FIRE ON HEAVEN’S HEARTH

The way is now cleared for the majestic sweep of the fire symbolism. It rises above the other elements in grandeur and impressiveness. The full implication of its meaning lifts the mind into reaches of luminous suggestiveness as to the splendor of the experience awaiting us in nobility, and even as a mere figure it has a certain power to stir dim intimations of the magnificence of that reality which it hints at. There is in nature hardly a phenomenon more wonderful than the eating away of a stick of wood by a flame. The mystery of all life is back of that energic display. And the mystery becomes awesome when we realize that our own life is more than analogous to fire; it is of kindred nature with it. The soul within us is a spark of divine flame.

The origin of the word is of interest. It goes back to the Greek pur(pyr). Massey traces the word "pyramid" from the stem, plus the Egyptian met, meaning "ten" or "a measure," giving us pyramet. He asserts that it stands thus for the ten original measures or arcs traced by the god of fire, the sun, through the zodiacal circuit. As the great pyramid at Gizeh, and others, seem to have been intimately related to sidereal measurements, this theory of origin is plausible. The word would then mean "a ten-form measure of fire," a figure for manifest life.

But the Greek pur itself traces back to the Chaldean ur, primitive word for "fire." To this the Egyptians added their article "the" as prefix, in the form of p-, making the word p-ur or pur. The first emanation, Abraham, came out from ur, the primal fire of creation.

The Sanskrit Agni, god of fire, is traced by Massey to the general root, ag, meaning "to move quickly," as in the Latin ago, "to go," agile (Lat.), "active," our "agitate" and others. As this derivation links it closely to the Greek theos, "god," who by etymology is the "swift runner," "the swift goer," Agni, god of fire, may well be connected with the theos, the god whose symbol everywhere is the swift-darting shaft of fire, whether in the heavens or in the uplands of reason and intelligence. The "flash of intelligence" is the exact sign and token of the swift activity of the god within us.

That the soul is a spark from the celestial fire is attested by the words of the Speaker in the Ritual (Ch. 97): "Lo I come from the lake of flame, from the lake of fire, and from the field of flame, and I live."

In the Vision of Scipio Cicero has preserved some of the ancient doctrine concerning the derivation of souls from the empyrean. The spirit of Africanus tells his son that souls were supplied to men from the eternal fires, which are constellations and stars. Virgil says that in souls there is a potency like fire. In the Hymn to Minerva of Proclus, souls originate

"From the great father’s fount, supremely bright,

Like fire resounding, leaping into light."

One of the Chaldean Oracles runs as follows:

"The soul being a splendid fire, through the power of the Father remains immortal, is the mistress of life . . . the soul extends vital illumination to body."

And again most succinctly:

"All things are the progeny of one fire."

The first Oracle of Zoroaster tells of a ladder which reached from Tartarus to the first or highest fire. This was the gamut of stages between the lowest levels of material life and the highest spiritual. The principle of soul, says the Oracle, is the operator and giver of life-bearing fire. It fills the vivific bosom of Hecate (the lower nature) and pours on the linked natures of matter and spirit the fertile strength of a fire endured with mighty power. Concerning divine Love the Oracle speaks:

"Who first leaped forth from intellect, clothing fire bound together with fire, that he might govern the fiery cratera (bowls), restraining the flower of his own fire."

When Ceres delivered up the government to Proserpina, her daughter (intellect to soul), she instructed her to have conjugal relation with Apollo, the sun-god, as thus the god would beget "famed offspring, with faces glowing with refulgent fire."

The upper fire, the Oracles affirm, did not shut up its power in matter, nor in works, but in intellect. "For the artificer of the fiery world is an intellect of intellect." Saturn, who in the Oracles is the first fountain, the strong spirit which is beyond the fiery poles, endues all the lower principles with his essence. These, through his pervading might, "become refulgent with the furrows of inflexible and implacable fire." They "are the intellectual conceptions from the paternal fountain, plucking abundantly the flower of the fire of ceaseless time." And that our progress upward is a return to a fiery nature is shown by these excerpts:

"A fire-heated conception has the first order. For the mortal who approaches to fire will receive a light from divinity; . . ."

"A singular fire extends itself by leaps through the waves of air; or an infigured fire, whence a voice runs before; or a light beheld near, every way splendid, resounding and convolved. But also behold a horse full of refulgent light; or a boy carried on a swift horse--a boy fiery or clothed with gold."

"Rivers being mingled, perfect the works of incorruptible fire."

It was the statement of Greek philosophy that "from the exhalations arising from the burning bodies of the Titans, mankind were produced."1

An echo of this abstrusity of esoteric lore is heard in the accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western Australia. One of their initiations is apparently the analogue of the whole basic structure of religion, represented in a fire drama. In the puberty initiations the lads were frightened by a large fire lighted near them, being told that the Dhur-Moolan was about to burn them. This god was supposed to take them into the bush and instruct them in all the traditional customs. So he went through a pretended killing of the boys, cutting them up and burning the pieces to ashes, after which he molded the ashes into human shape and restored them to life as new beings.2 Primitive ignorance may be the nursery of superstition, but much alleged primitive ignorance is old wisdom surviving in ruinous grandeur by the implacable power of tradition.

In the Clementine Homilies (8:18) the offspring of the unnatural and untimely union between the sons of God and the daughters of men described in Genesis are declared to be "bastards, begotten of the fire of angels and the blood of women." The gods are rebuked for polluting themselves with women, "as the sons of men do," and for creating a hybrid and unworthy progeny whose destruction they would in the future lament. (Enoch 12)

Many tribes held the fire-fly, which thrives in moist grasses, to be a typical emblem of our divinity. Its periodical flashing in the dark is suggestive.

The Logia and Revelation both yield data on the theme of fire. At the first angel’s trumpet message there ascended on the earth a hail of fire which was scattered from the Altar of Fire before the throne. "And the hail of fire was mingled with the blood of the Lamb; these were cast upon earth to consume away its evil." Horus had said that he came to put an end to evil. At the second angel’s blast lightning flashed forth and went down into the sea, which it changed into blood. We have seen that a hail of stars or sparks over the earth was the typical figuration of the descent of the bright deities. The Egyptian ceremony of flinging a blazing cross into the Nile conveys the same connotation. The deities in incarnation were styled by the Greeks water-nymphs. A cross on fire thrust into water carried the purport of the sacrificial act of incarnation. A fiery serpent on the cross is a kindred emblem. The Targum commands: "Make thee a burning." In India the swastika cross was a special emblem of fire, the god Agni. In the early Church the cross of fire was adorned on a Friday, when a lighted cross was suspended from the dome of St. Peter’s, the cross being covered with lamps in a fire-traced figure. Dante describes the souls in Paradise as praying inside a cross of fire, which is their world. The hawk is a symbol of solar fire, and Horus arose hawk-headed or divinized with fire.

