When broke the dawn of that civilization in Egypt whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the fragments supplied to us by the archaeologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to the king of Thebes; the Pyramids still keep their secrets unbroken through the lapse of centuries. It is these vast and timeless monuments which make Egypt to us "the land of mystery." How came Egypt by her knowledge? From whom did she learn her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. We have to seek in the religion of Egypt the key to all her mysteries; also have we to seek in the kinship of Egypt and India, the source and inspiration of her wisdom.
Just as in the case of Persia and China, modern historians are blinded by their Christian biblical chronology to her immense antiquity. We have to go back to another race than the Aryan -- to the Atlantean race of giants, and even to the Lemurians, to find the origin of those records in Egypt of a civilization passed and gone before the great builders of the pyramids came on the scene. For Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map, and Atlanto-Aryan tribes began to settle on it when France and the British Isles had not risen from the ocean bed. The Delta was far later in formation than Southern Egypt, but even it has been inhabited as firm and fertile land for more than 100,000 years. The Great Labyrinth was in ruins at the beginning of history; Thebes was in ruins when Memphis, founded by Menes, was the capital city; an ancient book of Hermes describes some pyramids as standing on the seashore, the waves dashing against their base -- now they stand amid the arid vastness of desert sands. The Great Pyramid, even now untouched by time is, according to the Denderah zodiac, more than 78,000 years old. This planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, with its mysterious three Virgins between Leo and Libra, has found its ådipus, who understood the riddle of its signs and justified the truthfulness of the Egyptian priests who affirmed that even since their first zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles had been three times within the plane of the ecliptic. This means that three sidereal cycles of 25,868 years each have passed.(1) The civilization of Egypt is untold ages old. Never was there a time when it appears to have been in its infancy, but all her arts and sciences were ever in full flower.
Herodotus, the Greek born about 500 B.C., called "The Father of History," is scoffed at by modern historians as being "unreliable," but we shall do well to note what he says the priests told him when they showed him colossal wooden statues of their kings -- 345 in all, inscribed with their names and annals, including the super-human kings who reigned before their first human sovereign; that no one could understand or write an account of these super-human kings unless he had studied and learned the history of the three dynasties that preceded the human. And they traced the origin of these dynasties to a period of the earth's formation which geologists say was millions of years ago! The priests referred to these pre-human reigns as the dynasties of the Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes or Giants. It was these Great Beings who left "everlasting monuments to commemorate their stay."
Since we have found similar Divine Instructors -- Dragons of Wisdom -- in Persia and China, all teaching the same doctrines, there must have been a common source of Wisdom. That was India -- though not the India of today. Great India once included Persia (Iran), Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary. There was an upper and a lower India, and Hindustan was once called Æthiopia. So these various peoples must have come originally from one center and were of one root, though various in the color of their skin -- white, yellow, red and dark. It was from India that the eastern Æthiopians came into Egypt, bringing their civilization with them -- all the knowledge of the Atlanteans, though they had no Atlantean blood in their veins -- under their first great human king, Menes. In a Hindu work it is stated that "Under the reign of Visvamitra ... in consequence of a battle which lasted five days, Manu-Vina ... being abandoned by the Brahmins, emigrated with all his companions ... to the shore of Masra." Unquestionably this Manu-Vina and Menes were identical. Masra was the name of Cairo, which to this day is called Masr and Masra. If this occurred 4,100 B.C. as historians claim, it was long after many of the pyramids had been built. However, the ancient knowledge of a by-gone race now again flowered in the land under Menes.
It may be wholesome, because humbling, for us to realize that some of the discoveries, inventions and achievements on which we most pride ourselves as a civilization are but revived again, because recollected, by those among us who once lived in Ancient Egypt. Is our Panama Canal and its lock system a great achievement? One of the Pharaohs made an artificial lake 450 miles around and 300 feet deep, fed by artificial channels from the Nile, with floodgates, dams and locks. Do we think our engineering feats so remarkable when we learn that Menes turned the course of the three principal branches of the Nile so that they could come to Memphis? Do we think our reclamation of desert lands a miracle? 500 miles of desert land were reclaimed above Cairo by these ancient peoples. Do we think our telephones and wireless systems inventions new to the world? The Egyptians had them, as they had railroads and telescopes, and understood the use of electricity.
Egypt is called the birthplace of Chemistry. The science had, in fact, its perfection in Chem -- Chem being one of the names of the country. The Egyptians knew and used poisonous gases centuries before they were used in the great World War; they knew the science of anaesthetics and of fumigations. They had their dentists, their books on anatomy, and such accurate knowledge of medicine that there were specialists -- some for the right and some for the left eye. They apparently had what is termed "osteopathy" in our day: that is, they had a science of healing manipulations, and were able to inhibit and to restore the circulation of the blood. It is well to remember this when we read in our text-books that Harvey first discovered the circulation of the blood in the seventeenth century. They knew the healing power in color and music. Music, in fact, was in a state of perfection among them while their musical instruments of all kinds have not been surpassed by those of our day. They manufactured the finest of linens, and they have never yet been equalled in the art of bandaging. They wove more beautiful tapestries than have since been known; they made paper that is practically indestructible; they knew how to make malleable glass and their art of dyeing is one of the "lost arts." Some of their paintings are bright in their colors as they were 4,000 years ago and as they will be 4,000 years hence. Mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and astrology were at their summit with them. When Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment by the Inquisition in the seventeenth century in Europe for declaring that the earth moved around the sun -- as every schoolboy knows now -- he was simply repeating what the Egyptians knew and demonstrated thousands of years before. Some idea of the size of their temples may be had from the fact that the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, if set inside the temple of Karnak, would look like a small ornament in the center of the hall. The blocks in all these great buildings are cemented so closely together that it is impossible to insert the point of a sharp knife between them. There must have been some strange device, or magic unknown to us, which moved the huge blocks weighing from two to fifty tons each to their desired position.
