CHAPTER VI.

EGYPT AND ITS WONDERS: LITERALLY AND MYSTICALLY CONSIDERED.

“Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” In this highly significant and important Scripture phrase we are introduced to far more than simply an historical allusion; at the same time, the historical information suggested is of great interest and value. Though in a very special sense a land of great antiquity, Egypt is also a modern country, which is attracting ever-increasing multitudes of fascinated students, as well as tourists, who find in the Delta of the Nile almost more to excite their curiosity, and also to repay diligent research, than in any other district usually included within the itinerary of popular travel. Though there are thousands of interesting things to be seen in Egypt, the object of supremest interest is the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, which is well called a miracle in stone. Many of our readers have doubtless read that large and learned work, “Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid,” by Prof. Piazzi Smyth, for many years Astronomer Royal of Scotland, but as that work abounds with elaborate mathematical calculations, and is also written from the standpoint of a certain type of dogmatic theology, it has never served to give a broad general view of the object for which this mighty structure was erected, notwithstanding the fact that it contains a vast amount of extremely valuable information. Prof. Smyth maintains that in order to account successfully for this mighty edifice, we must attribute to it an actually divine origin, for he contends that the architect was none other than Melchisedec, by far the most mysterious character mentioned in the Bible, concerning whom it is related that he was a priest of the Most High God, also a King of Salem, and it is also stated that he had neither father nor mother, beginning of days nor end of life. Such statements cannot refer to any ordinary human being, but they do have reference to human immortality, and they also refer in some incidental sense to a mighty Order of Adepts who exist upon earth in unending succession from age to age. These highly illumined Masters were undoubtedly the great rulers in ancient times, under whose benign sway the land of Egypt was at one time the chief center of civilization upon earth, or at least one of the great head centers whence knowledge was distributed to many other lands. The Great Pyramid differs widely from all other pyramids in its interior arrangements, though it closely resembles them all in its outward construction, as all are built on a common ground plan and all may be regarded as ancient temples, in many of which the bodies of distinguished people were doubtless buried, for the practice of burying the bodies of notable men in temples of worship is of immemorial antiquity. But all the pyramids, save this most imposing one, are elaborately adorned both within and without with all manner of emblems and inscriptions, the Great Pyramid alone being perfectly devoid of all embellishment. This fact in itself very largely justifies the positive declaration of Prof. Smyth, and many other learned men who largely coincide with him, that this unique structure has memorialized through all succeeding centuries, a purely spiritual religion which flourished in ancient Egypt surrounded by popular forms of idolatry. The Great Pyramid is well regarded as a massive Masonic Temple carrying us back to a period in human history when the astronomical religion of the ancient world was stated and preserved in fanes of superb architecture which were built according to the exact principles of mathematics and geometry, requiring no ornamentation to enforce doctrines or to portray the ceremonies for which these structures stood, as abiding and well-nigh indestructible monuments. The most curiously interesting theory which we have ever encountered is that elaborated by Albert Ross Parsons in his extraordinary book, “New Light from the Great Pyramid,” which declares that it was built to commemorate a great cosmic catastrophe, an idea thoroughly familiar to the many readers of “Atlantis,” by Ignatius Donnelly, who maintains that long before the great Island-Continent was finally overwhelmed by the ocean (between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago), it had already entered upon its declining period, during which certain great teachers from that enlightened land went to Egypt and established there the beginnings of a vast Atlantian Colony. Such a theory will make the great Pyramid very much older than the date given for its erection by Prof. Smyth, who traces it only to 2170 B. C., when Alpha Draconis was Polar Star. But as the phenomenon known as the procession of the equinoxes is accomplished every grand cycle, which occupies about 25,840 years, it is quite easy to admit that the Great Pyramid may be fully 30,000 years old. A very singular book on this intensely interesting subject was issued in California by an author named McCarthy, in which a claim is raised that this wonderful structure is between 50,000 and 60,000 years of age; but in all cases the astronomical phenomenon referred to remains the same. With the age of the Pyramid we need not greatly concern ourselves, but in the object of its construction, and the mysteries celebrated within its walls, we may well take active interest. Though there are many among modern Freemasons who place no great reliance upon very ancient traditions concerning the Masonic Craft, many other Masons, among them men of wide research and profound learning, declare that there is abundant evidence in support of the most venerable traditions. Among gifted authors who have treated of this subject in popular style, Rev. Chas. H. Vail, author of “The Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry,” ranks conspicuously high. This very liberal-minded minister, for a long time pastor of Pullman Memorial Church, Albion, N. Y., has furnished us with an enormous amount of evidence wonderfully condensed in a portable volume issued by the Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, New York. Concerning the Egyptian mysteries he has quoted from a number of distinguished writers, all of whom testify to substantially the view taken in that curious book, “Art Magic,” which contains a section on the Great Pyramid which we herewith substantially reproduce in abbreviated language of our own. The author of that singular treatise does not presume to speak dogmatically, but very modestly heads the section “The Great Pyramid of Egypt—Its Possible Use and Object.” The chapter is headed with a hieroglyphic entitled “Man, the Microcosm of the Universe.” This is a double triangle with a human figure at its center. At the left side of the apex of the ascending triangle is the word Macrocosmos; at the right-hand side of the apex of the descending triangle is written Microcosmos. At the right side of the apex of the ascending triangle is printed Dragon's Head, and on the left side of the apex of the descending triangle Dragon's Tail, illustrated by their well-known astrological emblems. The letter U (the original form of the horseshoe inverted) is represented on the left side of the horizontal line drawn through the middle of the figure, and the same letter inverted (making the familiar form of the horseshoe) at the right extremity of this line. Students of astrology will at once recognize that such a frontispiece to a treatise on the Great Pyramid is intended to convey to every reader that the structure itself was built to embody the sublime sciences mathematics, geometry, astronomy and astrology, which were regarded as the very foundations of all true science, philosophy and religion by the truly enlightened in days of old. Those who search Egyptian records profoundly, and thereby learn to decipher the real meaning of the Great Pyramid, can never fall into the error of supposing that it was either a granary or a tomb, but, speaking Masonically, a veritable stone rejected by modern builders but in reality “the head of the corner.” The vulgar supposition, still entertained by many writers and travelers (and frequently hurled at public audiences by lecturers who entertain us with travelogues), that all the pyramids, including the greatest, were burial-places for the bodies of kings, and that the Great Pyramid contains the remains of Cheops, is probably due to the fact that that inspiring object, the lidless Sarcophagus in the Grand Gallery, resembles a tomb; this has led them through their ignorance of ancient symbolism and the rites of initiation performed in ancient temples, to mistake this emblematical and ceremonial laver of regeneration for a literal coffin in which a dead body had at one time lain, but from which it must have at some time been removed, for it is certainly not there now. Prof. Smyth has clearly shown that the body of Cheops was buried in the vicinity of the pyramid, but nobody was interred within its walls. But even had a body been buried within this mighty structure, such a fact would no more supply evidence that the building was primarily intended for a place of sepulture, and not for a mighty temple, than the fact of many interments in Westminster Abbey and many other famous churches, would prove that they were intended only as tombs because the bodies of many illustrious men repose beneath their pavements.

