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Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of
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antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time — especially in India — are referred to Vol. II. of “ Isis Unveiled,” pp. 299, 300, et seq.
Admitting for argument’s sake that the ancient world was no, acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures — though we know it was — yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in cosmogony. Before the trigrammes of Fo-hi, Yang, the Unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Eliphas Lévi thus (Dogme et Rituel, Vol. I., p. 124) : — China had her Confucius, and her Tau-ists. * The former circumscribes the “ great extreme ” within a circle with a horizontal line across ; the latter place three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the “ great Extreme ” in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, many epithets of his applied to the “ God over all ” (ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός) notwithstanding. Plato having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God — a gigantic Shadow of Man. His epithets of “ monarch ” and “ Law-giver of the Universe ” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, recognizing it at the same time as immutable. “ Beyond all finite existences,” he says, “ and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (νοῦς), the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded . . . the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the Universe ” — who is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme † good “ the god ” ( ὁ θεός), and “ the god over all.” These words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the “ Creator ” nor to the “ Father ” of our modern Monotheist, but to the ideal and abstract cause. For, as he says, “ this θεός, the god over all, is not the truth or the intelligence, but the Father of it,” and its Primal cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a sage himself, for whom there was but a single object of attainment in this life — Real Knowledge — who would have ever believed in a deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation ? ‡ Not he, who considered only those to be
* Also in T’sang-t-ung-ky, by Wei-Pa-Yang.
† Cocker’s “ Christianity and Greek Philosophy,” xi., p. 377.
‡ The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier in his Mystères de la Vie Humaine, p. 117, is a warrant that the Cause of “ excellence and goodness,” supposed by Plato to pervade the Universe is neither his Deity, nor our World. “ Au spectacle de tant
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genuine philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the really existing in opposition to mere seeming ; of the always existing in opposition to the transitory ; and of that which exists permanently in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. * Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. “ The τίμιον (honoured one) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity — the world Soul ” † — the plane of the surface of the circle. The Cross and Circle are a universal conception — as old as human mind itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological mysteries ; and this symbol is precisely one of this kind, and is based upon the oldest esoteric cosmogony.
It is no explanation to say, as Eliphas Lévi does, that God, the universal Love, having caused the male unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or chaos, produced thereby the world. Besides being as gross a conception as any, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing one’s veneration for the rather too human-like ways of the Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never use the epithet “ God ” to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe ; and that — faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world over — they deny that such imperfect and often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties. Between speculative Atheism and idiotic anthropomorphism there must be a philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle throughout all nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth — man, can alone help to solve the Problem, which is that of the mathematician whose x must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus have tried to solve it by their avatars, the Christians think
de grandeur opposé à celui de tant de misère, l’esprit qui se met à observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande divinité qu’une divinité, plus grande et plus pressante encore, aurait comme brisée et mise en pièces en dispersant les debris dans tout l’Univers.” The “ still greater and still more exacting divinity ” than the god of this world, supposed so “ good ” — is Karma. And this true Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our inner God (personal for the time being), has no power to arrest the mighty hand of this greater Deity, the Cause awakened by our actions generating smaller causes, which is called the Law of Retribution.
* See “ Isis Unveiled,” Before the Veil, xii. (Vol. I.).
† Plato : “ Parmenides,” 141, E.
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they did it — by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically — both are wrong ; esoterically both of them are very near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed — if not actually revealed — the archaic mystery of the Cross. As for the rest of those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have thus synthesized it into one symbol — the central Point in the Crucifix — they have shown thereby that they have never seized the true Spirit of the teaching of Christ, and by their interpretations they have degraded it in more than one way. They have forgotten the Spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it — as though the Boundless and the Infinite can ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a nation !
The four arms of the “ 
,” the decussated cross, and of the “ Hermetic,” pointing to the four cardinal points — were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindus, Brahmins and Buddhists, thousands of years before it was heard of in Europe ; and that symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of that cross and made of it their Swastica 
now the Wan of the Buddhist Mongolian. * It implies that the “ Central point ” is not limited to one individual, however perfect. That the Principle (God) is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all the rest, is in it, like drops of water are in the Ocean, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity.
Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the dead body of Hermes, the well known Smaragdine tablet, which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic wisdom . . . . “ Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross . . . . Ascend from the earth to heaven and then descend again to earth ” was traced on it. The riddle of the cross is contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved — to the Occultist.
