It has been commonly assumed that this book constituted an historic link between the Old Testament and the New; but the Sarkolatrae, or worshippers of the word made flesh in one historic form of personality, the carnalizers of the Egypto-gnostic Christ, have never yet discovered what the revelation was intended to reveal. It has been taken as a supplement to the Gospels as if the history of Jesus had been continued into the wedded life after the marriage of the bride with the lamb, and that they dwelt together ever after in that new Jerusalem which came “down out of heaven” “as a bride adorned for her husband,” when the tabernacle of God which was to dwell with man took the place of the old Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Romans. The present contention is that the book is and always has been inexplicable because it was based upon the symbolism of the Egyptian astronomical mythology without the gnosis, or “meaning which hath wisdom,” that is absolutely necessary for an explanation of its subject-matter; and because the débris of the ancient wisdom has been turned to account as data for pre-Christian prophecy that was supposed to have had its fulfilment in Christian history.

For example, the lamb alone has power to open the book of seven seals. His power comprised the powers of the “seven spirits of God”, the primordial seven. And, as represented astronomically, when the vernal equinox passed from the sign of Taurus into the sign of Aries the son of God was imaged as a lamb, instead of the earlier calf or still earlier lion; thenceforth his was the power and the glory and the majesty, and his the book of life then newly-opened, in the cycle of precession for another 2,155 years. But in the Book of Revelation the drama of the mysteries has been mistaken for human history, and a mythical catastrophe for the actual ending of the world. The book as it stands has no intrinsic value and very little meaning until the fragments of ancient lore have been collated, correlated, and compared with the original mythos and eschatology of Egypt.

To some extent we are now able to identify the wisdom of Egypt [Page 691] in the Book of Revelation and to “make sense” of the apocalyptic visions, so long and so erroneously assumed to have been unveiled to a Christian named John in the isle of Patmos, for the first time since the ancient astronomy was made nonsense of in the futile and fatuous attempt to turn the hidden wisdom into prophecy intended to prove the truth of a spurious history.

The apocalypse of John might be described as “scenes and characters from the mysteries of Taht-Aan”, who was literally Aan=John, the divine penman. This was the sacred scribe to whom the 36,000 books or papyrus-rolls were attributed by tradition. In short, Taht-Aan was the pre-Christian John the divine. His typical bird, the ibis, is still known in Egypt by the name of John. His other zootype, the kaf-ape, is Aan by name. The name of Aani signifies the saluter. This is the character personalized in John. Speaking of the angel, he says: “And when I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead”. “And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel”. To salute was a primitive mode of worshipping; hence the ape, Aan, was an ideographic figure of the saluter. The object of the present section, then, is to show that the matter of “revelation” was derived from the Egyptian astronomical mythology and eschatology, and that the Jesus of this book is one with Iu, the su or son of Atum-Ra, who was portrayed as the divine man and bringer of peace to earth a many thousand years ago. The prototype of Patmos is to be seen in the Ritual (ch. 175). John is in the isle of Patmos, “for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus”. He writes of the god who died and is alive again, saying, “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him” “and they which pierced him” are to mourn (I. 7). To see how ancient this is, let us turn to the 175th chapter of the Ritual of the Resurrection. It is “the chapter of not dying a second death”. The divine sufferer is thus addressed: “Decree this, O Tum, that if I behold thy face I shall not be pained by thy sufferings”. This Tum decrees. The great gods have given him the supremacy, and he will reign “on his throne in the isle of flame for eternities of eternities” (Naville, Rit., ch. 175).

 The mission of Taht-Aan, the saluter of Horus, could not be better stated than in the words of John the divine concerning the Christ of the gnosis called the Word. “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ: and these things we write that our joy may be fulfilled” (1st Ep. John I. 1-4). Taht-Aan had indeed beheld and heard and handled “the Word of eternal life” manifested in Horus or Jesus, the ever-coming son, for, as bearer of the symbolic Utat, he carried Horus in his hands and held him aloft as the true light of the world, and the symbolic likeness of a soul in human nature that was begotten by Ra, the holy spirit and the father in heaven. Such was the revelation of Tehuti-Aan or Taht-Hermes. The position of Aan, the divine scribe, in relation to Horus, the only-begotten son of God, is repeated on behalf of John in the Gospel. It is in the character of Taht-Aan that “there came a man, sent from [Page 692]God, whose name was John”. The same came for witness of the light. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light (ch. I), as did Taht-Aan, who carries the Eye of Horus in his hands and testifies that Horus is the true light of the world, as son of Ra the solar god, and of the holy spirit in the eschatology. John likewise gives his personal testimony, not without hard swearing, regarding “that which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands handled, concerning the Word”. But the testimony of Taht-Aan concerning the Word or logos as Horus was far anterior and just as personal. Moreover, he handled it by carrying in his hands the eye of light, the talismanic maatkheru, and the papyrus-roll or book of life.

The Ritual is the book which contains the divine words that bring about the resurrection to the glory of eternal life. It is a book of the mysteries in which the revelation was dramatically enacted. As before said, the chief revelation made by Aan, as we have it in the now recovered Book of the Dead, is made by the father in heaven on behalf of Horus, the divine son on earth and in Amenta. Horus as the Word gives voice to the decrees which Ra hath spoken in heaven. In his form of the divine son Horus executes those decrees, and Taht-Aan, the giver of the written words (Rit., ch. 151A), is the recorder of the decrees for human use. It is announced in the opening chapter of the Ritual that Ra, the holy spirit, “issued the mandate which Taht-Aan hath executed” (ch. 1, Renouf). This was the revelation made by the father in heaven as testifier to Horus the son who is the “word made truth” in the books of Aan. It is the same opening in the Book of Revelation. The mandate is divinely given to John that he shall write “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants”, and John, like Aan, bears “witness of the word of God”, which was primarily personalized in Iu as the son of Ptah at Memphis.

The revelation of Taht-Aan in the Ritual begins with the resurrection or coming forth in Amenta from the life on earth. The opening chapters contain the words which bring about the resurrection and the glory, the recorder of which is Taht-Aan. It is Aan, as writer, who effects the triumph of Osiris over his adversaries on the day of weighing words, or on the judgment day. “Ra issued the command to Aan that he should effect the triumph of Osiris against his adversaries, and the command is what Aan hath executed” in writing the Ritual (ch. 1). The Revelation of John is termed “the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bore witness of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, of all things that he saw” (Rev. I. 1, 2). Jesus is accompanied by the seven great spirits whose place is before the throne of God. As Egyptian these were the seven servants or seshu of Horus. Thus “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” was given to John by God the Father “to show unto his servants”, the first of whom are the seven spirits which are before his throne. This is the same as the revelation of Horus that was given him by Ra to be written down by Taht-Aan, the scribe of the gods. Therefore we hold that John the divine, as seer in the isle of Patmos, is a form of Aan (or Taht) upon the Mount of Glory in the [Page 693] Isle of Flame. Not only are the seven seshus of Horus given to Jesus as his servants in Revelation; they are also grouped around him in their various characters by name, as (1) the seven spirits of God; (2) the seven as spirits of fire; (3) the seven as stars; (4) the seven as eyes; (5) the seven as golden lampstands; (6) the seven ruling powers, as heads of the dragon; (7) the seven as angels of the seven churches.

Thus the book ascribed to John the divine purports to contain “the Revelation of Jesus Christ”=Horus, that was given him by God the Father to show unto his “bond-servants”, and these bond-servants answer to the seshu or servants of Horus in the original scripture. The subject-matter of this revelation is sent by Jesus to “his servant John, who bore witness of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ” to be set forth as a prophecy of things about to happen that were seen by him in vision; but which had been unfolded by the mystery-teachers of the heavens in an indefinitely earlier time, and in accordance with the gnosis by means of which alone it could be understood.

For the Hebrew versions of the astronomical mythology in Revelation and in the Book of Enoch could not have been comprehended while the world lasts without the restitution of the Egyptian original as gloss and guide. Enoch, like John, was in the spirit. His internal sight was opened, and he beheld a vision which was in the heavens. But his vision was admittedly astronomical. In it he “beheld the secrets of the heavens and of paradise according to its divisions” (ch. 41). The record of his visions is called “the book of the revolutions of the luminaries of heaven”; and is said to contain “the entire account of the world for ever, until a new work shall be effected, which will be eternal” (ch. 71). Enoch says, “I beheld the ancient of days, whose head was like white wool, and with him another whose countenance resembled that of man”, and who is called the “Son of Man” in contradistinction to the “son of the woman” (ch. 46). “I beheld the ancient of days, while he sat upon the throne of his glory, and the book of the living was opened in his presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens stood armed and before him” (ch. 47, 3). Enoch was “elevated aloft to heaven”. He saw the new Jerusalem. It was a spacious habitation built with stones of crystal, with walls and pavement all of crystal. He saw that the new heaven contained an exalted throne, the appearance of which was like that of frost. To look upon it was impossible. One great in glory sat upon it, whose robe was brighter than the sun, and whiter than the snow. No mortal could behold him. “Then the Lord with his mouth called me, saying, Approach hither, Enoch, at my holy word” (ch. 14) He sees the giants who had been the watchers in heaven as rulers of the seven colossal constellations of the heptanomis in “their beginning and primary foundation” (ch. 15). Seven watchers are called up for judgment, and when tried are found to have been unfaithful to their trust because they came not in their proper season. They are judged, found guilty, and cast down into the flaming abyss like the seven mountains overthrown in Revelation.

There is also another great judgment day commemorated in the [Page 694] Book of Enoch. This is the judgment of the seventy. Enoch says, “I saw the throne erected in a delectable land. Upon this sat the Lord of the sheep, who received all the sealed books, which were opened before Him. Then the Lord called the first seven white ones, saying, Take those seventy shepherds; and behold, I saw them all bound, and all standing before Him. First came on the trial of the stars. Then the seventy shepherds were judged, and, being found guilty, were thrust into the flaming abyss into which the primary seven had been previously plunged” (Enoch, ch. 89). The seventy were rulers, angels, princes, watchers, timekeepers, here called shepherds in a heaven of ten divisions, which preceded the twelve and the seventy-two. This is the heaven of the Ritual, attained by spirits perfected upon the mount of glory; the paradise of peace upon the summit of Mount Hetep at the “Atlantean pole” consisting of ten divine domains which answer in the eschatology to the ten islands or celestial nomes in the Astronomy. Thus, it is apparent that a great judgment of Maat upon the mount, as represented in the Ritual, was uttered in or at the end of the heaven in ten divisions. And this had previously taken place when the seven rulers were overthrown, and the heaven in seven divisions passed away.

The day, or a day of judgment, was periodic, like the deluge. It was the ending of a time, an age or aeon, sometimes called “the ending of the world” by those who were ignorant of the sign-language. It was but an ending of the world, according to the astronomical mythology, when the time had come for “the dead to be judged” and for “them that destroy the earth” to be exterminated like the Sebau in the Ritual. This ending was also announced by “a great earthquake, when a tenth part of the city fell” (ch. 11, 13). There was a judgment annually in the solar mythos. This is still celebrated yearly by the Jews: the same assizes that were held each year or periodically in the Egyptian great hall of dual justice. But the drama appears so tremendous in the Book of Revelation because the period ending is on the scale of a great year. It is not the ending of the world, but of a great year of the world. It is the day of doom, the “time for the dead to be judged”, upon the hugest scale (11, 18). The last great day of judgment is known to all the genuine books of wisdom commonly called apocryphal, but the nature and mode of judgment were only made known to the initiated in the mysteries. The great judgment of all, like the great “deluge of all”, was held at the end of the great year of all, in the cycle of precession. At the termination of this vast period it was the Judgment Day. Then followed the conflagration by fire or the catastrophe by water, or the subsidence of the mountains, islands, nomes, provinces and other types of the Heptanomis; or the overwhelming deluge of the pole. The Revelation of John and of Enoch both preserved a fragmentary version of the drama ascribed to Taht-Aan as the mysteries of Amenta, such as: the mystery of the Great Mother who sat on the celestial waters; the mystery of the dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, upon which the woman rode; the mystery of the seven stars; the mystery of the first-born from the dead who rose again as the faithful and true witness on behalf of God the Father. [Page 695]

In the first place, the subject of Revelation was not derived from the canonical gospels. The fundamental matter existed ages on ages earlier. The cult of the lamb and the bride is at least as old in the astronomical mythology as the time when the vernal equinox entered the sign of Aries, and the lamb of Sebek succeeded the calf of Horus on the mount as the type of sacrifice in the cult of the Sebek-heteps in Egypt (Nat. Genesis). The doctrinal teaching of the mysteries is also partially apparent in Revelation and in the other writings ascribed to “John”. A fragment of the genuine pre-Christian gnosis previously cited is retained almost intact in the First Epistle of John, who says of Jesus the Christ, “This is He that came by water and blood, not in the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the Truth, for there are Three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the Water and the Blood; and the three agree in one” (1 John 5, 6, 7, 8). After the poor pitiful apologetics of the Patristic obfuscators in this, as in a myriad instances, it is a comfort to touch the truth upon Egyptian ground. Horus came by water, as the child of the mother and bringer of food, when he was represented by the papyrus-shoot, or by Ichthus, the fish of the inundation. He also came by blood as the incarnate mortal child of Isis. Lastly, in his second advent, Horus or Iusa came in the spirit as the only-begotten son of Atum-Ra, the holy spirit, who was the father of spirits in the Egyptian eschatology.

