Fig. 16.—“Kaadman.” From Essays on Archæological Subjects (Wright, T.).
Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient cameo herewith reproduced. This particular jewel was supposed to be of great efficacy and was entitled Kaadman; “perhaps,” suggests Wright, “another mode of spelling cadmeus or cameus”. But in view of the fact that Alban means all good, it was more probably the picture of a sacred figure which the natives recognised as the original Kaadman, i.e., Guidman or the Good Man.[131] The jewels found at St. Albans being unquestionably Gnostic it is quite within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman seal was an “idol” of what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon or Adam Kadman. According to C. W. King the Adam Kadman or Primitive Man of Gnosticism, was the generative and conceptive principle of life and heat, Who manifested Himself in ten emanations or types of all creation.[132] In Irish cad means holy; good and cad are the same word, whence Kaadman and the surnames Cadman and Goodman were probably once one. The word Albon or Albion means as it stands all good, or all well, and the river Beane, like the river Boyne—over whom presided the beneficent goddess Boanna—means bien, good, or bene well. The Herefordshire Beane was alternatively known as the river Beneficia, a name which to the modern etymologer working on standard lines confessedly “yields a curious conundrum”.[133]
The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having assured himself that the idolatrous books before-mentioned proved that the pagan British worshipped Phœbus, and Mercury consigned them to the flames with the same self-complacency as the Monk Patrick burnt 180—some say 300—MSS. relative to the Irish Druids. These being deemed “unfit to be transmitted to posterity,” posterity is proportionately the poorer.
Phœbus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and Mercury, was, as Cæsar said, the Hercules of Britain. The snake-encircled club of Kaadman is the equivalent to the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury; the human image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some probability that “Kaadman” was the All Father or the Maker of Mankind. We shall see subsequently that the Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle, and that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the Great Muckle leading the Mickle—“many a mickel makes a muckle”. St. Michael is the patron saint of Gorhambury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in Christian Art St. Michæl is almost invariably represented with the scales and other attributes of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt. Both Anubis of Egypt and Mercury of Rome were connected with the dog, and Anubis was generally represented with the head of a dog or jackal. In The Gnostics and their Remains, King illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal-headed man which is subscribed with the name MICHAH, and it is probable the word make is closely associated with Micah or Mike.
ANUBIS.
Fig. 17.
Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St. Kit, was a Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the head of a dog. The kilted figure represented in the Gnostic cameo here illustrated, is seemingly that same Kitman, or Kaadman, Bandog, or Good Dog, and chien, the French for dog, Irish chuyn, may be equated with geon, geant, or giant. The worship of the chien was carried in the Near East to such a pitch that a great city named Cynopolis or Dog-Town existed in its honour. The priests of Cynopolis, who maintained a golden image of their divine kuon or chien, termed themselves Kuons, and these kuons or dog-ministers were, according to some authorities, the original Cohen family. A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has been unearthed at Albano in Etruria; Fig. 13 is accompanied by bandogs(?); Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned by Maundeville as abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, where we still retain memories of the Dog Days, it will be shown to be probable that sacred dogs were maintained near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs. Until the past fifty years the traditions of this island at Barking were so uncanny that the site remained inviolate and unbuilt over. Whence, I think, it may originally have been a kennel or Cynopolis, where the kuons of the Cantians or Candians were religiously maintained.[134]
Fig. 18.—From An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems (Walsh, R.).