The object of the ancient initiations being to ameliorate mankind and to perfect the intellectual part of man, the nature of the human soul, its origin, its destination, its relations to the body and to universal nature, all formed part of the mystic science; and to them in part the lessons given to the Initiate were directed. For it was believed that initiation tended to his perfection, and to preventing the divine part within him, overloaded with matter gross and earthy, from being plunged into gloom, and impeded in its return to the Deity. The soul, with them, was not a mere conception or abstraction; but a reality including in itself life and thought; or, rather, of whose essence it was to live and think.
It was material; but not brute, inert, inactive, lifeless, motionless, formless, lightless matter. It was held to be active, reasoning, thinking; its natural home in the highest regions of the Universe, whence it descended to illuminate, give form and movement to, vivify, animate, and carry with itself the baser matter; and whither it unceasingly tends to reascend, when and as soon as it can free itself from its connection with that matter. From that substance, divine, infinitely delicate and active, essentially luminous, the souls of men were formed, and by it alone, uniting with and organizing their bodies, men _lived_.
This was the doctrine of Pythagoras, who learned it when he received the Egyptian Mysteries: and it was the doctrine of all who, by means of the ceremonial of initiation, thought to purify the soul. Virgil makes the spirit of Anchises teach it to aeneas: and all the expiations and l.u.s.trations used in the Mysteries were but symbols of those intellectual ones by which the soul was to be purged of its vice-spots and stains, and freed of the inc.u.mbrance of its earthly prison, so that it might rise unimpeded to the source from which it came.
Hence sprung the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; which Pythagoras taught as an allegory, and those who came after him received literally. Plato, like him, drew his doctrines from the East and the Mysteries, and undertook to translate the language of the symbols used there, into that of Philosophy; and to prove by argument and philosophical deduction, what, _felt_ by the consciousness, the Mysteries taught by symbols as an indisputable fact,--the immortality of the soul. Cicero did the same; and followed the Mysteries in teaching that the G.o.ds were but mortal men, who for their great virtues and signal services had deserved that their souls should, after death, be raised to that lofty rank.
It being taught in the Mysteries, either by way of allegory, the meaning of which was not made known except to a select few, or, perhaps only at a later day, as an actual reality, that the souls of the vicious dead pa.s.sed into the bodies of those animals to whose nature their vices had most affinity, it was also taught that the soul could avoid these transmigrations, often successive and numerous, by the practice of virtue, which would acquit it of them, free it from the circle of successive generations, and restore it at once to its source. Hence nothing was so ardently prayed for by the Initiates, says Proclus, as this happy fortune, which, delivering them from the empire of Evil, would restore them to their true life, and conduct them to the place of final rest. To this doctrine probably referred those figures of animals and monsters which were exhibited to the Initiate, before allowing him to see the sacred light for which he sighed.
Plato says, that souls will not reach the term of their ills, until the revolutions of the world have restored them to their primitive condition, and purified them from the stains which they have contracted by the contagion of fire, earth, and air. And he held that they could not be allowed to enter Heaven, until they had distinguished themselves by the practice of virtue in some one of three several bodies. The Manicheans allowed five: Pindar, the same number as Plato; as did the Jews.
And Cicero says, that the ancient soothsayers, and the interpreters of the will of the G.o.ds, in their religious ceremonies and initiations, taught that we expiate here below the crimes committed in a prior life; and for that are born. It was taught in these Mysteries, that the soul pa.s.ses through several states, and that the pains and sorrows of this life are an expiation of prior faults.
This doctrine of transmigration of souls obtained, as Porphyry informs us, among the Persians and Magi. It was held in the East and the West, and that from the remotest antiquity. Herodotus found it among the Egyptians, who made the term of the circle of migrations from one human body, through animals, fishes, and birds, to another human body, three thousand years. Empedocles even held that souls went into plants. Of these, the laurel was the n.o.blest, as of animals the lion; both being consecrated to the Sun, to which, it was held in the Orient, virtuous souls were to return. The Curds, the Chinese, the Kabbalists, all held the same doctrine. So Origen held, and the Bishop Synesius, the latter of whom had been initiated, and who thus prayed to G.o.d: "O Father, grant that my soul, reunited to the light, may not be plunged again into the defilements of earth!" So the Gnostics held; and even the Disciples of Christ inquired if the man who was born blind, was not so punished for some sin that he had committed before his birth.
