the Dove, is the Great Mother, one of whose types was
the Dove of Hathor, Menat, Semiramis and Juno. Her quarter is
the north, the region of the Great Bear. The clown is a survival of
the ape (Hapt or Kafi; i.e. Shu) whose quarter is the east, and who
appears as the Greek Pan or Orion in an Egyptian planisphere. 3
Pantaloon represents the jackal, the sly, wise counsellor, Sut-Anup,
whose quarter is the west. Harlequin is Har the Solar God, who went
downward from the south as the sun of the under world, the ŖHorus
(Har) of the Two Horizonsŗ who transformed and was the cause of
the transformation which took place annually in Amenti. His black
mask witnesses to the hidden sun, invisible in the darkness. His
magic wand is the sign of the transformation and resurrection. ŖI
went in as a Hawk; I came out as a Phœnix,ŗ says the Osirified in the
two characters of Horus. This is the Hawk-headed Kabhsenuf. The
1 Irenæus, condensed from b. iii. ch. xi. 8.
2 Tylor, Prim. Culture, v. ii. p. 217.
3 Drummond, pl. ii. from Kircher.
TYPOLOGY OF THE FOUR CORNERS. 415
These were identical with the four in Egypt and elsewhere, and
may be paralleled with other sets of four in many forms.
Aïdes. Dionysus. Helios. Zeus. Night. Morning. Noon. Evening.
Uati. Shu. Ra. Seb. North. East. South. West.
Chiun. Lion. Khem. Respu. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn.
Miriam. Moses. Hur. Aaron. Water. Air. Fire. Earth.
Deidre. Ainli. Naisi. Ardan. Deluge. Typhoon. Conflagra- Earthquake.
tion
Venus. Mars. Sun. Jupiter. Fish. Bird. Serpent. Beast.
Amset. Hapi. Kabhsenuf. Anup. Hippopota- Ape. Lion. Crocodile.
mus.
Mother. Child. Vir. Old Man. Mouth. Nose. Eye. Ear.
Columbine. Clown. Harlequin. Pantaloon. Vegetable. Spirit. Mineral. Animal.
Queen. Knave. Ace. King. Cane. Arrow. House. Rabbit.
Human. Lion. Eagle. Calf. Copper. Silver. Gold. Iron.
Ustur. Lion. Nattig. Bull. Red. White. Yellow. Black.
Human. Ape. Bird. Jackal. Circle. Crescent. Triangle. Square.
Bear. Orion. Phœnix. Crocodile. Fomalhaut. Aldebaran. Cor Leonis. Antares.
The four-fold compound divinity was also descried by the oracle
of the God Iao in the Temple of Klaros. This deity being consulted
through his orade as to which of the gods it was that should be
adored under the title of Iao1 replied:
Ŗ Know that of gods who exist the highest of all is Iao,
He is Aïdes in winter, and Zeus at the coming of springtime,
Helios in summer heat, and in Autumn the graceful Iao.ŗ
Here the combination varies; the god of fire appears twice as Helios
and Iao the Autumn Sun (the Child Horus, Elul, Adon, or Tammuz)
and Dionysos is omitted. This combination therefore points to the
Iao of the three-fold nature already explained who did not include
the fatherhood of the Tetramorphic Iao (which has to be elucidated)
but it does show the divinity adapted to the four quarters or four
seasons of the year.
In Egypt one god of the four quarters was the Tat-Cross of the
four cardinal points personified as the four-fold Ptah, and likewise as
ŖOsiris-Tat.ŗ In the Inscription of Shabaka2 the god Ptah is
pourtrayed in the four-fold character of ŖPtah-Ur,ŗ ŖPtah-Sen,ŗ
ŖPtah-Nunuŗ and ŖPtah-hes-urtŗ; he is designated ŖPtah in his four
divine forms.ŗ Beneath are four figures in the mummy-shape holding the
Tat-Cross. Ptah is a recognised god of fire, the Egyptian Hephaistos.
Ptah-unnu is god of the water; Ptah-Sen, god of breath; Ptah-Ur
is the old first, four-fold (equating with the genitrix Ta-Urt), and
Ptah-hes-Urt is the god of the ancient seat. In this way the four-fold
god, whether as Ra, Osiris-Tat, or Ptah, superseded the goddess of
the first circle of time and the four quarters of the beginning. In the
Ritual this god is designated ŖPtah the Great Tat, the Throne of the
sun, sole type in the Roofed House.ŗ The type being the Tat-tree of
the four quarters.3
The ŖTat of goldŗ made out of the body of a sycamore tree
and washed with the water of life, was placed at the throat of the
1 Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 18.
2 Chabas, Mélanges Egyptologiques. Troisième-Série tom. i. p. 247; Goodwin.
3 Ch. cxli.
418 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
dead so that they might pass through the gateways Ŗturning a
deaf ear to the charmer,ŗ the snake Ruhak. 1 This Tree-Tat was
symbolically the back-bone of Osiris, on which the heavens and the
future state of existence were bodily built.
In connection with the compounding of a one god from the four
it is noticeable that when the four spirits, gods, or old men passed
away, in the Quiché legend, they left in their place a bundle that
could never be unfolded as it was without seam. It was called the
ŖEnveloped Majesty.ŗ2 This has been previously compared with the
Mummy which in Egypt was represented by and as Ptah, the god of
the four-fold Tat-type.
The Mexican god, Napatecutli, appears likewise to be a form of the
four-fold deity. His name means the four times, or the four-fold lord; 3
the four times answering to the four corners figured by the Tat of
Ptah, the four seasons of Iao, Brahma with four faces; the ram with
four faces; the beast in Ezekiel and Revelation with four faces; Ptah
in four characters, and other forms of the four.
the four quarters with scientific precision, with the head to the south,
foot to the north, and arms extending east and west, 270 feet in length
and 27 across.1
The circle and four corners are also depicted as a circle and a
square. These are two patterns of the mound-builders. They appear
both as the square outside of the circle and as a square inclosed within
a circle in the ancient earth-works of Ohio, America.2 These squares
and circles were also formed with scientific precision. The Chinese
have two typical Temples; one of which is consecrated to Heaven;
that is round; the other to earth, that is square.
The circle and square constituted the ŖQuadrangular Caerŗ of the
Druids, as the circle of the four quarters. And this was a continuation
of the Horned Cairns of a prehistoric British race that once extended
from Caithness to the Cotswold Hills, and from thence to West
Wales. The plan of the Cairn of Ormiegill which is sixty-six feet
long, and has nearly the same breadth, shows the circle within the
squar, like the American Mounds, and at the centre of both is the
uterine type of the abode, the Egyptian Kha. This cairn comprises
the motherřs womb, the circle of heaven, and the square (with four
corners) of earth.3
In the Quiché geography the earth is four-square. It is shaped as
a square, divided into four parts, marked with lines, measured with
cords, and suspended from the heavens by a cord to each of its four
corners and its four sides.4
The square was held by the Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists to be
the symbol of earth, and inferior to the circle, the symbol of heaven.
The square in the language of heraldry is a diminished or broken
circle, the circle being the square perfected. This is imaged by the
Swastika cross, the four feet of which show segments of the circle
broken and reduced to form the square.
The square is of course an angle of ninety degrees, the fourth part
of a circle. Thus the square formed of the four corners is a cross equal
to the circle of 360 degrees.
The oldest known form of the Nagari character in use throughout
Pegu and Ava is formed of circles and segments of circles combined,
whereas the sacred text of the Pali is in a form of the square letter,
consisting chiefly of right angles. There is the same contention
of circle and square manifested in the Phœnician and Hebrew
letters; this is shown by the Ayin, the earliest form of which is round,
the later square.
The circle assigned to heaven was the primordial figure, and
this was followed by the square of the four corners. Both are
the fourth, or little, finger, is slightly bent, thus indicating the word
Kristos, X. C. The union of the thumb with the third finger makes
a Chi, c, and the curvature of the little finger forms a sigma, C.
And these two letters form the Ŗsigleŗ or abridgement of Christos.ŗ1 This
sign of the cross and circle in one figure is made by the Christ as the
the Saviour God in the Greek Iconography. It is also made by the
Divine Hand reaching out of heaven; 2 which hand is undoubtedly
intended for God the Father. Up to the twelfth century, says Didron,
the hand represents the Father exclusively. But Didron did not
know the relation of the Number 4, or the fourth finger to the Father-
hood. This has to be expounded in the following section. Enough
for the present to affirm that the sign of the thumb and fourth finger
making the circle does denote the fatherhood, and that this corrob-
orates the reason now assigned for placing the marriage-ring upon the
fourth finger.
The fourth digit was considered the healing one, known as the
Lech-man, or medical finger. The Greeks and Romans called it the
medical finger. It is still used in England for the purpose of rubbing
on salve. But the first salve, medicine, or healing signified was that
of marriage applied to such ailments as green-sickness. Salveo to save
is primarily to be well in health. Hence the Saviour of the world
poses as the Lech-man with his thumb touching the fourth digit as
a sign of saving and healing, or of blessing. It is the fourth digit
on the right hand, the masculine hand which constitutcs the healer.
This in digital reckoning is number 9, an equivalent to the nine pieces
of cake passed through the ring, and the sign of nine months, the
period of gestation. The Hindu Buddha is often depicted making
the figure of the circle and the cross, both with the hands and the feet,
whilst holding a four-petalled Lotus in one or in each hand. The Buddha
of Bengal also wears the four-petalled Lotus on his breast, and a hood of
nine hooded and inflated snakes on his head.3 These also denote the
period of gestation, and, as the present writer considers, show the nine
dry months of a year that was first completed by the three monthsř
inundation in Egypt.
The circle and cross are inseparable. The Ankh-loop, the sign
of one turn round, consists of a circle and a cross or crossing
of the ends. This, however, is not the cross of the later four
corners. 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
1 Gulielmus Durandus, Rat. Div. Off. lib. v. cap. ii., J. Beleth. Didron, pp. 407-
8, English Tr.
2 Didron, fig. 52. 3 Moorřs Hindu Pantheon, pl. 75.
422 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
form of the four-footed cross 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, „.
The Tat Cross consists of a pedestal (or stand) with four horizontal
bars or shelves that are circular, constituting a kind of altar-cross. It
was used in the temples as the pedestal and fulcrum for supporting
the statues of the gods. The name signifies to establish, and it is the
symbol of stability as the four-fold foundation of a world or an order
of things that was established upon the four quarters. The Tat-altar
(or pedestal) is the equivalent of the mount of the four corners, or the
tree with four branches, or the cross with four arms. The Tat is the
special type of Ptah, the establisher of the four corners in the solar
mythos, but it existed as a lunar emblem for the moon-god. Taht
impersonates the Tat, and says ŖI am Tat, the Son of Tat, conceived
in Tat, and born in Tat.ŗ1 As a lunar type, it would represent the
four quarters of the moon, for whether the four corners may be those
of the four stars (or spirits), the four leaves of the lotus, the four
lunar divisions, or the four corners of the solar Zodiac, the cross is
everywhere the sign of the four quarters with the one exception. The
Tat was set up in Tattu, the established or eternal region correspond-
ing finally to the zodiacal sign of the Fishes, the station of the Seven
Great Gods of the Assyrians, the chief of all the four corners because
the solar birthplace.
A most curious form of the cross is given in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society.2 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 Swastika 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
or 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.
Now the symbol depicted on the Scottish stones and commonly
known as the Ŗspectacles ornamentŗ is, as previously suggested, a
form of the cross of the four quarters; a symbol of the solstices and
equinoxes. This is also drawn within the ellipse upon the sculptured
stones of Scotland. Sir J.Y. Simpson copied the following specimen,
which is here presented as the cross of the two equinoxes and
the two solstices placed within the figure of the earthřs 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.
The four-armed cross is simply the cross of the four quarters,
1 Ritual, ch. i. 2 Vol. xviii. p. 393, pl. 4; Inman, Ancient Faiths, vol. i, fig. 38.
TYPOLOGY OF THE CROSS. 423
soles of his foot, as well as on his breast, the place of breath. 1 The
Lotus, the ascender out of the water, was a symbol of Breath, and
the Egyptian Seshnin (lotus) is the opener, uncloser or breather out
of the waters.
But breath, spirit, and fire are equivalent types of life. In Egyptian
Ses is breath; Sesit, flame; Sesh is combustion, also a spirit of wine,
Zis, or Zisit, was the Rabbinical Bird of Fire or Soul. The Greek
ŖZhshj!ŗŕVivasŕis a form of wishing life and health. Svas in
Sanskrit also means to breathe and to live. The Svastika, or Swas-
tika Cross, is a sign of life represented by the vivifying fire, and also
a lingaic symbol (Tika [Eg.] is to cross, join, twist, go together; and
Tik in Sanskrit is to go); this has the shape of a double Z, and Z Z
has the force of Zis, Ses, or Svas, denoting the life, the breath, the
generative fire, of which the Swastika is the Cross.
The Dakotahs have a native name for the cross, which signifies the
ŖMusquito-Hawk spread out.ŗ2 Here the bird is a type of fire. The
Hawk in Egypt was representative of the soul and the solar fire. The
Creek Indians at their festival of the Busk commenced with making
the new fire by placing four logs in the centre of a square, end to end,
so that they formed a cross, the outer ends pointing to the four
cardinal points and in the centre of this cross the new fire was
created.3 This was another mode of making the Swastika or cross of
fire. In Egyptjan ŖBusŗ denotes both fire and protection. This
connection of the cross and fire as interchangeable types of protection
is likewise manifest in the command for the Hebrews to make a fiery
serpent and elevate it on a stauros or cross pole which is rendered by
the Targum ŖMake thee a burning.ŗ The four-footed Swastika cross
has been found on the prehistoric pottery or Cyprus, at Herculaneum, in
Egypt, in Ireland, and in England. A leaden figure of the Babylonian
goddess Nana discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Troy, has this cross
figured on a triangular pelvis. The triangle is a type of fire, and the
Hindus consider the Swastika cross to be the especial emblem of
Agni or the Swastika in Sanskrit is the name of various mystical
marks and signs, amongst others the cross, and one particular symbol
made of ground rice, and shaped like a triangle or pyramid, and this
triangle or pyramid was a sign in Egypt of the ancient Horus, as
the virile one of the triad. The Swastika was also used (in India),
for the fumigation of Durga, as a type of the fire that vivifies, after
the period of negation or the water. According to De Rossi the
Swastika from an early period was a favourite form of the cross
employed with an occult signification which shows the secret was not
that of the Christian cross. One Swastika cross in the catacombs is the
sign of an inscription which reads ŖΖΩΣΙΚΩ ΖΟΣΙΚΗ Vitalis Vitalia,ŗ
or life of life. The writer of Rome in the Nineteenth Century
1 Moorřs Hindu Pantheon, plates 70 and 75. 2 Riggřs Dic. of the Dacotah.
3 Brinton, p. 97. 4 Boldetti, also Lundy, fig. 13.
428 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
witnesses that Christ was buried before he was dead, according to the
Christian reckoning; ŖHis body is laid in the sepulchre in all the churches
of Rome, where the rite is practised, on Thursday in the forenoon, and
it remains there till Saturday at mid-day, when, for some reason best
known to themselves, he is supposed to rise from the grave amidst the
firing of cannon, and blowing of trumpets, and jinglings of bells which
have been carefully tied up ever since the dawn of Holy Thursday, lest
the devil should get into them.ŗ1 On the Friday was the day of adoring
the cross of fire. A blazing cross was suspended from the dome of
St. Peterřs, a cross being covered with countless lamps, which had
the effect of a perfect figure of fire, shaped cross-wise. ŖThe whole
church,ŗ says the eye-witness, Ŗwas thronged with a vast multitude of
all classes and countries, from royalty to the meanest beggar, all gazing
upon this one object. In a few minutes the Pope and all his cardinals
descended into St. Peter‟s, and the aged pontiff prostrated himself in
silent adoration before the cross of fire.ŗ2 This may explain why the
Swastika cross, the fire-cross of India, the cross of the generative fire
in Egypt is found in the tombs at Rome. Dante describes the souls
in Paradise as kneeling, praying, and respiring inside a cross of fire
which forms the world. The cross of fire survives in the hot cross
bun, the cake of the vernal equinox, and of the Horus who arose
hawk-headed, the hawk being a symbol of the vivifying fire. The hot
cross buns eaten on Good Friday are believed to protect the house
from fire, which shows the connection with that element. The cross of
fire was continued in the Ŗcross candleŗ of Easter Eve and Pasche,
also in the candles that used to be consecrated to Ŗlight up in
thunder,ŗ which was equivalent to making the sign of the cross as the
symbol of stability when the powers of darkness, discord and deso-
lation were at work overhead. The cross has now been identified with
the three elements of earth, breath, and fire.
The vessel borne in the hands of Chalchiuitlicue the Mexican
goddess of water, which vessel is the equivalent of the Egyptian
water-bottle Nu, ì, and the womb-shaped vase of Mena, is
fashioned in the form of a cross. This we may consider the water-
cross, together with the Muysca rope-cross of the water. The
Mexican cross is particularly the symbol of rain, the first element of
life being liquid. Ankh (Eg.) the name of life and the cross denotes
the liquid or oil of life. Martin found the people of the Western
Isles in possession of a stone called the Ŗwater cross.ŗ The traditions
said the ancient inhabitants were accustomed to erect this kind of cross
when they wanted rain, and to lay it flat again when they had more than
they wanted.3 The water cross is likewise made in the baptismal sign
of the cross.
The Romish calendar contains several festivals devoted to the
glorification of the cross, but the church gives no account of their
1 Vol. iii. pp. 144, 145. 2 Vol. iii. pp. 148-9. 3 Martin, p. 59.
TYPOLOGY OF THE CROSS. 429
ensign that was consecrated by the name of Christ;ŗ by which he means the
monogram of ŖKRŗ upon th ebanner. No doubt this signification was being read
into the sign on the standard of Constantine. But there was nothing new in it,
whether found in Rome or out of it. The tree and cross are identical; and as a type
the one involves the other. The Labarum was the tree, from Laba, Greek, a staff.
This is a common type-name for the tree. Llwyf is the elm-tree in Welsh;
Liobhan, in Irish; Laban, a kind of wood, in Malayan; Lipa, a plane-tree, Polish;
Luban, a conifer, Arabic; Labanah, a poplar-tree, Hebrew; Lananj, a plane-tree,
Persian, etc. Lep or Rep (Eg.) signifies to grow, bud, branch, and take leaf. The
vine is a form of the Rep or Arp. The Repa personified was the branch of the
ancestral tree, the shoot and offspring of the Pharaoh, called the heriditary highness,
the prince, lord, heir-apparent. Now when Constantine is pourtrayed on the
Labarum with his child (or children), he is the exact equivalent of the Egyptian Ra
with the Repa; and the coins prove that he was assimilated to the Solar God, after
the fashion of the Pharaohs. The doctrine of the Repaship belongs to mythology,
in which the Repa was the divine child, the K R, Kar.t, or Khart, who is pourtrayed
as Horus on the cross, at the crossing, the representative of the K R, a course or
circle. Seb-Kronus is called the vertiable Repa of the gods; that is, as the
personified course of time,ŕK R, for the course, being a monogram of Kronus. The
latest form of the Repa was the lord of the solar course, the Kar whose representa-
tive was the Kart in Egyptian, the Kurios in Greek, the God Har-pi-Khart, whose
image is pourtrayed in the catacombs, or Har-Ma-Kheru. The cross goes with the tree
in the Labarum as elsewhere, because it was the tree of the four corners. The
cross is inseparable from the circle, the Kar, or course, and the maker of the course
is intended by the monogram of K R, whether personfied as the Kaft, Kronus, or
Christ. The typology is so ancient, that the Repa is found as Rupe in the Maori
mythology,ŕhe who was fabled to have fallen from the cross, or at the crossing;
ripeka being a name for the cross, the cross-roads, and to crucify.
2 Vol. v. pp. 283, 284.
436 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
about 390 A.D., were engaged in the work of destroying the monu-
ments and effacing the tell-tale pastŕhad they been able to read it
they would have wanted to erase the geological record itselfŕthey
came upon the Ankh-cross, which they were horribly astonished to
find in Egypt, at the end of the fourth century A.D.1 So ignorant
were they of the age, origin, and significance of the symbol which
they had adopted. The native Christians explained to them that it
was the emblem of life to come; as it was, and had been for thousands
of years. The cross was placed in the hands of the dead, and bound
to their bodies as the sign of life to come. It was figured on the
back of the sacred scarab as the image of life to come. The Ankh
cross signifies life and to duplicate; and in the Sechuana (African)
language, Tsela, to cross over, literally signifies to live. The Horus of
the resurrectlon is pourtrayed with the Cross of life in his hand in
the act of raising the dead body from the Bier.2
It may be noticed in passing that the tree and cross of life are
identical, and that the staff or rod is a reduced form of the tree-type.
The rod of Moses was fabled to be a shoot from the tree of life.