Some Magic, it may be, still lingers within these vast piles, for Madame Blavatsky says that "travelers have brushed against ..... adepts in the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious chambers of Luxor ... They have been encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, as in the caves of Elephanta." And it is also said that within the sombre recesses of these wonderful pyramids were performed the mysteries, and that their walls often witnessed the initiation of members of the royal family. The pyramids are symbols of the Tree of Life. The apex is the root, the link between heaven and earth; the base represents the spreading branches extending to the four cardinal points of the universe of matter. They also illustrated the principles of geometry, astrology and astronomy. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Prof. Piazzi Smyth, of Great Britain, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which the neophyte was "born again" and became an adept. During the solemn ceremony the neophyte was "crucified" -- that is tied, not nailed -- on a couch in the form of the Egyptian cross (the Tau), and plunged into a deep sleep for three days and three nights, during which time the Spiritual Ego was said to descend into Hades (the Amenti of the Egyptians); his body meantime lying in the Sarcophagus in the Kings Chamber of the Pyramids of Cheops. During the night of the approaching third day, it was removed to the entrance of the gallery where the beams of the rising sun, striking him full in the face, awoke the candidate. Then the Hierophant entered and pronounced the sacramental words, addressed ostensibly to Osiris -- the Sun -- but in reality to the Spiritual Ego-Sun within.
So, too, the Sphinx was Harmachus -- Horus (the Sun) in the Horizon, or Christ. As a couchant lion with human head it represents the union of spiritual man with animal matter, from which crucifixion in matter it challenges him to rise and become conscious of himself as Osiris or Horus. Might we not well ponder the ancient formulary in the Book of the Dead, which very possibly in Egyptian bodies, we repeated time and again: "I am Horus, I am Osiris." "I am Yesterday, and Seer of millions of years is my name."
The Wisdom-Religion, veiled from the masses and often distorted by allegory and myth, had nevertheless its own mystery language. This language had its seven "dialects," so to say, each referring to one of seven mysteries of Nature. Each had its own symbolism, so that Nature could be read either in all its fulness or viewed from one of its aspects. The only country in the world whose adept-sons have the knowledge of all the seven sub-systems is India. In Egypt these keys were lost one by one after the fall of Memphis, due in part to the death of the Great Hierophants before they had time to reveal all to their successors, but mostly to the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. The many cycles of Egyptian history -- its periods of flower and decay -- may be attributed to the people's devotion to, or disregard of, their country's two great Principles: TRUTH and RIGHT. Yet, in their rituals and dogmas, for those who can interpret them, have been preserved the main teachings of the Secret Doctrine.
In spite of the arduous labors of many Egyptologists, were it not for the work of Madame Blavatsky, who lifted a corner of the veil of Isis for us, we should look at the bewildering prodigality of animal, human-animal, and divine-animal forms, at the multiplicity of strange hieroglyphics and their stranger form of expression, and gain little or no wisdom. When one seeks to discover what the religion of Egypt was, as Prof. Maspero has pointed out, he is confronted by a perplexing number of contradictory statements and theological systems. Just as from the teaching of Christ have sprung some four hundred or more sects in nineteen centuries, so in the five thousand years intervening from the time of Menes to the Ptolemaic period many divergent streams of thought arose. Then, as now, the ideas and worship of the masses were totally different from the concepts held by the educated classes and the sacerdotal caste. True, the esoteric doctrine never altered, but we have only to regard the present day situation in religious thought to infer that the Wisdom-Religion, even in part, was known to or adopted by only a small minority.
When we attempt to study the sacred book of the Egyptians, the Pert-Em-Hru, familiarly known as the Book of the Dead -- in fact a collection of Chapters on the Coming Forth by Day, we meet the same difficulties as confront us in an approach to the Christian Bible. While it is impossible to assign a date to this ritual, it is certain, says the Egyptologist Budge, that it was known before the first dynasty. It was preserved for a long time orally and perhaps not committed to writing before the people began to forget it, or the meanings began to be doubtful. Then, as always, copyists made many errors in transcribing, often misreading the original, also adding comments of their own and other interpolations totally at variance with the original teaching. Thus many versions arose, so that now no two papyri are identical as to number of chapters -- which increased as time went on; no two preserve the same arrangement, and none are complete in themselves. Budge gives three recensions of the Book: the Heliopolitan, used in the Vth and VIth dynasties, found inscribed in hieroglyphs upon the walls of the Pyramids of Sakkara (hence our Pyramid Texts), also written upon coffins of the XIth and XIIth dynasties; the Theban, painted upon coffins and papyri in hieroglyphics, from the XVIIth to the XVIIIth dynasties; and the Saïte, used during the following dynasties, which may be regarded as its last form. In later times it was customary to place a copy in the tomb or coffin of the deceased. While no name is attached to any chapter as its author or reviser, as a whole it was considered to be the work of the god Thot, and thus believed to be of divine origin.
Until the unearthing of the Rosetta stone in 1799, upon which was an inscription both in Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics, scholars possessed no key to the latter form of writing. Since then the work of deciphering has gone rapidly forward, but in the process there has naturally been much uncertainty, much speculation and difference of opinion as to the correct reading. To add to the confusion of the lay reader, no two English translations are alike; there has been a continual change both in the transliteration and spelling of names, so that the student who compares the extracts given in the Secret Doctrine, for instance, with the latest edition of the Pert-Em-Hru by Wallis Budge, or with other Egyptologists, has to orient himself anew again and again.
In view of these difficulties the average reader can get little sense, let alone a system of philosophy, from a perusal of this ancient work. Never does the need of a new type of Orientalist become more apparent than in such an attempt on the part of the reader. One familiar both with Theosophical teachings and the hieroglyphics, would be enabled to give a translation, in general accordance at least, with the original esoteric intent. And again, in the case of translating the words to designate the various principles or "souls" -- the Egyptians recognizing seven -- much indefiniteness exists because the Christian scholar knows but one word for soul, and is thrown back on the New Testament classification of body, soul, and spirit, to which the words "double" and "shadow" are added, but without a true understanding of what they are or a precise application.
Therefore, out of an enormous mass of material, only a few extracts from the Chapters of the Coming Forth By Day can be given, nor can these be sequentially arranged nor dogmatized upon. Nor will any attempt be made to untangle the many combinations of triads and enneads. What follows is for the purpose of arousing the student to make use of the law of correspondence and analogy and fill out for himself what aims to be merely a suggestive outline.