Virgil, in the celebrated allegory in which he develops the doctrines taught in the Mysteries, enunciated the doctrine, held by most of the ancient philosophers, of the pre-existence of souls, in the eternal fire from which they emanate; that fire which animates the Stars, and circulates in every part of Nature: and the purifications of the soul, by fire, water, and air, of which he speaks, and which three modes were employed in the Mysteries of Bacchus, were symbols of the pa.s.sage of the soul into different bodies.
The relations of the human soul with the rest of nature were a chief object of the science of the Mysteries. The man was there brought face to face with entire nature. The world, and the spherical envelope that surrounds it, were represented by a mystic egg, by the side of the image of the Sun-G.o.d whose Mysteries were celebrated. The famous Orphic egg was consecrated to Bacchus in his Mysteries. It was, says Plutarch, an image of the Universe, which engenders everything, and contains everything in its bosom. "Consult," says Macrobius, "the Initiates of the Mysteries of Bacchus, who honor with special veneration the sacred egg." The rounded and almost spherical form of its sh.e.l.l, he says, which encloses it on every side, and confines within itself the principles of life, is a symbolic image of the world; and the world is the universal principle of all things.
This symbol was borrowed from the Egyptians, who also consecrated the egg to Osiris, germ of Light, himself born, says Diodorus, from that famous egg. In Thebes, in Upper Egypt, he was represented as emitting it from his mouth, and causing to issue from it the first principle of heat and light, or the Fire-G.o.d, Vulcan, or Phtha. We find this egg even in j.a.pan, between the horns of the famous Mithriac Bull, whose attributes Osiris, Apis, and Bacchus all borrowed.
Orpheus, author of the Grecian Mysteries, which he carried from Egypt to Greece, consecrated this symbol: and taught that matter, uncreated and informous, existed from all eternity, unorganized, as chaos; containing in itself the Principles of all Existences confused and intermingled, light with darkness, the dry with the humid, heat with cold; from which, it after long ages taking the shape of an immense egg, issued the purest matter, or first substance, and the residue was divided into the four elements, from which proceeded heaven and earth and all things else.
This grand Cosmogonic idea he taught in the Mysteries; and thus the Hierophant explained the meaning of the mystic egg, seen by the Initiates in the Sanctuary.
Thus entire Nature, in her primitive organization, was presented to him whom it was wished to instruct in her secrets and initiate in her mysteries; and Clemens of Alexandria might well say that initiation was a real physiology.
So Phanes, the Light-G.o.d, in the Mysteries of the New Orphics, emerged from the egg of chaos: and the Persians had the great egg of Ormuzd. And Sanchoniathon tells us that in the Phnician theology, the matter of chaos took the form of an egg; and he adds: "Such are the lessons which the Son of Thabion, first Hierophant of the Phnicians, turned into allegories, in which physics and astronomy intermingled, and which he taught to the other Hierophants, whose duty it was to preside at orgies and initiations; and who, seeking to excite the astonishment and admiration of mortals, faithfully transmitted these things to their successors and the Initiates."
In the Mysteries was also taught the division of the Universal Cause into an Active and a Pa.s.sive cause; of which two, Osiris and Isis,--the heavens and the earth were symbols. These two First Causes, into which it was held that the great Universal First Cause at the beginning of things divided itself, were the two great Divinities, whose worship was, according to Varro, inculcated upon the Initiates at Samothrace. "As is taught," he says, "in the initiation into the Mysteries at Samothrace, Heaven and Earth are regarded as the two first Divinities. They are the potent G.o.ds worshipped in that Island, and whose names are consecrated in the books of our Augurs. One of them is male and the other female; and they bear the same relation to each other as the soul does to the body, humidity to dryness." The Curetes, in Crete, had builded an altar to Heaven and to Earth; whose Mysteries they celebrated at Gnossus, in a cypress grove.
