The name of one of the oldest deities of which we have any record is
Set (Phoenician) or Seth (Hebrew). Traces of this God are found in
all oriental countries; and in the most primitive religions, whose
traditions are still extant, he (or she) appears as the supreme God.
After the subjection of Egypt by the stranger kings and the consequent
introduction into the country of Sabianism, the dual creative force
residing in the sun is represented by Seth. We are told that Seth
signifies "appointed or put in the place of the murdered Abel."
That there is some deep mystery connected with this subject none who has
studied it carefully can help observing.
According to the story of creation as set forth in the Jehovistic
account, on Saturday night, after God had finished his work, and
immediately after he had commanded Adam to "be fruitful," he presents
him with a staff, which we observe is handed down to Enoch and all the
patriarchs. Here the mystery deepens, for it is declared that this staff
was presented to Seth, and that it was a branch of the Tree of Life.
That beneath this allegory is veiled a contest, or perhaps a compromise,
between the worshippers of two distinct sects, seems altogether
probable. That the handing down of this branch of the Tree of Life,
first to Adam, or man, by Aleim, and its subsequent transference to
Seth, the God of Nature, the Destroyer or Regenerator, seems to indicate
a victory for the adherents of a purer religion. The translator of
Kallimachus says: "It is well known to the learned reader that the
descendants of Cain are distinguished in Scripture by the name of the
sons of man or Adam; those of Seth by the name of the sons of God." Gen.
vi., 2.(85) It is stated in Julius Africanus that all the righteous men
and patriarchs down to the Saviour himself have sprung from Seth and
have been denominated as the sons of God in contradistinction to the
sons of man.
85) Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 527.
Doubtless at the time indicated by the transference of the creative
agency from Aleim to Adam, the worship of an abstract principle, or of
a Trinity composed of the powers of Nature, was losing its hold on the
minds of the people, and the creative power, or the reproductive energy
in human beings, was rapidly taking the place of the older Deity. These
higher principles forgotten, Adam, or man, had become the Creator.
It is not improbable that the terms Adam, Cain, Abel, and Seth have
an esoteric meaning which for ages was known only to the priests. From
various facts which in later times are being brought forward regarding
the ancient myths of Genesis, it is believed that these names originally
stood for races of men, and that subsequently certain religious
doctrines came to be attached to them. The offering of fruit by Cain,
the elder brother, who was a tiller of the ground, and that of flesh by
Abel, who was a keeper of sheep, indicates a quarrel which ended in
the death of the latter. After the death of Abel, or after one of these
principles or sects was subdued, the older religion was revived,
and Seth, as the Aleim, or as the creative power within the sun, was
"appointed" or again worshipped.
It would seem that Seth was appointed to represent the third person in
the ancient Trinity--the Destroyer or Regenerator which had previously
come to embody all the powers of the Creator and Preserver. The fact has
been observed that the very ancient philosophers believed matter to be
eternal, hence, seeming death, or destruction, was necessary to renewed
life or regeneration. In other words, creation was but continuous change
in the form of matter.
Of the doctrines of the Sethians extant at the beginning of
Christianity, Hippolytus says that their system "is made up of tenets
from natural philosophers. These tenets embrace a belief in the Eternal
Logos--Darkness, Mist, and Tempest." These elements subsequently became
identified with the Evil Principle, or the Devil. The cold of winter,
the darkness of night, and water, were finally set forth as the Trinity.
Regarding cold, darkness, and water, or darkness, mist, and tempest,
Hippolytus observes:
"These the Sethian says are the three principles of our system; or when
he states that three were born in paradise--Adam, Eve, the serpent; or
when he speaks of three persons, namely, Cain, Abel, Seth, and again
of three others, Shem, Ham, Japheth; or when he mentions three
patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; or when he speaks of three days
before the sun, etc."
The same writer says that their entire system is derived from the
ancients; that, antecedent to the Eleusinian mysteries, were enacted by
them the ceremonies connected with the worship of the Great Mother.(86)
86) Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, book v., ch. 15.
We have observed that through some process not thoroughly understood
at the present time, the adherents of the older faith had succeeded in
reinstating their Deity. The powers of Nature had come to be represented
by Typhon Seth. It was the God of Death and of Life, of Destruction and
Regeneration. The simoom of the desert and the cold of winter were Seth,
as were also the genial powers of Spring. We are informed by various
writers that Typhon Seth was feminine. She was the early God of the
Jews. In other words, the Jews were formerly worshippers of a female
Deity. Jehovah, Iav, was originally female.
