Cardiff Blavatsky Archive, Wales, UK:- Theosophy Study Resource

THEOSOPHY

H P BLAVATSKY

Cardiff Blavatsky Archive

Cardiff Theosophical Society, 206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 – 1DL.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

1831 - 1891

THE

THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY

H. P. BLAVATSKY

First Published 1892

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C.—The third letter of the English alphabet, which has no equivalent in Hebrew except Caph, which see under K.

Cabar Zio (Gnost.). “The mighty Lord of Splendour” (Codex Nazaraeus), they who procreate seven beneficent lives, “who shine in their own form and light” to counteract the influence of the seven “badly-disposed” stellars or principles. These are the progeny of Karabtanos, the personification of concupiscence and matter. The latter are the seven physical planets, the former, their genii or Rulers.

Cabeiri or Kabiri (Phœn) Deities, held in the highest veneration at Thebes, in Lemnos, Phrygia, Macedonia, and especially at Samothrace. They were mystery gods, no profane having the right to name or speak of them. Herodotus makes of them Fire-gods and points to Vulcan as their father. The Kabiri presided over the Mysteries, and their real number has never been revealed, their occult meaning being very sacred.

Cabletow (Mas.). A Masonic term for a certain object used in the Lodges. Its origin lies in the thread of the Brahman ascetics, a thread which is also used for magical purposes in Tibet.

Cadmus (Gr.). The supposed inventor of the letters of the alphabet. He may have been their originator and teacher in Europe and Asia Minor; but in India the letters were known and used by the Initiates ages before him.

Caduceus (Gr.). The Greek poets and mythologists took the idea of the Caduceus of Mercury from the Egyptians. The Caduceus is found as two serpents twisted round a rod, on Egyptian monuments built before Osiris. The Greeks altered this. We find it again in the hands of Æsculapius assuming a different form to the wand of Mercurius or Hermes. It is a cosmic, sidereal or astronomical, as well as a spiritual and even physiological symbol, its significance changing with its application. Metaphysically, the Caduceus represents the fall of primeval and primordial matter into gross terrestrial matter, the one Reality becoming Illusion. (See Sect.Doct. I. 550.) Astronomically, the head and tail represent the points of the ecliptic where the planets and even the sun and moon meet in close embrace. Physiologically, it is the symbol of the restoration of the equilibrium lost between Life, as a unit, and the currents of life performing various functions in the human body.

Cæsar. A far-famed astrologer and “professor of magic,” i.e., an Occultist, during the reign of Henry IV of France. “He was reputed to have been strangled by the devil in 1611,” as Brother Kenneth Mackenzie tells us.

Cagliostro. A famous Adept, whose real name is claimed (by his enemies) to have been Joseph Balsamo. He was a native of Palermo, and studied under some mysterious foreigner of whom little has been ascertained. His accepted history is too well known to need repetition, and his real history has never been told. His fate was that of every human being who proves that he knows more than do his fellow- creatures; he was “stoned to death” by persecutions, lies, and infamous accusations, and yet he was the friend and adviser of the highest and mightiest of every land he visited. He was finally tried and sentenced in Rome as a heretic, and was said to have died during his confinement in a State prison.
(See “ Mesmer”.) Yet his end was not utterly undeserved, as he had been untrue to his vows in some respects, had fallen from his state of chastity and yielded to ambition and selfishness.

Cain or Kayn (Heb.) In Esoteric symbology he is said to be identical with Jehovah or the “Lord God” of the fourth chapter of Genesis. It is held, moreover, that Abel is not his brother, but his female aspect.
(See Sec.Doct., sub voce.)

Calvary Cross. This form of cross does not date from Christianity. It was known and used for mystical purposes, thousands of years before our era. It formed part and parcel of the various Rituals, in Egypt and Greece, in Babylon and India, as well as in China, Mexico, and Peru. It is a cosmic, as well as a physiological (or phallic) symbol. That it existed among all the “heathen” nations is testified to by Tertullian. “How doth the Athenian Minerva differ from the body of a cross?” he queries. “The origin of your gods is derived from figures moulded on a cross. All those rows of images on your standards are the appendages of crosses; those hangings on your banners are the robes of crosses.” And the fiery champion was right. The tau or T is the most ancient of all forms, and the cross or the tat (q.v.) as ancient. The crux ansata, the cross with a handle, is in the hands of almost every god, including Baal and the Phœnician Astarte. The croix cramponnée is the Indian Swastica. It has been exhumed from the lowest foundations of the ancient site of Troy, and it appears on Etruscan and Chaldean relics of antiquity. As Mrs. Jamieson shows: “The ankh of Egypt was the crutch of St. Anthony and the cross of St. Philip. The Labarum of Constantine . . . was an emblem long before, in Etruria. Osiris had the Labarum for his sign; Horus appears sometimes with the long Latin cross. The Greek pectoral cross is Egyptian. It was called by the Fathers the devil’s invention before Christ . The crux ansata is upon the old coins of Tarsus, as the Maltese upon the breast of an Assyrian king ...The cross of Calvary, so common in Europe, occurs on the breasts of mummies. . . it was suspended round the necks of sacred Serpents in Egypt. . . . Strange Asiatic tribes bringing tribute in Egypt are noticed with garments studded with crosses, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson dates this picture B.C. 1500.” Finally, “Typhon, the Evil One, is chained by a cross”.(Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought).