As a Temple to the great and glorious Central Sun of our Universe, Alcyone of the Pleiades, the Great Pyramid is comprehensible, for the only entrance being on the north side, has convinced all astronomers who have visited it that it was designed for astronomical purposes; and we must never forget that astronomy and astrology were inseparable from the religious concepts and ceremonies of the learned among all ancient nations. The total absence of all inscriptions, both within and without, distinguish this unique pyramid from its numerous companions, of which there are over fifty in the near vicinity. The populace in ancient Egypt, as well as in Persia, Assyria, India, and all other mighty lands renowned in ancient song and story, employed animal and vegetable forms to typify their spiritual ideas and to furnish them with appropriate aids to contemplation while engaging in religious exercises, but none of these objects were employed by those whose ideas were of the utmost sublimity and to whom the regular order of Nature, and especially the march of the constellations, not only suggested but definitely revealed the universal Cosmic Process. To these mighty minds nothing less than a Temple erected according to the plan of the heavens, as far as they could possibly discover it, would suffice to satisfy their religious aspirations and at the same time afford them the observatory they needed, in which to carry forward their continuous and elaborate astronomical calculations. The Spiritual Sun, not the physical orb we see, was the central object of veneration among these great Adepts of antiquity, and it is to this day among the most enlightened Brahmins and all others, in India and elsewhere, who have preserved intact the earliest and purest of all the combined systems of natural and revealed religion originally communicated to humanity by those wise and powerful guardians of our race who are known by various names and titles among the different schools of Theosophists scattered over the whole earth. It is in the 19th chapter of Isaiah that Bible students will find the clearest and most copious references to the Great Pyramid, according to the conclusions of many learned astronomers who have also devoted much attention to Biblical testimony. In that wonderful chapter we are told that there is an altar to the Lord and a pillar of witness in the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord (verse 19).