In Revelation it is said, “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. II. 10). The crown of Horus was the crown of life that was the gift of his father Tum. Horus was lord of the diadem. Through him the deceased is made master of the double crown. The Son of Man has on his head a golden crown (Rev. XIV. 14). The double crown worn by Horus of the kingly countenance is magnified into many crowns upon the head of the Logos or “word of God” in Revelation (XIX. 12). It was Atum who conferred the crown of triumph on the faithful followers of that example which was set before them by his son. “Thy father Tum hath prepared for thee this beautiful crown of triumph, the living diadem which the gods love, that thou mayst live for ever” (ch. 19, Renouf). Deceased, in presence of the great cycle of the gods, is the “great one who seeketh the crown” (ch. 133). “He followeth Shu and calleth for the crown” (ch. 131). “He arriveth at the Aged one, at the confines of the mount of glory, and the crown awaiteth him. The Osiris raiseth it up” (ch. 131). This crown of life was always in view, not only to the mind’s eye; it was also figured as an object-picture to the climbers up the mount of glory. Probably our Corona Borealis is an extant representative of the ancient constellation that was imaged as the crown, which, when figured in the stars that never set, was a likeness of the eternal diadem that was conferred on those who had attained the mount of glory. It was an Egyptian practice to place a floral crown upon the mummy in the sheta or coffin. The mummy of Aahmes I, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, was found to have been garlanded with roses for its burial. The “chapter of the crown of triumph” (Rit., ch. 19) shows the continuity of the custom in the nether-world, where the [Page 696] garland of earth becomes the crown of triumph for eternal wear. In the Ritual the judgment is designated that of the clothed and the naked. The righteous are clothed in the white robe of the worthy by the hands of Taht, and the wicked are synonymous with the naked in antithesis to those who are the clothed. There is a comment on this in Revelation, “Blessed is he who watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame” (Rev. XVI. 15). The ransomed spirits in the Ritual who are redeemed from the mummy condition and all the ills of the corruptible flesh put on the pure white robe of righteousness, called the vesture of truth, which is given to them by Taht for their entrance into and coming forth from the boat of the sun. And being assimilated to Horus, who fought his battle against Sut with a branch of palm, the symbol of victorious renewal of life, the righteous also have the branch of palm given to them as typical of their conquest over death and Hades. The crown of triumph and eternal life, which is called the crown of Makheru as an emblem of the word made truth, is placed by Atum on the brows of those who are justified because they were faithful unto death and thus have won the crown of life, to live for ever with their God in heaven since they lived for God, for truth, for right, for justice, and humanity, on earth (Rit., ch. 19, 1-3). In one chapter of the Ritual it is said of the deceased, “The mouth of N has been thirsty; but he will never hunger nor thirst any more; for Osiris-Châs delivers him and does away with hunger”. In Revelation it is said “they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of the waters of life” (Rev. VII. 17). These take the place of the water-spring and the vases in the Ritual (ch. 178). A second death is spoken of several times, called the “Extinction of the Adversaries of the Inviolate God”, “on the night when judgment was passed on those who are no more” (ch. 18). Those who suffer the second death are also spoken of as those who are buried for ever. That is, they have no part in the resurrection from Amenta. The deceased says in ch. 42 “I am he who dieth not a second time”. In the rubric to ch. 135 it is said of the defunct “he dieth not a second time in the nether-world”. In Revelation (XX) it is proclaimed that the part of the condemned guilty shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death. This, in the Ritual, is the lake or tank of flame in which the evil Sebau and the enemies of the good being are annihilated or extinguished for ever.

On the judgment day, in the Ritual, those that overcame are those who passed in triumph through the searching examination of the judgment-hall. As we read in Revelation, “he that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it” (ch. 2,. 17). This was given to the initiate both in the totemic ceremonies and religious mysteries. In the mysteries of Amenta a white stone, or “a pillar of crystal” is given to the initiate. As he comes forth in triumph from the examination he is asked what the judges have awarded him, and he replies “a flame of [Page 697] fire and a pillar of crystal” (ch. 125). It is said of the Lord and his servants “his name shall be upon their foreheads”. In the Ritual “the name of Ra is upon the Osiris (ch. 130), and his token of honour is on his mouth”. This is said in the book of life, which is here called “the book by which the soul is made to live for ever”. It is also said that the Osiris has been initiated in the mysteries, but he “hath not repeated what he hath heard in the house of the God who hideth his face” (Rit., ch. 133). He keeps the secret sacredly. But the original book of life was no mere volume in which a name might be written. The words of power in the Ritual were derived from the Holy Spirit itself by Horus, and inscribed by Taht for human use. These divine words were to be made truth in the life lived on earth, so that the spirit, when it entered the hall of judgment, was, as it were, its own book of life, written for the all-seeing eye. It did not live because Osiris died, but because the divine words or immortal seed had quickened and taken root, and been fulfilled=made truth in the individual human life (Rit., ch. 94) as the gnosis of Salvation. In Revelation we read of the voice which was heard from heaven, “I heard it again speaking with me, and saying, ‘Go! take the book which is open in the hand of the angel that standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.’ And I went unto the angel, saying unto him that he should give me the little book. And he saith unto me, ‘Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey.’ And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my belly was made bitter” (Rev. X. 8-11). A mode of obtaining knowledge by swallowing the book was also employed by Ptah-Nefer-Ka in the Egyptian “Tale of Setnau”. “He placed a new piece of papyrus before him. He copied each word which was on the roll. He had it dissolved in water. When he saw it dissolved he drank it. He (then) knew all that it contained” (Records, vol. IV, p. 138). In the original rendering the book of life was figuratively the food of soul. In the Hebrew version the book of life is turned into an edible and eaten actually as a result of literalising the ancient gnosis. It was not a man named Jesus who was crucified in Egypt as the Lord (Rev. XI. 8). These are the mysteries of Amenta, and the Egypt signified is the Egypt of that nether-world. It is the place of burial in the sandy realm of Sekari that will account for the streets that were choked with dead bodies. The lord who was crucified in that Egypt was Ptah-Sekari, in the cult of Memphis, Osiris in the religion of Abydos and Iu at Annu. The “crucified” belongs to a later terminology. The cross as Christian was preceded by the Tat; the cross of Ptah or of Osiris-Tat — the god who was immanent in the wood or tree of the cross, and who gave up his life periodically in or on the cross as the sustainer of the universe. In the mysteries of Amenta, the Tat-cross was annually overthrown and re-erected as the symbol of salvation; and it was there the Lord was crucified in Egypt. A brief synopsis will suffice to show that the Book of Revelation contains a version of the astronomical mythology which was derived from the Egyptian wisdom. The vanishing heaven is the celestial heptanomis that was formed in seven astronomes, on seven hills, or seven islands, which [Page 698] sank and passed away like the lost Atlantis in the last great deluge of all. The most ancient genetrix is reproduced as the great harlot. She is the beast that sat upon the waters as a pregnant hippopotamus. Her seven “sons of the thigh” are here as the seven kings who were made drunken with the cup of her fornication or promiscuous sexual intercourse. These, as powers, are the seven heads of the scarlet-coloured beast or solar dragon upon which the woman rode. By a change of type, the scarlet-coloured beast becomes the “Scarlet Lady” of later theology; the woman in red being substituted for the red water-cow. The Great Mother is now denounced as the great whore living in adultery with her own children who originated in the seven elemental powers, to pass through several phases of phenomena as the seven with Anup, with Ptah, with Horus, or with Jesus and with Ra. In Revelation the mother of mystery is called “Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of abominations of the earth”, who has the name of mystery written on her forehead (XVII. 5). But there was an earlier Babylon in Egypt, known to the secret wisdom, which is traditionally identified with the locality of Coptos, nominally the seat of Kep, the Kamite mother of the mysteries. The mother of mystery did not originate with the scarlet woman of Babylon (nor as the red rag of the Protestants), although the title of the Great Harlot was applied to her also, who was the mother of harlots and to whom the maiden-tributes were religiously furnished in that city. Hers is a figure of unknown antiquity in the astronomical mythology, which was constellated as the red hippopotamus that preceded the Great Bear. The red hippopotamus (Apt) had already become the scarlet lady in the Ritual. Hence the Great Mother, as Sekhet-Bast, who is higher than all the gods, and is the only one who stands above her father, is called the lady of the scarlet-coloured garment (Rit., ch. 164, Naville). The Kamite Constellation of the “birthplace” may also serve to show cause why the “great harlot” should have been abused so badly in the Book of Revelation. The creatory of the Great Mother was depicted in the sign of the meshken to indicate the place of bringing forth by the cow of heaven whose “thigh” is the emblem of great magical power in the hieroglyphics. The mother of mystery also carries “in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication” (XVII. 4), such as the mystery of fecundation by water, which was the primitive mystery of Kep. This was symbolised in Egypt by the water-vase, and constellated in the sign of Krater, the urn of the inundation. It has been shown that the gods of the Egyptian mythology originated in seven elemental forces that were born of earth, the mother of life, and who were then continued in a variety of characters as the primordial seven powers. These are reproduced as the progeny of the mother-earth, where they are called “the kings of the earth” over whom “the first-born of the dead” is to become the ruler (I. 5) as Jesus in the Book of Revelation, the same as Horus (or Iu) in the Ritual, the god; “who giveth light by means of his own body” (ch. 83). The astronomical mythology was taught in mysteries by the mystery teachers of the heavens. One of the chief of these was “the mystery of the seven stars” ; the seven that are described in the Ritual as “the seven glorious ones, [Page 699] “the seven spirits of fire”, “the seven great spirits”, who are also termed “the lords of eternity”. As never-setting stars the seven were beyond the bounds of time; hence they became the witnesses for eternal continuity. Thus seven stars that never set were made a group of witnesses for the eternal in the eschatology. These in the Book of Revelation are the seven spirits of God, the seven spirits of fire, the seven eyes, the seven golden lamps, or lampstands; as variously typified “before the throne” on the celestial summit.