Campanella, Tomaso. A Calabrese, born in 1568, who, from his childhood exhibited strange powers, and gave himself up during his whole life to the Occult Arts. The story which shows him initiated in his boyhood into the secrets of alchemy and thoroughly instructed in the secret science by a Rabbi-Kabbalist in a fortnight by means of notavicon, is a cock and bull invention. Occult knowledge, even when a heirloom from the preceding birth, does not come back into a new personality within fifteen days. He became an opponent of the Aristotelian materialistic philosophy when at Naples and was obliged to fly for his life. Later, the Inquisition sought to try and condemn him for the practice of magic arts, but its efforts were defeated. During his lifetime he wrote an enormous quantity of magical, astrological and alchemical works, most of which are no longer extant. He is reported to have died in the convent of the Jacobins at Paris on May the 21st, 1639.

Canarese. The language of the Karnatic, originally called Kanara, one of the divisions of South India.

Capricornus (Lat.) The 10th sign of the Zodiac (Makâra in Sanskrit), considered, on account of its hidden meaning, the most important among the constellations of the mysterious Zodiac. it is fully described in the Secret Doctrine, and therefore needs but a few words more. Whether, agreeably with exoteric statements, Capricornus was related in any way to the wet-nurse Amalthæa who fed Jupiter with her milk, or whether it was the god Pan who changed himself into a goat and left his impress upon the sidereal records, matters little. Each of the fables has its significance. Everything in Nature is intimately correlated to the rest, and therefore the students of ancient lore will not be too much surprised when told that even the seven steps taken in the direction of every one of the four points of the compass, or —28 steps—taken by the new-born infant Buddha, are closely related to the 28 stars of the constellation of Capricornus.

Cardan, Jérome. An astrologer, alchemist, kabbalist and mystic, well known in literature. He was born at Pavia in 1501, and died at Rome in 1576.

Carnac. A very ancient site in Brittany (France) of a temple of cyclopean structure, sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; and of the same kind as Karnac, in ancient Egypt, and Stonehenge in England. (See the “Origin of the Satanic Myth” in Archaic Symbolism.) It was built by the prehistoric hierophant-priests of the Solar Dragon, or symbolized Wisdom (the Solar Kumâras who incarnated being the highest). Each of the stones was personally placed there by the successive priest-adepts in power, and commemorated in symbolic language the degree of power, status, and knowledge of each. (See further Secret Doctrine II. 381, et seq., and also “ Karnac”.)

Caste. Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which the Indian population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra (or descendants of Brahmâ, Warriors, Merchants, and the lowest or Agriculturalists). Besides these original four, hundreds have now grown up in India.

Causal Body. This “body”, which is no body either objective or subjective, but Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, “the basis of the Cause”, by the Târaka Raja Yogis; and in the Vedânta system it corresponds to both the Vignânamaya and Anandamaya Kosha, the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the universal Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a “Causal Body ”, but becomes so in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.

Cazotte, Jacques. The wonderful Seer, who predicted the beheading of several royal personages and his own decapitation, at a gay supper some time before the first Revolution in France. He was born at Dijon in 1720, and studied mystic philosophy in the school of Martinez Pasqualis at Lyons. On the 11th of September 1791, he was arrested and condemned to death by the president of the revolutionary government, a man who, shameful to state, had been his fellow-student and a member of the Mystic Lodge of Pasqualis at Lyons. Cazotte was executed on the 25th of September on the Place du Carrousel.

Cecco d’Ascolî. Surnamed “Francesco Stabili.” He lived in the thirteenth century, and was considered the most famous astrologer in his day. A work of his published at Basle in 1485, and called Commentarii in Sphaeram Joannis de Sacrabosco, is still extant. He was burnt alive by the Inquisition in 1327.

Cerberus (Gr., Lat.). Cerberus, the three-headed canine monster, which was supposed to watch at the threshold of Hades, came to the Greeks and Romans from Egypt. It was the monster, half-dog and half-hippopotamus, that guarded the gates of Amenti. The mother of Cerberus was Echidna—a being, half-woman, half-serpent, much honoured in Etruria. Both the Egyptian and the Greek Cerberus are symbols of Kâmaloka and its uncouth monsters, the cast-off shells of mortals.

Ceres (Lat.) In Greek Demeter. As the female aspect of Pater Æther, Jupiter, she is esoterically the productive principle in the all-pervading Spirit that quickens every germ in the material universe.

Chabrat Zereh Aur Bokher (Heb.) An Order of the Rosicrucian stock, whose members study the Kabbalah and Hermetic sciences; it admits both sexes, and has many grades of instruction. The members meet in private, and the very existence of the Order is generally unknown. [ w.w.w.]

Chadâyatana (Sk.). Lit., the six dwellings or gates in man for the reception of sensations; thus, on the physical plane, the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body (or touch) and mind, as a product of the physical brain and on the mental plane (esoterically), spiritual sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and perception, the whole synthesized by the Buddhi-atmic element. Chadâyatana is one of the 12 Nidânas, which form the chain of incessant causation and effect.

Chaitanya (Sk) The founder of a mystical sect in India. A rather modern sage, believed to be an avatar of Krishna.

Chakna-padma-karpo (Tib.) “He who holds the lotus”, used of Chenresi, the Bodhisattva. It is not a genuine Tibetan word, but half Sanskrit.

Chakra (Sk.) A wheel, a disk, or the circle of Vishnu generally. Used also of a cycle of time, and with other meanings.

Chakshub (Sk.) The “eye ”. Loka-chakshub or “the eye of the world” is a title of the Sun.

Chaldean Book of Numbers. A work which contains all that is found in the Zohar of Simeon Ben-Jochai, and much more. It must be the older by many centuries, and in one sense its original, as it contains all the fundamental principles taught in the Jewish Kabbalistic works, but none of their blinds. It is very rare indeed, there being perhaps only two or three copies extant, and these in private hands.