But perhaps the most singular form of the rod and staff that was
ever clutched for comfort is that which used to be held in the hands
of a person who was being bled. It was an ancient British custom,
continued until recent times, for the patient at the barberřs to sit
and clasp a coloured pole, somewhat shorter than the one outside the
door. The patient was thus holding on to the tree of life whilst parting
with a goodly portion of his own, and supposing that he was saving
it in losing it. This practice, says Brand, may be seen from an
illuminated missal of the time of Edward I., in the possession of
Mr. Wild.3
The cross in Egypt was the express emblem of life to come when
the Ankh was a mere noose held in front of the enceinte genitrix
as she brooded over the dead in the tomb, the womb, or Meskhen, of
the second birth. This place of re-birth and of life to come was
imaged by Apt, the Hippopotamus Goddess of the Great Bear, who
was represented as the gestator, if not in the crucial pangs of her
travail, in the act of bringing the dead to their immortal birth. It is
this fact which accounts for the masculine symbolry that first accom-
panies the cross. One of these cruciform figures has a beard, and bears
a fourfold phallus on her breast.4 In like manner Apt or Ta-Urt, the
old Typhonian genitrix, as well as Mut, has the male member
assigned to her. These are the symbols of their power as the re-
begetters and re-generators of the dead. As Apt, she was the crib, the
cradle of new life, the abode of the four corners, or four parts by
name. Therefore she was herself a figure or the Ankh as well as the
1 Sozom, 7-15; Socrates, H. E. v. 17; Ruffinus, ii. 26-28.
2 Denon, Travels, plate; Lundy, fig. 183.
3 Brand, Barbers‟ Signs. 4 Di Cesnola.
TYPOLOGY OF THE CROSS. 437
city of Tigranocerta. In this the cross reads both Tau and Chi in one,
as does the hieroglyphic Tek X, and with the Ro forms the TKR,
whence Tigr. Of such pre-Christian signs of the mythical Christ, the
author of ŖEarly Christian Numismaticsŗ has remarked, ŖAlthough
these symbols, as far as regards their material form, were not invented by
the Christians, they nevertheless received at this time a new signification,ŗ1
which is perfectly true, but the signification read into them by men
who were ignorant of their origin, history, and nature is entirely false,
and ridiculously delusive. The typology of the catacombs, when
interrogated and interpreted by means of the Gnosis, will be found to
turn informer and confess that it has been forced to bear false witness
in giving its testimony to the truth of historic Christianity. All such
symbols figured their own facts from the first, and did not prefigure
others of a totally different order. The Iconography had survived
in Rome from a period remotely pre-Christian. There was neither
forgery nor interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of
imagery with a perversion of its meaning. The sign is simply
composed of a cross bisected with the letter Iota. This letter has
the numeral value and mystical significance of the Hebrew Jad, which
denotes the ineffable name of the Iao. Here it signifies the dual
one that decussates in the sign of the X to become twain on the
two horizons as did Har-Makhu, the Greek Harmachis, and Khem-
Horus, who wears the decussa on his breast ages before it appears on
the coins of L. Lentulus, and on medals of the kings of the Bosphorus.
The Iota and Chi were read as the initials of Jesus the Christ, which
they were, but in no personal sense. Iota, Alpha, and Omega read
Iao, even as they did with Hebrews, Phœnicians, and Britons; and
they remained just what they had been, the monogram of the biune
one, the androgynous deity that decussated in crossing the circle; who
was also considered Triadic or Tetradic in character according to the
variation of the type in the different aspects yet to be elucidated.
The Christ in the Solar Myth was the Sun-God who, in the form of
Stauros, the Gnostic Horus, crossed the genitrix Sophia, and gave a
figure to her who had been otherwise formless by making the sign of
the ŖKrŗ or Cross in space. In the human aspect of the typology
there is no male without the female, no Cross without the circle, and
the two are finally a form of the natural axis, and copula, the Linga-
yoni, which is actually worn as a crown on his head by the Crucified
Krishna.2 The symbolical can only be interpreted by the natural.
The AO denotes the being of both sexes with a triadic manifestation.
Without the two sexes in conjunction there can be no reproduc-
tion. The Christ who Crossed, whether as Horus the Child, or Ma-
Kheru, was the Boy of the Mother who duplicated at puberty, or
1 King, Early Christian Numismatics, p. 12.
2 Inman, Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i. p. 403.
446 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
decussatedŕas it was figuredŕto become the reproducer in conjunc-
tion with the genitrix. Hence the Chi combined with the Ro, or the
Cross within the Circle, has the same significance as the male and
female united under other and more evident twin-types of the two
sexes. Sophia was crossed and established by Horus the Christ
in his sixfold form which is figured by the letters /, Iota Chi.
The ΑΩ beside the sixfold Cross has the same significance as the
exclamation of the sixfold Horus, who, when he extended himself
crosswise to restrain Sophia claimed ŖIAO,ŗ which the Gnostics
affirmed to have been the origin of that name.1
One special solar form of the Egyptian Christ was Horus-Ma-Kheru,
the Horus who was the True Word or Logos. He was the crosser of the
circle personified, as the Word that made Truth, or as the Word made
Truth, because he fulfilled the promise: he crossed. The amulet or
charm which Isis hung round her neck when she found herself enceinte
was called in Greek the True Voice,2 which, in Egyptian, is Ma-Kheru.
For one reason, the star-gods and moon-gods were not true timekeepers,
and they were superseded in favour of Har-ma-Kheru, who was the
solar crosser or the Christ, and the Word as the Kheru or Chr, ,.
Once, at least, the cross of Christ, together with the Alpha and
Omega, is found in the catacombs coupled with the name of Asaris.
The inscription reads, ŖKhr-Ao-Asaris.ŗ3 As-ar, Ày, is the Egyp-
tian form of the name known as Osiris, and this with the Greek
terminal j is Asaris. Osiris is designated ŖHar-Iu.ŗ Har denotes
the Lord, the Greek Kurios (Kr having been the earlier form), who is
the Lordl and the dual Iu is an exact equivalent for Au (was, is, and
to be), the Greek Aw (also the Ð ên, he who is). This ŖMonogram
of the Saviourřs nameŗ belongs to Osiris, and to Har-Ma-Kheru in
Rome as surely as ever it did in Egypt.
The Latins appear to have continued the Ark or Rek in their
Rex which they inscribed on the cross, instesd of the Ð ên of the
Greek Aureole-cross, with one letter on each of three arms. Rek
(Eg.) denotes time and rule, whence the ruler or regulus. Rex and
Kr are equivalents, and Kher (Eg,) also means the Majesty or Rex
applied to Horus the Christ, the Ma-Kheru.
As late as the eighteenth century the Christ in a fresco at Salamis
is pourtrayed in the act of making the sign of the cross and circle
with the first and fourth digit of the right hand. In his left hand
he ho1ds the book, the Word (Kheru). He is pourtrayed between
the two figures
that day.1 This figure of the four quarters was accompanied by the
egg as a type of the circleŕthe circle and the cross being everywhere
twinned. Eggs were offered to the cross, and the image of the cross
was used in collecting eggs on Good Friday.
The Cardinals, as their name denotes, are founded on the cross as
the cardinal points of the circle, from Cardo, a hinge, a point or nick
of time. The double cross of the archbishops is still paralleled
in England by the two archbishoprics of the north and south, York
and Canterbury. No link is missing in the long chain of evidence
that shows the continuity of the mythical cross. It cannot be said
that the sun and moon were the parent of an historical Christ,
but they were the father and mother of Horus the Christ or Iu-su
the Child of Atum, and of Khunsu the Prince of Peace. It is
the Mother Moonŕthe woman arrayed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet,ŕthat still brings forth her child at Easter, as she
does in the Book of ŖRevelation,ŗ and a bust of the supposed
historical Saviour is seen enthroned within a nimbus of the cross
between the sun and moon, showing the child of both who was born
at Easter. Moreover, this form of the Father and Mother is pourtrayed
on the earliest known crucifix that has the human figure on it.2 The solar
disk and crescent symbols appear upon the plastic crucifix presented
by Gregory the Great to Queen Theodolinde, which is preserved in
the church of St. John at Monza. The vernal equinox is the place
where the sun and new moon were once more re-united and the
Horus or Christ was re-born at Easter; and in the mediæval repre-
sentations of the Crucifixion the Christ is constantly accompanied
by the sun and crescent moon. It is the same luni-solar conjunction
that produced the youthful Khunsu in the mythos of Egypt. Our
calendar rules for Easter continue the same as in Egypt, and the
same full moon which contains Khunsu holding forth the Pig of
Easter in the Planisphere of Denderah (Cf. the leg of pork especially
eaten at that season), still determines the Easter-tide. There has
been no break in the bringing on to leave any room for the insertion
of an historical cross.
Being prc-Christian, the Cross was not derived from an historical
Crucifixion, and can afford no evidence of the fact. The monograms
of the Cross X, KR, Iota Chi, and others, being also pre-extant
could not bave been derived from the name of a personal Jesus Christ.
The Solar and Kronian Crosses were continued for and as the Christ
until there was a personal representation; the Pagan imagery was
not even taken intelligently, it was only inherited ignorantly.
To recapitulate: the earliest sign of the Cross made with the hands
denoted reckoning and repetition; this is extant in the of multiplica-
tion. The first form of the Celestial Cross was described by the earliest
maker of a circle, which was a constellation that crossed below the
1 Brand, Good Friday. 2 Martigny, plates p. 190.
452 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
horizon. This was made by the Seven Stars in Ursa Major or the
genitrix who was personified as the bringer-forth of Time in Heaven
and pourtrayed as the enceinte Mother, whose Ankh-Cross (the tie or
cord) was the figure of life to come (for in her was life), and of
continuity by means of cyclic repetition. The next was the Cross of
establishing for ever on the four-fold foundation of the four quarters,
with the Tat-pillar as its type, which was first assigned to the lunar
god. Lastly, the Sun-God made the circle and the sign of the Cross
which might be tha Tat of the Equinox and Solstice or the Swastika.
with four nails in its four feet; the extended human figure with the
sign of four nails in hands and feet; the Cross of the four-fold or the
cubical foundation; the four-fold, six-fold, or seven-fold Lingaic cross.
The Solar God who crossed was the virile potent one, the victor and
conqueror. Hence the Cross became the sign of all that is expressed
by the word KR (Eg.), which not only means a course of time but
Power, Ability. Virile Potency, Support, the Weapon of Power. And
in its final phase as the Christian emblem the Cross of death and
blood-sacrifice offered to the God of Gore, befittingly fulfils its type;
keeps its character, and still gets its drench and drink of human life
as the hilt of the sword by means of which the dominion of the Cross
has been and still continues to be extended over the globe.
In the Christian Iconography the cross is connected with the ram
and the lamb; in each case the animal wears the cross as a glory,
and has another form of the cross for an accompaniment. Again,
the name of the fish as ΙΧΘΤC is placed at the head of the starry
cross.1
In the Hermean Zodiac, Pisces is named Ichton, and the fish is
the female goddess who brought forth the young Sun-god as her fish,2
whether called Horus in Egypt or Marduk the Fish of Hea in
Assyria; Ichthys, who was the son of the fish-tailed Atergatis at
Ascalon,3 or Ichthys which was also a titIe of Bacchus.4 The cross
of the ram or lamb, as the symbol of the four quarters is corroborated
by the mount of the four quarters which are represented by the four
rivers of the ŖGenesis.ŗ In monuments of what is termed by Didron
the ŖPrimitive Church,ŗ the lamb is frequently seen standing on a
mountain out of which the four rivers flow, as a symbol of the four
quarters. On a sculptured sarcophagus in the Vatican, Ŗbelonging
to the earliest ages of Christianity,ŗ the lamb is pourtrayed standing
on the mount of the four rivers with the monogram A - w set in a
circular nimbus. The same writer also cites a monument of the
11th century in which the four streams are called Gyon, Phishon,
4 Hesychius, p. 179.
TYPOLOGY OF THE CROSS. 453
1 Zodiac in present vol.; Bosio, Rom. Sott. p. 505; Lundy, figs. 53 and 55.
2 No. 231, Gnostic Seals, British Museum.
3 See plate ii. vol. ii., Book of the Beginnings, also plate in present vol.
4 Log of Lord Colin Campbell.
TYPOLOGY OF THE CROSS. 455
WHEN, after many yearsř research, the present writer discovered that
mythology is the mirror in which the pre-historic sociology is reflected,
his labour was forthwith doubled, but the fact furnished him with the
real foundation for the work he was building. It may be difficult for
the modern mind to conceive of the primitive priority (for it is that
rather than supremacy in Bachofenřs sense) of the Woman; the
priority of the sonship to the institution of the fatherhood; of the
nephew to the son of the father; and of the types of thought, the
laws and ceremonies that were left as the deposit of such primitive
customs. Yet these facts, and others equally important, are reflected
in the mirror of mythology.
The genitrix as Ta-Urt (Typhon) is designated the ŖMother of the
Beginnings,ŗ ŖMother of the Revolutionsŗ (time-cycles), ŖMother of
the Fields of Heaven,ŗ and the ŖMother of Gods and Men.ŗ The
priority of the genitrix as typical producer was plainly enough pour-
trayed by Tesas-Neith, the Great Mother, at Sais. ŖI am all that was,
and is, and is to be; no mortal hath lifted my peplum, and the fruit I bore
is Helios.ŗ 1 The title of the goddess as ŖTesas-Neithŗ signifies
the self-existing; she who came from herself. The genitrix is cele-
brated as the ŖOnly Oneŗ in the Ritual. ŖGlory to thee! The
art mightier than the Gods! The forms of the living souls which are
in their places give glory to the terrors of thee, their Mother; thou art
their origin.ŗ2
Following this enunciation of the female priority we find that Seb,
the father of the gods, is also designated the ŖYoungest of the gods.ŗ
The earlier gods, Sut (or Sevekh), Shu, Taht, and the first Horus,
were children of the mother alone. They were created before there
was any father in heaven, there being no fatherhood as yet indivi-
1 Clemens, Strom., v.; Proclus in Timæus, 1.
2 Rit., ch. clxv., Sup. Birch.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 457
dualized on earth. Both on earth and in heaven the father was pre-
ceded by the Totemic elders and fathers, the mythical Pitris. The
Kamite mirror shows us that when the fatherhood had become indi-
vidualized in the human family it was first reflected by Seb as God
the divine Father. Seb, the God of earth and of planetary time,
who followed the earlier Star-gods, Moon-deities, and elementaries,
was then termed the ŖFather of the Gods.ŗ When the fatherhood
became individualized it was applied retrospectively, which often
gives a false appearance of beginning with and descent from the
father in place of the mother. But mythology begins with and
reckons from the female, as in the totemic system of the oldest
races. We can only begin at the beginning; the god could only
be born as the child of the mother. Although the Hottentots have
now attained the individualized fatherhood, and have elevated the
divine father of the fathers to the supreme place, yet their languages
show that the race, clan, or tribe, was always called after the
mother, never after the father. Thus the Namas, Amas, Khaxas,
and Gaminus have each and all the feminine terminal as their
appellation. They are all children of the mother, and it is the
same with the lesser formation in the family, which is likewise
named from the mother.1
Descent in the female line was universal in the earliest times and
most archaic condition of society; the gens or kin being composed
of a female ancestor and her children. The fatherhood is un-
known to the primary group, and this status of the human family
originated the figure of the Great Mother and her children in the
heavens. Also in certain Chinese accounts of the founders of dy-
nasties in the oldest times, long anterior to 2000 B.C., they were
invariably born of the father. One maid, or the Virgin Mother,
dreams that she embraced the sun. Another dreams that she sud-
denly felt a mighty wind in the form of an egg. So the Virgin
Mother, typified by the Vulture, Mu (Eg.), is impregnated by the
wind alone without the male. Tradition said that the first King of
Northern Gaoli had a maid slave who was found to be with child.
The King desired the death of the boy who was born, but the mother
said that she had conceived him by an influence which came upon
her, and which she felt to be like air, as if in the form of an egg.
The King, at once afraid to kill, and fearing to keep alive a prodigy,
had the child thrown into the pig-yard. But it was the rightful heir,
who lived to become the monarch.2
The sole catholic and universal first producer was feminine. She
was the Mother Nature, La Source, the Goddess of Beginnings
(Taurt), the Begetter of the Universe (Ishtar and Atergatis). The
1 Hahn, p. 145. The Wyandot mode of stating that descent is in the female
line, is ŖThe woman carries the Gens.ŗ
2 Ross, Corea, its History, Manners, and Customs, p. 121.
458 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Great Mother, the Grandmother (Inner African), the Godmother,
the Old Woman (North American Indian), the Mother Earth (Nin-ki-
gal), and Mother Heaven; the mother that opened in the void below
or vault above in the uterine likeness of the human parent. This
alone is beginning. She is yet extant in the Africanřs and the
Hinduřs ŖMama,ŗ and the Papistřs ŖMary.ŗ When a piece of crewel
work bearing the motto, ŖGod is my King,ŗ was presented to Cete-
wayo in London, he at first declined to receive it with the remark,
ŖThere is no one over me but the Queen, my Mother!ŗ1 He himself
was the King, the Bull, as Male; and such was the primitive status.
The lower world, says the Sohar, is created after the pattern of the
upper, and everything existing above is to be found, as it were, in a
copy on the earth. But this is a reversal of the real process; a result
of the later thought which culminated in the Hindu tree with its roots
above and its branches below. The lower was first in mythology, as
in evolution. The esoteric interpretation was last. The Great
Mother, the Virgin Mother, of mythology, represents the human
mother, as the first mistress of the home in the pre-paternal phase,
and thus mythology helps us to ascertain the natural genesis of such
customs as those of the Mother-Right by becoming the mirror to the
pre-historic past, which reflects the most Archaic social conditions of
the human race. The earliest God known is the Son of the Mother,
who becomes her Bull or Male. It was thus with Sut, or Sevekh, so
with Taht, Khem, and Khepr; and he who was the consort of his
mother was necessarily born or re-born of his wife; and, as according
to one Egyptian custom the son took the motherřs name, in another
the bridgegroom takes that of the wife, and both are typical of the
primordial derivation from the female with which mythology begins.
Non-evolutionists have recently been startled at the rank of the wife
and the priority and apparent supremacy of the woman in Egypt as late
as the Ptolmian age. A writer in the Times has said, ŖWe shall pro-
bably never know how customs so strange and perverse came to be estab-
lished among a people famed throughout antiquity for their wisdom and
learning.ŗ We never shall, except on the evolutionary theory, and
also on the theory propounded in the present work, or Egyptřs being
the mouth-piece and Inner Africa the birth-place of all such archaic
and primitive customs. For example, the same supremacy of the
female as mistress of the house, which is shown by the Egyptian
marriage documents is extant to-day among the Hottentots. In
every house or hut she is the supreme ruler, the Taras. Dr. Hahn
derives this title from Ta to rule, be master; Ra, which expresses a
custom or intrinsic peculiarity, with S for feminine terminal. Taras
denotes the Supreme Ruler, the Lady of the house. Out of doors
the man is Governor, but the Taras dominates within. Her place is
on the right side of the house and the right hand of her husband.
1 Daily News, Sept. 2, 1882.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 459
He dare not take a mouthful of sour milk out of a tub without her
permission. Should he break the law in such a case his nearest
female relations will mulct him in a heavy fine of sheep or cows. 1
When a chief died it has often happened that his wife became the
ruleress and queen of the tribe, just as in Egypt. It is also a Khoi-
khoi custom for the sons to take the name of the mother (the
daughters taking that of the father); and in Egypt the sons, instead
of being called after their fathers were named after their mothers.
Neither sons nor daughters could be named after the fathers when
these were unknown. When the fatherhood was represented by the
solar Râ, then she who had been his mother was called his daughter,
and so the great goddesses became daughters of the Râ. This
position of the woman is the oldest known in the world, and it is in
perfect accordance with natural genesis. The mother was the first
parent recognised, as in the mirror of mythology, where Ta-Ur (with
the Egyptian terminal, Ta-Urt, Greek Thoueris), the old first chief
ruleress is the Taras of the gods in Egypt.
It was a law of the Basques or Iberians that he who married the
heiress should take her name and have no control over her children.
In the event of her death he was not permitted to marry again except
by consent of the deceased wifeřs relations.
The earliest societary conditions and typical modes of expression
first establisbed in Inner Africa were continued one way or another
by the Egyptians whose laws, literature, and mythology, are a complete
Kamite fossil formation deposited by the life of the past. Egypt, as
insisted in the previous volumes, is the missing link between the Inner
African origines and the rest of the world. Remote as the postulate
seemed when enunciated by me, every discovery and every day will
bring us nearer to that truth. Such customs do not commence just
where we first meet with them in history; nor were they established
in Egypt in the sense of being imported or adopted by a civilised
people. They are simply surivals from the Inner African birth-place.
Neither did such customs arise from a primitive order of chivalry
being established for the worship of womankind. Woman was the
first known parent, and her priority in mythology and sociology was the
natural result. As bringer-forth she was the cow of human kind,
and the chivalry was doubtless somewhat akin to that of the bulls, rams,
and stags, fighting for the finest females in the herd. Female
supremacy was sexual at first but the precedence is afterwards
registered in statutory laws. Diodorus had already told us that the
Queen of Egypt held a loftier position theoretically if not practically
than the Pharaoh himself; the Ra being a far later institution.2 The
Emperor of China is not yet exempted from performing the Kotou
in presence of his mother.
1 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 19.
2 Vide Chrestomathie Demotique, par E. Revillout.
460 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
According to the Laws of Akkad if a son said to his father, ŖThou
art not my fatherŗ and sealed it by making his nail-mark he was
fined in a forfeit of money. But if he said to his mother even with-
out confirming it with the nail-mark, ŖThou art not my motherŗ he
was put into prison and had his hair cut off to humble him.1 The
one was so much more certain a law-breaker than the other. Still more
interesting is it to learn that in case of homicide among the Kaffirs
the scale of compensation allowed by law was seven head of cattle
for the male and ten head for the female. 2
The reason why the mother was the Ruleress and Tyrant of the
House and Home was because she was the first House or Home that
was recognised. She was the abode of birth, and all early forms
of the abode whether of the living or the dead were first named after
her. Even the notion that a man is born of his wife abides in the
Vedas. But, this did not originate in the fanciful etymology of Jaya
a wife, from Jan, to be born, as explained by the commentators. It
must be read by the primitive doctrine. ŖA Man‟s Wife Maghaven
is his dwelling; verily she is his place of Birth.ŗ3 Simply because the
wife was the abode of being like the mother. This may be illustrated
in Cornish where Kuf is the name both of the womb and the wife.
Wife, woman and mother are three personifications of the womb,
the earliest house of life. It is also shown by the Wame (Scotch)
belly or womb; Wamo, (Fin.), woman and wife; Gwamm (Breton)
wife.
The Cave, Cove, Kof; the Combe, Wem, Uamh, Home and
Hamlet, are all forms of the dwelling founded on the female. Also,
the chief type-names arc Inner African, continued in Egyptian.
Kam, in Yula. Kamu, in Munio. Ama, in Nřgodsin.
Kamu, in Kasm. Kamu, in Kanem. Uma, and Ma, in Dosi.
Kumu, in Kanuir. Gama, in Bode. Koomara, in Dor.
Kamu, in Nřguri.
We cannot derive the Gens (or Kinsfolk), except from the woman
as producer; the Khennu (Eg). In Ulfilařs translation of the Bible
(fourth century) the wife is Gens, the woman is Ginio. And the
name is the womanřs as that of the uterus, the birth-place of the
Gens; the Khentu (Eg.), and Kentu for the woman in Arabic. It
has been previously shown how the type-name of the woman ranging
1 Tablet of Ancient Akkadian Laws, 12, 13; Sayce. [Records, vol. iii pp. 21-24.]
2 Dugmore, p. 61. 3 Rig Veda, Wilson, v. iii. p. 84.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 461
from Yoni and Gine to Queen was based on the first abode of being.