These two Divinities, the Active and Pa.s.sive Principles of the Universe, were commonly symbolized by the generative parts of man and woman; to which, in remote ages, no idea of indecency was attached; the _Phallus_ and _Cteis_, emblems of generation and production, and which, as such, appeared in the Mysteries. The Indian Lingam was the union of both, as were the boat and mast and the point within a circle: all of which expressed the same philosophical idea as to the Union of the two great Causes of Nature, which concur, one actively and the other pa.s.sively, in the generation of all beings: which were symbolized by what we now term _Gemini_, the Twins, at that remote period when the Sun was in that Sign at the Vernal Equinox, and when they were Male and Female; and of which the Phallus was perhaps taken from the generative organ of the Bull, when about twenty-five hundred years before our era he opened that equinox, and became to the Ancient World the symbol of the creative and generative Power.
The Initiates at Eleusis commenced, Proclus says, by invoking the two great causes of nature, the Heavens and the Earth, on which in succession they fixed their eyes, addressing to each a prayer. And they deemed it their duty to do so, he adds, because they saw in them the Father and Mother of all generations. The concourse of these two agents of the Universe was termed in theological language a _marriage_.
Tertullian, accusing the Valentinians of having borrowed these symbols from the Mysteries of Eleusis, yet admits that in those Mysteries they were explained in a manner consistent with decency, as representing the powers of nature. He was too little of a philosopher to comprehend the sublime esoteric meaning of these emblems, which will, if you advance, in other Degrees be unfolded to you.
The Christian Fathers contented themselves with reviling and ridiculing the use of these emblems. But as they in the earlier times created no indecent ideas, and were worn alike by the most innocent youths and virtuous women, it will be far wiser for us to seek to penetrate their meaning. Not only the Egyptians, says Diodorus Siculus, but every other people that consecrate this symbol (the Phallus), deem that they thereby do honor to the Active Force of the universal generation of all living things. For the same reason, as we learn from the geographer Ptolemy, it was revered among the a.s.syrians and Persians. Proclus remarks that in the distribution of the Zodiac among the twelve great Divinities, by ancient astrology, six signs were a.s.signed to the male and six to the female principle.
There is another division of nature, which has in all ages struck all men, and which was not forgotten in the Mysteries; that of Light and Darkness, Day and Night, Good and Evil; which mingle with, and clash against, and pursue or are pursued by each other throughout the Universe. The Great Symbolic Egg distinctly reminded the Initiates of this great division of the world. Plutarch, treating of the dogma of a Providence, and of that of the two principles of Light and Darkness, which he regarded as the basis of the Ancient Theology, of the Orgies and the Mysteries, as well among the Greeks as the Barbarians,--a doctrine whose origin, according to him, is lost in the night of time,--cites, in support of his opinion, the famous Mystic Egg of the disciples of Zoroaster and the Initiates in the Mysteries of Mithras.
To the Initiates in the Mysteries of Eleusis was exhibited the spectacle of these two principles, in the successive scenes of Darkness and Light which pa.s.sed before their eyes. To the profoundest darkness, accompanied with illusions and horrid phantoms, succeeded the most brilliant light, whose splendor blazed round the statue of the G.o.ddess. The candidate, says Dion Chrysostomus, pa.s.sed into a mysterious temple, of astonishing magnitude and beauty, where were exhibited to him many mystic scenes; where his ears were stunned with many voices; and where Darkness and Light successively pa.s.sed before him. And Themistius in like manner describes the Initiate, when about to enter into that part of the sanctuary tenanted by the G.o.ddess, as filled with fear and religious awe, wavering, uncertain in what direction to advance through the profound darkness that envelopes him. But when the Hierophant has opened the entrance to the inmost sanctuary, and removed the robe that hides the G.o.ddess, he exhibits her to the Initiate, resplendent with divine light. The thick shadow and gloomy atmosphere which had environed the candidate vanish; he is filled with a vivid and glowing enthusiasm, that lifts his soul out of the profound dejection in which it was plunged; and the purest light succeeds to the thickest darkness.
