Thoth
(Eg.)
The most mysterious and the least understood of gods, whose personal character is entirely distinct from all other ancient deities. While the permutations of Osiris, Isis, Horus, and the rest, are so numberless that their individuality is all but lost, Thoth remains changeless from the first to the last Dynasty. He is the god of wisdom and of authority over all other gods. He is the recorder and the judge. His ibis‐head, the pen and tablet of the celestial scribe, who records the thoughts, words and deeds of men and weighs them in the balance, liken him to the type of the esoteric Lipikas. His name is one of the first that appears on the oldest monuments. He is the lunar god of the first dynasties, the master of Cynocephalus — the dog‐headed ape who stood in Egypt as a living symbol and remembrance of the Third Root‐Race. (Secret Doctrine, II. pp. 184 and 185). He is the “Lord of Hermopolis” — Janus, Hermes and Mercury combined. He is crowned with an atef and the lunar disk, and bears the “Eye of Horus ”, the third eye, in his hand. He is the Greek Hermes, the god of learning, and Hermes Trismegistus, the “ Thrice‐great Hermes ”, the patron of physical sciences and the patron and very soul of the occult esoteric knowledge. As Mr. J. Bonwick, F.R.G.S., beautifully expresses it : “ Thoth has a powerful effect on the imagination . . . in this intricate yet beautiful phantasmagoria of thought and moral sentiment of that shadowy past. It is in vain we ask ourselves however man, in the infancy of this world of humanity, in the rudeness of supposed incipient civilization, could have dreamed of such a heavenly being as Thoth. The lines are so delicately drawn, so intimately and tastefully interwoven, that we seem to regard a picture designed by the genius of a Milton, and executed with the skill of a Raphael.” Verily, there was some truth in that old saying, “ The wisdom of the Egyptians ”.When it is shown that the wife of Cephren, builder of the second Pyramid, was a priestess of Thoth, one sees that the ideas comprehended in him were fixed 6,000 years ago ”. According to Plato, “Thoth‐Hermes was the discoverer and inventor of numbers, geometry, astronomy and letters”. Proclus, the disciple of Plotinus, speaking of this mysterious deity, says: “He presides over every species of condition, leading us to an intelligible essence from this mortal abode, governing the different herds of souls”. In other words Thoth, as the Registrar and Recorder of Osiris in Amenti, the Judgment Hall of the Dead was a psychopompic deity; while Iamblichus hints that “ the cross with a handle (the thau or tau) which Tot holds in his hand, was none other than the monogram of his name”. Besides the Tau, as the prototype of Mercury, Thoth carries the serpent‐rod, emblem of Wisdom, the rod that became the Caduceus. Says Mr. Bonwick, “ Hermes was the serpent itself in a mystical sense. He glides like that creature, noiselessly, without apparent exertion, along the course of ages. He is . . . a representative of the spangled heavens. But he is the foe of the bad serpent, for the ibis devoured the snakes of Egypt.” (TG).
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- Quotes: H. P. Blavatsky
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Shortly: The most mysterious and the least understood of gods, whose personal character is entirely distinct ...