This type-name is Inner African for the belly or womb as
Youno, in Krepee. Konyo, in Toronka. Eni, in Ebe.
N‟yoni, in Hwida. Kono, in Dsalunka. Ine, in Opanda.
N‟yonu, in Dahome. Kono, in Kankanka. Ine, in Igu.
N‟kona, in Saldana Bay. Kono, in Bambara. Ine, in Egbira-hima.
Gine, in Tene. Kenu, in Kasm. Hona, Woman, in Agaumidr.
Ginei, in Kise-Kise. Kuna, in Bode. Kento ,, Mimboma.
Kun, in Bulam. Kunu, in Nřgodsin. Kento ,, Musentandu.
Kun, in Mampa. Kunu, in Doai. Kento ,, Bsunde.
Kono, in Mandenga. Gungu, in Tumbuktu. Onda ,, Mbarike.
Kono, in Kabanga. Unna, in Yasgua.
The Hieroglyphics show the Khun is the Abode, the Dwelling, or Inn
as it is in the boosing Ken. Khen signifies In, Within, the interior, the
Hottentot and Bushman Khoin for the entrails. The first interior, or
inn, was feminine. When we have dug down to a root like this we
find it as as simple as one of two, or rather it is one with two aspects;
these are the dual of the idea of Within and Without. The female
is the inn, or within, and the male is out; Egyptian Uta, a title of
Khem, the one who puts forth or jets out; as it is in the Chinese
duality of Feng-Shui. This is one of the names under which the
typical female can be followed the world round, beginning in Africa
as the birthplace for this name of the Birthplace.
Kono, in Maori. Kuns, in Mandan India. Gean, in Irish.
Quani, in Tasmanian. Ken or Cons, in Cornish. Qen, in Hebrew.
Koona, in Australian. Con, in Old French. Quan, the wife, in Old Norse.
Ch‟hen, in Chinese.
At the time of making his remark on the Wesley-Bob (B. B. vol i. p. 304), the writer
did not know that the ŖBobŗ was the sailorřs berth on board ship. He argued
that the chilrenřs ŖBobŗ with the dolls, denoted the birth-place of the genitrix,
which is the ŖBerthŗ of the unborn child. The ŖBob,ŗ therefore, is one of the
prototypes which survive from the first origin. It is the mother herself in the
Australian, Akkadian, and other languages. It is the woman, the female, in
various languages. It is the womb or belly in the Kanyop, Pipas; Pepel, Pobob;
Mbe, Fuburu; Bowe, or Bovo, in Tiribi. In Dutch the Pop is the caterpillarřs
cocoon. The Bob, or Bub, in Egyptian is the hole, the pit, a primitive type of the
berth. In Gaelic the Boabh is the tomb; Bebo in Tiwi (African); and Babisi
in Melon, are hells (in the sky). The Bab in Assyrian is the Gate, place of
outlet, whence Babylon. But the first Bab is the uterus. Then the hole in the
ground or berth on board ship. Hence the Great Mother who personified the
abode is names Baba (Eg.); Papa, Mangaian; Babia, Khetan.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 463
1 Laveleye.
464 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
of Ta-Urt in Smen, or Hathor in Sesennu, both of which names
denote the number Eight.
The mythical Abyss was the Womb, the Bab, Kep, Ken; Khem, or
Tep of all beginning. Tep (Eg.) means first. With the feminine or
dual terminal this is the tepht, the abyss of source, the Hole of the
Snake or lair of the Water-Cow. The tepht is synonymous with the
English Depth; Welsh, Dyfed; Shetland, Toŷt; Lithuanic, Dubti;
Hebrew, Tophet, in the valley. The Abyss is also represented by the
Tuba (Xosa Kaffir) or opening; the Tupe, Maori, a hole over which
incantations are uttered against evil demons whose dwelling is the
Abyss of Darkness. The Greek t£foj was a Barrow for the Burial
urn, and therefore a form of the Teph as the Abyss from which all
birth proceeded in the beginning. The Tiava, Butumerah, is the
womb or belly; the Dabu in Bornu. This name of the primordial
place of birth is likewise that of the primal conditions of beginning,
becoming, and being, as in the Ma.ori and Mangaian Tupu, to open,
originate, begin; and the Polynesian Tafito for the first and most
ancient; Teva, Cornish, to grow; Tyfu, Welsh, to cause to grow; Dhov,
to come; Tubu, Fiji, origin and growth; Tapairu, Maori, the first-
born as a female; also the Niece and Nephew, the Sisterřs Children;
Teibe, Irish, the Mother Nature; Tyba, Arabic. In Fijian the Tubu-
na are the ancestors, but more especially the Godmother. Davke, or
Davkina, is the Babylonian Mother Earth, or the Abyss over which
the god Hea presided. The first of the Two Truths being Water
accounts for the beginning in and from the Abyss, the Tepht of
Source. Tepht (Eg.) is a dual or feminne form equivalent to Teph-
Teph, and in Fijian Dave-Dave is the name for a Channel from the
Source. Mystically the Source is denoted by
Tef (Eg.), to ooze, drip, bedew, menstruate.
Tevah, Hebrew, to menstruate.
Tep, Sanskrit, to distil, ooze, drop.
Dhav, Sanskrit, to flow, to give milk as a cow, to cleanse, purify
or, primarily, to menstruate.
Diva, or Defa, Zulu, first menstruation.
Tabau, Yarra (Australian), damp.
Davi, Fiji, flow of liquids, expressly from the source.
Tuphan, Arabic, inundation or deluge.
Damu, Assyrian, blood.
Tombo (Xosa Kaffir), fountain, source, spring, shoots, germs,
malt.
Tomba, applied to the female at the time of first menstruation.
This root, with its variants, is an Inner Airican type-name for water
and wet,
A Tebi, wet, Limba. Dsape, water, Dsuku. Ndsab, water, Bagba.
Isof ,, Kano. Ndsib ,, Bayon. Ndsob ,, Momenya.
Sabe ,, Toma. Ndsab ,, Kum.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 465
1 Chips, v. i. p. 141.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 467
forth by the mother, the sole supreme primordial being in (or as)
earth and heaven.
Hor-Apollo points out that the Egyptians thought it absurd to
designate Heaven in the masculine, tÕn oÙranÕn, but represented it in
the feminine, t¾n oÙranÕn, inasmuch as the generation of the Sun,
Moon, and the rest of the stars is perfected in it, which is the
peculiar property of the female. 1 The Heaven, whether Upper or
Lower, was the bringer-forth, therefore feminine. Wheresoever the
fatherhood is applied to the heaven itself the myth is later. The
Two Heavens, or Heaven and Earth, were represented by the Two
Divine Sisters as Neith and Seti (or Nephthys), or Isis and Nupe, who
were two forms of the first One, the Mother and Sister in the
earliest sociology. These Two Sisters were represented not only as
Two Goddesses, for in the Cult of Atum at Heliopolis, the Two
Sisters Urti, who bore the name of the double-uræi Crown of
Maternity, were the Servants of the god. These likewise agree with
the Two Women of the Temple that were carried away from
Thebes by certain Phœnicians and became the first who established
oracles in Lybia and Greece.2
The author of the ŖBook of Godŗ3 speaks of a picture of Paradise
described in Brahminic theology. At the top of the seven-stepped
mount there is a plain and in the midst a square table surrounded by
Nine precious stones, and a silver bell. On the table there is a silver
rose called Tamara Pua, which is the shrine of Two Women, who are
only one in reality, but two in appearance according as they are seen
from below or above; the celestial or terrestrial one. In the first
aspect the twin woman is Briga Sri the Lady of the Mouth; in the
second she is Tara Sri, the Lady of the Tongue. This dual being was
depicted in Egypt as Pekht, the Lioness. Pekh means division, and
the genitrix divided into the double-mouth. One Pekh (or Peh) is
the sign of the hinder part (the back) the North, the mouth of birth;
the fore part (pekh-pekh or pekhti) is the mouth in front and there-
fore the mouth of the tongue. The double mouth typified the two
horizons and the divided lioness was equivalent to the two sisters who
represented earth and heaven.
In Chinese poetry the heaven is considered to be both father
and mother.4 But in ancient Egypt, before the time of Seb, the
plural parent was female alone; female above and female below;
female as the emaner of the waters of source (or blood) and female
as the mother of breath, the gestator. Hence Seb also appears
as the genitrix. In Chinese Tien is the double heaven or heaven
and earth as upper and lower of two. Thus Ti denotes heaven and
earth; and Shang-ti the Supreme One, is of necessity dual, like the
Egyptian Penti for the one. The heavens are called Ten or Tien in
1 B. i. 11. 2 Herodotus, b. ii. 54.
3 P. 13. 4 Chalmers, Origin of the Chinese, p. 14.
468 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Amoy. Tem or Ten (Eg.) signifies the division into two halves, and
this is the root meaning of Ten or ten-ten in Amoy, and Tan in
Chinese, to cut in two. We have the same duality in dawn for
morning and den for evening.
The Hindu Aditi is the great mother of the Gods who becomes
twain. As the mother who yielded milk for them, she is identical with
the cow of heaven in Egypt. Aditi was the primæval form of Dyaus,
the sky divinity, who appears as such in the Rig-Veda, however rarely.
She alternates with Diti as mother of the embryo that was divided
into seven parts, the Seven who were also called the Seven Adityas.1
She became Diti in the second character, and is identical in both
with the one original genitrix who opens and divides in all the
ancient mythologies. The Aryanists who begin with little less than
infinitude insist that Aditi signifies infinity, or the infinite, as a men-
tal concept. Aditi, says Max Müller, is in reality the earliest name
invented to express the infinite! Professor Benfey remarks that the
conception of this goddess is still dark. Roth understands Aditi to
mean the boundlessness of heaven as opposed to the limitation of
earth. Aditi is, of course, the negative of Diti, and it is by aid of the
latter that we have to recover foothold in phenomena. Then we shall
find that the un-finited is not the infinite; the unbounded is not the
boundless infinitude; timelessness is not necessarily the eternal.
Diti in Sanskrit denotes cutting, splitting and dividing. Thut also
signifies splitting and dividing. Tithi is the fifteenth lunar day, the
day of dividing. So Tutua in Tahitian, signifies splitting in two, and
in the Inner African languages we find Didi in Timbo; Didi Salum;
Didi, Goboru; Didi, Kano, as the type name for number two, the
divided one. Aditi has a mystical form on certain Hindu talismans
under the form of Athithi, the un-fixed, the undefined, or un-established;
and this was the sole character preceding that of Diti. Aditi was the
primordial undivided One, the All, who when divided as the Egyptian
goddess of the north, bifurcates in Uati, the dual One; or as Omoroka
and the Cow she is cut in two and becomes Diti the divided. Aditi
produced Diti by a sort of self-splitting which may be compared
with that of the entozoa, molluscoids and annelids; she being
twy-fold in herself as the representative of the Two Truths.
The passage from a ŖMother Heavenŗ to a ŖFather Heavenŗ is
easily traced. The upper of the two females represented the
breathing force as the inspirer of Soul. This being the superior
power of two, it came to be considered masculine, and was then
pourtrayed as a male attribute of the motherhood. There is an
extract rendered by Bunsen from the ŖGreat Announcement,ŗ a
work attributed to Simon, the Samaritan, which has a bearing on this
change of sex in the heaven. Simon teaches that the root of all
things bifurcated in two powers. Of these, the one appears above,
1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 145; vol. v. p. 39 (note), and 147, note.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER. 469
and is the Great Power, the mind of the universe, directing all things
male; the other appears below, the great thought, female, producing
all things. Hence, being thus ranged one against the other, they
form a syzygia (a pair, Copula), and make manifest the intermediate
interval, the incomprehensible Air. In this air is the Father, sup-
porting all things. This is Ŗhim who standsŗŕas did Khem-Horus,
Mentu or Khepr-Raŕand who was of a dual nature. These Gnostic
evolutions, whether Simonian, Valentinian or Marcosian were but a
continuation of the mythical characters in a later phase of thought.
The great power was the female inspirer of the male, his Sakti; she
who was the primaty begetter as communicator of the breath of life;
next, begetting was identified as masculine, and the upper was then
called the father Heaven.
Our British Druids must have possessed the myths and symbols of
Egypt right to the inmost core of the matter. The Great Mother
who bifurcates in the two heavens, or the two divine sisters, is
represented by Ked in two persons as Keridwen and Ogyrwen. Also,
her daughter repeats the dual phase. She has two names. As
Kreirwy her name denotes the token of the egg (i.e. Virginalis) as
Llywy she is the emaner of the egg; i.e. Matrona. The double daughter
represents the two phases or the female nature. Kreirwy is the British
Proserpine, she who in the Greek mythos was fated to dwell alternately
in the upper and lower heavens, or the underworld. Another form of
her name is Kreirddylad, the token of the flowing or the mystical
period, and this is the original of Cordelia by name. She keeps her
character too as the dumb Cordelia of the drama in which our
Sige of the Druidic Mystery is the Silent one, the Mer-Seker (Eg.) type
of the flowing (Nile or Nature), as a divinity humanized
for ever.
ŖOf the Vivific Goddesses,ŗ says Proclus, Ŗthey call the one older but the
other younger.ŗ1 These two forms of the Mother appear in the Mangaian
mythology as Vari and Papa. Vari is the very beginning in the Abyss,
the Polynesian Sige who dwells in the Mute land at the bottom of
Avaiki, where she is the originator of all things, from the water or
mud of source. She is the blood-mother who creates her children
from pieces of her own flesh, these therefore are equivalent to the
embryos of A-diti. Vari is the first farm of the Great Mother and
Papa, answering to Diti, is the second. It is Papa who produces
the first human being in a perfect human shape, as the Mother of
Breath or soul called Foundation.2 In a dramatic song of creation
Vari, the first of the two is celebrated as the source of all, and the
singers claim descent from her, the Mother, alone, ŖWe have no
Father whatever; Vari alone made us,ŗ and ŖVari, the originator of
all things, sheltered Papa under her wing.ŗ
1 Proclus in Timæus, b. iii.
2 Gill, pp. 1-7.
470 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
The mother was the first papa, and remains so in some of the oldest
languages like the Australian.
Pappy, mother, Hamilton, Aust. Paapie, mother, Kulkyne, Aust.
Pepie ,, Camperdown, Aust. Bab ,, Akkadian.
Papie ,, Upper Richardson, Aust. Babia, the Great Mother, Khetan.
Bap ,, Lake Hindmarsh, Aust. Vavy, female, Malagasy.
Baboo ,, Tyntyndyer, Aust. Fafine ,, Tongan.
Pabook ,, Gunbower, Aust. Papa ,, Egyptian
True, this is an Inner African type-name for the father, because the
one word first named the producer or duplicator in languages that did
not denote sex.
Mythology keeps the pre-historic record of the past. It shows the
mother was the first person distinguished from the herd. Descent
from one mother was the first bond of blood. The sister was
second. These two are typified as the Two Divine Sisters, Isis and
Nephthys, who are at one and the same time the two sisters and wives
of Horus in his two characters. The ŖTwo womenŗ appear as the two
wives of Jacob Ŗwhich two did build the House of Israel.ŗ1 The King
of Burmah has two especial wives, the superior and inferior one.
Manaboju, in the North American Indian legends, has two squaws.
The Hottentot possesses his elder wife, Geiris, the great wife, and Aris
the younger wife, as did Heitsi-eibib their first ancestor. The Kaffir
chief has two typical wives; one, the great wife; the other the wife of
the right hand; one being called the Elephantess, whilst his great
wife is called the Lioness.2 And here, although the fatherhood is
individualized the mode of distinguishing, dividing, and expanding by
means of the two women is still extant. Each of these two wives
produces an heir. The first is the principal heir, but a portion of the
tribe is allotted to the Benjamin or son of the right hand, with which
he constitutes a new clan;3 and so they spread abroad, even as men
did originally in the first Two Castes. It may be noticed that the
Namaqua Khoi-khoi have the two women as their two wives in a
curious combination of polygamy and polyandry. With these, two
chiefs hold four wives in common between them. This is the twin-
wife system doubled, as if they might represent the twin-brothers of
Mythology married to the genitrix in her dual character of the
two sisters.
The beginning on earth shows why the celestial beginning is with
and from the great mother in earth and heaven, whose two characters
become the two sisters. And the dual figure of Isis or Neith as the
earth or lower hemisphere, and Nupe as the starry heaven represents
the two women, the two sisters from whom the Kamilaroi claim their
descent. The upper one is a common figure of the Egyptian Pê
(heaven), and this alone is sufficient to determine a matter previously
alluded to, against Brugsch Pasha,4 who says the Egyptians did not
1 Ruth iv. 11. 3 Burton, Dahome, vol. ii. appendix 4.
3 Theal, Kaffir Folk-lore, p. 6. 4 Book of the Beginnings, vol. i. sect. i.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TWO SISTERS. 471
reckon by the right hand east and left hand west. Their figure of
heaven and earth does double duty and shows the south as front, the
north as hinder part; with the east for the right hand and west for the
left. This can only be illustrated by one figure in the Egyptian fashion.
The attitude of this, the upper figure, is equal to two figures for south
and north as front and back; and the position of the face turns the
natural left arm into the right, so that we have the face for the south, the
hinder-part for the north; the right hand being east, and the left west.
This is supplemented and enforced by the position of the lower figure.
When one stands with the face to the north, to represent the south,
the face and front of heaven, as did Sut (or Sothis), the east is on the
right hand, but it then needs another figure to stand for the north as
hinder-part, and this would be the other female half. In all typology,
the west and north are feminine, the left hand quarter and the hinder
half of heaven. In the Isubu language, Dia da modi, the female,
is the left, because inferior hand. Also, when the death of an
Australian black occurs after sunset, the nearest of kin, a male
and female watch by it all night. Two fires are lighted; one toward
the east, the other toward the west, and it is the male who watches
eastward, the female westward.1
The Goddess of the Great Bear and northern heaven was the
bringer-forth in the Abyss of earth in one of two characters, that
of the mother earth; in the other she brought forth above as the
mother heaven, the feminine Dyaus who was Tep above and Tepht
below. The duality of the genitrix which commenced in the
division of earth and heaven was finally deposited in the zodiac
of twelve signs. First, she was the Abyss of birth represented by the
dragon; second, the Goddess of the Great Bear; third, the Wateress
with streaming breasts in the Hermean zodiac; and lastly she was
pourtrayed as the virgin mother in the sign of Virgo and the Bringer-
forth in the sign of Pisces, where she is half-fish and half-human, and
thus combines the two truths of water and breath in one image.
Ishtar-Bilit, the genitrix in her dual character of Venus above and
Venus below the horizonwas worshipped in the temples of Syria, as
at Hierapolis, under the form of a statue with a golden dove on her
head, one of her names there being Semiramis. Lucian calls
Semiramis the daughter of Derketo (Atergatis) whom he saw in
Phœnicia as a woman with the tail of a fish, whereas at Hierapolis
she was woman all over. The fish denoted the element of water; the
1 Smyth, vol. i. 107.
472 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
dove signified the soul of breath that was derived from the mother.
The breath or spirit of life was first perceived in the motherhood, and
the two truths of the water and breath were assigned to the mother.
This accounts for the feminine form of the creative spirit in Hebrew.
Julius Firmicus observes, Ŗthe Assyrians and part of the Africans wish
the air to have the supremacy of the elements, for they have
consecrated it under the name of Juno.ŗ1 And according to Proclus,
ŖJuno imports the generation of the soul.ŗ2 Dido, who at Carthage
was pourtrayed with a beard like the standing image of Aphrodite at
Paphos, had a second character in Anna. These two divine sisters,
the bona cælestis and inferna cælestis were worshipped, the one, Dido,
with dark bloody rites; the other, Anna, the charming one, with
cheerful ceremonies. They divided into the good goddess of the
upper heaven and the evil one of the lower. Pausanias3 tells us there
was a temple of Aphrodite, and the only such one known to him,
which had two storeys, the lower consecrated to the armed goddess;
the upper to Aphrodite-Morpho who was sitting veiled with her feet
bound. Pausanias thought the fetters showed the attachment of
women to their husbands. The tie symbol denotes the gestator, the
bearing mother.
One of the legends in the Mahâbhârâta, dcscribes Kaçyapas as
making two wives fruitful. One is Kadrû, the dark or red one; the
other is Vinatâ the swollen one, that is the gestator, the mother
of breath, she who emanes the egg, out of which issued the serpent.4
Sufficient has now been shown of the Great Mother in her two
phases of the virgin and gestator, also as the two sisters of sociology.
It is the most ancient and most primitive myths that are the
most universal; and one or the most universal is that of the Twin-
Brothers, born of the genitrix either in her single or her dual
character. The Abyss of Darkness is said, in the Bundahish, to
be in the middle of the earth, and to have been formed there when
the Evil Spirit pierced and rushed into the earth at the time when
Ŗall the possessions of the world were changing into duality,ŗ and
the conflict and contention or high and low began. 5 It is also said
in the Bundahish that ŖRevelation is the explanation of both these
spirits togetherŗ; the two spirits of light and darkness that manifest
in space and time.6 This was in the division or bifurcation of all
beginning. The Abyss of Darkness became the hell as antithesis of
heaven. The evening and the morning were the twin boundary in
the first forrnation of night and day. And in Hebrew the evening
or darkness has the same name as the raven, the blackbird, the Gareb,
identical with the Latin Corvus, old German Kraben; old Norse
1 Firmicus, De Error, cap. iv. p. 9.
2 Proclus, lib. vi. cap. xxii., v. ii. p. 76. 5 Bundahish, ch. iii. 27.
3 iii. xv. 8. 4 Mahâbh. iii. xiv. 480. 6 Ch. i. 3.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TWINS. 473
Crow, which is white and black, and is called the Fineog in Irish. The phœnix is
the Bird of Transformation, and it is an English superstition that the cuckoo
transforms into a sparrow-hawk in spring. So in Plutarchřs Life of Aratos, when
the cuckoo asks the other birds why they flee from him, who is not ferocious, they
tell him they fear the future sparrow-hawk!
