Typhon
(Eg.)
An aspect or shadow of Osiris. Typhon is not, as Plutarch asserts, the distinct “ Evil Principle ” or the Satan of the Jews; but rather the lower cosmic “principles ” of the divine body of Osiris, the god in them — Osiris being the personified universe as an ideation, and Typhon as that same universe in its material realization. The two in one are Vishnu‐Siva. The true meaning of the Egyptian myth is that Typhon is the terrestrial and material envelope of Osiris, who is the indwelling spirit thereof. In chapter 42 of the Ritual (“ Book of the Dead”), Typhon is described as “Set, formerly called Thoth”. Orientalists find themselves greatly perplexed by discovering Set‐Typhon addressed in some papyri as “a great and good god ”, and in others as the embodiment of evil. But is not Siva, one of the Hindu Trimûrti, described in some places as “the best and most bountiful of gods ”, and at other times, “a dark, black, destroying, terrible ” and “ fierce god”? Did not Loki, the Scandinavian Typhon, after having been described in earlier times as a beneficent being, as the god of fire, the presiding genius of the peaceful domestic hearth, suddenly lose caste and become forthwith a power of evil, a cold‐hell Satan and a demon of the worst kind? There is a good reason for such an invariable transformation. So long as these dual gods, symbols of good and necessary evil, of light and darkness, keep closely allied, i.e., stand for a combination of differentiated human qualities, or of the element they represent — they are simply an embodiment of the average personal god. No sooner, however, are they separated into two entities, each with its two characteristics, than they become respectively the two opposite poles of good and evil, of light and darkness ; they become in short, two independent and distinct entities or rather personalities. It is only by dint of sophistry that the Churches have succeeded to this day in preserving in the minds of the few the Jewish deity in his primeval integrity. Had they been logical they would have separated Christ from Jehovah, light and goodness from darkness and badness. And this was what happened to Osiris Typhon ;but no Orientalist has understood it, and thus their perplexity goes on increasing. Once accepted — as in the case of the Occultists — as an integral part of Osiris, just as Ahriman is an inseparable part of Ahura Mazda, and the Serpent of Genesis the dark aspect of the Elohim, blended into our “Lord God ” — every difficulty in the nature of Typhon disappears. Typhon is a later name of Set, later but ancient — as early in fact as the fourth Dynasty; for in the Ritual one reads: “ 0 Typhon‐ Set ! I invoke thee, terrible, invisible, all‐powerful god of gods, thou who destroyest and renderest desert ”. Typhon belongs most decidedly to the same symbolical category as Siva the Destroyer, and Saturn — the “dark god ”. In the Book of the Dead, Set, in his battle with Thoth (wisdom)_who is his spiritual counterpart — is emasculated as Saturn‐Kronos was and Ouranos before him. As Siva is closely connected with the bull Nandi — an aspect of Brahmâ‐Vishnu, the creative and preserving powers — so is Set‐Typhon allied with the bull Apis, both bulls being sacred to, and allied with, their respective deities. As Typhon was originally worshipped as an upright stone, the phallus, so is Siva to this day represented and worshipped as a lingham. Siva is Saturn. Indeed, Typhon‐Set seems to have served as a prototype for more than one god of the later ritualistic cycle, including even the god of the Jews, some of his ritualistic observances having passed bodily into the code of laws and the canon of religious rites of the “chosen people”. Who of the Bible‐worshippers knows the origin of the scape‐goat (ez or aza) sent into the wilderness as an atonement ? Do they know that ages before the exodus of Moses the goat was sacred to Typhon, and that it is over the head of that Typhonic goat that the Egyptians confessed their sins, after which the animal was turned into the desert? “And Aaron shall take the scapegoat (Azâzel) and lay his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel . . . and shall send him away . . . into the wilderness” (Levit., xvi.). And as the goat of the Egyptians made an atonement with Typhon, so the goat of the Israelites “made an atonement before the Lord” (Ibid., v. 10). Thus, if one only remembers that every anthropomorphic creative god was with the philosophical ancients the “Life‐giver” and the “Death‐dealer ” — Osiris and Typhon, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, etc., etc. — it will be easy for him to comprehend the assertion made by the Occultists, that Typhon was but a symbol for the lower quaternary, the ever conflicting and turbulent principles of differentiated chaotic matter, whether in the Universe or in Man, while Osiris symbolized the higher spiritual triad. Typhon is accused in the Ritual of being one who “steals reason from the soul ”. Hence, he is shown fighting with Osiris and cutting him into fourteen (twice seven) pieces, after which, left without his counterbalancing power of good and light, he remains steeped in evil and darkness. In this way the fable told by Plutarch becomes comprehensible as an allegory. He asserts that, overcome in his fight with Horus, Typhon “fled seven days on an ass, and escaping begat the boys Ierosolumos and Ioudaios ”. Now as Typhon was worshipped at a later period under the form of an ass, and as the name of the ass is AO, or (phonetically) IAO, the vowels mimicking the braying of the animal, it becomes evident that Typhon was purposely blended with the name of the Jewish God, as the two names of Judea and Jerusalem, begotten by Typhon — sufficiently imply. (TG).
See also: Taoer
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- Quotes: H. P. Blavatsky
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Shortly: An aspect or shadow of Osiris. Typhon is not, as Plutarch asserts, the distinct “ Evil Principle ” o...