Chaldeans, or Kasdim. At first a tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine” found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.

Chandra (Sk.) The Moon; also a deity. The terms Chandra and Soma are synonyms.

Chandragupta (Sk.) The first Buddhist King in India, the grand-sire of Asoka ; the Sandracottus of the all-bungling Greek writers who went to India in Alexander’s time. (See “Asoka”.)

Chandra-kanta (Sk.) “The moon-stone”, a gem that is claimed to be formed and developed under the moon-beams, which give it occult and magical properties. It has a very cooling influence in fever if applied to both temples.

Chandramanam (Sk.) The method of calculating time by the Moon.

Chandrayana (Sk.) The lunar year chronology.

Chandra-vansa (Sk.) The “Lunar Race”, in contradistinction to Suryavansa, the “Solar Race”. Some Orientalists think it an inconsistency that Krishna, a Chandravansa (of the Yadu branch) should have been declared an Avatar of Vishnu, who is a manifestation of the solar energy in Rig -Veda, a work of unsurpassed authority with the Brahmans. This shows, however, the deep occult meaning of the Avatar ; a meaning which only esoteric philosophy can explain. A glossary is no fit place for such explanations; but it may be useful to remind those who know, and teach those who do not, that in Occultism, man is called a solar-lunar being, solar in his higher triad, and lunar in his quaternary. Moreover, it is the Sun who imparts his light to the Moon, in the same way as the human triad sheds its divine light on the mortal shell of sinful man. Life celestial quickens life terrestrial. Krishna stands metaphysically for the Ego made one with Atma-Buddhi, and performs mystically the same function as the Christos of the Gnostics, both being “the inner god in the temple”—man. Lucifer is “the bright morning star”, a well known symbol in Revelations, and, as a planet, corresponds to the EGO. Now Lucifer (or the planet Venus) is the Sukra-Usanas of the Hindus ; and Usanas is the Daitya-guru, i.e., the spiritual guide and instructor of the Danavas and the Daityas. The latter are the giant-demons in the Purânas, and in the esoteric interpretations, the antetypal symbol of the man of flesh, physical mankind. The Daityas can raise themselves, it is said, through knowledge “austerities and devotion” to “the rank of the gods and of the ABSOLUTE”. All this is very suggestive in the legend of Krishna ; and what is more suggestive still is that just as Krishna, the Avatar of a great God in India, is of time race of Yadu, so is another incarnation, “God incarnate himself”—or the “God-man Christ”, also of the race Iadoo—the name for the Jews all over Asia. Moreover, as his mother, who is represented as Queen of Heaven standing on the crescent, is identified in Gnostic philosophy, and also in the esoteric system, with the Moon herself, like all the other lunar goddesses such as Isis, Diana, Astarte and others—mothers of the Logoi, so Christ is called repeatedly in the Roman Catholic Church, the Sun-Christ, the Christ-Soleil and so on. If the later is a metaphor so also is the earlier.

Chantong (Tib.) “He of the 1,000 Eyes”, a name of Padmapani or Chenresi (Avalokitesvara).

Chaos (Gr.) The Abyss, the “Great Deep”. It was personified in Egypt by the Goddess Neїth, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, “the only God, without form and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under the form of a Virgin Mother”. She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the oldest period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first Dynasty, which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing Orientalists, about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent work on Egyptian belief—“Neїth, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously read !) is a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the Christian era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than that”. And he adds: “ Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet the Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceeded”. Neїth is the
“Father-mother” of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the Northern Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest “Virgin” of all; for, as Sharpe says, “the Feast of Candlemas—in honour of the goddess Neїth— is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary”; and Beauregard tells us of “the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva, the mysterious Neїth, boast of having come from herself, and of having given birth to God”. He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of events, let him read what Neїth was years ago, in the conception of the Egyptian Initiates, trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and then remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when Mary was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the World as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Neїth is Swabhdvat and also the Vedic Aditi and the Purânic Akâsa, for “she is not only the celestial vault, or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit of the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the divine water of life”. Hence she gained the favourite appellation of “Lady of the Sycamore”, an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick). The resemblance becomes still more marked when Neїth is found on old pictures represented as a Mother embracing the ram-headed god, the “Lamb”. An ancient stele declares her to be “Neut, the luminous, who has engendered the gods”—the Sun included, for Aditi is the mother of the Marttanda, the Sun—an Aditya. She is Naus, the celestial ship ; hence we find her on the prow of the Egyptian vessels, like Dido on the prow of the ships of the Phœnician mariners, and forth with we have the Virgin Mary, from Mar, the “Sea”, called the “Virgin of the Sea”, and the “Lady Patroness” of all Roman Catholic seamen. The Rev. Sayce is quoted by Bonwick, explaining her as a principle in the Babylonian Bahu (Chaos, or confusion) i.e., “merely the Chaos of Genesis . . . and perhaps also Môt, the primitive substance that was the mother of all the gods”. Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been in the mind of the learned professor, since he left the following witness in cuneiform language, “I built a temple to the Great Goddess, my Mother”. We may close with the words of Mr. Bonwick with which we thoroughly agree “She (Neїth) is the Zerouâna of the Avesta, ‘time without limits’. She is the Nerfe of the Etruscans, half a woman and half a fish” (whence the connection of the Virgin Mary with the fish and pisces) ; of whom it is said: “From holy good Nerfe the navigation is happy. She is the Bythos of the Gnostics, the One of the Neoplatonists, the All of German metaphysicians, the Anaita of Assyria.”