Certain deities in the Ritual are called the Khabsu gods of light, or of the lamp. When the risen Osiris passes over heaven unto the west, it is said the Khabsu gods of the lamp rise up to greet him with their acclamations. “Acclamation cometh from the mount of glory, and greeting from the lines of measurement” (Rit., ch. 130 and 133). This is when the light arises in Kher-Aba and the child, “he of the strong cord”, is re-born upon the mount of resurrection (ch. 136A). The number is not directly given in the “Book of the Dead”. But the gods of the lamp are obviously reproduced in “Revelation” as the spirits of the golden lampstands, whether as the group of seven or as the “two witnesses”, which are “the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the lord of the earth” (Rev. XI. 4). The word Khabsu is the name for a lamp, but, in the present instance, the determinative shows that a heavenly body is meant. Also, if a plausible correction, made by Renouf, be allowed, there were Khabsu trees upon the mount of glory as well as deities of the lamp. Khabsu is the well-known name of a sacred tree (Renouf, Rit., ch. 133, Note 4). This may be compared with the two olive trees in Revelation, which were also two lampstands, as the two witnesses whom we shall identify with Anup the stellar god upon his mountain, and Taht-Aan as the lunar lamp of Ra. Moreover, the word Khabsu signifies the soul or spirit as well as the star. Hence it is probable that the seven stars called spirits, the spirits of God, and spirits of fire, were represented by the seven Khabsu stars, or lamps, which were held in the hand of the young solar god as head of the seven, whether as Jesus or as Horus. No matter how these things were shown, or are said to have been shown, to John in Patmos, what we are concerned to know is their fundamental significance and to identify them with the lesser or greater mysteries, which are the mysteries of Taht-Aan in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The writer John, who follows afar off in the wake of Taht-Aan, makes an attempt at showing some of the mysteries in his Book of Revelation. Amongst the more prominent are (1) the mystery of the seven stars; (2) the mystery of the woman, and the beast with seven heads; (3) the mystery of the two “witnesses” and the four “living creatures”; (4) the mystery of the war in heaven; (5) the mystery of God (X. 7); (6) the mystery of renewal in the ancient heavens when every isle and mountain vanished and the heptanomis passed away. In the mysteries of Amenta there is a resurrection of the body-soul, or manes, and a transformation into spirit. This was on the day upon which the god in spirit, Ra, calls from heaven to the mummy-Osiris in Amenta. This summons to the transformation of the mummy into spirit, “Come thou hither!” or “Come thou to me!” (in “Pistis Sophia” it is “Come thou to us!” ), that was [Page 700] uttered in the mystery of Tattu, is repeated and applied to John in Revelation as the mode of resurrection into the spirit. John says: “I saw and beheld a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, a voice as of a trumpet, speaking with me, one saying, ‘Come up hither, and I will show thee the things that must come to pass hereafter' “. Obviously this was the transformation into spirit that was represented in the mysteries. Hence the saying of John, “Straightway I was in the spirit” (Rev. IV. 1, 2), as was the Osiris at the call of Ra (Rit., ch. 17). This cry of “Come” is repeated by each of the four “living creatures”, who are the same in the mount that the divine powers, Amsta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Kabhsenuf, were in the resurrection from Amenta (Rit., ch. 1).

John says “there came one of seven angels that had the seven bowls and spake with me saying: ‘Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication’ “ (ch.17). The kings of the earth were the seven spirits of earth who were at once the children and the consorts of the mother in accordance with the primitive polyandry. “I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carried her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition”. That is following the final judgment. It is explained that “the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth”. This was the kingdom of the seven (Rit., ch. 17), who ruled with the Great Mother in the celestial heptanomis. Some light may be shed on the mystery of the four-and-twenty elders, seated on their four-and-twenty thrones, by the Egypto-gnostic gospel, “Pistis Sophia”. In this cryptic work the “mysteries” are said to be four-and-twenty in number. The mystery of God the Father is the first, the mystery of God the Son is last. These two are the first and the last in Revelation, the closer and opener of Amenta in the Ritual. And all the twenty-four are included in the one great, unique, ineffable mystery of the Father, manifested by the Son, as the dove, or the calf, or the lamb, upon the mount of sunrise in the mythos, and on the stellar mount of glory in the eschatology.

In Revelation the heaven in seven divisions comes to an end when the seven thunders have uttered their voices and the seventh angel has sounded the trumpet of doom. Then was “finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which he declared to his servants the prophets” (Ch. x., 7), which shows the interpretation of the Kamite astronomical mythology by means of biblical prophecy concerning the coming Messiah. The heaven that “was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places” (ch. vi. 14, 15), is also imaged as a book which had been closed and sealed with seven seals. This was the book of doomsday; the record possibly kept for six-and-twenty-thousand years. The book is seen in the right hand of him that sits upon the throne, “a book written within, and on the back close-sealed with seven seals” (ch. v. 1, 2). We may not have all the necessary details for perfecting the parallel and proving the prototype to have been Egyptian, but we observe that in the end of the world or the [Page 701] “subsidence of a country”, described in the “magic papyrus” (Records, vol. X, 151-2) as an overwhelming deluge, there is mention made of “the seven great dungeons that were sealed at the time with an eternal seal”. It is also evident that these seven dungeons were sealed singly one after the other, as it is said of the evil beings who are at the time submerged: “What is immersed, do not let it pass out! Seal the mouths, choke up the mouths, as the shrine is sealed up for centuries”. There is an echo of this in Revelation (Ch. x). “And when the seven thunders uttered (their voices) I was about to write: And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not’ “. The record is to be sealed not only for centuries, but with the seal of eternal silence, or, as it is imaged, with the sevenfold seal.

 Seven times over in the great year the typical catastrophe occurred. The station of the pole was changed. The island was submerged, the mountain was dislimned. Then was the day of judgment when one of the seven dungeons of eternal doom was sealed, and this was repeated until there were seven altogether. It is in this papyrus that the ark or shrine of seven cubits is superseded by the ark of eight cubits, and the heptanomis of Sut is to make way for the octonary of Taht. In Revelation the heptanomis of seven astronomes is symboled by the book of judgment sealed with seven seals. Seven seals are broken for the opening of the book. Seven angels sound upon seven trumpets. Seven thunders utter their voices. Seven plagues are loosed by the seven angels from the seven bowls of the wrath of God. Seven kings are overthrown, and seven mountains pass away, at this the final judgment of the great harlot and her seven children of the thigh; her meskhen, or other “unclean things of her fornication” that were set in heaven as primitive uranographic signs, by those whose learning came to be unintelligibly interpreted and unintelligently abused by the ignorant fanatics of a later religious cult.

At the end of each three thousand seven hundred years in the cycle of precession the pole-star changed, or, as represented, a star fell from heaven. Thus, when the second angel sounded, a mountain (one of the seven) sank down flaming to be quenched in the celestial sea. This was one of the seven mountains upon which the ancient harlot sat. At the same time a great star fell from heaven, which was one of the seven pole-stars. When the fifth angel sounded another pole-star fell. The fall of the total seven has not been followed out one by one in stars. But the fall or wreck of the heptanomis piecemeal has been otherwise described; Enoch saw it as seven blazing mountains overthrown. Seven types of the overtoppling mount or station of the pole may be assigned approximately: (1) to the mount of the hippopotamus (or northern crown); (2) to the mount of the dragon; (3) the mount of the ape; (4) the mount of the jackal (or dog); (5) the mount of the bird (cygnus); (6) the mount of the tortoise (or lyra); and (7) the mountain of mankind.

To revert for a moment to the beginning of the Book, the drama opens in Revelation the same as in “the Book of the Dead”, with “the resurrection and the glory” of the coming Son. “Behold He cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him”. It is the risen [Page 702] Lord of Resurrection who says: “I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of hades” (Ch. i. 18). This is Horus of the resurrection risen from Amenta in his triumph over death and hell or Sut and Akar. He proclaims himself to be the all-one, Har-Sam-taui-Neb-Uâ. Jesus, like Horus, is the “faithful witness” for the Father, the first-born of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth who were the seven elemental powers that were born of the ancient mother, and afterwards elevated in another character to the sphere, as spirits in glory, and lastly, as the seven lords of eternity. Risen Horus comes as the anointed only-begotten son of God; His revelation is to make known the Father which is in heaven as the God in Spirit. We learn from Irenaeus that the Egypto-gnostic Christ (or Horus) came to teach the seven powers who preceded him and who had no knowledge of the Father, and to create in them the desire to investigate the divine nature and to make that nature known. This was the revelation through the Christ who is the “faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth”, who taught it as a mystery of revelation. The secret of the mysteries was with Aan. The mysteries of Amenta in the Ritual are chiefly eschatological. But some of them are plainly astronomical. In one of the texts it is said of Taht-Aan, “And now behold “ Taht in the secret of his mysteries. He is the maker of endless reckonings” (ch. 130).

As Egyptian, the day of judgment was the day of reckoning, and the books were kept by Taht-Aan, who was called the reckoner of all things in earth and heaven. An item in precession is likewise recognisable in Revelation in the statement concerning the seven rulers of the heptanomis. “They are seven kings: the five are fallen, one is, the other is not yet come” (XVII. 10). There is a date in the statement as it stands. The time indicated is that of the sixth pole-star, which as here reckoned out was the pole-star Vega in the constellation of the lyre or tortoise some fourteen thousand years ago.

The “mount of glory” has been well preserved in the “Revelation of John”. It is described as a throne set in heaven with “one sitting on the throne, and round about the throne were four-and-twenty thrones, and upon the thrones were four-and-twenty elders sitting arrayed in white garments; on their heads were crowns of gold” (Ch. iv. 4). And in the midst of the elders was the lamb “standing on the mount Zion”, which shows the identity of the throne and mount and astronomically with the zodiacal sign of Aries. The mount in Revelation has been turned into the throne of the Father and the Son, but it is the same throne as that of Osiris, from beneath which the water of life wells up, with the four genii standing before the shrine. These become “the four living creatures full of eyes”, around the throne, in the four corners of the mount. The probability is that the four-and-twenty elders had been objectified in the astronomy by four-and-twenty stars, which represented twenty-four divine judges who appear in the Babylonian calendar. These were twenty-four zodiacal stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the south (Diodorus, II, 30; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 72). As characters in the Egyptian wisdom, the earliest pre-solar powers were [Page 703] called the old ones or the elders. As Egyptian, they are traceable to the two different groups of the twelve described in “Pistis Sophia” as the subject of four-and-twenty mysteries. These were the twelve who had their thrones as rulers (or aeons) in the zodiac and the twelve as spirits with Horus-Khuti, lord of spirits, in the harvest-field or heaven of eternity.

The Mount is indeed the place of congregation, not only for the spirits of the just made perfect, but also as the final gathering-place for all the principal personages in the Pantheon of the Kamite mythography. The old great mother and her seven sons are there; the seven great spirits or the glorious ones, the Khus with Horus-Khuti; the four who kept the quarters as Egyptian gods or powers ages before they were christened “angels” ; the twelve as rulers in the zodiac; the dragon, the woman with child, and others, which are identifiably Egyptian, are all included in the astronomical imagery of the Celestial Mount. The seven Halls, Arits or watch-towers assigned to the seven spirits in the Great House of Osiris, are utilised as the seven churches which are assigned to the seven angels in the Book of Revelation. The seat of justice in the solar mythos was shifted to the point of equinox, and the balance was erected on the later mount of glory in the zodiac. This is the mountain of Amenta in the eschatology. It is described in the Ritual (ch. 149) as the exceeding high mountain of the nether-world, the top of which touches the sky. Whether stellar of solar, this was the mount as judgment-seat. “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it. And I saw the dead standing before the throne, and the books were opened; and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, every man according to their works” (Rev. XX. 11-14). In the Ritual, it is said, the gods “fashion anew the heart of a person (in spirit) according to what he hath done”, i.e., according to his works, in the body (ch. 27 and 75). There is also a call to judgment in the Ritual (ch. 136B). “Come! come! for the Father is uttering the judgment of Maat”, says the speaker, who is Horus in the Osirian myth and Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra.

