The Origin And References Of The Hermesian Spurious Freemasonry.

and legs , veiled , & c . Plutarch says that it was placed before temples to show the sacredness of the mysteries . * But when the hawk occurred with a human face , it signified "the soul with hands and wings , "t or " the soul in the sun , or the great spirit

manifested in the abime of the heaven . " j A curious instance of a winged figure with a human head , which is found on one of the monuments of Egypt , has been described by Champollion , in a letter to the Duke of Blacas , as existing in the Museum

at Turin . He thinks it a memorial of the daughter of Pharaoh , who adopted Moses as her son . And in a plate of an Egyptian obelisk found among the papers of the late Mr . Taylor , the Platonist , and engraven in " Eraser ' s Magazine" § we find a hawk

, with a human head . The instances of this practice are , however , of rare occurrence . The Greeks represented their deities in the human form , attended b y the animal which constituted the acknowledged symbol of their respective attributes . Thus Jupiter

was accompanied by ail eagle , Minerva by an owl , Juno by a peacock , Venus by a dove , Dionysus by a bull , Cybele bv a lion , & e . ; but in Egypt the head of the symbol was generally placed upon the body of a man , and thus the deities in the Egyptian Pantheon were easil y distinguished from each other .

Sometimes the figure was altogether human , and identified by appropriate symbols . Thus Cneph was represented as a man crowned with magnificent plumes of feathers , with a girdle and a sceptre , and extruding from his mouth an egg . The

plumes denoted his invisibility , his omnipresence , and spiritual power . The egg was the world , of which he is thus proclaimed to be the creator , produced by the breath , or in other words , the spirit of his mouth . "The doctrine taught in the

Pimander is not at variance with that attributed to the Egyptians by Porphyry . Cneph , the Demiourgos , the great O plfexverum , was considered , as we learn from Plutarch , as an unbegotten and immortal being . This then was the intellectual spirit which produced the world , and which gave

form and order to the shapeless mass . This was the spirit of God which moved on the face of the waters . " * Sometimes Cneph was depicted as a serpent with a hawk ' s head , and it is remarkable that although the hawk was

considered the representative of other deities besides Cneph , its head attire denoted the particular deity whom it represented . Thus if it had upon its head nothing , it signified Orus ; if the pschent , it represented Harsiesi ; if with a complicated

plume of feathers in a peculiar form , it was the emblem of Phtah ; if with the disc of the sun , Rhe , & c . Under the above appearance it was feigned that when Cneph opened his eyes the world was illuminated by light , and when he closed them it was

involved in impenetrable darkness . f But all their numerous male divinities were resolvable into the sun , and all the female ones into the moon ; aud even these latter were sometimes identified with the former . In Egypt Cneph , or Amon , is the sun or the divine word . He enters the golden circle of the year in the sign

Aries ; and having obtained a victory over the darkness in his progress through the lower hemisphere , he emerges forth in li ght and brightness to invigorate Nature and bring the fruits of the earth to perfection . He is sometimes painted with a ram ' s

head and a deep blue colour . The polyonomy of the heathen deities was one of the artifices of the priesthood to veil their mysteries from the penetration o ( the vulgar . " H the several histories of the principal deities , revered by the most

ancient nations , be considered , we shall find them at once allusive to the Sabian idolatry and to the catastrophe of the Deluge . Thus the account which is given of Osiris and Isis , if taken in one point of view , directs our attention to the sun and the moon ;

but if in another , it places immediately before our eyes the great patriarch and the vessel in which he was preserved . Accordingly we learn from Plutarch that Osiris was a husbandman , a legislator , and a zealous advocate for the worship of the gods ; that Typhou , or the sea , conspired against him , and compelled him to enter into an ark , and that this event took place