* These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates thatthose various worships were given by a king of Egypt to thedifferent towns to disunite and enslave them, and thesekings had been taken from the cast of priests. See Isis andOsiris.
"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture of geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded all traditions.
"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent, sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and perverted the principles of government."
IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences, and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects, which became so many theological systems.
"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having remarked that all the operations of nature during the annual period were reducible to two principal ones, that of producing and that of destroying; that on the greater part of the globe these two operations were performed in the intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to say, during the six months of summer every thing was procreating and multiplying, and that during winter everything languished and almost died; they supposed in Nature two contrary powers, which were in a continual state of contention and exertion; and considering the celestial sphere in this view, they divided the images which they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so that the constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct and superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that of fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light, fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity and virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction, of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin and vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains, two factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field to the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe plate Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in circular order, presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary, opposed to it. By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral sense; and the adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.** From that moment all the astronomical history of the constellations was changed into a political history; the heavens became a human state, where things happened as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the greater part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for king an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good. And as every rebel faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose character was applied by different people to the constellation which to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at first the Scorpion, first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time chief of the winter signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the earth during the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
* The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which itmay be useful to make known to the reader."We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster wasthe first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantlysituated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed theidea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator andfather of all things: that is to say, having made in thiscavern several geometrical divisions, representing theseasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale theorder and disposition of the universe by Mithra. AfterZoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for thecelebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as templeswere dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes andterrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernaldeities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to theworld, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hencePythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the eartha cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;though the Persians give the honor of the invention toZoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we maysuppose from this projection being the most simple that itwas the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similarpictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.The following was the second projection: "The prophets orhierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiatedin the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to formidols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselvesinto the sacred caves, where they have concealed cofferscontaining certain spheres upon which they construct thoseimages secretly and without the knowledge of the people, whodespise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies andfables." (Syn. in Calvit.) That is, the ancient priestshad armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which sowell agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to alltheir theological astrology.Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. withthe difference that they were of a very complicated nature,having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, withthe hieroglyphic signs of their influence. Kircher hasgiven us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, andGybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar(under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac). The ancientEgyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of theZodiac into three sections; and each section was under thedirection of an imaginary being whom they called decan orchief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, andthirty-six a year. Now these decans, who were also calledGods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind—and theywere placed particularly in certain stars. They afterwardsimagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they calledarbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and thesewere farther divided into an infinite number of powers. ThePersians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from thedescription given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, weshould find in it a complete explanation of theirhieroglyphics, for every article forms one.** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote thename of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside downand backwards].*** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is preciselythe touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and thesedeluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and therains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretendedfires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summerseason. And it is for this reason that Aristotle (DeMeteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the greatcyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration."The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year atalisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solsticethey mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposingthat on that day the whole world had been set on fire. Itwas also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrricor fire dance." And this illustrates the origin ofpurification by fire and by water; for having denominatedthe tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heatof celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of delugeor of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls whopassed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and thepassage through flames, observed throughout the East longbefore Moses.**** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, orrather when the alteration of the skies showed that it wasno longer the bull.
"In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this is the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in horror, in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested him as the murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians! is the type of your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your brethren, the Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the creator, is only the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose very name expresses creative power, producer of forms. And these gods received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary; which worship was divided into two branches, according to their characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances, banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word, everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, mournings, self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.
* All the ancient festivals respecting the return andexaltation of the sun were of this description: hence thehilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,Pascha, of the vernal equinox. The dances were imitationsof the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises stillrepresent it to this day.** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offeredto Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath. Demons arefond of blood, humidity, stench." Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,p. 173."The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victimsto Typhon. They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animalimmolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sinsof the people." The goat of Moses. See Isis and Osiris.Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcisionand the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung fromsuperstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony ofcircumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol ofOsiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: anobstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," saysPlutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causesobstruction."
"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.
"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white and black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of lions, or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and tails of serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles, and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon or Chiven, Michael or Satan;—whether they appear under the form of giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the sacred fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive filiation of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness from their source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross forms have been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
"But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis and support.
V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
"Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world, they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served to strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic, related that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics) where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and no doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had already interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after his death, as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which animates his body, and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he had imagined airy substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed that he should continue, in the subterranean world, that life which it was too painful for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed commodious for the reception of the beloved objects which he could not willingly resign.
