A great difference is now found between the secret meaning of this symbolical place as given in the Esotericism of the Pagans and in that of the later Jews, though its symbology was originally identical throughout the ancient races and nations. The Gentiles placed in the Adytum a sarcophagus, or a tomb (taphos), in which was the Solar God to whom the temple was consecrated, holding it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration. They regarded it, in its Esoteric meaning, as the symbol of resurrection, cosmic, solar, or diurnal, and human. It embraced the wide range of periodical, and (in time) punctual, Manvantaras, or the reäwakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences; the Sun being the most poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of such Cycles in Heaven, and man—in his reïncarnations—on Earth. The Jews—whose realism, if judged by the dead-letter, was as practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now[1045]—in the course of their estrangement from the Gods of their Pagan neighbours, consummated a national and levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of Holies as the most solemn sign of their Monotheism—exoterically, while seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol—esoterically. While the Kabalists knew but Ain Suph and the “Gods” of the Mysteries, the Levites had no tomb, no God in their Adytum but the “Sacred” Ark of the Covenant—their “Holy of Holies.”
When the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, however, the profane will be better able to understand why David danced “uncovered” before the Ark of the Covenant, and was so anxious to appear vile for the sake of his “Lord,” and base in his own sight.[1046]
The Ark is the navi-form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has a long dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a word about it in his Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:
Archê (Ἀρχὴ) in this application answers to the Hebrew Rasit or wisdom, ... a word which had the meaning of the emblem of the female generative power, the Arg or Arca, in which the germ of all nature was supposed to float or brood on the great abyss during the interval which took place after every mundane cycle.
Quite so; and the Jewish Ark of the Covenant had precisely the same significance; with the supplementary addition that, instead of a beautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the Matrix of Nature and Resurrection), as in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Pagans, they had the Ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two Cherubs set up on the coffer or Ark of the Covenant, facing each other, with their wings spread in such a manner as to form a perfect Yoni (as now seen in India). Besides which, this generative symbol had its significance enforced by the four mystic letters of Jehovah's name, namely, IHVH (יהוה); Jod (י) meaning the membrum virile; Hé (ה), the womb; Vau (ו), a crook or a hook, a nail, and Hé (ה) again, meaning also “an opening”; the whole forming the perfect bisexual emblem or symbol or I(e)H(o)V(a)H, the male and female symbol.
Perhaps also, when people realize the true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh Kadeshim, the “holy ones,” or “the consecrated to the Temple of the Lord”—the “Holy of Holies” of these “holy ones” may assume an aspect far from edifying.
Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic God.
“Who shall ascend into the hill [the high place] of the Lord?” asks the holy king David, “Who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu (קדשו)?”[1047] Kadesh may mean in one sense to “devote,” “hallow,” “sanctify,” and even to “initiate”or to “set apart”; but it also means the ministry of lascivious rites—the Venus-worship—and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy, xxiii. 17; Hosea, iv. 14; and Genesis, xxxviii. 15-22. The “holy”Kadeshim of the Bible were identical, as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindû pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or Galli, lived [pg 483] “by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove,” or the bust of Venus-Astarte.[1048]
The dance performed by David round the Ark was the “circle-dance,” said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh,[1049] and the leaping of the prophets of Baal.[1050] It was simply a characteristic of the Sabæan worship, for it denoted the motion of the Planets round the Sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michal and the King's reply are very expressive.[1051]
The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things necessary to repeople the Earth, represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of Spirit over Matter, through the conflict of the opposing powers of Nature. In the Astro-theosophic chart of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the Moon), one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's Temple—Boaz. The umbilicus is connected (through the placenta) with the receptacle in which are fructified the embryos of the race. The Ark is the sacred Argha of the Hindûs, and thus the relation in which it stands to Noah's Ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astarte, and Venus-Aphrodite, all of whom were Goddesses of the generative powers of Nature, or of Matter—hence representing symbolically the Ark containing the germs of all living things.[1052]