THE GODS OF EGYPT
Every cosmogony purports to deal with the origin of the universe, its manifestation marking the beginning of time. Before the beginning, however, time was -- it pre-existed as timelessness or duration. So the "beginning" is the first moment of a definite period of time, or a cycle. And what produces the cycle? The action of beings, whose field is limitless Space. The cycles of the Egyptians extended over millions of years. "Millions of years" was the epithet applied to the Sun-god Amen-Ra, "who maketh decrees for millions of double millions of years." Vastness, profundity, boundlessness, "all-existence," immortality and infinite possibility meet us at the very outset of Egyptian thought.
Never was time when the germs of things were not, but there were cycles when they had slept for ages upon ages in the bosom of Nu -- "Nu, of the dark waters." Nu was the incomprehensible source of all things -- Chaos or Space. In a Hymn to Hapi, the Nile-god, whose origin was traced back to Nu, the latter is set forth as being that "which cannot be sculptured in stone ... It cannot be seen. Service cannot be rendered to It. Gifts cannot be presented to It. It is not to be approached in the sanctuaries. Where it is, is not known. No habitation can contain It." Within Nu was the One ever-concealed, Mon (Monad?) or Amen -- the origin undoubtedly of our word "Amen," which is not "Verily" as the translators would have it, but rather an affirmation of the omnipresent One Life or Deity. In the Book of the Dead, "Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial light dissipating total darkness by the help of the great magic power of the WORD of the (Central) Sun." Chaos becomes Father-Mother, the "dark waters" incubated through Light, in other words Spirit acting in matter. (Secret Doctrine, I, 231).
All action, even of the highest Deity, is necessarily a limitation, a circumscribing or drawing around of some portion of the eternal spirit-substance for the purpose of manifestation. What is this "drawing around" but a circle or egg, the primal form of all things from atoms to universes? Mathematically expressed this egg is the nought (zero) which contains the potentiality of all forms. In this "egg" the One becomes the Dual Force, the secondary aspect of the One, or Amen-Ra the generator. All the Egyptians' gods become dual -- positive and negative "forces" necessary both for the maintenance of equilibrium and the production of life. Hence Amen-Ra was Neith (or Nuit, the feminine of Nu considered in its positive aspect) in his other half. He was the Spiritual Sun, the "Sun of Righteousness," whose son is the Sun. For "When the One becomes two, the three-fold appears."
Nu in late times, says Budge, was regarded as "Father of the Gods." "A something in the water, which formed an essential part of it, felt the desire to create." Let us connote here that "Desire first arose in IT, which was the primal germ of mind." "Having imagined in itself the forms of the beings and things that it intended to create, it became operative, and the first creature produced was the god Tem or Khepera, who was the personification of the creative power in the primeval water. .... Tem fashioned the form of everything in his mind and made known his desire to create to his heart, which was personified as Thoth. This god received the creative impulse and invented in his mind a name for the object that was to be created, and when he uttered the name, the object came into being."
Now Tem (Tum or Toum) is the Fohat of the Secret Doctrine. Fohat is said to be "....that potential creative power in virtue of whose action the NOUMENON of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative ray. When the 'Divine Son' breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the ONE to become TWO and THREE -- on the Cosmic plane of manifestation." (S.D., I, 109). So we find that Tem emanates from his own body Shu and Tefnut, the two Lion-gods, the three forming the first triad, Tem saying: "From [being] god one, I became three."
So fundamental was this trinitarian concept in the Egyptian teaching that there is an almost endless number of triads, each district and city having its special triad. While not all consist of Father-Mother-Son, this combination was the most common and the origin of the Christian Holy Family. In fact, three aspects are essential in every act of creation or thought. For example, let us try to recollect something we have forgotten -- arouse the sleeping "germs" of thought, which is analogous to the "desire" present before the evolution of a world. The former ideas, memories, or forms are "asleep" in the empty egg of the mind, but by brooding over them, by trying to bring them back to mind, we move upon the "dark waters" within, until finally in a flash the latent forms wake up, and then we see what before was not in manifestation. Yet, even in this simple illustration is much of mystery. If we could observe the entire process with our physical eyes, if it could be demonstrated to us as creative processes were demonstrated in the Mysteries, we would comprehend far better than if we were told. However, these mysteries never were told. Hence all these personifications were for the easier comprehension of people, who knowing the relations between persons, could by analogy apply similar relations and correlations to "powers" and elements. It is for us to revitalize these ancient dramatis personae and recognize in them not merely personifications employed ages ago in Egypt, but as living forces in ourselves.
The triad which the French Egyptologist Champollion said was the starting-point of Egyptian mythology included Kneph, Neith and Ptah. Herodotus said that Menes erected a temple to Ptah in Memphis. Kneph, called "the Eternal Unrevealed," was nevertheless represented by a snake, emblem of eternity, encircling a water-urn, his head containing the "Concealed Breath" hovering over the water. This again is the "water" of Nu, the prototype of that element which is essential to the germination and growth of all living things.
Neith was the Virgin-Mother, "anterior to all the gods, without form or sex, who gave birth to itself and without fecundation." An ancient stele declares her to be Neut, "the luminous, who has engendered the gods." For the primordial substance is luminous -- the garment of light covering the darkness. So Neith of Sais was a weaver and made the universe of warp and woof as a mother weaves her children's garments. In the Stanzas of Dzyan, "Father-Mother spin a web whose upper end is fastened to Spirit, the light of the one Darkness, and the lower one to Matter ...; and this web is the Universe spun out of the two substances made in one, which is Swabhavat." (S.D., I, 83). And we, too, having the same power to think and act, weave the web of our own world which often becomes an inscrutable net of fate instead of a vesture of light. Being connected with water, Neith was found on the prow of Egyptian vessels. Another form of her name is Naus (Latin navis, boat), hence the boat became a symbol of the container or vehicle of the sun. Neith is found in the oldest period at Abydos, to which Mariette Bey assigns the date of 7000 B.C. Neith and Isis are interchangeable and we may find a hint as to the mission of Madame Blavatsky in the title of her first great work, "Isis Un-veiled," by referring to the famous inscription in the temple of Neith at Sais: "I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my peplum no mortal has withdrawn." Although a rent in the veil that conceals the arcane truths of the ancient Wisdom-Religion was made, mortal eyes are so blinded by false ideas, prejudice and selfishness, that they cannot see through it nor accept the ideas presented.
