are more rare; others are quite plain. In the tombs of Thebes, Belzoni found scarabæi with human heads. There is hardly any symbolical figure which recurs so often in Egyptian sculpture or painting as the scarabæus, or beetle, and perhaps scarcely any one which it is so difficult to explain. He is often represented with a ball between his fore-legs, which some take for a symbol of the world, or the sun. He may be an emblem of fertility. The “crab" on the Denderah Zodiac is by some supposed to be a "beetle" (Egyptian Antiquities). It is for some of the preceding reasons that one of the mystic names of Lucifer, or the Devil, is the "Lord of Flies," for which strange appellation all antiquaries, and other learned decipherers, have found it impossible to account.

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Con

Of the figure of the Fleur-de-Luce, Fleur-de-Lis, or Flowerde-Luce (Lus, Luz, Loose), the following may be remarked. On its sublime, abstract side, it is the symbol of the mighty self-producing, self-begetting Generative Power deified in many myths. We may make a question, in the lower sense, in this regard, of the word "loose," namely, wanton, and the word “lech,” or leche," and "lecher," &c. sider, also, in the solemn and terrible sense, the name Crom-Lech, or "crown," or "arched entry," or "gate," of death. The Druidical stones were generally called cromlechs when placed in groups of two, with a coping or capstone over, similarly to the form of the Greek letter pi (II, 7), which was imitated from that temple of stones which we call a cromlech.

Cromlechs were the altars of the Druids, and were so called from a Hebrew word signifying "to bow." There is a Druidic temple at Toulouse, in France, exhibiting many of these curious Druidical stones. There is a large, flat stone, ten feet long, six feet wide, one foot thick, at St. David's, Pembrokeshire. It is called in Cymric "Lêch

* The whole forming a "capital," "chapter," "chapitre," "chapel," "cancel,' or "chancel,"—hence our word, and the sublime judicial office of "Chancellor," and "Chancery."

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Lagar, the speaking stone." We may speculate upon the word "Lich, Lych, Lech" in this connection, and the terms 'Lich-gate," or Lêch-gate," as also the name of "Lichfield." There is a porch or gateway, mostly at the entrance of old-fashioned churchyards, which is called the "LykePorch," or "Litch-Porch." Lüg, or Lük, is a word in the Danish signifying the same as Lyk in the Dutch, and Leiche in the German. Thus comes the word "Lich-gate." Lich in the Anglo-Saxon means a "dead body." See Notes and Queries, vol. ii. p. 4. The "Lych-gates" were as a sort of triumphal arches (Propylaa) placed before the church, as the outwork called the "Propylon," or "Propylæum," was advanced before the Egyptian and the Grecian temples. They are found, in the form of separate arches, before the gates even of Chinese cities, and they are there generally called "triumphal arches."

Propylaa is a name of Hecate, Dis, Chronos, or the II, to which sinister deity the Propylon or Propylæum (as also, properly, the Lych-gate) is dedicated. Hence its ominous import, Pro, or "before," the Pylon or passage. Every Egyptian temple has its Propylon. The Pyramid also in Nubia has one. We refer to the ground plans of the Temples of Denderah, Upper Egypt; the Temple of Luxor, Thebes; the Temple of Edfou, Upper Egypt; the Temple of Carnac (or Karnak), Thebes.

Colonel (afterwards General) Vallancey, in the fourth volume, p. 80, of his General Works, cited in the Celtic Druids, p. 223 (a valuable book by Godfrey Higgins), says: "In Cornwall they call it" (i.e., the rocking-stone) "the Logan-Stone. Borlase, in his History of Cornish Antiquities, declares that he does not understand the meaning of this term Logan, as applied to the Druidical stones. Had Dr. Borlase been acquainted with the Irish MSS.," significantly adds Colonel Vallancey, "he would have found that the Druidical oracular stone called Loghan, which yet retains its name in Cornwall, is the Irish Logh-oun, or stone into which the Druids pretended that the Logh, or divine essence, descended when they consulted it as an oracle. Logh in

THE GNOSTIC "ABRAXAS."

47

Celtic is the same as Logos in the Greek; both terms mean the Logos ("Word") or the Holy Ghost.

Sanchoniathon, the Phoenician, says that Ouranus contrived, in Botulia, 'stones that moved as having life." Stukeley's Abury, p. 97, may be here referred to for further proofs of the mystic origin of these stones, and also the Celtic Druids of Godfrey Higgins, in contradiction to those who would infer that these "poised stones" simply mark burial-places, or foolish conclusions of shallow and incompetent antiquaries.

