Art Magic

Character, destiny, physical form and external appearances of all kinds were determined principally by astral as well as solar influences.

Again it was argued that laws stern and immutable, principles strict and unvarying, must underlie a scheme in which millions of worlds are the actors, yet the whole drama is conducted in the most unbroken system of harmony and power. To arrive at any just idea of causation, it was believed that well defined mathematical quantities and geometrical proportions must be the underlying principles of this stupendous chain of being, all moving, living, and acting severally and singly in the most unbroken power and perfection.

Every sound in the universe must conform to the harmonic rule, every shade of color must combine to produce the totality of pure white light. Every creature must be a definite part, everything an organ belonging to the vast whole. Fanciful methods of interpreting this gigantic scheme by the laws of correspondence must ever remain fanciful, unless the keystone was found which should combine all the separated parts of the grand Temple of humanity by one mighty arch. This fair white stone would be neither oval nor square, yet its perfection would delight all eyes, its beauty excite the wonder of all beholders. In all mystic proportions would be found the square, the triangle, the circle and the line. In its combinations would be expressed the truths of Astronomy, or the science of Astral worlds; Astrology, or the science which connects the sum of worlds with the units, and teaches how the mass influences and disposes of the integral parts; Mathematics, or the science which assignes to each world its number, to each component part its unit, and finds in the whole sum the just relations which each unit sustains to the other, and to the whole. Fourthly and last is the science of Geometry, by which the universe is mapped out in lines, angles, squares and circles, in which all the component parts are arranged in just relations to each other, and united together in the grand circle of Infinity.

Let not our readers regard these words as meaningless, or deem them the mere rhapsody of a transcendental writer:

"The stone that the builders reject becomes the head of the corner."

For ages the great Pyramid has been this rejected stone.

The world has not known it, and the builders of science have thrown it away amidst the rubbish of speculative possibilities.

Long has it waited for recognition, and we deem we do not claim too much for it when we prophesy it will yet be read and understood, and take its place as the keystone in the lost art, which interprets the grand science of being as a Masonic Lodge. All creation, the Universe itself, is the Lodge of the Divine Mason, in which all the principles of science are found, from the smallest atom to an Astral system. All are arranged in the exact order of pure mathematics and geometry, and the great Pyramid was built to represent this sublime truth, to celebrate its mysteries and perpetuate its meaning from generation to generation.

We shall now present to the reader a few excerpts from various authoritative writers, whose opinions will strengthen the theory vaguely intimated above.

Bishop Russell, of St. John's College, Oxford, England - advancing the very just and reasonable hypothesis that the great Pyramid of Cheops was not built by a descendant of the ancient Egyptian dynasty, but rather by one who was determined to illustrate in its erection ideas imported from a still older and more advanced civilization - says in his fine treatise on "Ancient Egyptian Monuments:"

"It is manifest at first sight that the dynasty of princes to whom these stupendous works are ascribed were foreigners, and also that they professed a religion hostile to the animal worship of the Egyptians, for it is recorded by the historian (Herodotus) with emphatic distinctness, that during the whole period of their domination, the temples were shut, sacrifices prohibited, and the people subjected to every species of calamity and oppression. hence it follows that the date of the pyramids must synchronize with the epoch of the Shepherd Kings, those monarchs who were held as an abomination by the Egyptians, and who, we may confidently assert, occupied the throne of the Pharoahs during a part of the interval which elapsed between the birth of Abraham and the captivity of Joseph. The reasoning now advanced will receive additional confirmation when we consider that buildings of the pyramidal order were not uncommon amongst the nations of the East......At the present day there are pyramids in India, and more especially at Benares......An edifice of the same kind has been observed at Medun, in Egypt, constructed in different stories or platforms, diminishing in size as they rise in height until they terminate in a point the exact pattern of which was supplied by the followers of Buddha in the plan of their ancient pyramids, as these have been described by European travelers, on the banks of the Ganges and the Indus."