In a fragment of the same writer, preserved by Stobaeus, we learn that the Initiate, up to the moment when his initiation is to be consummated, is alarmed by every kind of sight: that astonishment and terror take his soul captive; he trembles; cold sweat flows from his body; until the moment when the Light is shown him,--a most astounding Light,--the brilliant scene of Elysium, where he sees charming meadows overarched by a clear sky, and festivals celebrated by dances; where he hears harmonious voices, and the majestic chants of the Hierophants; and views the sacred spectacles. Then, absolutely free, and enfranchised from the dominion of all ills, he mingles with the crowd of Initiates, and, crowned with flowers, celebrates with them the holy orgies, in the brilliant realms of ether, and the dwelling-place of Ormuzd.
In the Mysteries of Isis, the candidate first pa.s.sed through the dark valley of the shadow of death; then into a place representing the elements or sublunary world, where the two principles clash and contend; and was finally admitted to a luminous region where the sun, with his most brilliant light, put to rout the shades of night. Then he himself put on the costume of the Sun-G.o.d or the Visible Source of Ethereal Light, in whose Mysteries he was initiated; and pa.s.sed from the empire of darkness to that of light. After having set his feet on the threshold of the palace of Pluto he ascended to the Empyrean, to the bosom of the Eternal Principle of Light of the Universe, from which all souls and intelligences emanate.
Plutarch admits that this theory of two Principles was the basis of all the Mysteries, and consecrated in the religious ceremonies and Mysteries of Greece. Osiris and Typhon, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Bacchus and the t.i.tans and Giants, all represented these principles. Phanes, the luminous G.o.d that issued from the Sacred Egg, and Night, bore the sceptres in the Mysteries of the New Bacchus. Night and Day were two of the eight G.o.ds adored in the Mysteries of Osiris. The sojourn of Proserpine and also of Adonis, during six months of each year in the upper world, abode of light, and six months in the lower or abode of darkness, allegorically represented the same division of the Universe.
The connection of the different initiations with the Equinoxes which separate the Empire of the Nights from that of the Days, and fix the moment when one of these principles begins to prevail over the other, shows that the Mysteries referred to the continual contest between the two principles of light and darkness, each alternately victor and vanquished. The very object proposed by them shows that their basis was the theory of the two principles and their relations with the soul. "We celebrate the august Mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine," says the Emperor Julian, "at the Autumnal Equinox, to obtain of the G.o.ds that the soul may not experience the malignant action of the Power of Darkness that is then about to have sway and rule in Nature." Sall.u.s.t the Philosopher makes almost the same remark as to the relations of the soul with the periodical march of light and darkness, during an annual revolution; and a.s.sures us that the mysterious festivals of Greece related to the same. And in all the explanations given by Macrobius of the Sacred Fables in regard to the Sun, adored under the names of Osiris, Horus, Adonis, Atys, Bacchus, etc., we invariably see that they refer to the theory of the two Principles, Light and Darkness, and the triumphs gained by one over the other. In April was celebrated the first triumph obtained by the light of day over the length of the nights; and the ceremonies of mourning and rejoicing had, Macrobius says, as their object, the vicissitudes of the annual administration of the world.
This brings us naturally to the tragic portion of these religious scenes, and to the allegorical history of the different adventures of the Principle, Light, victor and vanquished by turns, in the combats waged with Darkness during each annual period. Here we reach the most mysterious part of the ancient initiations, and that most interesting to the Mason who laments the death of his Grand Master Khir-Om. Over it Herodotus throws the august veil of mystery and silence. Speaking of the Temple of Minerva, or of that Isis who was styled the Mother of the Sun-G.o.d, and whose Mysteries were termed _Isiac_, at Sais, he speaks of a Tomb in the Temple, in the rear of the Chapel and against the wall; and says, "It is the tomb of a man, whose name respect requires me to conceal. Within the Temple were great obelisks of stone [_phalli_], and a circular lake paved with stones and revetted with a parapet. It seemed to me as large as that at Delos" [where the Mysteries of Apollo were celebrated]. "In this lake the Egyptians celebrate, during the night, what they style the Mysteries, in which are represented the sufferings of the G.o.d of whom I have spoken above." This G.o.d was Osiris, put to death by Typhon, and who descended to the Shades and was restored to life; of which he had spoken before.