When Lucifer fell upon the earth and with his key unlocked the pit of the abyss, there issued from it clouds of smoke like that which proceeds from a great furnace, and it obscured the light of the sun! That is to say, the mingled steam and exhalation from electrolyzed "water" and ‘burning flesh," or the carnal nature vivified by currents of deific potency, rose all around the god and well nigh obscured his inner glow. And out of the smoke came forth locusts and scorpions, having power to sting and poison. And these went forth to torment all the dwellers on earth; only they could not harm those who had not the mark of the Beast on them. The army of horsemen that came forth to battle these forms of evil coming out of the smoke appeared as if "emitting fire." This fire scorched those who love to do wickedness, and drove them back into the pit. This denotes the burning out of those strong animal propensities in the fiery furnace of human experience. Proclus in his Timaeus (Lib. V) observes concerning the telestic art that "it obliterates through divine fire all the stains produced by generation." This is the true and only meaning of purgatory.

Another angel descended with a rainbow on his head, his face was as the sun for brightness and his feet were resting upon pillars of fire. This lower fire searched the lives of all on earth and filled with pain those who bore the mark of the Beast.

In the Book of Overthrowing Apap this arch-fiend and his associates, the Sami and the Sebau (minions of Seb), are burnt up by the flames of the sun-god. In the Book of Am-Tuat the bodies, souls, shadows and heads of the enemies of Ra are burnt and consumed daily in pits of fire. In the eighth section of the Book of Gates a picture is drawn of a monster speckled serpent called "Kheti," with seven folds, in each one of which stands a god. The open mouth of the serpent belches a stream of fire into the faces of the enemies of Ra, whose arms are tied behind their backs in agonized helplessness. Horus stands by, urging the reptile to consume the enemies of his father. In the Book of Am-Tuat there is also a group of twelve serpents, whose work was to pour fire from their bodies "which was to light the dead sun-god on his way." The soul of the god, typed often as "the Eye of Ra," is described as "the flame which followeth after Osiris to burn up the souls of his enemies." "Uatchet, the Lady of Flames, is the Eye of Ra." Ra is addressed as "Thou who givest blasts of fire from thy mouth, (who makest the two lands bright with thy radiance)." The Manes who come out of Amenta pure "shall have burnt incense before Ra."

The inner idea of burning animal flesh on a physical altar was the consuming by divine fire of the dross that emanated from the carnal segment in man. The god came into the natural man to transfigure him. To achieve this aeonial labor his fire had to burn out slowly the grosser elements, earthy and moist, by spiritual alchemy and replace them by subtle and pure essence akin to its own diviner substance. A Buddhist phrase, "the gross purgations of the celestial fire," attests the nature of the chemistry that must take place. The burning up of dross to refine pure metal is a glib poetic shibboleth in philosophy, but few know that it is a description of an actual bio-chemical process taking place in human life. All our lower emotionalism and heavier sensualism is as fuel for the burning. The lurid flare of such a combustion is only turned to pure clear flame by pain and defeat. Animal sacrifice on an altar was only to dramatize the conversion of lower man to higher under the action of fiery spiritual energies. And it is significant that the ancients swore, not by the altar, but by the fire which was on the altar. One would not swear by the impermanent part of his nature, but by the stable and abiding. This was the fire of soul and conscience. The inner fire, imprisoned in body, strives to burn its way into flame. But its fuel is moist and damp--green wood--and it must first slowly dry out the resistant mass. The grossly misunderstood phrase, "the wrath of God," is just this steady consuming of obstructing material.

Says the Eternal, then, in Deuteronomy (32), when he notes that his sons have sacrificed to "demons, to no-gods, to gods who are utter strangers, to new-comers of gods""

"For a self-willed race are they,

Children devoid of loyalty.

My wrath has flared up,

flaming to the nether world itself,

burning up earth and all it bears,

setting the roots of the hills ablaze.

. . . . .

From Sinai came the Eternal,

from Seir he dawned on us;

from Paran’s range he rayed out,

blazing in fire from the south.

It is given in the Ritual (Ch. 108) that "the Osiris, triumphant, knoweth the name of this serpent. . . . ‘Dweller in his fire’ is his name."

The Manes "opens the doors of heaven by the flames which are about the abode of the gods; he advances through the fire which is about the home of the gods, who make a way for him, to make him pass onwards, for he is Horus."

According to another text, "Horus led the deceased through the abode of the gods situated among the flames of fire."

Sut and Horus are the representatives of the dual life of man, and are the divine twins, the first of whom, Sut, brings the water of the inundation to submerge the fire of deity in the sea of generation; and the second, Horus, brings the rebirth of the fire within the very borders of the sea of life. Both were astrologically united in the star Sut-Canopus. In an Australian myth the hawk brought the fire to the aborigines.

A typical mythical account of the war in heaven and descent of the fire-devas to earth is found in another Australian legend of the bandicoot who had a firebrand, but refused to share it. This was the rebellion. The hawk and the pigeon were deputed to get it. The pigeon made a lunge for it, whereupon the bandicoot desperately hurled it toward the water to put it out. But the hawk deflected it into the grass over the sea, which caught fire. The hawk and pigeon (dove) are birds of soul-fire, the bandicoot the bird of darkness, a type of the water that put out the solar fire.

All through the world’s Märchen one finds that fire is often dual, the first being the natural fire, as of lightning, flint-fire and other forms; the second is a fire that is human in origin, requiring mind to achieve it.

Sut and Horus, as the human duality, are typed in the two phases, light and dark, of the moon. Sut is the black vulture (which lives on blood) and Horus the golden hawk. The lunar ibis, bird of Ptah, is black and white, and portrays the two natures in one creature. There is a legend of a black raven that once was white. In a Thlinker tradition the white bird is represented as becoming black in passing up the flue of Kanukh’s fire-place. This is a form of the phoenix which transforms from black to white (or into the golden hawk) and from white to black in its passage to and from the underworld, which is called Kanukh’s flue.

A prayer in the Ritual (Ch. 163) begs the god to "grant that the flame may leave the fire, wherever it may be, to raise up the hands of Osiris," which were bandaged to the sides of his inert body in the mummy case. Osiris is himself appealed to, as the Governor of Amenta, to "grant light and fire to the happy soul which is in Sutenkhenen (Heracleopolis)," the underworld. Samson’s bound arms were freed by the burning away of his flaxen bonds. The soul (in Ch. 63B) says that Ra has "lifted up the moist emanations of Osiris from the

Lake of Fire and he was not burned." "A fire was kindled for thee in the hands of the goddess Rerit [the hippopotamus goddess of the Nile, i.e., the virgin mother]; she performeth acts of protection for thee every day." The Manes is exhorted to "kindle the fire in order that the flame may rise up; and throw incense upon it in order that the smell of incense may rise up." A chapter (137A) deals with the four blazing flames which are made for the Khu or spirit. The flame riseth, it is said, in Abru (Abydos) and it cometh to the Eye of Horus. It is set in order on the brow of Osiris and on his breast, and is fixed within his shrine. The Rubric specifies that this chapter shall be recited over the four fires made of anointed atma3 cloth, and the fires shall be placed in the hands of four men who shall have the names of the four pillars of Horus written on their shoulders. It is promised that the soul that undertakes to perform the offices of this chapter of the Four Blazing Fires each day shall find release from every hall in the underworld and from the seven halls of Osiris. The four men are the four guardians of the cardinal points, upholding man at the four corners of his being, or in his four bodies.