“ The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circum-
* The Swastica is certainly one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopædia) it (the Swastica) “ has survived in the form of the mallet ” in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many “ meanings ” the author gives of it, we do not find, however, the most important ne, masons evidently not knowing it.
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scribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession birth, life, death, and immortality.
“ ‘ Attach thyself,” say the alchemists, “ to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the following manner : The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.’ ” ( “ Isis Unveiled.” )
Again : — The 
(Tau), and the astronomical cross of Egypt 
are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso-relievos of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation ; while it extends its right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper. . . . The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress which he had to wear always during his functions. . . . The perfect Tau, formed of the perpendicular (descending male ray), and a horizontal line (matter, female principle), and the mundane circle was an attribute of Isis, and it is but at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy.” These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah, who feared the Lord (Ezekiel ix. 4), with the signum Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus 
, but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross 
(Tat, the emblem of stability). In the Revelation, also, the “ Alpha and Omega ” (spirit and matter), the first and the last, stamps the name of his Father in the foreheads of the elect, (p. 323, Vol. II.) Moses, in Exodus xii. 22, orders his people to mark their door-posts and lintels with blood, lest the “ Lord God ” should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a tau ! The identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philœ.
Enough was said in the text about the Swastica and the Tau. Verily may the Cross be traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable Archaic Ages ! Its Mystery deepens rather than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter Island — in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks as Tau and Swastica, in pre-Christian Scandinavia,
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everywhere ! The author of the “ Hebrew Egyptian Mystery ” stands perplexed before the endless shadow it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by translation. In Joshua (viii. 29) read in Arabic, and in the Targum of Jonathan, it is said : “ The king of Ai he crucified upon a tree.” The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a double word (Wordsworth on Joshua.) . . . The strangest expression of this kind is in Numbers xxv. 4, where, by Onkalos ( ?) it is read : “ Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the Sun.” “ The word here יקע, to nail to, is rendered properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate to crucify. The very construction of this sentence is mystic.”
So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. “ To crucify before (not against) the sun ” is a phrase used of initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau (in Egypt) of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (thus : 
, not 
) plunged in a deep sleep (the “ Sleep of Siloam ” it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt). He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to confabulate with the “ gods,” descend into Hades, Amenti, or Pâtâla, (according to the country), and do works of charity to the invisible beings, whether souls of men or Elemental Spirits ; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris, and Thoth the God of Wisdom.
Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals before he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian bas reliefs. One especially from the temple of Philœ, represents a scene of initiation. Two Gods-Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis-headed (Mercury, Thoth, the god of Wisdom and secret learning, the assessor of Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body of a candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of water (the water of life and new birth), which stream is interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the candidate
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(now an Initiate), when the beams of the morning sun (Osiris) strike the crown of his head (his entranced body being placed on its wooden tau so as to receive the rays). Then appeared the Hierophants-Initiators, and the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly, to the Sun-Osiris, addressed in reality to the Spirit Sun within, enlightening the newly-born man. Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the Cross in both its generative and spiritually regenerative capacities — from the highest antiquity. Let him examine the tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II., where he will find the crosses in every shape and position. So again, on the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III., preserved in the National Library of Paris, which represents the adoration of Bakhan-Alearé.
In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disc of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary were perfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the “ hard couches of those who were in (spiritual) travail, the act of giving birth to themselves.” A quantity of such cruciform “ couches,” on which the candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme initiation, was placed and secured, were found in the underground halls of the Egyptian temples after their destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely, believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex-initiates, knew better. But they preferred to keep silent.
Again, let the reader read the Hindu “ fables,” as the Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Visvakarma, the creative power, the great architect of the world, called in the Veda “ the all-seeing god,” who “ sacrifices himself to himself ” (the Spiritual Egos of mortals are his own essence, one with him, therefore). Remember that he is called Deva Vardhika “ the builder of the gods ” and that it is he who ties (the Sun) Sûrya, his son-in-law, on his lathe, in the exoteric allegory ; on the Swastika, in esoteric tradition, as on earth he is the Hierophant Initiator, and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Visvakarma, remember again, is the Son of Yoga-Siddha, i.e., the holy power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the “ fiery weapon,” the magic Agneyâstra. The narrative is given more fully elsewhere. The author of the Kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks : —
“ The theoretical use of crucifixion must have been somehow connected with the personification of this symbol (the structure of the garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man). But how ? And as showing what ? The symbol was of the origin of measures, shadowing forth creative law or design. What practically, as regards humanity,
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could actual crucifixion betoken ? Yet, that it was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number values — (the symbolization of the connection of 113 : 355, with 20612 : 6561, by a crucified man). Not only are they shown to work in the Kosmos . . . . but by sympathy, they seem to work out conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have held knowledge of the connecting link. . . . Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that the power of expression of the law, exactly, by numbers, clearly defining a system, was not the accident of the language, but was its very essence, and of its primary organic construction ; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system attaching to it, could be of man’s invention, unless both were founded upon a prior language, which afterwards became obsolete . . . ” (p. 205).
