The eye which Odin had to pledge to acquire that knowledge may be "the Sun, which enlightens and penetrates all things; his other eye being the moon, whose reflection gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when setting, sinks into the Ocean." ( Ibid.
) But it is something more, besides this.
Loki, the fire-god, is said to have hidden in the water, as well as in the moon, the light-giver, whose reflection he found therein; and this belief that the fire finds refuge in the water was not limited to the old Scandinavians.
It was shared by all nations and was finally taken up by the early Christians, who symbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, "cloven tongues like as fire" -- the breath of the Father- S UN.
This "Fire" descends also into the Water or the Sea: Mar , Mary.
The dove was the symbol of the Soul with several nations, it was sacred to Venus, the goddess born from the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Quoted in Mr.
G.
Massey's Lecture.
[[Vol.
1, Page]] 403 IDENTITY OF TYPOLOGY.
sea-foam, and it became later the symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi , or the Holy Spirit.
One of the most occult chapters in the "Book of the Dead" is ch.
lxxx., entitled: "To make the transformation into the god giving light to the path of Darkness," wherein "Woman-light of the Shadow" serves Thot in his retreat in the moon.
Thot-Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the representative of the Secret Wisdom.
He is the manifested logos of its light side, the concealed deity or "Dark Wisdom" when he is supposed to retire to the opposite hemisphere.
Speaking of her power, the moon calls herself repeatedly: "The Light which shineth in Darkness," the "Woman-Light." Hence it became the accepted symbol of all the Virgin-Mother goddesses.
As the wicked "evil" spirits warred against the moon in days of yore, so they are supposed to war now, without being able to prevail, however, against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the moon.
Hence also the moon was intimately connected in all the Pagan theogonies with the Dragon, her eternal enemy; the Virgin, or Madonna, standing on the mythical Satan under that form, crushed and made powerless, under her feet.
This, because the head and tail of the Dragon, which represent in Eastern astronomy to this day the ascending and descending nodes of the moon, were also symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents.
Hercules kills them on the day of his birth, and so does the babe in his virgin mother's arms.
As Mr.
Gerald Massey aptly observes in this connection: "All such symbols figured their own facts from the first, and did not pre-figure others of a totally different order.
The Iconography (and dogmas, too) had survived in Rome from a period remotely pre-Christian.
There was neither forgery nor interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of imagery with a perversion of its meaning.
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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 entire passage is structured around demonstrating typological identity across Norse, Egyptian, Greek, and Christian symbol systems, arguing that the same underlying symbols (moon, fire, water, dove, dragon) recur across traditions with 'a continuity of imagery with a perversion of its meaning.'
A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).
Massey's quoted observation that 'Iconography (and dogmas, too) had survived in Rome from a period remotely pre-Christian' with 'a continuity of imagery' frames the passage as tracing an unbroken chain of esoteric symbolism across cultures.
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 moon is explicitly identified as 'Woman-light of the Shadow' and 'the accepted symbol of all the Virgin-Mother goddesses,' with the feminine divine principle (Venus, Mary, the Madonna) structurally central to the passage's argument.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
Thot-Hermes is described as 'the representative of the Secret Wisdom' who hides in the moon, and the passage's whole thesis is that surface-level religious symbols conceal a deeper, shared esoteric meaning ('a perversion of its meaning').
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
Thot-Hermes is explicitly called 'the manifested logos of its light side, the concealed deity or Dark Wisdom when he is supposed to retire to the opposite hemisphere.'
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 repeatedly pairs opposites—sun/moon, fire/water, light/darkness, the 'light side' and 'Dark Wisdom' of the same deity, ascending and descending nodes of the moon—presenting them as two aspects of a single principle.