Magic in Egypt
The immense prestige acquired by ancient Egypt for unapproachable excellence in every department of art and science, has invested the name and history of this land with a reputation for magical wisdom which raises expectation to the very highest pitch. A general impression seems to prevail moreover, that Egyptian monuments, incomprehensible hieroglyphics. and buried crypts conceal treasure of magical lore unknown to other nationals and inaccessible to modern research. But assuming, as there is good reason to do so, that Hindostan preceded Egypt in the dynastic order of ancient civilization, India surviving, although Egypt is no more, still preserves the originals of those splendid myths which become the undertones of Egyptian sacerdotal science. And again, how many of the wisest and most philosophic minds of Greece visited the Egyptian priests, sat at their feet, and carried from thence those systems of esoteric knowledge which became the corner-stones of Grecian mysteries? Those mysteries are such to us no longer, and we lose nothing of Egyptian wisdom because we find it filtered through Greek philosophy. Neither must we forget that the founders of the Jewish nation were residents in Egypt during some portion at least of her most triumphant periods of civilization, and when this captive people were led forth my Moses, he carried with him as much of the far-famed wisdom of the Egyptians as a well instructed Hierophant could obtain.
Believing, as the best authenticated fragments of history would imply, that this same Moses claimed by the Jewish people as their own countryman was in reality an Egyptian priest, and an Adept of the famous school of Heliopolis, we marvel not to find every item of Jewish religious worship stamped with Egyptian characteristics; hence, too, we see little ground for the general belief that Egypt conserved within herself sacerdotal mysteries utterly unknown to contemporary nations of antiquity, or that those elements of mystic wisdom for which she became so famous, perished with her, and have been lost in the night of her antiquity. We believe that the veil of Isis concealed the mysteries of nature only from the vulgar who were unable to comprehend them, whilst the wisdom so hermetically sealed against all but the Initiates were preserved in the sum of Grecian philosophy, which is itself by no means inaccessible to the student of the nineteenth century.
As to the ornaments of which the Hebrews spoiled the Egyptians on the eve of their exodus, they are perfectly well understood to signify in Cabalistic language, the external rites and ceremonies of their religious worship. And all these are as fully revealed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and the Book of Revelations, as they were, when breathed into the ears of trembling Neophytes by the Hierophants of Egypt,. Whilst therefore, we may admire, wonder, philosophize, and crown the land of the Nile with a mastery over arts and sciences unknown in any other country or time, whilst we gaze on her stupendous ruins with an awe and wonder that almost revives the belief that, the sons of God did take them wives of the daughters of men, and in those days there were giants; still, we cannot admit that the genius of great Egypt has perished, or that her understanding of nature's most occult laws lays buried in secret crypts of veiled hieroglyphics, forever remaining the unsolved problems of history.