Charaka (Sk.). A writer on Medicine who lived in Vedic times. He is believed to have been an incarnation (Avatara) of the Serpent Sesha, i.e., an embodiment of divine Wisdom, since Sesha-Naga, the King of the “Serpent” race, is synonymous with Ananta, the seven-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu sleeps during the pralayas. Ananta is the “endless” and the symbol of eternity, and as such, one with Space, while Sesha is only periodical in his manifestations. Hence while Vishnu is identified with Ananta, Charaka is only the Avatar of Sesha. (See “Ananta” and “Sesha”.)

Charnook, Thomas. A great alchemist of the sixteenth century; a surgeon who lived and practiced near Salisbury, studying the art in some neighbouring cloisters with a priest. It is said that he was initiated into the final secret of transmutation by the famous mystic William Bird, who “had been a prior of Bath and defrayed the expense of repairing the Abbey Church from the gold which he made by the red and white elixirs” (Royal Mas. Cyc.). Charnock wrote his Breviary of Philosophy in the year 1557 and the Enigma of Alchemy, in 1574.

Charon (Gr.) The Egyptian Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed Steersman of the boat conveying the Souls across the black waters that separate life from death. Charon, the Sun of Erebus and Nox, is a variant of Khu en-ua. The dead were obliged to pay an obolus, a small piece of money, o this grim ferryman of the Styx and Acheron; therefore the ancients always placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased. This custom has been preserved in our own times, for most of the lower classes in Russia place coppers in the coffin under the head of the dead for post mortem expenses.

Châryâka (Sk.) There were two famous beings of this name. One a Rakshasa (demon) who disguised himself as a Brâhman and entered Hastinâ-pura; whereupon the Brahmans discovered the imposture and reduced Châryâka to ashes with the fire of their eyes,—i.e., magnetically by means of what is called in Occultism the “black glance” or evil eye. The second was a terrible materialist and denier of all but matter, who if he could come back to life, would put to shame all the “Free thinkers” and “Agnostics” of the day. He lived before the Râmâyanic period, but his teachings and school have survived to this day, and he has even now followers, who are mostly to be found in Bengal.

Chastanier, Benedict. A French mason who established in London in 1767 a Lodge called
“The Illuminated Theosophists”.

Chatur mukha (Sk) The “four-faced one”, a title of Brahmâ.

Chatur varna (Sk.) The four castes (lit., colours).

Châturdasa Bhuvanam (Sk.) The fourteen lokas or planes of existence. Esoterically, the dual seven states.

Chaturyonî (Sk.) Written also tchatur-yoni. The same as Karmaya or “the four modes of birth”—four ways of entering on the path of Birth as decided by Karma : (a) birth from the womb, as men and mammalia (b) birth from an egg, as birds and reptiles; (c) from moisture and air-germs, as insects; and (d) by sudden self-transformation, as Bodhisattvas and Gods (Anupadaka).

Chava (Heb.) The same as Eve: “the Mother of all that lives” "Life"

Chavigny, Jean Aimé de. A disciple of the world-famous Nostradamus, an astrologer and an alchemist of the sixteenth century. He died in the year 16O4. His life was a very quiet one and he was almost unknown to his contemporaries; but he left a precious manuscript on the pre-natal and post-natal influence of the stars on certain marked individuals, a secret revealed to him by Nostradamus. This treatise was last in the possession of the Emperor Alexander of Russia.

Chelâ (Sk.) A disciple, the pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some adept of a school of philosophy (lit., child).

Chemi (Eg.). The ancient name of Egypt.

Chenresi (Tib.) The Tibetan Avalokitesvara. The Bodhisattva Padmâpani, a divine Buddha.

Cheru (Scand) Or Heru. A magic sword, a weapon of the “sword god” Heru. In the Edda, the Saga describes it as destroying its possessor, should he be unworthy of wielding it. It brings victory and fame only in the hand of a virtuous hero.

Cherubim (Heb.) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they specially associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of angels who are “watchers”. Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and the O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged representations in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal figures of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of Solomon. Ezekiel describes them in poetic language. Each Cherub appears to have been a compound figure with four faces—of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was certainly winged. Parkhurst, in voc. Cherub, suggests that the derivation of the word is from K, a particle of similitude, and RB or RUB, greatness, master, majesty, and so an image of godhead. Many other nations have displayed similar figures as symbols of deity ; e.g., the Egyptians in their figures of Serapis. as Macrohius describes in his Saturnalia; the Greeks had their triple-headed Hecate, and the Latins had three-faced images of Diana, as Ovid tells us, ecce procul ternis Hecate variata figuris. Virgil also describes her in the fourth Book of the Æneid. Porphyry and Eusebius write the same of Proserpine. The Vandals had a many-headed deity they called Triglaf. The ancient German races had an idol Rodigast with human body and heads of the ox, eagle, and man. The Persians have some figures of Mithras with a man’s body, lion’s head, and four wings. Add to these the Chimæra Sphinx of Egypt, Moloch, Astarte of the Syrians, and some figures of Isis with Bull’s horns and feathers of a bird on the head.

Chesed (Heb.) “Mercy ”, also named Gedulah, the fourth of the ten Sephiroth; a masculine or active potency.

Chhâyâ (Sk.) “Shade” or “ Shadow”. The name of a creature produced by Sanjnâ, the wife of Surya, from herself (astral body). Unable to endure the ardour of her husband, Sanjnâ left Chhâyâ in her place as a wife, going herself away to perform austerities. Chhâyâ is the astral image of a person in esoteric philosophy.

Chhandoga (Sk) A Samhitâ collection of Sama Veda; also a priest, a chanter of the Sama Veda.

