Chapter I *■ Verses 5—7
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Hoor-paar-kraat or Harpocrates, the “Babe in the Egg of 
Blue,” is not merely the God of Silence in a conventional sense. 
He represents the Higher Self, the Holy Guardian Angel. The con­
nection is with the symbolism of the Dwarf in Mythology. He 
contains everything in Himself, but is unmanifested. See ILS.1
1 [See page 95.)
2 [Richard Wagner, Parsifal (1882). Wagner used the spelling Parsifal 
(rather than Percivale or Parzival) to emphasize a supposed Arabic ety­
mology of parsi “pure one” and fal “foolish.”]
He is the First Letter of the Alphabet, aleph, whose number is 
One, and his card in the Tarot is “The Fool,” numbered Zero. 
Aleph is attributed to the “Element” (in the old classification of 
things) of Air.
Now as “One” or aleph he represents the Male Principle, the 
First Cause, and the free breath of Life, the sound of the vowel A 
being made with the open throat and mouth.
As Zero he represents the Female Principle, the fertile Mother. 
(An old name for the card is “Mat,” from the Italian matto, 
“fool,” but earlier also from Maut, the Egyptian Vulture-Mother- 
Goddess.) Fertile, for the “Egg of Blue” is the Uterus, and in the 
Macrocosm the Body of Nuit, and it contains the Unborn Babe, 
helpless yet protected and nourished against the crocodiles and 
tigers shown on the card, just as the womb is sealed during gesta­
tion. He sits on a lotus, the yoni, which floats on the “Nile,” the 
amniotic fluid.
In his absolute innocence and ignorance he is “The Fool”; he 
is the “Saviour,” being the Son who shall trample on the croco­
diles and tigers, and avenge his father Osiris. Thus we see him as 
the “Great Fool” of Celtic legend, the “Pure Fool” of Act I of 
Parsifal? and, generally speaking, the insane person whose words 
have always been taken for oracles.
But to be “Saviour” he must be born and grow to manhood; 
thus Parsifal acquires the Sacred Lance, emblem of virility. He 
usually wears the “Coat of many colours” like Joseph the 
“dreamer”; so he is also now the Green Man of spring festivals. 
But his “folly” is now not innocence but inspiration of wine; he 
drinks from the Graal, offered to him by the Priestess. 1 2