From Stewart’s erudite work on “Solar Worship,” the author of “Art Magic” culled the following intensely interesting facts: “It is important not to lose sight of the fact that formerly the history of the heavens, and particularly of the sun, was written under the form of the history of men, and that the people almost universally received it as such, and looked upon the hero as a man. The tombs of the gods were shown, as if they had really existed; feasts were celebrated, the object of which seemed to be to renew every year the grief which had been occasioned by their loss. Such was the tomb of Osiris, covered under those enormous masses known as pyramids, which the Egyptians raised to the star which gives us light. One of these has its four sides facing the cardinal points of the world. Each of these fronts is 110 fathoms wide at the base, and the four form as many equilateral triangles. The perpendicular height is seventy-seven fathoms, according to the measurement given by Chazelles of the (French) Academy of Sciences. It results from these dimensions and the latitude under which this pyramid is erected, that fourteen days before the Spring equinox, the precise period at which the Persians (and others) celebrated the revival of nature, the sun would cease to cast a shade at midday, and would not again cast it until fourteen days after the Autumnal equinox. Then the day, or the sun, would be found in the parallel or circle of the Southern declension, which answers to 5 deg. 15 min.; this would happen twice a year—once before the Spring and once after the Autumnal equinox. The sun would then appear exactly at midday upon the summit of this pyramid; then his majestic disc would appear for some moments, placed upon this immense pedestal, and seem to rest upon it, while his worshipers, on their knees at its base, extending their view along the inclined plane of the Northern front, would contemplate the great Osiris—as well when he descended into the darkness of the tomb as when he arose triumphant. The same might be said of the full moon of the equinoxes when it takes place in this parallel. It would seem that the Egyptians, always grand in their conceptions, had executed a project (the boldest ever imagined) of giving a pedestal to the sun and moon, or to Osiris and Isis; at midday for one, and at midnight for the other, when they arrived in that part of the heavens near to which passes the line which separates the Northern from the Southern hemisphere; the empire of good from that of evil; the region of light from that of darkness. They wished that the shade should disappear from all the fronts of the pyramid at midday, during the whole time that the sun sojourned in the luminous hemisphere; and that the Northern front should be again covered with shade when night began to assert supremacy in our hemisphere—i.e., at the moment when Osiris descended into hell. The tomb of Osiris was covered with shade nearly six months, after which light surrounded it entirely at midday, as soon as he, returning from hell, regained his empire in passing into the luminous hemisphere. Then he had returned to Isis and to the God of Spring, Horus, who had at length conquered the genius of darkness and winter. What a sublime idea!”