Ptah, the product of spirit and matter, was called the Wisdom of the First Intellect, the manifested Mahat or Universal Mind. In another aspect he, too, is Swabhavat, as indicated by a passage in the Book of the Dead where homage is paid to him in these words: "Thou art without father, being engendered by thy Will, Thou art without mother, being born by the renewal of thine own substance from whom proceeds substance." He is usually represented as making men on a potter's wheel, for he was the "generator of all men produced from his substance." He was also called "the Blacksmith God of Thebes," identified by the Greeks with Vulcan. He, together with Khnoum or Khnemu (who is sometimes substituted for Kneph), carried out the commands of Thot concerning the creation of the universe, Ptah's special task being the creation of the eggs of the sun and the moon. Ptah, or Osiris-Ptah, is Ra, the manifested sun, or more properly its Regent.
From earliest times the great cosmopolitan center of Anu (or Annu) the On of the Bible and the Heliopolis of the Greeks -- the City of the Sun -- was the seat of the worship of Tem. Another form of the solar-god, according to Budge, was worshipped in Lower Egypt, known as Ra, whose name does not seem to be Egyptian and whose origin is unknown -- it may be Asiatic. (!!) In Anu was the famous Well of the Sun, from which tradition declares that the Virgin Mary drew water when the Holy Family halted in the city. Fortunately for the story this well had its source in the inexhaustible waters of Nu, otherwise it might have dried up during the thirty odd centuries before the Christian era and we might have considered it a well of wisdom of which the youthful Jesus partook. This well was the property of the priests of Ra, who became so rich and powerful from the tribute received from grateful travellers for the watering of their beasts, that they were able by the VIth dynasty to elevate Ra to the position of over-lord of all the other gods and from that time Tem, Khepera, Horus became Ra-Tem, Ra-Khepera, Ra-Herakhuti (Horus of the two horizons) and so on. Maspero claims that the complex beings (?) resulting from these combinations never attained to any pronounced individuality, the distinctions referring merely to details of their functions and attributes.
During the many centuries of Egyptian history many teachers must have come from time to time, their presentations of the Wisdom-Religion differing according to the period, the need and the nature of the Egos whom they taught. That the Heliopolitan system was distinct from that of Amen at Thebes, that the priests of Hermopolis held to their particular form of doctrine, and those of Osiris to theirs, and that all as cults differed from one another and from Atenism is evident; nevertheless Ptah of Memphis, Ra of Heliopolis, Amen of Thebes, and Osiris of Abydos, in certain of their aspects -- and in all when considered as septenary, and esoterically understood -- are one and the same. Consequently wherever their fusion occurs it apparently was an attempt at unity of systems tending toward unity of thought and understanding among a cosmopolitan people rather than an effort to establish monotheism, as many Christian scholars would fain prove.
Maspero says that the sun appearing before the world was called Tumu (Tem) or Atum, while our earthly sun was Khepera. The similarity between the word "Atum" and "Atma," the Spirit, is too striking to require comment. Atum, according to this author, was also the prototype of man, (Coptic TME, man) becoming a perfect "Tum" after his resurrection; that is, Perfected Man. There were several traditions as to how Atum became Ra, but according to the most generally accepted, Atum had suddenly cried across the water, "Come unto me"! and immediately the mysterious lotus had unfolded its petals, and Ra appeared at the edge of its open cup as a disk, a new-born child, or a disk-crowned sparrow-hawk. The Egyptians called the first day of the year, Come-unto-me.
In Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead, the opening passage reads: "I am Tem in rising. I am the only One. I came into being in Nu. I am Ra who rose in the beginning... The pillars of Shu were not as yet created. It is Ra, the creator of the names of his limbs, which came into being in the form of the gods, who are in the train of Ra" (i.e., the gods who personify his phases) -- fourteen Spirits, seven dark and seven light... "I am the Bennu bird (the Phoenix, type of resurrection) which is in Anu, and I am the keeper of the volume of the book of things which are and of things which shall be." In the eternity of his being occur vast cycles of activity followed by equal periods of rest: "Millions of years" is the name of the one, "Great Green Lake" is the name of the other, the "Lake" representing the cycle in which are swallowed up all things produced by "The Begetter of millions of years." In Chapter XLII he "who dwelleth in his eye" is beaming in "the solar egg, the egg to which is given life among the gods." In Chapter XV he is "Yesterday," "Today," and "Tomorrow," the one "who reposeth upon law which changeth not nor can it be altered." In Chapter LXXV he is the self-created god: "I gave birth unto myself together with Nu in my name of Khepera, in whom I come into being day by day. I am the creator of the darkness who maketh his habitation in the uttermost parts of the sky ... and I arrive at the confines thereof. I sail over the sky which formeth the division betwixt heaven and earth... None sees my nest, none can break my egg."
In these extracts are all the fundamental teachings of Theosophy: Space, the One Life, the Self-existing Deity, Law, Cycles, Reincarnation, Being, and a hint of the septenary nature of cosmos.
In a Hymn to the Setting Sun, the deceased says: "Praise be unto thee, O Ra, praise be unto thee, O Tem." Chapter LXXIX reads: "I am the god Tem, the maker of heaven, the creator of things which are, who cometh forth from the earth, who maketh to come into being the seed which shall be, who gave birth to the gods; [I am] the great god who made himself, the lord of life, who maketh to flourish the company of the gods." Tem, as already said, is Fohat, whose influence on the Cosmic plane "is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things -- from the planetary system down to the glowworm and simple daisy -- the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of that special thing." (S.D., I, 111). He is "the north wind and the spirit of the west;" as "the setting sun of life" he is the vital electric force that leaves the body at death, wherefore the defunct begs that Toum should give him the breath from his right nostril (positive electricity) that he might live in his second form. Both the hieroglyphic and the text of Chapter LXII show the identity of Toum with Fohat. The former represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the breaths in his hands. The latter says: "I open to the chief of An... I am Toum. I cross the water spilt by Thot-Hapi, the lord of the horizon, and am the divider of the earth." (Fohat divides Space and, with his Sons, the earth into seven zones) ... "I cross the heavens, and am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I ate my heir.... I am Toum, to whom eternity is accorded...." (S.D., I, 674).