The Basilidans were called by the orthodox Docetæ, or Illusionists. The Deity of the Gnostics was called "Abraxas" in Latin, and "Abrasax" in Greek. Their last state, or condition for rescued sensitive entities, as they termed souls, was the "Pleroma," or "Fulness of Light." This agrees precisely with the doctrines of the Buddhists or Bhuddists. The regulating, presiding genius was the Pantheus. The Pythagorean record quoted by Porphyry (Vit. Pythag.) states that the "numerals of Pythagoras were hieroglyphical symbols by means whereof he explained ideas. concerning the nature of things." That these symbols were ten in number, the ten original signs of the zodiac, and the ten letters of the primeval alphabet, appears from Aristotle (Met. vii. 7). "Some philosophers hold," he says, "that ideas and numbers are of the same nature, and amount to ten in all." See The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 229.

But to return to the arms of France, which are the "Fleurs-de-Lis," and to the small representative creature (sublime enough, as the farthest-off symbol which they are imagined in their greatness to indicate). A Bible presented to Charles the Second, A.D. 869, has a miniature of this monarch and his court. His throne is terminated with three flowers of the form of "fleurs-de-lis sans pied." On his head is a crown "fermée à fleurons d'or, relevez et recourbez d'une manière singulière." Another miniature in the Book of Prayers shows him on a throne surmounted by a sort of "fleurs-de-lis sans pied." His crown is of “fleurs comme de lis," and the robe is fastened with a rose, “d'où

sortent trois pistils en forme de fleurs-de-lis." His sceptre terminates in a fleur-de-lis.—Notes and Queries.

Sylvanus Morgan, an old-fashioned herald abounding in suggestive disclosures, has the following: "Sir William Wise having lent to the king, Henry VIII., his signet to seal a letter, who having powdered” (seméed, or spotted) “eremites" (they were emmets-ants) "engray'd in the seale, the king paused and lookit thereat, considering." We may here query whether the field of the coat of arms of Sir William Wise was not "ermine;" for several of the families of Wise bear this fur, and it is not unlikely that he did so also.

"Why, how now, Wise!' quoth the king. "What!— hast thou lice here?' 'An', if it like your majestie,' quoth Sir William, a louse is a rich coat; for by giving the louse I part arms with the French king, in that he giveth the flour-de-lice. Whereat the king heartily laugh'd, to hear how prettily so byting a taunt (namely, proceeding from a prince) was so suddenly turned to so pleasaunte a conceit."

Stanihurst's History of Ireland, in Holinshed's Chron. Nares thinks that Shakespeare, who is known to have been a reader of Holinshed, took his conceit of the "white lowses which do become an old coat well," in the Merry Wives of Windsor, from this anecdote. See Heraldic Anomalies, vol. i., p. 204; also, Lower's Curiosities of Heraldry, p. 82 (1845). It may here be mentioned, that the mark signifying the royal property (as it is used in France), similarly to the token, or symbol, or "brand," denoting the royal domain, the property, or the sign upon royal chattels (the "broad arrow"), as used in England, is the "Lis," or the "Fleur-de-Lis." The mark by which criminals are "branded" in France is called the "Lis-Fleur-de-Lis."

The English "broad arrow," the mark or sign of the royal property, is variously depicted, similarly to the following marks:

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

THE ENGLISH "BROAD ARROW."

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These are the Three Nails of the Passion. In figs. 1 and 2 they are unmistakably so, with the points downwards. Figs. 3 and 4 have the significant horizontal mark which, in the first centuries of Christianity, stood for the Second (with feminine meanings) Person of the Trinity; but the points of the spikes (spica, or thorns) are gathered upwards in the centre. In fig. 5 there are still the three nails; but a suggestive similarity to be remarked in this figure is a disposition resembling the crux-ansata—an incessant symbol, always reappearing in Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphics. There is also a likeness to the mysterious letter "Tau." The whole first chapter of Genesis is said to be contained in this latter emblem-this magnificent, all-including "Tau."

Three bent spikes, or nails, are unmistakably the same symbol that Belus often holds in his extended hand on the Babylonian cylinders, afterwards discovered by the Jewish

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.

ཝ་བད

cabalists in the points of the letter "Shin," and by the medieval mystics in the "Three Nails of the Cross."-The Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and Mediaval, p.

208.

This figure, which is clearly a nail, has also characteristics, which will be remarked in its upper portion, which suggest a likeness to the obelisk, pin, spike, upright, or phallus.

The Hebrew letter "Shin," or "Sin," counts for 300 in the Hebraic numeration. Each spica, or spike, may be taken to signify 100, or ten tens. We have strong hints here of the origin of the decimal system, which reigns through the universal laws of computation as a natural substratum, basis, or principle. This powerful symbol, also, is full of secret important meanings. It will be remarked as the symbol or figure assigned in the formal zodiacs of all countries, whether original zodiacs, or whether produced in figure-imitations by recognising tradition. The marks or

The letter "Shin."

D