But one were an Œdipus to expound this serpent mythology; whereby is symbolized the mysteries of genesis, and of The One rejoining man's parted personality, and thus recreating mankind. Coeval with flesh, the symbol appears wherever traces of civilization exist; a remnant of it in the ancient Phallus worship having come to us disguised in our Mayday dance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge merely. The serpent symbolized divine wisdom, also; and it was under this acceptation that it became associated with those "traditionary teachers of mankind whose genial wisdom entitled them to divine honors." An early Christian sect, called Ophites, worshipped it as the personation of natural knowledge. So the injunction, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves," becomes the more significant when we learn that seraph in the original means a serpent; cherub, a dove. And these again symbolize facts in osteological science as connected with the latest theories of the vertebrated cranium,[[K]] which view Nature as ophiomorphous—a series of spines, crowned, winged, webbed, finned, footed in structure—set erect, prone, trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or lower; man, holding the sceptre of dominion as he maintains his inborn rectitude, or losing his prerogative as lapsed from his integrity—hereby debasing his form and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes distributed throughout nature's kingdoms. Or, again as aspiring for lost supremacy, he uplift and crown his fallen form with forehead, countenance, speech,—thus liberating the genius from the slime of its prone periods, and restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, fellowship, the ideal arts.
"Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man."
"The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work, in the divine mind before it exists in the creature."
As the male impregnates the female, so mind charges matter with form and fecundity; the spermatic world being life in transmission and body in embryo; the egg a genesis and seminary of forms, the kingdoms of animated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk, and awaiting the quickening magnetism that ushers them into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds in series the lineaments of all forms in the living hierarchy, to be fixed at last in its microcosm, unreeling therefrom its faculties into filamental organs, spinning so minutely the threads, "that were it physically possible to dissolve away all other members of the body, there would still remain the full and perfect figure of a man. And it is this perfect cerebro-spinal axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments, that, physically speaking, is the man."[[L]] The mind contains him spiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and his kind. Every creature assists in its own formation, souls being essentially creative and craving form.
"The creature ever delights in the image of the Creator; And the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself; Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated of God; For she glories in the harmony under which the human body exists."
Throughout the domain of spirit desire creates substance wherein all creatures seek conjunction, lodging and nurture. Nor is there anything in nature save desire holding substances together, all things being dissolvable and recombinable in this spiritual menstruum.
"'Tis the blossom whence there blows Everything that lives and grows; It doth make the heavens to move And the sun to burn in love: The strong to weak it seeks to yoke, And makes the ivy climb the oak, Under whose shadows lions wild, Softened thereby grow tame and mild. It all medicine doth appease, It burns the fishes in the seas, Not all the skill its wounds can stanch, Not all the sea its thirst can quench: It did make the bloody spear Once a leafy coat to wear, While in his leaves there shrouded lay Sweet birds for love that sing and play; And of all the joyful flame, Bud and blossom this we name."
Temperament is a fate, oftentimes, from whose jurisdiction its victims hardly escape, but do its bidding herein, be it murder or martyrdom. Virtues and crimes are mixed in one's cup of nativity, with the lesser or larger margin of choice. Unless of chaste extraction, his regeneration shall be wrought with difficulty through the struggling kingdom of evil into the peaceful realm of good. Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry, from fountains whence rose Adam the first and his Eve. The oldest and most persistent of forces, if once ennobled by virtue and refined by culture, it resists base mixtures long, preserving its purity and power for generations. All gifts descend in the torrent; all are mingled in the ecstasy, as purity or passion prevail; genius being the fruit of chaste conjunctions, brute force of adulterous—the virgin complexions or the mixed.[[M]]