In Egyptian mythology Kneph was originally the breath of life, his name meaning soul-breath. Indeed, according to Plutarch and Diodorus, kneph was identical with the Greek pneuma. Kneph in this context was a spirit that breathed life into things, giving them form. Kneph eventually became considered to be the creator god himself, in Elephantine, although his identity was finally a ...

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Kneph (Egypt, Egyptian). Also Cneph and Nef, endowed with the same attributes as Khem. One of the gods of creative Force, for he is connected with the Mundane Egg. He is called by Porphyry "the creator of the world"; by Plutarch the "unmade and eternal deity"; by Eusebius he is identified with the Logos; and Jamblichus goes so far as almost to identify him with Brahma since he says of him that "this god is intellect itself, intellectually perceiving itself, and consecrating intellections to itself; and is to be worshipped in silence".

One form of him, adds Mr. Bonwick "was Av meaning flesh. He was criocephalus, with a solar disk on his head, and standing on the serpent Mehen. In his left hand was a viper, and a cross was in his right. He was actively engaged in the underworld upon a mission of creation." Deveria writes: "His journey to the lower hemisphere appears to symbolise the evolutions of substances which are born to die and to be reborn". Thousands of years before Kardec, Swedenborg, and Darwin appeared, the old Egyptians entertained their several philosophies. (Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought.)

(See also: Kneph, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Kneph or Knouphis (Egyptian) An alternative form of the deity Khnum or Khnemu, associated with Egyptian cosmogony. One of the gods of creative force:

"as Chnoumis-Kneph, who represents the Indian Narayana, the Spirit of God moving on the waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of evolution; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator; for as Deveria explains: 'His journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.' Esoterically, however, . . . Chnoumis-Kneph was pre-eminently the god of reincarnation" (TG 82-3). All these solar gods are the personification of the attributes of one god, representing various aspects of the phases of generation and impregnation.

(See also: Kneph, Knouphis, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Horus is an ancient god of Egyptian mythology, whose cult survived so long that he evolved dramatically over time and gained many names. The most well known name is the Greek Horus, representing the Egyptian Heru/Har, which is the basic element in most of the other names of Horus. Horus was so important that the Eye of Horus became an important Egyptian symbol of power and even to this day is represented on the U.S. one dollar bill. Horus - Mythology. Horus - Sky G ...

Including:

• Horus - Mythology
• Horus - Sky God
• Horus - Sun God
• Horus - Conquerer of Set
• Horus - Brother of Isis
• Horus - Son of Osiris
• Horus - Mystery Religion
• Horus - Horus and Jesus
• Horus - Neith's nativity
• Horus - See Also

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Knouph. See KNEPH

(See also: Knouph, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ophis (Ancient Greek). The same as Chnuphis or Kneph, the Logos; the good serpent or Agathodemon.

(See also: Ophis, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Chnoubis, Chnoumis, Chnouphis. See KNEPH (see TG and SD for Blavatsky's meanings of these)

(See also: Chnoubis, Chnoumis, Chnouphis, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Noo (Egypt, Egyptian). Primordial waters of space called "Father-Mother"; the "face of the deep" of the Bible; for above Noo hovers the Breath of Kneph, who is represented with the Mundane Egg in his mouth.

(See also: Noo, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Chnoumis (Ancient Greek) The same as Chnouphis and Kneph. A symbol of creative force ; Chnoumis or Kneph is "the unmade and eternal deity" according to Plutarch. He is represented as blue (ether), and with his ram’s head with an asp between the horns, he might be taken for Ammon or Chnouphis (.q.v’. ).

The fact is that all these gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the phases of generation and impregna tion. Their ram’s heads denote this meaning, a ram ever symbolizing generative energy in the abstract, while the bull was the symbol of strength and the creative function. All were one god, whose attributes were individualised and personified. According to Sir G. Wilkinsen, Kneph or Chnoumis was "the idea of the Spirit of God" ; and Bonwick explains that, as Av, "matter" or "flesh", he was criocephalic (ram- headed), wearing a solar disk on the head, standing on the Serpent Mehen, with a viper in his left and a cross in his right hand, and bent upon the function of creation in the underworld (the earth, esoterically).