The Manes says again: "I am the Great One, son of the Great One; I am Fire, son of Fire, to whom was given his head after it was cut off." The descent was symbolized as a cutting off of the head, since intellect was lost.

The genetrix of the seven stars is called the keeper of fire, the spark-holder.

Sut signifies "Fire-stone," according to Massey. Oddly enough, lightning was anciently regarded as the dart of a fiery stone, and it has the name of the fire-stone widely attached to it among many peoples. So we have Jesus saying, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." But the name likely has also a reference to the flint-stone fire, as potential fire locked up in stone. Indeed flint was a frequent symbol of the buried deific potency. One of the Mexican legends reports the Mother-Creatrix as having given birth to a flint knife, which fell on earth and became the origin of men. The flint is a graphic symbol of the presence of hidden fire in the physical world. In the same fashion a god (fire) is buried invisibly within the body of physical humanity. Flint nurses the potentiality of the birth of fire within it! "When the Serpent-lightning darted out of the cloud it buried itself in the earth, leaving its stone-head in the aerolith of smelted sand." It was called the Thunder-hatchet. (Records of the Past.)

The element of fire was regarded as latent in both wood and stone, needing effort, force, a blow or heat to bring it forth. Fire, with its eternal intimation of spirit, was regarded as the divine inner essence of these materials, a conception now endorsed by late science.

When the Mystery candidate came forth from the examination he was asked what the judges have awarded him and he replies: "A flame of fire and a pillar of crystal." (Ch. 125.)

The Quiché name for lightning is Cak-ul-ha, that is, "fire coming from water"; and the serpent of fire and the serpent of water are one, ultimately. The winged serpent signified winged lightning.

The Old Testament (Exod. 24:12) declares that the glory of the Lord was in appearance like a devouring fire on top of the mount. The Psalms (18) say that he "thundered in the heavens. He made darkness his secret place; a smoke issued from his nostrils and devouring fire out of his mouth . . . and he hurtled stones and coals of fire." He is called the "Lightning-sender." In Exodus (20) the Eternal descended in fire upon a cloud. Here is the mingling of fire and water again. "Smoke rose like steam from a kiln, till the people all trembled terribly." The lightning only flashed on the third day, a significant fact explained later.

In most of these illustrations the fire alluded to is that of upper intelligence flashing forth to enlighten the natural order. But this fire, in its contact with the watery and earthly elements of the carnal self, stirs up steam, sulphurous exhalations, fumes, noxious gases and dust, and in this transformation it becomes truly a fire of Tophet and Hades! Nevertheless it is still the purifying fire. As washing by water was an emblem of purgation, so fumigation was a companion type. Says Massey:

"Amenta was the land of precious metals and the furnace of solar fire. Hence Ptah, the miner, became the blacksmith of the gods, the Kamite Vulcan."4

If, then, the earth is the furnace of fire, there can be no quibbling about the meaning of the vivid narrative of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three who were cast into the fiery furnace, in Daniel. It is only another allegory of the solar triadic god, in his three principles of mind-soul-spirit, embodied in the sphere of flesh, typed now as a fiery furnace. The Manes, who is spirit in this furnace, is shown his Ka, his pure higher soul, as a means of aiding him to remember his name in the great house, "in the crucible of the great house of flame." One of the chapters is designed to be read so that its magical potency may enable the Manes to "escape from every fire." In another the soul prays (Ch. 17) to be "delivered from the god who liveth upon the damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a man," "at the angle of the pool of fire." Here is the man and animal combined, another of the oft-recurring glyphs of our duality. And where the man and the animal are united, where they meet, is the pool of fire!

In the Psalms it is said, "They go through fire and through water" and are "brought out into a place of abundance." "So," says Edward Carpenter, "was the Greek Hercules, who overcame death though his body was consumed in the burning garment of mortality out of which he rose to heaven."5

The Book of Judges (6) recounts how at the sacrifices for the Eternal, the meat and the unleavened bread which the angel had commanded Gideon to "put on the rock yonder," were touched by the tip of the wand in the angel’s hand, at which "fire spurted out of the rock and burned up the meat and the cakes. So Gideon realized it was an angel of the Eternal."

In Exodus (12) the directions from the Eternal to the Israelites were that the meat of the sacrificial offering was "not to be eaten raw or boiled in water, but roasted in fire, head and legs and all." The true food for man to consume is not that immersed in his lower watery nature, but that transformed into suitable spiritual nourishment by the fire of spirit alone. It is to be recalled that the Titans first boiled the members of Bacchus in water and afterwards roasted them in fire. The fiery force of deity had caused the lower elements to seethe and boil; when the moisture (carnality) was all dried out, the remainder of the process was a "roasting."

The immolation of Jephthah’s daughter as a burnt sacrifice appears to be another figuration of the divinization of the mortal (feminine) nature after two and a fraction aeons. For she asked permission to bewail her unfruitfulness for two months in the hills. Hill or hills is a frequent glyph for earth. To burn her up was not to destroy her, so we can save our tears. It was to set her on fire with a brighter purer flame.

Gideon’s routing of the Midianites "in the valley below" by the smashing of the clay pitchers in which were lighted torches, is of extremely apt relevance in the terms of the symbology of fire and water. A pitcher is a water container, but these were empty. The water had been dried up, and the fire burned unquenched. The water of sense burned out, the only remaining task for the spirit, to consummate its full release from its prison, was to rend asunder the veil of flesh, the body. This was achieved in the shattering of the clay pitchers. The Midianites are the multitude of lower impulses, ever the adversaries, the enemies. They flee and vanish the moment they see the divine fire glow forth in its full release of hidden power!

The story of Samson, a typical solar hero, provides splendid exemplification of the fire symbology. When he was delivered over to the Philistines (the lower propensities again) he was bound with two new ropes. But when the Philistines were about to punish him, "the spirit of the Eternal inspired him mightily, the ropes around his arms became like flax that has caught fire, the bonds melted off his hands." The god within burned away his bonds. A whole chapter of exposition could not add force to the sublime meaning here pictured.

It is appropriate to consider the beautiful emblemism of the "pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night," whereby the Eternal manifested his guiding presence with his children on their mundane journey. In the full glare of the blinding light of divinity, some watery veil is necessary to intervene between us and the overpowering glory. The Eternal put his hand over Moses’ eyes while his glory passed by. Man’s face must be veiled in the presence of deity. God interposes the veil of matter between us and his hidden spirit. This is the cloud by day. But in the evolutionary night time, when the soul is deeply submerged in material darkness, there is needed the shining of the pillar of fire. It is the moon by night. In the Elysian or paradisical realms the angels are represented as refreshing themselves in bowers of shade or cloud. Shade is grateful in the summer. But on earth the buried god needs light. The gross physical sense of the moving pillars is impossible. A marching column of some two million people, and some twenty miles long, would need to rest at night, whereas the literal translation would presuppose their needing a light to guide their nocturnal march.

