THE CROSS AND CIRCLE Something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed, in the minds of the ancient philosophers, to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism with its pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity and its outward VEIL alike – by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name theos given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Platos etymological definition of the word theos has been shown elsewhere. He derives it from the verb θεειν (see Cratylus), to move, as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with deity. According to the Esoteric philosophy, this Deity is during its nights and its days (i.e., cycles of rest or activity) the eternal perpetual motion, the EVER-BECOMING, as well as the ever universally present, and the ever Existing. The latter is the root-abstraction, the former – the only possible conception in human mind, if it disconnects this deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through æons of duration into its original status – ABSOLUTE UNITY. It was only the minor gods, who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the god Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as the great Cat of the Basin of Persea, in An (See Book of the Dead, Ritual XVII, 45-47), was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated, and holding a cross, symbol of the four quarters, or the Elements, attached to a Circle. In that very learned work, The Natural Genesis, by Mr. Gerald Massey, on pp. 408-455 (Vol. I.), under the heading, Typology of the Cross, there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the Cross is referred to these two volumes. The author shows that the circle and the cross are inseparable. . . . The crux ansata unites the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin they came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The names denote the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed cross (Swastica) and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. . . . The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh-te . Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul-Rochette shows (ibid)the sign , occurring as the reverse of a Phœnician coin, with a Ram as the obverse. . . . .The same sign, sometimes called Venus Looking-Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses (Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. De La Croix Ansée, Mém. de lAcademie des Sciences, pl. 2, Nos. 8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320, quoted in Nat. Gen.), which proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the divine origin of Cross and Circle had been forgotten. Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (vol. xviii., p. 393, pl. 4): At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth . . . . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following specimen , which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure of the earths path. The same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru. This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes. But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of Cross and Circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Aryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author: The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross sign is not always simple. 1 This is a type that was developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant . . . The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru set upright on the Tau-Cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the birth-place in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh sign is the feminine type of the birth-place, representing the north. It was in the NORTHERN QUARTER that the GODDESS OF THE SEVEN STARS, called the Mother of the Revolutions, gave birth to time in the earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross , a mere loop which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon of the great Bear, as her Ark, the ideograph of a period, an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution. This then represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear, which constituted the earliest year of time, from which we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birth-place of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark or Rak type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued in the Cypriote and the Coptic Ro, Ρ. 2 The Ro, was carried into the Greek cross , which is formed of the Ro and Chi or R-K. . . . The Rak, or Ank, was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the Ank-tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of Heaven. . . . 1 Certainly not; for very often there are symbols made to symbolize other symbols, and these are in turn used in ideographs. 2 The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza) is also the Latin P. The Secret Doctrine, ii 545–547 H. P. Blavatsky
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