the origin of which cannot be traced, was meant to represent the Trinity
of his attributes, the three Masonic pillars, WISDOM, STRENGTH, and
HARMONY.
The Prophet Ezekiel, in the 4th verse of the 9th chapter, says: "And the
Lord said unto him, 'Go through the midst of the city, through the midst
of Jerusalem, and mark the letter TAU upon the foreheads of those that
sigh and mourn for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof." So the Latin Vulgate, and the probably most ancient copies of
the Septuagint translate the passage. This _Tau_ was in the form of the
cross of this Degree, and it was the emblem of _life_ and _salvation_.
The Samaritan _Tau_ and the Ethiopic _Tavvi_ are the evident prototype
of the Greek [Greek: τ]; and we learn from Tertullian, Origen, and St.
Jerome, that the Hebrew _Tau_ was anciently written in the form of a
Cross.
In ancient times the mark _Tau_ was set on those who had been acquitted
by their judges, as a symbol of innocence. The military commanders
placed it on soldiers who escaped unhurt from the field of battle, as a
sign of their safety under the Divine Protection.
It was a sacred symbol among the Druids. Divesting a tree of part of its
branches, they left it in the shape of a Tau Cross, preserved it
carefully, and consecrated it with solemn ceremonies. On the tree they
cut deeply the word THAU, by which they meant God. On the right arm of
the Cross, they inscribed the word HESULS, on the left BELEN or BELENUS,
and on the middle of the trunk THARAMIS. This represented the sacred
_Triad_.
It is certain that the Indians, Egyptians, and Arabians paid veneration
to the sign of the Cross, thousands of years before the coming of
Christ. Everywhere it was a sacred symbol. The Hindus and the Celtic
Druids built many of their Temples in the form of a Cross, as the ruins
still remaining clearly show, and particularly the ancient Druidical
Temple at Classerniss in the Island of Lewis in Scotland. The Circle is
of 12 Stones. On each of the sides, east, west, and south, are three. In
the centre was the image of the Deity; and on the north an avenue of
twice nineteen stones, and one at the entrance. The Supernal Pagoda at
Benares is in the form of a Cross; and the Druidical subterranean grotto
at New Grange in Ireland.
The Statue of Osiris at Rome had the same emblem. Isis and Ceres also
bore it; and the caverns of initiation were constructed in that shape
with a pyramid over the _Sacellum_.
Crosses were cut in the stones of the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria;
and many Tau Crosses are to be seen in the sculptures of Alabastion and
Esné, in Egypt. On coins, the symbol of the Egyptian God Kneph was a
Cross within a Circle.
The Crux Ansata was the particular emblem of Osiris, and his sceptre
ended with that figure. It was also the emblem of Hermes, and was
considered a Sublime Hieroglyphic, possessing mysterious powers and
virtues, as a wonder-working amulet.
The Sacred Tau occurs in the hands of the mummy-shaped figures between
the forelegs of the row of Sphynxes, in the great avenue leading from
Luxor to Karnac. By the Tau Cross the Cabalists expressed the number
10, a perfect number, denoting Heaven, and the Pythagorean Tetractys, or
incommunicable name of God. The Tau Cross is also found on the stones in
front of the door of the Temple of Amunoth III, at Thebes, who reigned
about the time when the Israelites took possession of Canaan: and the
Egyptian Priests carried it in all the sacred processions.
Tertullian, who had been initiated, informs us that the Tau was
inscribed on the forehead of every person who had been admitted into the
Mysteries of Mithras.
As the simple Tau represented Life, so, when the Circle, symbol of
Eternity, was added, it represented Eternal Life.
At the Initiation of a King, the Tau, as the emblem of life and key of
the Mysteries, was impressed upon his lips.
In the Indian Mysteries, the Tau Cross, under the name of _Tiluk_, was
marked upon the body of the candidate, as a sign that he was set apart
for the Sacred Mysteries.
On the upright tablet of the King, discovered at Nimroud, are the names
of thirteen Great Gods (among which are YAV and BEL); and the left-hand
character of every one is a cross composed of two cuneiform characters.