There is a description of the books being brought into the judgment-hall upon the Mount. “Oh, thou who callest out at thine evening hours, grant that I may come and bring to him (the Father) the two jaws of Rusta, and that I may bring to him the books which are in the celestial Annu, and add up for him his hosts”. Bringing away the jaws of Rusta is equivalent to carrying off “the broken bonds of Death and of Hades” by him who was dead and is alive for evermore (Rev. I. 18). He who has conquered death and hell and carried away the gates of the prison-house has also vanquished the evil dragon. He exclaims, “I have repulsed Apap and healed the wounds he made”. There was a great Egyptian library at On or Annu, the Greek Heliopolis. Hence in heaven itself, or the Celestial City, the books of Taht were kept in Annu. Thus, speaking of the judgment, the Osiris says: “Grant that I may bring to him, the Judge, the books which are in Annu, and add up for him his heavenly hosts”. The deceased says: “I am come to thee, O my Lord, that I may look upon thy glory. I know thee, and I know the names of the forty-two gods who make their appearance with thee in the hall of righteousness”. But in the papyri [Page 704] of Ani and of Nunefer, the judges or assessors in the Maat appear as Twelve in number sitting on twelve thrones instead of the forty-two, or the twenty-four, which offers a prototype for twelve judges on the twelve thrones in Revelation and in the canonical gospels. In one of the pictures to the Ritual Horus stands upon the Mount in presence of his father as the calf, which was a type of sacrifice in the Osirian religion earlier than the lamb (Naville, Todt, Kap. 108). “I come”, says the speaker, “so that I may see the process of Maat, and the lion-forms”. These are the Kherefu=Cherubs (ch. 136B) stationed at the seat of judgment on the Mount. “Let the fathers and their apes (the spirits of fire) make way for me, that I may enter the Mount of Glory and pass through where the great ones are”. “Here is the cycle of the gods”. “I poise for him”, the Judge, “the balance, which is Maat”. “Come! come! for the Father is uttering the judgment of Maat”. This was the final judgment on the Mount, where the spirits of the just were passed as perfected. The invitation to “Come, come”, and hear the judgments delivered on the day of doom, is equivalent to the words in Revelation, “Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter. Straightway I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and one sitting upon the throne”. “And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the back, close-sealed with seven seals” (Rev. IV. 1, and V. 1). It is said in the Ritual (ch. 133), “Rã maketh his appearance at the Mount of Glory with the cycle of his gods about him. The strong one issueth from his hidden dwelling”. “Be thou lift up, O Rã, who art in thy shrine, on the day when thou discernest the land of Maat” ; that is, where the hall of judgment stands upon the Mount of Glory. The ancient of days in the Semitic version is Ra, the solar god, who typifies the eternal in the Ritual. He is called “the aged one at the confines of the Mount of Glory” (ch. 131). He is the aged one upon his throne, as in the books of Enoch, Daniel, and John the Divine. The ancient of days together with the Son of Man preparing for the judgment is described by Enoch. “At that time I beheld the ancient of days, while he sat upon the throne of his glory, while the book of the living was opened in his presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens stood around and before him” (ch. 47, 3). Another was present whose countenance “resembled that of man”, and who accompanied the ancient of days. This is the Son of Man to whom Righteousness (or Maati) belongs. It is said of this great judgment in the Ritual, “The glorious ones are rightly judged, and the evil dead are parted off” (ch. 18). In the mysteries of the Ritual, “He that sitteth upon the throne”, as the great judge in Amenta is Osiris, with Horus as the beloved only-begotten Son. But in the earlier cult at Annu, Atum-Ra was the judge, as God the Father, with Iu-em-hetep as God the Son, that is, as Iu the Su=Jesus the ever-coming Son. At the opening of the book for the Judgment Day in Revelation we read, “I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great voice, ‘ Who is worthy to open the book, and to close the seals thereof?’ “. ”And one of the elders said unto me, ‘Behold, the lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath overcome to open the book and the seven seals thereof’ “(Rev. V. 2, 5). This was the [Page 705] book containing “the things which the seven thunders uttered” (Rev. X. 4). The book therefore of Seven Great Mysteries. Now, among the other writings ascribed to Taht there was a book of the seven mysteries of Amenta, or of the seven festivals with which the seven mysteries were celebrated. (1) The day of the Monthly festival of the sixth-seventh; (2) The festival of the fifteenth; (3) The festival of Uaka; (4) The festival of Taht; (5) The festival of the birth of Osiris; (6) The festival of Amsu; and (7) The festival of “Come thou hither”. Thus there were seven great mysteries corresponding to the seven festivals for which the record was written. It is a book by which is revealed all that has happened from the beginning, consequently it was a book of Revelation that was written by Aan, the divine scribe. By means of this book the Manes for whom it was written can enter what John calls “the spirit” by becoming a Spirit, so that the gods are able to come near him and touch him, “for he has become as one of them”. It is this book of Revelation concerning the seven mysteries and their celebration of which Aan is speaking when he declares it is to be copied in its entireness and is not to be added to by commentaries. This we cannot but associate with the book of the Seven Great Mysteries that is sealed with seven seals in Revelation. The book that was sealed with seven seals is a record of all time, or of the seven ages in the cycle of precession, that was kept by Taht the measurer, reckoner and divine recorder; the god who “rescued the Atu from his backward course”, and who “repeated the ancient ordinances and words for the guidance of posterity” as teller of time by means of the moon (Rit., ch. 128).

Seven stars in a group were witnesses to the power that was permanent at the pole, the power of stability, of equilibrium, and of the scales of justice which they served as “the seven arms of the balance” on the day of judgment. But there are “two witnesses” particularly specialised in Revelation. These are said to be “the two olive-trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord of the earth” (Ch. xi. 4). These two witnesses are to be met with in the Egyptian judgment scenes. In the second tale of Khamuas, a scene of the Osirian judgment is portrayed. The seven halls or mansions of Osiris and the lords of eternity are here described as the seven “arits” or watch-towers, the same as in the Ritual (ch. 144). The seven are represented as a series, the seventh being the last. It is said that, “They entered the seventh Hall, and behold! Setme saw the figure of Osiris the great god seated upon his throne of fine gold, and crowned with his atef-crown”; “Anup the great god being on his left, and the great god Taht on his right, with the gods of the council standing in their places: standing and making proclamation”. The Balance was set in the midst before them, and they were weighing the evil deeds against the good deeds, the great god Taht (Aan) recording, with Anup giving the word to his colleague (Griffith, Second Tale of Khamuas, pp. 46, 48). These are the prototypal “two witnesses” stellar and lunar for the Father and son in the solar mythos. Taht-Aan was the witness for Horus, the only-begotten son of the father. In the mythos, which preceded the eschatology, Taht-Aan was the light of the world as the god whose luminary was the moon. Read doctrinally, he was not the true light, but he came that he [Page 706] might bear witness to the true light. The lunar god was one of the powers in nature that was born of the motherhood; whereas Horus, of the resurrection, was begotten by the father, and Taht bore witness that Horus, not Aan, was the true light of the world, and the one direct representative of the father-god, who was Ra the holy spirit in the eschatology. Horus (or Iu) is the Word that was with God the Father in the beginning. He is the only Son who issued from the Father; the Son who converses with the Father; the Son who was instructed of the Father to reflect and reveal the nature of the God in Spirit as the One Eternal Power. Anup may be traced in Amenta as the witness for Horus the child, who was the Word; Aan is the witness for Horus the adult who is the word made truth. Hence, he is the giver of the talismanic makheru; also the divine scribe who avouches the truth of the Word in the writings. These, as Egyptian, are the “two witnesses” who were present in the hall of judgment.

In the astronomical mythology the earth was the coffin of Osiris; the coffin of Amenta which Sut, the power of darkness, closed upon his brother when he betrayed him to his death. Then the four “living creatures” or “four glorified ones” who rose again with Horus from the dead were stationed at the four corners of the coffin of the earth, in which Osiris as the elemental god was buried. In the Egyptian drawings, the earth is represented by the lotus or papyrus-plant on which the four attendant spirits stand. This is equivalent to the four corners on which a new heaven had been based in the creation of Atum-Ra. These were four of the primordial powers which had been the brothers of Horus in the earlier mythos who are now called his children, when Horus is said to have “come to light in his own children”. This is in the resurrection as it was rendered in the Osirian eschatology (Rit., ch. 112). Thus, when Horus rose again upon the mount of resurrection in Amenta he was accompanied by the spirits of the four corners with whom his fold was founded (Rit., ch. 97). The scene of the mystery on the mount is reproduced in the Gospels. According to Matthew, when Jesus “opened his mouth” to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, only four of the disciples accompanied him. These were Simon-Peter, Andrew, and the two brothers John and James (Chs. iv,v and x). The Kamite four are also reproduced in Revelation as the four living creatures. “The first creature like a lion, the second creature like a calf, and the third had the face of a man, and the fourth creature like a flying eagle” (Ch. iv, vii). As Egyptian, they are also four great spirits at the four corners of the mount; and in Revelation they are the “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth” (VII. 1). Also, their names under each form of the four are the same. In their primary form they are the “four living creatures” with the eyes, which, as Egyptian, are ape-headed, jackal-headed, bird-headed and human-headed. In a secondary phase they were given the human figure; and both forms of the four are repeated in the Revelation of John. According to Revelation, the four living creatures are full of eyes, round about and within, and they have no rest day and night, as they were moving round for ever with the sphere. Being astronomical figures, the eyes of these were stars. And in the Ritual, the four are eyes or stars to the four quarters. The vignettes to ch. 148 show them as the [Page 707] four eyes, or guiding-stars, one to each quarter: north, south, east and west.

When the heptanomis, or heaven in seven divisions, passed away, as rendered in the mysteries of the astronomical mythology, the seven ruling powers were fabled to have fallen, as described by Enoch in his book of the heavens. But in another representation the powers of the seven were unified in one great sovereign power. This was assigned to Horus, the primordial solar god who was born of the Old Mother as one of the seven that were unified in him, and re-born as Horus of the resurrection. Horus, in his earliest image, was the crocodile-headed Sebek, as the fish of the inundation, and the crocodile was the Kamite prototype of the solar dragon. The seven powers were variously portrayed as seven stars, seven eyes, seven spirits, seven islands or mountains on which the “woman” sat; seven uraeus-deities, seven fins of a fish. According to the ancient wisdom, or the gnosis, says the writer, the seven heads of the beast on which the woman sitteth are seven mountains, and they are also seven kings, elsewhere called the kings of the earth, the kings who committed fornication with the woman, and were made drunken with her wine. “I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carried her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come!” The seven heads of the beast “are seven kings”, that were rulers in the celestial heptanomis. “Five of these are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come. And when he cometh he must continue a little while”.

There would have been no dragon with seven heads but for Sebek the crocodile-headed deity, whom we look upon as the oldest type of the solar Horus in the Egyptian mythology. The seven powers born of the Old Mother as the spirits of earth or gods of the elements, here called the kings of earth, were compounded into one great power as the sun-god Horus who preceded Ra. This was the crocodile-headed Sebek in relation to the ancient Mother, and thus the crocodile became the solar dragon, upon which the woman rode; the seven powers being at the same time seven kings and also seven mountains “on which the woman sitteth”, each type being a representative of the celestial pole. The goddess Apt, who is the female dragon, inasmuch as the crocodile was one of her zootypes, is called “the Great Mother of him who is married to his mother”, that is, to Sebek-Horus, the crocodile or dragon as male. He, as child of the Great Mother, was made her consort in the mythos of the mother and child. He became the husband of the mother as the divinised adult, and seven powers are equal to the seven heads of the male dragon or crocodile. By the bye, there is an Egyptian talisman or fetish in the Berlin Museum composed of a sevenfold figure of the crocodile. The crocodile was an image of the god Sebek, being the prototypal dragon; and seven crocodiles are equivalent to the beast with seven heads, on which the woman rode, in the Book of Revelation, as the great harlot of primitive promiscuous intercourse (Erman’s Egypt, p. 149). During the changes that occurred in heaven, the [Page 708] seven-headed beast on which the woman rode is represented as losing one of its seven heads. Thus, the change of type from an image of the beast to that of the human figure which occurred when the crocodile-head of Sebek was replaced or added to by the head of the human Horus is plainly indicated. It was given to the second beast, or to the first beast in a second character, that an image should be made to the beast who had the stroke of the sword, and lived. “And it was given unto him to give breath to it, even to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as should not worship the beast should be killed”. Naturally, the image that could speak was of the human type, as is Horus An-ar-ef when portrayed as the seventh of the group who were represented in the image of the beast before the human figure was adopted for “the first beast whose death-stroke was healed”. Thus the beast that came up out of the waters, called the sea, as a crocodile, or dragon, having ten horns and seven heads, and upon his horns ten diadems, was smitten unto death, as it seemed, in one of its heads: “And I saw one of its heads, as though it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed; and there was given to him a mouth speaking great things” (Ch. xiii, 5). The beast that came up out of the sea is the solar dragon under two different types, but in both characters it is the dragon or crocodile. In the first, it has seven heads and ten horns, and is like unto a leopard, and his feet are as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. In the second shape he had two horns like unto a lamb, but he spake as a dragon (Ch. xiii, 11). This was Sebek, who, under one type, was the crocodile, and under the other, a lamb. The dragons are somewhat mixed in Revelation. There are five altogether: (1) the Apap-dragon (Ch. xii, 9); (2) the dragon that gave power and dominion to the beast (Ch. xiii, 2); (3) the dragon on which the woman rode; (4) the lamb that spake as a dragon; (5) the dragon constellated in Draconis as a uranographic sign in heaven. There was at first no human type in the septenary of powers. They were figured as seven serpents, seven hawks, seven apes, seven crocodiles, or other forms of the typical seven, but with no human head amongst them; when there was as yet no Horus as the human child, or Atum as the divine man, all seven had been imaged by zootypes. But in the later mythos the human type was introduced, as that of Horus, the child of the Virgin Mother. The seven-headed beast then lost one of its pre-human heads. Sebek-Horus, the crocodile or dragon-headed, was changed into the human Horus. As crocodile, he was the child of Apt. As Har-si Hesi, he became the child of Isis in a human guise. Thenceforth the human type was one amongst the seven, and the beast, qua beast, lost one of its original heads, which, as Egyptian, was seen to be replaced by the human type when the wound was healed.