Although the secret meaning of all the allegories contained in the Old
Testament is not fully understood, still the belief that Cain, Abel, and
Seth represented the self-triplicated Deity at a time when the idea of
man as a creator had been accepted, or when his power to reproduce was
becoming the highest idea of a creative force, is consistent with what
is known of the Cabala of the Jews, or of the esoteric meaning of the
Jewish scriptures formerly known only to the priests. In other
words, the ancient doctrines, the true meaning of which was no longer
understood by them, were patched together as a basis for the later
developments in Jewish religious experience.
We have seen that six hundred years after Adam appears Noah, another
self-triplicated Saviour or preserver of man, with his ark or seed
vessel, beneath which is veiled the female element. Afterward Abraham
becomes the Great Father or Saviour, and later Moses. That, in the time
of the latter, the more ancient worship of a creative force in Nature
represented by the Aleim, had, by the masses of the people, been wholly
lost, is evident from the Old Testament writings. The worship of the
Father, the male power, in opposition to that of the Mother, or the
female power, constituted the religion of Moses. In the religion of the
Jews, Jehovah came to be regarded as wholly male and as spirit, while
Edam (translated "downward tending"), the female principle, was matter,
or woman, which finally became identified with the Devil.
The philosophical doctrine that spirit is evolved through matter, or
that matter must be raised to a certain dynamical power before spirit
can manifest itself through it, was no longer understood; only the husks
of this doctrine--the myths and symbols of Nature-worship--remained;
these were taken literally, and thus man's religion was made to conform
to his lowered estate.
When man had so far gained the ascendancy over woman as to assert that
he is the sole Creator of their joint offspring, he was no longer of the
earth earthy, but at once became the child of heaven. He was, however,
bound to earth through his association with matter, or with woman, from
whom he was unable to free himself. The "sons of God" were united "to
the daughters of man." Jahvah, the "God of hosts," who was revengeful,
weak, jealous, and cruel, was worshipped in the place of Aleim the
great dual force throughout Nature. The ethereal, spiritual male essence
resided somewhere in the heavens and created from afar, while the earth
(female) furnished only the body or material substance.
In the history of the god Seth is to be found a clue to the way in which
the sublime and philosophical doctrines of the ancients, after their
true meaning was forgotten, were finally changed so as to conform to the
enforced humiliation and degradation of women.
Seth or Typhon was for ages worshipped throughout Egypt, and as she
comprehended the powers of Nature, or the creative energy residing in
the sun and earth, little is heard of any other god. Strange it is,
however, that Seth is worshipped more in her capacity as Destroyer than
as Regenerator. So soon as we understand the origin and character of the
Devil, and so soon as we divest ourselves of the false ideas which under
a state of ignorance and gross sensuality came to prevail relative to
the "powers of darkness," we shall perceive that his (or her) Satanic
majesty was once a very respectable personage and a powerful Divinity--a
Divinity which was worshipped by a people whose superior intelligence
can scarcely be questioned. Regarding this subject Higgins remarks:
"Persons who have not given much consideration to these subjects will be
apt to wonder that any people should be found to offer adoration to the
evil principle; but they do not consider that, in all these recondite
systems, the evil principle, or the Destroyer, or Lord of Death, was at
the same time the Regenerator. He could not destroy but to reproduce,
and it was probably not till this principle began to be forgotten, that
the evil being, per se, arose; for in some nations this effect seems to
have taken place. Thus Baal-Zebub is, in Iberno Celtic, Baal Lord, and
Zab Death, Lord of Death; but he is also called Aleim, the same as the
God of the Israelites; and this is right, because he was one of the
Trimurti or Trinity.
"If I be correct respecting the word Aleim being feminine, we here see
the Lord of Death of the feminine gender; but the Goddess Ashtaroth or
Astarte, the Eoster of the Germans, was also called Aleim. Here again
Aleim is feminine, which shows that I am right in making Aleim the
plural feminine. Thus we have distinctly found Aleim the Creator (Gen.
i., 1), Aleim the Preserver, and Aleim the Destroyer, and this not by
inference, but literally expressed."(87)
87) Anacalypsis, ch. ii., p. 66.
At one period of their history the Hebrews worshipped Ashtaroth and
Baal, they together representing the great Aleim, the indivisible God,
but after the Israelites had chosen the worship of the male principle
as an independent deity, or as the only important agency in the creative
processes, as Baal might not be represented aside from his counterpart
Ashtaroth, he was no longer adored but came to stand for something
"approaching the Devil." Forlong has observed the fact that, although in
Hebrew Baal is masculine, in the Greek translations he is feminine both
in the Old and New Testaments.(88)
88) Forlong, Rivers of Life, p. 223.
