It is impossible to deny that a septiform chronology was divinely appointed in the elaborate ritual of Judaism.
This statement is innocently accepted and fervently believed in by thousands and tens of thousands, only because they are ignorant of the Bibles of other nations. Two pages from a small pamphlet, a lecture by Mr. Gerald Massey,[368] so upset the arguments and proofs of the enthusiastic Mr. Grattan Guinness, spread over 760 pages of small print, as to prevent them from ever raising their heads any more. Mr. Massey treats of the Fall, and says:
Here, as before, the genesis does not begin at the beginning. There was an earlier Fall than that of the Primal Pair. In this the number of those who failed and fell was seven. We meet with those seven in Egypt—eight with the Mother—where they are called the “Children of Inertness,” who were cast out from Am-Smen, the Paradise of the Eight; also in a Babylonian legend of Creation, as the Seven Brethren, who were Seven Kings, like the Seven Kings in the Book of Revelation; and the Seven Non-Sentient Powers, who became the Seven Rebel Angels that made war in heaven. The Seven Kronidæ, described as the Seven Watchers, who in the beginning were formed in the interior of heaven. The heaven, like a vault, they extended or hollowed out; that which was not visible they raised, and that which had no exit they opened; their work of creation being exactly identical with that of the Elohim in the Book of Genesis. These are the Seven elemental Powers of space, who were continued as Seven Timekeepers. It is said of them: “In watching was their office, but among the stars of heaven their watch they kept not,” and their failure was the Fall. In the Book of Enoch the same Seven Watchers in heaven are stars which transgressed the commandment of God before their time arrived, for they came not in their proper season, therefore was he offended with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation of their crimes, at the end of the secret, or great year of the World, i.e., the Period of Precession, when there was to be restoration and rebeginning. The Seven deposed constellations are seen by Enoch, looking like seven great blazing mountains overthrown—the seven mountains in Revelation, on which the Scarlet Lady sits.[369]
There are seven keys to this, as to every other allegory, whether in the Bible or in pagan religions. While Mr. Massey has hit upon the key in the mysteries of cosmogony, John Bentley in his Hindu Astronomy claims that the Fall of the Angels, or War in Heaven, as given by the Hindus, is but a figure of the calculations of time-periods, and goes on to show that among the Western nations the same war, with like results, took the form of the war of the Titans.
In short, he makes it astronomical. So does the author of The Source of Measures:
The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were esteemed as sexed, the lords or husbands being respectively the planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme, want of proper correction would bring it to pass, after a time, that error and confusion would ensue by the compartments coming under the lordship of the wrong planets. Instead of lawful wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between the planets, “sons of Elohim” and these compartments, “daughters of H-Adam,” or the earth-man; and in fact the fourth verse of sixth Genesis will bear this interpretation for the usual one, viz., “In the same days, or periods, there were untimely births in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of Elohim came to the daughters of H-Adam, they begat to them the offspring of harlotry,” etc., astronomically indicating this confusion.[370]
Do any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible ingenious allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the ancient Mythologists and Priests? Carried to their last word they would undeniably explain much, and would thus furnish one of the right seven keys, fitting a great many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none naturally and entirely, instead of being scientific and cunning master-keys. But they yet prove one thing—that neither the septiform chronology nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin in the Bible. For let us see the sources at which the Bible sipped its divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven. Says Mr. Massey in the same lecture:
The Book of Genesis tells us nothing about the nature of these Elohim, erroneously rendered “God,” who are creators of the Hebrew beginning, and who are themselves preëxtant and seated when the theatre opens and the curtain ascends. It says that in the beginning the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but ... with no conclusive result.... The Elohim are Seven in number, whether as nature-powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, ... as the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The Gnostics, however, and the Jewish Kabalah preserve an account of the Elohim of Genesis by which we are able to identify them with other forms of the seven primordial powers.... Their names are Ildabaoth, Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus, and Astanphæus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers, that is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are identical with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenæus, B. I., xxx., 5). Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were preëxtant by name and nature as Phœnician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaries of Kronos or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are time-keepers in heaven! In the Phœnician mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons of Sydik [Melchizedek], identical with [pg 195]the Seven Kabiri, who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven Spirits of Ra in The Book of the Dead; ... in America with the seven Hohgates, ... in Assyria with the seven Lumazi.... They are always seven in number ... who Kab—that is, turn round, together, whence the “Kab-iri.”... They are also the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were seven in number!... They were first born of the Mother in Space,[371] and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As Damascius says in his Primitive Principles, the Magi consider that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers of the air the gods were promoted to become time-keepers for men. Seven constellations were assigned to them.... As the seven turned round in the ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven Sailors' Companions, Rishis, or Elohim. The first “Seven Stars” are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in describing the circle of the year.[372] These the Assyrians called the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim are identified for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained the hidden wisdom or gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely essential to any proper understanding of mythology or theology.... There were two constellations with seven stars each. We call them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which we meet with—as the beast with seven heads—in the Akkadian Hymns and in Revelation. The mythical dragon originated in the crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt.... Now in one particular cult, the Sut-Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the seven-fold], who wears the crocodile's head, as well as the Serpent, and who is the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.... In Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, or Kepha, the old genetrix, called the Mother of the Revolutions; and the Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son, Sevekh-Kronus, or Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the typical dragon or serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the type was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent, in Ea the Sevenfold, ... Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these two in The Book of Revelation. One is the Scarlet Lady, the mother of mystery, the great harlot, who sat on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads, which is the Red Dragon of the Pole. She held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication. That means the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon, in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two revolved about the pole of heaven, or the Tree, as it was called, which was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In The Book of Enoch these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and Behemoth-Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and they are the primal pair that were first created in the Garden of Eden. So that the Egyptian first [pg 196]mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose name signifies “mystery,” was the original of the Hebrew Chavah, our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with Sevekh the sevenfold one, the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays worn by the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is Sevekh by name and a form of the first father as head of the Seven.[373]
All this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in Genesis, but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the sevenfold glyph. The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself according to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven who fell from Heaven, and he connects these with the Patriarchs, thus agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by mystic permutation and the mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the Seven Rishis are in reality identical with the seven Prajâpatis, the fathers and creators of mankind, and also with the Kumâras, the first sons of Brahmâ, who refused to procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction is explained by the seven-fold nature—make it four-fold on metaphysical principles and it will come to the same thing—of the celestial men, the Dhyân Chohans. This nature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles (Âtmâ-Buddhi) of the “Creators of Men” are said to be the Spirits of the seven constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected with the earth and are shown
Without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the Universe and undesirous of progeny,[374]