Then there is that other great religious usage, the significance of which no mind can fail to sense in all its dynamic admonition for humanity. Many nations felt it incumbent, under the strength of the most powerful obligations, to maintain a fire perpetually burning on the central hearth of the nation. In Rome a class of virgins, chosen for physical and spiritual purity, were put in charge of the Vestal Fire, and death was the penalty for letting it die out. Likewise, as is not so generally known, death by burial alive was the penalty for sexual intercourse, inflicted remorselessly upon these maidens. This, too, was regarded as a letting of the spiritual fire on the hearth of life go out. The ancients knew that if once the spark of empyreal fire kindled in the moist nature of the earthy man was permitted to die out, it was the second and irretrievable death of the soul. That portion or fragment of deity that was sent into the flesh could be divulsed entirely from its linkage to heaven--the silver cord could be cut--and the soul lost, for the rest of the aeonial cycle. The 64th chapter of the Ritual is to be recited in order that the person may not die a second time, "but may come forth and escape from the fire." To escape the second death the Manes had to keep the sacred fire aglow.

In the elaborate ceremony conducted over the mummy, there was one act which stands out in the sharp forcefulness of its meaning. The Rubric to the 137th chapter says that the figure of the mummy was to be smeared with bitumen (the same substance was used to caulk the wicker boat in which Moses and Sargon floated among the reeds) and set fire to. This was to figure the lower nature being lighted up by the fire of the higher. The life of the god, says Budge naively, "sometimes takes the form of a flame of fire." Budge adds: "These ceremonies are said to be ‘an exceedingly great mystery of Amenta and a type of the hidden things of the other world.’"6 Again we see the scholar’s mind stultified by want of that one key to ancient books: that this world is Amenta. For the mystery pertains to the hidden things of no other world than this one we know. But it is, of course, a type of the mysteries of all other cosmic worlds.

Then there is the "burning bush" of Moses. "When he looked there was the thorn-bush ablaze with fire, yet not consumed" (Ex. 2). "The angel of the Eternal appeared to him in a flame of fire rising out of the thorn-bush." To be sure, the fire rises out of the natural order, symboled by a bush. The figure of the burning bush seems to offer no more significance than the "golden bough" of classical lore, or the branch of the sycamore-fig that burns with fire but is not consumed. Horus indeed was typed as the "golden unbu" (branch) from his mother’s tree. No fact in nature lends itself with more felicity to the idea of new life from old than that of the bright new shoot (as of the pine) at the end of last season’s more darkly colored growth. Its lighter color is significant of new glory. As Jesus was the shoot of the vine (also Horus), his Egyptian mythical designation would have been the "golden unbu." In the texts the unbu is the symbol of the son reborn from the dead father. There is a figure of the disk of light raying all ablaze from the summit of the sycamore-fig, which thus appears to burn with fire, but is not burned. The Manes approaches the holy emblem without shoes, salutes the tree and addresses the god in the solar fire: "Shine on me, O unknown soul. I draw near to the god whose words were heard by me in the lower earth" (Ch. 64). One is now prepared to sense the meaning of the bright-spangled star that tops our Christmas pine tree. And by the same token one can know the cryptic meaning of the Star of Bethlehem. Need it be added that the burning bush is just the symbol of nature’s "green" product, the first Adam, being divinized to golden splendor by the touch of the god’s spiritual fire? Any green tree or stalk or stem, tipped at its summit by the bright-hued flower, furnishes the same moral. Human life is to flower out at its summit in radiant colors. And we set fire to the Yule log.

An old English legend identifies the golden bough of Horus with the bush that flowered at Christmas, the Glastonbury thorn. The flowering at Christmas depicts the birth of the solar god at the solstice, the application of which to individual spiritual history will be examined later. Says Horus (Ch. 42): "I am Unbu, who proceedeth from Nu, and my mother is Nut." Again: "I am Unbu of An-ar-ef, the flower in the abode of occultation," or in the fleshly world of hiding. Possession of the golden bough in classical mythology was the passport of release from the underworld.

There is, also, the flaming two-edged sword of the angel set to guard the tree of life in the garden. Origen says that the Gnostic diagram of this symbol was as follows: "The flaming sword was depicted as the diameter of a flaming circle, and as if mounting guard over the tree of knowledge and of life." There is doubtless much mystical, astrological and other occult symbolism in the sign; but in relation to the human situation its meaning seems to be simpler. Man’s life here is cast between the two fires of heaven and earth, the bright fire of celestial splendor and the lurid one of earth. They are of course two aspects or modifications of the same one fire. Hence his life is cut by the fire that catches him on both sides, upper and lower. The fire of life consumes in both directions. It lights and it also burns. It glows in beauteous glory; it painfully consumes the lower self. Heaven is fiery; so is hell. As the waters were sundered, so was the divine fire. The flaming sword is the eternal reminder of the two-edgedness of our nature. The doubleness of the fire that has come to deify us is announced in the line in the Ritual: "Pepi is the country (or the god) Setit, the conqueror of the Two Lands, whose flame receives its two portions." We are bathed in "the Pool of the Double Fire." The Two Lands are the two areas or fields of our dual selfhood. Man is to conquer the twoness of his being, merging the two portions into one new creation. The Ritual says that "he cultivates the Two Lands, he pacifies the Two Lands, he unites the Two Lands." It says also that "he cultivates the crops on both sides of the horizon."

John Baptist’s statement in the New Testament is a mighty affirmation of the truth of what is here presented. He represented the lower man, antecedent and preparatory to the spiritual self. He bears the symbolism of water (if not of earth), as Jesus does that of fire and air. For his statement yet rings down the centuries of Christian theology: "I indeed baptize you with water, but he that cometh after me shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit [Latin: spiritus, "air"!] and with fire." The man born of the natural or maternal order (man born of woman) alone, preceded him that was born of the Father’s divine spirit. Again our thesis is dramatically vindicated by "scripture."

