in modern rites of the Jewish Passover, Leviathan and the Fishes are connected. Leviathan is a form of the Dragon of Darkness which has been vanquished by the Sun in Pisces ever since the crossing occurred in that sign, over two thousand years since, when the Fishtype succeeded that of the Lamb. The final facts are that Christ, as the ram, dates from B.C. 2410. Christ as Ichthys, the fish, dates from B.C. 255. Christ, in the human form upon the Cross, dates from the seventh century, A.D.

This is the Gnostic Christ, the Egyptian Horus who for thousands of years had been represented in the act of treading the crocodile under foot, and who is here pourtrayed as the youthful Sun-God representing the Sun of the vernal equinox in the sign of the Fishes.

SECTION VIII.

NATURAL GENESIS AND TYPOLOGY OF THE MYTHICAL GREAT MOTHER, THE TWO SISTERS, THE TWINS, TRIADS, TRINITY AND TETRAD.

WHEN, after many years' research, the present writer discovered that mythology is the mirror in which the pre-historic sociology is reflected, his labour was forthwith doubled, but the fact furnished him with the real foundation for the work he was building. It may be difficult for the modern mind to conceive of the primitive priority (for it is that rather than supremacy in Bachofen's sense) of the Woman; the priority of the sonship to the institution of the fatherhood; of the nephew to the son of the father; and of the types of thought, the laws and ceremonies that were left as the deposit of such primitive customs. Yet these facts, and others equally important, are reflected in the mirror of mythology.

The genitrix as Ta-Urt (Typhon) is designated the "Mother of the Beginnings," "Mother of the Revolutions" (time-cycles), " Mother of the Fields of Heaven," and the "Mother of Gods and Men." The priority of the genitrix as typical producer was plainly enough pourtrayed by Tesas-Neith, the Great Mother, at Sais. "I am all that was, and is, and is to be; no mortal hath lifted my peplum, and the fruit I bore is Helios." The title of the goddess as "Tesas-Neith" signifies the self-existing; she who came from herself. The genitrix is celebrated as the "Only One" in the Ritual. "Glory to thee! Thou art mightier than the Gods! The forms of the living souls which are in their places give glory to the terrors of thee, their Mother; thou art their origin." 2

1

Following this enunciation of the female priority we find that Seb, the father of the gods, is also designated the "Youngest of the gods.' The earlier gods, Sut (or Sevekh), Shu, Taht, and the first Horus, were children of the mother alone. They were created before there was any father in heaven, there being no fatherhood as yet indivi

1 Clemens, Strom., v.; Proclus in Timæus, i.

2 Rit., ch. clxv., Sup. Birch.

い

dualized on earth. Both on earth and in heaven the father was preceded by the Totemic elders and fathers, the mythical Pitris. The Kamite mirror shows us that when the fatherhood had become individualized in the human family it was first reflected by Seb as God the divine Father. Seb, the God of earth and of planetary time, who followed the earlier Star-gods, Moon-deities, and elementaries, was then termed the "Father of the Gods." When the fatherhood became individualized it was applied retrospectively, which often gives a false appearance of beginning with and descent from the father in place of the mother. But mythology begins with and reckons from the female, as in the totemic system of the oldest races. We can only begin at the beginning; the god could only be born as the child of the mother. Although the Hottentots have now attained the individualized fatherhood, and have elevated the divine father of the fathers to the supreme place, yet their languages show that the race, clan, or tribe, was always called after the mother, never after the father. Thus the Namas, Amas, Khaxas, and Gaminus have each and all the feminine terminal as their appellation. They are all children of the mother, and it is the same with the lesser formation in the family, which is likewise named from the mother.1

Descent in the female line was universal in the earliest times and most archaic condition of society; the gens or kin being composed of a female ancestor and her children. The fatherhood is unknown to the primary group, and this status of the human family originated the figure of the Great Mother and her children in the heavens. Also in certain Chinese accounts of the founders of dynasties in the oldest time, long anterior to 2,000 B.C., they were invariably born of no father. One maid, or the Virgin Mother, dreams that she embraced the sun. Another dreams that she suddenly felt a mighty wind in the form of an egg. So the Virgin Mother, typified by the Vulture, Mu (Eg.), is impregnated by the wind alone without the male. Tradition said that the first King of Northern Gaoli had a maid slave who was found to be with child. The King desired the death of the boy who was born, but the mother said that she had conceived him by an influence which came upon her, and which she felt to be like air, as if in the form of an egg. The King, at once afraid to kill, and fearing to keep alive a prodigy, had the child thrown into the pig-yard. But it was the rightful heir, who lived to become the monarch.2

The sole catholic and universal first producer was feminine. She was the Mother Nature, La Source, the Goddess of Beginnings (Taurt), the Begetter of the Universe (Ishtar and Atergatis). The