476 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
above, the other illumines Savaiki. These are now supposed to be the
Sun and Moon, as we find them in an address to Num: ŖO thou Lord
of Lords, Khnum, whose right eye is the sun‟s disk, whose left eye is the
moon.ŗ1
The first Twins are two Brothers. They consist of a bright being
who is held to be divine, and a dark one who comes to be considered
devilish, and who began as the devil in physical phenomen. In the
beginning the Mother Darkness opened and gave birth to her brood
of elemetaries as the evil-working powers. This beginning with
darkness internal and external, and the starting from the night side
of phenomena will account for the dark power, the deity as devil,
being the uppermost of two with many of the primitive tribes. It
was the dark power born of darkness, whose shadow put out the light,
that was first dreaded by the black race; the influence earliest feared
and longest believed in, whose type survived in Egypt as the black
Sut, the black Hak or Kak, and the black Osiris. Although the latter
were but forms of the nocturnal sun, they continued the type of
terror in a psychotheistic phase.
The devil of a God who is recognised by the West Coast Negroes
is black, malignant, and mischievous. How should poor Caliban
have apprehended otherwise when his chief teachers were wrath and
danger; the Blackness spittting fire and growling as if heaven were
fuller of wild beasts than the forests of earth; the snap of the
crocodile, the sting of the serpent, the stroke of the sun, the whirl-
wind, flood, and all the torments of incomprehensible disease? If
there were a conscious power postulated behind phenomena it must
appear of a very bad nature to Caliban.
Burton asked the Negroes of the East Coast about the deity, and
they wanted to know where he was to be found, that they might slay
him. They said, ŖWho but he lays waste our home, and kill our wives
and cattle?ŗ Such being their very natural interpetation of the
intemperate phenomena of nature.
In the Bundahish the Evil demon and Tempter is the darkness, and
he shouts out of the dark his insidious, vile suggestions to the primal
human pair, Mashya and Mashyoi. Their turning aside from the
right way to worship the dark power is represented as the ŖFall.ŗ
But this form of Kotou from fear was primordial, the root of a
religious awe, and as such the feeling has been sedulously fostered up
to the present time! The Dark Power was primal.
An evil being that is propitiated and flattered or glorified so that it
may not work any harm is always found to be related to natural
phenomena which are inimical to man. He is connected by the
Hottentots with thunder as well as with disease and death. Dr. Hahn
shows that the worship of Gaunab, the bad being or inimical power,
who dwells in the Black Sky, was probably of a much older date than
that of the good being Tsuni-Goam.
The Gabe Bushmen, the Ai Bushmen, the Nunin, and others, know,
fear, and propitiate the evil-doer Gaunab, whereas the good power,
Tsuni-Goam, is entirely unknown or unrecognised amongst them.1
In Mangaia it was the dark god Rongo who was the principal deity of
the Twins, and who had to be appeased by human sacrifice. With
various other races the dark power is the worshipful, because it works
harm to man.
Dr. Hahn learned from an old Habobe-Namaqua that Tsuni-
Goam was a powerful chief of the Khoi-Khoi (Hottentots). In fact
he was the first from whom they took their origin. Tsuni-Goam went
to war with Gaunab because the latter always killed great numbers
of Tsuni-Goamřs people. In the continual conflict, however, the good
god, though repeatedly overpowered by Gaunab, grew stronger and
stronger with every battle he waged. At last he grew strong and big
enough to give his enemy a fatal blow behind the ear, which put
an end to Gaunab. But whilst Gaunab was expiring he gave Tsuni-
Goam a stroke on the knee, from which the conqueror received his
name of Tsuni-Goam or ŖWounded-Knee.ŗ Henceforth he could
never walk properly because of his lameness, but he was victor for the
future. He could do wonderful things, and was very wise. He could
tell what would happen in years to come. He died several times, and
several times he rose again. When he came back there was a great
festival of rejoicing. He dwells in a bright and beautiful heaven, and
his opponent Gaunab dwells in a dark heaven, quite separate from the
heaven of Tsuni-Goam.
There are several renderings of Tsuni-Goamřs name and story. In
Bleekřs Hottentot fables we have another version of the Twins.
ŖAt first they were two! One had made a large hole in the
ground, and sitting by it told passers-by to throw a stone at his
forehead. The stone, however, rebounded, killing the thrower, who
fell into the hole. At last Heitsi-Eibip was told that many people died
in this way. So he arose, and went to the man, who challenged Heitsi-
Eibip to throw a stone at him. The latter declined, being too prudent;
but he drew the man‟s attention to something on one side, and while he
turned round to look at it Heitsi-Eibip hit him behind the ear, so that he
died, and fell into his own hole. After that there was peace, and people
lived happily.ŗ2
Another variant reminds one of the negro chaunt, ŖChase the devil
round the stump.ŗ The two opponents hunt each other round the hole
or abyss. We are told that ŖAll men who came near to that hole were
pushed into it by Ga-gorip (the pusher into the hole), as he knew well
where it lay. Whilst thus employed there came the Heitsi-Eibip (also
1 Tsuni-Goam, p. 86.
2 Hottentot Fables and Tales, by W. H. T. Bleek, p. 77.
478 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
called Heigeip) and saw how the Ga-gorip treated the people. Then
these two being to hunt each other round the hole, saying, „Push the
Heigeip down,‟ „Push the Ga-gorip down.‟ With these words they
hunted each other round for some time, but at last the Heigeip was
pushed down. Then he said to the hole „support me a little‟; and it
did. Being thus supported he came out, and they hunted each other
again with the same words. A second time the Heigeip was pushed down,
and he spoke the same words, „support me a little,‟ and thus got out
again. Once more these two hunted each other, till at least the Ga-
gorip was pushed down, and HE came not up again. Since that day
men breathed freely, and had rest from their enemy, because he was
vanquished.ŗ1
The same conflict of the Twins is celebrated in the legends of the
Australian aborigines. The story told by a man of the Wa-woo-rong
or Yarra tribe is that ŖPundjel was the first man. He made every
thing; the second man (Kar-ween) he made also, as well as two wives
for Kar-ween. But Pundjel made no wife for himself, and after a
lapse of time he came to want Kar-ween‟s wives—but he watched them
very jealously, and wouldn‟t let Pundjel get near them. The latter, how-
ever was clever enough to steal both the wives in the night, and take
them away. Kar-ween, taking some spears, pursued Pundjel, but he
could find neither him nor his wives. In a short time Pundjel came
back, bringing with him two women. He asked Kar-ween to fight on the
following day, and proposed that the women should fall to whoever
conquered. To this Kar-ween agreed, having a different plan in his
mind, which was this, to make Ingargiull or corrobboree. Kar-ween
spoke to Waugh (the crow) and asked him to make a corrobboree. And
many crows came, and they made a great light in the air, and they sang
as they danced round. Whilst they were thus singing Pundjel danced.
Kar-ween took a spear, and threw it at him, and wounded him a little
in the leg, but not in such a manner as to hurt Pundjel much. Pundjel
however was very angry, and, seizing a spear, threw it at Kar-ween, and
with such good aim that it went through Kar-ween‟s thigh, who
could walk about no more, became sick, lean as a skeleton, whereupon
Pundjel made Kar-ween a crane, and that bird was thereafter called
Kar-ween. Pundjel was the conqueror, and had the women.ŗ
In another version, we learn that the two beings who created all
things had severally the form of the crow and the eagle. The conflict
that was waged between the rival powers is thus preserved in song:ŕ
Thinj-anrni balkee Mako; Nato-panda Kambe-ar tona.
Knee strike cow; Spear father of him.
The meaning of which is ŖStrike the cow on the knee, I will spear the
father.ŗ
The war was maintained with vigour for a long time. The crow
took every possible advantage of his nobler foe the eagle; but the latter
generally had ample revenge for injuries and insults. Out of their
emnities and final agreement arose the two classes, and thence a law
governing marriages amongst the classes.
Mr. Bulmer says:ŕŖThe Blacks of the Murray are divided into
two classes of the Mak-quarra or Eagle and the Kil-parra or Crow.
If the man be Mak-quarra the women must be Kil-parra. The children
take their caste from the mother, not from the father. The Murray
blacks never deviate from this rule. A man would as soon marry his
sister as a woman of the caste to which he belongs. He calls a woman
of the same class Wurtoa (sister).ŗ1
Here we find the crow and the eagle, the birds of darkness and of
light, are the two totemic signs of the people that were first divided
into two different castes, just as they are the two symbols of the
earliest divisions into light and dark, or the heaven into south and
north, which shows what was meant by calling the raven the
ŖBird of separation.ŗ Moreover, we see the beginning with the
Dark Power and type, the Black Bird being for a long time the
superior one, and the conquest made by the Bird of Light over his
brother. This is shown in another way. ŖWaughŗ is one name
of the crow and of the ŖSecond Manŗŕhe who was first in time.
In the Phœnician legend, according to Sanchoniathon, Hypsuranius
and Usous are a form of the two brothers who quarrel and are at
enmity with each other. These, the typical dividers, are said to have
been begotten when the intercourse between the sexes was so promis-
cuous that women accompanied with any man they might chance to
meet, and men with their own mothers.2 The Eskimos of Greenland
relate that in the beginning there were two brothers, one of whom
said, ŖThere shall be Night and there shall be Day, and men shall die
one after another.ŗ But the second said, ŖThere shall be no Day but
only Night all the time, and men shall live for ever.ŗ Then they
wrestled for the supremacy; the dark one worsted in the long
struggle and the day triumphed at last.3 The Singhalese have a pair
of twins, Gopolu and Menkara born of a Queen on the Coromandel
Coast. The mother died and the twins were suckled by a cow. The
brothers quarrelled, and Gopolu being slain was changed into an Evil
Demon who sends diseases from his abode in a Banyan tree in Aran-
godde. Mangara is worshipped as god or demi-god. The Mexican
Great Mother who was called the woman with the serpent, and the
woman of our flesh, was represented as the mother of the twins. She is
depicted on a monument in the act of conversing with the serpent
whilst her twin children are standing behind her; they are differently
coloured in token of their diverse character, and one of them is
1 Aborigines of Victoria, by R. Brough Smyth, vol. i. pp. 86, 423, 424.
2 Cory, Ancient Fragments.
3 Bishop Paul Egede, Nachrichten von Grönland, &c. p. 157.
480 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
likewise pourtrayed as overcoming or slaying the other. These Twins
were also born of Cihuacohuatl as Two Serpents. Her name is the
Female Serpent, which shows her to be a from of the Dragon Tiamat
and Typhon the genitrix. She gave birth to the Twins of Light and
Darkness as her two serpents. One is, however, considered male, the
other female; and to these the Aztecs referred the origin of mankind.
Hence Twins and Serpents are synonymous as Cocohua,ŕCôhua
being the singular for serpent, Cocohua the plural.
The Mangaians relate that the genitrix who took the dual form of
the Two Women, as Vari below and Papa above, bore two children.
Tangaroa, the fair one, was the first by right, and ought to have
been the first-born, but was said to have politely given precedence
to his brother Rongo, the dark one, as Jacob gave precedence
to Esau, but recovered the birthright from him afterwards. Rongo
the Dark came up from the Mute-land-home of Vari, the first of the
two Mothers who never ascended from the lower world. Soon after
this birth the genitrix, as Papa, the second of the two Mothers,
suffered from a great swelling. She resolved to get rid of it by
pressing it. This she did; the core flew out, and it was Tangaroa.
Another account says that Tangaroa came right up out of Papařs
head, the precise spot being indicated by Ŗthe Crown,ŗ with which
all their descendants have since been born. That is the double Crown
which is still considered to be auspicious. Tangaroa instructed his
brother Rongo in the arts of tillage: he was the husbandman of the
Phœnician and Hebrew myths, as Esau is a man of the field. Their
father was desirous of making Tangaroa, the fair one, the sole lord of
all that the parents possessed. So Isaac, the father of the Twins, loved
Esau. But Papa, the Mother, interposes on behalf of Rongo, the dark
one, as Rebekah interposed on behalf of Jacob, to secure the blessing
for him. In each version of the myth the mother had her own way.
Hence, whenever a sacrifice was offered to Rongo, the refuse was
thrown to the mother who dwelt with him in the shades below.
Through the cunning of Papa, the government, feasts, the drum of
peace, all honours and power were secured to. Rongo. Nearly
all sorts of food fell to the elder twin-god, with this exception.
Tangaroa was admitted to be lord of all the red on earth or in ocean.
This was his lot; the red taro, the red yam, the red chestnut; four
kinds of fish, all scarlet, and all other things that were red. This
posseion by the fair god of all the red on earth as his share 1 is the
exact parallel of Esau, the red man who is fed with a mess of red.
If Tangaroa is not described as a red man, he has red or sandy hair.
Rongořs hair is raven-black. Here, also, red and black correspond
to the red heaven of Tsuni-Goam and the black heaven of Gaunab
in the Khoi-Khoi myth. It has been previously suggested that Jacob
was a form of the Egyptian god Kak, whose name means darkness
1 Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 12.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TWINS. 481
The beginning was with darkness and its division into dark and
light, in the elementary stage of the mythos. Eznik, an Armenian
author of the fifth century, who wrote a book on Heresies, containing
a refutationn of the false doctrine of the Persians, says, ŖBefore any-
thing, heaven or earth, or creature of any kind whatever therein, was
existing, Zeruan (Time) existed.ŗ He offered sacrifices for a thousand
years in the hope of obtaining a son, Ormizt by name, who was to
create heaven, earth, and everything therein. Whilst he was sacrificing
and cogitating Ormizt and Arhmen were conceived in the womb of
their mother. Ormizt as the fruit of his sacrifices, Arhmen as that
of his doubts. When Zeruan was aware of this event he said, Two sons
are in the womb; he who will first come to me is to be made king.
Ormizt having perceived his fatherřs thoughts revealed them to
Arhmen, saying, Zeruan, our father, intends to make him king who
shall be born first. Having heard these words Arhmen perforated the
womb and appeared before his father. But Zeruan, when he saw
him, did not know who he was, and asked him, ŖWho art thou?ŗ
He told him, ŖI am thy son.ŗ Zeruan answered him, ŖMy son is
well-scented and shining, but thou art dark and ill-smelling.ŗ While
they were thus talking Ormizt, shining and well-scented, appeared
before Zeruan who, seeing him, perceived him at once to be his son
Ormizt, and handed Oyet to him his rod (the Barsom) and blessed
him. Then Arhmen approached him saying, ŖHast thou not vowed to
make that one of thy two sons king who should first come to thee?ŗ Zeruan
in order to avoid breaking his vow, replied to Arhmen, ŖOh, thou liar
and evil-doer, the empire is to be ceded to thee for nine thousand years;
but I place Ormizt over thee as chief, and after nine thousand years he
will reign and do what he likes.ŗ Then Ormizt and Arhmen began
the work of creation; everything produced by Ormizt was good and
right, and everything wrought by Arhmen was bad and perverse. 1 In
the Hebrew version of the twins, Jacob and Esau, Isaac the father takes
the place of Zeruan. Esau is the first born, but Jacob wins the birth-
right by deceit; lsaac, like Zeruan, tries to determine which is the
true heir by smelling him. When the disguised Jacob came near
his father, his father Ŗsmelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him,
and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord
hath blessed.ŗ2 Jacob is represented as being the Ŗwell-scented,ŗ
like Ormizt in the Persian account.
In some forms of the myth the two Powers are antiphonal rather
than antagonistic; they meet amicably like Satan and the Lord of
Light in the Book of Job, or in Faust. In an ancient version of the
relationship of Sut and Horus the two stand on two opposite emi-
nences in the character, as it were, of two land surveyors, they
solemnly agree respecting the natural boundaries of each otherřs
1 Haugřs Essays, pp. 13, 14. West.
2 Genesis xxvii. 27.
484 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
domains and each pronounces the formula, ŖThe land of An is the
boundary of the land.ŗ1
The circle of day and night was also typified by an egg which
divided and gave birth to the Twin Brothers. The two Dioscuri
are depicted with half of the severed shell on each of their heads
as a cap or helmet. The Dioscuri are curiously pourtrayed upon
the coins of the Greek city of Istros in Mœsia. The opposition,
alternation, conflict or contention of the Twins is ingeniously illus-
trated. M. Lenormant has pointed out that their two heads seen
on the obverse side are there placed side by side but in opposite
directions, so that when one of them appears to the spectator in
its normal position, the other is reversed, forehead downwards.
Chaldaeo-Babylonian art had adopted the same combination to
symbolise the opposition of the Twins of the zodiac. Their
ordinary representation on the cylinders of hard stone, which were
used as seals, consisted of two small figures of men placed one above
the other, with their feet in opposite directions.2
In referring to the Chaldean form of the Twin Brothers, a fragment
of Babylonian legend may be quoted here as a sort or summary
of the earliest creations. So ancient is this recovered relic that the
entire literature of the Cuneiform Inscriptions contains nothing with
which it has been correlated. It states that in the beginning the great
Gods created two kinds of men in the likeness of Birds. ŖWarriors
with the bodies of Birds of the Desert (and) Men whose faces were
Ravens. Tiamat gave them suck: their life was created by Bilat-Ili
(the Mistress of the Gods). In the midst of the earth they grew up
and became strong; and . . . . Seven Kings brethren were made to
come as begetters.ŗ3 The oldest of the Seven Brothers is named
Memangab, the Thunderbolt. This brief rendering of a broken
tablet contains the perfect legend of the Typhonian Creation, with
Tiamat, the Deep, in place of the Abyss, Tepht. Tiamat and Bilat
represent the two sisters into which the genitrix divided; one gives
Suck (Water-source), the other Soul (Breath of life). The two kinds
of Bird-men correspond to the dual Sut-Horus, with the two Birds
of Light and Darkness for heads; the twins that issue from the egg.
Following the twin-birth the total progeny of Typhon and of Tiamat
is seven in number, i.e. seven altogether. ŖThe Sons of the Abyss
(there are) Seven of them.ŗ4 These were represented under one figure
as the Seven-headed Thunderbolt of Tiamat: ŖThe Thunderbolt of
Seven heads like the huge serpent or dragon of Seven heads.ŗ5 Here the
first of the Seven is the Thunderbolt by name. This is in agreement
1 Inscription, Reign of Shabaka, col. 16, Goodwin.
2 Cullimore, Oriental Cylinders, Nos. 65, 75, 94. Lajard, Culte de Mithra,
pl. 26, 1 and 8.
3 Sayce, Records of the Past, vol. xi. p. 109.
Keeper or the Fire and the other of the Water. Sut the dark one
brings the Inundation and Horus the Solar fire. Both were united
in Sut-Canopus. In the Australian myth War, the male crow and
brother of War-pil, was the first to bring fire from space (tyrille) and
give it to the aborigines, before which they were without it. This
can be read by the hawk of fire. Another account of the mode
in which the aborigines of Australia first obtained fire is thus given
by Mr. J. Browne.1 A long time ago a little Bandicoot was the sole
owner of a firebrand that he cherished with the greatest jealousy,
carrying it about with him wherever he went, and never allowing it
out of his own care, even refusing to share it with the other animals,
his neighbours; so they held a council where it was decided to get
the fire either by force or strategy. The hawk and pigeon were
deputed to carry out this resolution, and after trying to induce the
fire-owner to share its blessings, the pigeon, seizing an unguarded
moment, as he thought, made a dash at the prize. The bandicoot,
seeing affairs had come to a crisis, threw the fire in desperation to-
wards the water, to quench it for ever. But fortunately for the black
man, the hawk was hovering near, and seeing the fire falling into the
water made a dart towards it, and with a stroke of his wing knocked
the brand far over the stream into the long dry grass of the opposite
bank, which immediately ignited and the flames spread over the
country. The black man then felt the fire and said it was good.
Both the hawk and dove are birds of Light or Fire. The Bandicoot
is the bird of Darkness, a type of the Water that put out the
solar fire.2
The first divinity of fire and light was in a sense pre-Solar. He
began as an elementary or an element, before the sun was a time-
keeper and before it was known to be the same sun that set and
rose again. For illustration, Ptah is an Egyptian solar-god, and
yet not the sun itself, in the later sense. But as a form of the
Egyptian Vulcan or Hephaistus he is a god of fire, because the
elemental was first and the fire or light was primary, whether the fire
of the sun, or the lightning-flash, or the conflagration, as one of the
elementaries. So was it in India.
Wilford learned from the Hindus that Agni, or Fire, was an Ele-
mentary Divinity before the Sun was created, or before the element
was concentrated in the solar god,3 as it was in Egypt, and in Africa
beyond,ŕwhere Ogun is fire simply in Akurakura; Ikan or Agan in
Anan; Akan in Bode; and the Yoruban god of blacksmiths is named
Ogun, with whom we may compare Ogon, the Sclavonic god of fire.
It is apparent in the Mangaian and other forms of the mythos that
the Sun making the passage out of sight was apprehended as the
element of fire in the underworld. The observers saw that in the
1 Canadian Journal, vol. i. p. 509. 2 Smyth, v. i. pp. 460 and 461.
different messages for men, just as the natural phenomena are still
susceptible of a double interpretation to the theist and the atheist.
The moon sent the hare to tell mankind that as the lunar god died
and rose again so should they also be renewed and rise again. But
the hare played false and perverted the message. She told mankind
that like as the moon died and did not rise again, so men should
perish and should not rise again. This was the dark aspect of the
moon and that was the true message at the time when it could not be
known that the same moon re-arose. When this fact became known
and the moon was recognised as the true prophet of immortality, then
the hare was discarded. The moon is now the Khoi-khoi deity who
promises men immortality.
In a Caroline-island myth it is said that in the beginning mankind
only quitted life on the last day of the dying moon to be revivified
when the new moon re-appeared. But there was a dark and evil
spirit that inflicted a death from which there was no revival. The
dark spirit and the fatal message were first in fact, and the assurance
of revival like the moon depended on its being identified as the same
moon that rose again.
Jack and Jill are a lunar form of the twins as we may see in the
Norse version of the Younger Edda where they are Hjuki and Bil
the twin children of the moon. Hjuki denotes the one who nourishes
and cherishes, the increasing new moon corresponding to Tekh (Eg.);
Bil is an interstice, an interval corresponding to the latter half of the
lunation; the fall and vanishing of the moon. In the Tuscarora myth,
recorded by David Cusick, the Twin Brethren are the Two Children of
Aataensic who is identified as the moon and the genitrix of the gods.