Chhanmûka (Sk) A great Bodhisattva with the Northern Buddhists, famous for his ardent love of Humanity; regarded in the esoteric schools as a Nirmanakâya.

Chhannagarikah (Tib.). Lit., the school of six cities. A famous philosophical school where Chelas are prepared before entering on the Path.

Chhassidi or Chasdim. In the Septuagint Assidai, and in English Assideans. They are also mentioned in Maccabees I., vii., 13, as being put to death with many others. They were the followers of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabeans, and were all initiated mystics, or Jewish adepts. The word means ‘‘ skilled learned in all wisdom, human and divine”. Mackenzie (R.M.C.) regards them as the guardians of the Temple for the preservation of its purity ; but as Solomon and his Temple are both allegorical and had no real existence, the Temple means in this case the “ body of Israel ” and its morality.“ Scaliger connects this Society of the Assideans with that of the Essenes, deeming it the predecessor of the latter.”

Chhaya loka (Sk.) The world of Shades; like Hades, the world of the Eidola and Umbræ. We call it Kâmaloka.

Chiah (Heb.) Life; Vita, Revivificatio. In the Kabbala, the second highest essence of the human soul, corresponding to Chokmah (Wisdom).

Chichhakti (Sk.) Chih-Sakti; the power which generates thought.

Chidagnikundum (Sk.). Lit., “the fire-hearth in the heart” ; the seat of the force which extinguishes all individual desires.

Chidâkâsam (Sk); The field, or basis of consciousness.

Chiffilet, Jean. A Canon-Kabbalist of the XVIIth century, reputed to have learned a key to the Gnostic works from Coptic Initiates; he wrote a work on Abraxas in two portions, the esoteric portion of which was burnt by the Church.

Chiim (Heb.) A plural noun—“lives”; found in compound names Elohim Chum, the gods of lives, Parkhurst translates “the living God” and Ruach Chiim, Spirit of lives or of life. [ w.w. w.]

China, The Kabbalah of. One of the oldest known Chinese books is the Yih King, or Book of Changes. It is reported to have been written 2850 B.C., in the dialect of the Accadian black races of Mesopotamia. It is a most abstruse system of Mental and Moral Philosophy, with a scheme of universal relation and divination. Abstract ideas are represented by lines, half lines, circle, and points. Thus a circle represents YIH, the Great Supreme; a line is referred to YIN, the Masculine Active Potency; two half lines are YANG, the Feminine Passive Potency. KWEI is the animal soul, SHAN intellect, KHIEN heaven or Father, KHWAN earth or Mother, KAN or QHIN is Son; male numbers are odd, represented by light circles, female numbers are even, by black circles. There are two most mysterious diagrams, one called “HO or the River Map”, and also associated with a Horse ; and the other called “The Writing of LO” ; these are formed of groups of white and black circles, arranged in a Kabbalistic manner. The text is by a King named Wan, and the commentary by Kan, his son ; the text is allowed to be older than the time of Confucius. [ w. w.w.]

Chit (Sk.) Abstract Consciousness.

Chitanuth our (Heb.). Chitons, a priestly garb; the coats of skin given by Java Aleim to Adam and Eve after their fall,

Chitkala (Sk.). In Esoteric philosophy, identical with the Kumâras those who first incarnated into the men of the Third Root-Race. (See Sec.Doct.; Vol. 1. p. 288 n.)

Chitra Gupta (Sk.) The deva (or god) who is the recorder of Yâma (the god of death), and who is supposed to read the account of every Soul’s life from a register called Agra Sandhâni, when the said soul appears before the seat of judgment. (See “Agra Sandhâni ”.)

Chitra Sikkandinas (Sk). The constellation of the great Bear ; the habitat of the seven Rishis (Sapta Riksha). Lit., “ bright-crested”.

Chnoumis (Gr) The same as Chnouphis and Kneph. A symbol of creative force ; Chnoumis or Kneph is “the unmade and eternal deity” according to Plutarch. He is represented as blue (ether), and with his ram’s head with an asp between the horns, he might be taken for Ammon or Chnouphis (.q.v’. ). The fact is that all these gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the phases of generation and impregna tion. Their ram’s heads denote this meaning, a ram ever symbolizing generative energy in the abstract, while the bull was the symbol of strength and the creative function. All were one god, whose attributes were individualised and personified. According to Sir G. Wilkinsen, Kneph or Chnoumis was “the idea of the Spirit of God” ; and Bonwick explains that, as Av, “matter” or “flesh”, he was criocephalic (ram- headed), wearing a solar disk on the head, standing on the Serpent Mehen, with a viper in his left and a cross in his right hand, and bent upon the function of creation in the underworld (the earth, esoterically). The Kabbalists identify him with “Binah, the third Sephira of the Sephirothal Tree, or Binah, represented by the Divine name of Jehovah”. If as Chnoumis-Kneph, he represents the Indian Narayâna, the Spirit of ( moving on the waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of evolution ; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator ; for, as Deveria explains:“His Journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.” Esoterically, however, and as taught by the Initiates of the inner temple, Chnoumis-Kneph was pre-eminently the god of reincarnation. Says an inscription: “I am Chnoumis, Son of the Universe, 700”, a mystery having a direct reference to the reincarnating EGO.