The Kabbalists identify him with "Binah, the third Sephira of the Sephirothal Tree, or Binah, represented by the Divine name of Jehovah". If as Chnoumis-Kneph, he represents the Indian Narayana, the Spirit of ( moving on the waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of evolution ; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator ; for, as Deveria explains:"His Journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn." Esoterically, however, and as taught by the Initiates of the inner temple, Chnoumis-Kneph was pre-eminently the god of reincarnation. Says an inscription: "I am Chnoumis, Son of the Universe, 700", a mystery having a direct reference to the reincarnating EGO.

(See also: Chnoumis, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Pasht (Egypt, Egyptian). The cat-headed goddess, the Moon, called also Sekhet. Her statues and representations are seen in great numbers at the British Museum. She is the wife or female aspect of Ptah (the son of Kneph), the creative principle, or the Egyptian Demiurgus. She is also called Beset or Bubastis, being then both the re-uniting and the separating principle. Her motto is: "punish the guilty and remove defilement", and one of her emblems is the cat. According to Viscount Rouge, her worship is extremely ancient (B.c. 3000), and she is the mother of the Asiatic race, the race that settled in Northern Egypt. As such she is called Ouato.

(See also: Pasht, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Eggs (Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the "Mundane Egg", in which Brahma gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, and the Mundane Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the "unmade and eternal deity", Kneph, and which is the emblem of generative power.

Then the Egg of Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates. Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost every country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time, which was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth or rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial.

They were hung up in Egyptian temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques.

(See also: Eggs, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Water. The first principle of things, according to Thales and other ancient philosophers. Of course this is not water on the material plane, but in a figurative sense for the potential fluid contained in boundless space. This was symbolised in ancient Egypt by Kneph, the "unrevealed" god, who was represented as the serpent - the emblem of eternity - encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which he incubates with his breath. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (Gen. i.) The honey-dew, the food of the gods and of the creative bees on the Yggdrasil, falls during the night upon the tree of life from the "divine waters, the birth-place of the gods ". Alchemists claim that when pre-Adamic earth is reduced by the Alkahest to its first substance, it is like clear water. The Alkahest is "the one and the invisible, the water, the first principle, in the second transformation".

(See also: Water, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Incarnations (Divine) or Avatars. The Immaculate Conception is as pre-eminently Egyptian as it is Indian. As the author of Egyptian Belief has it: "It is not the vulgar, coarse and sensual story as in Greek mythology, but refined, moral and spiritual "; and again the incarnation idea was found revealed on the wall of a Theban temple by Samuel Sharpe, who thus analyzes it: "First the god Thoth . . . as the messenger of the gods, like the Mercury of the Greeks (or the Gabriel of the first Gospel), tells the maiden queen Mautmes, that she is to give birth to a son, who is to be king Amunotaph III. Secondly, the god Kneph, the Spirit . . . . and the goddess Hathor (Nature) both take hold of the queen by the hands and put into her mouth the character for life, a cross, which is to be the life of the coming child", etc., etc. Truly divine incarnation, or the avatar doctrine, constituted the grandest mystery of every old religious system!

(See also: Incarnations, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

I-em-hetep or Imhetep (Egyptian) Imouthis, Imouthes (Greek) Also Imhotep, Imhot-pou. He who comes in peace; the Egyptian deity presiding over medicine, especially in connection with its learning and science; a son of Ptah who, with his brother Nefer-tem, was regarded as the third member of the great triad of gods at Memphis.

The Greeks equated him with Aesculapius. He was regarded as the god of study and in later times took on some of the attributes of Thoth or Tehuti as the scribe of the gods. During their life he healed men's bodies; after their death he superintended the preservation of their bodies, and was regarded as one of the protectors of the dead in the underworld. He is termed the Logos-Creator in conjunction with Kneph (SD 1:353).

(See also: I-em-hetep, Imhetep, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Aesculapius Asklepios (Greek) God of healing and medicine, son of Apollo by Coronis, educated by the centaur Chiron. When Aesculapius brought the dead back to life, Zeus at the behest of Hades killed him with a thunderbolt.

He is often identified with Mercury, the divine healer or cosmic serpent, represented by the caduceus of Mercury; and in some of his functions he is the same as Ptah in Egypt, creative intellect or wisdom, and as Apollo, Baal, Adonis, and Hercules (SD 2:208; 1:353). Also called the serpent and the savior: "Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Knoum, and Kneph, are all deities with the attributes of the serpent. Says Dupuis, 'They are all healers, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of enlightenment' " (SD 2:26). Thus Aesculapius is mystically the divine healer or healing power, the ray of divine wisdom emanating from the spiritual sun in man.