The acclaiming of Horus or Jesus above the seven previous powers is a subject of the first chapter in Revelation. He is exalted as “the first-born of the dead”. This is “the faithful One”, who is the True Witness for the Father in Heaven as Horus or Iu in his resurrection. The other seven did but represent a soul in matter. The soul that rose up from the dead was an immortal spirit, and as an eighth one it was added to the seven. This was as the sun that rose again from the [Page 709] underworld in the mythology, and as the Divine Enduring Spirit in the eschatology. In one cult, it was the crocodile-headed Sebek-Horus who is the seven-headed dragon in Revelation. As it is stated clearly enough, “the beast that was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven” (Rev. XVII. 11). This, as Egyptian, became “the ruler of the kings of the earth”, as did Horus in his resurrection from the dead at his second coming, which was from the Father in Heaven. Time was when the eighth one was the highest power. Sut-Anup was the highest as an eighth one to the seven great spirits in the stellar mythos. Taht — following Sut — was an eighth one to the seven in the lunar mythos. Lastly, Horus was the highest in the solar mythos as the lord of resurrections, and as eighth one to the seven, he whose symbol was the eight-rayed star of the Egypto-gnostic Pleroma, which was first made historical when it was called the star of Bethlehem. As the Egypto-gnostics said, “Seven powers glorify the Word”. These powers were the contributions of the seven spirits which out of gratitude to the Propator had contributed whatsoever each one had attained in himself of the greatest beauty and preciousness; they skilfully blended the whole in producing a most perfect being, and the very star of the Pleroma (namely, the gnostic Jesus, the Christ, the Saviour, Logos — everything), because he was formed from the contributions of all the powers that preceded him who was the Horus or Jesus of the Resurrection, the outcome and first fruit of all (Iren., Bk. I, ch. 2, 6).

The faithful and true witness, as Egyptian, is Horus-Maat-Kheru, the word made truth; he who made the word truth by his resurrection, in the likeness of the Living God. The first Horus, or Horus in his first advent, was the Word; and the promise made by him as founder was fulfilled by Horus at his second coming as the “faithful witness”, the first-born from the dead. In Revelation, this “faithful and true witness” is called “the beginning of the creation of God” (Ch. iii, 14). That is as a creation of the god in spirit, who, as Atum-Ra at Annu, was the Holy Spirit. Har-Ur, the elder Horus, was the child of the virgin goddess; Horus in spirit was “the beginning of the creation of God”, the lord of resurrections who had wrested “the keys of death and hades” from the grasp of their grim keepers for the deliverance of the Manes from Amenta (Rit., ch. 64). The scales or balance was erected in the Maat or Hall of Twofold Justice for the weighing of hearts and also of words, and in Revelation one of the four living creatures is portrayed with the scales in his hand. “I saw, and behold, a black horse, and he that sat thereon had a balance in his hand” (Ch. vi, 5). The balance, as Egyptian, was the scales of justice. In Revelation, the scales are turned to commercial account for the weighing out of grain by the pennyworth. “And I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head are many diadems; and he hath a name written, which no one knoweth but he himself. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that [Page 710] with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth a winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Ch.,xix. 11, 16). The sign-language of Egypt will tell us why the name of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was written on his Thigh. The thigh or khepsh was a type of power. In one shape it is called the Ur-heka, or great magical power, which was feminine at first. It is a thigh-shaped instrument made use of to open the mouth of the dead in the resurrection (Rit., ch. 23). At the time of his re-arising the Osiris exclaims: “Let me seize the khepsh which is under the place of Osiris, with which I may open the mouth of the gods” (ch. 69). In another rôle Horus is the divine husbandman, the sower and the reaper, as the power of germination; of harvest and of vintage. In this character he is known as the god Amsu, who is portrayed in the human form like him who is described in Revelation as the Son of man. “I saw, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud one sitting like unto the Son of man, and wearing on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle, and another angel came out from the temple crying with a great voice to him that sat on the cloud, “Send forth thy sickle and reap, for the hour to reap is come, for the harvest of the earth is over ripe”. And he that sat on the cloud cast his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reapt. And another angel came out from the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle”, and it was said to him, “Send forth thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe” (Ch. xiv. 19). Horus usually carries the fan or flail as husbandman, but he is also the reaper and the vintager; hence the fig-leaf was his emblem. Horus the reaper in Amenta has twelve followers in two groups of seven and five. These are the reapers in the Aarru-fields, where the corn grows seven cubits high and the harvest is reapt for eternity. The twelve are called the “blessed”, who reap with Horus for his father Ra, and therefore are the blessed of his father. The harvest-field is in the earth of eternity, where Horus appears in human form with the fan in his hand as the master of joy and lord of the twelve, who are likewise portrayed in human form as the Manes. In the gospels Jesus is depicted in this character of the reaper. As such he comes like Horus with the fan in his hand that shows him to be the thresher and winnower of the corn. As lord of the harvest-field he calls to him the twelve and constitutes them reapers of the harvest on earth which was reapt in Amenta, the other earth, by Horus and the twelve. It is made doubly certain by the context that the twelve in the gospels were astronomical characters. Their names were written in heaven like those of the twelve gods, the twelve kings, or the twelve apostles that are coeval with the founding of the zodiac. The twelve in the gospels were followed by the seventy and the seventy-two (cf. the two versions), which represent the two different divisions of the planisphere into its ancient seventy, and later seventy-two parts that were assigned to those whose names were written in heaven and had been read there for ages on ages of time by the astronomers and the men who knew. So ancient was the matter as mythical representation in the Egyptian [Page 711] wisdom that the reaper of the harvest in Amenta, who has twelve followers there, had been set aloft in the planisphere as Horus the reaper in the fields of food, who is extant to-day as the husbandman and reaper on the stellar map; but as Boötes, and not as the “historic” reaper of the harvest.

Horus appears in the various characters of Har-Tema, the revealer of justice; Har-Makheru, the word made truth; Har, the red god who orders the block of execution. These are phases of Har-Makhu, the god of both horizons, all of which are reproduced in Revelation. Michael, the warrior angel who overthrows “the dragon and his angels”, is the Hebrew form of Har-Makhu, who is Atum-Huhi in the person of his own son. This is Har-Tema, he who makes justice visible, in the cult of Osiris. He is the avenger of the wrongs inflicted on his father by the Apap-dragon and his dark host of the Sebau or fiends by the evil Sut, and also by the criminals who on account of their own deeds are self-condemned to die the second death upon “the highway of the damned” (Rit., ch. 18).

The mythology of Egypt has preserved the prototypal uncorrupted version of what has been termed the “awful tradition of a war in heaven”. This was made out magnificently at last in Milton’s epic poem, but the original war in heaven was simply elemental and had no more awfulness or terror in it than a thunderstorm. We can trace this warfare of the elements from the beginning in chaos; the terrors were evoked from the mind of man. A battle was fought each four-and-twenty hours betwixt Har-Makhu, the sun-god of both horizons, and the dragon of darkness, who is hurled down from the horizon of the east into the pit with all his angels or fiends called the Sebau or Sami. This great battle, fought in the Ritual during the last hours of the night, becomes a typical last great battle in a contention that is fought out on the scale of the great year in the Book of Revelation called “the war of the great day of God the Almighty”, when “the kings of the whole world”, or the seven kings who ruled in the celestial heptanomis, are to be “gathered together into the place which is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon” (Ch. xvi. 14, 16). Now it is feasible to infer that the name of this battle-ground was derived from that of Har-Makhu as the place where the Makha, or scales of justice, was erected for the judgment on the night of the great battle when the Sebau were defeated and the day when the adversaries of the good being were finally annihilated. This was at the point of equinox (Rit., ch. 18). The battle of Har-Magedon is preceded by the pouring out of the seventh bowl and the sound of the great voice from the throne that said: “It is done!”. “And every island fled away, and the mountains were no longer found”, for this was the end of the heptanomis and the substitution of the heaven in twelve divisions, which was the heaven of Atum-Ra or Atum-Iu, who says: “I am he who closeth and he who openeth, and I am but one. I am Ra at his first appearance. I am the great god self-produced”, and who became the Hebrew deity Ihuh (Rit., ch. 17, Renouf). The war in heaven, or in external nature, was first. Next it was made astronomical. Lastly, it was eschatological or theological, as in Milton’s version of the Paradise Lost. In the Ritual the evil Apap is bound in chains each morning. “Chains are flung upon thee [Page 7112 by the scorpion goddess, and slaughter is dealt out to thee by Maati. Apap is fallen and is in bonds” (ch. 39). The same drama was represented yearly in relation to the annual sun and the autumn gathering of All Souls. In Revelation the drama represents a larger period of time. A thousand years intervene betwixt the first and second resurrection. “I saw thrones, and they that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them”. Those who rise again are said to “reign with Christ a thousand years”, or with Horus in the house of a thousand years, and the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection. Then follows the last judgment, the second death, and the new Jerusalem built for the children of Israel, whose thrones are twelve in number as foundations of the final heaven.

We read in Revelation that the great dragon is that “old serpent” who is called the devil and Satan (Ch. xii. 9). And again, it is said: “I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him” (Ch. xx. 2, 3). These are the two types of the Egyptian devil. The Apap-reptile was that old serpent, the devil in pre-anthropomorphic guise. Sut was the anthropomorphic Satan or evil adversary in the later theology. Also the dragon and Sut are treated as if identical in the Ritual (ch. 108). In the chapter of chaining the evil one, this is the Apap in one aspect and Sut in the other. It is said: “Then Sut is made to flee with a chain of steel upon him. Then Sut is put into his prison”. The evil one is said to be “pierced with hooks, as was decreed against him of old”. Horus makes war upon the powers of evil on account of what they have done against his father Osiris in Amenta. But especially on Sut the power of drought and darkness now represented as the adversary Satan in an anthropomorphic shape, which brings us to the latest stage of the war in heaven, earth, and Amenta. “Horus says to these gods, ‘Strike the enemies of my father, punish them in your pits (in the bottom of hell) for the evil they have done to the great one, my father. Your particular duties in Amenta are to keep the pits of fire in accordance with Ra’s command, which I make known to you’. “To the condemned, he says: “You are bound for ever, you are tied by strong cords. I have ordered your detention. My father prevails against you, your curses are judged against you before Ra. Your contempt for justice comes back to you. Bad for you is the judgment of my father. O Ra! praise be to Ra! thy enemies are in the place of destruction!” (Book of Hades, Second Division, Legends.)