Prof. Smyth has made a great deal of the perfect standard for weights and measures which is found in the Great Pyramid, and he draws particular attention to the Sacred Cubit which measures exactly twenty-five inches, in contradistinction from the “profane” cubit in common use among the Egyptians, which measures a fraction over twenty-six inches. This fact of only the “sacred” cubit being employed throughout the Great Pyramid goes far to prove that it is not actually an Egyptian, but a truly universal structure, designed to perpetuate those profound mysteries which, though they have been celebrated in Egypt, were never confined to any special country. Though it is quite rational to insist that literal commercial transactions can be equitably balanced only by the adoption of a world-wide standard of perfectly accurate weights and measures, these external business matters are entirely subservient to the sublime spiritual purpose for which the lidless sarcophagus in the Grand Gallery was designed. Here again a quotation from “Art Magic” will prove illuminating: “A better understanding of the profound heights of metaphysical speculation in which the Oriental mind employed itself would have shown......that this vast edifice was designed as a sky and earth metre, and that the huge problem of scientific discoverers, the mystic, lidless, wholly unornamented, uninscribed coffer, in the midst of the vast unornamented and uninscribed chamber, was not intended as a model for all generations of succeeding corn and seedsmen, but as a sarcophagus for living men, for those Initiates who were there taught the solemn problems of life and death, and through the instrumentality of that very coffer attained to that glorious birth of the Spirit—that second birth so significantly described by the great Hierophant of Nazareth when he answered those who came to enquire of him by night, saying: ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ The time was when Egypt, the young untutored child of the desert, was not the queen of arts and sciences who sat enthroned over the intellectual world. Then did she become the prey of the spoiler. She was invaded and conquered by the ‘Pali’ — Shepherd Kings, or ‘Hyksos,’ who, according to Manetho, overran the land, put the inhabitants to chains and tributary service, and became for awhile the rulers of Egypt. What this country was before the advent of these Shepherd Kings we can hardly conjecture, but after their rule, every monument, pyramid and inscription bore the stamp of Oriental ideality. It needs not that we particularize the details of these revolutionary changes; we only allude to them to account for the wonderful parity which exists between the religious opinions which we have enlarged upon in our descriptions of Hindu worship, and those which reappear in Egyptian Theogony. Let us, as Solomon says, consider the conclusion of the whole matter. Cheops, a monarch of the invading line, caused a temple to be erected in conformance with those strict rules of science, revealed to the ancient Hindu metaphysicians, as the mode in which God worked.”

Remembering that the book from which the above quotations are taken was published in 1876, since which time much added light has been thrown on the close similarity between Central American and Egyptian monuments, especially through the indefatigable explorations conducted by Prof. and Mme. Le Plongeon, it seems quite reasonable to refer to an Atlantian as well as to a Hindu origin, for an adequate explanation of the building of the Great Pyramid. But it matters not who built it or in what age it was erected, for as a temple of the immemorial mystery of human life, fashioned in accordance with the plan of the Solar System, it stands pre-eminent, and it is therefore to universal esoteric Co-Masonry that we must turn for a complete elucidation of its abiding as well as original significance.

There is one more mighty wonder in Egypt of world-wide celebrity—the majestic Sphinx—which ranks second only to the Great Pyramid in symbolical expressiveness. The special feature of this mysterious stone preacher is its emphatic protest against the animal worship outpictured in all common Egyptian architectural productions. We are all familiar with representations of Anubis, the dog-headed divinity, and with many other works of popular art which equally exalt animal forms above the human level. In the massive Sphinx, propounding its age-long riddle to every passer-by, we see the exactly contradictory concept, for here is a lion's body surmounted with a human head. In this portrayal we can clearly trace the work of some truly enlightened cult, erecting its silent age-enduring protest against animal-worship, and displaying unmistakably the exaltation of the distinctively human, and the consequent rightful subordination of the animal. This is truly the problem which all humanity is called upon to solve. Neither the worship nor the extirpation of the animal is our goal, but the perfect ascendancy of the human over the animal, so that the human may justly reign and the animal as justly serve. Let Egypt reveal her message to the modern world as she revealed it in remote antiquity, prior to her decadence, and we shall understand aright the double meaning of the passage: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”