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 foretell the time of a new incarnation of the sun. This solar epithet of honour given to the Persian conqueror, and the events of the incarnation, very well agree with the other part in the same prophecy, where our God, or the Hero or Messiah of the soli-lunar cycle, is foretold. Of the names of the earliest of the ancients we have scarcely one which has not been given on account of some supposed quality, or something in the life, of the bearers, which could only be known (except by divine inspiration) after their deaths. This must have been the case with the name of Cyrus. It was not till after he lived that he would be known to the world to deserve the solar title. I believe the name Pharaoh, of Egypt, was a similar solar title, meaning, in the Coptic, without vowels, Ⲫ 500, Ⲣ 100, Ⲏ 8,=608.

In Usher’s Chronology, the famous eclipse of the sun, which caused the battle between the Medes and Lydians to cease, and which was said to have been foretold by Thales, is placed exactly 601 years before Christ. I am well aware that the date of this eclipse has been a subject of much controversy. But the date of it being fixed by Usher, where, according to my theory it ought to be, is striking. In the same year the city of Nineveh is said to have been taken, and the Assyrian empire destroyed, as it was foretold in holy writ, and the Great Cyrus to have been born. These coincidences can scarcely have been the produce of accident. They are all closely connected with the sacred prophecies.

The case of the final in the Hebrew word לםרבה lmrbe, the sign of 600, noticed by Cassini, leaves little room to doubt of the allusion. Secrets of this kind constitute sacred mysteries, cabala. I am by no means certain that there is not a secret religion in St. Peter’s, not known perhaps to any persons but the Pope and Cardinals. I believe I am at this moment letting out their secrets. I beg leave to ask them if they have not in some of the Adyta of St. Peter’s Church, a column or lithos of very peculiar shape, on which are ascribed the words Σευς Σωτηρ, or some words of nearly similar meaning? I have not seen it, but I have it on authority which I cannot doubt.

This Mem final was understood by Picus of Mirandula, who maintained that the closed ם Mem in Isaiah, taught us the reasons of the Paraclete coming after the Messiah. He evidently understood that there was a secret concealed under this word of Isaiah. He was a man much celebrated for his learning in the antiquities of the Jews, and thus it appears that my idea, taken from M. Cassini, is no modern thought, but that a similar opinion respecting this word was held four hundred years ago, by a man who, of all others in modern times, was the most likely to understand it. This, I hope, will justify me and Cassini against the charge of being fantastical.

In the celebrated history called The Gospel of the Infancy, which, I think it probable, was originally in Arabic, but of which there are some passages remaining in Greek, Jesus is said to have been sent to a school-master, to whom he explained the mystical meaning of the letters. This gospel was peculiarly the gospel of the Nestorians, and of the Christians of St. Thomas on the coast of Malabar, of whom I shall have to speak hereafter. This story is repeated in another Gospel, called the Gospel of St. Thomas, which is in Greek, and, for the reasons which the reader will see, was probably translated from Syriac, Hebrew, or Arabic. When the master taught Jesus the word Aleph, (the mystical meaning of which has been proved to be the Trinity by Chardin,) he pronounced the second letter, which is written in the Greek letters, but in the Hebrew language, Μπεθ Mpeth, after which it is said, that he explained to his master the meaning of the prophets. Here we see the mystical ם Mem, or 600 of Isaiah, only written in Greek letters.