The above metaphor expresses the succession of divine functions, the substitution from one form into another, or the correlation of forces. Aam is the electro-positive force, devouring all others as Saturn devoured his progeny. The Egyptians used the forcible expression to eat where we would use the word absorb, or assimilate. The Rev. James Baikie, writing for the National Geographic, Sept., 1913, quotes one of the Pyramid Texts which to him reveals an "almost savage set of religious conceptions," contrasting strangely with their high civilization. The deceased is ascending to heaven as a fierce huntsman who lassoes the stars and devours the gods. "The great ones among them are his morning meal, the middle ones are his evening meal, and the small ones his night meal.... Their magic is in his body; he swallows the understanding of every god." The last sentence contains the explanation of the Text. It is difficult to understand why a Christian who eats the body of Christ and drinks his blood, should consider the ancient Egyptians as more "cannibalistic" than himself!
Amen, whose name means "concealed," was regarded as an ancient nature-god in the Vth dynasty, says Budge; esoterically he is All-Nature, therefore the universe, and the "Lord of Eternity." Later his worship was established at Thebes, where his sanctuary seems to have absorbed the shrine of the ancient goddess Apit, from whom T-Ape (Coptic) the city derived its name. It was far later that Thebes was known as the City of Amen -- Nut Amen, the No Amon of the Bible (Nahum iii, 8). The worship of Amen was carried into Nubia and the Soudan by the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty; in the name of Amen the Hyksos had been expelled from the country, so that in the course of time Amen became known as the god of successful warriors. The booty obtained from many campaigns was shared with the priests of Amen who became exceedingly rich and powerful and, little by little, Amen absorbed the titles and attributes of the other gods. While the priests of Amen worshipped Amen, or Amen-Ra, as the Spiritual Sun, the masses of people adored Ra, the visible luminary of the heavens.
An interesting passage from the Papyrus of Nesi-Khonsu, a Priestess of Amen-Ra, written about 1000 B.C., proves that this order considered the visible sun, the Disk, merely as a focus or "substitute" for the Central Sun, as Theosophy teaches. The apostrophe to Amen-Ra reads: "This holy god, the lord of all the gods, Amen-Ra.... the holy soul who came into being in the beginning; the great god who liveth by Maat (order and regularity); the first divine matter which gave birth unto subsequent matter! the being through whom every other god hath existence; the One One ...; the being whose births are hidden, whose evolutions are manifold, and whose growths are unknown;... the divine form who dwelleth in the forms of all the gods, the Lion-god with awesome eye;... the god Nu, the prince who advanceth at his hour to vivify that which cometh forth upon his potter's wheel;... the traverser of eternity ... with myriads of pairs of eyes and numberless pairs of ears, whose light is the guide of the god of millions of years;... whose substitute is the divine Disk."
Connected with this very distinction is an important epoch in Egyptian history. Amenhotep IV, according to Pro. Breasted, believing in only one god, whom he called Aten, the Disk, attempted to destroy the old gods of Egypt, and introduce monotheism. He particularly hated Amen, closed the temples, cast out the priests, had the names of the gods cut out of the inscriptions, and changed his own name containing Amen to Akhen-aten, meaning "Aten is satisfied." He abandoned Thebes and built a new capital at Amarna where he devoted himself to art and religion. He is represented as receiving the light and heat of Aten through the Heavenly Father's Hands -- the sun's rays terminating in hands. A few years ago hundreds of clay tablets in the Babylonian cuneiform were dug up at Amarna, which reveal that the dependencies of Egypt were gradually throwing off her yoke, dissatisfaction among both priests and soldiers was fomenting trouble, all of which led to Egypt's loss of prestige and power. So the "monotheism" which Akhen-aten tried to introduce died with him. That his reform was aimed in part at a corrupt priesthood is undoubtedly true, but to suppose that, "In all the progress of men which we have followed through thousands of years, no one had ever before caught such a vision of the Great Father of all" is a gross misconception. Budge states that the old Heliopolitan system made Tem or Tem-Ra the creator of Aten, the Disk; but this view Amenhotep IV rejected, asserting that the Disk was self-created and self-existent. Since from the esoteric and philosophical point of view, this was the substitution of a material and personal god for the ever-concealed Deity, or Amen, Akhenaten could not have received the backing of the Hierophants, and being himself a pacifist, Egypt suffered greatly as a result of his reign. In the conflict waged around this Pharaoh some Egyptologists have attempted to prove that his monotheism was not new; but no amount of mere scholarship can adequately deal with the situation; nor until authors rid themselves of the idea of the superiority of monotheism, with its Christian implication of a personal God, over all other forms of belief, will they ever judge aright.
Tutankhamen, whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by the late Lord Carnarvon, married Akhenaten's daughter. When he came to the throne he professed the same religion as his father-in-law; but soon realizing the failure of Atenism, substituted the name of Amen in his wife's and in his own name, which had originally been Tutankhaten. The honor accorded to this now famous Pharaoh by the Egyptians rests upon the fact that he restored the national worship of Amen, rehabilitated the decaying temples and reestablished the priesthood of Amen-Ra. The priests of Amen gradually lost this temporarily restored power, as they had already lost their spiritual power, and the people brought their rule to an end about 700 B.C.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS
According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.--S.D. I, p. 70.
EGYPTIAN SYMBOLISM AND ANIMAL WORSHIP
The sincere and unprejudiced student of comparative religions comes at last to see that without the help of symbology no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. No Egyptian papyrus, no Indian olla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally. Besides, the symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of expression. The point to which even the most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalist seems to remain blind, is the fact that every symbol is a many-faced diamond, each face of which not merely bears several interpretations, but relates likewise to several sciences. Many myths which, on the surface, have only an astronomical bearing, conceal facts in regard to the evolution of rounds and races which are of the utmost significance.