Chnouphis (Gr.). Nouf in Egyptian. Another aspect of Ammon, and the personification of his generative power in actu, as Kneph is of the same in potentia. He is also ram-headed. If in his aspect as Kneph he is the Holy Spirit with the creative ideation brooding in him, as Chnouphis, he is the angel who “comes in” into the Virgin soil and flesh. A prayer on a papyrus, translated by the French Egyptologist Chabas, says; ‘ 0 Sepui, Cause of being, who hast formed thine own body! 0 only Lord, proceeding from Noum ! 0 divine substance, created from itself! 0 God, who hast made the substance which is in him! 0 God, who has made his own father and impregnated his own mother.” This shows the origin of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and immaculate conception. He is seen on a monument seated near a potter’s wheel, and forming men out of clay. The fig-leaf is sacred to him, which is alone sufficient to prove him a phallic god—an idea which is carried out by the inscription: “he who made that which is, the creator of beings, the first existing, he who made to exist all that exists.” Some see in him the incarnation of Ammon-Ra, but he is the latter himself in his phallic aspect, for, like Ammon, he is “ his mother’s husband”, i.e., the male or impregnating side of Nature. His names vary, as Cnouphis, Noum, Khem, and Khnum or Chnoumis. As he represents the Demiurgos (or Logos) from the material, lower aspect of the Soul of the World, he is the Agathodæmon, symbolized sometimes by a Serpent ; and his wife Athor or Maut (Môt mother), or Sate, “the daughter of the Sun”, carrying an arrow on a sunbeam (the ray of conception), stretches “mistress over the lower portions of the atmosphere”. below the constellations, as Neїth expands over the starry heavens. (See “Chaos”.)

Chohan (Tib.) “Lord” or “Master” ; a chief; thus Dhyan-Chohan would answer to “Chief of the Dhyanis”, or celestial Lights—which in English would he translated Archangels.

Chokmah (Heb) Wisdom; the second of the ten Sephiroth, and the second of the supernal Triad. A masculine potency corresponding to the Yod (I) of the Tetragrammaton IHVH, and to Ab, the Father.
[w.w.w.]

Chréstos (Gr.) The early Gnostic form of Christ. It was used in the fifth century B.C. by Æschylus, Herodotus, and others. The Manteumata pythochresta, or the “oracles delivered by a Pythian god” “through a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Choeph.901). Chréstian is not only “the seat of an oracle”, but an offering to, or for, the oracle. Chréstés is one who explains oracles, “a prophet and soothsayer”, and Chrésterios one who serves an oracle or a god. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology calls his co-religionists Chréstians. It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of Chréstians,” says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.). The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant in that vocabulary a disciple on probation, a candidate for hierophantship. When he had attained to this through initiation, long trials, and suffering, and had been ‘‘anointed’’ (i.e., “rubbed with oil”, as were Initiates and even idols of the gods, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), his name was changed into Christos, the “purified”, in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christés, or Christos, meant that the “Way”, the Path, was already trodden and the goal reached ; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby into the immortal EGO. “At the end of the Way stands the Chréstes”, the Purifier, and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the “man of sorrow”, became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say, in bad translation : ‘‘I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv.19), the true rendering of which is . . . ‘‘until ye form the Christos within yourselves” But the profane who knew only that Chréstés was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justin Martyr, on being called Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man” as Paul expresses it (Ephes. iii. 16,17), whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu, or Christian. Kenneth Mackenzie seemed to think that the word Chréstos was a synonym of Soter, “an appellation assigned to deities, great kings and heroes,” indicating ‘‘Saviour,’’—and he was right. For, as he adds:“It has been applied redundantly to Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus or Joshua bears the same interpretation. The name Jesus, in fact, is rather a title of honour than a name—the true name of the Soter of Christianity being Emmanuel, or God with us (Matt.i, 23.).Great divinities among all nations, who are represented as expiatory or self-sacrificing, have been designated by the same title.’’ (R. M. Cyclop.) The Asklepios (or Æsculapius) of the Greeks had the title of Soter.

Christian Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of an art of healing by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or Materialist, can practise this new form of Western Yoga, with like success, if he can only guide and control his will with sufficient firmness. The
“Mental Scientists” are another rival school. These work by a universal denial of every disease and evil imaginable, and claim syllogistically that since Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the failings of flesh, and since every atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since finally, they—the healers and the healed—are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there he, such a thing as disease. This prevents in no wise both Christian and Mental Scientists from succumbing to disease, and nursing chronic diseases in their own bodies just like ordinary mortals.

Chthonia (Gr.) Chaotic earth in the Hellenic cosmogony.

Chuang. A great Chinese philosopher.

Chubilgan (Mongol.) Or Khubilkhan. The same as Chutuktu.

Chutuktu (Tib.) An incarnation of Buddha or of some Bodhisattva, as believed in Tibet, where there are generally five manifesting and two secret Chutuktus among the high Lamas.

Chyuta (Sk.) Means, “the fallen” into generation, as a Kabbalist would say; the opposite of achyuta, something which is not subject to change or differentiation; said of deity.

Circle. There are several “Circles” with mystic adjectives attached to them. Thus we have: (1) the
“Decussated or Perfect Circle” of Plato, who shows it decussated in the form of the letter X ; (2) the
“Circle-dance” of the Amazons, around a Priapic image, the same as the dance of the Gopis around the Sun (Krishna), the shepherdesses representing the signs of the Zodiac ; (3) the “Circle of Necessity”
of 3,000 years of the Egyptians and of the Occultists, the duration of the cycle between rebirths or reincarnations being from 1,000 to 3,000 years on the average. This will be treated under the term
“Rebirth” or “Reincarnation”.

Clairaudience. The faculty, whether innate or acquired by occult training, of hearing all that is said at whatever distance.

Clairvoyance. The faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As now used it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so remarkably exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Real clairvoyance means the faculty of seeing through the densest matter (the latter disappearing at the will and before the spiritual eye of the Seer), and irrespective of time (past, present and future) or distance.