The Cross appears upon an Ancient Phœnician medal found in the ruins of
Citium; on the very ancient Buddhist Obelisk near Ferns in Ross-shire;
on the Buddhist Round Towers in Ireland, and upon the splendid obelisk
of the same era at Forres in Scotland.
Upon the facade of a temple at Kalabche in Nubia are three regal
figures, each holding a Crux Ansata.
Like the Subterranean Mithriatic Temple at New Grange in Scotland, the
Pagodas of Benares and Mathura were in the form of a Cross. Magnificent
Buddhist Crosses were erected, and are still standing, at Clonmacnoise,
Finglas, and Kilcullen in Ireland. Wherever the monuments of Buddhism
are found, in India, Ceylon, or Ireland, we find the Cross: for Buddha
or Boudh was represented to have been crucified.
All the planets known to the Ancients were distinguished by the Mystic
Cross, in conjunction with the solar or lunar symbols; Saturn by a cross
over a crescent, Jupiter by a cross under a crescent, Mars by a cross
resting obliquely on a circle, Venus by a cross under a circle, and
Mercury by a cross surmounted by a circle and that by a crescent.
The Solstices, Cancer and Capricorn, the two Gates of Heaven are the two
pillars of Hercules, beyond which he, the Sun, never journeyed: and they
still appear in our Lodges, as the two great columns, Jachin and Boaz,
and also as the two parallel lines that bound the circle, with a point
in the centre, emblem of the Sun between the two tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn.
The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius,
Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English
brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures
they said: "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that
Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial
influence dispenses blessings to mankind." It is also said in those
lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word _Prudentia_ means, in its
original and fullest signification, _Foresight_: and accordingly the
Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the
All-Seeing Eye, which to the Ancients was the Sun.
Even the Dagger of the Elu of Nine is that used in the Mysteries of
Mithras; which, with its blade black and hilt white, was an emblem of
the two principles of Light and Darkness.
Isis, the same as Ceres, was, as we learn from Eratosthenes, the
Constellation Virgo, represented by a woman holding an ear of wheat. The
different emblems which accompany her in the description given by
Apuleius, a serpent on either side, a golden vase, with a serpent twined
round the handle, and the animals that marched in procession, the bear,
the ape, and Pegasus, represented the Constellations that, rising with
the Virgin, when on the day of the Vernal Equinox she stood in the
Oriental gate of Heaven, brilliant with the rays of the full moon,
seemed to march in her train.
The cup, consecrated in the Mysteries both of Isis and Eleusis, was the
Constellation Crater or the Cup. The sacred vessel of the Isiac ceremony
finds its counterpart in the Heavens. The Olympic robe presented to the
Initiate, a magnificent mantle, covered with figures of serpents and
animals, and under which were twelve other sacred robes, wherewith he
was clothed in the sanctuary, alluded to the starry Heaven and the
twelve signs: while the seven preparatory immersions in the sea alluded
to the seven spheres, through which the soul plunged, to arrive here
below and take up its abode in a body.
The Celestial Virgin, during the last three centuries that preceded the
Christian era, occupied the horoscope or Oriental point, and that gate
of Heaven through which the Sun and Moon ascended above the horizon at
the two equinoxes. Again it occupied it at midnight, at the Winter
Solstice, the precise moment when the year commenced. Thus it was
essentially connected with the march of times and seasons, of the Sun,
the Moon, and day and night, at the principal epochs of the year. At the
equinoxes were celebrated the greater and lesser Mysteries of Ceres.
When souls descended past the Balance, at the moment when the Sun
occupied that point, the Virgin rose before him; she stood at the gates
of day and opened them to him. Her brilliant Star, Spica Virginis, and
Arcturus, in Boötes, northwest of it, heralded his coming. When he had
returned to the Vernal Equinox, at the moment when souls were generated,
again it was the Celestial Virgin that led the march of the signs of
night; and in her stars came the beautiful full moon of that month.
Night and day were in succession introduced by her, when they began to
diminish in length; and souls, before arriving at the gates of Hell,
were also led by her. In going through these signs, they passed the Styx
in the 8th Degree of Libra. She was the famous Sibyl who initiated
Eneas, and opened to him the way to the infernal regions.
