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Something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed, in the minds of the ancient philosophers, to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism with its pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity and its outward veil alike — by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name theos given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Plato’s etymological definition of the word theos has been shown elsewhere. He derives it from the verb θεεῖν (see Cratylus), “ to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with deity. According to the Esoteric philosophy, this Deity is during its “ nights ” and its “ days ” (i.e., cycles of rest or activity) “ the eternal perpetual motion,” “ the ever-becoming, as well as the ever universally present, and the ever Existing.” The latter is the root-abstraction, the former — the only possible conception in human mind, if it disconnects this deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through aeons of duration into its original status — Absolute Unity.
It was only the minor gods, who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as “ the great Cat of the Basin of Perséa, in An ”
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(See “ Book of the Dead,” Ritual XVII., 45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated, and holding a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements, attached to a Circle.
In that very learned work, “ The Natural Genesis,” by Mr. Gerald Massey, on pp. 408 — 455 (Vol. I.), under the heading, “ Typology of the Cross,” there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the Cross is referred to these two volumes. The author shows that “ the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The crux ansata unites the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin they came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The names denote the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed cross (Swastica) and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. . . . The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh-te 
.”
Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid) “ the sign 
, occurring as the reverse of a Phoœician coin, with a Ram as the obverse. . . . . The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking-Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses ” (Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansée, Mém. de l’Académie des Sciences, pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in “ Nat. Gen.”), which proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the divine origin of Cross and Circle had been forgotten.
Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (vol. xviii., p. 393, pl. 4) : —
“ At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval ; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth . . . . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following specimen 
, which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure of the earth’s path.
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The same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru.”
This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.
But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of Cross and Circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Aryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author : —
“ The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross sign is not always simple. * This is a type that was developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh 
the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . . . The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru 
set upright on the Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the birth-place in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh sign is the feminine type of the birth-place, representing the north. It was in the Northern Quarter that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the “ Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross 
, a mere loop which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon of the great Bear, as her Ark, the ideograph of a period, an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution.
“ This then represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear, which constituted the earliest year of time, from which we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birth-place of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark or Rak type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued in the Cypriote 
and the Coptic Ro, 
. † The Ro was carried into the Greek cross 
, which is formed of the Ro and Chi or R-K. . . . The Rak, or Ank, was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the Ank-tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of Heaven. . . .”
Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Purânic version in India gives the whole another colour ; and without, however,
* Certainly not ; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize other symbols, and these are in turn used in ideographs.
† The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza) is also the Latin P.
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destroying the above interpretation it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The “ Ankh-tie ” does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of pâsa, a cord which Siva holds in the hand of his right back arm * (Siva having four arms). The Mahadeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Maha-Yogi, with his third eye 
, which is “ the Ru, 
, set upright on the Tau-Cross ” in another form. The pâsa is held in the hand in such a way that it is the first finger and hand near the thumb which make the cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kali, Siva’s consort, has the same as an attribute !
The pâsa has here a double significance, as also has Siva’s trisuli and every other divine attribute. This significance lies in Siva, as Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian ansated cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Siva it becomes linghayic and yonic. That which is meant is this : Siva, as said before, is unknown by that name in the Vedas ; and it is in the white Yajur Veda that he appears for the first time as the great god — Mahadeva — whose symbol is the lingham. In Rig Veda he is called Rudra, the “ howler,” the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu Purâna, he is the god who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the Vedas, he is the divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that divine ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the “ roarer,” the “ terrible.” This is well shown in the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra, god of fire, are called the “ ten vital breaths ” ( prâna, life) with manas, as eleventh, whereas as Siva, he is the Destroyer of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, which names are his seven forms of manifestation, also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.
Hence the cruciform noose (pâsa) in his hand, when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahayogin, has no phallic signification, and it, indeed, requires a strong imagination bent in this direction to find such even in
* See Moor’s “ Hindu Pantheon,” plate xiii.
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an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of “ door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet ” it signifies the “ strait gate ” that leads to the kingdom of heaven, far more than the “ birth-place ” in a physiological sense.
It is a Cross in a Circle and Crux Ansata, truly ; but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogi passes through the “ strait gate,” the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold.