Clemens Alexandrinus. A Church Father and a voluminous writer, who had been a Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He lived between the second and the third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.

Cock. A very occult bird, much appreciated in ancient augury and symbolism. According to the Zohar, the cock crows three times before the death of a person; and in Russia and all Slavonian countries whenever a person is ill on the premises where a cock is kept, its crowing is held to be a sign of inevitable death, unless the bird crows at the hour of midnight, or immediately afterwards, when its crowing is considered natural. As the cock was sacred to Æsculapius, and a the latter was called the Soter (Saviour) who raised the dead to life, the Socratic exclamation “We owe a cock to Æculapius”, just before the Sage’s death, is very suggestive. As the cock Was always connected in symbology with the Sun (or solar gods), Death and Resurrection, it has found its appropriate place in the four Gospels in the prophecy about Peter repudiating his Master before the cock crowed thrice. The cock is the most magnetic and sensitive of all birds, hence its Greek name alectruon.

Codex Nazaraeus (Lat.) The “Book of Adam”—the latter name meaning anthropos, Man or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written. The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an institution established before the laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El Mogtasila; in European languages—the
Mendæans or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) But if the term Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that some of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the “Book of Adam”, and also “Mendæans ”.)

Coeur, Jacques. A famous Treasurer of France, born in 1408, who obtained the office by black magic. He was reputed as a great alchemist and his wealth became fabulous; but he was soon banished from the country, and retiring to the Island of Cyprus, died there in 1460, leaving behind enormous wealth, endless legends and a bad reputation.

Coffin-Rite, or Pastos. This was the final rite of Initiation in the Mysteries in Egypt, Greece and elsewhere. The last and supreme secrets of Occultism could not be revealed to the Disciple until he had passed through this allegorical ceremony of Death and Resurrection into new light. “The Greek verb teleutaó,” says Vronsky, “signifies in the active voice ‘I die’, and in the middle voice ‘I am initiated”. Stobæus quotes an ancient author, who says, “The mind is affected in death, just as it is in the initiation into the Mysteries ; and word answers to word, as well as thing to thing ; for teleutan is ‘ to die ‘, and teleisthai ‘to be initiated’”. And thus, as Mackenzie corroborates, when the Aspirant was placed in the Pastos, Bed, or Coffin (in India on the lathe, as explained in the Secret Doctrine), “he was symbolically said to die.”

Collanges, Gabriel de. Born in 1524. The best astrologer in the XVlth century and a still better Kabbalist. He spent a fortune in the unravelling of its mysteries. It was rumoured that he died through poison administered to him by a Jewish Rabbin-Kabbalist.

College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo Judæus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of “hazim”. These were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the Sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.

Collemann, Jean. An Alsatian, born at Orleans, according to K. Mackenzie; other accounts say he was a Jew, who found favour owing to his astrological studies, with both Charles VII. and Louis XI., and that he had a bad influence on the latter.

Collyridians. A sect of Gnostics who, in the ear]y centuries of Christianity, transferred their worship and reverence from Astoreth to Mary, as Queen of Heaven and Virgin. Regarding the two as identical, they offered to the latter as they had done to the former, buns and cakes on certain days, with sexual symbols represented on them.

Continents. In the Buddhist cosmogony, according to Gautama Buddha’s exoteric doctrine, there are numberless systems of worlds (or Sakwala) all of which are born, mature, decay, and are destroyed periodically. Orientalists translate the teaching about “the four great continents which do not communicate with each other”, as meaning that “upon the earth there are four great continents” (see Hardy’s Eastern Monachism, p. 4), while the doctrine means simply that around or above the earth there are on either side four worlds, i.e., the earth appearing as the fourth on each side of the arc.

Corybantes, Mysteries of the. These were held in Phrygia in honour of Atys, the youth beloved by Cybele. The rites were very elaborate within the temple and very noisy and tragic in public. They began by a public bewailing of the death of Atys and ended in tremendous rejoicing at his resurrection. The statue or image of the victim of Jupiter’s jealousy was placed during the ceremony in a pastos (coffin), and the priests sang his sufferings. Atys, as Visvakarma in India, was a representative of Initiation and Adeptship. He is shown as being born impotent, because chastity is a requisite of the life of an aspirant. Atys is said to have established the rites and worship of Cybele, in Lydia. (See Pausan., vii., c. 17.)

Cosmic Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.

Cosmic ideation (Occult.) Eternal thought, impressed on substance or spirit-matter, in the eternity ; thought which becomes active at the beginning of every new life-cycle.

Cosmocratores (Gr.). “Builders of the Universe”, the “world architects”, or the Creative Forces personified.

Cow-worship. The idea of any such “worship” is as erroneous as it is unjust. No Egyptian worshipped the cow, nor does any Hindu worship this animal now, though it is true that the cow and bull were sacred then as they are to-day, but only as the natural physical symbol of a metaphysical ideal; even as a church made of bricks and mortar is sacred to the civilized Christian because of its associations and not by reason of its walls. The cow was sacred to Isis, the Universal Mother, Nature, and to the Hathor, the female principle in Nature, the two goddesses being allied to both sun and moon, as the disk and the cow’s horns (crescent) prove. (See “Hathor ‘ and “isis”.) In the Vedas, the Dawn of Creation is represented by a cow. This dawn is Hathor, and the day which follows, or Nature already formed, is Isis, for both are one except in the matter of time. Hathor the elder is “the mistress of the seven mystical cows ” and Isis, “the Divine Mother is the “cow-horned” the cow of plenty (or Nature, Earth), and, as the mother of Horus (the physical world)—the “mother of all that lives The outa was the symbolic eye of Horus, the right being the sun, and the left the moon. The right “eye” of Horus was called “the cow of Hathor”, and served as a powerful amulet, as the dove in a nest of rays or glory, with or without the cross, is a talisman with Christians, Latins and Greeks. The Bull and the Lion which we often find in company with Luke and Mark in the frontispiece of their respective Gospels in the Greek and Latin texts, are explained as symbols—-which is indeed the fact. Why not admit the same in the case of the Egyptian sacred Bulls, Cows, Rams, and Birds?

