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217 be remembered in this connection that the human incarnations of Isis and Osiris should not be taken as mere allegorical representations of the incarnations of spirit. They were placed on quite a different footing by the ancient Egyptian writers; and in this very discourse Isis said that she would not and dared not "recount this nativity" and "declare the origin" of the race of Horus. The so-called myth of Osiris is the great central mystery of Egyptian occultism, and has probably a closer relation with the appearance of Buddha than has usually been imagined. It must further be stated here that the Greek God Dionysos has no proper position to occupy in the Egyptian Pantheon. Dr. Kingsford speaks of the "incarnation martyrdom and resuscitation of Dionysos Zagreus" in the essay prefixed to this book. She says that Dionysos was intended to mean the spirit, and adds further on that "the spirit or Dionysos was regarded as of a specially divine genesis, being the son of Zeus by the immaculate Maiden Kore-Persephoneia...." If so, Dionysos is the seventh principle in man, the Logos that manifests itself in the microcosm. But we are informed at the end of the essay that "Osiris is the microcosmic sun, the counterpart in the human system of the microcosmic Dionysos or Son of God." This latter statement is clearly inconsistent with what has gone before, and is evidently the result of misconception—a misconception generally prevalent in the minds ol the Western Hermetic students regarding the real position of Osiris—and an attempt to interpret the higher mysteries of the Egyptian religion by the mythological fables of ancient Greece, which, though elegant and refined in form, bear no comparison whatever to the allegories of the ancient Egyptian writers in point of occult significance.

There is a remarkable passage on p. 34 of the book under consideration which, if closely examined, may throw some light on the subject. Isis informs Horus that "on high dwell two ministers of the Universal Providence; one is the guardian of the Souls, the other is their conducter, who sends them forth and ordains for them bodies. The first minister 28