The author of this work has himself visited and examined these Hindoo structures, taking part in the rites of initiation still practiced in their ancient crypts, and that after a fashion, which clearly indicates that the great Pyramid of Cheops was designed upon the same model and for the same purpose. Bishop Russell adds:

"Such too, is understood to have been the form of the Tower of Babel, the object of which may have been to celebrate the mysteries of Sabaism (the astronomical religion), the purest superstition of the untaught mind. Mr. Wilford informs us that on his describing the great Pyramid to several very learned Brahmins they declared it at once to have been a Temple, and one of them asked if it had not a communication with the River Nile. When answered that such a passage was said to have existed, and that a well was to be seen to this day, they unanimously agreed that it was a place appropriated to the worship of Padma Devi, and that the supposed tomb was a trough, which on certain festivals, her priests used to fill with water and the sacred lotus flowers.

"The most probable opinion respecting the object of this vast edifice is, that it combines the double use of the sepulchre and the temple, nothing being more common in all nations than to bury distinguished personages in places consecrated to the rites of worship. If Cheops intended it only for his tomb, what occasion was there for a well at the bottom, the lower chamber with a large niche in its eastern wall, the long narrow cavities in the sides of the large upper room, encrusted over with the finest marble, or for the ante-chambers and lofty gallery with benches on each side that introduce us into it? As the whole of Egyptian Theology was clothed in mysterious emblems and figures, it seems reasonable to suppose that ll these turnings, apartments and secrets in architecture were intended for some nobler purpose, for the catacombs are plain, vaulted chambers hewn out of the natural rock - and that the Deity rather, which was typified in the outward form of this pile, was to be worshipped within."

Always desirous of presenting the views of such writers as may prove more acceptable to our readers as authority than ourselves, we propose to render our own opinion on this recondite subject in another quotation from a curious little work put forth by an erudite American gentleman by the name of Stewart, on the subject of Solar worship. This author says:

"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 mean, 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 by the name of the Pyramids, which the Egyptians raised to the star which gives us light. One of thse has its four sides facing the cardinal points of the world. Each of these fronts is one hundred and ten 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 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 celebrated the revival of nature, the sun would cease to cast a shadow 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 minutes; this would happen twice a year - once before the spring, and once after the fall equinox. The sun would then appear exactly at mid-day upon the summit of this pyramid; then his majestic disk 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 that was 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 attain her supremacy in our hemisphere - that is, 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, Orus, who had at length conquered the genius of darkness and winter. What a sublime idea!"

That this great Pyramid was built by those who transcended the ancient Egyptians in sacerdotal arts, sublimity of conception, and the knowledge of the exact sciences, none can question. That it was designed for a Temple as well as a tomb, all true Initiates of Oriental mysticism will affirm. Its external form is the purest example of mathematical rule and geometrical proportion in the world. The perfect square is obtained at its base; perfect triangles at each corner, and a perfect circle, when it becomes, as it was designed to be, the semi-annual pedestal of the Sun and Moon.

According to the hypothesis of Prof. Piazza Smythe, the object of this great Pyramid was to convert it into a granary in time of famine, and a storehouse for the preservation of treasures in the event of a general inundation, or other national calamity. Others imagine it to have been simply designed as the tomb of its founder, Cheops, and a monument to his memory. These and other opinions concerning its destined uses are supported with more or less plausibility. Prof. Smythe, the chief supporter of the first named hypothesis, triumphantly pointing to his wonderfully adjusted scales of measurement, and actually proving - at least to his own satisfaction - that the huge porphyritic coffer, found in the great upper chamber, lidless, open, empty, was designed for an universal standard of measurement, and that its division into certain nicely calculated parts, will coincide with the standard of dry measure now in common use throughout Europe and America! A better understanding of the profound heights of metaphysical speculation in which the Oriental mind employed itself would have shown the learned Edinburgh Professor that this vast edifice was designed as a sky and earth meter, not a mere standard by which farmers and market women could adjust their bargains during centuries after the great founder had ascended to his place of recompense and rest, 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 inquire of him by night, saying: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again ....

Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

Jesus answered and sid unto him, Art thou a Master in Israel and knowest not these things?

We might ask the same question of the learned Professors, but the succession of ideas revealing the sublime metaphysics of being, transmitted from God through nature to his first Priests, the ancient Priests of the Aryan tribes, from them to the Hindoos, on to the Egyptians, forward through Moses to the Hebrews, the "Masters in Israel," and chief of them all, to the Essences, of whom Jesus of Nazareth was the best type - these items of pure metaphysics, form no part of the learning of great Edinburgh professors, and so the huge sarcophagus of the might Temple of Cheops, in which Initiates were designed to by typically born again of water and of the Spirit, became a corn measurer in the eyes of the great British mathematician! When an angel spoke at the baptism of jesus, the by-standers said, "it thundered." Such by-standers are not all dead yet.

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 of "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 Hindoo worship, and those which re-appear 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 Hindoo metaphysicians, as the mode in which God worked.

The external of this gorgeous edifice was the symbolism of the world; built upon the purest principles of Astronomy, Astrology, Mathematics and Geometry.

The interior was a Temple designed to teach and illustrate those sciences, and as the soul of man was regarded as an emanation direct from Deity, so its progress through matter - its fall from spiritual purity to an alliance with gross matter - its transmigration through various forms for the purposes of probation and purification, its ultimate birth into manhood and - provided the animal prevailed in its nature - its descent again into animal forms, and provided the spiritual prevailed, its new birth and final transformation into a pure spiritual existence; these were the stages of the gorgeous drama which the Temples were built to display, and chiefest of all was the great Temple of Cheops, which by profound and correct astronomical calculations, the founders designed should be the physical centre of the world, so they also metaphysically designed it to be the great centre of all those sublime teachings which, in the form of sublime teachings which, in the form of mysteries too profound for the vulgar mind, they, the ancients organized into Free Masonry.

The base of this great building occupies something over thirteen acres of land. Its base line is 764 feet, and its vertical height 480. Descriptions of its bewildering passages, noble halls, chambers, galleries, sunken shafts, ending in secret crypts, blocked up by fallen stones and accumulations of sand, the descending passages invariably found leading to all sepulchral edifices, the ascending galleries and noble chambers which forbid the idea of its being a monument of death alone, its empty, lidless sarcophagus without any signs of attachment, whereby a lid could ever have been used, and the perfect absence in the upper chamber of all inscriptions which could declare the secrets of the rites performed within it, all speak in trumpet tones to the true and instructed masters in Israel, of the design and scope of this wonderful building and its actual nature as a veritable Lodge of Ancient Free Masonry.

We must add, that this dumb but most eloquent structure is full of revelation to the true mystic. its base is the perfect square which symbolizes in its four corners the sacred number 4, the union of the masculine and feminine principles. Its corners are the perfect triangle, the symbol so esteemed throughout the East as the masculine emblem, and significant of the mystic number 3. Its apex represents the Phallus, the sign ever deemed throughout the East the symbol of Deity, or the creative principle. The descent of the sun upon its apex at the two solemn epochs of the year, which signify life eternal, and death through the ever-constant adverse principle of evil, complete the series of allegorical ideas which this building was designed to celebrate.