Cremer, John. An eminent scholar who for over thirty years studied Hermetic philosophy in pursuance of its practical secrets, while he was at the same time Abbot of Westminster While on a voyage to Italy, he met the famous Raymond Lully whom he induced to return with him to England. Lully divulged to Cremer the secrets of the stone, for which service the monastery offered daily prayers for him. Cremer, says the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, “having obtained a profound knowledge of the secrets of Alchemy, became a most celebrated and learned adept in occult philosophy . . . lived to a good old age, and died in the reign of King Edward III.”

Crescent. Sin was the Assyrian name for the moon, and Sin-ai the Mount, the birth-place of Osiris, of Dionysos, Bacchus and several other gods. According to Rawlinson, the moon was held in higher esteem than the sun at Babylon, because darkness preceded light. The crescent was, therefore, a sacred symbol with almost every nation, before it became the ‘standard of the Turks. Says the author of Egyptian Belief, “ The crescent is not essentially a Mahometan ensign. On the contrary, it was a Christian one, derived through Asia from the Babylonian Astarte, Queen of Heaven, or from the Egyptian Isis . . . . whose emblem was the crescent. The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium. Upon the conquest of the Turks, the Mahometan Sultan adopted it for the symbol of his power. Since that time the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the cross.”

Criocephale (Gr.). Ram-headed, applied to several deities and emblematic figures, notably those of ancient Egypt, which were designed about the period when the Sun passed, at the Vernal Equinox, from the sign Taurus to the sign Aries. Previously to this period, bull-headed and horned deities prevailed. Apis was the type of the Bull deity, Ammon that of the ram-headed type: Isis, too, had a Cow’s head allotted to her. Porphyry writes that the Greeks united the Ram to Jupiter and the Bull to Bacchus.

Crocodile. “The great reptile of Typhon.” The seat of its “worship” was Crocodilopolis and it was sacred to Set and Sebak—its alleged creators. The primitive Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahmâ, are each the progenitors of some animal species, of which he is the alleged “father”; in Egypt, each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals which were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the early dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their mummies. Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of Moabdeh, and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left untouched. But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and “father” received honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen shows, had been considered a great god. His words are, “ Down to the time of Ramses B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt.” As explained elsewhere, Typhon is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills Osiris, the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces, and separates himself from the “god”, he incurs the execration of the masses; he becomes the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the Desert, the constant enemy of the Nile, and the “slayer of the evening beneficent dew”, because Osiris is the ideal Universe, Siva the great Regenerative Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the god, or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated and partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from the water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation—hence its adoration at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal beings yearly—hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at Elephantine and Tentyra.

Cross. Mariette Bey has shown its antiquity in Egypt by proving that in all the primitive sepulchres “the plan of the chamber has the form of a cross”. It is the symbol of the Brotherhood of races and men; and was laid on the breast of the corpses in Egypt, as it is now placed on the corpses of deceased Christians, and, in its Swastica form (croix cramponnée) on the hearts of the Buddhist adepts and Buddhas. (See “Calvary Cross”.)

Crux Ansata (Lat.). The handled cross,T; whereas the tau is T, in this form, and the oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol of immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the significance of a sexual emblem. The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the Egyptian Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons must have indeed forgotten the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their authorities still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis (or yoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a double significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the mundane circle; as symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of immortality, of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon and grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line, surmounting the vertical male line—the fructifying male principle in nature or spirit. Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T, which, left by itself, is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when it takes the shape +.

Crypt (Gr.) A secret subterranean vault, some for the purpose of initiation, others for burial purposes. There were crypts under every temple in antiquity. There was one on the Mount of Olives, lined with red stucco, and built before the advent of the Jews.

Curetes. The Priest-Initiates of ancient Crete, in the service of Cybele. Initiation in their temples was very severe ; it lasted twenty-seven days, during which time the aspirant was left by himself in a crypt, undergoing terrible trials. Pythagoras was initiated into these rites and came out victorious.

Cutha. An ancient city in Babylonia after which a tablet giving an account of “creation” is named.
The “Cutha tablet” speaks of a temple of Sittam”, in the sanctuary of Nergal, the “giant king of
war, lord of the city of Cutha”, and is purely esoteric, it has to be read symbolically, if at all.

Cycle. From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races, lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods—a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

Cynocephalus (Gr.) The Egyptian Hapi. There was a notable difference between the ape-headed gods and the “Cynocephalus” (Simia hamadryas), a dog-headed baboon from upper Egypt. The latter, whose sacred city was Hermopolis, was sacred to the lunar deities and Thoth Hermes, hence an emblem of secret wisdom—as was Hanuman, the monkey-god of India, and later, the elephant-headed Ganesha. The mission of the Cynocephalus was to show the way for the Dead to the Seat of Judgment and Osiris, whereas the ape-gods were all phallic. They are almost invariably found in a crouching posture, holding on one hand the outa (the eye of Horus), and in the other the sexual cross. Isis is seen sometimes riding on an ape, to designate the fall of divine nature into generation.