"24th Degree - Prince of the Tabernacle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)
The Candlestick represented the twelve signs through which the Seven Planets run their courses; and the seven lights, those planets; the veils, of four colors, the four elements; the tunic of the High Priest, the earth; the Hyacinth, nearly blue, the Heavens; the aphid, of four colors, the whole of nature; the gold, Light; the breast-plate, in the middle, this earth in the center of the world; the two Sardonyxes, used as clasps, the Sun and Moon; and the twelve precious stones of the breast-plate arranged by threes, like the Seasons, the twelve months, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Even the loaves were arranged in two groups of six, like the zodiacal signs above and below the Equator, Clement, the learned Bishop of Alexandria and Philo, adopt all these
explanations.
Hermes calls the Zodiac, the Grent Tent, Tabernaculum. In the Royal Arch Degree of the American Rite, the Tabernacle has four veils, of different colors, to each of which. Belongs a banner. the colors of the four are White, Blue, Crimson, and Purple, and the banners bear the images of the Bull, the Lion, the Man, ant the Eagle, the Constellations answering 2500 years before our era to the Equinoctial and Solstitial points to which belong four stars, aldebaran, Regulus, Fomalhaut, and Antares. At each of these veils there are three words : and to each division of the Zodiac, belonging to each of these Stars, are three Signs. The four signs,
Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, were termed the fixed signs, and are appropriately assigned to the four veils.
So the Cherubim, according to Clement and Philo, represented the two hemispheres; their wings, the rapid course of the firmament, and of time which revolves in the Zodiac. "For the Heavens fly" says Philo, speaking of the wings of the Cherubim which were winged representations of the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, and the Man; of two of which, the human-headed, winged bulls and lions, so many have been found at Nimrod; adopted as beneficent symbols, when the Sun entered Taurus at the Vernal Equinox and Leo at the Summer
Solstice and when also, he entered Scorpio, far which, on account of its malignant influences, Aquila, the eagle was substituted, at the autumnal equinox; and Aquarius (the water-bearer) at the Winter Solstice.
So, Clement says, the candlestick with seven branches represented the seven planets, like which the seven branches were arranged and regulated, preserving that musical proportion and system of harmony of which the sun was the centre and connection. They were arranged, says Philo, by threes, like the planets above and those below the sun; between which two groups was the branch that represented him, the mediator or moderator of the celestial harmony. He is, in
fact, the fourth in the musical scale, as Philo remarks, and Martianus Capella in his hymn to the Sun.
Near the candlestick were other emblems representing the heavens, earth and the vegetative matter out of whose bosom the vapors arise. The whole temple was an abridged image of the world. There were candlesticks with four branches, symbols of the elements and the seasons; with twelve, symbols of the signs; and even with three hundred and sixty, the number of days in the year, without the supplementary days. Imitating the famous Temple of Tyre, where were the great columns consecrated to the winds and fire, the Tyrian artist placed two columns of bronze at the entrance of the porch of the temple. The hemispherical brazen sea, supported by four groups of bulls, of three each, looking to the four cardinal points of the compass, represented the bull of the Vernal Equinox, and at Tyre were consecrated to Astarte; to whom Hiram, Josephus says, had built a temple, and who wore on her head a helmet bearing the image of a bull. And the throne of Solomon, with bulls adopting its arms, and supported on
lions, like those of Horus in Egypt and of the Sun at Tyre; likewise referred to the Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice. Those who in Thrice adored the sun, under the name of Saba Zeus, the Grecian Bacchus, blinded to him, says Macrobius, a temple on Mount Zelmisso, its round form representing the world and the sun. A circular aperture in the roof admitted the light, and introduced the image of the sun into the body of the sanctuary, where he seemed to blaze as in the heights of Heaven, and to dissipate the darkness within that temple which was a representation symbol of the world. There the passion, death, and resurrection of Bacchus were represented.
So the Temple of Eleusis was lighted by a window in the roof. The sanctuary so lighted, Dion compares to the Universe, from which he says it differed in size alone; and in it the great lights of nature played a great part and were myopically represented. The images of the Sun, Moon, and Mercury were represented there, (the latter the same as Anubis who accompanied Isis); and they are still the three lights of a Masonic Lodge; except that for Mercury, the Master of the Lodge has been absurdly substituted.
Eusebius names as the principal Ministers in the Mysteries of Eleusis, first, the Hierophant, clothed with the attributes of the Grand Architect (Demiourgos) of the Universe. After him came the Dadoukos, or torch-bearer, representative of the Sun then the altar-bearer, representing the Moon: and last, the Hieroceryx, bearing the caduceus, and representing Mercury. It was not permissible to reveal the different emblems and the mysterious pageantry of
initiation to the Profane; and therefore we do not know the attributes, emblems, and ornaments of these and other officers of which Apuleius and Pausanias dared not speak.
We know only that everything recounted there was marvelous; everything done there tended to astonish the Initiate: and that eyes and ears were equally astounded. The Hierophant, of lofty height, and noble features, with long hair, of a great age, grave and dignified, with a voice sweet and sonorous, sat upon a throne, clad in a long trailing robe; as the Motive-God of Nature was held to be enveloped in His work and hidden under a veil which no mortal can raise. Even his name was concealed, like that of the Demiourgos, whose name was ineffable.