The different stages of the mysteries celebrated within its crypts, tortuous passages, large halls and grand chambers, would not now avail to related, even if we did not feel bound in honorable promise to suppress them. But their spirit belongs to humanity. They are found in the grand law of universal correspondence - correspondence which makes Geometry the plan, and Mathematics the sum of all things that be; that knits up color and sound, form and function, matter and spirit, heaven and earth, man and his Creator, each planet with his solar system, and the solar system with the universe, in one stupendous scheme of harmony - harmony in which, a number, a sign, a color, a tone or a word will express the whole. The number is one - the color, white - the sound, the pure octave - the word, all the synonyms which relate to God - the sciences, Astronomy, Astrology, Mathematics, Geometry - the parts, Infinity, the sum, Eternity. Fragments of this sublime philosophy have been obtained by all the capable minds who resorted to the Egyptian Priests for information concerning their occult wisdom. Parts of it are to be found in all the different philosophical systems of the Greeks and Romans, the Cabalism of the Jews, the mysticism of the mediaeval sects called Alchemists and Rosicrucians; the fullness of Ancient Masonry, and the effete exoteric puerilities of modern Free Masonry; the figure which typifies the perfection of this system in geometrical proportion is often passed by unnoticed in Egyptian monuments.

The world is spoken with cold, lifeless, unsanctified lips, and has no efect on the unresponsive air.

The magnificent unison that strikes from the lowest to the highest depths, including all the tones of Creation, sounds in vain in the harmony of choiring worlds upon ears that are dulled to every tone save the clink of money, the emblem of all materialism; but amidst this eclipse of the true faith - this total darkness on the subject of the scientific religion, and the religion of science, the grand old Pyramid of Cheops stands grimly mute - eloquently speechless, waiting for the hour when the builders of the new Temple of divine humanity, missing the keynote of the arch, which is neither oblong or square, shall search amid the rubbish of antiquity, and finding the stone that the builders rejected, place it as the keystone in the arch by which the heavens overshadow the earth, and constitute the universe the Divine Lodge of the Master Builder, God.

There is yet another fragment of metaphysical history to be given ere we feel free to close this section.

The Sun God, to whose honor this temple is dedicated, once in every year dies, and descends into the deepest portions of the earth.

So does death linger in the lowest crypts, in the ashes of the earthly founder of the building. The intricate passages, the narrow, rough and rugged paths, and the final openings into the great Temple Hall were only so many practical types of the Soul's progress to that of the Sun God through the constellated Zodiac of the skies. In the great Hall to which he at length arrives, the Neophyte was instructed in the last great lesson of life and eath. Slain by violence and laid in the coffer, with him is destroyed the Master's word on which the building of the Great Temple depends.

The aroma of death directs the searchers to the spot where he lies.

On the five points of human fellowship, he is raised to life again and elevated to the still higher degree of life eternal. Born again! - now he becomes the key-stone and is placed in the royal arch which completes the building of the Divine Temple. There the Sun of Heaven sits triumphant on the apex of the Pyramid -- the Pyramid which in itself is a symbol of generative life.

This temple was the work of those who lived 5,000 years ago. Its date is no uncertainty. Names and inscriptions ahve been found which justify this opinion inferred both by Manetho and Herodotus. The rites celebrated in this grand old fane at least 2,500 years ago, are not quite forgotten yet, nor are the principles upon which they were practices, blotted out. The moving phantasmagoria which which constituted the glory of ancient Egypt has disappeared from the scene, perhaps never again to be replaced, certainly never by a band of actors as sublimely perfect in the highest realms of life's melodramatic art as those who figured in the great Epic of antique Egypt's palmy splendors.

To-day tribes of wandering Arabs scarcely banded together, not ruled by some poor Sheik, who will perform magic for the value of a few English Shillings, or a set of Dervishes who will dance, whirl, howl, or throw themselves into epileptic trances, for a few dollars, represent the chief of what was once so wise, powerful, far-seeing, and sublime, in Egyptian Spiritism.

Notwithstanding this picture of external degradation, the spirit of ancient Egypt, filtered through the epics of classic Greece and the memories of stately Rome, still lives, still animates the earnest student and the patient scholar to fresh research in the letter of the dead Orient, and fresh discovery in the hidden meaning of its immortal Soul. The day will come when the magic of the ancients will be the Science of the moderns, and in that morning light of revelation the Great Pyramid of Cheops will be known for what it really is, the alphabet which spells out the signification of the Divine Drama of existence.