Gerald Massey's Lectures - Society in evolution - Awardspace

All men derived from the motherhood at first--and in that mythical creation the man was
really created from the woman, instead of the woman being taken from the man, which
was of necessity a later creation, in keeping with the sociology. The mystery of the
woman being taken from the man is mentioned in the Egyptian Ritual, or Book of the
Dead. The speaker says: "I know the mystery of the woman being taken from the man."
The matter of such a mystery was physiological. The far earlier mystery was that of man
being created by the woman from the red earth, or blood.
Next it was apprehended that the mother inspired the breath of life into her embryo. And
breath, prajna, jiva, or the ba, constitutes the soul No. 2. In various legends man was
made from the red earth, and the Blacks of Victoria say that their creator, Pundjel, blew
the breath of life, or the soul of breath, in at his navel. These were the first two souls of
the seven, because blood supplied the element of flesh, or form, and breath was the
primal element of life. A Yuni Indian description of death speaks of a man as having the
wind pressed out of him, so that he forgot.
And now for a doctrinal development!
Blood and breath being the two primary elements or souls of life, these consequently
became the two great types of sacrificial offering. Among the Amaponda Kaffirs when a
new chief succeeds to the government it is a custom for him to be baptised in the blood of
his brother, or some near relative, who is put to death for the purpose; and in Fiji when
the canoe of a chief was launched a number of men were sacrificed, so that their souls (or
Breath) might supply a wind of good luck for the sails of the vessel. It was on account of
their natural genesis that these two souls of the blood and breath were typically continued
in the water and the breath employed for the re-genesis, or regeneration, of the child in
Christian baptism. Everyone of our religious rites and ceremonies has to be read
backwards, like Hebrew, to be understood.
The observation that blood, the first factor in primitive biology, was the basis used by
Nature in building up the future human being is probably the source and origin of the
superstition that in building a city, fortress, bridge, or church, an enduring foundation
must be laid in blood; whence the primitive practice of burying a living child, a calf, a
dog, goat, or lamb--the lamb slain from the foundation of the world being a Mithraic and
Christian survival of the same significance, with the bloody and barbarous rite of the
Victim immured as a basis for the building. Sometimes, as in the legend of Vortigern, the
foundation-stone was to be bathed in the blood of a child that was born of a mother
without any father; as was the child-Horus, who was the child of the Virgin Mother only.
The doctrine is Egyptian, and as such can be understood. It was applied to Horus shut up
in the region of annihilation, or transformation (the Skhem), where his type was the Red
Mouse.
As the breath of life was a kind of soul, so the steam of food, or the incense presented in
sacrifice, was a form of the breath of life offered to the spirits of the dead or to the gods.
The motive and meaning of many curious customs can only be apprehended on these
physical grounds. For instance, when the Canadian Indians killed a bear they adjured the
soul of the animal not to be angry with them, and then placing a pipe between its teeth
blew tobacco-smoke backwards into its mouth, and thus symbolically restored that which
they had just taken--its soul of breath. In the Rubric to the Egyptian Ritual it says--"Offer
ye a great quantity of incense; it makes that spirit alive." Drops of blood from the heart
of a cow are likewise to be offered with the incense. Blood and breath (incense) were
both offered by the Jews. Philo explains that the offerings of frankincense laid on the
golden altar in the Inner Temple were more holy than the blood offered outside. The
mystical meaning of which, he says, must be investigated by those who are eager for the
truth in accordance with the Gnosis. The blood and breath survive also in the bloody
wafer and incense of the Roman Ritual.
Now, we have to go back to this Soul of Breath to reach the origin of the transmigration