The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature

by C.-F. Volney

* Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
amply 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 ether
and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid. A
luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
What can more strongly resemble electricity?
*** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
heart of the world. Som. Scrip. c. 20. The Egyptians, says
Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
and the South the left side of the world, because there the
heart is placed. They continually compare the universe to a
man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
pretensions, 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 egg
refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
the yolk. May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
elipsis of the orbs? I am inclined to this opinion. The
word Orphic offers a farther observation. Macrobius says
(Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
intelligence. Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
sur 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 regularly
at 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 the
Latins. . . . Existence itself. This is the signification
of 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 not
created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
and from all eternity. Such, in a few words, is the
doctrine of Macrobius on this head. Som. Seip. passim.
"There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
under 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, a
small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
its 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 Greeks
called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
school, its vessel, or boat. When a man had conducted
himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
of God (c. 14). If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
Greece. Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
pretended to be its authors. I know their names, adds he,
but shall not mention them (lib. 2). Cicero, however, has
positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
Pythagoras. Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
Pherecydes. 'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
that it goeth upwards? I said in my heart concerning the
estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For
that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
iii: v. 18.
And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians. In
other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
understood.