This was the ancient mother who alighted from heaven on the back
of a tortoise and bore her twin sons. The Hurons claimed her as their
Grandmother. The names of her twins in the Oneida dialect signify
respectively the Light one and the Dark one. According to Cusick
they were Enigorio, the Good Mind, and Enigonhahetgea, the Bad
Mind, or more accurately the Beautiful spirit and the Ugly one; the
god and devil of objective phenomena. The Good Mind wished to
create light but the dark one desired the world to remain in its
natural darkness. The Bad one made a couple of clay images in
the shape of man but whilst he was in the act of creating them they
turned into apes. The Good mind formed two images of the dust of
the earth, breathed into their nostrils, gave them living souls, and
named them Ea-gwe-howe or ŖReal people.ŗ This expression alone
proves the true myth. The doctrine was not derived from the
missionaries, who assuredly knew nothing of the ape being the type
of the dark half of the lunar twins, as it became in Egypt.
At length there was a final struggle between the two brothers to
determine which should be master once for all. The light one played
false, as did Jacob with Esau, and persuaded the dark one to fight
490 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
him with flags, or, in another version, the fragile wild-rose, as this
would be fatal to himself. He then chose a weapon of deerřs horn.
The dark one was discomfited and went sorely wounded, dropping
his blood at every step and wherever the life-drops fell they turned
into flint stones. When dying the dark one claimed that he would
have equal power over souls in the life hereafter, and on being thrust
down into the earth, or abyss, he became the evil spirit, the Satan of
later theology.1
The two birds of Sut and Horus are the black vulture (Neh)
and the gold hawk. The lunar Ibis is black and white and its
pied nature typlfies the dual lunation. Birds and brothers both
appear in the mythos of the Thlinkeet as the twin deities of light
and dark. The two brothers are Yethl and Khanukh. The raven is the
bird of Yethl, but it is described as a black raven that once was white,
the same alternation of black and white as in the Ibis. The white
bird is represented as getting black in passing up through the flue of
Khanakhřs fire-place. This is a form of the Phœnix which transforms
from black to white (or into the gold hawk), and from white to black
in its passage to and from the underworld, Khanukhřs flue.
Another legend tells how Yethl shot the large bird which had a
long glittering bill; its name was the ŖCrane that can soar to heaven.ŗ
This he skinned, and when he wished to fly he clothed himself in the
craneřs feathers. The crane is a heron, the hieroglyphic equivalent of
the lunar Ibis.
The Ibis-headed Taht was lord of the eighth region, and Yethl
was born in the eighth month, and his aunt was watched over by eight
red birds called Kun. 2 Yethl supplied light to mankind. In the
Thlinkeet tongue Yethl signifies a raven, and Khaoukh a wolf. The
wolf, or jackal, is a type of darkness. Khanukh is described as raising
a magical darkness, in which Yethl, the Light-Bringer, howled
helplessly. In a discussion between them as to which is the elder,
Khanukh asserts that he has been in the world ever since the time
that the Ŗliver came out from the belly.ŗ 3 Then said Yethl, ŖThou
art older than I.ŗ Darkness was first, and the blood-source preceded
that of the breath. The liver was looked upon as solid blood, and
blood as fluid liver, or life; which shows the allusion to the first of the
Two Truths in the biological phase. Hence Khanukh is the keeper
of the waters, and has to be outwitted by Yethl before be can take
possesion of them in turn and give new life to the world. 4
It is possible that the Hindu Krishna and Bala-Rama may be as old
as the elemental phase of light and shade. ŖDo you not know,ŗ asks
Krishna of Bala-Rama, Ŗthat you and I are alike the origin of the
1 Schoolcraft, part i. p. 316; part vi. p. 166; Brinton, p. 63.
2 Bancroft, v. iii. pp. 99, 102.
3 ŖSeit der Zeit, entgenete Khanukh, als von unten die Leber herauskam.ŗ
3 Plate in present vol. See Œdipus Judaicus, Drummond, pl. 16, for Kepheus
with his staff north and south, a twin-type of the tree which was divided to mark
the two solstices.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TWINS. 493
ments the two trees mark the east and west.1 Planting the tree
would be a primitive mode of marking the boundary, and in the
traditions of Central America there is a story of two brothers who
before starting on a journey to Xibalba, the land of disappearing,
plant a cane in the middle of their grandmother‟s house, on purpose for
her to know whether they are living or dead, according to the
flourishing or withering condition of the cane. The cane is a sign of
one of the four cardinaI points in the Mexican symbolism. Grimm
traces this type in the story of the Two Gold Children who leave
their father two Golden Lilies, saying: Ŗfrom these you will see how
we fare. If they are fresh we are well; if they fade we are ill; if
they fall we are dead.ŗ The story is wide-spread like the myth of
the twins themselves. Egypt will tell us who were the Two Gold-
Children. They were the twins in a dual stellar phase of the
mythos. Sut-Nubti (or Sothis-Canopus) was the golden Sut of a
dual nature, represented double-headed, or as the golden twin; and
the type would be the same if called the double Anubis (the golden-
dog, canis aureus), or if it were taken for the sun and Sirius, or the sun
and Saturn in a later phase. The reader may see the golden Sut
(jackal or dog) in the tree which is planted in the decans of the grand
or great mother, Isis, who personates the sign of Virgo.2
The ŖTwo Brothersŗ in Grimmřs Household Stories are another
form of the twins. First we have them as the rich and poor brothers,
the dark one being the rich one, as the dark Rongo is in the Mangaian
myth. With this opening of the tale we may compare an Eastern
tradition of the first two brothers of humankind current among the
Tshudes, which relates that the elder brother acquired great wealth
from his gold mines, but that the younger being envious, drove him
away and forced him to take refuge in the East.3 The gold mines
would be in the West where the light went down.
In the German tale the gold mines are represented by the golden
bird which lays the golden egg; the Roc, or Rekh. i.e., the Phœnix
in Egypt. Then follows the tale of the twins. These go out into the
world, but can find no place where they may dwell together. So they
said to one another: ŖIt cannot be otherwise, we must separate.ŗ
The huntsman at parting gave them a bare knife, saying: ŖIf you
separate, stick this knife in a tree by the roadside, and then if one returns
to the same point, he can tell how his absent brother fares; for the side
upon which there is a mark will rust if he dies, but as long as he lives it
will keep bright for ever.ŗ The knife is a type of the division. The
younger of the twins becomes the slayer of the dragon which has
seven heads, and lies coiled round the top of a mountain. He cuts
off the monsterřs seven heads and rescues the princess who is waiting
ready to be devoured. Ultimately he marries her and has the usual
1 Drummond, pl. 13. 2 Plate in present vol.
because the origin was Inner African and Egypt is the connecting-
link with the outside world.1
The Twins appear in an American myth, and in a form that looks
comparatively late in Egyptian mythology. In the Osirian solar phase
the child Horus duplicates to become Har-Tema and avenge the
death of his father. In the American version the child commands his
grandmother to cleave him in twain, in order that he may become the
double avenger of his fatherřs death. Thus he is transformed into
the duplicated one and is then called by the name of the ŖOne Two.ŗ
The father of Har-Tema the twin or total Horus, was slain by
Typhon, one of whose names is Stone-head, another being Stone-arm.
The father of One-Two is killed by Stone-Shirt, and ŖOne-Twoŗ in
his duplicated character is the avenger. The shrew-mouse was sacred
to Horus in Skhem, the place of transformation and annihilation; and
in the American Myth One-Two transforms into the mouse or mice to
make war upon Stone-Shirt.2
A single type will serve to express different developments and
applications of the one primary idea. These vary, according to
phenomena, but are determined and limited by the prototypal Two
Truths.
At first these Two Truths are simply day and dark, or dawn and
dusk. Next the twins enter the sphere of time as two stars or con-
stellations on the two horizons, or are the two gods of north and
south. Then the double lunation is personified by the two children of
the genitrix, and, lastly, the Twins are the Two Horuses of the solar
myth. A glimpse of the mode in which the type was continued with
a change of personages may be seen in Indra and Agni, the solar
gods who are twinned as the Asvinia; Indra and Agni being the two
later divinities of moisture and light, or the solar fire.
The twin brothers are Egyptian in every phase, whether elementary,
stellar, lunar, or solar, beginning with the Sut-Horus (elementary), the
twin Lion-Gods of Light and Darkness which the Lunar Genitrix boasts
that she bears in her womb; the souble Anubis (stellar), Sut-Nubti
(stellar or soli-stellar), Hermanubis or Taht-Aan (lunar); and they
were continued as the Two Horuses in the Osirian mythos. Here there
is alternation but no contention. The Twins are two representatives
of the annual Sun that descends and the Sun that ascends. The
first Horus is the child, the impubescent, maimed, or crippled deity,
the phantom that fades and disappears or transforms into the virile
Horus of the resurrection. Lastly, there is a moral and religious
stage in which the Sut and Horus of the beginning typify good and
evil, deity and devil, as the final form of the male twins.
The twin brothers in the Avesta can be traced from their natural
genesis in physical phenomena as the ever-alternating light and
1 Norse Tales, introduction, p. 54.
2 J. W. Powell, ŖBureau of Ethnology,ŗ Washington. Report, 1881, pp. 47-51.
496 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
dark to their latest phase, as divinity and devil in Ahura-Mazda
and Anra-Mainyus. They are called the ŖTwinsŗ by name in
Yasna 30. This description, says Bleeck, agrees with that contained
in the Armenian writers, Esnik for example, where they are both
the ŖSons of Time,ŗ that is the twins of light and dark, considered
not merely as a dual manifestation in space, but also as manifestors
of time. We learn that both these heavenly beings, the twins, of
themselves manifcsted the good and the evil, and the wise do
rightly distinguish between them; not so the foolish or imprudent.
These two heavenly beings came together in the beginning to that
which was the first creation. Whatsoever is living is through the
purpose of Ahura-Mazda, who is the life, and whatsoever is lifeless
or of death is through the purpose of Anra-Mainyus the destroyer.
They are designated the Two Creators, the Two Masters who are
sometimes spoken of as the Two Spirits of Ahura Mazda. 1 And
Haug argues that Ŗin consequence of an entire separation of the two
parts of Ahura-Mazda, and the substitution of two independent
rulers governing the universe, the unity of the Supreme Being was
lost, and monotheism was superseded by dualism.ŗ He attributes
the Persian dualism to a personal Zoroaster, and observes that
Ŗthis great thinker of antiquity having arrived at the grand idea of
the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being, undertook to solve
the great problem, how are the various kinds of evil in the world com-
patible with the goodness, holiness, and justice of God? He solved this
difficult question philosophically by the supposition of two primæval
causes, which, though different, were united. The one who produced
the reality is called the Good Mind; the other, in whom originated non-
reality, bears the name of the Evil Mind. All good, true, and perfect
things, which fall under the category of reality are produced by the Good
Mind; whilst all that is delusive and belongs to the domain of non-
reality, is traceable to the Evil Mind. These are the two moving
causes of the universe, united from the beginning, and therefore called
the Twins (Yema; Sanskrit, Yamau).ŗ2 In Manichæism the develop-
ment of doctrine culminated, and the eternal antagonists were
separately enthroned in ceaseless conflict in the domain of what are
termed spirit and matter; the original division of day and night was
deepened and darkened into a great gulf riven right through the con-
stitution of all things and the moral nature of man. But the myths
do not disclose any deeper meaning by our reading into them the
ideas of later times; we are only imposing on them a sense quite
foreign to them in order that they may impose upon us and others
in return. Each phase of the mythos out of Egypt can be identified
and interpreted by the Kamite Typology from the beginning to the
end; and to the beginnings we must go back to learn.
The mythical twins also became the dual Messiah of theology.
1 Yasna, xix. 9, and lvii. 2. 2 Haug, Essays, p. 303. West.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TWINS. 497
5 Bosio, Roma Sotteranea, pp. 49, 65, 85, 91, 253, 363.
498 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
Many examples are given by Bosio and others of the twin Jesus;
Christ the younger and Christ the elder. The American writer
Lundy is pitiably perplexed at what he comes across in the Christo-
logy of the Roman tombs. The only possible explanation, he says,
of the double Jesus, the young-elder, and the juxtaposition of the
youthful Christ and the old one is that this contradiction is intended
to depict the two natures in Christ, the divine and the human; the
little, old, ugly, hairy man being the human likeness, and the youthful,
majestic beardless figure the type of the divine.1 The treatment is
simply that of the Sut-Horus, and of Horus the elder and Horus the
younger. The elder Horos, Har-Ur, was the old first one, the mortal,
the one who wears the human image, he who was born to descend
and suffcr and die because he represented the declining sun in the
lower signs. Horus the Younger was the perennial youth, called the
Lord, the Majesty, the God of the Beautiful Face. He was the sun-
god, as the Young Immortal, the type of the eternal sonship. It is
the same dual type that is traceable all mythology through. So
Prajapati was one-half mortal, one-half immortal, and with his mortal
half he feared death.
The statues of Dionysos show the same duality as the elder or
bearded and the younger or beardless god. The duality is that of
Shu, who is expressly designated the ŖYoung-elderŗ in consequence.
It was the duality or Sut-Horus and of the Twins of the Avesta;
the primordial type being that of light and darkness; the latest
psychotheistic.
The typical twins thus identified as simply a continuation of the
type of the Double-Horus, the dual Mithras, the biune Bacchus, the
two-faced Janus or Sut and Horus, prove that this twinship could
no more pourtray a personal Jesus than the supposed Christ in
ŖRevelationŗ who is a male figure with female paps, the hermaphro-
dite divinity of the mythos. These things are unthinkable apart from
their origin, and hence they have become the unfathomable mysteries
of theology.
Eros and Anteros are a Greek version of the twins. Eros (Cupid)
accompanies Venus, the gestator; Anteros represents the negative
character; and in some versions he is made the active antagonist of
Eros, and shares the character of the Dark Mind in other myths.
Plato, in the Ŗsymposium,ŗ allows us to see that he had not bottomed
the Horus or Eros myth. Phædros calls Eros the oldest, Agathon the
youngest, of the gods; and both appeal to ancient versions as their
authority.2 Each was right, for Horus was both. Har-Ur was always
the oldest; Har-Ahi for ever the youngest; both were blended in
Har-Makheru, the True Word. But he had continued the mythical
twin-type, and this he has copied as his portrait of the soul, which he
1 Monumental Christianity, p. 237.
2 Symposium, 178 c.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TWINS. 499
calls Ŗdoubleŗ and says it has two faces conformably to its Ŗparadigm,ŗ
according to the circle of the same and the circle of the different. 1
Peter, in the Clementine Homilies,2 adverts to the great power,
which is also called the Kuria (Mistress), from whom two angels were
sent forth, the one to create the world, the other to give the law, Ŗeach
of which, on account of his work, proclaimed himself to be the sole
Creator,ŗ and thus caused the ancient feud. This is a later form of
the twins with the Kuria in the place of the Great Mother. The bird
of Light and Shade might likewise be traced all through. Horus, the
child, the dark and disappearing one in the solar phase, whose bird-
type is the Phœnix of transformation in the lower world, is sometimes
depicted with the hawk of his brother flying at the back of his head
or skull-cap,3 the Hawk and Phœnix being the two birds of light and
shade in the latest Egyptian form of the myth.
This also survived in the Christian typology as a form of the Dove
of the Holy Ghost which blended both birds in one. A Franco-
German miniature of the eleventh century shows the Dove with six
wings represented half in light and half in shade, with the fore-part
yellow and hinder-part dark. The Golub (dove), and Gareb (black-
bird) are thus blended together, even as the two were twinned in the
black and white Ibis of the moon.4
The ŖTwo Womenŗ who brought forth the twin brothers were
placed in the Zodiac six signs apart. The one, Virgo, was the Virgin
Mother of the Child-Horus, the negative one of the twins who is born
first, but who, in the solar mythos, has to be re-born, and this time
begotten by the father, Osiris, or Atum, in the Menti or Ŗre-foundryŗ
of the male generator. This second Horus, the Ŗonly-begotten of the
father (or from a father), full of grace and truthŗŕeach phrase may
be found applied to Horus, the Redeemerŕwas re-born of the gestator
in the Sign of Pisces; and the dual imagery of the Zodiac, the Two
Women and the Two Children who were first born as Sut and Horus,
and lastly as Horus the elder and Horus the younger, is perfectly
paralleled or preserved in the Gospel according to St. Luke. Eliza-
beth the barren, who is described as the barren when she was six
months gone with the child John, brings forth six months earlier than
Mary.5 The barren breeder can only be understood according to the
typology of the mythos.6 One horizon was the lower, considered to
be that of earth, the other that of heaven. The imagery is repro-
duced by John, who says of himself and Jesus, ŖHe must increase,
but I must decrease.ŗ ŖHe that cometh from above is above all; he
that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh.ŗ7
The precise characters and relationship of the mythical Twins is
1 Proclus in Timæus, b. 3. 2 xviii. 12.
3 Birch, Gallery. 4 Didron, fig. 119.
5 Luke i. 36. 6 See Records, vol. x. p. 142.
7 John iii. 30, 31.
500 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
preserved. John represents the element of Water; Jesus the Fire
or Spirit. John precedes the Light, as does the dark one in all the
true legends, and says, ŖHe that cometh after me is preferred before me;
for he was before me,ŗ as was Jacob, Ormizt, or Tangaroa, who was
first by right of birth, although the latest born.
The description of Mercury in the mysteries given by Apuleius
proves how the old Egyptian mythology had found its way to Rome.
ŖHere, awful to behold, was the messenger of the Gods above, and
of those in the realms beneath, standing erect with his face partly
black and partly golden, carrying a caduceus in his left hand, and
waving in his right a green branch of palm. Close behind him fol-
lowed a cow in an erect position, seated on the shoulders of one of
the devotees of this divinity; this cow being the prolific likeness of the
All-parent Goddess.ŗ Mercury was the Egyptian Sut-Anubis who
passed into Taht, or Hermanubis, in the lunar stage. The double
visage of black and gold is identical with the black bird and gold
hawk of Sut Horus and Sut Nubti.
quarters, the thirty days to the month and the three hundred and
sixty degrees of the ecliptic which corroborates and continues the
astronomical beginnings.
The mythical twins are represented by the royal twinship. Royalty
in Dahome is invested with this dual character. In one aspect the
monarch is king in town, in the other he is king in the bush.1 In like
manner the Egyptian Horus has two titles; one being the ŖYouth in
Town,ŗ the other the ŖLad in the Country.ŗ2 So the Pharaohs of
Egypt were crowned kings of the double horizon and the Sut Ra
continued the dual type of Sut Horus. The Twin-Brothers who
divided in the mythos are re-united in the Egyptian Pharaoh.
In the ŖFoundation of the Temple of the Sunŗ at An (Heliopolis)
Usertasen I. says the God had exalted him as Lord of both parts
of Horus and Sut (Peseshti) whilst he was yet an infant in the womb.
The God Amen says to Tahtmes III. that he has Ŗunited the hands of
the Pair of Brothers to blessŗ the king.3 Japan until recently had
her Tycoon and Mikado, the sacred and secular sovereigns. In ancient
Sparta likewise we find the royal twinship or government by twin
kings. Also the Samoan chief, whose title is ŖYou Two,ŗ preserves
the title of twinship founded on the impubescent child and virile
male who were united in onc at puberty. This is what is meant by
mythology being a mirror to the earliest sociology.
The ŖTwo Womenŗ in Egypt are the two Sister goddesses, chiefly
reprcscnted as Isis (Neith) and Nephthys (Neft) who appear on the
two sidcs of Horus, their child and brother, in the act of wooing or
worshipping him. The three form that triad which Champollion placed
at the head of the Pantheon. These are the dual form of the genitrix,
that Sut opened and Horus sealed, which equally applies to the later
double Horus and the mother on the two horizons. From this origin
we derive the two mothers of the child, one of whom may be uterine,
and one the milch-mother. The Egyptian Pharaoh had two mothers.
It is said in the Inscription of Queen Hatasu, ŖRa consorts with his
two mothers, the Uræus Goddesses.ŗ4 On one side, over one of the doors,
at the temple of Dakkeh, it is said of the Æthiopian king, Ergamun,
that he was nursed by the goddess Ank, and born of Seti; on the
other he is Ŗborn of Isis, and nursed by Nephthys.ŗ5 Osiris is Ŗcon-
ceived by Isis and engendered by Nephthys.ŗ6 Also, the Osirified
deceased says, ŖI am Horus! I know that I was begotten by Pasht,
and brought forth by Neith;ŗ another form of the Two Goddesses,7
who are the two sisters of Horus in the drawing on the following
page.
To judge from the prevalence of this triadic type, a special litera-
Urti in the cult of Atum, and Iusâas, whose son, Iu-em-hept, as the
Iu-su, was the Jesus of Heliopolis and Pa-Tum. The two sisters
invoke the God as the Babe.
ŖThou who comest to us as a child each month.ŗ ŖThou comest to us from
thy retreat at the time, to spread the water of thy soul, to distribute the bread of
thy being.ŗ ŖCome to thine abode.ŗ ŖI am Nephthys thy sister who loveth
thee.ŗ ŖCome to Aper; thou wilt see thy mother Neith. Beautiful child, do
not stay from her. Come to her nipples; abundance is in them.ŗ 1
Isis criesŕ
Ŗ Come to thine abode, come to thine abode!
God An,2 come to thine abode!
Look at me; I am thy sister who loveth thee.
Do not stay far from me, oh, beautiful youth;
Come to thine abode with haste, with haste.
I see thee no more,
My heart is full of bitterness on account of thee;
Mine eyes seek thee;
I seek thee to behold thee.
Will it be long ere I see thee?
Will it be long ere I see thee?
1 Records of the Past, vol. ii. p. 119. 2 Osiris reborn of the Moon.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TWO SISTERS. 503
(Oh) excellent sovereign,
Will it be long ere I see thee?
Beholding thee is happiness;
Beholding thee is happiness;
(Oh) God An, beholding thee is happiness.
Come to her who loveth thee;
Come to her who loveth thee;
(On) Un-nefer, the Word-made-Truth!
Come to thy sister, come to thy wife;
Come to thy sister, come to thy wife;
(Oh) Urt-eht, come to thy spouse.