As to the mysterious constellation of the Seven Rishis in the great Bear, if Egypt made them sacred to “ the oldest genitrix, Typhon ” — India has connected all these symbols ages ago with time or Yuga revolutions, and the Saptarishis are intimately connected with our present age — the Dark Kali Yug. * The great Circle of Time, on the face of which fancy in India has represented the Tortoise (Kurma, or Sisumâra, one of the Avatars of Vishnu), has the Cross placed on it by nature in its division and localisation of stars, planets and constellations. Thus in Bhagavata Purâna V., xxx., it is said that “ at the extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the South and whose body is in the shape of a ring (Circle), Dhruva (the ex-pole star) is placed ; and along that tail are the Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc. ; and across its loins the Seven Rishis.” This is then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into the formation of which enters the Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kala, on whose plane lie crossways all the gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time ; — who, as the philosophy has it, all die at the Mahapralaya.
Meanwhile it is they, the Seven Rishis, who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary life cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one — she who hides — has proven virtuous. The Pleiades (Krittika) are the nurses of Karttikeya, the God of War (Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the celestial armies — or rather of the Siddhas (translated Yogis in heaven, and holy sages on the earth) — “ Siddha-sena,” which would make Karttikeya identical with Michael, the “ leader of the celestial hosts ” and, like himself, a virgin Kumâra. † Verily he is the “ Guha,” the mysterious one, as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittika (seven Rishis and the Pleiades), for the interpretation of all these combined, reveal to the adept the greatest mysteries of occult nature. One point is worth mention in this question of cross and
* Described in the “ Mission des Juifs ” by the Marquis St. Yves d’Alveydre, the hierophant and leader of a large party of French Kabalists, as the Golden Age !
† The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurasura and the Titan Taraka. Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and Karttikeya are often made identical.
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circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of fire and water, which play such an important part in the circle and cross symbolics. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of a mother alone (Juno), without the participation of a father, or like the Avatars (Krishna, for instance), in the West as in the East — Karttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner — begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra Siva, viâ Agni, who dropped it into the Ganges. Thus he is born from fire and water — a “ boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhuva (Agni’s son) and Ganga-putra (Son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittika, his nurses, as Matsya Purâna shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic words — “ The seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni,” and hence are called Agneya — and the connection is easy to follow.
It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali-yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. See in the Bhagavata Purâna XII., 11, 2, 6, 32, and Vishnu Purâna. Says the latter : “ When the splendour of Vishnu (Krishna) departed for heaven, then did the Kali Yug, during which men delight in sin, invade the world. . . . . When the Seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali Yug, comprising 1,200 (divine) years (432,000 years of mortals), began ; and when from Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvashadha, then will this Kali age attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.” * This is the revolution of the Rishis “ when the two first stars of the Seven Rishis (of the Great Bear) rise in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance between them, then the Seven Rishis continue stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,” a hater of Nanda makes Parasâra say. According to Bentley, it is in order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among the astronomers. It was done “ by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the Great Bear. . . . The seven stars being called the Rishis, the Circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis . . . . and being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree . . . of any moveable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle as an index ” (“ Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy,” p. 65).
* Nanda is the first Buddhist Sovereign, Chandragupta, against whom all the Brahmins were so arrayed ; he of the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Asoka. This is one of those passages that do not exist in the earlier Purânic MSS. They were added by the Vaishnavas, who interpolated almost as much, out of Sectarian spite, as the Christian Fathers did.
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There was, and still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindus. Here is a point that could help to determine — approximately at least — the age when the symbolism of the Seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Karttikeya was delivered to them by the gods to be nursed, the Krittika were only six — whence Karttikeya is represented with six heads ; but when the poetical fancy of the early Aryan symbologists made of them the consorts of the Seven Rishis, they were seven. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dula, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the Seven Rishis were made to marry the Seven Krittika before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindu astronomers speak of that which, without the help of the strongest telescopes, no one can see ? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindu allegories is fixed upon as “ a very recent invention, certainly within the Christian era ” ?