We are reminded, by this pa.s.sage, of the Tomb of Khir-Om, his death, and his rising from the grave, symbolical of restoration of life; and also of the brazen Sea in the Temple at Jerusalem. Herodotus adds: "I impose upon myself a profound silence in regard to these Mysteries, with most of which I am acquainted. As little will I speak of the initiations of Ceres, known among the Greeks as Thesmophoria. What I shall say will not violate the respect which I owe to religion."
Athenagoras quotes this pa.s.sage to show that not only the Statue but the Tomb of Osiris was exhibited in Egypt, and a tragic representation of his sufferings; and remarks that the Egyptians had mourning ceremonies in honor of their G.o.ds, whose deaths they lamented; and to whom they afterward sacrificed as having pa.s.sed to a state of immortality.
It is, however, not difficult, combining the different rays of light that emanate from the different Sanctuaries, to learn the genius and the object of these secret ceremonies. We have hints, and not details.
We know that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun, under the name of Osiris.
The misfortunes and tragical death of this G.o.d were an allegory relating to the Sun. Typhon, like Ahriman, represented Darkness. The sufferings and death of Osiris in the Mysteries of the Night were a mystic image of the phenomena of Nature, and the conflict of the two great Principles which share the empire of Nature, and most influenced our souls. The Sun is neither born, dies, nor is raised to life: and the recital of these events was but an allegory, veiling a higher truth.
Horus, son of Isis, and the same as Apollo or the Sun, also died and was restored again to life and to his mother; and the priests of Isis celebrated these great events by mourning and joyous festival succeeding each other.
In the Mysteries of Phoenicia, established in honor of Thammuz or Adoni, also the Sun, the spectacle of his death and resurrection was exhibited to the Initiates. As we learn from Meursius and Plutarch, a figure was exhibited representing the corpse of a young man. Flowers were strewed upon his body, the women mourned for him; a tomb was erected to him. And these feasts, as we learn from Plutarch and Ovid, pa.s.sed into Greece.
In the Mysteries of Mithras, the Sun-G.o.d, in Asia Minor, Armenia and Persia, the death of that G.o.d was lamented, and his resurrection was celebrated with the most enthusiastic expressions of joy. A corpse, we learn from Julian Firmicus, was shown the Initiates, representing Mithras dead; and afterward his resurrection was announced; and they were then invited to rejoice that the dead G.o.d was restored to life, and had by means of his sufferings secured their salvation. Three months before, his birth had been celebrated, under the emblem of an infant, born on the 25th of December, or the eighth day before the Kalends of January.
In Greece, in the Mysteries of the same G.o.d, honored under the name of Bakchos, a representation was given of his death, slain by the t.i.tans; of his descent into h.e.l.l, his subsequent resurrection, and his return toward his Principle or the pure abode whence he had descended to unite himself with matter. In the islands of Chios and Tenedos, his death was represented by the sacrifice of a man, actually immolated.
The mutilation and sufferings of the same Sun-G.o.d, honored in Phrygia under the name of Atys, caused the tragic scenes that were, as we learn from Diodorus Siculus, represented annually in the Mysteries of Cybele, mother of the G.o.ds. An image was borne there, representing the corpse of a young man, over whose tomb tears were shed, and to whom funeral honors were paid.
At Samothrace, in the Mysteries of the Cabiri or great G.o.ds, a representation was given of the death of one of them. This name was given to the Sun, because the Ancient Astronomers gave the name of G.o.ds Cabiri and of Samothrace to the two G.o.ds in the Constellation Gemini; whom others term Apollo and Hercules, two names of the Sun. Athenion says that the young Cabirus so slain was the same as the Dionusos or Bakchos of the Greeks. The Pelasgi, ancient inhabitants of Greece, and who settled Samothrace, celebrated these Mysteries, whose origin is unknown: and they worshipped Castor and Pollux as patrons of navigation.