I am thy sister by thy mother;
Do not separate thyself from me.
Gods and men (turn their faces towards thee.
Weeping together for thee whenever (they) behold me.
I call thee in (my) lamentations,
(Even) to the heights of heaven,
And thou hearest not my voice.
I am thy sister who loveth thee on earth;
No one else hath loved thee more than I,
(Thy) sister, (thy) sister.ŗ1
We find in these fragments the essence of the ŖCanticlesŗ assigned
to Solomon. It is also evident that some other remains of Egyptian
poetry translated by Goodwin are either spoken in the character of
one of the two divine sisters, or were composed in closest imitation
of the Invocations addressed to the divine lover.
T H E B EGINNING OF TH E S ONG OF J OY AND B EAUTY O F THY S ISTER .
ŖBeloved of my heart, come to the meadows, my brother beloved of my heart
(come) after me, thou who art beloved in all thy doings. Thou fair one! thou who
comest to the garden of one who loves him. The voice of the bird resounds,
occupied with his Uai.2 Thy love draws me back. I knew not how to unloose it
(the bird). Shall I call to my mother that she may come to me? The bird flies
and perches. Many birds gyrate around; (thou) art my love alone; my heart is
bound to thy heart; go not far from me. I go, for I find him whom Amen hath given
to me for ever and ever. Thou fair one! When thou wast in thy chamber, thy
arm was laid upon my arm; thou didst survey thy love. I poured forth my heart
to thee in the night. I was as one in my bower; thou didst strengthen my heart
to seek thee. The voice of the swallow resounds. It saith the earth is enlightened.
How do I wait for thee, thou bird. I found my brother in his bed-chamber. Go
not far from me. Let thy hand be in my hand, let me be with thee in every
pleasant place.ŗ3
T H E B EGINNING OF TH E S ONG OF J OY S OF TH E F RAG RANT F LOW ERS .
ŖThou enchantest my heart, thou hast caused me to be as one who seeks, that I
may be in thy bosom. My prayer is to hear the (beat) of his heart; that I may
behold the brightness of (his) eyes, I fawn upon thee, to behold thy love, O man
of my heart! Most delightful is my hour of going forth; an hour of eternity. . . .
I am thy oldest sister. I am unto thee like the garden which I have planted with
flowers and sweet odours. It is watered by thy hand, refreshed by the breezes,
a pleasant place to walk in. Thy hand is in my hand. I remember, and my heart is
joyful at our walking, drinking together; how I listened to thy voice, it was life to
me to hear it. I bring thy garlands when thou comest drinking. 4
1 Records of the Past, vol. ii. p. 120.
2 Uaui, is to discourse, meditate, melt.
3 A Papyrus in the B. M. rendered by Goodwin, Trans. Bib. Arch. Socy. v. iii.
pp. 383-5.
4 From an Egyptian song. Goodwin, Trans. Bib. Arch. Socy. vol. iii. 387-8.
504 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
It is the song of Solomon, matter and music, phrase after phrase,
and there is no poetry in literature more full of love-longing. The
bosom is also called the ŖBreast of Rerem.ŗ Rer was some kind or
Egyptian food; the word likewise means a nurse, and to nurse. This,
therefore, was the breast for the suckling, the divine child.
The Ŗblack but comelyŗ lady of the Canticles says: ŖMy
Beloved feedeth among the lilies,ŗ ŖMy Beloved is gone down into
his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather
lilies.ŗ Still more occultly, ŖI would lead thee and bring thee
into my mother‟s house; I would cause thee to drink of the spiced
wine of the juice of the pomegranate.ŗ This fruit was the emblem of
the womb, and was held in the hand of the Syrian Juno; the
illustration belongs to the primitive physiology, and related to nourish-
ing the child before birth in the maternal abode. In the Egyptian
song the ladyt says: ŖMy sister issues forth angry, uttering all sorts of
exclamations at the porter.ŗ In the Hebrew, ŖMy mother‟s children
were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards.ŗ ŖI spoke
not,ŗ says the one, Ŗbut my heart remembered.ŗ The other, ŖI sleep,
but my heart waketh.ŗ
In both the feminine triad appear as the mother and the two
sisters. Horus is called the brother of the two sisters as Isis and
Nephthys and the child of the mother as Neith; the genitrix who
becomes twain in the sisterhood. The lady of the Canticles is one of
two sisters, and Solomon is their brother. ŖWe have a little sister, and
she hath no breasts.ŗ But the speaker has breasts that stand erect
like towers. This agrees with the two characters one of whom gave the
breast to the child, the other being without a breast; hence the female
Egyptian figures having only one breast!
The lady in the songs says; ŖThou tookest my breast, thou didst revel
in its abundance in the day of (* * * *)ŗ Nephthys pleads: ŖCome to
Aper; thou wilt see thy mother Neith. Beautiful child, do not stay far
from her. Come to her nipples; abundance is in them.ŗ
The two sisters and the brother are the children of one mother who
represents the abode of being. This abode was figured on the head
of Nephthys as the house of breath. Another type of it was the
double-turreted tower-crown of Kubele. This is the character of the
lady of Solomon's song; she is the wall, the tower, Ŗher neck is as the
tower of David built for an armouryŗ like the Kubele crown.1
The present reading permits of a sense similar to that claimed by
the Christian commentators for their ŖLoves of Christ and the Church,ŗ
1 The duality personated by the Two Divine Sisters will explain an obscure
passage in the Canticles. ŖWhat will ye see in the Shulamite?ŗ ŖAs it were the
company of two armies.ŗ The word Makanaim denotes something double that
dances up and down. Fuerst says a Ŗdouble row of dancing youths and maidens.ŗ
It is simply the twin-sisters of the double horizon. Mak (Eg.) is to dance.
Makha (Eg.) means the balance, scales, equinox, and the two characters are here
combined in the Shulamite, as the mother who divides on the horizon.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TWO SISTERS. 505
only the Christ was the youthful solar god Horus, Iu-su or Khunsu,
the ŖGood Peaceŗ in Egypt; the mythical Solomon, the Hebrew
Prince of Peace. The difference between the mythical and the human
representation is as great as that betwixt the virgin of Pinturiccio
feeding the little one Ŗamong the liliesŗ and the fleshly display of one
of Sir Peter Lelyřs painted courtezans.
The child Horus was the Kamite Christ who became the Anointed
at puberty. The Great Mother was his Abode and Shrine, or Sekhem.
The Abode or House is carried on the head of Nephthys. This type
was likewise continued in Rome as the Mother Church, the sanctuary
of the divine child.
The primordial genitrix appears as the House of God in the visions
of Hermas where she is seen as an old woman because she was the
Ŗfirst of all creation, and the world was made for herŗ; omnium primus
creata est. She who had been the Abode from the beginning, the
abode in life and death, became the Church in the end.1
Further, as the Great Mother divided into the two Sisters
represented by Isis and Nephthys who stand at the two sides of the
child-god, so is it in the imagery of the catacombs, where various
examples are found of two female Orante figures which stand on the
two sides of the mythical Christ. These two women are believed to
symbolise the Church. Being two, however, they are supposed by the
religious A-Gnostics to typify the Church under two dispensations of
the Law and the gospel.2
The Christ between them is the good shepherd whose original
crook, the Hek, is carried in one hand by Horus, and his fan (Khu) in
the other, as he stands between HIS two Orantes, Isis and Nephthys!
Horus is conceived by Isis, the mother of flesh, and generated by
Nephthys, the mother of breath.3 Rhea and Hera were the two
mothers of the child Zeus. Bacchus called Bimater had two mothers;
he was conceived by Semele and brought into the world by Ippa.4
The two divine sisters were continued in the Gospels as the
two Maries, the Virgin and Mary Cleophas, both of whom were the
mothers of Jesus. This, that is impossible as history, is perfect
according to the mythosŕthe Christ being bi-mater; and true to
the Celestial Allegory, which is illustrated in the Catacombs by the
mythical Christ who is pourtrayed in more than half-a-dozen different
but identifiable forms.
To recapitulate: first, the Great Mother is personified in space, and
as space takes two aspects in the upper and lower hemispheres; she
divided and there are two women, the two divine sisters. The great
mother bears the twins as male, and these are then assigned to the
two sisters. We have now got the characters of the mother, sister,
and brother of the earliest sociology. Then follows a pair of twins,
1 The Shepherd of St. Hermas. Vision, ii. 2 Lundy, figs. 81 and 149.
to her and accompanied with her. The result of this connection was
the twin-children of the myth. When she was delivered these two
sons came out of her left side; they were jealous of each other,
and the one who was an unsuccessful hunter treated the successful one
so badly as to compel him to leave the earth and withdraw to heaven.
After his withdrawal the Spirit again descended and returned to the
woman, who bore a daughter, and she became the Great Mother of the
North American Indians.1
The mother, the two sisters, the child, and the pubescent male,
the brother and sister, completed the first group of relations, there being
as yet no individualized fatherhood. Following the motherhood
simply, a type of the producers was now evolved in the likeness of
the male and female twins.
The two different pairs of twins, who were the twins, brothers Sut
and Horus, and the twin brother and sister Shu and Tefnut in Egypt,
enable us to detect and expose another example of the elaborate
historicizing of mythic material which was practised by the re-writers
of the Hebrew Scriptures; for the story of the twin-brothers is told
a third time in the Book of Genesis as the history of Judah and
Tamar and of Pharetz and Zarach.2 In this the red one who ought
to have been born first puts forth his hand, which the nurse binds
round with a scarlet thread. He then withdraws and his brother
breaks his way into the world. The Nurse, however, identifies
Zarach as the one who should have been the first-born, and who is
named as the one who appears like the sun, the light, or the red dawn,
i.e. the one that makes the first visible appearance. Pharetz is the
dark one, who breaks his way through to be foremost. So Sut was
fabled to have broken away into the world at the wrong time. So,
according to Plutarch, Anra-Mainyus, the Dark Mind, broke open the
egg-shell to be born firstŕthe egg-shell which images the heaven.3 The
twin-brothers Zanub and Pharetz, the breaker-through, are born of
Judah and Tamar, who are represented as relatives and consorts, if not
called the brother and sister. Now the male and female twins who
consorted as Shu and Tefnut are the twin lion-gods; and Judah was
the lion-god in Israel. He is called the lionřs whelp, and is represented
by the twin lions4 which were pourtrayed on the standard of Judah
and in the planisphere.5 The lion was the totemic type of Judah
because Judah, like Shu, was the lion.
sex and triadic in manifestation; the mother being the opening One;
the Child a duad in sex, and the virile male a natural figure of Three.
The deity with four arms is likewise an embodiment of the dual
nature. This is not so common in the Egyptian as in the Hindu
Pantheon, yet Amen-Ra and Ptah are both pourtrayed with
four arms.1
One type of the dual divinity is the calf, an image of Ahti, the
duplicative abode. The calf, of course, may be of either sex, hence it
represents both in one. The calf is the Au, and Au or Iu is a deity with
the head of the calf or bullock. Au signifies Was, Is, and To-be, like
the A O, or Alpha and Omega. Alpha and Omega are likewise to be
seen among the classical curiosities of the British Museum in a terra-
cotta imitation of a foot weacing a hobnailed hoot on which the nails
are arranged in the shape of a pointed A at the toe, and in the form
of the Omega at the heel; the beginning and the end is thus figured
on one foot. When the present writer was young this same pattern
of A and W a tips or honails was dear to the hearts of our canal
boatmen. This epicene nature is pourtrayed by the A O of the
Mexican drawings, in which the O is entwined about the A, after the
fashion of making the capital letter A with the O of a flourish about
it thusŕ
human child being of either sex, the divine was of both. This
mythical type could only be fulfilled in nature by an hermaphrodite.
The epicene Messiah is described in the ŖCodex Nazaræus.ŗ ŖNebu
Messiah shall call the Jews and shall say to them, „Come ye, behold!
I quicken the dead and make them arise again. I pay the price of the
ransoming. I am Enos Nazaræus Spiritus, even a Voice being sent that
shall give testimony of him in Jerusalem, but he himself will captivate
the sons of the men by the allurements of cunning delusions, and will
imbrue them with blood and monthly (menstrual) pollution.ř ŗ 1 Such
language could not be interpreted without the types on which it is based.
It is one mode of describing the biune being of either or both sexes,
corresponding to the feminine Ŗpapsŗ of the ŖSon of Man,ŗ the sup-
posed Messiah of ŖRevelation.ŗ In the fragment quoted by the two
Clemcnts we are told that Ŗthe Lord, having been asked by Salome
when his kingdom was to come, replied, „When you shall have
trampled under foot the garment of shame (mystically, when the
woman shall cease to menstruate), when two shall be as one, when
that which is without shall be like that which is within, and when the
male with the female shall be neither male nor female.ř ŗ2 Which shows
an application of the neutral type evolved from the child, calf, colt, or
lamb, to the eschatological phase; that which preceded the division of
the sexes at puberty is continued as a type beyond sex; the neuter
image of divinity. Paul identifies the doctrine of this unity in the
biune one, the mythical Christ, when he says, ŖThere is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female,
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,ŗ who was the biune being, the Alpha
and Omega.
When the biune being was finally figured as male in front and female
behind, the adorers of the Great Mother are known by the prominence
given to the hinder part. Thus when the divinity as Iah showed the
hinder part to Moses, that denoted the feminine half of the whole.
The Egyptian Peh, or Pekh, is the feminine hinder-part of the lioness,
the goddess Pekh; and Pekh and back, as before said, are identical.
This cult was continued in the Witchesř Sabbath, where all the
imagery and actions illustrated the backward way. The witnesses
describe how in their circular dances they were placed back to back, and
struck each other at intervals. Among the curious figures engraved
by Von Hammer there is a naked female form wearing the crown of
Kubelê, holding in one hand an image or the sun and moon, both of
which have faces turned bottom upwards. This representation was
sculptured on a stone coffer found in Burgandy, together with a series
Where and how then did a male god originate under the name of
Div, the Father in Heaven, who is found as
Tef, Divine Father, Egyptian. Dio, God, Zulu
Dio, the Father-Sky, Sanskrit. Dewas ,, Lett.
Dwyf, the Self-existent One, Welsh. Deus ,, Latin.
Tivisco, the Father, German. Duw ,, Keltic.
Tivi, God, Icelandic. Dia ,, Old Irish.
Dipti ,, Amardan. Dhu ,, Arabic.
The evening and morning were the first day, and these were marked
on the two horizons by certain stars. In Egyptian the star is the
sign of day; it reads both Seb and Tua (or Tef), the Sebat or
Tuaut being the gateway of light that was opened by the star of
dawn. Tuai (or Tefi), is the morning, the morrow-day. Thus Tuai
is equivalent to Day. The time of opening and closing of day was
determined by the morning and evening star, Seb. Again Seba and
Tuai signify adoration, worship, as in the Greek Seba, and the time
was reckoned by the star of dawn, Now the on[y planet that can be
assigned to the god Seb is Jupiter, the Egyptian Har-pa-ka.
Mercury was given to Sut-Anup, Mars to Shu, Saturn to Sevekh,
the earlier form of Seb or Kronus. In Seb the fatherhood was first
established; he is the youngest of the gods and yet the father of the
gods. In him the fatherhood was founded as the god of earth, and
Har-pa-ka, the Egyptian Jupiter, is the lord of the house of earth, in
accordance with the astrological phraseology. There was no father
in Egyptian mythology until Seb was crowned with the title of Tef.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL DIVINE FATHER. 521
According to the Assyrians, the wide heaven is the seat of Anu the
King. He is Anu in the helght. Bel is lord of the world, countries,
1 As. Res. vol. iii. p. 39. 2 Atharva-Veda, x. 8.
3 Muir, Sansk. Texts, iii. x. 4 Plate in Asiatic Researches.
5 As. Res. i. 267, v. 254. 6 Stone, Cradle-Land of Arts and Creeds.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TRIAD. 527
or lands. Hea is the dweller in the deep. These are the heaven,
earth, and hell. In the oldest, the Akkadian, cult these three deities
are the recognised Zi or spirits of the three divisions.
A papyrus at Turin shows the solar god speaking in his threefold
character and as the crea tor of the Ŗmysteries of the two-fold horizonŗ
who says, ŖI am Khepera in the morning, Ra at noon and Atum in the
evening.ŗ1 Speaking generally, it may be said that the Trimurti proper,
composed of three male figures, is not Egyptian, although a three-
headed and four-armed lion-god found at Meroë is referred to py
Rawlinson.2 There is, however, a solar triad in the Ritual, consisting
or Atum, Kâ (Kak or Hak) and Hu. In this Atum is the manifestor
of the Two Truths, and his two manifestations are personified as
Kâ and Hu, who are called his sons. Kâ is the black sun in the
abyss. Hu is the white sun in the height. Atum is the red sun on
the horizon of the west.
This triad is very ancient and rare. The solar god Hak or Kâ was
the child of the mother. According to the present reading, he was
a continuation into the solar mythos of Kak, the god of darkness,
the crocodile, Khevek (Sevekh), who was the earlier form of Seb,
the father-god, and whose name of Khevek would modify into Kek
or Kak, whencc Kâ, still written with the crocodileřs tail. In this way
the star-god passed into the solar mythos, and into the triad in which
Atum was considered to be the father, and Kâ and Hu are then called
his sons.
A doctrinal application of the Tum triad is made in the Tablet of
Rameses II. at Kuban.3 ŖTruly thou art the living image of thy father
Tum, of An. The god Hu is in thy mouth, the god Ka is in thy heart, the
place of thy tongue is the sanctuary of truth, the divinity is seated on thy
two lips.ŗ
The title of Har-Makhu, the Sun of the Double Horizon distin-
guishes that God from the Sun of the Third Region, in the Amenti,
and preserves a proof of the Har Sun being an earlier solar deity
than the Ra of the Three Heavens/
The Chinese male tried appear as Yu, Yih, and Tseih. Yu put
a stop to the deluge, when it had broken in, by preparing nine proper
channels for the waters. In this work he was helped by Yih, who
opened up the forests with fire, and Tseih, who showed the people how
to cultivate the ground which had been reclaimed from the waters
(Shu-King).
The Chinese symbol of these three regions is made with three hori-
zontal bars, 三. To denote the supreme ruler of the three spheres the
lines are crossed 王 . This forms the figure of the Papal crozier,
which is thus shown to be a cross of the threefold heaven, that of the
1 Trans. Soc. of Bid. Arch. vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 268.
2 Herodotus, b. ii. 35.
3 Birch, Records. viii. 75 sqq.; Brugsch, Hist. Egypt, ii. 80; Eng. Tr.
528 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
hexagram of space in six directions, already identified with the Papal
triple crown.
The triad who divide the sovereignty of the universe in the Finnic
mythology are Ukko, the old one, the god of heaven above, the
supreme onc; Ilmarinen. the eternal forger, god of the earth; and
Wainamoinen, the friend of the waves. These three were said to have
established the celestial vault, fixed the gates of air, and sowed the
stars in space.1
At one time the Hawaiians had the male triad as a Trimurti named
Kane, Ku, and Lono, equal in nature but distinct in attributes. Ku
was surnamed Ka-Pao, the Builder or Architect; Lono was Noho-i-
ka-wai, the dweller on the water. They formed a triad as ŖThe one
who is established.ŗ These three were held to have broken up the
ancient darkness of Po, the underworld, which shows the dependence
of the triad on the sun that passed through the abyss; they created
the heavens, three in number, as their dwelling-places when they were
considered to be distinct from each other. The triadic one is thus
addressed: ŖKane-po-lani! O Heavenly Father, with Ku the Builder
in the blazing heaven, with great Lono of the flashing eys, a God, the
God of Lightning, the fixed light of heave, standing on the earth; on the
earth of Kane-Kumu-honua, he is God.ŗ2
The New Zealanders also have the masculine triad as the three
brothers Mauiŕthe Ŗelder Maui, the tallest Maui, and the young
Maui.ŗ The younger Maui, as in all the European stories of three
brothers, is despised and badly treated by the other two. They leave
him at home whilst they go abroad and do not suffer him to sit at
meals with them, but toss him a bone or offal to eat whilst they
devour the best of everything. At last he plucks up spirit, and when
the elder brothers next go-a-fishing, he takes his place in the boat;
and insists on going too. ŖWhere is your hook?ŗ ask the two brothers.
ŖOh, this will do,ŗ said little Maui, taking out his own jawbone. This
he threw overboard for his fishhook, but on trying to pull it in again
found it very heavy. By hauling away at it he at last lifts it, and
finds it has brought up the land from the bottom of the deep.
This was the first great feat of little Maui, or the sun which made the
passage of the underworld. It happened that near the habitation of
the three Mauis there lived an old woman called Great Daughter of
the Night, a most terrible person. Maui the youngest, however,
determined to visit her, and see if he could find anything good.
Coming near the spot where ŖHine-nuiŗ lived, he began to play
a tune on his flute. When the old woman heard the sound, she said
to her slaves: ŖIf the man comes down the hill walking upright on his
legs, catch him, he‟s a thief. But if he comes on his hands and feet with
his belly and face upwards, be sure not to meddle with him, he is an
Atuaŗ (or God). This little Maui heard, and came upon the old
1 Kalwala, part ii. runa xiv. 2 Fornander, vol i. p. 61.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL MALE TRIAD. 529
When the three regions were spaced out, the mother was the horizon,
as place of emanation, the Mut, or Mouth of birth. She is represented
in the Vignette as a Deess with three heads one the vulture, one the
lioness, and one human; the latter being the wearer of the two
crowns in one. The Goddess Hathor, in Egypt is said to receive the
dead in the west as the spotted cow. The British Triads also speak of
three cows, one of which typifies the genitrix, Keridwen, the other two
being devoted to her service; one was called the spotted cow; the
other two were one white and one red, the colours of the two Egyptian
crowns of the upper and lower hemispheres. There is a Buddhist
emblem called the Sri Iantra, in Hindustan, copied from the gates of
Somnauth, which will serve to illustrate the three regionsŕupper, mid,
and lowerŕby south, east, and north, with the corresponding positions
assigned to the reminine triad. The diagram is a common one. It is
found in the masonsř ŖRoyal Arch,ŗ and is to be met with in some old
English churches. It constitutes the hexagram of the sixfold heaven,
or of space in six directions. In the Hindu figure, the three gods and
their consorts are arranged with Brahma east, and Laksmi west;
Siva north and Parvati south-west; Vishnu south, and Sarasvati
north-east. The order of the Trimurti varies according to the
particular cult; all that we are concerned with here is the hexagram. 1
One name of the most ancient genitrix who divided into the two
sisters was Tef (Eg.), identical with the Abyss of the beginning. She
was continued as Tefn or Tefnut under her lioness-type, and from her
name and nature it is now proposed to derive the Dawn. The word
is common for opening, and to dawn is to open out. In Egyptian
Tebn means to rise up, spread, illumine, i.e. to dawn. But the name
of dawn or Tefn includes more than the dawn in heaven. The dawn
with which primitive mythologists were first concerned was the dawn
of womanhood, and the day of procreation. This was a dawn that
broke in blood. We speak of the rose of dawn, but they drew their
simile from blood; and blood first manifested through a breaking
open, as it did in the human dawn. In Egyptian Tef means to shed,
evacuate, spit, menstruate, drip, and drop, with the flower-sign of
bleeding; the bleeding wound; the breaking open in blood, blood
itself, are all determined by the flower of brood as the sign of flowing.
