Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Monday, October 28, 2013
THE NATURAL GENESIS
"It is said that: 'Thebes is heaven on earth. It is the august staircase of the beginning of time.' Thebes is Teb or Apt, the birthplace, and the mother of birth, first personified in the abyss; next in the heaven of the Great Bear, and lastly as Apta in the Solar Zodiac.
"The twelve signs of the zodiac were the twelve Totems of the Hebrew Tems. The system was full-blown under another type in the Kabalistic tree of the world, with its seventy-two branches corresponding to the seventy-two duo-decans of the zodiac.
"The tree of seventy-two branches, as the figure of the seventy-two duo-decans, is of Egyptian origin.
"They use the ape (Aan), says Hor-Apollo, "to symbolize the world, because they hold that there are seventy-two primitive countries of the world." This world was in the heavens where the station of the ape was at the equinox, the point of completion. The stars were totemic with the ancient Arab tribes. Jupiter was the star of the Jodam and Lolham tribes; Mercury of the Assad tribe; Sirius of the Kais tribe; Canopus of the Tay tribe. Others recognized constellations as totemic types. From these we come at last to the ruling planet and the individual's guiding star. These things did not begin with any vague general worship of the heavenly host. The God of Sabaoth is the deity of the seven stars, not of Argelander's map of millions, or the diamondiferous dark. Those stars were observed and reckoned by which time could be reckoned and position in space determined. The constellations were figured for use, the types were made totemic and became fetishistic; but the non-evolutionist who looks on fetishism as a primeval religion degraded to idolatry, might just as well look on the black race as a vey discolored or dirty kind of white. He has to be forced backward, step by step with face set all the while the clean contrary way. Fetishism began with typology, and both mythology and religion were the outcome not the origin."
P.71, "Typology of Primitive Customs," THE NATURAL GENESIS, by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore, Maryland: 1883, 1998)