Page 77 (part 4)

And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults. This will be demonstrated in the following Section. Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in "whose image he is made"; the third, from this second -- an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the 6th and 7th pairs of the male-female AEons, --Amphian-Essumene, and Vannanin-Lamer (Father and Mother; vide Valentinian Table, in Epiphanius) -- while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean monster. The latter -- a post-Christian fancy -- is the degraded copy of the ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the "Good One," or "He, who created before anything existed ," the Celestial Priapus -- truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodaemon, the Gnostic Saviour, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract creative Power, but symbolizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the five branches cut off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands in the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root-Races was recorded in the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which five were framed in a panel in the Initiation halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it was a hand with five fingers spread, the fifth or little finger being only half-grown, and also five " N 's" -- hieroglyphs standing for that letter. The Romans used the five vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this archaic symbol was adopted during the middle ages as a motto by the House of the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria! ---------