So in Fijian, Dave signifies the flow; Tevah and Daveh in Hebrew
denote the menstrualia. The Assyrian Dav-kina (or Dam-kina) is
the Blood-Mother. The mother opened in the first of two phases in
the red dawn that broke in blood. The first mother divides and
assumes the forms of the two sisters, as she did in sociology; one form
of this double mother bdng that of Neith the wearer of the red crown,
and Seti of the white crown, whose name is written with the arrow of
light, a sun beam. The three may be described as black night, red
dawn, and white day. These reproduced the light, or the solar god,
1 Inman, Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i, fig 34.
532 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
in three corresponding characters. The dark night represented the
hidden sun, whence Mut, the mother darkness, was the consort of the
hidden Amen. The red dawn reflected the coming sun and gave
it birth.
The verb Uben applied to the act is identical with the word open;
uba (Eg.) is a window as an opening for light, and the Uben of Neith
is our opening. Seti, or day, reflected the sun at white heat. Now
one image or the reflector was the pupil of the eye; and the two
reflectors, as dawn and day or north and south, are also called the two
eyes of the sun. The Great Mother, as Mut, Uati, Buto, or Pekht,
divides (Pekh, to divide) in the two characters of Tefn and Sekhet,
who represent the two elements of wet and heat; the dewy red of dawn,
and burning white of day. Hence Tef denotes moisture or dew (which
is the same word as Tef); and also means to drip and drop. Tef,
moreover, is the pupil of the eye, the mirror in which the sun was
re-born of the genitrix at dawn. Nu is the heaven or firmament.
Thus Tefnu (or Tefne) is the reflector of the sun as the opening
dawn; when the dawn reddened it shed blood, and when the dew
dropped, the eye wept. Then the mother passed into her second
phase as Sekhet whose element is fire, and who is the eye, as reflector
of the sun in her fury or double force. These were the two eyes of the
sun. The eye of dewy dawn becomes the eye of burning day, or
Tefn transforms into Sekhet. This is the transformation of Daphne.
the dawn, that was poetised by the Greeks. For Daphne does not
come from India, and is not derived from any Vedic Ahanâ, which the
present writer would explain by Han (Eg.) the young, youth, to go to
and fro, the ever-returning; but she is the Egyptian Tefne, whose
transformation into the goddess of fire or heat was pourtrayed as the
metamorphosis of Daphne into the laurel-tree, the wood of fire; which
was only another type of the change from dawn to day, from Neith
to Seti, from Tefne to Sekhet, that represented the elemental
metamorphosis according to the mythical impersonations. Elaborate
explanation may make some of these things look incredibly ingenious,
whereas they are only excessively simple. The eye and water were
the first natural mirrors, and their application to phenomena is just as
natural from the primitive standpoint. The gestator, who in later
times carried the artificial mirror, bore an eye on her head in an
earlier presentation of the character. Meri is both the eye and
the water, as the mirror or reproducer. Also, the two eyes, when
used as separate symbols, are painted the one (left) of a red colour;
the other (right) being blue; answering to the red of dawn and blue
of day; the red of flesh and blood, and the blue of soul. The left
eye of the sun is described as shedding blood.1 The Sun born daily
from this eye which is also called the Great Water, the Mirror.
The British Barddas dcscribe Arthur as having three wives, each of
1 Ritual, ch. xvii.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL FEMALE TRIAD. 533
the orb in the underworld is transformed rrom the dark and blind
phase in to a thing of brilliance and beauty. The transformer in one
triad is Heka.t, the frog-headedŕthe frog being a symbol of trans-
formation in the waters or the abyss. Heka.t appears in one repre-
sentation1 as the waiting-maid or Cinderella of the three sister
goddesses. It is she who transforms into Seti, the sunbeam, the arrow
of light; the poor girl who becomes the princess. Three days were
assigned to the moon out of sight, and it was at the three daysř festival
that Cinderella lost her slipper and won the heart of the prince. It
is exceedingly likely that the original Phryne of Greece was a form
of the frog-goddess who transformed. Her name signifies the frog,
and the most famous representation of her, made by Apelles, was as
a Venus transforming from the foam, as did the frog-goddess Heka.t.
This would account for the stories told about the exhibition of all
her naked blinding beauty, suddenly revealed by the dropping of her
garment. The courtesan was a character of the goddess who was earlier
than marriage. In a Zulu form of the tale of transformation the girl
enters the earth, and it is said of her that her body glistened, for she
was like brass in her pristine state, but she took black earth and
smeared her body with it. She was then seen by a chief to enter a
pool being very dirty and black, and to emerge from it with all
her natural radiance restored, and her body glistening like brass.2
The transformer in the Russian tales retains the frog-type of
Heka.t and changes into a lovely woman. The frog-skin here takes
the place of the slipper of Vair or fur, as the token of transform-
ation from the beast phase to that of the beauty.
The female triad was brought on as the three Maries of the Christian
mythology. The triad of this name was found on a tablet at Metz,
with the inscription, ŖIn Honorem Domûs Divinæ Dis Mariabus, Vicani
Vici Pacis.ŗ ŖIn honour of the divine house, to the Goddesses Mariæ:
they of the street of peace.ŗ Montfauçon held them to be divinities of
the country, and therefore extant before the Christian era. 3 If so.
there can be no difficulty in identifying them as a triadic form of the
Goddess Meri, who as Mer-Seker, the divinity of the Nile, takes two
other forms, as Meri-ras (south), and Meri-Mehi (north). This reading
will be elucidated hereafter.
The male and female triads in the Chaldean mythology were
totalled at last in the god one, or one god as the Supreme, who was
of a biune and sixfold nature; the double trinity united in one
person. This was Anu, the god in the highest heaven. His signs show
him to have been the one and the six. He attained what is termed
the ŖPrimordial unity,ŗ but which was the final totality or the godhead
composed of the male triad and the triad of female consorts. Each
1 Wilkinson, Mat. Hierog. xvi. b.
2 Callaway, Nursery Tales of the Amazulu, i. 300.
3 Antiq.Explained, pl. xxx., fig. 11; Maurice, Ind. Ant. vol. v.
536 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
of these compounds and combinations was represented by figures and
images which were held to be sacred and talismanic on account of
their secret significance. The double triangle or six-rayed star was
a type of the triads twinned. The Chinese attribute the foundation of
the trigram to Fu-hsi; and the combination of the double trigram, as
in the hexagram of the Yi-King, is sometimes assigned to the king
Wan who arranged the ŖPosterior Heaven.ŗ The dual triad imaged
by the double triangle or hexagram, the sixfold one, is extant in the
Christian iconography. The Trimurti, together with the feminine triad
as a triangle, are drawn in an Italian engraving of the fifteenth
century.1 Two of the male faces are bearded, one is boyish, and the
triad of male heads is set in the triangle, all being inclosed in a circle.
The doctrine of a biune being, who was compounded from the natural
factors and afterwards divided into the two triads of sex, is reproduced
by the writer of the Clementine Homilies, who says the body of
man consists of three parts, and derives its origin from the female
(the mother of flesh). The spirit consists of three parts, and derives
its origin from the male. Both of these triads have one root, so that
man is a compound of two ingredients, the female and the male.
This, when applied to the deity, recovers the Chaldean Sixfold one. 2
ŖOne, then, is the god who presides in a superior shape, as the heart of
all that is above and below.ŗ The text is corrupt, but the context
shows, and the doctrine demands, that this is the biune being.
ŖFrom this (or these) is sent forth, as from a centre, the life-giving
and incorporeal power, extending the wise nature from his over
three infinities.ŗ This is the masculine triad of the height, depth,
and mid-region. The Ŗextensions taking their rise form thence possess
the nature of six infinities, of which the one penetrates into the height
above, another into the depth below, another to the right hand, another
to the left, another in front, another behind; to whom he himself,
looking as to a number that is equal on every sideŗŕthat is a dice-
shaped, six-sided figureŕŖcompletes the world in six temporal intervals,3
himself being the Rest. In him the six infinities end, and from him they
receive their extension to infinity. This is the Mystery of the Hebdomad,
for he himself is the Rest of the whole.ŗ4 Such, according to the
Homilies, is the nature and shape of the Christian God. An infinite
made up of six infinities, a dice-shaped deity, the six being forms
of the one, and the one formed of the six. The six sides were also
imaged in the six days of creation, or temporal intervals, the seventh
is the type of the Sabbath rest, and the sixfold god here culminates
in the god Seven as the outcome of the Hexad. He is the Rest
or Peace. This in Egyptian is the Hept, the Peace, and No. 7;
whence Heptaktis, the Seven-rayed Iao-Sabaoth, god of the later
but superior, that is the planetary, Hebdomad.
1 Didron, fig. 147. 2 Clementine Homilies, xx. 2.
3 Clem. Hom. xvii. 9. 4 Ch. x.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TRINITY. 537
Ritual) who brings her orb to the dark round and reproduces the light,
says ŖI have made the Eye of Horus when it was not coming on the
Festival of the 15th day;ŗ1 the Eye of Horus being the mother-mirror,
the reproducer of the infantile image (cf A NHU , for the eyebrow with
Anhu in Sanskrit), and so we identify the Egyptian form of the
goddess 15, with the moon at full.
The crescent of the new moon rises with horns erect, and sets with
its horns comparatively inverted. The horned phase of the moon was
considered its masculine manifestation, and its waning was the
infantile phase. These two were typified in Egypt by Taht as the
bull of the cow, his mother, and Aan, the cynocephalus. The feminine
moon was first as the cow Aah, or Aahti; and Aan, her dog or ape,
was her Child, her little one who represented her lessening phase, who
transformed at puberty, so to say, into the horned and begetting bull,
as Taht. The modern idea of the lunar imagery would be that the
new moon was the Child, and such was my notion for years; but
this idea is erroneous. We find it difficult to think within the primary
limits. The Child of the full moon was born in the wane as the
powerless or impubescent one of the triad. So Krishna denotes the
diminishing one on the dark side, the Ŗobscure halfŗ of the moon,
Taht, the bull, is the pubescent virile youth corresponding to Bala-
rama. Taht or Tekh (another name signifying full), the virile god,
was the re-filler of the orb with 1ight (in the pre-solar stage), the
cause, therefore, of his mother growing great, which accounts for
the human nature of the typology. The solar mythos can only be
fathomed in the lunar stage. The Child Horus was born of the
genitrix when the year, like the moon, was at its full circle. Hence
he typified the descendjng and diminishing sun, the Khart, or, as
in English the crut, a dwarf, or deformed Child.
The second Horus was the waxing sun of the vernal equinox, the
virile and pubescent typce of power. From this stand-point the types
can be correlated and read. Certain Greek theologists held that the
moon was drawn by two bulls, which denoted her waxing and waning.
As the Cow and moon (Aah) are identical the two bulls are the calf
and bull, only the Egyptians used the cynocephalus, instead of the
calf, for the non-virile one. The calf-type was applied to Epaphus,
the child of Io; the horned maiden, moon, or cow. The triple moon
was also represented by Hekate Triformis, who appears as the mare,
snake, and dog. In this combination the mare (Hippa is the
mother; the serpent is the symbol of renewal, and the dog is the
type of the waning moon, as was the cynocephalus that bewailed the
lessening light.
The dove was the feminine bird of soul or ghost when the Two
Truths were both assigned to the female nature. On the coins of
Sicyon, the dove is pourtrayed on the reverse (the tail), with the lion
1 Ch. lxxx.
542 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
as obverse (or head1). So the Persian triadic figure is male in the
upper part, and the dove denotes the female below, the serpent
being a type of renewal. The Dove-winged Circle incloses and emanes
the male figure-head of the triad as the supreme one, but the feminine
Yoneh, or Yoni, was primary; and these are united in the circle with
the wings and tail of the dove. This type of the Godhead is called the
Mihir-sign. The most ancient form of the figure appears on the Assyrian
monuments, in the shape of a winged eye. The eye is the Mother-
Mirror, the reproducer of the infant image. Now the Mirror is the
Ma-her (Eg.), Ma being the eye and to see; her, the face. The eye
was the mirror or Mer (Eg.) from ma-her; and this will explain the
Persian Mihir as the Eye-Mirror and foundation of the triadic figure,
when the male in the circle takes the place of the image in the eye.
The winged circle and serpent are Egyptian not only as a solar form
of the triad; the winged disk and eye are also lunar types.
A heart-shaped Gnostic gem in the British Museum shows the
trinity consisting of Bait, a hawk-headed god, Athor as a frog-headed
goddess, and a winged uræus serpent called Akori. On the reverse is
a Greek inscription, ŖThou art Bait! Thou art Athor! Thou art
Akori! Hail, father of the world! hail, three-formed God.ŗ These
three are Egyptian; they denote the Genitrix, the Child that trans-
forms (serpent of Har-ur), and the Generator or masculine Soul (Ba)
of the hawk-headed Horus.2
The natural genesis of the trinity is of necessity lunar. Through-
out the whole range of phenomena the lunar orb alone in its three
phases gives objective representation to the three characters of the
human triad which furnished the primal factors. Only the moon can
include the triune image of the producer, re-producer, and produced
in one single type. The three are one as Homo and one as moon,
but nowhere else can the trinity be found in nature. Thus by means
of the lunar triad we can now explain the tradition extant in the
Isthmus of Darien that tells how the Man in the Moon was guilty of
incest with his sister; and the stories of the man who made love to
his mother-in-law each month, and she threw ashes in his face, which
accounts for the black side of the orb. The male moon re-begot
itself on the female, whether she was termed his mother, his sister or
mother-in-law. This would be first described in interpreting the
natural phenomena when sexual intercourse was promiscuous, and
mother, sister and woman were one. But when distinctions had
been made, the Man in the Moon was pointed to as a warning. That
was the guilty one who went with his own mother, and came back
bearing the brand of blackness on his face! And yet this primitive
type cast out by the savage races serves as a represetative of the
triune god for the most civilized! The type was continued and
applied to the solar god who represented the ŖPrimordial Unityŗ of
1 Lajard, Cultes de Venus, pl. 25. 2 Case 86, G. 1.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TRINITY. 543
the mother, child, and Vir in one, as did Num and Ptah. This was
in the secondary and symbolical phase. Har-Khuti or Horus of the
triangle was the great solar type of the trinity in unity whose sign
is set in the stars.
One great incentive to the study of astronomy will yet be to find
out at first hand what the Kamites typified in the book above with
which we have been so deluded at second hand below. By
turning to the plate in the present volume the reader may see
Horus seated in the decans of the Ram holding the whip of rule
in his left hand and the starry ŖTriangula,ŗŕsupposed to have
been added by Hevelius!ŕin his right. Proclus employs this
imagery as mere figure of speech when he says the ŖCelestial
Triangle is connective of all generation, being proximate to the ram.ŗ1
We read in the ŖLitany of Raŗ2 Ŗthou commandest the Osirified
deceased to be like Khuti, the brilliant Triangle which appears in
the shining place.ŗ Thus the dead rose on the horizon of the
resurrection like the sun in the sign of the vernal equinox when
that was the Ram, in the shape of the triangle, as an image of the
trinity in unity. The triple Horus was the three-fold sun which
was unified once a year at the time and place of the spring equinox.
There is a form of him as the child crowned with a triple crown
of reed and called ŖP-neb-Ta,ŗ the Lord of the world.3 This was
he who also united the two worlds or two heavens, upper and lower
in one accordiog to the doctrine stated in the Epistle to the
Ephesians;4 ŖFor he who is our Peace, who hath made both one,
hath broken down the middle wall of partition,ŗ5 on which the dividing-
wall of the Second Court of the Temple had been founded.
In the ninth of Hugp de Pratořs ŖSermones Dominicales,ŗ5 he says of
the nativity of Christ, ŖOn this day there appeared in the east three suns
which were immediately joined into one to signify that the three i.e.
divinity, soul and flesh are combined in Christ.ŗ The old Adam of
the flesh, he says, was combined with the newly-created soul and
the deity to make one Sun, one Man Jesus Christ. Such terrible
tell-tales are the ancient types. The triadic type was cast by the
mind of man before the individual fatherhood was known, and no
fatherhood was ever acknowledged by those who worshipped this
form of the divine totality or god-head. That was the religious
cause of quarrel with the Osirians and Amonians against the Disk-
worshippers in Egypt. For this they were denounced as the
Typhonian Aati, the fatherless; from Aat the orphan, the lad. These
were the original ŖMamsersŗ amongst the Jews. In the Mishnah
the question is asked, ŖWhat is a Mamserŗ? And the answer is,
Ŗevery child born in that degree of parentage in which cohabitation is
1 Proclus in Timæus, b. i. 2 Ch. ii. 7.
3 Sarcoph. ŖQueen of Amasis,ŗ Brit. Museum.
4 ii. 14. 5 See verses 15-22. 6 Printed 1476, or 1483.
544 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
prohibited.ŗ1 This does not merely denote the bastard born in
adultery. The type of the child who was consort to his own sister
and husband to his own mother, which was as old as incest, was
represented by the Mamser. It was a very primitive type preserved
in mythology and divinized by religion.
The modern notion of ancient monotheism is that men conceived
of the one god as the father of souls and that the son and mother
or Holy Ghost were added to express a mode of manifestation. On
the contrary there was no conception in the matter. ŖThe nous of the
Father said that all things should be cut into three. His will assented
and all thing became three.ŗ2 That is the Greek metaphysical mode of
statement whereas the primitive mythology of the black races shows
the natural genesis of the doctrine, and tells us the earliest division into
three occurred when the child that was second to the mother became
the third in the human series at puberty. This was when the sexes
were divided by the Lizard and serpent; when the tree was split by
Tiri, when the stone of Pundjel effected the severance which constituted
the third person of the original triad in nature. What sense is there
in applying the primitive thought to the nature and manifestation
of an eternal being who cuts up all things into three? ŖThere are
three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on
earth, the spirit, the water, the blood; and these three agree in one.ŗ3
These three in heaven or on earth are derived doctrinally from the
natural genesis of the human triad of mother, child and pubescent
male. The Kabalah identifies this primordial trinity with the ŖThree
true witnessesŗ who testify to the nature of the infinite one. Leo
di Modena, an orthodox Jew, questioned whether God would ever
forgive those who printed the Kabalistic works, because the doctrine
of the triad contained in them had actually led many Hebrews to
embrace Christianity and accept the modern error on account of the
ancient truth.4 The great pity, however, is that this and all other
doctrines of the religion of symbolism were not published earlier
and more widely spread, as that might have prevented a huge
accumulation of misrepresentation and error.
Plutarch tells us the Egyptians held the Divine Nature to consist
of three, and this trinity was typified by the triangle, the base being
considered female, the perpendicular male and the subtense that
which is produced by them both; Osiris being considered the first
cause: Isis the recipient and Horus the effect.5 According to this
reading the father god is one of three, and the trinity was perfected
in the three characters of the latest sociology with the father, mother
1 Jebamoth iv. 13. 2 Proclus in Timæus; also in Parmenides.
3 1 John v. 7, 8.
4 History of the Rites, Customs, and Manners of the Jews.
and child. But in this version the second character of the child is
merged in the fatherhood; yet the dual character of the child was
continued and this finally manifested a four-fold totality.
In the previous section it was shown how four earlier types or genii
of the four quarters were totailed in a one god, as Ptah, Ra, Brahma,
or other form of the four-fold one, including IAO. The name, how-
ever, will not determine the IAO without the types. Both the triple
and tetradic types come under the one name of Iao, the unified
one god. But there was internecine warfare between the two cults,
because the four-faced, four-headed, four-natured Iao included the
father who had been individualised in the human family, and trans-
posed thence to the type of the deity as the father in heaven. The
nature of the triune Iao is indicated by the three letters, just as
it is by the mystic AUM of the Hindus, the triangle and other signs
of the three-fold one. Baal-Shalisha was a form of this triple deity
and the Agla-Shalisa, or triple-Baal is the calf-headed Iao referred
to by Isaiah,1 who did not mean a heifer of three years old but the
calf type of the triune nature, whether or not represented by a triple-
headed calf. The Carthaginian Baal was pourtrayed with four faces
corresponding to the four characters assigned to the Phœnician Iao
according to the oracle of Apollo Klarius. Lucian has a Pythagorean
dialogue in his Auction, in which Pythagoras asks, ŖHow do you
reckon?ŗ The reply is ŖOne, Two, Three, Four.ŗ Then Pythagoras
says, ŖDo you see? In what you conceive Four there are Ten, a
perfect triangle and our Oath.ŗ
In the Hebrew Shebâ the Oath is Identical with No. 7; taking an
oath was synonymous with Ŗto seven,ŗ and the 10 expressed by the
letter Jad was the full number of Iao-Sabaoth. We are also told that
ŖThe Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetractys as the foun-
tain of perennial nature."2
Pythagoras thus alludes to the four:
Ŗ Naˆ m¦ týn ¢metšra yÚca parodÒta tetrakt¾n
Pag¦n ¢en¦ Ð fÚsewj.ŗ
The mother was the only one, the first ancestor who conveyed a
sense of personal monèsij, onlyness or oneness, to her children. The
Child was dual in sex and thence the Twin or type of two. Vir, the
triadic at puberty, was a figure of three, the Thrion. The individual
father was fourth, the figure of the Tetrad. In this most natural way
were founded the mythical Monad (mother), the Duad (child-twin),
Triad (virile male) and Tetrad (compIete human family) the 1, 2, 3, 4 10.
