The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol of saving power. Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained to and bound by the cross. In the Ritual, the Osirian cries, “The Apophis is overthrown, their cords bind the South, North, East, and West, their cords are on him. Har-ru-bah has knotted him.”[1393]These were the Cords of the four quarters, or the cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the serpent with his hammer, ... a form of Swastika or four-footed cross.... In the primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber [pg 622]had the form of a cross.[1394] The pagoda of Mathura ... the birth-place of Krishna, was built in the form of a cross.[1395]
This is perfect, and no one can discern in it that “sexual worship,” with which the Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about the Jews, and the exoteric religions of some Hindû sects, especially the rites of the Vallabâchâryas? For, as said, Shiva-worship, with its Lingam and Yoni, stands too high philosophically, its modern degeneration notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the Tree- or Cross-worship[1396] of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can hardly escape the charge. The “sons of the sorcerers, the seed of the adulterer,”[1397] as Isaiah calls them, never lost an opportunity of “enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree”[1398]—which denotes no metaphysical recreation. It is from these monotheistic Jews that the Christian nations have derived their religion, their “God of Gods, the One living God,” while despising and deriding the worship of the Deity of the ancient Philosophers. Let such believe in and worship the physical form of the cross, by all means.
But to the follower of the true Eastern Archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in, every atom of Nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give Life Eternal and not physical life alone. For him, the cross and circle, the Tree or the Tau—even after every symbol relating thereto has been referred to and read, one after another—still remain a profound mystery in their Past, and it is to that Past alone that he directs his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be the Seed from which grows the genealogical Tree of Being, called the Universe. Nor is it the Three in One, the triple aspect of the Seed—its form, colour, and substance—that interest him, but rather the Force which directs its growth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown. For this vital Force, that makes the Seed germinate, burst open and throw out shoots, then form the trunk and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like the boughs of the Ashvattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and [pg 623] procreate other trees—this is the only Force that has reality for him, as it is the never-dying Breath of Life. The Pagan philosopher sought for the cause, the modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in the latter. What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A-gnostic care; thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full security base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to fathom it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan, not the antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine did,[1399] is forthwith regarded by the Church as a heathen; by Science, as a lunatic. This, because, while refusing to worship the God of physical generation, he confesses that he can know nothing of the Cause which underlies the so-called First Cause, the Causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly admitting the All-Presence of the Boundless Circle and making of it the Universal Postulate upon which the whole of the Manifested Universe is based, the Sage keeps a reverential silence concerning that upon which no mortal man should dare to speculate. “The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the Logos (the Verb) of man is the revealer of God,” says Éliphas Lévi in one of his paradoxes. To this, the Eastern Occultist would reply: On this condition, however, that man should be dumb on the Cause that produced both God and its Logos. Otherwise, he becomes invariably the reviler, not the revealer, of the Incognizable Deity.
We have now to approach a mystery—the Hebdomad in Nature. Perchance, all that we may say, will be attributed to coincidence. We may be told that this number in Nature is quite natural—as indeed we say it is—and has no more significance than the illusion of motion which forms the so-called “strobic circles.” No great importance was given to these “singular illusions” when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited them at the meeting of the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should like to learn the scientific explanation why seven should ever form itself as a preeminent number—six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings within one another round a central point, etc.—in this illusion, produced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the solution refused by Science in the Section which follows.
Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.
We must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without an attempt to explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number, the Hebdomad, in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest to the latest, reveals its presence, and explains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special dogmas, this is no easy task. We can, therefore, do no better or more explanatory work than to give a bird's-eye view of all. The numbers, 3, 4, 7, are the sacred numbers of Light, Life, and Union—especially in this present Manvantara, our Life-Cycle; of which number seven is the special representative, or the factor number. This has now to be demonstrated.
If one should ask a Brâhman learned in the Upanishads, which are so full of the Secret Wisdom of old, why “he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon-plant,” is Trisuparna, as Bopaveda is credited with saying;[1400] and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the Brâhman Trisuparna—very few could answer the question; or, if they knew, they would still less satisfy one's curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what the old Esoteric Doctrine teaches. As says the Commentary:
When the first Seven appeared on Earth, they threw the seed of everything that grows on the land into the soil. First came Three, and Four were added to these as soon as stone was transformed into plant. Then came the second Seven, who, guiding the Jîvas of the plants, produced the middle [intermediate] natures between plant and moving living animal. The third Seven evolved their Chhâyâs.... The fifth Seven imprisoned their Essence.... Thus man became a Saptaparna.