The tomb of Apollo was at Delphi, where his body was laid, after Python, the Polar Serpent that annually heralds the coming of autumn, cold, darkness, and winter, had slain him, and over whom the G.o.d triumphs, on the 25th of March, on his return to the lamb of the Vernal Equinox.
In Crete, Jupiter Ammon, or the Sun in Aries, painted with the attributes of that equinoctial sign, the Ram or Lamb;--that Ammon who, Martia.n.u.s Copella says, is the same as Osiris, Adoni, Adonis, Atys, and the other Sun-G.o.ds,--had also a tomb, and a religious initiation; one of the princ.i.p.al ceremonies of which consisted in clothing the Initiate with the skin of a white lamb. And in this we see the origin of the ap.r.o.n of white sheep-skin, used in Masonry.
All these deaths and resurrections, these funeral emblems, these anniversaries of mourning and joy, these cenotaphs raised in different places to the Sun-G.o.d, honored under different names, had but a single object, the allegorical narration of the events which happened here below to the Light of Nature, that sacred fire from which our souls were deemed to emanate, warring with Matter and the dark Principle resident therein, ever at variance with the Principle of Good and Light poured upon itself by the Supreme Divinity. All these Mysteries, says Clemens of Alexandria, displaying to us murders and tombs alone, all these religious tragedies, had a common basis, variously ornamented: and that basis was the fict.i.tious death and resurrection of the Sun, Soul of the World, principle of life and movement in the Sublunary World, and source of our intelligences, which are but a portion of the Eternal Light blazing in that Star, their chief centre.
It was in the Sun that Souls, it was said, were purified: and to it they repaired. It was one of the gates of the soul, through which the theologians, says Porphyry, say that it re-ascends toward the home of Light and the Good. Wherefore, in the Mysteries of Eleusis, the Dadoukos (the first officer after the Hierophant, who represented the Grand Demiourgos or Maker of the Universe), who was posted in the interior of the Temple, and there received the candidates, represented the Sun.
It was also held that the vicissitudes experienced by the Father of Light had an influence on the destiny of souls; which, of the same substance as he, shared his fortunes. This we learn from the Emperor Julian and Sall.u.s.t the Philosopher. They are afflicted when he suffers: they rejoice when he triumphs over the Power of Darkness which opposes his sway and hinders the happiness of Souls, to whom nothing is so terrible as darkness. The fruit of the sufferings of the G.o.d, father of light and Souls, slain by the Chief of the Powers of Darkness, and again restored to life, was received in the Mysteries. "His death works your Salvation;" said the High Priest of Mithras. That was the great secret of this religious tragedy, and its expected fruit;--the resurrection of a G.o.d, who, repossessing Himself of His dominion over Darkness, should a.s.sociate with Him in His triumph those virtuous Souls that by their purity were worthy to share His glory; and that strove not against the divine force that drew them to Him, when He had thus conquered.
To the Initiate were also displayed the spectacles of the chief agents of the Universal Cause, and of the distribution of the world, in the detail of its parts arranged in most regular order. The Universe itself supplied man with the model of the first Temple reared to the Divinity.
The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of the High Priest,--all, as Clemens of Alexandria, Josephus and Philo state, had reference to the order of the world. Clemens informs us that the Temple contained many emblems of the Seasons, the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the elements, and the other parts of the world.
Josephus, in his description of the High Priest"s Vestments, protesting against the charge of impiety brought against the Hebrews by other nations, for contemning the Heathen Divinities, declares it false, because, in the construction of the Tabernacle, in the vestments of the Sacrificers, and in the Sacred vessels, the whole World was in some sort represented. Of the three parts, he says, into which the Temple was divided, two represent Earth and Sea, open to all men, and the third, Heaven, G.o.d"s dwelling-place, reserved for Him alone. The twelve loaves of Shew-bread signify the twelve months of the year. The Candlestick represented the twelve signs through which the Seven Planets run their courses; and the seven lights, those planets; the veils, of four colors, the four elements; the tunic of the High Priest, the earth; the Hyacinth, nearly blue, the Heavens; the ephod, of four colors, the whole of nature; the gold, Light; the breast-plate, in the middle, this earth in the centre of the world; the two Sardonyxes, used as clasps, the Sun and Moon; and the twelve precious stones of the breast-plate arranged by threes, like the Seasons, the twelve months, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Even the loaves were arranged in two groups of six, like the zodiacal signs above and below the Equator. Clemens, the learned Bishop of Alexandria, and Philo, adopt all these explanations.