Jehovah was originally female, so, also, was Netpe the Holy Spirit of
the Egyptian Tree of Life. We are given to understand that Netpe was the
same as Rhea, the partner of Sev or Saturn, and that her hieroglyphic
name was "Abyss of Heaven." Osiris was the son of this goddess who was
really a Mai or Mary, the Celestial Mother, he being the only God of
the Egyptians who was born upon this earth and lived among men. Of
this Forlong remarks: "His birthplace was Mount Sinai; called by the
Egyptians Nysa, hence his Greek name Dionysos."
As the Palm was the first offering of Mother Earth to her children,
so Osiris was the first offspring of the Egyptian Celestial Virgin to
mankind. He was the new sun which through the winter months had been
"buried," but which in process of time arose to gladden all the earth.
He was also the new Sun of Righteousness which was to renew the world,
or redeem mankind from sin.
The female principle for the time being cast out of the Deity, Osiris,
the male element, now outwardly assumes the position of supreme God. It
was, however, reserved for a later and more sensuous age to permanently
adopt an absurdity so opposed to all established ideas relative to
a creative force in Nature and in man. Seth, the Destroyer, had been
deposed, but, so deeply rooted in the human mind had become the idea
of a female Creator, that Isis, the Queen of Heaven, a somewhat lower
conception of Muth, or of universal womanhood, soon assumed the place
of Seth beside Osiris. Later in the history of Egypt, when the gods have
become greatly multiplied, and the original significance of the deity
obscured, Horus, the child and the third member in the later Egyptian
triad, not unfrequently appears in her place as one of the eight great
gods.
The fact is observed that the history of Osiris is not alone the
"history of the circle of the year, or of the sun dying away and
resuscitating itself again, but that it is also the history of the
cycle of 600." It has been said that of the component elements of his
hieroglyphical name, Isis is the first, and that the name Osiris really
signifies the "Eye of Isis."
According to Plutarch, Isis and Muth are identical, but from the
evidence at hand it is plain that Muth comprehends divine womanhood,
or the female principle as it was regarded at an earlier stage of human
growth. Muth is not only the parent of the sun, or the force which
produces the sun, but she is also Wisdom, the first emanation from the
Deity, at the same time that she comprehends all the possibilities of
Nature. Isis seems to represent the Deity at a time when the higher
truths known to a more ancient people were beginning to lose their hold
upon the race.
Renouf informs us that the word Maat, or Muth, means Law, "not in that
forensic sense of command issued either by a human sovereign authority,
or by a divine legislator, like the laws of the Hebrews, but in the
sense of that unerring order which governs the universe, whether in its
physical or its moral aspect."(89) The same writer observes further that
Maat "is called mistress of Heaven, ruler of earth, and president of the
nether world," and in a further description of the conception embodied
in this Deity, refers to the fact that while she is the mother of the
sun she is also the first emanation from God.
89) The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 126.
Although Typhon Seth was long worshipped as the sole Deity in Egypt,
in later ages the god-idea came to be represented by Seth and Osiris.
Toward the close of Typhon Seth's reign, Horus, the child, the young
sun, was represented "as rising from his hiding-place, attracting
beneficent vapors to return them back as dews, which the Egyptians
called the tears of Isis."
Seth and Osiris represent a division of the Deity. Osiris, as the sun,
represents heat; as man, or as god, he stands for desire. Seth or Typhon
stands for the cold of winter, the simoom of the desert, or the "wind
that blasts." Seth, Osiris, and Horus constitute a Trinity of which
Muth is the Great Mother. Finally, with the gradual ascendancy of male
influence and power, it is observed that Seth appears as the brother of
Osiris.
It is the opinion of Bunsen that the fundamental idea of Osiris and Set
was "not merely the glorification of the sun, but was also the worship
of the primitive creative power."(90) But, as in Egypt the creative
agency was regarded as both female and male, the former being in the
ascendancy, this fact of itself would seem to determine the sex and
position of Seth.
90) History of Egypt, vol. iv., p. 319.
In the ideas concerning Seth and Osiris may be observed something of the
manner in which the fructifying agencies of the sun and the reproductive
power in human beings were blended and together worshipped as the Deity;
while through the history of these gods are to be traced some of the
processes by which the idea of the Creator was changed from female to
male.
