22 § Seth

Kāna l-insānu hayyatan fil-qidam [1] ('Man was formerly a serpent'.) In a curious book on the 'last times', The Antichrist (Personal, Future) by E. H. Moggridge, there is a point which we noticed in particular and about which we should like to offer some clarifications, namely, the interpretation of the names Nimrod and Seth. As a matter of fact, the assimilation that the author establishes between the one and the other calls for many reservations, but there is at least a certain real relationship and the comparisons drawn from animal symbolism seem to us to be well-founded. Let us point out first of all that namar in Hebrew, like nimr in Arabic, is strictly speaking the 'flecked animal', a name common to the tiger, the panther and the leopard; and we can say, even if we keep to their most outward meaning, that these animals indeed represent the 'hunter' that Nimrod was according to the Bible. Furthermore, in an aspect which need not be considered as unfavourable, the tiger is, like the bear in the Nordic tradition, a symbol of the Kshatriya; and the foundation of Nineveh and of the Assyrian empire by Nimrod actually seems to have been a revolt of the Kshatriyas against the authority of the Chaldean sacerdotal caste. Thence the legendary relationship established between Nimrod and the Nephilim or other antediluvian 'giants' which the Kshatriyas also represent in ancient times; and thence the epithet of 'nimrodian' applied to a temporal power which affirms itself as independent of the spiritual authority. Now, what has all this to do with Seth? The tiger and other similar animals, inasmuch as they are 'destroyers', are emblems of the Egyptian Set, Osiris's brother and murderer, to whom the Greeks gave the name of Typhon. And one can only say that the 'Nimrodian' spirit proceeds from the dark principle designated by the name Set, without for all that claiming that Set is identical with Nimrod himself; we have here a distinction that is more than a mere nuance. But the point that seems to give rise to the greatest difficulty is this malefic signification of the name Set or Sheth or Seth which, on the other hand, insofar as it designates the son of Adam, far from signifying destruction, on the contrary evokes the idea of stability and the restoration of order. Besides, if one wants to establish Biblical comparisons, Set is to Osiris what Cain is to Abel; and we will mention in this connection that some make of Nimrod one of the 'Cainites' thought to have escaped from the diluvial cataclysm. But the Seth of Genesis, far from being assimilable to Cain, is opposed to him. How then does his name come to be here? In fact, even in Hebrew, the word Seth really has the two contrary senses, that of 'foundation' and that of 'tumult' and 'ruin'; [2] and the expression beni-Seth (sons of Seth) is also found with this double meaning. It is true that the linguists prefer to see two distinct words there, deriving from two different verbal roots: sith [shith] for the first, and sath [shath] for the second; but the distinction between these two roots seems to be quite secondary, and in any case their essential constituent elements are certainly identical. In reality, nothing is to be seen there but an application of that double meaning of symbols to which we have often had occasion to allude; and this application relates more particularly to the symbolism of the serpent. Indeed, if the tiger or leopard is one symbol of the Egyptian Set, the serpent is another, [3] and this can be understood without difficulty if the serpent be considered under its malefic aspect, that which is most commonly attributed to it. But it is almost always forgotten that the serpent has a benefic aspect which, moreover, is to be found also in the symbolism of ancient Egypt, in particular under the form of the royal serpent, the 'uraeus' or basilisk. [4] Even in Christian iconography the serpent is sometimes the symbol of Christ; [5] and the Biblical Seth, whose function in the legend of the Grail [6] we have noted elsewhere, is often looked on as a 'prefiguration' of Christ. [7] It can be said that the two Seths, fundamentally, are not other than the two serpents of the Hermetic caduceus. [8] It is, if one will, life and death, both produced by a power that is single in its essence but double in its manifestation. [9] If we stop to dwell on this interpretation in terms of life and death, even though it is only a particular application of the case of two contrary or antagonistic terms, it is because the symbolism of the serpent is actually linked, before all else, to the very idea of life: [10] in Arabic, the serpent is al-hayyah, and life al-hayāh (Hebrew hayah, meaning both 'life' and 'animal', from the root hayi which is common to the two languages). This is linked to the symbolism of the 'Tree of Life', [11] and thus enables one to glimpse a singular relationship between the serpent and Eve (Hawwā, 'the living'); and we may recall the medieval representations of the 'temptation' in which the body of the serpent entwined around the forbidden tree is surmounted by the bust of a woman. [12] Equally remarkable is the fact that in Chinese symbolism Fo-hi and his sister Niu-Koua, who are said to have reigned together forming a fraternal couple (such as had its counterparts in ancient Egypt and even down to the time of the Ptolemys) are sometimes represented with the body of a serpent and a human head; and in certain cases these two serpents are intertwined like those of the caduceus, no doubt thereby alluding to the complementarism of the yin-yang. [13] Without insisting anymore upon this, which would risk leading us rather far afield, we can see that it all shows the serpent to have had, doubtless in very remote times, an importance which is no longer suspected today; and anyone who studied closely all the aspects of its symbolism, especially in Egypt and in India, might well be led to quite unexpected conclusions. On the subject of the double sense of symbols, it is to be noted that even the number 666 does not have an exclusively malefic significance. If it is the 'number of the Beast', it is in the first place a solar number and, as we have said elsewhere, [14] it is that of Hakathriel or the 'Angel of the Crown'. On the other hand, the letters of the name Sorath also add up to this number, and Sorath, according to the Kabbalists, is the solar demon. As such he is opposed to the Archangel Mikaël, and this has to do with the two faces of Metatron. [15] Sorath is moreover, the anagram of sthur which signifies 'hidden thing'. Is this the 'name of mystery' of which the Apocalypse speaks? But if sathar signifies 'to hide', it also signifies 'to protect'; and in Arabic the same word satar evokes almost without exception the idea of protection, and often even the idea of a divine and providential protection. [16] Here, too, things are much less simple than they are thought to be by those who see only one aspect of a question. But let us return to the animals that symbolise the Egyptian Set. There is also the crocodile, which is self-explanatory; and the hippopatamus, in which some have been inclined to see the Behemoth of the Book of Job, and perhaps not without some justification, although this word (plural of behemah) is strictly speaking a collective designation of all the great quadrapeds. [17] But another animal which has no less importance in this context than the hippopotamus, strange though it may seem, is the ass, and more especially the red ass, [18] which was represented as one of the most fearful of all the entities among those which the dead had to encounter in their journey beyond the grave, or, which esoterically comes to the same, that the initiate encounters in the course of his trials. Would this not be, even more than the hippopotamus, the 'scarlet beast' of the Apocalypse? [19] In any case, one of the darkest aspects of the 'typhonian' mysteries was the cult of the 'god with the ass's head', to which, as is known, the first Christians were sometimes falsely accused of belonging. We have some reasons for believing that, under one form or another, it has persisted until our own times, and some assert that it is bound to endure until the end of the current cycle. From this last point, we want to draw at least one conclusion: at the decline of a civilisation, it is the most inferior side of its tradition which persists the longest, in particular the 'magical' side, which, moreover, contributes to the complete ruin of the tradition by the deviations it gives rise to. This is said to be what happened with Atlantis. [20] Magic is also the only immaterial thing of which the debris still survive from civilisations which have entirely ceased to function-witness the cases of Egypt, of Chaldea, even of Druidism; and no doubt the 'fetishism' of the negro peoples has a similar origin. Sorcery could be said to be made of the vestiges of dead civilisations. Is this why the serpent, in the most recent times, has hardly kept anything but its malefic significance, and why the dragon, ancient Chinese symbol of the Word, awakens only 'diabolical' ideas in the minds of modern Westerners? [21]