One of the best known, at least the most frequently represented, is that of the sun. Ra made his passage across the heavens in a boat from which streamed a blue light -- the "Sun's son." A first bark, the Saktit (Sakti?) boat, received him at birth and carried him from the Eastern to the Southern extremity of the world. Mazit, the second bark, received him at noon and bore him into the land of Manu, which is at the entrance of Hades; other barks ... conveyed him by night, from his setting until his arising at morn. In the formulae of the "Book of Knowing that which is in Hades," the dead sun remains in the bark Saktit during part of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and fifth hours that he changesinto another. Sometimes he entered the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed. Such is the bark of the sun in the other world, for although carrying a full crew, yet for the most part it progresses at its own will, and without their help. Sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, having a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern, and half a dozen sailors to handle the oars. (Maspero, "Dawn of Civilization," p. 90).
If we may be permitted to identify the boats with the Saktis, considered as the "principles" -- whose powers they are, the above symbolism is most suggestive. According to Theosophical teaching, at each round or period of evolution, man enters a body or "boat" composed of the substance of that particular round. At "noon," or the mid-point of evolution, man was borne into "the land of Manu, which is at the entrance into Hades;" Hades is the earth of physical existence, into which the "Manu," or man, enters and becomes a seven-fold being having his "full crew" on board. The barks referred to in the "Book of Knowing that which is in Hades" at the fourth and fifth hours of the night, correspond at least to the fourth and fifth rounds, when man has donned his "coats of skin," which after the fifth "hour" or round, will give place to more ethereal "barks" or vestures. After death the "crew" is of no use to the magic boat, for the lower principles which these useless sailors represent, die out and disappear.
The first-born of Ra by the goddess Hathor was Shu. He is solar energy. "The blossoms of Shu" are the sun's rays. In Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead, Shu places the sky on top of the staircase in the City of the Eight. According to tradition earth and sky, or Seb and Neith, were two lovers lost in Nu, fast locked in each other's embrace. On the day of creation Shu, coming forth from the primeval waters, stepped between them and seizing Neith with both hands lifted her above his head. Although the starry body of the goddess extended in space, her head to the West, her feet and hands touched the earth, forming the four pillars of the firmament. Usually these supports are referred to as the pillars of Shu. It was Shu who was depicted holding up the sky and possibly from him the Greeks derived their representations of Atlas.
Seb is the Egyptian Saturn, ushering in a new cycle of evolution. Esoterically he is nearer to Parabrahman than Brahma. He is called the "Great Cackler," who laid the world upon his head, and is represented with a black swan or goose. Darkness, always associated with "beginnings," is symbolized in all religions by black birds. Two black doves flew from Egypt and settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave their names to the Grecian gods. In Chapter LIV of the Book of the Dead Seb's egg is referred to as the "egg conceived at the hour of the great one of the Dual Force."
According to tradition the golden age of Ra had gone, for even the gods die. All of them were represented as mummies and in Chapter VIII, are the words, "I am that Osiris in the West, and Osiris knoweth the day in which he shall be no more." The children of earth had become rebellious, bringing down upon themselves the wrath of Ra and their almost complete destruction by Hathor, whose hand was stayed by the repentant god, and a new race produced from mandragora plants. Afterwards mounting upon the back of a cow, Ra disappeared into the heavens. Shu and Tefnut (the double Lion-god) reigned in his stead. They represent the first differentiation of substance: as applied to Rounds and Races, the second in descending order. In this aspect, Seb ushers in the third and more material world, while his four children rule over the fourth.
This line of descent formed the basis of the Egyptian Enneads, or four pairs proceeding from the One. This gives us the ogdoad, or eight (the double cube of good and evil) of which Ra, or Tem, was the ninth, counting from below up. In the City of the Eight (Hermopolis) where Hermes was adored, Hermes was the One who contained in himself the double cube. Eight was the number of the caduceus or wand of Mercury, the figure being made by the intertwining of the two serpents of good and evil, or the joining of two cubes. There were as many Enneads as there were cities, but all are merely personifications covering the one general scheme or idea. Considering, then, a typical one, we have Tem (or Ra) who is said to have emanated Shu from himself; Shu and Tefnut; Seb and Neith; Osiris and Isis; Set and Nepthys -- lower aspects of Osiris and Isis. Thus the exoteric system of the Egyptians, as H. P. Blavatsky has pointed out, dealt with but five planes out of the seven, the pairs having to do with the four lower ones.
Hathor was always represented as a cow, sacred also to Isis, the Universal Mother -- Nature. Both goddesses were allied to the sun and the moon, as the disk and the cow's horns (which form a crescent) prove. In the Vedas the dawn of creation is represented by a cow. This dawn is Hathor, and the day which follows -- or Nature already formed -- is Isis, for both are one except in point of time. Isis is cow-horned, the cow of plenty, and as the mother of Horus (the physical world) she is the "mother of all that lives." The right eye of Horus, or the Sun, was called the cow of Hathor. In Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead, the cow Meh-urt, is called "the Eye of Ra;" while in Chapter CIX the sun is represented as a spotted calf when Sibu (Seb) its father was a bull and Hathor a heifer. The vignette to Chapter CLXX shows a cow wearing the solar disk upon her head and around her neck the symbol of life.
The symbol of life is the ankh or ansated cross of the Egyptians -- the Tau with a handle. In illustrations of the Sunrise the sun's disk is upheld by two arms emerging from the ankh, the ankh itself supported by the Tet or Didu or Osiris. This emblem is a short pillar or disbranched tree-trunk surmounted by four cross bars, reminiscent of the tree fabled to have held the dead body of Osiris. Might it not be the sacred Ashwatta tree which the Egyptian Avatar had cut down with the strong axe of dispassion? It was also thought to be the backbone of Osiris after he had been "reconstructed" and "set up" by Isis. In Chapter LXXVIII of the Ritual the deceased says: "He (Osiris) hath stablished my heart through his own backbone; he hath stablished my heart through his own great and exceeding strength." This is evidence that the tree-like formation of the nerves radiating from the spine had not escaped the attention of the Egyptians, nor were they without their Trees of Life.
