These four "animals" may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments where the portraits of the evangelists are given.
They are the animals of Ezekiel's Mercabah.
As truly stated by Ragon, "the ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas and symbols of their religious philosophies, that these symbols can be fully explained only by the combination and knowledge of all the keys." They can be only approximately interpreted, even if one finds out three out of these seven systems: the anthropological , the psychic , and the astronomical.
The two chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest, the spiritual and the physiological, they preserved in the greatest secrecy until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane.
Thus far, with regard only to the pre-historic Hierophants, with whom that which has now become purely (or impurely) phallic, was a science as profound and as mysterious as biology and physiology are now.
This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their studies and discoveries.
The other two were those which dealt with the creative gods (theogony), and with creative man, i.e.
, the ideal and the practical mysteries.
These interpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those who, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in understanding the significance of the others, and could never unriddle them sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions.
The highest, the first and the fourth -- theogony in relation to anthropogony -- were almost impossible to fathom.
We find the proofs of this in the Jewish "Holy Writ." It is owing to the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol of wisdom and an emblem of the Logoi, or the self-born.
In the temple of Philoe in Upper Egypt, an egg was artificially prepared of clay made of [[Vol.
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various incenses, and it was made to hatch by a peculiar process, when a cerastes (the horned viper) was born.
The same was done in antiquity for the cobra in the Indian temples.
The creative God emerges from the egg that issues from the mouth of Kneph -- as a winged serpent -- because the Serpent is the symbol of the All-wisdom.
With the Hebrews he is glyphed by the "flying or fiery serpents" of the Wilderness and Moses, and with the Alexandrian mystics he becomes the Ophio-Christos, the Logos of the Gnostics.
The Protestants try to show that the allegory of the Brazen Serpent and of the "fiery serpents" has a direct reference to the mystery of Christ and Crucifixion*; but it has a far nearer relation, in truth, to the mystery of generation , when dissociated from the egg with the central germ, or the circle with its central point.
The brazen Serpent had no such holy meaning as that; nor was it, in fact, glorified above the " fiery serpents " for the bite of which it was only a natural remedy.
The symbological meaning of the word "brazen" being the feminine principle, and that of fiery, or "gold," the male one.** In the Book of the Dead , as just shown, reference is often made to the Egg.
Ra, the mighty one, remains in his Egg, during the struggle between the "children of the rebellion" and Shoo (the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness) (ch.
xvii.).
The deceased is resplendent in his [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * And this only because the brazen serpent was lifted on a pole!
It had rather a reference to Mico the Egyptian egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg and the Serpent are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of Egypt, and since both the Brazen and "fiery" serpents were Saraphs , the "burning fiery" messengers, or the serpent Gods, the nagas of India.
It was a purely phallic symbol without the egg, while when associated with it -- it related to cosmic creation.
** "Brass was a metal symbolizing the nether world .
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that of the womb where life should be given .
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The word for serpent was in Hebrew Nakash , but this is the same term for brass.
" It is said in Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews complained of the Wilderness where there was no water ( v .
5); after which "the Lord sent fiery serpents" to bite them, when, to oblige Moses, he gives him as a remedy the brazen serpent on a pole to look at; after which "any man when he beheld the serpent of brass .
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lived " (?).
After that the "Lord," gathering the people together at the well of Beer, gives them water, (14-16), and grateful Israel sang this song, "Spring up, O Well," ( v .
17).
When, after studying symbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning of these three symbols -- water , brazen , the serpent , and a few more -- in the sense given to them in the Holy Bible , he will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his Saviour with the "Brazen Serpent" incident.
The Seraphim (fiery winged serpents) are no doubt connected with, and inseparable from, the idea "of the serpent of eternity -- God," as explained in Kenealy's Apocalypse.
But the word cherub also meant serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning is different; because the Cherubim and the Persian winged [[ gruphes ]] "griffins" -- the guardians of the golden mountain -- are the same, and their compound name shows their character, as it is formed of (kr) circle , and "aub," or ob -- serpent -- therefore, a "serpent in a circle." And this settles the phallic character of the Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it.
( See II.
Kings , 18, 4).
Verbum sat.
sapienti.
[[Vol.
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Egg when he crosses to the land of mystery (xxii.
i.).
He is the Egg of Seb (liv.
1-3).
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The Egg was the symbol of life in immortality and eternity; as also the glyph of the generative matrix; and the tau , associated with it, only of life and birth in generation.
The Mundane Egg was placed in Khnoom , the "Water of Space," or the feminine abstract principle (Khnoom becoming, with the fall of mankind into generation and phallicism, Ammon, the creative God); and when Phtah , the "fiery god," carries the Mundane egg in his hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its significance.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage's entire argument rests on the principle that the same symbol (serpent, egg) operates simultaneously at spiritual, physiological, and astronomical levels, making each a legible map of the others.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage is fundamentally a cosmogonic account: 'The creative God emerges from the egg,' the Mundane Egg in Khnoom, theogony in relation to anthropogony, and the mystery of generation as cosmic creation.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The passage describes knowledge that was 'preserved in the greatest secrecy' until it 'fell into the dominion of the profane,' implying a transgressive quality to its disclosure.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The masculine-feminine generative principle is the passage's central structural claim: the brazen/fiery duality, the 'generative matrix,' the phallic character of the serpent, and the egg-as-womb all demonstrate that this principle operates on every plane of being.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage's meta-argument is precisely about esoteric concealment: the Hierophants 'preserved in the greatest secrecy' their interpretations, symbols were 'so cleverly veiled and combined' that discovering one meaning baffled understanding of the others.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The serpent is explicitly identified as 'an emblem of the Logoi, or the self-born' and 'the Logos of the Gnostics,' making the divine ordering principle a key interpretive key for the passage's symbology.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The passage explicitly identifies 'brazen' as the feminine principle and 'fiery/gold' as the male one, presenting them as two poles of the same generative scale whose union produces cosmic creation.
Organized, persisting groups — fraternities, orders, lodges — that maintain esoteric knowledge or practices as an institution distinct from public religion or mainstream society, holding 'the keys' collectively rather than through any one master-disciple pair. Distinct from esoteric_lineage (a genealogical chain of individual transmission, not an institution) and hidden_sayings (the concealment of a teaching's meaning, independent of whether any organized body holds it).
The 'ancient Hierophants' are described as an organized body holding exclusive esoteric knowledge as institutional property, with 'their exclusive property, the fruit of their studies and discoveries.'