Iamblichus tells us that the three golden apples of Hesperides are: (1), Illumination; (2), A communion of operation; and, (3), A perfect plenitude of Divine Fire.7

A mass of testimony could be drawn from the Bible to stress the prominence of the fire typology. Isaiah strongly enjoins us (50, 11): "Behold all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled." Job admonishes evildoers (18:5): "Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out and the spark of his fire shall not shine. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with him." Paul says that if we awake "from the dead," "Christ will shine upon" us. Isaiah says that we wait for the light, and exhorts us to "arise, shine, for thy light is come." John says that "light is come into the world" and "that was the true light" when the Christos arrived. He declares that the only condemnation was the world’s rejection of the light when it came. The Psalmist says that the Lord is his light and his salvation and that "light is sown for the righteous." "In thy light shall we see light." Jesus said: "When I am in the world I am the light of the world." He assured the righteous that they were the light of the world, that indeed they needed no other light to lighten their path, as they had light in themselves. The Lord made his ministers a flame of fire. "The Lord God is a sun and a shield"--the pillar and the cloud, the meaning of which, clear at last, is simply spirit and matter. When there was darkness over the land of Egypt, "the Israelites had light in their dwellings." And this is not speaking of rush lights in Egyptian huts, but spiritual light in physical bodies. Jesus was "the sun of righteousness" and at the end of human evolution "the righteous shall shine like the sun." And if there is needed a pointblank utterance from the Bible to cover our claim, it might be found in the line from the Psalms: "Our God is a living fire." For a long series of generations Christendom has set fire to the Yule log and lighted candles on the Christmas tree. Yet there is hardly a child in the West that could give a reason for these rites that would convey a modicum of the truth. For the venerable teaching that nature put forth on its topmost bough a bright effulgence of deity, a bright flower at the top of the green stem, a shining god at the summit of elemental creation, has long been lost. Yet the Christ has come, bringing and distributing "that light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

The fire emblem has become involved in a host of combinations with other types, and its play in all mythology is extensive. Many of these references to it carry valuable implications.

The ancient Apt, mother of the world, is called "the kindler of sparks," the "kindler of light for the deceased in the dark of death" (Rit., Ch. 137: Vign: Papyrus of Nebseni). Thus the old first bringer of rebirth is the kindler of light in the sepulcher--of earth. Mary Magdalene who is her counterpart in the Gospel version, comes to the tomb "early, while it is yet dark," and finds the stone moved away and light kindled at the tomb sufficient to see by. Chapter 137B is entitled: "Of kindling a flame by Nebseni, the scribe in the temple of Ptah."

The great classical fable of Prometheus bears relations to the fire sign. The myth is not entirely unique. There is, for instance, the Hindu tale of the monster (Titan) Rahu, who smuggled himself into the presence of the Gods of light and drank the Amrit-juice of immortality. He was cut in two, but could not be destroyed, by Indra, and the two halves were set as signs in the heavens at the places of the lunar eclipses.

That the Promethean myth is not entirely to be dissociated from the story of the Galilean savior is shown by the fact that, according to Carpenter, "Prometheus, the greatest and earliest benefactor of the human race, was nailed by hands and feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mt. Caucasus."8 When one knows that this figure fastened to a cross or rock is but the outward dramatization of the truth of the god’s impalement on the stake of matter, all historical realism connected with it becomes revolting.

The Titans were styled in the Mysteries "Thyrsus-bearers, and Prometheus concealed fire in a thyrsus or reed; after which he was considered as bringing celestial light into generation or leading soul into body, or calling forth the divine illumination."9 The natural order harbors in it the seeds of spiritual growth.

Massey quite plausibly allocates to the word "Teitan" the "number of the Beast" given in Revelation as 666. He argues that the triple "S" on the Gnostic stones, represents this number, "S" equaling 6. SSS then equals 666. It was a sign of the six elementary creations that prepare the way for the seventh. He traces the value of the letters as follows:

T ............... 300

E ............... 5

I ............... 10

T ............... 300

A ............... 50

N ............... 1

____

666

The statement that the Beast lost one of its heads, which was afterwards restored and healed (Cf. a similar case in the Egyptian mythos) is interpreted by him to mean that the descent of the Titanic hosts was the figurative equivalent of the loss of the head or intellect to be regained in the evolutionary sequel. The sevenfold corpus of deity, minus one of its heads, was thus numerically reduced from seven to six. Man, then, is to be regarded as a sevenfold being suffering the temporary loss of his (divine) intellect, or head, which he is striving to restore or heal. We must round out the Beast in us by giving him a head of intelligence. There is still more to this typology of seven minus one. The fabled Mt. Meru "is also described as being intersected by six parallel ranges running east and west. Six is typed by the hexagon or space in six directions"--a symbol of our life in this three-dimensional world, where the cube of six sides is the typical shape of any existential object. The six parallel ranges are the six planes beneath the topmost level, where the "heart of Bacchus" was preserved when the mental body was dismembered. Says Proclus in the Timaeus: "The Framer made the heavens six in number, and for the seventh he cast into the midst the fire of the sun." This was the crowning of nature’s six elementary kingdoms with the element of mind, or the first injection of intellect into the evolutionary creation in and through the person of man, Atum-Ra, the first god-born race. Nature struggles upward through six degrees of material coarseness, till her product, animal-man, is sufficiently sensitized to be made the vehicle of Manas, or Mind.

Job (5:19) relates six and seven mysteriously in a remarkable statement: "He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven, there shall no evil touch thee." Trouble is associated with six and deliverance from it with seven. Life is captive and harassed during its long peregrinations upward through the three sub-atomic "elemental kingdoms" in the invisible world, the preliminary stages in the formation of matter out of empty space, and the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms in the visible atomic world; and intelligence comes in the seventh kingdom to release it from its sub-conscious captivity. Life is in "Egyptian" bondage to nature through six aeons. The seventh--and seven times seven--brings the glorious "year of jubilee," when all captives and prisoners are set free. In Numbers a Hebrew slave was to serve six years and go free in the seventh without paying a ransom. The fields were to be cultivated for six years and to lie fallow the seventh. But when the Messiah came--and his Egyptian name Iu-em-hetep means "he who comes seventh"--he was allegorized as coming under the dominance of the six lower forces; and so the number seven later took on in the texts the evil implications of the number six and is the numerical type of servitude. Jacob is made to serve seven years for Leah and an added seven for Rachel. In some old texts the ten plagues of Egypt were originally seven.

The profounder significance of the first "miracle" of Jesus in turning water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana hinges upon the fact, hardly ever commented on, that the servants set out for the transformation six pots of water in earthen vessels! Jesus, embodying the seventh or transmuting power, came to convert that nature that had been constituted by the first six outpourings of primal life into higher spiritual status. The Christ has the task of transfiguring six lower elemental powers into divinity. And in the Gospel story he went up into the mount for the transfiguration "after six days"! Spiritual "wine" was to be made out of the six types of elemental "water" in man’s constitution. And man, physically, comes close to being six-sevenths water in composition!

The "year of the Lord" was divided into six (double) signs of the zodiac. The sun passes annually through these six signs, and man’s soul, his sun, also passes through six levels of being in attaining self-conscious freedom. It makes the round of the elements of earth, water, air and fire in twelve subdivisions. These elements being embodied in his own constitution, the sun-soul in man passes through them to achieve its mastery of all life. His victory in the seventh kingdom regains for him all that was lost in the beginning. The Christ adds the seventh head to the decapitated natural order. The seventh and "lost" Pleiad will be recaptured by Orion, the mighty hunter, Egypt’s astrological figure for Horus. The Christ will restore the lost light.

The Titans, of whom Prometheus was one, appear in a dual and somewhat confusing character in the mythology. They are both man’s good angel and his devil. The solution of this enigma of theology will be fully expounded in the next chapter. But, briefly, it can be said that the Titans of mythology match the Lucifer character of theology.