The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of more than one dead-letter narrative, by showing that probably איש man was the primordial word — “ the very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea by sound of a man. The essential of this word was 113 (the numerical value of that word) from the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed.”
This is demonstrated by the Hindu Wittoba — a form of Vishnu — as said already. The figure of Wittoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet, * is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details save the Cross ; and that man was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the tree of life. This “ tree ” has now become exoterically, through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture, and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers, the tree of death !
Thus, one of the seven esoteric meanings implied in this mystery of Crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system — the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very establishment of the mysteries — is discovered in the geometrical symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews, whose prophet Moses was so learned in the esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical system from the Phœnicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom they borrowed most of their Kabalistic Mysticism, adapted, most ingeniously, the Cosmic and anthropological symbols of the “ heathen ” nations to their peculiar secret records. If Christian
* See Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, where Wittoba’s left foot bears the mark of the nail — on the figure of his idol.
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sacerdotalism has lost the key of it to-day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric philosophy and the Hebrew occult metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus they took the word aish (one of the Hebrew word forms for man) and used it in conjunction with that of Shânâh “ lunar year,” so mystically connected with the name of Jehovah, the supposed “ father ” of Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an astronomical value and formula.
The original idea of “ Man Crucified ” in Space belongs certainly to the ancient Hindus, and Muir shows it in his “ Hindu Pantheon ” in the engraving that represents Wittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated Cross in Space, the .jpg){kind=small}
, “ the Second God who impressed himself on the Universe in the form of the Cross ” ; Krishna is likewise shown “ crucified.” (See Dr. Lundy’s Monumental Christianity, fig. 72.) Again it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun — which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In § II. of that same most suggestive work on the Kabalistic meanings — “ The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery,” we read again : —
“ In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of the three nails in the Man’s extremities and on the cross, they form or mark a triangle in shape, one nail being at each corner of the triangle. The wounds or stigmata in the extremities are necessarily four designative of the square. . . . The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube unfolded (which make the cross or man-form, or 7, counting three horizontal and four vertical bars) on which the man is placed ; and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on to the edges of the cube. The one wound of the feet separates into two when the feet are separated, making three together for all, and four when separated, or 7 in all — another most holy (and with the Jews) feminine base number.”
Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the “ Crucifixion Nails ” is proven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks upon it, as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.
Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the Cross, is not “ of human invention,” for Cosmic ideation and the Spiritual representation of the divine Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it expanded in the beautiful idea adopted by and represented in the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the
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Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego Soul became as free as a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol.
With the Esotericists, from the remotest times the Universal Soul or anima mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the life principle of the three kingdoms ; and it was Septenary with the Hermetic philosophers, as with all ancients. For it is represented as a Sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity, terrestrial magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and Intelligence, or what some call self-consciousness.
We have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a sign of recognition among adepts and neophytes, the latter being called Chrests (from Chrestos, man of tribulation and sorrow). Says E. Lévi : “ The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is Kabalistic, and represents the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the Occult verse of the Paternoster that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least two very different formulas to express its meaning — one reserved for priests-initiates, the other given to neophites and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said : To thee ; then he added, belong : and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast — the kingdom ; then, to the left shoulder — justice : to the right shoulder — and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding : throughout the generating cycles : ‘ Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et Chassed per Æonas ’ — a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose.” (Dogma et Ritual, etc., Vol. II., p. 88.)
The “ militant and official Church ” did more : having helped herself to what had never belonged to her, she took only that which the “ profane ” had, the Kabalistic meaning of the male and female Sephiroth. She never lost the inner and higher meaning since she never had it — E. Lévi’s pandering to Rome, notwithstanding. The sign of the cross adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from the beginning, while that of the Greeks was the cross of the neophytes, the Chrest.