Chapter 275

[←262]

To those who would enquire: What has Hydrogen to do with air or oxygenation?—it is answered: Study first the ABC of Occult Alchemy. In their anxiety, however, to identify Pymander, the “mouth of mystery,” with St. John the Baptist prophetically, the Christian Symbologists thus identified also the seven Kabiri and the Assyrian Bulls with the Cherubs of the Jews and the Apostles. Having, moreover, to draw a line of demarcation between the four and the three the latter being the Fallen Angels; and furthermore to avoid connecting these with the “Seven Spirits of the Face,” the Archangels, they unceremoniously threw out all they did not choose to recognize. Hence the perversion in the order of the Elements, in order to make them dovetail with the order of the Gospels, and to identify the Angel-Man with Christ. With the Chaldees, the Egyptians—from whom Moses adopted the Chroub (Cherubs in their animal form)—and the Ophites; with all these, the Angels, the Planets, and the Elements, were symbolized mystically and alchemically by the Lion (Mikael); the Bull (Uriel); the Dragon (Raphael); the Eagle (Gabriel); the Bear (Thot-Sabaoth); the Dog (Era-taoth); the Mule (Uriel or Thantabaoth). All these have a qualificative meaning.