1 Hahn, p. 145. The Wyandot mode of stating that descent is in the female line, is, "The woman carries the Gens."

2

Ross, Corea, its History, Manners, and Customs, p 121,

1

Great Mother, the Grandmother (Inner African), the Godmother, the Old Woman (North American Indian), the Mother Earth (Nin-kigal), and Mother Heaven; the mother that opened in the void below or vault above in the uterine likeness of the human parent. This alone is beginning. She is yet extant in the African's and the Hindu's "Mama," and the Papist's "Mary." When a piece of crewel work bearing the motto, "God is my King," was presented to Cetewayo in London, he at first declined to receive it with the remark, "There is no one over me but the Queen, my Mother!" He himself was the King, the Bull, as Male; and such was the primitive status. The lower world, says the Sohar, is created after the pattern of the upper, and everything existing above is to be found, as it were, in a copy on the earth. But this is a reversal of the real process; a result of the later thought which culminated in the Hindu tree with its roots above and its branches below. The lower was first in mythology, as in evolution. The esoteric interpretation was last. The Great Mother, the Virgin Mother, of mythology, represents the human mother, as the first mistress of the home in the pre-paternal phase, and thus mythology helps us to ascertain the natural genesis of such customs as those of the Mother-Right by becoming the mirror to the pre-historic past, which reflects the most Archaic social conditions of the human race. The earliest God known is the Son of the Mother, who becomes her Bull or Male. It was thus with Sut, or Sevekh, so with Taht, Khem, and Khepr; and he who was the consort of his mother was necessarily born or re-born of his wife; and, as according to one Egyptian custom the son took the mother's name, in another the bridegroom takes that of the wife, and both are typical of the primordial derivation from the female with which mythology begins. Non-evolutionists have recently been startled at the rank of the wife and the priority and apparent supremacy of the woman in Egypt as late as the Ptolemian age. A writer in the Times has said, “We shall probably never know how customs so strange and perverse came to be established among a people famed throughout antiquity for their wisdom and learning." We never shall, except on the evolutionary theory, and also on the theory propounded in the present work, of Egypt's being the mouth-piece and Inner Africa the birth-place of all such archaic and primitive customs. For example, the same supremacy of the female as mistress of the house, which is shown by the Egyptian marriage documents is extant to-day among the Hottentots. In every house or hut she is the supreme ruler, the Taras. Dr. Hahn derives this title from Ta to rule, be master; Ra, which expresses a custom or intrinsic peculiarity, with S for feminine terminal. Taras denotes the Supreme Ruler, the Lady of the house. Out of doors the man is Governor, but the Taras dominates within. Her place is on the right side of the house and the right hand of her husband.

Daily News, Sept. 2, 1882.

He dare not take a mouthful of sour milk out of a tub without her permission. Should he break the law in such a case his nearest female relations will mulct him in a heavy fine of sheep or cows.1 When a chief died it has often happened that his wife became the ruleress and queen of the tribe, just as in Egypt. It is also a Khoikhoi custom for the sons to take the name of the mother (the daughters taking that of the father); and in Egypt the sons, instead) of being called after their fathers were named after their mothers. Neither sons nor daughters could be named after the fathers when these were unknown. When the fatherhood was represented by the solar Râ, then she who had been his mother was called his daughter, and so the great goddesses became daughters of the Râ. This position of the woman is the oldest known in the world, and it is in perfect accordance with natural genesis. The mother was the first parent recognized, as in the mirror of mythology, where Ta-Ur (with the Egyptian terminal, Ta-Urt, Greek Thoueris), the old first chief ruleress is the Taras of the gods in Egypt.

It was a law of the Basques or Iberians that he who married the heiress should take her name, and have no control over her children. In the event of her death he was not permitted to marry again except by consent of the deceased wife's relations.

The earliest societary conditions and typical modes of expression first established in Inner Africa were continued one way or another/ by the Egyptians whose laws, literature, and mythology, are a complete Kamite fossil formation deposited by the life of the past. Egypt, as insisted in the previous volumes is the missing link between the Inner African origines and the rest of the world. Remote as the postulate seemed when enunciated by me, every discovery and every day will bring us nearer to that truth. Such customs do not commence just where we first meet with them in history; nor were they established in Egypt in the sense of being imported or adopted by a civilised people. They are simply survivals from the Inner African birth-place. Neither did such customs arise from a primitive order of chivalry being established for the worship of womankind. Woman was the first known parent, and her priority in mythology and sociology was the natural result. As bringer-forth she was the cow of human kind, and the chivalry was doubtless somewhat akin to that of the bulls, rams, and stags, fighting for the finest females in the herd. Female supremacy was sexual at first but the precedence is afterwards registered in statutory laws. Diodorus had already told us that the Queen of Egypt held a loftier position theoretically if not practically than the Pharaoh himself; the Ra being a far later institution.2 The Emperor of China is not yet exempted from performing the Kotou in presence of his mother.

1 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 19.

2 Vide Chrestomathie Demotique, par E. Revillout.