The secrets of the mysteries have to be unfolded in figures rather
than words, because figures belong to the languagc of gesture-signs.
In elucidating the mystery of simplicity relating to numbers, it was
suggested that our notes of punctuation are typical figures, and that
the comma, semicolon, and colon, correspond to the Mother as first
one, the Child of both sexes as two; the colon being like the
1 Ch. xv. v. 2 Proclus in Timæus, b. iii.
546 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
pubescent male who was accounted third in the series. A fourfold
form of Iao takes us one step further; and the only human element
left to be added is that of the personal fatherhood in the individualised
patriarchate. This character was divinized as the god of the four
letters or figures, instead of the earlier three. Now, in our notes of
punctuation, the full stone is reckoned fourth. With that the tetrad
is completed. Also, as the fourth stop is the perfect one (the comma
being an imperfect one), this agrees with the one god who, on this
line of combination, was perfected as the fourfold one, who included
the triad, due, and monad, in the unity of a threefold totality. The
number Ten was mystically said to be the ŖBegetter of Souls,ŗ 1 and
the power of Ten was held to Reside in the number Four.
The wisdom was so simple that if published the gnostics would be
put to shame, hence they remained Ŗmumŗ; and to ŖMumŗ was
to initiate into the mysteries.
One form of the Oath, then, was that of the fourth nature, the
individualised fatherhood, the tetramorphic Iao. Plutarch tells us
this was the greatest oath amongst the Egyptians. ŖThat which is
termed Tetractys or the sacred Quarternion, being the number thirty-six
(as the decans of the four quarters) was according to common report
the most sacred oath and was called by them the World.ŗ This was a
symbol of the fourtfold divinity, based also upon the four quarters,
who included the nature of the father that followed the triad of
mother, child, and pubescent youth. Here the four-fold Iao was
sworn by instead of the three-fold as in the Greek oath, Ŗby Three am
I overthrown.ŗ Amongst the Jews the three Jads, which have the
numeral value of 30, expressed the triple Iao, the one who was the
Sheru, the Khemt (Eg.), or triaded; as did the three letters in the
name of Jah; but the sacred Tetragrammaton expressed the Iao of
the four-fold nature, and this was the god of the later Jahvists and
those who spelt the name with the four letterts Ihoh. On one of the
Gnostic gems the tetradic form of Iao is distinguished by the name
being written with the tetragrammaton itself, as Iaeo.2
The order of development was the same in the Jewish mythology
as it was in Egypt. Jehovah Elohim was first. Jehovah being the
genitrix and the Elohim her progeny of the seven elementaries who
became the Phœnician auxiliaries of Kronus in their second phase.
Jehovah was followed by Jah or Iao, who was the male-female
divinity, the dual child of the mother; the triune being united in
Asher-Jah. The contention of the later writers is for a Jahveh who shall
be considered wholly male, to whom no Ram even was to be offered
that had been castrated, or was a blemished type of the begetter.3
The Gnostics were men who had continued the most ancient and,
as was considered, the most mystical types from the beginning; and
here we find the Tetrad in a feminine form as it was represented by
the genitrix Typhon or Apt in her figure of the four chief elementaries
1 Hermes, b. vii. 51.[= CH XIII. 12.] 2 British Museum, Case 86, G. 133. 3 Mal. i. 14.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TRINITY. 547
which were combined in her image and which became the types
or the spirits of the four quarters. Marcus insisted that the in-
finitely exalted Tetrad had descended on him from its invisible
place, to be made visible through him, in the form of a woman, and
expounded to him its nature and the origin of all things.1
A form of the four-fold motherhood corresponding to the tetradic
fatherhood is also intimated when Plutarch tells us that the properties
of the quadrangle appertain to the goddesses Rhea, Venus, Keres, and
Vesta, Ŗas Eudoxus relates.ŗ The type was further extended to the
hexagonic figure of the genitrix, who, as Durga (in India), is called
the six-sided; a sort of Shasha-Yoni of space befitting the Shasha-Linga,
the cube, or the six-armed cross. Thus when the hexagonal heaven
of the three divisions and of space in six directions had been estab-
lished, the cross of the four quartets. the Swastika of Agni, or Fylfot
of Thor, was represented by the double triangle, the six-cornered figure,
the Shat-Kona, called the thunder-bolt of Indra, the cross of the
three regions and six corners. It is in this way the mythical types
contain relative dates in their data.
Each type, each doctrine of the mythos was continued into the later
religious stage, and these survived in the Roman church. The conquest
of Egypt by Rome had its other side in an Egyptian conquest of
Rome; for Rome was the bringer-on of the Kamite: mythology and
Egyptian religion, which were adopted with a difference by the
mytholators of Christendom. Rome was the centre where the Greek,
the Hebrew. the Mithraic, and Egyptian versions of one original
mythology met as in an assimilating vortex, and every essential dogma
of the new religion re-issued by Rome (save one) was pre-extant as
Egyptian.
The triangle of Horus-Khuti supplied one type of the Nimbus
or glory of the god in the Greek iconography. The Holy Ghost, as
the dove, also wears the triangular aureole, in a mosaic of the ninth
century, in the cathedral at Capua.2 These likewise point to the trinity
of the mother and child in which the child became his own re-begetter,
he who was No. 3. In a fresco from the apse in the crypt of the Auxerre
cathedral,3 belonging to the twelfth century, the good is pourtrayed
holding a book as the AO and with his right hand he makes the sign
of the trinity, the thumb and two forefingers being extended and the
other two held closed. The AO denotes the dual being; the three
digits make the gesture-sign of the three-fold manifestation. Bishops
of the Christian Church still continue to make this gesture-sign of the
trinity, in blessing the people, with the thumb and two forefingers
thrust out, or with the tips pressed together; a ring being sometimes
worn upon the middle finger denoting the trinity in unity. When
this sign was employed by the Otomacs and others to signify the
Number 3 it was a natural posture, but when used by men who are
1 Irenæus, b. i. ch. 14. 1.
2 Ciampini, Vetera Monimento, part xxi. pl. 54, p. 168. 3 Didron, fig. 36.
548 THE NATURAL GENESIS.
entirety ignorant of the origin and significance of primitive symbol-
ism as the gesture-language of a supposed revelation not yet nineteen
centuries old it becomes an imposture.
The cult of the Roman Church as illustrated by the typology that
survived in the catacombs and by other traditions proves that her
religion was fundamentally founded on the virgin mother and child of
mythology; the god who had crossed or decussated and duplicated
as the consort of the genitrix from the time before the fatherhood
was recognised. Hence God the Father is almost wholly absent from
the early monuments claimed to be Christian which are in general
agreement with the Gnostics who continued the opposition to a
paternal deity and exalted Sophia, the great mother, from the begin-
ning, together with the third Horus, who became the anointed
Messiah in his second character of Stauros the cross.
As admitted by Didron it took some thirteen centuries for God the
Father to obtain his place in the Christian iconographic art. Until
that time there is little, if any distinction between the portraits of
the supposed father and son. Even at the commencement of the
fourteenth century the father is too youthful to be accredited with
paternity. But about 1360 and onwards into the fifteenth century
the difference in their relative ages was preserved and appropriately
pourtrayed. In the fourteenth century art the mother son and father
have taken the place of the mother, child and virile male of the pre-
paternal trinity in unity. Until then the son was generally represented
as the Creator of that world but in the fifteenth century God the
Father comes to the front as Creator of the world instead of his son.
The father was represented somewhat earlier, although by a sign
unread by Didron. That is the square. It is easy to understand the
triangle, says this writer, but it is difficult to understand why the
square Nimbus should have been given to God the Father. It was
because the square was tetradic and the four-fold nature was summed
up in the father-God, as it was in Greece, in Egypt and in India.
A miniature of the fourteenth century exhibits God the Father
wearing a four-cornered Nimbus, the shape of a Trencher Cap.1 This
Icon shows the survival of the tetrad; the deity of a four-fold nature
who was completed at last in the human image of the mother, child, vir
and pater combined, and personified as the divine unity or one God.
Also in a fresco of the great convent of Salamis (eighteenth
century) the father God is pourtrayed seated within the symbolic
squares which has concave sides and thus emphasizes the four corners.
Moreover he makes the figure of four in gesture language with the
thumb and fourth digit of the right hand in token that he is Tetra-
morpheus, the true tetradic god. Everywhere the father followed the
son, as Osiris the father had been As-Ar, the son of Isis and as Abram
preceded Abraham. It was the same in the religious phase: as it had
been in the mythological which was the mirror of the primitive
1 Didron, fig. 22. 2 Didron, fig. 38.
TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL TRINITY. 549
END OF VOL. I.
A
BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS
B Y GERALD MASSEY
Containing an attempt to recover and reconstitute the lost Origines of the Myths
and Mysteries, Types and Symbols, Religion and Language, with
Egypt for the Mouthpiece and Africa as the Birthplace.
Two Vols., pp. 1,190. Imp. 8vo. Price 30s.
An interpretation of Egyptian History and Mythology in Monumental and pre-Monumental times,
which was first enunciated in this work, has recently been corroborated by the more ancient Texts
discovered at Sakkarah.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.—Egypt—Comparative Vocabulary of English and Egyptian—Hieroglyphics in Britain
—Egyptian Origines in Words—Egyptian Water-Names—Egyptian Names of Personages—British
Symbolical Customs identified as Egyptian—Egyptian Deities in the British Isles—Place-Names and the
Record of the Stones—Egyptian Type-Names of the People.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.—Comparative Vocabulary of Hebrew and Egyptian—Hebrew Cruxes, with Egyptian
Illustrations—Egyptian Origines in the Hebrew Scriptures, Religion, Language, and Letters—Phenomenal
Origin of Jehovah-Elohim and Shadai—Egyptian Origin of the Exodus—Moses and Joshua, or the Two
Lion-Gods of Egypt—An Egyptian Dynasty of Hebrew Deities, identified from the Monuments—Egyptian
Origin of the Jews traced from the Monuments—Comparative Vocabulary of Akkado-Assyrian and Egyptian
—Egyptian Origines in the Akkadian Mythology—Comparative Vocabulary of Maori and Egyptian—
African Origines of the Maori—The Roots in Africa beyond Egypt.
ŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕŕ
“In two large volumes MR. GERALD MASSEY has collated together all the principal facts known about
Egypt, with a view to trace the origin of mankind. Some portions of his theories are undoubtedly correct,
especially those which go to prove that the Egyptians are the oldest known historical race, that they are an
African people of a peculiar type, and by no means an Asiatic tribe filtered through the Isthmus of Suez.
Evidence of their primitive development is to be found in their physical type; for Mr. MASSEY is a decided
evolutionist, and regards man as evolved from some of the Anthropoid Apes, especially the Black Races,
whose colour he considers marks their animal descent.
“It must be admitted that the author has a full right to oppose that system of Comparative Philology
which has been built up from the Sanskrit, the supposed oldest representatives of the Aryan languages, to the
utter neglect of the old Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Chinese. The stately edifice built upon the
sand of Sanskritism already shows signs of subsidence, and will ultimately vanish like the baseless fabric of a
vision.
One of the most startling ideas is that the Arsu, who ruled during the anarchy which preceded the reign
of Seti-Nekht, is none other than Moses!
“Notwithstanding the difference of opinion about the results and the methods by which they have been
obtained, great credit is due to Mr. MASSEY for the ingenuity with which he has endeavoured to build up his
theory, and, to his mind, discoveries. He has read through all the principle works on the subject he treats, and
his collection of words, legends, and data is enormous.
“He has taken all reasonable care to insure a fair and correct list of words and facts. He has produced a
work which will be read with pleasure by some, and amazement by others.”—Nature.
“This book belongs to the most advanced reconstruction-researches, by which it is intended to reduce all
language, religion, and thought to one definite historical origin; a kind of literature which thrives in Germany,
in a manner calling for no such apology as would be necessary in America or England. The author differs,
however, from all similar writers in that he is an Evolutionist, holding that he who is not has not yet BEGUN
to think, for lack of a starting-point; that black is older than white, whence the Black Race is first. It follows
that the first is in Africa, and Egypt the birthplace of the original language and civilization—the parent home
which swarmed from time to time like a beehive. This view, of which modern philology has not yet dreamed,
has not hitherto had any Egyptian research brought to its support. This the author saw; and saw also that
not only must one be an Egyptologist, but also an Evolutionist, and of the newer philology. A man has seldom
been able to reduce the old Egyptian to an intelligible form, about which such doubts exist, and which has
never been treated by an evolutionist. The work is mingled with curious verses which make A Book of the
Beginnings delightful reading.”—Deutsche Litteraturzeitung (Pietschmann).
“Mr. GERALD MASSEY has lately applied the Key (Egyptian) to certain Hieroglyphics found in
Pitcairn’s Island (vol. ii. p. 593), and it seems to me that he has struck the right line in his system (e.g. of the
Kamite Origines). Mr GERALD MASSEY‟S laborious study will do good work as commentary upon Professor
Lepsius. In the oldest times within the memory of man we know of only one advanced culture, of only one
mode of writing, and only one literary development, viz. those of Egypt. If, in working out this suggestive
text, Mr, MASSEY has overworked the subject and failed in details, his general view appears to be perfectly
sound. He has met with rough treatment from that part of the critical world which is lynx-eyed to defects of
detail, and stone-blind to the general scheme. He has charged, lance at rest, the Sanskrit windmill, instead of
allowing the windy edifice to fall by its own weight. Still his leading thought is true: we must begin the
history of civilization with Egypt. “—Captain RICHARD F. BURTON, in the Athenæum.
“Mr. GERALD M ASSEY has given us an extraordinary book. If its conclusions are true, they are most
important. The question whether they are true or not will have to be carefully cogitated by the Christian
teacher, by the Hebraist, the Egyptologist, the Ethnologist, and the student of mythology and folk-lore.
Mr. MASSEY has been chiefly known to the public as a poet and lecturer, but henceforth he will be known as
the author of this book. Ten years ago he retired from the public gaze, as Livingstone disappeared into the
heart of Africa; and now emerges laden with manifold information which he has collected. Stranger than
ii.
„traveller‟s tales‟ are some things which he has to tell, yet not on that account to be summarily rejected.
Nor is Mr. MASSEY a mere collector, but his vast accumulations of fact and statement are sorted, sifted,
questioned, and made to serve as the basis for theories which are new and astonishing. The axe is now laid to
the root of the tree in a very different fashion from what was done by Bishop Colenso, or the author of
Supernatural Religion. Evolution and the comparaitve method are here applied, with the greatest boldness,
to the study of language, typology, myths, the genesis and succession of gods, the antiquities of the Jews, and
subjects which touch us more nearly still. Only profound scholars will be competent to question, or capable of
fairly judging, the author‟s main results.”—Modern Review.
“Mr. GERALD M ASSEY‟S Book of Beginnings, in two portentous volumes, which it appears are only
introductory to the subject, contains an enormous mass of partly digested information, the object of which is to
show that „the universal parent of language, of symbolism, of early forms of law, of art and science, is
Egypt.‟
“In every name, every tradition, every observance of almost every people, the author‟s ingenuity finds
traces of an Egyptian origin. We hardly know whether to marvel and the industry, the curiously recondite
knowledge, and unquestioned faith in the main thesis, which mark these volumes; or at the want of discrimination
between what is valuable and worthless, and the contempt for the ascertained (hithorto received?) truths of
history, religion, ethnology, and philology. . . . His work will be a quarry out of which future enterprise may
here and there extract a diamond.”—Guardian.
“Since Mr. GERALD MASSEY‟S great work appeared, numerous criticisms of it have come under our notice.
And of these scarcely one has indicated that the reviewer had closely studied the book, while most have shown
but too plainly that its pages had been but skimmed over hurriedly and perfunctorily.
“This is no paste-and-scissors compilation, made as a commercial speculation, but a conscientious compilation
and analysis of all available material which bears upon the history of Egypt or throws light upon the beginnings of
her people.
“This book is an encylopædia of Egyptology in itself; and though the reader disagree ever so much with
Mr. Massey as to an African rather than an Asiatic or American origin of the race, yet he must all the same
value is most highly, as the best repository extant of the data that every student of history and ethnology needs
for a comprehension of those subjects. Were our purpose to do more than to call attention to this encyclopædic
work, and recommend it to Asiatic and Anglo-Indian buyers, we might challenge the accuracy of the author‟s
philological deductions, as of his ethnic theory. So liberal a thinker as Mr. G ERALD MASSEY will be most
unlikely to deny our statement, that the last word has not yet been said about the origin and distribution of the
races of mankind. Possibly he may even concede to us the reasonableness of our belief that the mist will
never be cleared away until the treasures of certain hidden libraries in the possession of a group of Asiatic
recluses shall be given out to the world. But, be that as it may, we feel too thankful to him for the present
compendious contribution to Egyptological literature to attempt any criticism upon a single reading of his
book in the hurry of editorial and official duties. One thing we may at least say, that he has traced with
minute painstaking the Egyptian parentage of the whole array of Bible myths and miracles. This is
unpalatable truth for our benevolent enemies, the Padris, but Mr. M ASSEY makes out his case. They may
revile but they cannot answer him.”—Theosophist, Madras.
extent. Mr. MASSEY is an independent thinker. After prolonged and laborious inquiry he rejects certain
modern theories as to the origin of civilization and the formation of language. He is no believer in the „Aryan
hypothesis.‟ He contents that the transition from the bestial to the lowest human condition took place not in
Central Asia or Northern India, but in the interior of Africa, and that the stream of culture flowed along the
valley of the Nile. He shows that language is derived not from abstract roots, but from signs and symbolic
actions far antecedent. He does away with the notion of a civilization springing up suddenly, or miraculously
communicated to man, and of a language rich and complete in its origin. For the first time, perhaps, we
have inquiries into primitive philology, mythology, and the early history of our species untained by the precon-
ceived notion of an absolute and qualitative distinction between man and the lower animals. The author‟s results
are in strict accord with those which modern naturalists have reached by totally different processes. We do not
hesitate to say that if the substance of this work could be presented in a condensed form, freed as much as
possible from „scaffolding,‟ it would form a valuable—almost necessary—companion to Darwin‟s Descent of
Man, the one work complementing and supporting the other. . . Only the leisurely and conscientious reader or
the candid reviewer will succeed in fairly grasping Mr. M ASSEY‟S current of thought; this the rather because the
conclusions reached will be, to many, grivieously unwelcome. The section on the „Typology of Language‟ must
ultimately give Comparative Philology a new departure and a more rational character. . . . Reluctantly
breaking off our survey of this remarkable book, we can merely hope that what we have said may at least
excite the curiosity of the reader, and lead him to inquire for himself. We would, indeed, bespeak for Mr.
MASSEY‟S work the earnest attention of Evolutionists. To us it seems that he is turning the only position of
importance held by our opponents, and that his movement, if properly followed up, will be decisive.”—
Journal of Science.
1
A copy of the first volume of The Natural Genesis having been sent to the editor of the Journal of Science,
as a pronounced Evolutionist, for private perusal, he inferred that it was intended for review. Hence a
notice of the one imperfect and unpublished volume appeared in the Journal for July, 1883. A copy was
similarly sent from the printers to Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who replies:—“Thanks for your great and
wonderful work. I see it contains many things of profound interest. The sections on „Numbers‟ and
„Language‟ appear to me especially interesting.”
EDITORIAL NOTE TO THE CELEPHAÏS PRESS EDITION.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This edition of The Natural Genesis was key-entered / scanned and proofed by Frater T.S.
from page images of photocopies of the first edition. Layout and pagination have been
retained as far as possible, although I have made no attempt to match the typeface . A few
corrections and clarifications were made in footnotes where I was able to determine what
Massey was actually referring to and had access to the works in question; unfortunately it is
beyond the scope of the present treatment to track down all of Masseyřs references and
prepare a proper bibliography for this work (a valiant attempt was made by Jon Lange on the
website masseiana.org which now sadly appears to be offline).
To clarify: Ritual refers to the Egyptian Book of the Dead; Massey was mainly using a mid-
19th century translation by Samuel Birch of the Turin Papyrus (Ptolemaic period), to which I
do not have access; it was published in 1867 in vol. V of the English edition of C.K.J. Bunsenřs
Egypt‟s Place in Universal History (along with Birchřs Egyptian grammar and hieroglyphic
dictionary) which work was apparently rare even by the mid-1870s. In some cases the chapter
numbers he gives seem to be out compared to later editions, and in others I have been
unable to trace the references at all; the well-known translations by Budge and Faulkner are
from the earlier ŖTheban Rescensionŗ (New Kingdom period).
Records denotes a series of small volumes titled Records of the Past, comprising
translations of Egyptian and Assyrian texts, published by Samuel Bagster in London; the
first series of twelve volumes was issued 1874-1881. A second series of six volumes followed,
but post-dates The Natural Genesis (Massey cites them several times in Ancient Egypt). The
series has had occasional reprints, some libraries have sets, even first editions can be
obtained for fairly reasonable prices on the second hand and antiquarian market (going on a
quick search at AbeBooks) and the whole of the first series can be found online as page
images through the Internet Archive.
Masseyřs citations of ŖHermes Trismegistusŗ are apparently to J. Everardřs redaction of
the ŖDivine Pymanderŗ (first pub. 1650, many reprints), the numbering of which differs
radically from modern editions of the Corpus Hermeticum (ŘPoimandrēs,ř the first tract in the
CH numbering, whose title is frequently referred to the entire collection, is Everardřs ŘSecond
Bookř) this volume contains the treatises now known as CH I-XIV plus three other Hermetic
tracts from different sources, possibly taken from the anthology of Stobæus.
The student is reminded that the transliterations and translations of Egyptian materials
on which Massey was relying (principally those in Birchřs dictionary, as mentioned above),
while reasonably up to date at the time he was writing, have been largely superseded by
subsequent discoveries and work.
Editions of Masseyřs other major works (A Book of the Beginnings and Ancient Egypt: the
Light of the World) are in preparation by Celephaïs Press. An edition of Gerald Massey‟s
Lectures has been issued under the Unspeakable Press imprint.
Celephaïs Press
Ulthar - Sarkomand - Inquanok – Leeds