This peculiar situation of the Constellation Virgo, has caused it to
enter into all the sacred fables in regard to nature, under different
names and the most varied forms. It often takes the name of Isis or the
Moon, which, when at its full at the Vernal Equinox, was in union with
it or beneath its feet. Mercury (or Anubis) having his domicile and
exaltation in the sign Virgo, was, in all the sacred fables and
Sanctuaries, the inseparable companion of Isis, without whose counsels
she did nothing.
This relation between the emblems and mysterious recitals of the
initiations, and the Heavenly bodies and order of the world, was still
more clear in the Mysteries of Mithras, adored as the Sun in Asia Minor,
Cappadocia, Armenia, and Persia, and whose Mysteries went to Rome in the
time of Sylla. This is amply proved by the descriptions we have of the
Mithriac cave, in which were figured the two movements of the Heavens,
that of the fixed Stars and that of the Planets, the Constellations, the
eight mystic gates of the spheres, and the symbols of the elements. So
on a celebrated monument of that religion, found at Rome, were figured,
the Serpent or Hydra under Leo, as in the Heavens, the Celestial Dog,
the Bull, the Scorpion, the Seven Planets, represented by seven altars,
the Sun, Moon, and emblems relating to Light, to Darkness, and to their
succession during the year, where each in turn triumphs for six months.
The Mysteries of Atys were celebrated when the Sun entered Aries; and
among the emblems was a ram at the foot of a tree which was being cut
down.
Thus, if not the whole truth, it is yet a large part of it, that the
Heathen Pantheon, in its infinite diversity of names and
personifications, was but a multitudinous, though in its origin
unconscious allegory, of which physical phenomena, and principally the
Heavenly Bodies, were the fundamental types. The glorious images of
Divinity which formed Jehovah's Host, were the Divine Dynasty or real
theocracy which governed the early world; and the men of the golden age,
whose looks held commerce with the skies, and who watched the radiant
rulers bringing Winter and Summer to mortals, might be said with poetic
truth to live in immediate communication with Heaven, and, like the
Hebrew Patriarchs, to see God face to face. Then the Gods introduced
their own worship among mankind: then Oannes, Oe or Aquarius rose from
the Red Sea to impart science to the Babylonians; then the bright Bull
legislated for India and Crete; and the Lights of Heaven, personified as
Liber and Ceres, hung the Bœotian hills with vineyards, and gave the
golden sheaf to Eleusis. The children of men were, in a sense, allied or
married, to those sons of God who sang the jubilee of creation; and the
encircling vault with its countless Stars, which to the excited
imagination of the solitary Chaldean wanderer appeared as animated
intelligences, might naturally be compared to a gigantic ladder, on
which, in their rising and setting, the Angel luminaries appeared to be
ascending and descending between earth and Heaven. The original
revelation died out of men's memories; they worshipped the Creature
instead of the Creator; and holding all earthly things as connected by
eternal links of harmony and sympathy with the heavenly bodies, they
united in one view astronomy, astrology, and religion. Long wandering
thus in error, they at length ceased to look upon the Stars and external
nature as Gods; and by directing their attention to the microcosm or
narrower world of self, they again became acquainted with the True Ruler
and Guide of the Universe, and used the old fables and superstitions as
symbols and allegories, by which to convey and under which to hide the
great truths which had faded out of most men's remembrance.
In the Hebrew writings, the term "Heavenly Hosts" includes not only the
counsellors and emissaries of Jehovah, but also the celestial
luminaries; and the stars, imagined in the East to be animated
intelligences, presiding over human weal and woe, are identified with
the more distinctly impersonated messengers or angels, who execute the
Divine decrees, and whose predominance in Heaven is in mysterious
correspondence and relation with the powers and dominions of the earth.
In Job, the Morning Stars and the Sons of God are identified; they join
in the same chorus of praise to the Almighty; they are both susceptible
of joy; they walk in brightness, and are liable to impurity and
imperfection in the sight of God. The Elohim originally included not
only foreign superstitious forms, but also all that host of Heaven which
was revealed in poetry to the shepherds of the desert, now as an
encampment of warriors, now as careering in chariots of fire, and now as
winged messengers, ascending and descending the vault of Heaven, to
communicate the will of God to mankind.