* Nights of six months duration.** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifiesdancing and joyous.
"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded perfectly well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the entrance of the seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram) and through the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which give life to vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which bring, at the solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the gate of ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the Milky Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed to be placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.* Besides, in their atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile, designated by the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
*See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there, it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently to be received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without which the body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild beasts. This custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the means of a powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated and ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing a previous trial, which should decide whether the deceased merited to be admitted to the rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea accorded too well with all the others, not to be incorporated with them: the people soon adopted it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus, with the wand, the bench, the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and civil state. It was then that God became a moral and political being, a lawgiver to men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible. Then it was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such odd materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments and of rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what was vicious and erroneous in the judgment of men. This spiritual and mystical system acquired the more credit, as it took possession of man by all his natural inclinations. The oppressed found in it the hope of indemnity, and the consolation of future vengeance; the oppressor, expecting by rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed out of the errors of the vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit of actions, which they took care to characterize as best suited their system.
"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator, with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes: and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good works, your last judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs not in the least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
* There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, sointeresting and explanatory of the whole of this system,that we shall cite it entire. Having observed that thetheory of good and evil had at all times occupied theattention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Manysuppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, onedelighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these iscalled particularly by the name of God, the second by thatof Genius or Demon. Zoroaster has denominated them Oromazeand Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under thecognizance of our senses, light is the best representationof the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other. Headds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is forthis reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator orintermediator. Each of these Gods has distinct plants andanimals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds andhedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquaticanimals to the evil one."The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed outof the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of thethickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good ashimself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: thatOromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermestrismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from thesun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formedstars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in theheavens as a guard and sentinel. He made also twenty-fourother Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanescreated an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, andfrom that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth tobe made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy."Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one ofthese Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years duringwhich the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwardscontend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to riseagain). Then men will become happy, and their bodies castno shade. The God who mediates all these things reclines atpresent in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased toexecute them." See Isis and Osiris.There is an apparent allegory through the whole of thispassage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the sixGods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those ofAhrimanes the six signs of winter. The forty-eight otherGods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancientsphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze. Theoffice of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that theorigin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expressionthat the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that thebodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that theequator was considered as their true paradise.** In the caves which priests every where constructed, theycelebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen againstCelsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planetsand the heavens. The initiated took the name ofconstellations, and assumed the figures of animals. One wasa lion, another a raven, and a third a ram. Hence the useof masks in the first representation of the drama. See Ant.Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244. "In the mysteries of Ceres thechief in the procession called himself the creator; thebearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the personnearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,Mercury. In Egypt there was a festival in which the men andwomen represented the year, the age, the seasons, thedifferent parts of the day, and they walked in precessionafter Bacchus. Athen. lib. v., ch. 7. In the cave ofMithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the sevenspheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended anddescended. This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,which shows that at that epoch a the whole system wasformed. There is in the French king's library a superbvolume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladderis represented with the souls of men mounting it."
VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under diverse Emblems.
"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the earth, which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as soon as they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences of this first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to induction they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens, the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis, to determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain known portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one or more degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole circumference. Then, taking for a compass the known diameter of the earth, some fortunate genius applied it with a bold hand to the boundless orbits of the heavens; and man, the inhabitant of a grain of sand, embracing the infinite distances of the stars, launches into the immensity of space and the eternity of time: there he is presented with a new order of the universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited appeared no longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to the enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth subjected to precise calculations.
"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence, engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*
* Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you willfind our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priestsamply proved.