"Hesiod says the Father called the Revolters by an opprobrious name, Teitans, when he cursed them. And they were cast down into Tartarus and bound in chains and darkness in the abyss." (Theogony I, 207; II, 717).

The god, the Titan, Prometheus, Lucifer, who brought us our divine fire from the empyrean, was in part converted into the Beast when his Titanic intellect was linked with the six elementary forces. He mingled his life-blood with theirs, and the contagion of elementary impulse went to his head! Certain of the myths tend to align the Titans with the six elementary powers; and this is a natural confusion since the higher mentality did commingle with the lower instincts. The god who was angelic, because untested, in heaven, became demoniacal on earth, and the coloring of every attribute is altered as he indeed "suffers a sea change" in plunging into the lower waters.

The myth of the Greek Saturn, who was overthrown and despoiled by the Titans in that heavenly warfare, is read as planetary cosmology by Massey and others. The meaning is that each lower grade of life organized in the progressive outpourings "steals" away the higher creative force to use on its own plane. The functions and the glory of Saturn were alleged to have been transferred to the sun, who became the new lord of the six. Saturn is identical with the Egyptian Sebek (Sevekh) whose name is "seven," and in the early mythos he was the deity who crowned the six elementary forces with completion, as their ruler and governor. Says Massey:

"The sun and Saturn both became the lord of the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day of rest and peace, which is Hept, [Hetep] the name of No. 7. But in the cult of Sebek . . . the original of the solar Sabazius, son of . . . Kubele, the sun and Saturn were combined as Sabat, Sabaoth, or Sapt, which, read as Sebti, shows the dual form of Seb, for the sun and Saturn . . . Sabazius was reported to have been torn into seven parts by the Titans, corresponding to the seven days of the week and the seven planets to which they were dedicated."10

That is to say, our number "seven" (Latin: septem) is derived from Saturn and the sun combined in their two names of Seb and Hept, compounded into sept. Seb, as we have seen, covers the dual meaning of "star" and "soul," both suggesting fire. As the coming of the god of intellect and reason, the seventh element, crowned the long elemental warfare of cosmic creation with the peace and rest of intellectual control, order and harmony, so the deific principle gives its name to the day of peace that follows the hurly-burly of the six secular days. In general we devote six days to bodily interests; the seventh should go to the interests of the soul. Ancient discernment of primary creational verities gave us our week of seven days, to stand as an eternal reminder of the sevenfold cosmic order, of which our own basic constitution is itself a reflection and a miniature. And old Egypt gives us the philosophical demonstration of all this in the dual meaning of the word Hept, which is both "seven" and "peace." The seventh element is that noetic intellect which stills the storm on the passional waters and brings peace to chaotic nature, based on its six lower mindless energies. Iu-em-hetep (Imhotep of the Greeks) is he who comes to bring peace as number seven.

In Exodus (23) it is written:

"The radiance of the Eternal rested on the mountain of Sinai; for six days the cloud covered it, and on the seventh day he called from the cloud to Moses (the Eternal’s radiance looked to the Israelites like blazing fire on the top of the mountain.)"

It is in a verse from this same chapter that a very noteworthy statement is made:

"For six years you may sow your land and gather in your crops, but every seventh year you must let the land alone, so the poor people may pick up something; anything they leave the wild animals can eat, for if you worship their gods it will endanger you."

There is ample warrant for a moment’s digression from the main theme of the chapter to follow out several implications of this astonishing passage. The injunction not to cultivate the fields every seventh year, so that the "poor" might have some "pickings," is on the face of it impossible physically. For if the land was left alone, there would be no planting and hence no picking. How could the earthly poor profit from unplanted fields?

The command has nothing to do with agriculture or charity, except that which is cosmic and spiritual. It is one of those ingenious "parables" by which ancient sagacity embodied great evolutionary truth in pictorial representation. It concerns in this case a most recondite fact of esoteric knowledge. Bizarre as it may sound to modern ears, it was the teaching of the abstruse biological science of old that at the dissolution of the several component principles of the multiple human constitution at the completion of the cycle (the seventh day), one of these bodies of etheric material (of types now predicated by science), the "astral," called the "chhaya" in India, floated free as an independent entity, possessing both sufficient vitality to preserve it from disintegration, and a semblance of mental automatism. In this condition it was utilized by nature for a particular purpose. It was made the matrix or mold about which was aggregated coarser matter, as a magnetic field organizes iron filings, which matter gave it a body and localized it on earth as a living creature. Both the Bible and other esoteric writings have mysterious sayings about the lower orders of life feeding upon the lees or dregs of the orders above them, even in some cases excrementitious matter. The meaning is approached along the line of a peculiar emblemism. Man’s discarded "astral" shells, so the doctrine teaches, serve as the models and the animating principles of lower forms of life. Our "astral" leavings, cast-off clothing, are made to serve as the feeling souls of inferior creatures. The animal picks up our emotion body and builds his physical body over it as a model. Man’s part in creative evolution is far more direct than he imagines. Every phase or grade of life is creative, to its degree. If this item seems strange, it assuredly is no more so than many of the almost unbelievable phenomena of physical biology in general in animal and insect life. Nature has a bigger bag of tricks than we realize. She employs a vast range of unsuspected and startling methods in the endless repertoire of her ingenuity. At any rate the fact was so taught in the arcane schools of occultism, and here in Exodus is a passage directly pointing to it, since the text can mean nothing intelligible in its literal sense. The seventh round in all cycles of life in nature is always the epoch at which soul consummates its work in an organism and retires to its proper level above, leaving the physical bases of life to stand without further cultivation until the beginning of the next series of seven rounds. During the retirement the lower animal self, the "poor," reaps the harvest of its previous attachment to the higher entity. The ethereal vestures survive, for they are enduring in proportion to their atomic fineness. We have already equated "the poor" and also "the people" with the Gentiles, who were the "sons of men" in contrast to the "Sons of God"; the humans in whom the Christ principle has not yet been made consciously the ruler.

And the second startling item of this excerpt asserts that what those "poor" semi-humans leave may be picked up, in a third order of gradation, by the wild animals. This is informative indeed. The process of divination begins with the highest God and is relayed, in ever diminishing power, from rank to rank, down to the animal. Only by living on the lees of the superior order can each kingdom link itself to its appropriate measure of divine vivification.

By such occult analysis is it possible to see the meaning of the final hint of danger expressed by the line: "for if you worship their gods it will endanger you." This work has already set forth the peril involved for the heavenly visitant in taking residence in animal forms, if it permitted itself to "worship their gods" of sensuality and beastliness. A number of passages of scripture admonish the children of light to "make no compact" with the "natives" of that realm to which they were sent, nor to marry their "women"!

The sum of this material which shows the world to be figuratively "at sixes and sevens" is that conscious life was in servitude and bondage to blind unintelligent elemental forces for six aeons, three in the invisible and three in the visible worlds, and was only lifted up to the liberty of sons of God when the spiritual fire of the spiritual sun, the second Adam or the Christ, was set in the heavens of man’s conscious being as the ruler of the six sub-mental powers. In Galatians (4) Paul clearly states that when we were children in evolution "we were in bondage to them that by nature are no gods." We were in slavery to the elementals of the earth and of the air, as he distinctly says! He warns his brethren not to come under the power of these elementals, as it would endanger their spiritual integrity.

