It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery-god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.[1268]
In the Ophite gems of King,[1269] we find the name of Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of the “chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a “mystery name”from the beginning, for יהיה and יה never came into use before the time of king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,[1270] brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron (חברון), Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears, apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme [pg 571]Deity of the Shemites. Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor-eb—the Cave—under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldæans, whose remains are to be found among the Neo-Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle, ... and also conceived of as Demiurgus,[1271] was called Ιαω (יהו), who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and secret, and he was Ιαω.”[1272]
The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient—nay, perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter. This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.
Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Cœlus and Lux—of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the “Messenger” of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among other things, the “Interpreter”—the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now placed in Italy, and they were cruciform.[1273] Every seventh day the priests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointed. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles, says:
I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.
Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.[1274] He was often represented as three-headed and called Tricephalus, [pg 572] Triplex, as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus[1275] shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because “the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, and it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the crafty Eusebius say, “Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all,” for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyry teaching that the Speech of Hermes—now interpreted “Word of God” (!) in Pymander—a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered throughout the Universe.[1276] In Alchemy “Mercury” is the radical “Moyst” Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of Source of Measures tells us why.[1277]
As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, “the circle attached to the Tau gives the ansated cross” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their “King-Initiates” for ages, and also what was meant by “the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “was made to coördinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.” Only the latter came into action æons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and Artificer of the Gods, Vishva-karmâ, crucifying the “Sun-Initiate” on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes:
The attachment of a man to the cross ... was made use of in this form of display by the Hindûs.[1278]
But, it was made “to coördinate” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initiation was attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere terrestrial life.