In all countries, at a certain stage in the history of religion, the
transference of female deified power to mortal man may be observed.
In the attempt to change Seth or Typhon into a male God may be noted
perhaps the first effort in Egypt to dethrone, or lessen the female
power in the god-idea.
The fact seems plain that the Great Typhon Seth, or Set, who conferred
on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties of Egypt
"the symbols of life and power," was none other than the primitive
Regenerator or Destroyer, who was for ages worshipped as the God of
Nature the Aleim, or the life-giving energy throughout the universe.
We have observed that when the profound principles underlying the most
ancient doctrines had been lost or forgotten, and when through the
decay of philosophy, and through the stimulation of the sensual in human
nature, mankind had lost the power to reason abstractly, Destruction,
which was symbolized by darkness or the absence of the sun's rays,
finally became the evil principle, or the Devil. Darkness and cold,
which had formerly been worshipped as the powers which brought forth the
sun, or as mother of the sun, in process of time became the agency which
is ever warring with good and which is constantly destroying that which
the latter brings forth.
We are informed by Forlong that "some derive our term Devil from Niphl
or Nevil, the wind that blasts or obstructs the growth of corn; and it
used sometimes to be written th' evil, which is D'evil or Devil."
It was "this Dualistic heresy which separated the Zend or Persian branch
of the Aryans from their Vedic brethren, and compelled them to emigrate
to the westward."(91)
91) See Rawlinson, Notes on the Early History of Babylon.
The ancient philosophical truth that matter is eternal, and that the
destruction of vegetable life through the agency of cold was one of
the necessary processes of re-generation, or the renewal of life, had
evidently been lost sight of at the time when Seth was dethroned in
Egypt. Wilkinson informs us that "both Seth and Osiris were adored until
a change took place respecting Seth, brought about apparently by foreign
influence." Sethi or Sethos, a ruler whose reign represents the Augustan
age of Egyptian splendor, received his name from this Deity. It is said
that during the twentieth dynasty Seth is suddenly portrayed as the
principle of evil "with which is associated sin." Consequently all the
effigies of this great Goddess were destroyed and all her names and
inscriptions "which could be reached" were effaced.
Bunsen tells us that Schelling, who has made a study of Egyptian
mythology, although totally ignorant of the later historical facts which
by means of hieroglyphical monuments have been obtained, had arrived at
the conclusion that Seth had occupied an important position in the Deity
down to the fourteenth century B.C. "Schelling had on mere speculative
grounds been brought to lay down as a postulate that Typhon, at some
early period, had been considered by the Egyptians as a beneficent and
powerful God."
Wilkinson says that the character given to Seth, who was called
Baal-Seth and the God of the Gentiles, "is explained by his being the
cause of evil." We are assured that formerly "Sin the great serpent," or
Apophis the giant, was distinct from Seth who was a deity and a part
of the divine system. But after the recondite principles underlying
sun-worship were lost or forgotten; when cold and darkness, or the
sinking away of the sun's rays, which are necessary to the reappearance
of light and warmth, came to be regarded as the destructive element, or
the evil principle, woman became identified with this principle. She was
the producer of evil, and came to be represented in connection with
a serpent as the cause of all earthly or material things. She is
Destruction, but not Regeneration. She is in fact matter. The cold of
winter and the darkness of night, which are necessary to the return
of the sun's warmth and which were formerly set forth as a beneficent
mother who brings forth the sun, became only the evil principle--that
which obscures the light. In fact Darkness or absence of the sun's heat
has become the Devil. It is the "cause of evil in the world."
With woman blinded by superstition, with every instinct of the female
nature outraged, and with her position as the central figure in the
Deity and in the family usurped, her temples were soon profaned,
her images defiled, and the titles representing her former greatness
transferred to males.
There is no doubt but this doctrine was the legitimate outcome of the
decay of female influence. Through the further stimulation of the lower
nature of man its absurdity gradually increased, until under the system
calling itself Christian it finally reached its height. This subject
will be referred to later in these pages.
When we remember that the original representation of the Deity among the
nations of the earth consisted of a female figure embracing a child,
and when we observe that subsequently in the development of the god-idea
woman appears associated with a serpent as the cause of evil in the
world, the history of the God Seth, who, as we have seen, represented
the processes of Nature, namely Destruction and Regeneration, seems
quite significant as indicating some of the actual processes involved in
this change.
There can be little doubt that the facts relating to this Deity indicate
the source whence has sprung the great theological dogma underlying
Christianity, that woman is the cause of evil in the world.