The Dragons and Serpents of Antiquity are all seven-headed—one head for each Race, and “every head with seven hairs on it,” as the allegory has it. Aye, from Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity, which carries Vishnu through the Manvantara; from the original primordial Shesha, whose seven heads become “one thousand heads” in the Purânic fancy, down to the seven-headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven Principles throughout Nature and in man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not of the Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that Philo speaks, in his Creation of the World, when saying that the world was completed “according to the perfect nature of number 6.” For:
When that Reason [Nous] which is holy in accordance with the number 7, has entered the soul [the living body rather], the number 6 is thus arrested and all the mortal things which that number makes.
And again:
Number 7 is the festival day of all the earth, the birthday of the world. I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate the number 7 in adequate terms.[656]
The author of The Natural Genesis thinks that:
The septenary of stars seen in the Great Bear [the Saptarshis] and seven-headed Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic seven of time above. The goddess of the seven stars was the mother of time, as Kep; whence Kepti and Sebti [pg 439]for the two times and number 7. So this is the star of the Seven by name. Sevekh (Kronus), the son of the goddess, has the name of the seven or seventh. So has Sefekh Abu who builds the house on high, as Wisdom (Sophia) built hers with seven pillars.... The primary kronotypes were seven, and thus the beginning of time in heaven is based on the number and the name of seven, on account of the starry demonstrators. The seven stars as they turned round annually kept pointing, as it were, with the forefinger of the right hand, and describing a circle in the upper and lower heaven.[657] The number 7 naturally suggested a measure by seven, that led to what may be termed Sevening, and to the marking and mapping out of the circle in seven corresponding divisions which were assigned to the seven great constellations; and thus was formed the celestial heptanomis of Egypt in the heavens.
When the stellar heptanomis was broken up and divided into four quarters, it was multiplied by four, and the twenty-eight signs took the place of the primary seven constellations; the lunar zodiac of twenty-eight signs being the registered result of reckoning twenty-eight days to the moon, or a lunar month.[658] In the Chinese arrangement, the four sevens are given to four Genii that preside over the four cardinal points,[659] or rather the seven northern constellations make up the Black Warrior; the seven eastern (Chinese autumn) constitute the White Tiger; the seven southern are the Vermilion Bird; and the seven western (called vernal) are the Azure Dragon. Each of these four spirits presides over its heptanomis during one lunar week. The genitrix of the first heptanomis (Typhon of the seven stars) now took a lunar character.... In this phase we find the goddess Sefekh, whose name signifies number 7, is the feminine word, or logos in place of the mother of time, who was the earlier Word, as goddess of the Seven Stars.[660]
The author shows that it was the Goddess of the Great Bear and Mother of Time who was in Egypt from the earliest times the “Living Word,” and that Sevekh-Kronus, whose type was the Crocodile-Dragon, the pre-planetary form of Saturn, was called her son and consort; he was her Word-Logos.[661]
The above is quite plain, but it was not the knowledge of astronomy only that led the Ancients to the process of Sevening. The primal cause goes far deeper and will be explained in its place.
The above quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as showing (a) the reason why a full Initiate was called a Dragon, a Snake, a Nâga; and (b) that our septenary division was used by the priests of the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason, and on [pg 440] the same basis, as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already stated, what Mr. Gerald Massey calls the Four Genii of the four cardinal points; and the Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Azure Dragon, are called in the Secret Books, the “Four Hidden Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Celestial Nâgas.” Now, the seven-headed or septenary Dragon-Logos is shown to have, in course of time, been split up, so to speak, into four heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions. Each week has a distinct Occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; for each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has an Occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum of knowledge that men can acquire on this earth; yet few are those who acquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root-Dragon, the Spiritual Logos of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of Dragons, and they are the “Arhats of the Four Truths of the Twenty-eight Faculties,” or attributes, and have always been so called.