Stars are closely intermingled with the fire symbolism. They are themselves fiery in constitution, blazing suns or their planets. Stars were considered the children of Ra, the great lord of the spiritual sun, who emaned them like tears from his eyes. Souls were his offspring, centrally nucleated by his solar fire. He was the parent of the Kumaras. Stars were held to be a race of higher beings, having souls of the essence of light coming from the sun. "I have shed my seed (of light) abroad for you," he says to his sons.11 In the Book of Adam and Eve, translated from the Ethiopic by Malan, God says: "I made thee of the light, and I wished to bring out children of the light from three." The sun’s children were called Ruti, or men of excellence. Under the name of Khabsu the stars are synonymous with souls, as also in the name of Seb. Souls in Amenta were represented by stars. As the souls arose in their resurrection they appeared above the horizon on the eastern side of heaven. This is why the rising star of the solar deity born in mankind was seen "in the east" in the Gospel story. It dies in the west, like the sun, and has its new birth in the house of bread (Bethlehem) in the east. The god Shu-Anhur was called the "lifter up of the sky," together with its inhabitants, the stars. Ra addresses Shu: "Be the guardian of the multitudes that live in the nocturnal sky," or sky of the Lower Egypt of Amenta. "Put them on thy head and be their fosterer," or sustainer. Spiritually this betokens the elevation of our elemental nature by the shifting of the center of intellectual and spiritual gravity above the horizon in the heaven of consciousness. The stars were in fact the bodies of gods, and the lucent fragment of deity in man is his star.

The Great Bear of seven stars drew the first circle or cycle of time in the abyss of chaos, and gave definite law, order and periodicity to the primary creation. From primal elemental disorder, nature settled down to rhythmic regularity as the beginning of stable order in her worlds. From blind erratic struggle the elements fell into order in a septenary mechanism. This was imaged first in the Great Bear, the mother of the first cycle of regular time and fixed revolutions. This primary cluster in the sky should never cease to speak to our imagination of the heptarchy of forces in nature, which are the bases of our lives as well. This mighty fact of creation was in the mind of the sage who wrote that at the dawn of creation all the sons of the Elohim shouted for joy and "the Morning Stars sang together" (Job 38). The music of the spheres began with the first swing into symmetrical order and balanced harmony between centripetal and centrifugal energies that had been jangling in confusion and dissonance before the seventh element, the sun or spirit, gave the six a king. But Plato strangely tells us that "with the sixth creation ended the order of song." (Philebus, 66.) Coincident with this we are also told that the sixth pole star in succession passed from the constellation of Lyra, the Harp, to that of Hercules, the man-god. All these veiled hints have tremendous meaning, for this would seem to indicate that the soul comes into the order of nature bringing a power of independent will, which may contravene the mechanical automatism of nature, break into the rhythm and mar the music--until it learns of itself anew to fix the measure to a higher harmony. Man’s free agency does inject either a reasoned or an unreasoned self-initiative into that which was automatically rhythmic before. In a former reference we have heard the great Lord himself complain of the spirits who had broken in upon his celestial music and marred the harmony, for which he threw them down into incarnation.

The Rubric to chapter 129 of the Ritual says of the Manes: "And he shall be established as a star face to face with Septet [Sirius, Sothis, the Dog-Star] and his corruptible body shall be as a god . . . forever." To deify the human is to make a star of him. The Manes himself prays (Ch. 102): "Let me be among the stars that never rest." It is promised (Ch. 164) that "he shall become a star of heaven." Has orthodoxy held out to its votaries any such thrilling cosmic view of their future? The Osiris-Nu pleads (Ch. 188): "May I enter into the house of his body, which, behold, hath become one of the starry gods!" This would be the higher spiritual body, not the corporeal. It is said to the soul: "Thou art purified with the libation of the stars. The stars that never set bear thee up; thou enterest in the place where thy father is, where Keb [Seb] is . . . thou becomest a soul therein." The soul (Pepi) pleads: "Make thou this Pepi to be an imperishable star before thee." The acme of directness is attained in the next statement: "Pepi is a star." To Teta, the soul, it is said: "Thou seizest the hands of the imperishable stars . . . for behold thou art one of the gods." "The imperishable stars follow and minister unto thee." Pepi is addressed: "Thou art the Great Star; Orion beareth thee on his shoulder. Thou traversest heaven with Orion, thou sailest through the Tuat with Osiris." Again: "Pepi takes his seat among you, O ye star gods of the Tuat." And finally in grand simplicity stands the categorical pronouncement : "Thy soul is a living star at the head of his brethren." For the six elementary powers were his natural brothers, of whom he, like Joseph and like Jesus, was made the chief or head. From brethren they were reduced to children when the god principle took charge and synthesized their functions. The fiery soul of intellect became king of the lower six elementary powers in man’s make-up. The Christos came as the Prince of Peace to rise to kingship over nature’s six divisions of force. "Unto you a king is given . . . and his name shall be called . . . the Prince of Peace."

But the soul is specifically typed by that great and brilliant emblem of our divinity, the Morning Star. The Titan who came hurtling to earth still clinging to his stolen possession, the spiritual fire, was Lucifer, "the bright and morning star."

The significance of this emblem is in its heralding the approach of day. "The day star is rising." It is the harbinger of the coming of the great Lord of Day. As the announcer it becomes identical in function with Anup, the fiery ape in Egypt, Mercury in Greek mythology, and John Baptist in Christianity. Anup is the way-opener for the advent of Horus, who, though coming after him, was before him in stature and authority (Rit., Ch. 44). Anup abode in the dark and empty reaches of the desert of Amenta until the day of his manifestation in the heliacal rising of the star Sothis (Sirius), the morning star of the year in Egypt, which heralded the birth of Horus, as the opening of the year. John dwelt in the wilderness until the time of his theophany or "showing forth in Israel" (Luke I:80). The soul was held out in the wilderness of the six elemental energies until the arrival of the Christ. Anup was only a star god, but as such he was the precursor of the greater solar light. As the sun in its splendor far outshines the total galaxy of the stars, so the deity whose association with man was presaged by the star-god, was far to surpass in glory any product of the natural series. And this is made clear by the Gospel statement that the least in the kingdom of the god is greater than the highest of those born of woman, that is, nature.