The sycamores planted on the edge of the desert were supposed to be inhabited by Hathor, Neith and other goddesses, and numerous vignettes represent the deceased as stopping before these trees to receive water and bread -- the Water and Bread of Life -- from the goddess whose body emerges from the sheltering foliage. The persea tree was the symbol of the "Sacred Heart" of Horus. The pear-like shape of its fruit, especially of its kernel, resembles the heart. It is sometimes seen on the head of Isis, the mother of Horus, the fruit being cut open and the heart-like kernel exposed to view. Here again we trace a form of worship, that of the "Sacred Heart" of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary by the Catholics, back to Egypt.
The use of these symbols seems fitting and justifiable, but why did the Egyptians worship animals? Why was the sun represented as a beetle? Why was the cat sacred to Bast, the jackal to Anubis, the hawk to Horus, the ibis to Thot? And how came Set to be incarnated in the fennec and Osiris and Ptah in the bull? The wise Egyptians never did worship animals, although as the true ideas were lost, the ignorant masses did. In "A Weird Tale" a hint in regard to this symbolism is given. It is stated therein that there was an occult reason back of it and that the ancient Egyptians never did anything unscientifically; that there are undoubtedly types (of forms and intelligences) and that forms having been once assumed and seen by the seers always repeated the same forms to those persons. Therefore having taken a certain view of invisible nature, every symbol was made to conform or be consistent with that view. This partial explanation might also be applied to the fairies seen sometimes by children and psychic persons. The form of the fairy, or of an idea for the matter of that, once seen or held by an individual repeats itself and may even be photographed, which picture is then taken to be the real form or the fact; but this form is very often merely in the imagination that fashioned it and may neither be true to the type of elemental seen or to the fact. It is true, nevertheless, that Nature has evolved certain patterns which she copies wherever feasible; and just as the tree pattern may be traced in the formation of certain crystals on up through the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, so there are likewise types of sentiency and function found in the vegetable and animal kingdoms which are reproduced in man, for Nature is One. "All beings are the same in kind and differ only in degree." If we realized the unity of all the kingdoms, if we saw, as the Egyptians did, the divine form of Amen-Ra in all forms, we would treat our younger brothers better -- we would neither wantonly kill animals nor torture them in the perverted belief that thereby man is better served or benefited.
A passage from the Book of the Dead, (quoted in the Secret Doctrine, II, p. 635) reads: "I am the mouse." "I am the hawk." "I am the ape." ... "I am the crocodile whose soul comes FROM MEN." This corroborates the teaching that "while the human monad has passed on globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms -- the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal -- in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man ... not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as Man,... but the inner divine MONAD with its manifold principles or aspects." Furthermore, all animals are the cast-off clothing of man; for man impresses all the lives in his body by his thought and feeling, and these lives entering into the bodies of animals, give them their peculiar characteristics. Thus, in a sense, they become the mirror in which man may see his own features and have frequent occasion to scorn his own image. The types in the early periods of evolution, therefore, must have been brought over from a prior mankind. As might be expected, then, in Egyptian symbolism there is a correspondence between the characteristics and functions of the animals and of the gods.
The cat, associated with the moon, was sacred to the cat-goddess Bast or Pasht, and to kill one was to court death. The Egyptian word for cat is mau, meaning to see, and both the moon and the cat were seers by night. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect the moon on account of its phosphorescent eyes. In the form of the goddess Bast the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, the sun's eternal enemy. In Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead, "The male cat is Ra himself, and he is called 'Mau'" (Seer), while the illustrations represent him in action similar to Bast. The chief-priest of Amen-Ra was called "Oiru mau," Master of Visions, he who beheld God "face to face."
The sun is represented as a beetle in the solar boat -- the "Boat of millions of years" -- and is referred to as giving birth to beings in his name of Khepera. Khepera is the beetle or scarabaeus, the symbol of rebirth. The word is derived from the verb kheper, to become, to build again. Like the beetle the sun appeared to come up out of the earth and to ascend aloft as with wings. The winged globe is but another form of the scarabaeus and the egg, relating both to the rebirth of man and to his spiritual regeneration. No mummy is found without several of these green or blue beetles.
The jackal-headed god was Anubis, the "Opener of the Ways." The jackal's omniscience as to where any dead body is hidden, his absolute certainty of direction in the trackless desert, made him a fitting symbol of Anubis, who not only guided the dead along the trackless path of the underworld, but also led the reincarnating entity into the underworld of physical existence. Anubis is often identified with Horus and with Hermes, the Higher Mind; he is the knowledge on any plane which leads one whithersoever he has need to go. Anubis is also connected with the dog-star, the Sothis of the Egyptians.
The ibis, sacred to Thot, was held in the greatest veneration. It kills the land serpents and makes havoc among the crocodile eggs, thus saving Egypt from being overrun by these saurians. The black and white ibis was sacred to the moon, because this planet has a dark as well as a light side. Under the form of an ibis Thot watched over the Egyptians and taught them the occult arts and sciences. Maspero affirms that the word "Thot" means ibis. The ibis religiosa is said to have magical properties, in common with many other birds. At all events, he who killed either an ibis or the golden sparrow-hawk risked death. The hawk, the keen-sighted, was the symbol of the sun, of Horus and of the human soul.
The fennec is the Egyptian fox, appropriate symbol of Set whose craftiness conceived the coffin into which Osiris was enticed and confined, thus causing his death. Apis the white bull, sacred to Osiris and into which he was supposed to incarnate, was typical of the universal generative or evolving power in nature. Mariette Bey discovered near Memphis the Serapaeum, an imposing subterranean crypt containing the mummies of thirty sacred bulls. The mummification of various sacred animals would show that the Egyptians took the utmost care to conserve the "lives" in any highly evolved type or species. The bull is also the Taurus of the zodiac, connected with all the "First-born" solar gods. Christians associated this constellation with Christ. Here again, the Egyptians no more worshipped the bull than Christians worship the lamb. The ram is always a symbol of physical generation, the ram or the goat of Mendes being another symbol of Osiris.
