1nCnVqgFI

THE GREAT MIND.
377
who got this Secret Wisdom in Babylonia from the Chaldean Hierophants,
just as Moses got his in Eg3^pt. The Zoharic system cannot
ver}- well be judged by its translations into Latin and other tongues,
when all its ideas were softened and made to fit in with the views and
policy of its Christian arrangers; for its original ideas are identical
with those of all other religious systems. The various Cosmogonies
show that the Universal Soul was considered by every archaic nation
as the Mind of the Demiurgic Creator; and that it was called the
Mother, Sophia, or the female Wisdom, with the Gnostics; the Sephira,
with the Jews ; Sarasvati or Vach, with the Hindijis ; the Holy Ghost
also being a female Principle.
Hence, the Kurios, or Logos, born from it, was, with the Greeks, the
God, Mind (Nous). "Now Koros [Kurios] . . . signifies the
pure and unmixed nature of Intellect—Wisdom," says Plato, in
Craiylus;* and Kurios is Mercury (Mercurius, Mar-kurios), the Divine
Wisdom, and "Mercurj' is Sol [the Sun],"t from whom Thot-Hermes
received this Divine Wisdom. While, then, the Logoi of all countries
and religions are correlative, in their sexual aspects, with the female
Soul of the World or the Great Deep, the Deity, from which these Two
in One have their being, is
ever concealed and called the Hidden One,
and is connected only indirectly with " Creation, ":|: as it can act only
through the Dual Force emanating from the Eternal Essence. Even
^sculapius, called the "Saviour of all," is identical, according to
ancient classical writers, with the Eg>'ptian Ptah, the Creative Intellect,
or Divine Wisdom, and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis and Hercules :§
Ptah, in one of its aspects, is the Anima Mundi ; the Universal Soul of
Plato; the Divine Spirit of the Egj'ptians; the Holy Ghost of the early
Christians and Gnostics ; and the Akasha of the Hindus, and even, in
its lower aspect, the Astral Eight. For Ptah was originally the God of
the Dead, he into whose bosom they were received, hence the Eimbus
of the Greek Christians, or the Astral Eight. It was far later that Ptah
was classed with the Sun-Gods, his name signifying "he who opens,"
as he is shown to be the first to unveil the face of the dead mummj-, to
call the Soul to life in his bosofn. Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed, is
represented by the snake-emblem of eternity
and
encircling a water-urn.
• p. 79-
+ Aniobius, VI. xii.
t We employ the tenii as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible
to the reader.
\ See Dunlap, Sod: the Mysteries of Adoni, 23.