The oldest MSS. in Sanskrit on astronomy, begin their series of Nakshatras (the 27 lunar asterisms) with the sign of Krittika, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2780 B.C., (see the “ Vedic Calendar,” accepted even by the Orientalists) ; though they get out of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not prove that the Hindus knew anything of astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian pundits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittika from the Phœnicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation of Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in astronomy, as the central group of the system of The Milky Way, and in the Kabala and Eastern Esotericism, as the sidereal septenate born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed 
. This manifested side is Taurus, the Symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph א (bull or ox) whose synthesis is ten (10), or י Yodh, the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in astronomy, as the central point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolves, the focus from which, and into which the divine breath, Motion, works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence — in the Occult philosophy and its sidereal symbols — it is this Circle and the starry cross on its face, which play the most prominent part.
The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the universe, as well as the universe itself, is formed (created) during its periodical manifestations — by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of
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the ever-to-be-unknown power (unknown to present mankind, at any rate) within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a circle : hence the serpent biting his tail, represents the circle of Wisdom in infinity ; as does the astronomical cross — the cross within a circle, and the globe, with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is called in Egypt (in the papyri) Khopirron and Khopri from the verb Khopron “ to become,” and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive becomings of man, through the various peregrinations and metempsychoses (reincarnations) of the liberated Soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal entity. Being, however, an esoteric doctrine, revealed only during the mysteries by the priest-hierophants and the Kings-Initiates to the candidates, it was kept secret. The incorporeal intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. In the primitive philosophy of the Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or coverings, and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity. (See Ezekiel, ch. 1.)
“ Before the mathematical numbers,” says Proclus (in Quinto Libro, Euclid), “ there are the Self-moving numbers ; before the figures apparent — the vital figures, and before producing the material worlds which move in a Circle, the Creative Power produced the invisible Circles.”
Deus enim et circulus est, says Pherecydes, in his hymn to Jupiter. It was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. “ The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle,” prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread among the people the same custom, Pierius * tells his readers ; and Pliny says : “ During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring, totum corpus circumagimur.” † The vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one
* Pierius Vale.
† The goddess Basht (or Pasht) was represented with the head of a cat. This animal was sacred in Egypt for several reasons : as a symbol of the Moon “ the eye of Osiris ” or the “ Sun,” during night. The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was because of its body being rolled up in a circle when asleep. The posture is prescribed for occult and magnetic purposes, in order to regulate in a certain way the circulation of the vital fluid, with which the cat is pre-eminently endowed. “ The nine lives of a cat ” is a popular saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr. G. Massey gives also an astronomical reason for it which may be found in § I. “ Symbolism.” “ The cat saw the Sun, had it in its eye by night (was the eye
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forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a whirl-wind from which came out “ one wheel upon the earth ” whose work “ was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel ” (ch. i. vv. 4-16). . . “ for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels ” (v. 20).
“ Spirit whirleth about continually and returneth again according to his circuits ” — says Solomon (Eccles. i. 6), who is made in the English translation to speak of the “ Wind,” and in the original text to refer both to the Spirit and the Sun. But the Zohar, the only true glossary of the Kabalistic Preacher, in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend, says that “ it seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers to the Spirit under the Sun, called the holy Spirit, that moves circularly, toward both sides, that they (It and the Sun) should be united in the same Essence.” . . . (Zohar, fol. 87, col. 346.)
The Brahmanical “ Golden Egg,” from within which emerges Brahmâ, the creative deity, is the “ circle with the Central Point ” of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity — whether representing Parabrahmam, or the “ Great Extreme ” of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by Phta, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish En-Soph, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the “ nought ” (absolute No-Thing and Nothing, because it is infinite and the All) ; while the god-manifested (by its works) is referred to as the diameter of that circle. The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident : the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth or thickness : it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity and made to rest on the plane of existence of the phenomenal world. It is dimensional, whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decade which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the 1 and a circle or cipher), the absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or generative Power of Creation.
of night), when it was otherwise unseen by men (for as the moon reflects the light of the Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on account of its phosphorescent eyes) . . . We might say the moon mirrored the solar light, because we have looking-glasses. With them the cat’s eye was the mirror.”