(See also: Aesculapius, Asklepios, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Chnouphis (Ancient Greek). Nouf in Egyptian. Another aspect of Ammon, and the personification of his generative power in actu, as Kneph is of the same in potentia. He is also ram-headed.

 If in his aspect as Kneph he is the Holy Spirit with the creative ideation brooding in him, as Chnouphis, he is the angel who "comes in" into the Virgin soil and flesh. A prayer on a papyrus, translated by the French Egyptologist Chabas, says; ‘ 0 Sepui, Cause of being, who hast formed thine own body! 0 only Lord, proceeding from Noum ! 0 divine substance, created from itself! 0 God, who hast made the substance which is in him! 0 God, who has made his own father and impregnated his own mother."

This shows the origin of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and immaculate conception. He is seen on a monument seated near a potter’s wheel, and forming men out of clay. The fig-leaf is sacred to him, which is alone sufficient to prove him a phallic god - an idea which is carried out by the inscription: "he who made that which is, the creator of beings, the first existing, he who made to exist all that exists." Some see in him the incarnation of Ammon-Ra, but he is the latter himself in his phallic aspect, for, like Ammon, he is " his mother’s husband", i.e., the male or impregnating side of Nature.

His names vary, as Cnouphis, Noum, Khem, and Khnum or Chnoumis. As he represents the Demiurgos (or Logos) from the material, lower aspect of the Soul of the World, he is the Agathodemon, symbolized sometimes by a Serpent ; and his wife Athor or Maut (Mot mother), or Sate, "the daughter of the Sun", carrying an arrow on a sunbeam (the ray of conception), stretches "mistress over the lower portions of the atmosphere". below the constellations, as Ne?th expands over the starry heavens. (See "Chaos".)

(See also: Chnouphis, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Ptah, or Pthah (Egypt, Egyptian). The son of Kneph in the Egyptian Pantheon. He is the Principle of Light and Life through which "creation" or rather evolution took place. The Egyptian logos and creator, the Demiurgos.

A very old deity, as, according to Herodotus, he had a temple erected to him by Menes, the first king of Egypt. He is "giver of life" and the self-born, and the father of Apis, the sacred bull, conceived through a ray from the Sun. Ptah is thus the prototype of Osiris, a later deity. Herodotus makes him the father of the Kabiri, the mystery-gods; and the Targum of Jerusalem says: "Egyptians called the wisdom of the First Intellect Ptah"; hence he is Mahat the "divine wisdom"; though from another aspect he is Swabhavat, the self-created substance, as a prayer addressed to him in the Ritual of the Dead says, after calling Ptah "father of fathers and of all gods, generator of all men produced from his substance": "Thou art without father, being. engendered by thy own will; thou art without mother, being born by the renewal of thine own substance from whom proceeds substance".

(See also: Ptah, Pthah, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

World Serpent or Snake Ideas connected with the world snake are not those associated with the legend of a hero slaying a serpent but with a more profound concept. In the Hindu system, there is Ananta-Sesha, the serpent of infinity; in the ancient Scandinavian cosmogony, the world serpent Nidhogg, is represented as encircling the globe with its tail in its mouth. The same representation is found in the Egyptian teachings:

"In the oldest Egyptian imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake, when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved, while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme First Cause. . . . When the serpent represents eternity and immortality, it encircles the world, biting its tail, and thus offering no solution of continuity. It then becomes the astral light" (IU 157).

Another interpretation of the snake in the circle is that "The active is attracted by the passive principle and the Great Nag [Ananta-Sesha], the serpent emblem of the eternity, attracts its tail to its mouth forming thereby a circle (cycles in the eternity) in that incessant pursuit of the negative by the positive" (ML 71).

A sublime conception has also its human analog: the world serpent as the cosmic naga or grand universal 'Adam Qadmom, the sublime cosmic initiate, the cosmic wisdom which lives from manifesting universe to manifesting universe as its Purusha or spirit. It is the source of cosmic laws, wisdom, and life which infill the universe of which each such world serpent is the divine originating cause. The same thought in its human application refers to the great adept or master of wisdom and love.