"The Eternal," says the Bereshith Rabba to Genesis, "called forth
Abraham and his posterity out of the dominion of the stars; by nature,
the Israelite was a servant to the stars, and born under their
influence, as are the heathen; but by virtue of the law given on Mount
Sinai, he became liberated from this degrading servitude." The Arabs had
a similar legend. The Prophet Amos explicitly asserts that the
Israelites, in the desert, worshipped, not Jehovah, but Moloch, or a
Star-God, equivalent to Saturn. The Gods El or Jehovah were not merely
planetary or solar. Their symbolism, like that of every other Deity, was
coextensive with nature, and with the mind of man. Yet the astrological
character is assigned even to Jehovah. He is described as seated on the
pinnacle of the Universe, leading forth the Hosts of Heaven, and telling
them unerringly by name and number. His stars are His sons and His eyes,
which run through the whole world, keeping watch over men's deeds. The
stars and planets were properly the angels. In Pharisaic tradition, as
in the phraseology of the New Testament, the Heavenly Host appears as an
Angelic Army, divided into regiments and brigades, under the command of
imaginary chiefs, such as Massaloth, Legion, Kartor Gistra etc.--each
Gistra being captain of 365,000 myriads of stars. The Seven Spirits
which stand before the throne, spoken of by several Jewish writers, and
generally presumed to have been immediately derived from the Persian
Amshaspands, were ultimately the seven planetary intelligences, the
original model of the seven-branched golden candlestick exhibited to
Moses on God's mountain. The stars were imagined to have fought in their
courses against Sisera. The heavens were spoken of as holding a
predominance over earth, as governing it by signs and ordinances, and as
containing the elements of that astrological wisdom, more especially
cultivated by the Babylonians and Egyptians.
Each nation was supposed by the Hebrews to have its own guardian angel,
and its own provincial star. One of the chiefs of the Celestial Powers,
at first Jehovah Himself in the character of the Sun, standing in the
height of Heaven, overlooking and governing all things, afterward one of
the angels or subordinate planetary genii of Babylonian or Persian
mythology, was the patron and protector of their own nation, "the Prince
that standeth for the children of thy people." The discords of earth
were accompanied by a warfare in the sky; and no people underwent the
visitation of the Almighty, without a corresponding chastisement being
inflicted on its tutelary angel.
The fallen Angels were also fallen Stars; and the first allusion to a
feud among the spiritual powers in early Hebrew Mythology, where Rabab
and his confederates are defeated, like the Titans in a battle against
the Gods, seems to identify the rebellious Spirits as part of the
visible Heavens, where the "high ones on high" are punished or chained,
as a signal proof of God's power and justice. God, it is said--
"Stirs the sea with His might--by His understanding He smote Rahab--His
breath clears the face of Heaven--His hand pierced the crooked
Serpent.... God withdraws not His anger; beneath Him bow the
confederates of Rahab."
Rahab always means a sea-monster: probably some such legendary monstrous
dragon, as in almost all mythologies is the adversary of Heaven and
demon of eclipse, in whose belly, significantly called the belly of
Hell, Hercules, like Jonah, passed three days, ultimately escaping with
the loss of his hair or rays. Chesil, the rebellious giant Orion,
represented in Job as riveted to the sky, was compared to Ninus or
Nimrod, the mythical founder of Nineveh (City of Fish) the mighty
hunter, who slew lions and panthers before the Lord. Rahab's
confederates are probably the "High ones on High," the Chesilim or
constellations in Isaiah, the Heavenly Host or Heavenly Powers, among
whose number were found folly and disobedience.
"I beheld," says Pseudo-Enoch, "seven stars like great blazing
mountains, and like Spirits, entreating me. And the angel said, This
place, until the consummation of Heaven and Earth, will be the prison of
the Stars and of the Host of Heaven. These are the Stars which
overstepped God's command before their time arrived; and came not at
their proper season; therefore was he offended with them, and bound
them, until the time of the consummation of their crimes in the secret
year." And again: "These Seven Stars are those which have transgressed
the commandment of the Most High God, and which are here bound until the
number of the days of their crimes be completed."