The Dadoukos also wore a long robe, his hair long and a bandeau on his forehead. Callias, when holding that office, fighting on the great day of Marathon, clothed with the insignia of his office, was taken by the Barbarians to be a King. The Dadoukos led the procession of the Initiates, and was charged with the purification.
The same offsets are found in the procession of Initiates of Isis, described by Apuleius. All clad in robes of white linen, drawn tight across the breast, and close-fitting down to the very feet, came, first, one bearing a lamp in the shape of a boat; second, one carrying an altar; and third, one carrying a golden palm-tree and the caduceus. These are ihe same as the three officers at
Eleusis, after the Hierophant. Then one carrying an open hand, and pouring milk on the ground from a golden vessel in the shape of a woman's breast. The hand was that of justice: and the milk alluded to the Galaxy or Milky Way, along which souls descended and remounted. Two others followed, one bearing a winnowing fan, and the other a water-vase; symbols of the purification of souls by air and water; and the third purification, by earth, was represented by animage of the animal that cultivates it, the cow or ox, borne by another officer.
Then followed a chest or ark, magnificently ornamented, containing an image of the organs of generation of Osiris, or perhaps of both sexes; emblems of the original generating and producing Powers. When Typhon, said the Egyptian fable, cut up the body of Osiris into pieces, he flung his genitals into the Nile, where a fish devoured them. Atys mutilated himself, as his Priests afterward did in imitation of him; and Adonis was in that part of his body wounded by the
boar: all of which represented the loss by the Sun of his vivifying and generative power, when he reached the Autumnal Equinox (the Scorpion that on old monuments bites those parts of the Vernal Bull), and descended toward the region of darkness and Winter.
Then, says Apuleius, came "one who carried in his bosom an object that rejoiced the heart of the bearer, a venerable effigy of the Supreme Deity, neither bearing resemblance to man, cattle, bird, beast, or any living creature an exquisite invention, venerable from the novel originality of the fashioning; a wonderful, ineffable symbol of religious mysteries, to be looked
upon in profound silence. Such as it was, its figure was that of a small urn of burnished gold, hollowed very, artistically, rounded at the bottom, and covered all over the outside with the wonderful hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. The spout was not elevated, but extended laterally, projecting like a long rivulet; while on the opposite side was the handle, which, with similar lateral extension, bore on its summit an asp, curling its body into folds and stretching upward, its wrinkled, scaly, swollen throat."
The salient basilisk or royal ensign of the Pharaohs, often occurs on the monuments-a serpent in folds, with his head raised erect above the folds. The basilisk was the Phoenix of the serpent-tribe and the vase or urn was probably the vessel, shaped like a cucumber, with a projecting spout, out of which, on the monuments of Egypt, the priests are represented pouring streams of the Cruz ansasta or Tau Cross, and of scepters, over the kings.
In the Mysteries of Mithras, a sacred cave, representing the whole arrangement of the world, was used for the reception of the Initiates. Zoroaster, says Eubulus, first introduced this custom of consecrating caves. They were also consecrated, in Crete, to Jupiter; in Arcadia, to, the Moon and Pan and in the Island of Naxos, to Bacchus. The Persians, in the cave where the Mysteries of Mithras were celebrated, fixed the seat of that God, Father of Generation, or
Demiourgos, near the equinoctial point of Spring, with the Northern portion of the world on his right, and the Southern on his left.
Mithras, says Porphyry, presided over the Equinoxes, seated on a Bull the symbolical animal of the Demiourgos, and bearing a sword. The equinoxes were the gates through which souls passed to and fro, between the hemisphere of light and that of darkness. The milky way was also represented, passing near each of these gates and it was, in the old theology, termed the pathway of souls. It is, according to Pythagoras, vast troops of souls that form that luminous belt. The route followed by souls, according to Porphyry, or rather their progressive march in the world, lying through the fixed stars and planets, the Mithriac cave not only displayed the zodiacal and other constellations, and marked gates at the four equinoctial and Solstitial points of the zodiac, whereat souls enter into and escape from the world of generational and through which they pass to and fro between the realms of light and darkness; but it represented the seven planetary spheres which they needs must traverse, in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth and seven gates were marked, one for each planet,
through which they pass, in descending or returning.
We learn this from Celsus in Origen; who says that the symbolical image of this passage among the stars, used in the Mithriac Mysteries, was a ladder, reaching from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or stages, to each of which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth, that of the fixed stars. The first gate, says Celsus, was that of Saturn, and of lead, by the heavy nature
whereof his dull slow progress was symbolized. The second, of tin, was that of Venus, symbolizing her soft splendor and easy flexibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity.
The fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon and the seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order, of these Planet's but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and retrograding to Sunday. It was dictated, Celsus says, by certain harmonic relations, those of the fourth.
Thus there was an intimate connection between the Sacred Science of the Mysteries, and ancient astronomy and physics; and the grand spectacle of the Sanctuaries was that of the order of the renown Universe, or the spectacle of Nature itself, surrounding the soul of the Initiate, as it surrounded it when it first descended through the planetary gates, and by the equinoctial and
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