Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... SPIRITUAL PROGRESS--AN EGYPTIAN SYMBOL1 THE cone upon the head of the defunct, as represented in some of the illustrations in the Book of the Dead, attracted my attention in a study of Egyptian religions from the standpoint of symbolism. The significance of the cone is not known, says Budge, although some writers have considered it to be simply a form of head dress. The deep spiritual significance of the Egyptian teachings, together with the symbolic or hieroglyphic method of transmitting their knowledge to posterity, led me to consider this " cone" as also conveying some idea worth the effort of an attempt at interpreting its meaning. To secure the perspective necessary to the view to be disclosed, one must abandon the idea that the ancient Egyptians were animal worshipers, and come to view with Budge, Spineto, Renouf, and others, the monotheism of this ancient race. Iamblichus says regarding this: "Before the things that really are, even the first principles of all things, is One Divine Being; prior even to the first God and King, abiding immovable in the aloneness of his own absolute unity. For neither is Intelligence nor any principle else intermingled with him, but he is established an exemplar of the God self-begotten, self-produced and only begotten, the One truly God." 2 With so lofty a conception of God, we are prepared for a noble conception of man. Lactantius says, " From the two natures, the deathless 1 Records of the Past, March-April, 1912. 2"The Egyptian Mysteries." By Iamblichus. Translated by Alexander Wilder, p. 252. and mortal, He made one nature--that of man--one and the self-same thing; and having made the self-same (man) both somehow deathless and somehow mortal, He brought him forth, and set him up betwixt the...