Maspero suggests that the habit of certain monkeys assembling, as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and just before sunset, may have justified the Egyptians in entrusting the apes with the duty of hailing Ra morning and evening. In the illustrations of the Sunrise previously mentioned, six apes hail the sun; the Papyrus of Hu-nefer gives seven. In Chapter C of the Book of the Dead, the deceased says, "I have united myself unto the divine apes who sing at the dawn and I am a divine Being among them." The dog-headed ape was a Hermetic symbol, filling the same office in Egypt that Hanuman did in India. In Chapter XLII the defunct says, "I am the dog-headed ape of gold, three palms and two fingers high."
The crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are five, and the god Toum calls them forth in his fifth creation. When Osiris, "the defunct Sun," is buried and enters into Amenti, the sacred crocodiles plunge into the abyss of primordial waters. When the Sun of life rises, they re-emerge from the sacred river. In the Secret Doctrine the Fifth Group is said to be a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the Microcosmic Pentagon, the five-pointed star representing man. In India and in Egypt those Dhyanis were connected with the crocodile, and their abode is in the zodiacal sign of Capricorn. In Egypt the defunct was transformed into a crocodile -- Sebakh or Sevekh, the "Seventh" -- showing it to be a type of intelligence, a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. (S.D. I, 219; II, 580). The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to indicate that it was a soul arriving from earth. The instructions appended to Chapter CLXIII are that it should be read before a serpent with two legs, meaning thereby a Dragon of Wisdom, or Hierophant. The evil serpent, "the enemy of Ra" was Apep (Apophis) whose power was greatest at the full of the moon, his overthrow being the subject of Chapter XXXIX.
Chapter LXXIII is devoted to the transformation into the Bennu bird, the Egyptian phoenix, symbol of the cycle of rebirth. The deceased says: "I came (literally 'I flew') into being from unformed matter. I came into existence like the god Khepera. I have germinated like the things (i.e., the plants) which germinate, and I have dressed myself like the tortoise. I am [of] the germs of every god."
In this incomplete list of animal symbols must be included a curious little insect called the praying mantis, the "diviner" who led the deceased unerringly to the underworld. It was greatly honored in Egypt, the Greeks attributed to it supernatural powers, and the Arabs declare that it always prays with its head toward Mecca. We might connote with it the state called manticism, during which the gift of prophecy is developed. (See chapter in Isis Unveiled, "Before the Veil.")
The lotus was pre-eminently the flower of Egypt. The lotus seeds, even before they germinate, contain perfectly formed leaves -- the miniature of the perfect plants they will some day become, thus showing how idea comes to be made visible, which is true of the birth of a world as of a man. Its roots growing in the mud, and its blossoms in the air typify the human nature -- its body grown out of the lower kingdoms, and the soul belonging to the higher spiritual regions. In Chapter LXXI of the Ritual -- making the transformation into a lotus, a human head springs from the flower, and the god exclaims: "I am the pure Lotus, emerging from the Luminous One... I carry the messages of Horus. I am the pure lotus which comes from the Solar Fields." So the god Khnoom, the moist principle of life, sits on a throne within a lotus. Thot is often seated on a lotus. Finally, it is the goddess Hiquet, under the shape of a frog, who rests on the lotus. This undeniably most ancient of goddesses, on account of her amphibious nature, was one of the chief cosmic deities connected with creation. Because the frog comes to life after being buried for years under rocks or in old walls, it was typical of resurrection. A frog or toad enshrined in a lotus, or simply without the flower, was the form chosen by the early Christians for their church lamps, on which were engraved the words, "I am the resurrection."
Was the general character of Egyptian religion monotheistic, polytheistic or pantheistic, is a question that has caused endless discussion. The epithet "the only god," which on the surface might imply monotheism, was applied to several gods. In the Papyrus of Nesi-Khonsu, Amen-Ra is addressed as "the One One," "the divine form who dwelleth in the forms of all the gods;" but this concept was held only by the educated and the priesthood. Then, as now, the true teaching existed: that behind all forms is a nameless, invisible Power, the source of all manifested life, expressed in such passages as this: "You look and you see it not -- it is colorless; you listen and you hear it not -- it is voiceless; you desire to handle it -- you touch it not -- it is formless."
Budge says in the Collection of Moral Aphorisms composed by ancient sages are several allusions to a divine power to which no personal name is given. The word used to indicate this is Neter, translated "God" by him in the following examples taken from the Precepts of Kagema and the Precepts of Ptah-hotep, whose many instructions remind one of the Proverbs of Solomon:
"The things which God doeth cannot be known."
"Terrify not men. God is opposed thereto."
"When thou ploughest, labour in the field God (Karma) hath given thee."
The Teaching of Amenemapht clearly shows, says this author, that the writer distinguished between Deity and the gods Ra, Thot, etc.
"Leave the angry man in the hands of God. God (Karma) knows how to requite him."
"Take good heed to the Lord of the Universe." (The Self).
"Truth is the great bearer of Deity."
In the Teaching of Khensu-hetep, Budge finds a more intimate, personal Heavenly Being:
"It is God who gives thee existence."
"The Deity is the judge of the truth."
"The house of God abominates overmuch speaking. Pray with a loving heart, the words of which are hidden. He will do what is needful for thee, he will hear thy petitions and will accept thy oblations." (The God within each being).
In Chapter CXXV of the Book of the Dead, the defunct says, "I have not cursed God" and "I have not contemned the god of my city," showing the Egyptian admitted the existence of another Neter besides the god of his native place.
Whatever the Egyptian thought as to Deity or to the gods, he knew he was himself "of the germs of every god." He never considered himself a poor worm of the dust, as do Christians, but ever declared,
"Thou, Ra, art in me and I am in thee; and thy attributes are my attributes."
AMEN-RA
ONE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
No one can study ancient philosophies seriously without perceiving that the striking similitude of conception between all -- in their exoteric form very often, in their hidden spirit invariably -- is the result of no mere coincidence, but of a concurrent design: and that there was, during the youth of mankind, one language, one knowledge, one universal religion, where there were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto himself. And, if it is shown that already in those ages which are shut out from our sight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious thought developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it becomes evident that, born under whatever latitude, in the cold North or the burning South, in the East or West, that thought was inspired by the same revelations, and man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of the same TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.--S.D. I, p. 341.