 The battle of Har-Magedon was not a mortal conflict to be fought at some far-off indefinite future time. It had been fought already in the Ritual, and was periodically repeated in the mysteries as the final struggle betwixt light and darkness, or the solar god and apap-reptile. The great battle depicted in the Ritual is fought by Har-Makhu (Gr. Har-Machis) and the evil dragon. Har-Makhu was the solar god of the double horizon or equinox, and the nightly battle was ended on the horizon east. In the Ritual the dragon of darkness is shown at night and morn in relation to the double horizon on two [Page 713] sides of the mount. At the close of day, when the sun-god sinks into the water of the west as Ra or Horus, he is confronted by his natural enemy, the evil serpent Apap, the destroyer or devourer that rises up gigantic from the bottomless abyss. Daylight is described as coming to a stand (Hâu) like a tidal wave at the poise. With sunset the Apap “turneth down his eyes to Ra; for there cometh a standing still in the bark and a deep slumber within the ship. And now he (the dragon) swalloweth seven cubits (in some texts three) of the great water” (Rit., ch. 108). This is the monster that drank up all the water in the world, whether as dragon, toad, snake or other reptile, here caught, as Kamite, in the act, and the water that it drinks is daylight; the great water flowing round the mount of earth by day. The war of light and darkness goes on through the night down in Amenta, the lurking-place of the dragon who seeks to destroy the tree of life at its roots, but is for ever foiled by the god who represents the nocturnal sun in the shape of a great cat, as seer in the dark, and protector of the persea or ash, which is the Kamite Tree of Life by name. All night the war goes on betwixt the solar god and his old adversary. At dawn the host of darkness is repulsed and beaten for another day. The last great overwhelming wrecking, ruining charge is described in the Ritual (ch. 38). It is the prototype of the war in heaven described in Revelation, when Michael and his angels went “forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred, and his angels; and they prevailed not. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was cast down to the earth” (Rev. XII. 7, 9), which in the Ritual is the Nether Earth of Amenta. “The stormy voice of bellowings” is heard from the dying monster, and Ra the conqueror staggers forth upon the horizon, fainting with his many bleeding wounds. But Apap has fallen, and the song of triumph is raised, “Apap is fallen! fallen! fallen!” Apap, the enemy of Ra, goeth down to be cut up piecemeal and drowned in the lake of heaven. The “gods who are on the roads” overthrow him. There are ten groups of the Tata-gods of a heaven in ten divisions (Rit., ch. 18). The gods of the four quarters bind him. The avenging goddesses fall on him furiously. Chains are flung upon him by Isis-Serkh. Death is dealt out to him by Maftit, the lynx-goddess. Ra is satisfied; he makes his progress peacefully. The monster has relinquished his hold on the Tree of Life and also disgorged the waters of light, and the solar bark is once more sailing joyfully across the heaven of day. The Apap-dragon with the chains upon him is to be seen in pictures to the Ritual, also on the sarcophagus of Seti (Bonomi, Pls. 10 and 11). In Pl. 11 the scorpion-goddess Serkh is putting the chain upon the Apap-reptile in presence of the executioners, who include the four children of Horus. The angel who comes down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand, who lays hold of the dragon and binds him for a thousand years (Rev. XX. 1, 2, 3) is “Akar” in the Ritual, the chief of the gate of the abyss, who has overthrown and bound the dragon of the deep, so that Ra can navigate in peace. Such was the Egyptian battle of Har-Magedon as fought by Har-Makhu against his old enemy, the Apap-dragon. [Page 714]

We find the breaking loose from the pit, the recapturing and chaining down of the dragon or serpent of evil in the abyss, is described in the magic papyrus as well as in the Ritual. It is Amen-Ra, who is addressed as the Egyptian Apollo, piercing the python of the abyss when he rises in revolt. “Thou disposest of the Abut-Unti. Nubi shoots his arrows against him. Akar springs forward and watches over him, and restores him to his prison, devouring the two huge eyes by which he prevailed. A fierce devouring flame consumes him, commencing from his head and wasting all his members with its fire”. From this text we learn that one Egyptian name of the huge typhonian reptile in the abyss is Abut-Unti, from which we may suppose the name of the Abaddon in Hebrew was derived; Abut or Abtu being a form of the Apap which typifies non-existence or Unti (Rit., 93). The beast that was taken and cast alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone is to be found, lake and all, in the seventeenth chapter of the Ritual (lines 67-68) in Baba, the eternal devourer, whose dwelling is in the lake of fire, the red lake, the pool of the damned, in the fiery pit of the “recess” in Amenta. The banquet of Baba, lord of gore, who extracts the heart and other viscera from the corpses doomed to be consumed at his feast, and who eats the livers of princes, becomes the “great supper of God” in Revelation, at which is eaten the flesh of kings and captains, and all kinds of men, great or small (XIX. 17, 18).

 It is the same war in the Book of Revelation betwixt the serpent and the seed of the woman that it was in the Book of Genesis, without having any significance in the fulfilment of supposititious prophecy as human history. After the great dragon the old serpent was cast down to the earth; he continued the battle. “The dragon waxed wroth with the woman (the great mother in a later character) and went away to make war with the rest of her seed” (Rev. XII. 17). The application to the seed has been extended, but the woman and her child remain the same as when she was Isis and he was Horus, and both were pursued by the dragon, or crocodile, in the marshes of lower Egypt, and the mother made her escape with her infant upon the two wings of the Vulture or the Hawk. This war made by the evil dragon on the Great Mother is reproduced directly from the Egyptian Mythos. When mortal Horus was brought forth among the reeds or bushes of the marshes he and his mother were pursued by the Apap-dragon. Isis tells Osiris that a very great crocodile was following after his son, and that she hid herself among the bushes for the purpose of concealing the young child born to be a king or to become the Royal Horus, whatsoever the opposition. In this text he is said to be born for repulsing Tebha, a form of the devourer who seeks to destroy the divine heir, for answering on behalf of his father Osiris. (Budge, “The Book of Overthrowing Apap”, Proc. Soc. Bib. Archy., 1886, p. 17).

In Revelation a great sign is described in heaven; “a woman arrayed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered. . . . And the dragon stood before the woman which was about to be delivered, that when she was delivered he might devour her child; and she was delivered of a son, [Page 715] a man-child who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught unto God and unto his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God”. (Ch. x.II). This marks the course of development and the change from the Great Mother in the stellar to the bringer forth of the child in the lunar mythos. As Egyptian, the first Great Mother Apt was imaged in the likeness of the water-cow, the cow of earth. In her later lunar character as Hathor, she was imaged in the likeness of the milch-cow. And in the vignette to the last chapter of the Ritual this Great Mother is portrayed in these two of her forms, as Apt the water-cow and Hathor the milch-cow, in which two forms she receives the Manes in the mountain of Amenta as the mother in earth and in heaven, the mother in the Great Bear and the mother in the Moon. Hathor has now the upper and Apt the lowermost place of two, as it was when the stellar was succeeded and to some extent superseded by the soli-lunar Mythos. But Apt was never cast out of heaven in the genuine version as the drama is represented in the Book of Revelation, although the matriarchate was superseded by the fatherhood of Atum-Ra. Thus it is demonstrated little by little, item by item, that the main subject-matter of the Book of Revelation is the drama of the last judgment, of which we get great glimpses in the mysteries of Amenta. The judgment seat is set upon the highest hill in heaven called “the mount of the resurrection and the glory” (Rit., ch. 1). The one eternal judge is seated on the throne. He also appears in the two characters of God the Father and God the Son; the lion and the lamb; the first and the last; he that was dead and is alive again for evermore. The lords of eternity are round about him on their thrones; the shennin or officials of the celestial court are present as the seven spirits of fire; the two witnesses, who are Taht-Aan and Anup in the Egyptian judgment scenes; the keepers of the four corners of the mount; the old, old ones, or four-and-twenty elders, with various other Kamite prototypes, are all there. The old Great Mother and her seven earth-born spirits are judged, rejected and cast out of heaven. Apt, so to say, is now succeeded by Hathor as the Great Mother in the later mythos, and Sebek the dragon by Horus as the lamb of the goddess. In this new heaven it is Horus, or Jesus, of the resurrection who was raised to the supremacy as lord over all. And in such ways did the Egyptian wisdom supply the original data for the Christian Revelation. The heaven in seven divisions is not the only celestial formation that declines and passes away as a mystery in Revelation. When the seventh bowl was poured out and the heptanomis came to an end with a mighty earthquake the celestial city “was divided into three parts”, or, as we read it, into the triangular heaven of Sut, Horus, and Shu as gods of the south, north, and equinox. Also the ten horns or powers of the solar dragon indicate a heaven in ten domains, ten islands, or ten circles of Ra, in the Ritual, which preceded the ultimate heaven in twelve divisions. This is intimated when “the tenth part of the city fell” as one of the ten divisions passing away in the course of precession.

The ancient heaven passed away “as a scroll”, or as the book of the eternal sealed for the great judgment with the seven seals. There is a new heaven built on twelve foundations in place of the earlier seven [Page 716] or ten. “He that sitteth on the throne said, ‘Behold I make all things new!’ “ (Ch. xxx. 5). This, in the Ritual, is the son of God who is reborn upon the mount of glory as the lamb, or the child that was the connecting link with the eternal parent in the sphere of time. The new heaven in the Book of Revelation is based upon the twelve zodiacal signs for its twelve foundations. This was as old as the heaven of Atum-Ra, in which the twelve kings rowed the solar bark around the ecliptic thirteen thousand years ago. Following the making of Amenta by Ptah, the creation of a new heaven and earth was ascribed to Atum-Ra, the highest deity developed in the Egyptian theology previous to Osiris Neb-er-ter. Hence the creation, or a creation was proclaimed to be the work of Atum by the priests of Heliopolis. In the eschatology it is said of the house on high, “Tum buildeth thy dwelling, the Lion-faced God (Tum or Atum) layeth the foundation of thy house, as he goeth his round” in fulfilling the solar circle, which was completed with the twelve thrones, twelve stars, twelve gates, or twelve foundations of the final zodiac. This foundation, as the imagery shows, was extant at the time when the solar lion-god first rose up in the strength of the double lions, and the mount of the vernal equinox was in the sign of Leo. In Revelation the equinox has travelled to the sign of Aries, which will account for the lamb upon the mount in place of Horus the calf. In this new rendering the earth was thought of as the lotus of the nun from which the sun of dawn arose. This is shown by the four keepers of the cardinal points or corners of the earth that stand on the papyrus-plant in the presence of the Lord of all things, who was Atum in the earlier and Osiris in the later cult. These, in Revelation, are “the four living creatures full of eyes” that were “in the midst of and around about the throne”. The throne was now upon the mount of glory in the equinox, with the four corner keepers “round about the throne”; the solar heaven being founded on the four quarters previously established by Kheper-Ptah. The opening day of this new creation in the cult of Atum-Ra, at Annu, was called the day of “come thou to me”, or “come thou hither”. It is described in the Ritual (ch. 17) as the day on which their places were fixed by Anup for the seven glorious ones who follow the coffined one in the Osirian mystery of the resurrection, as previously set forth. These are the seven great spirits who are represented by the seven never-setting stars in the right hand of him who moves in the midst of the seven golden lampstands or khabsu lamps as the Supreme One, the only God-begotten Son, in whom the seven powers in the mythology were unified to image an eighth one in the eschatology. As the elder Horus and child of the Mother he had been one of the seven, and in Horus of the resurrection he is now the Son of the Father, divinised in spirit as eighth one to the seven. This is the twofold figure seen upon the mount in Patmos as “the Son of man”.

In one phase, Horus or Iu-em-hetep was the type of an eternal child, the raison d’être of which was in the human child being an image of both sexes, or, as the Ritual expresses it, both souls of the god and goddess in one figure. As it is said in the Ritual (ch. 115), Horus assumed the form of a female with the sidelock of childhood. Horus was also portrayed as a male child with feminine mammae. It is said in the pyramid texts, “Hail, Unas, the nipples of the bosom [Page 717] of Horus have been given to thee, and thou hast taken in thy mouth the breast of thy sister Isis”. This was the mystical divine male-female of the gnosis; the youth with female paps like Bacchus, or Serapis; Horus with the cteis; Venus with the beard; the Christ as Charis or Jesus as Saint Sophia (Didron, fig. 50). The Son of man portrayed in Revelation is the Egypto-gnostic Jesus. The garment worn by him is that “long garment in which rests the whole world” ; the garment that was worn by Iu-em-hetep, in the temple at Annu, as the son of Atum-Ra. This long garment was the sign of both sexes, like the sidelock of the child in Egypt; and it is worn by a figure that is both male and female as shown by the feminine paps and golden girdle, and was worn originally on account of the female nature of the type.

This is the very effigy of child-Horus or Iu-em-hetep, the son of Ptah, who was the dual representative of the biune parent. But in no case could such a dual figure have become “historical” or been “made flesh” except in some hermaphrodital shape of monstrous personality, whether in Egypt, Nazareth, or Rome.