"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies, teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire, they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished all beings. Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive analysis, this same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the composition of all bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential agent of that spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and vegetation in plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the universe, as of a homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts, though distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world was a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
* These are the very words of Jamblicus. De Myst. Egypt.** The more I consider what the ancients understood by etherand spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the strongerdo I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid. Aluminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervadingthe universe, forming the matter of the stars, having smallround particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, andfill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.What can more strongly resemble electricity?*** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun theheart of the world. Som. Scrip. c. 20. The Egyptians, saysPlutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,and the South the left side of the world, because there theheart is placed. They continually compare the universe to aman; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other suchsort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of thisancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of theirpretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are but the different modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself possesses properties which give rise to all its modes of existence; that the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and duration; said that the whole universe was God; and, according to them, God was a being, effect and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, having for laws the invariable properties that constitute fatality; and this class conveyed their idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of Jupiter, with a forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals; or of the Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid, surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming in ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the moving principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded with spots of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail—that is, folding and unfolding himself eternally, like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by that of a man, having his feet joined together and tied, to signify immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors, like the face of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes seated on the flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs. And here, Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology, which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom of Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of which you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of the waters, by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the world, that is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer, announced the inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
* See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.*** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an eggrefers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its centralsituation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained inthe yolk. May not the oval form of the egg allude to theelipsis of the orbs? I am inclined to this opinion. Theword Orphic offers a farther observation. Macrobius says(Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain ofthe universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull ofa human being is round, like the planet, the seat ofintelligence. Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew thebrain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same asBedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics whichPlutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vendedtalismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, andeven governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freretsur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.**** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.*5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularlyat the solstice, with the inundation.
VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say, the Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
"But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause, agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature, distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the cover or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle, known to be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be the fluid called ether, which was thought more active and subtile; and, as in animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a spirit, and as they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially those drawn from human beings, they gave to the moving principle of the universe the name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital spirit, which extended through all beings and animated the vast body of the world. And this class conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,* essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather existence itself; sometimes by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of fire; or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like the sun in the heavens; sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in dark blue, having in one hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with a cap of feathers to express the fugacity of thought, and producing from his mouth the great egg.
* This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of theLatins. . . . Existence itself. This is the significationof the word You.
"Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself a portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover, and this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the souls of all beings were portions of God himself partaking of all his attributes, that is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and immortal; and hence the whole system of the immortality of the soul, which at first was eternity.*
* In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was notcreated with, or at the same time as the body, in order tobe inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anteriorand from all eternity. Such, in a few words, is thedoctrine of Macrobius on this head. Som. Seip. passim."There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, whichunder the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, asmall round particle of this fluid gravitates through themilky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associatewith matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes withit; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elementsdissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained byits union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,the perfect representation of the deceased. The Greekscalled this phantom the image or idol of the soul; thePythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinicalschool, its vessel, or boat. When a man had conductedhimself well in this world, his whole soul, that is itschariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separationtook place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and theether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for thefixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the nameof God (c. 14). If a man had not lived virtuously, the soulremained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wanderto and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrinemust have been known, since he wrote after the time ofPherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators inGreece. Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the wholeromance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented bythe Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, whopretended to be its authors. I know their names, adds he,but shall not mention them (lib. 2). Cicero, however, haspositively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master ofPythagoras. Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting thatthis system was at that period a novelty, it accounts forSolomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years beforePherecydes. 'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a manthat it goeth upwards? I said in my heart concerning theestate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them andthat they might see that they themselves are beasts. Forthat which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; evenone thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth theother; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath nopre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.iii: v. 18.And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator ofHerodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justlyobserves in note 389 of the second book; where he says alsothat the immortality of the soul was not introduced amongthe Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians. Inother respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properlyanalysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badlyunderstood.
"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis, that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements. And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans! whence are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul; behold what was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your masters, who were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or Grand Artificer.
"Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the fine and subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not, however, ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the senses; and theology continued to be the theory of physical powers, placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated through the universe; but at this period, certain superficial minds, losing the chain of ideas which had directed them in their profound studies, or ignorant of the facts on which they were founded, distorted all the conclusions that flowed from them by the introduction of a strange and novel chimera. They pretended that this universe, these heavens, these stars, this sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and applying to this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from the works of art, they raised an edifice of the most whimsical sophisms. A machine, said they, does not make itself; it has had an anterior workman; its very existence proves it. The world is a machine; therefore it had an artificer.*
* All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded onthis. See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, andPlato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
"Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to this by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by taking eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author. The innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to a second; and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human understanding, they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his machine on a plan already existing in his understanding. Now, as their masters, the naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars the great primum mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so their mimics, the spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their Demi-Ourgos, and making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they called it mens or logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted the existence of the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found themselves obliged to compose three grades of divine beings, which were: first, the Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word or reason; thirdly, the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here, Christians! is the romance on which you have founded your trinity; here is the system which, born a heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported a pagan into the schools of Greece and Italy, is now found to be good, catholic, and orthodox, by the conversion of its partisans, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to Christianity.