Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/475

Rh and death, from whom light and life emerged, and who rose from the black deep as a star and wept a fertilising tear of malachite dew. The Hathor star was the prototype of the Madonna's "Stella del Mare." Her darkness symbolized the Infinite Unknown, the primeval Darkness, which was the source of all power, light, life and knowledge. Hathor was as the black powder, the All-mother, while the green powder was the father Osiris, her son and husband. Horus, the new form of Osiris, was "Husband of his Mother."

As Egyptian Colour Symbolism leads us into Metal Symbolism, so does Metal Symbolism lead us into Alchemy, the Egyptian origin of which cannot be disputed. The germ of Egyptian Alchemy, like the germ of the Logos Doctrine, is as old as the Pyramid Age.

"Side by side with the growth of skill in performing the ordinary powers of metal work in Egypt, there grew up," writes Budge, "in that country the belief that magical powers existed in fluxes and alloys; and the art of manipulating the metals and the knowledge of the chemistry of the metals and of their magical powers were described by the name of Khemeia, that is to say, 'preparation of the black ore' (or 'powder'), which was regarded as the active principle in the transmutation of metals."

What was meant by "transmutation" is brought out by Professor Arthur John Hopkins in a recent important article on "Earliest Alchemy." "The transmutation claimed and attained by the Egyptians was," he writes, "essentially a colour transmutation." He believes that "the fundamental art which led up to alchemy was the dyeing of fabrics. … There is internal evidence that the dyeing of fabrics was carried on in the temple-workshops of Egypt by the priests, the methods and recipes of this art being kept a trade secret from the common people. …