In the Old English representation here illustrated either St. Peter or God the Father is conspicuously tattooed or spotted; Pan was always assigned a panther’s skin, or spotted cloak.
A speck is a minute spot, and among the ancients a speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central Spook or Spectre. This, like all other emblems, was understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe. In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil in the iris of the eye. In addition it is evident that ⨀ was an emblem of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letter theta written—⨀ is identical with teta, teat, tada, dot or dad. The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the word alban meant a primary point.[277]
Fig. 67.—Christ’s Ascent from Hell. From Ancient Mysteries (Hone, W.).
Speck is the root of speculum, a mirror, and it might be suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a metal mirror was assumed to be a spook. The mirror is an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British Druids seem to have had some system of flashing the sunlight on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance. Specula means a watch-tower, and spectrum means vision. Speech, speak, and spoke, point to the probability that speech was deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official surmise “all, perhaps, from Teutonic base sprek—to make a noise”.
Fig. 68.—The Mirror of Thoth. From The Correspondences of Egypt (Odhner, C.T.)
Fig. 69.