Which title, with all its attributes, became that of Michael. The good Fathers, the Master Masons of the temple of Church Christianity, knew indeed how to utilize pagan material for their new dogmas.
The fact is, that it is sufficient to examine certain Egyptian cartouches, pointed out by Rossellini (Egypte, Vol. I., p. 289), to find Mercury (the double of Sirius in our solar system) as Sothis, preceded by the words “sole” and “solis custode, sostegnon dei dominanti, e forte grande dei vigilanti,” “watchman of the sun, sustainer of dominions, and the strongest of all the vigilants.” All these titles and attributes are now those of the Archangel Michael, who has inherited them from the demons of paganism.
Moreover, travellers in Rome may testify to the wonderful presence in the statue of Mitra, at the Vatican, of the best known Christian symbols. Mystics boast of it. They find “in his lion’s head, and the eagle’s wings, those of the courageous Seraph, the master of space (Michael); in his caduceus, the spear, in the two serpents coiled round the body, the struggle of the good and bad principles, and especially in the two keys which the said Mitra holds, like St. Peter, the keys with which this Seraph-patron of the latter opens and shuts the gates of Heaven, astra cludit et recludit.” (Mem: p. 162.)
To sum up, the aforesaid shows that the theological romance of Lucifer was built upon the various myths and allegories of the pagan world, and that it is no revealed dogma, but simply one invented to uphold superstition. Mercury being one of the Sun’s assessors, or the cynocephali of the Egyptians and the watch-dogs of the Sun, literally, the other was Eosphoros, the most brilliant of the planets, “qui mane oriebaris,” the early rising, or the Greek ὀρθρινὸς. It was identical with the Amoon-ra, the light-bearer of Egypt, and called by all nations “the second born of light” (the first being Mercury), the beginning of his (the Sun’s) ways of wisdom, the Archangel Michael being also referred to as the principium viarum Domini.
Thus a purely astronomical personification, built upon an occult meaning which no one has hitherto seemed to unriddle outside the Eastern wisdom, has now become a dogma, part and parcel of Christian revelation. A clumsy transference of characters is unequal to the task of making thinking people accept in one and the same trinitarian group, the “Word” or Jesus, God and Michael (with the Virgin occasionally to complete it) on the one hand, and Mitra, Satan and Apollo-Abbadon on the other: the whole at the whim and pleasure of Roman Catholic Scholiasts. If Mercury and Venus (Lucifer) are (astronomically in their revolution around the Sun) the symbols of God the Father, the Son, and of their Vicar, Michael, the “Dragon-Conqueror,” in Christian legend, why should they when called Apollo-Abaddon, the “King of the Abyss,” Lucifer, Satan, or Venus—become forthwith devils and demons? If we are told that the “conqueror,” or “Mercury-Sun,” or again St. Michael of the Revelation, was given the spoils of the conquered angel, namely, his planet, why should opprobrium be any longer attached to a constellation so purified? Lucifer is now the “Angel of the Face of the Lord,”[[10]] because “that face is mirrored in it.” We think rather, because the Sun is reflecting his beams in Mercury seven times more than it does on our Earth, and twice more in Lucifer-Venus: the Christian symbol proving again its astronomical origin. But whether from the astronomical, mystical or symbological aspect, Lucifer is as good as any other planet. To advance as a proof of its demoniacal character, and identity with Satan, the configuration of Venus, which gives to the crescent of this planet the appearance of a cut-off horn is rank nonsense. But to connect this with the horns of “The Mystic Dragon” in Revelation—“one of which was broken”[[11]]—as the two French Demonologists, the Marquis de Mirville and the Chevalier des Mousseaux, the champions of the Church militant, would have their readers believe in the second half of our present century—is simply an insult to the public.
Besides which, the Devil had no horns before the fourth century of the Christian era. It is a purely Patristic invention arising from their desire to connect the god Pan, and the pagan Fauns and Satyrs, with their Satanic legend. The demons of Heathendom were as hornless and as tailless as the Archangel Michael himself in the imaginations of his worshippers. The “horns” were, in pagan symbolism, an emblem of divine power and creation, and of fertility in nature. Hence the ram’s horns of Ammon, of Bacchus, and of Moses on ancient medals, and the cow’s horns of Isis and Diana, etc., etc., and of the Lord God of the Prophets of Israel himself. For Habakkuk gives the evidence that this symbolism was accepted by the “chosen people” as much as by the Gentiles. In Chapter III. that prophet speaks of the “Holy One from Mount Paran,” of the Lord God who “comes from Teman, and whose brightness was as the light,” and who had “horns coming out of his hand.”
When one reads, moreover, the Hebrew text of Isaiah, and finds that no Lucifer is mentioned at all in Chapter XIV., v. 12, but simply הֵילֵל, Hillel, “a bright star,” one can hardly refrain from wondering that educated people should be still ignorant enough at the close of our century to associate a radiant planet—or anything else in nature for the matter of that—with the Devil![[12]]
H. P. B.
THE BLOSSOM AND THE FRUIT:
A TALE OF LOVE AND MAGIC.