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Introduction xvii
side, a triangle, symbolising the Christian Trinity, and the
svastika, here possibly signifying that all things living, "live,
and move, and have their being" in God. Indeed the
highest symbolism of the svastika might well be ex-
pressed in Goethe's words :
God's
is the East, God's is
the West, North and South lands repose in peace in His
Hands :
—
"
" Gottes ist der Orient
Gottes ist der Occident
Nord- und siidliches Gelande
Ruht im Frieden seiner Hande."*
There may be no connection between the Assyro-Baby-
lonian name for the sun, Samas, in Hebrew Shemesh, and
the Greek scnieion, "a mask," "a device," "a sign," "a con-
stellation," "a token." But the earliest Akkadian name of
the sun, Kasseba \cf. Cassiopea], is rendered in Assyro- Baby-
lonian by tsalam [c/. the Sun-goddess Salambo] meaning
"image," "symbol." This is the Arabic ti/sam, in the plural
talasiin, from which comes, through the Spanish, our " talis-
man," and possibly the Greek tclesnia, "a payment," " initia-
tion," " mystery." The sun, so magnificently apostrophised
by Satan, in Paradise Lost, B. IV. 31-7 :
!
!
—
" O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world ; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads, to thee I call,
O Sun !
* Cf. Aratus, P/uriwmcna, 1-5 [quoted in "The Acts of the Apostles," xvii.
28-29] •— " i-Gt us begin with Zeus ; let us always call upon, and laud his name ; all
the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of
Zeus, and all the paths and fair havens of the seas ; and everywhere our hope is
in Zeus, for we are also his children." Cf. also the quotation, facing the Title
Page, from Fiona Macleod, Dominion of Dreams, " The Book of the Opal."