The Jewish and early Christian writers looked on the worship of the sun
and the elements with comparative indulgence. Justin Martyr and Clemens
of Alexandria admit that God had appointed the stars as legitimate
objects of heathen worship, in order to preserve throughout the world
some tolerable notions of natural religion. It seemed a middle point
between Heathenism and Christianity; and to it certain emblems and
ordinances of that faith seemed to relate. The advent of Christ was
announced by a Star from the East; and His nativity was celebrated on
the shortest day of the Julian Calendar, the day when, in the physical
commemorations of Persia and Egypt, Mithras or Osiris was newly found.
It was then that the acclamations of the Host of Heaven, the unfailing
attendants of the Sun, surrounded, as at the spring-dawn of creation,
the cradle of His birth-place, and that, in the words of Ignatius, "a
star, with light inexpressible, shone forth in the Heavens, to destroy
the power of magic and the bonds of wickedness; for God Himself had
appeared, in the form of man, for the renewal of eternal life."
But however infinite the variety of objects which helped to develop the
notion of Deity, and eventually assumed its place, substituting the
worship of the creature for that of the creator; of Parts of the body,
for that of the soul, of the Universe, still the notion itself was
essentially one of unity. The idea of one God, of a creative,
productive, governing unity, resided in the earliest exertion of
thought: and this monotheism of the primitive ages, makes every
succeeding epoch, unless it be the present appear only as a stage in the
progress of degeneracy and aberration Everywhere in the old faiths we
find the idea of a supreme or presiding Deity. Amun or Osiris presides
among the many gods of Egypt; Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs
the chorus of the constellations, as Zeus leads the solemn procession of
the celestial troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans.
"Amidst an infinite diversity of opinions on all other subjects," says
Maximus Tyrius, "the whole world is unanimous in the belief of one only
almighty King and Father of all."
There is always a Sovereign Power, a Zeus or Deus, Mahadeva or Adideva,
to whom belongs the maintenance of the order of the Universe. Among the
thousand gods of India, the doctrine of Divine Unity is never lost sight
of; and the ethereal Jove, worshipped by the Persian in an age long
before Xenophanes or Anaxagoras, appears as supremely comprehensive and
independent of planetary or elemental subdivisions, as the "Vast One" or
"Great Soul" of the Vedas.
But the simplicity of belief of the patriarchs did not exclude the
employment of symbolical representations. The mind never rests satisfied
with a mere feeling. That feeling ever strives to assume precision and
durability as an idea, by some _outward_ delineation of its thought.
Even the ideas that are above and beyond the senses, as all ideas of God
are, require the aid of the senses for their expression and
communication. Hence come the representative forms and symbols which
constitute the external investiture of every religion; attempts to
express a religious sentiment that is essentially _one_, and that vainly
struggles for adequate external utterance, striving to tell to one man,
to _paint_ to him, an idea existing in the mind of another, and
essentially incapable of utterance or description, in a language all the
words of which have a sensuous meaning. Thus, the idea being perhaps the
same in all, its expressions and utterances are infinitely various, and
branch into an infinite diversity of creeds and sects.
All religious expression is symbolism; since we can describe only what
we see; and the true objects of religion are unseen. The earliest
instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other religious
forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and
imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental
cultivation. To present a visible symbol to the eye of another is not to
inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to _you_. Hence the
philosopher soon superadded to these symbols, explanations addressed to
the ear, susceptible of more precision, but less effective, obvious, and
impressive than the painted or sculptured forms which he despised. Out
of these explanations grew by degrees a variety of narratives, whose
true object and meaning were gradually forgotten. And when these were
abandoned, and philosophy resorted to definitions and formulas, its
language was but a more refined symbolism, grappling with and attempting
to picture ideas impossible to be expressed. For the most abstract
expression for Deity which language can supply, is but a _sign_ or
_symbol_ for an object unknown, and no more truthful and adequate than
the terms Osiris and Vishnu, except as being less sensuous and explicit.
To say that He is a _Spirit_, is but to say that He is not matter.
_What_ spirit is, we can only define as the Ancients did, by resorting,
as if in despair, to some sublimized species of matter, as Light, Fire,
or Ether.