It is now proposed to show that God the Father in Revelation was Atum-Huhi, the Eternal Being in the religion of On, who had become the Jewish god Ihuh, and that the Jesus of this book was Iusa, the coming Son of god and demonstrator of eternal life upon the mount of resurrection in the Ritual and in the Book of Revelation. Atum-Huhi (Atum-Iu or Atum-Ra) was the only deity in all Egypt who was expressly worshipped by the title of the “Ankhu”, or the ever-living one eternal god. This is he who is reproduced by name in Revelation, saying, “I am the first and the last, and the living one” (Rev. I. 17). In the coming forth to day from out the dark of death which is the resurrection in the Ritual, Atum-Iu, the closer and the opener of Amenta, carries in his hands the keys that close and open the underworld. These are the Ankh-key of life, and the Un-sceptre, with which Amenta is closed and opened. These are repeated in the Book of Revelation as the keys of death and hell. The god in spirit was the highest type of deity attained as the “holy spirit” in the cult of Atum-Ra. Now, there is a typical character in Revelation called “the spirit”, but which is not otherwise identified. “Hear what the spirit saith: ‘To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’ “ (Rev. II. 7). It is this god in spirit who proclaims the blessedness of the dead “which die in the Lord” to “rest from their labours” (XIV. 13). And calls on those who are athirst to come and take of the waters of life freely (XXII. 17). He is also the spirit with the bride, but distinguished from the lamb. “The spirit and the bride say ‘Come’ “ (XXII. 17). As Egyptian, then, “the spirit” in the eschatology was Atum-Ra the holy spirit, in the cult of Annu; Iusãas, a form of Hathor, was the bride, and Iu-em-hetep, he who comes with peace, was their son, whom we identify as the Egyptian Jesus in the Book of Revelation, in Pistis Sophia, in the Apocrypha, and in the Book of Taht-Aan.

The “entire god” was a mystical title of Amen-Ra as the child and husband of the mother. According to the gnosis, there was a triune being, distinct from the male trinity, consisting of the mother, child, and adult male, in one person. The figure-head of this triad might be either the mother, the father, or the child, according to the [Page 718] cult; and whereas the knowers worshipped the “entire god” who was three in one, one sect would exalt the mother; on the other hand, the Jews became monotheists by eliminating both the mother and the son from the godhead, and setting up the father by himself alone as the “entire god”, the Kamite Neb-er-ter. Irenaeus cachinnates in a ghastly fashion at the gnostics who assigned but one consort to both the father and son. But, it is the same with the spirit (father) and the lamb (son) in connection with the bride in Revelation, as it was in Egypt and as it still remains in Rome. Fortunately, the mystical bride had two characters not to be easily taken away by the Bishop of Lyons. She was the virgin in one, the gestator in the other. As virgin she was the bride of Horus, the lamb of god. As gestator she was the consort of the lion-faced man or man-faced lion who was Atum as god the father. According to the Kabalists these two were the macrocosm and microcosm. The two figures are said to comprehend three persons — namely, the father, the son, and the mother, who was the bride of both. The lesser man or microcosm was a figure of double sex, the feminine half being conjoined to his back as the hinder female part. This is equivalent to the Horus of both sexes, and to Jesus as Saint Sophia. This was he whom the gnostics called Pan and Totum, the all-one, who became the manifestor as the ever-coming son. This all-oneness of the son is described in the Ritual and proclaimed by Atum the father, when it is said that “Horus is the father! Horus is the mother! Horus is the brother! Horus is the kinsman! Horus is seated upon the throne, and all that lives is subject to him. All the gods are in his service. So saith Atum, the sole force of the gods, whose word is not to be altered” (Rit., ch. 78). Horus was now the all-one as manifestor in physical and spiritual phenomena for all the powers which had been summed up in Atum as the one god in spirit and in truth. This same triad of the mother, father, and son was known to the Sethians. With them the father of all is styled the first man=Atum or Adam. “His Ennua, going forth from him, produced a son, and this is the son of man — the second man”, or second Adam. “The father and son both had intercourse with the woman, whom they call the mother of the living”, and the triad constituted the “entire god”, in accordance with the Egyptian doctrine (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Bk. I, ch. 30). Atum, who was god the father in spirit, had assumed the sovereignty of Ra, the creator as god almighty, the one true god, the only one, because he was the god in spirit, not merely in physical phenomena, but in that new heaven which was opened on the day of “Come thou to me”. This is the position acknowledged by the worshippers in the new temple of god (Rev. XI. 17). “We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, which art and which wast, because thou hast taken thy great power and didst reign”. That is he who had assumed the sovereignty as sole ruler in the luni-solar heaven that followed the passing away of the heptanomis and the heaven in ten divisions.

Atum Ra is not only to be identified as the closer and opener of Amenta; the first and the last, and the “living one” ; the spirit with the bride; the god who sat upon the throne was also of a red complexion. He was like unto “a sardius” to look upon, which is [Page 719] the especial colour of Atum in the vignettes to the Ritual. In Revelation, when the “throne is set in heaven, and one sitting upon the throne”, there was a rainbow round about the throne like emerald to look upon (Ch. iv. 3). Also in the original mythos the throne “like emerald to look upon” was a figure of the Egyptian dawn that was imaged as a great emerald sycamore tree, a lake of emerald, green fields, and other evergreen things upon the mount of glory. Ra, in the Ritual, is said to be “encircled with emerald light”, which was the emerald dawn surrounding him on the solar mount. As it is said, “thy body is of gold, thy head of azure, and emerald light encircleth thee” (ch. 15). The gods who are in the green light of dawn are also called “the emerald ones” (Rit., ch. 110).

When Horus at his second coming rises from the dead it is as the son of God to whom was given the throne of the eternal with power to share the sonship with his followers. He is received with “a cry of adoration to him in Suten-Khen”. There is exultation in the place of Horus in his darkness, previously described as a world “without water and without air; all abyss, utter darkness, sheer bewilderment” (ch. 175), as the condition of the soul in matter that was imaged by the mortal Horus without sight. “He of the strong cord is born (ch. 136), his cable is completed”, and the ark of earth made fast to heaven once more for another period in precession, or the shennu-circle of eternity. “Glory is given to the inviolate one”, “by generations yet unborn”. “Ra exalteth him”. The gods of the lamps “rise up to greet him with their exclamations of great joy”; he who comes was the re-establisher of time “for millions of yearsâ€� (Ch.130). He come in raiment like the dawn as the true light of the world newly kindled for the night of death. “He putteth an end to the opposition of Sut”, the power of darkness (ch. 137 B, 2, 3). This, then, is Horus the son of God in the Osirian cult or Jesus in the religion of Atum-Ra, with God the father in the great judgment scenes upon the mount. He comes “to witness the process of Maat (or the judgment) and the lion-forms which belong to it”. He comes to erect the scales of justice for his father, who is “uttering the judgment of Maat”. He now appears as Horus triumphant who has torn out the jaws of Rusta, conquered the evil Apap, and brought the books which are kept in Annu to his father in the hall of judgment called the Maat. Here, says the speaker, “here is the cycle of the gods, and the kite of Osiris”, which represents his son Horus. “Grant ye that his father may judge in his behalf; and so I poise for him the balance, which is Maat (that of law and justice) and I raise it that he may live. Come! come! for the father is uttering the judgment of Maat. O thou who callest out at thine evening hours, grant that I may come and bring to him the two jaws of Rusta, and that I may bring to him the books which are in Annu, and add up for him his heavenly hosts”(ch. 136 B, Renouf). These are the books of Taht-Aan that were examined on the great day of reckoning called the judgment day (Rev. IV). In the parallel scene, the father sits, Osiris-like, upon his throne, with the four-and-twenty elders, the seven great spirits, and the four living creatures round about.

A striking picture of the god in his characters of the closer and the opener is presented by John in the Book of Revelation. The [Page 720] father-god, he who closes, is seated on the throne. In his right hand he holds the book that is closed with seven seals; the book which “no one in the heaven or earth, or under the earth” is able to open. In his other character, that of the son, represented by the lamb, “he taketh it out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne”. This is the opener of the book and the breaker of the seven seals thereof. “And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four-and-twenty elders fell down before the lamb”, who alone has power to break the seals and open the book. His taking of the seven-sealed book from the right hand of him that sat upon the throne is followed by the “adding up for him his hosts”. In this reckoning it is declared that the number of angels round the throne “was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” (Ch. v. 11). These in the astronomical mythology would signify the souls that had attained eternal setting as the hosts of heaven, represented by the Akhemu-Seku or stars which never set. The spirits in glory, called the Khus, are numbered in the Ritual as in Revelation. In the Papyrus of Nebseni, the number of the Khus or spirits is reckoned as “four millions, six hundred thousand, and two hundred” (Rit., ch. 64, Papyrus of Nebseni). It is not said on what grounds the computation was made. In Revelation the number of the saved and sealed is computed at one hundred and forty-four thousand.

The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, though the latest in evolution, have been given the foremost place in the Ritual and have somewhat obscured the pre-Osirian mythology. But Atum was the great judge upon the mount of Amenta at a far earlier period than Osiris. And one of the judgments in the Ritual is described as that of Atum-Ra. This takes place “when the eye is full on the last day of the month Mechir”; on the night wherein the eye is full and fixed for the judgment (Rit., ch. 71). “Ra makes his appearance on the mount of glory with his cycle of gods about him”. “Atum rises pouring out his dew” “His majesty gives orders to the cycle of his followers”. “They fall down before Atum-Harmachis”, or Atum-Horus. “His majesty orders them to praise the eye”. “His glorious eye rests in its place on his majesty in this hour of the night”. At the fourth hour of the night, on the last day of Mechir, “the majesty of the eye is in the presence of the cycle of the gods, and his majesty rises, as in the beginning, with the eye upon his head as Atum-Ra”. The Khabsu-gods lift up their lamps by night. When Ra passes over heaven unto the west upon his daily round, these gods of the lamp rise up with exclamations of delight to show the way. They are stars upon the summit of the mount which are said “to receive the cable of Ra from his rowers”. Twelve rowers rowed the bark by day around the zodiac. At night the seven starry powers at the pole took the rope in hand to haul the vessel through the underworld. Thus a mystery of the seven stars, as servants of the solar god, was interpreted in the astronomical mythos before the law of gravitation could be known (Rit., ch. 130). As it is said, “Oh Ra, who smileth cheerfully, as thou comest forth in the east, the ancients, and those who are gone before acclaim thee” (ch. 64). These “ancients”, who came from the “primeval womb” as earlier powers than Ra (ch. 133), appear in Revelation as “the elders”. They are also called “the fathers”. The [Page 721] Osiris in the character of Horus risen on the mount, says “Let the fathers and their apes make way for me, that I may enter the mount of glory, where the great ones are” (ch. 136 B). Naturally enough, “the apes” do not appear as apes in Revelation. But we may discern them in “the seven spirits of fire”, or the seven lamps of fire, burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God (Ch. iv. 5). As Egyptian, the apes are spirits of fire. In sign-language the hot-natured or fiery-tempered Kaf-Ape was made the image of a spirit of fire. Thus seven apes are equivalent to seven spirits of fire. They could “make way” for the Osiris in the mount, as they were keepers of the way and openers of the gates of dawn for Ra in his rising. The numbers vary. But there is a picture to the Ritual in which the seven spirits of fire around the throne of Ra are seven apes around the mount of glory (Naville, Todt. Kap., 16 A). In Revelation, the son of God promises to give the morning star to him that overcometh. “As I also have received of my father; I will give him the morning star” (Rev. II. 28). The morning star was equally identified with Horus. “I know the powers of the east: Horus of the mount of glory, the calf in presence of the god, and the star of dawn” (Rit., ch. 109). The powers represented in the vignette are Atum-Ra, the father, with Horus (or Jesus) the son, as a calf, the later lamb. This is Horus of the morning star. In the vignette to the previous chapter (108) the powers are Atum, the father, Horus (as Sebek), the son, and Hathor as the bride (Naville, Todt. Kap., 108, 109). Here is an application of the imagery to the deceased which is as old as the Pyramids. The morning star was given by Horus to his followers who were reborn in Sothis. The rebirth of Pepi was in or as the morning star. And “his guide the morning star leadeth him to paradise, where he seateth himself upon his throne” (Budge, Book of the Dead, Introd., pp. 141, 143). When Pepi goeth forth into heaven he is led by Septet, the female Sothis, and his guide is the morning star. She is the bride whom he calls his sister. He seats himself upon his throne of ba-metal. This throne has lions’ heads, and feet in the form of hoofs called the hoofs of the bull, Sema-Ur. Thus the lion and the bull, or bullock, meet in the throne of Pepi, which is the throne of god upon the mount of glory (Pyramid Texts, 304), and the types are equivalent to Atum the man-faced lion and Iu the son, as calf, later lamb, together with the bride in Sothis.

As Egyptian, then, Atum-Huhi was the God in Spirit, who was adored at On, as God the Holy Spirit, with Hathor-Iusãas, the bride, and Horus as the calf. And in one of the vignettes to the Ritual (Naville, Todt. Kap., 109) these three are grouped together on the mount, the same as in the Book of Revelation (Naville, Todt. Kap., 108).