Hermes calls the Zodiac, the Grent Tent,--Tabernaculum. In the Royal Arch Degree of the American Rite, the Tabernacle has four veils, of different colors, to each of which belongs a banner. The colors of the four are White, Blue, Crimson, and Purple, and the banners bear the images of the Bull, the Lion, the Man, and the Eagle, the Constellations answering 2500 years before our era to the Equinoctial and Solst.i.tial points: to which belong four stars, Aldebaran, Regulus, Fomalhaut, and Antares. At each of these veils there are three words: and to each division of the Zodiac, belonging to each of these Stars, are three Signs. The four signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, were termed the _fixed_ signs, and are appropriately a.s.signed to the four veils.
So the Cherubim, according to Clemens and Philo, represented the two hemispheres: their wings, the rapid course of the firmament, and of time which revolves in the Zodiac. "For the Heavens fly;" says Philo, speaking of the wings of the Cherubim: which were winged representations of the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, and the Man; of two of which, the human-headed, winged bulls and lions, so many have been found at Nimroud; adopted as beneficent symbols, when the Sun entered Taurus at the Vernal Equinox and Leo at the Summer Solstice: and when, also, he entered Scorpio for which, on account of its malignant influences, Aquila, the eagle was subst.i.tuted, at the autumnal equinox; and Aquarius (the water-bearer) at the Winter Solstice.
So, Clemens says, the candlestick with seven branches represented the seven planets, like which the seven branches were arranged and regulated, preserving that musical proportion and system of harmony of which the sun was the centre and connection. They were arranged, says Philo, by threes, like the planets above and those below the sun; between which two groups was the branch that represented him, the mediator or moderator of the celestial harmony. He is, in fact, the fourth in the musical scale, as Philo remarks, and Martia.n.u.s Capella in his hymn to the Sun.
Near the candlestick were other emblems representing the heavens, earth, and the vegetative matter out of whose bosom the vapors arise. The whole temple was an abridged image of the world. There were candlesticks with four branches, symbols of the elements and the seasons; with twelve, symbols of the signs; and even with three hundred and sixty, the number of days in the year, without the supplementary days. Imitating the famous Temple of Tyre, where were the great columns consecrated to the winds and fire, the Tyrian artist placed two columns of bronze at the entrance of the porch of the temple. The hemispherical brazen sea, supported by four groups of bulls, of three each, looking to the four cardinal points of the compa.s.s, represented the bull of the Vernal Equinox, and at Tyre were consecrated to Astarte; to whom Hiram, Josephus says, had builded a temple, and who wore on her head a helmet bearing the image of a bull. And the throne of Solomon, with bulls adorning its arms, and supported on lions, like those of Horus in Egypt and of the Sun at Tyre; likewise referred to the Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice.
Those who in Thrace adored the sun, under the name of Saba-Zeus, the Grecian Bakchos, builded to him, says Macrobius, a temple on Mount Zelmisso, its round form representing the world and the sun. A circular aperture in the roof admitted the light, and introduced the image of the sun into the body of the sanctuary, where he seemed to blaze as in the heights of Heaven, and to dissipate the darkness within that temple which was a representative symbol of the world. There the pa.s.sion, death, and resurrection of Bakchos were represented.
So the Temple of Eleusis was lighted by a window in the roof. The sanctuary so lighted, Dion compares to the Universe, from which he says it differed in size alone; and in it the great lights of nature played a great part and were mystically represented. The images of the Sun, Moon, and Mercury were represented there, (the latter the same as Anubis who accompanied Isis); and they are still the three lights of a Masonic Lodge; except that for Mercury, the Master of the Lodge has been absurdly subst.i.tuted.