The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX ourself—the Professor, then, Master Eliphas Levi, gave the persons assembled in Mme. de B——’s drawing-room the scientific explanation of the three signatures, and this is what he said : “These three signs belong to the series of sacred and primitive hieroglyphs, known only to initiates of the first order. The first is the signature of Typhon. It expresses the blasphemy of the evil spirit by establishing dualism in the creative principle. For the crux ansata of Osiris is a lingam upside down, and represents the paternal and active force of God (the vertical line extending from the circle) fertilizing passive nature (the horizontal line). To double the vertical line is to affirm that nature has two fathers; it is to put adultery in the place of the divine motherhood, it is to affirm, instead of the principle of intelligence, blind fatality, which has for result the eternal conflict of appearances in nothingness ; it is, then, the most ancient, the most authentic, and the most terrible of all the stigmata of hell. It signifies the atheistic god ; it is the signature of Satan. “This first signature is hieratical, and bears reference to the occult characters of the divine world. “The second pertains to philosophical hieroglyphs, it represents the graduated extent of idea, and the progressive extension of form. “Tt is a triple tau upside down; it is human thought affirming the absolute in the three worlds; and that absolute ends here by a fork, that is to say, by the sign of doubt and antagonism. So that, if the first character means: ‘ There is no God,’ the rigorous signification of this one is : ‘ Hierarchical truth does not exist.’ 136