About the year 2410 B.C. the vernal equinox was moving out of Taurus into the sign of Aries, and the type of Horus changed from the calf upon the horizon to the lamb upon the mount. Horus is called “the Lamb, Son of a Sheep”. As a fact in the astronomical mythology the lamb was then exalted to the highest place, and Hathor-Sothis became “the bride, as the wife of the lamb”. In the Book of Esdras we come very near to the fulfillment of a Sothiac cycle. “These tokens shall come to pass, and the bride shall appear, [Page 722] and she coming forth shall be seen that now is withdrawn from the earth”, and “my Son Jesus shall be revealed with those that be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice within four hundred years. And the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in the former Judgment: so that no man shall remain. And after seven days the world, that yet awaketh not, shall be raised up, and that shall die that is corrupt. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of Judgment”. In this reckoning “my son Jesus” is no more historical or ethnical than the bride. The bride, who was now withdrawn from the world in fulfilling her period, identifies Sothis and her cycle, which is to be completed in four hundred years, when the Coming One will be reborn as the Bennu or Phoenix, the Messu or Messiah, whose rebirth was reckoned and redated by that cycle. The bride or Shtar, the betrothed, as Egyptian, was Hathor-Sothis, who was “withdrawn” from the world in completing the Sothiac cycle; and Iusãas-Neb-hetep, the mother of Iusa, was a form of Hathor in the cult of Atum-Ra. Thus, Atum was the God in Spirit, Hathor-Iusaas is the bride, and Iusa is the son who was imaged by the calf or lamb according to the time and position on the ecliptic. As Egyptian, the mystical bride and child were astronomical. The prophecy of their return to earth and reappearance within four hundred years, in the secret wisdom of Esdras, is astronomical. Consequently, the fulfilment with the marriage of the bride and the lamb or Virgin Mother and Child in Revelation was likewise astronomical, and Jesus was that character in the astronomical mythology which was and is, and is to come for ever as the Son who is the manifester for the Father under whatsoever type or name, whether as the lamb, calf, the crocodile, the beetle, the dove, the hawk, the fish, the green corn, the grapes, the shoot of the papyrus-plant, or as Horus in the human image of the eternal Child.

To all appearance “John” has reproduced the astronomy in “Revelation” so as to agree with the entrance of the vernal equinox into the sign of the Ram which occurred about the year 2410 B.C., when the starry dragon as Draconis ceased to be the station of the pole star and so was fabled to have fallen from heaven; and the lamb became the typical victim that suffered death and rose again in the sign of the ram at Easter, as Horus in one cult, Sebek in the other, and as Jesus the “Lamb of God” in the Book of John.

The drama comes to an end with the marriage of the bride and the lamb. This is the same in the astronomical reckoning as shifting the birthplace of the child in the circle of precession from the sign of the bull to the sign of the ram, as it actually took place four thousand three hundred years ago. The natural result of this change was that the lamb from that time became the type of Horus instead of the calf. And the great change was marked in Egypt by the crocodile-headed Sebek being portrayed by the Sebek-heteps with the head of the lamb now added to the form of the dragon (Book of Beginnings, also Nat. Genesis).

The biblical writings abound in phrases too indefinite for anything [Page 723] but the faith that can supply its own fulcrum. One of these is the “foundation of the world”. Can any Christian explain this “foundation of the world”? For them, this had to be historically laid or relaid some nineteen centuries ago. But, according to the Book of Revelation, the sacrificial lamb was slain from the “foundation of the world”. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is made to say, “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. XXV. 34). Here the kingdom of the elect was already prepared and in no wise dependent upon any slaying of the historic lamb. On the other hand, the lamb (or calf, or other animal) had been slain for ages annually, as the type of the foundation laid in blood-sacrifice; and Sebek or Jesus in Egypt had been the lamb that was slain as the foundation of the world. He is addressed as the lamb, son of a sheep, and as such was the Lamb of God who did not take away the sins of the world, and did not profess to have the power. It is in totemism that we find a first foundation laid in sacrifice which is afterwards religiously described as the foundation of the world. The lamb was one of the sacrificial types; Osiris, in the human form of his son Horus, is another; and from the Osirian mysteries we may learn the meaning of this “foundation of the world” which, like so many other mysteries, has been imported into the Christian scheme, to be continued as one of the mysteries of ignorance and wondering faith, and to be accepted on the condition that it was never to be explained. In the Book of Revelation Jesus is “the lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world” . (XIII. 8). But in the Epistle to the Hebrews (IX. 26) this foundation is shifted. Here the lamb has not “suffered since the foundation of the world”, but “now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”. In that way the astronomical was turned into the supposed historical Lamb of God. In the new heaven that is finally established the mother and child are re-enthroned in glory as the lamb and the bride who is the wife of the lamb, together with “the Lord God, the Almighty” (Rev. Ch. XXI, XXII; cf. ch. I. 8). And these were the three persons who previously composed the “entire god” in Amen, the hidden Ra, who was a form of Atum-Ra, or Huhi the Eternal.

The prevalence and persistence of the lamb in the gnostic-Christian iconography point to a starting-point when the vernal equinox occurred in the sign of Aries. In the early ages of what is termed Christianity the lamb, not the man, upon the cross was the sacrificial type of the divine victim, as it had been of Sebek-Horus in Egypt at the time of the Sebek-hetep dynasty. “And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a lamb standing as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth”. The lamb is but a type that is here employed at its current value in symbolism, like the calf, as a sign of sacrifice, which like other types in Revelation has to be read by means of the mythology. As Egyptian, the lamb, “son of a sheep”, had been a type of Horus who was called the child. This was Har-Ur, the first or elder Horus, who was “born but not begotten” of the virgin [Page 724] mother. The seven powers, or spirits, that were unified in Horus who became the all-one as “an eighth to the seven”, are now represented by the seven horns and seven eyes of the lamb, which are correctly described as the seven powers or “seven spirits of God”.

The new Jerusalem was built upon the square. “The city lieth four-square, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth; the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal”. This was the heaven of Atum based upon the four quarters of the solstices and the equinoxes which followed the making of Amenta (Rev. XXI. 16).

At first the form impressed upon the universe, in the Kamite mythology, had been feminine. It was the womb, the meskhen, or creatory of the Great Mother, as bringer-forth of life and the elements of life. Finally, this was superseded by the image of the man; the divine man described by Plato, who bicussated and was stamped upon the universe in the likeness of a cross. Now the new heaven in the Book of Revelation was formed according to “the measure of a man” (Rev. XXI. 17). This was the heaven founded on the four cardinal points, which were represented by the cross of the four quarters. The cross of the four quarters, or the earlier Tat-pillar was a figure of the power that sustained the universe as the Osiris-Tat or as the later man upon the cross. Thus the divine man, as the cruciform support of all in Ptah-Sekeri or Osiris, was the prototype of the Crucified. This god of the four quarters is portrayed as Atum-Ra in the Ritual (ch. 82). It is he who says (by proxy) “My head is that of Ra and I am summed up as Atum, four times the arm’s length of Ra, four times the width of the world”. Thus Atum, the divine man, was a quadrangular figure of the four quarters in the heaven founded according to “the measure of a man” which is reproduced in Revelation. We learn from the Ritual that man became the measure of the universe in consequence of the god being divinised in the human form, who in his coming to earth as the heir of Seb says, “I come before you and make my appearance as the god in the form of a man” (ch. 79); he who is identified in the same chapter as Atum-Ra. As Atum was the first god who assumed the form of man, that may account for the new heaven being designed according to “the measure of a man”, as described in Revelation (XXI. 17, and Rit., ch. 82). This was what took place at Annu when Iu, the son of Atum-Ra, designed the “temple”, as the new heaven was called. Moreover, as Atum-Ra was the divine man, this tends to prove that “the son of man” who is Jesus in Revelation was one with Iu, the Su or son of Atum-Ra. And here it is possible that we come upon the origin of the Swastika cross as a typical figure of the heaven that was founded on the four corners according to the measure of a man. From the most primitive forms of the Swastika known we learn that in its origin it was derived from the human figure. The Swastika found in Egypt proves it to have been derived from the form of a man. The four limbs, which eventually became four feet or four legs, were at first the two arms and two legs of the human figure (Pro. Bib. Arch., Nov.1900). This, then, is the divine man whose image was extended crosswise on the universe as a type of creation, and who, as Atum in the character of Iu the son, was the Egyptian Jesus. A portrait of the Good Shepherd has been discovered in an underground [Page 725] Roman cemetery with the Swastika figured twice upon his tunic. He carries the pan-pipes in his right hand and comes in the attitude of dancing (Lanciani, Rodolfo, New Tales of Old Rome, p. 117). This in the mythos was the youthful solar god, and Horus of the resurrection in the eschatology. “The tabernacle of God” is now “with men, and he shall dwell with them”. As it had been ever since the child, as Horus, was incarnated in the blood of Isis, to assume the human figure when “the Word was made flesh” in the beginning.

The mystery of Messiahship, which had been rendered in the Kamite wisdom thousands of years before, was now repeated as Hebrew prophecy in the Book of Revelation. In the sign of the bull, the bride had been represented by the sacred heifer, and Horus the child was imaged as the calf upon the horizon. “The calf in presence of the god” is as we have seen with Horus of the solar mount, in a vignette to ch. 109 (Naville, Todt. Kap.). The victim as the sacrificial calf is also spoken of in the Ritual (ch. 84) when the speaker says, “I am the calf painted red on the tablets”. Again he speaks of being the calf or the bull of the sacrificial herd with the mortuary gifts upon him (ch. 105). One sign later in precession, there was a change of type. The vernal equinox now entered Aries and the lamb upon the mount was substituted for the calf as the sacrificial victim, just as the fish was substituted 2,155 years later for the lamb.

The new heaven of Revelation is the “heaven of eternity” in the Ritual, at the summit of Mount Hetep; the mould of the mythos being continued in the eschatology. For this reason there was no night there, and no more sea, and “death shall be no more”. “Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more; the first things are passed away”. And this is the vision of a spirit-life in the heaven of eternity that is no longer simply astronomical.

The astronomical enclosure of the non-setting stars; the tree of life, the water of life, the sacrificial lamb, remain as types of salvation and eternal sustenance in what the “Revelation” terms “the paradise of God” (II. 7), which is identical by name with the garden of the beginning in the Book of Genesis

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 In some of the Papyri, the dwelling-place upon the summit of eternal attainment, described in the Book of the Dead (ch. 110), is called the City of the Two Eyes, or Merti the Double Eye, the two eyes that we hold to have been the stars of the two poles seen in Equatoria. Merti was also a place-name in Egypt. Thus, the stellar paradise upon the mount that was established in the region of the pole before the time of moon or sun remained the type of a future heaven described in Revelation which had “no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it”, and the light of it, or the luminary, “was like a stone most precious” — otherwise it was the star Polaris. The light of the pole-star in the primal paradise is likewise referred to in the Talmudic Legends of the future heaven. It is said, “There is a light which is never eclipsed or obscured, derived from that upper light by which the first men could view the world from one end to the other” (Avodath Hakodesh, f, XLVI, c, 1, 2; Stehelin, Vol. II, pp. 20-24). Only one pole-star is reproduced in Revelation, but in the elder legend, as we see, the first [Page 726] men could view the world from one end to the other, which included both poles (or pole-stars) that were seen at first upon the level of the equatorial plain and are repeated in the latest eschatology. Finally, the injunctions at the end of the book should be compared with the Rubrical Instructions of the Ritual. The writer of Revelation says, “Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy in this book. I testify unto every man that heareth the words of prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book” (XXII. 7, 18, 19). In the Ritual, at the end of the book by which the soul of the Osiris is perfected in the bosom of Ra, it is said, “Let not this be seen by anyone except the minister of the funeral and the king. By this book (or according to it) the soul of the deceased shall make its exodus with the living and prevail amongst, or as, the gods. By this book he shall know the secrets of that which happened in the beginning. No one else has ever known this mystical book or any part of it. It has not been spoken by men. No eye hath deciphered it, no ear hath heard it. It must only be seen by thee and the man who unfolded its secrets to thee. Do not add to its chapters or make commentaries on it from imagination or from memory. Carry it out (or execute it) in the judgment hall. This is a true Mystery, unknown anywhere to those who are uninitiated” (Rubrical Directions to Rit., ch. 149, Birch; 148, Pierret).