The stars typed one of the elementary creations, of which there seem to have been three, the first being cosmic and universal, offering a sevenfold differentiation in primal substance; the second stellar and planetary; the third racial and individual in mankind. Much of the endless confusion in the interpretation of creation legends has arisen because of failure to distinguish which of these creations was being dealt with. What is fundamental, however, to all understanding is that all of nature’s cyclic processes are typical of each other. So that cosmogenesis adumbrates the planetary formation, which in turn is an enlarged picture of the anthropogenesis. As man was formed in the image and likeness of the Elohim, the seven-rayed creative Logoi, the septenary constitution pictured in the first and second creations appertains to him by reflection. All ancient philosophy referable to man was built upon the human constitution as a septenate of powers. We see the first creation in the hebdomadal formation of all physical creation; the second in the septenary solar systems; the third in the human formed of seven principles or natures. Of the first the Mother alone, the Virgin, Achamoth, Typhon, Apt, Nut, Neith, Isis, Hathor, Rerit, Ishtar, Tiamat, Semiramis, Cybele and other primary feminine deities become the bearer and producer. Of the second Sevekh (Sebek, Seb), Saturn, and the Sun, as the leader of the seven Rishis, Archangels, Elohim, Kabiri, were the progenitors. Of the third the twelve legions of Asuras, Kumaras, Titans, Deva-Angels, Rudras, Adityas, who came collectively as Prometheus and Lucifer, individually as sons of the solar radiance, sons of Ra, or sparks of the divine fire, were the chief agents. They still supervise their continuing creation from their citadel deep within the shrine of man’s life. In one form or another, solar light, essence, power is centered in every manifestation. In the innermost sanctuary of life dwells the spark, the ray, the flame of solar glory. The sun is the central type and embodiment of the highest divinity. The Christs were all sun-gods.

In the Kabalah the vital statement is found that in each solar system the soul in its aeonial round dwells successively on six planes and spends its seventh aeon on the sun of that system. This is after the analogy of the soul in the human body, for there it successively energizes, from lowest to highest, the six elemental physical ranges of power, and six sub-spiritual psychic centers, before it ascends into the supreme flowering of the solar fire in the head.

Sirius, otherwise Sothis and Septet, being the morning star in the mythos, etymologically supplies another significant link in the story. Septet is another form of the word "seven." The six natural forces were completed and synthesized by the coming of the seventh. The morning star heralded the perfection of the sevenfold creation as it announced the coming of the crowning glory. This Sirius, the Dog-Star, was the type of Anup, the dog or jackal god, as the guide of souls in the dark of night, or incarnation. "The star Sept (Sothis) with long strides leads on the celestial path of Ra each day, and the blessed one rises as a star." The star precedes Ra, the sun in man. Of Pepi it is written: "His sister is Sept (Sothis), he is born as the Morning Star (Venus)." And again: "His sister, the star Sept (Sothis), his guide, the Morning Star, takes him by the hand to Sekhet-Hetep." Usually women, in the mythology, are the guides, protectors and watchers of the sun-god in the mythology, as they are the natural bearers, rearers and watchers of the human infant, until his own divinity arises. As the feminine always types the natural as distinct from the spiritual, the religious myth depicts the youthful solar god as being born of woman, cradled, watched and nourished by women, type of the elementary forces. The god comes to be born, nursed and nurtured in the lap of Mother Nature. But he must leave her at twelve!

In one place the text of the Ritual says, as to Pepi: "The Morning Star giveth birth to him." In another it says: "Pepi giveth birth to the Morning Star." The apparent contradiction is a matter of viewpoint, or a matter like the priority of hen or egg. Did John the Baptist bring Jesus, or Jesus John? John himself solves the riddle by saying: "He who cometh after me is preferred before me." The star brings the dawn, but the dawn also brings the star. Of the coming god, as of the Christ, the Ritual says: "His light appeareth in the sky like that of a great star, the Morning Star." And again: "Thou revolvest about Ra, near the Morning Star." The Manes is instructed: "Command thou that he is to sit by thee, on the shoulders of the Morning Star on the horizon." Following the statement that heaven is pregnant with wine, it is said that "Nut maketh herself to give birth to her daughter, the Morning Star." And immediately follows the exhortation to the soul: "Rise up thou, then, O Pepi, thou third Septet (Sothis), whose seats are purified." Calling Pepi the "third Septet" bears out fully what has just been expounded as to the three creations, each sevenfold in organization, the last being that of septenary man. That the god in his coming was to enter the waters of incarnation and the mires of earth is betokened by the following: "He places thee like the Morning Star in the fields of Reeds (Sekhet-Aarru)."

Numbers (24:17) predicts that "there shall come a star out of Jacob." As the Gnostic Jesus of Revelation (22:16) himself declares: "I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and Morning Star." And the angel promises in Revelation (2:28), to him that overcometh "I will give the Morning Star." This comes as the seventh of a series of promises "to him that overcometh."

The frequent use of the censer in Revelation is to be noticed. Seven angels had given to them seven censers, containing the fire from the altar of God within the innermost place, which the seven were to cast upon the earth! Here is the basic allegory again in small compass. In the Logia these details are preceded by the announcement: "And I beheld yet another sign in the heavens, which was marvelous in its meaning and great in its issues!" Surely; for it was the story of the deification of the human race. The burning of incense, a very general custom in religious observance in the world, runs parallel in meaning to keeping alive the Vestal Fire. In the Old Testament all cereal was to be mixed with oil and sprinkled with incense--a double seal of divinity. The Manes is addressed in the Ritual: "Thou art pure with the incense of Horus." Again we read" "Incense is presented unto thee, thou becomest God." One becomes a god only by the gift of that higher fire that purges the lower nature and refines it to true gold. And this gold is the immortal solar light. The words for gold, light and deity all derive from the same original root, "ar," "aur," "or."

Lightning, a great sacred symbol of the outflashing of the power of God on earth, was often pictured as seven-barbed. This usage establishes it definitely as a figure for the seven-forked emanation that engendered the creation. It is the type of a fiery power resident in latent form in the air and water elements. So the god is latent in the water of physical nature. The swift power of the fiery dart was typical of the "swift-running" power of deity, for the Greek word for god, theos, means the "swift-darter." In Assyria Tiamat, mother of "seven sons of the abyss," wielded a seven-speared thunderbolt, typifying her children, as powers. The highest of the seven is lightning by name. In Africa some tribes have a word for divinity which translates "lightning." Many peoples had thunder-gods, and the Bible is full of allusions to thunder. The fiery dart of Intelligence into the bosom of the worlds produces or carries the Voice of the Logos out into nature, in seven primary tones. The Hebrew male god of thunder, Kak, or Iach, probably equates with the Hindu Vach, the Word. As the forerunner and prophet of rain, the thunder held the office of Mercury and Anup, the announcers of divine advent.

Even embers and sparks are not slighted in the typism. We have the ancient Egyptian tale of Cinderella, the "sitter in the ashes," embers or cinders. Sitting in her lonely hutch on earth by the dead embers of the fire, she is the soul come to desolation on earth, stripped of her fire. But she surpasses her sisters and fits herself to be dight with radiance again. The flame that ramifies out in seven tongues is the original figure of the seven-branched candlestick. Deity comes to earth to manifest himself in seven flaming aspects of his being. And still stand the great ancient pyramids, the word by etymology reading "a measure of (creative) fire," with square base and triangular upper faces, the four and the three united to constitute the sevenfold physical structure of the worlds and man, and multiplied to constitute the twelve deific powers to be unfolded by spiritual humanity.