(See also: World Serpent, Snake, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Water A primary cosmic element with almost innumerable manifestations, corresponding to the Hindu apas tattva and to the akasic waters of space. Its most fundamental meaning is that of space or akasa, the great mother of all, the feminine receptive principle over and in which broods the fire of spirit. "The first principle of things, according to Thales and other ancient philosophers. Of course this is not water on the material plane, but in a figurative sense for the potential fluid contained in boundless space. This was symbolized in ancient Egypt by Kneph, the 'unrevealed' god, who was represented as the serpent -- the emblem of eternity -- encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which he incubates with his breath. 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' (Gen. i). The honey-dew, the food of the gods and of the creative bees on the Yggdrasil, falls during the night upon the tree of life from the 'divine waters, the birth-place of the gods.' Alchemists claim that when pre-Adamic earth is reduced by the Alkahest to its first substance, it is like clear water. The Alkahest is 'the one and the invisible, the water, the first principle, in the second transformation' " (TG 368).

Water corresponds with soul, representing the middle world between spirit or fire on the one hand, and matter or earth on the other. It corresponds to the astral plane as compared with the physical; and here we

See its quality of instability, mobility, having no fixed shape but adapting itself to other shapes, dissolving solid bodies and re-precipitating them. It corresponds to the psychomental nature as contrasted with the spiritual and the physical, and to the liquid state of physical matter, though in this sense it is the water subdivision of the earth element. Water and fire are necessary elements of life, as are their correspondences the moon and sun.

(See also: Water, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Hiram Abif, Huram Abif Huram 'abiu or 'abiv (Hebrew) (from hawar to become white or pale; or from harah to burn (as with ardor), be noble or free-born; or haram to devote, consecrate as to religion or destruction, be killed or destroyed)

The last derivation is descriptive of the character and fate (according to Masonic tradition) of Hiram Abif; while the second derivation befits the character of Hiram King of Tyre. Hiram Abif is described as a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kings 7:14), and a skillful, knowledgeable man, a worker in gold, silver, brass, and iron, as was his father (2 Chron 2:12). Hiram Abif was sent by Hiram King of Tyre to King Solomon to aid in the building of his Temple.

In Freemasonry Hiram Abif is the central figure in the drama of the Third or Master Mason's degree, and one of the Three Ancient Grand Masters of the Craft (the other two being King Solomon and Hiram King of Tyre). Before the completion of the building of the Temple he was slain by three ruffians because he refused to communicate to them the Master Mason's Word, which on account of his death was said to be lost, for it can be communicated only when all the Three Ancient Grand Masters are present. Hiram Abif was hastily buried in a shallow grave marked by a sprig of acacia or myrtle, which led to its discovery and the subsequent raising of Hiram Abif by the power of a Substitute Word which, it was decreed, should be used until the Lost Word be again found.

The Masonic initiation was modeled on that of the Lesser Mysteries of Egypt, also used in India from time immemorial with Loka-chaksu (eye of the world) and Dinkara (day-maker or the sun).

"In Egypt the third degree was called Porte de la Mort (the gate of death) . . . in the modern rite, one finds the reproduction of this Egyptian myth, except that in place of Osiris, inventor of the arts, or the Sun, one finds the name of Hiram, which signifies raised -- eleve, (the epithet which belongs to the Sun) and who is skillful in the arts" (Ragon, Orthodoxie Maçonnique 101-2). The slaying of Hiram signifies the annual slaying of the sun by the last three months of the year, the sun being reborn or raised at the winter solstice, one of the four great initiation periods celebrated in antiquity.

Hiram Abif is a type-figure of all the saviors of humanity who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of mankind, a direct human representative of its prototype among the divinities, such as Odin and Visvakarman, the builder and artificer of the gods. Hiram Abif is also the type-figure of the individual's inner god, crucified upon the cross of material existence.

The legend and drama of the Master Mason's degree constitutes an indisputable link between Freemasonry and the ancient Mysteries, and few have fathomed the esoteric significance of this degree and of the legend of Hiram Abif: 1) the relation of the upper triad to the lower quaternary of the sevenfold human nature; 2) the incarnation or sacrifice of the manasaputras; 3) the symbolism of Solomon's Temple; 4) the instruments with which the death of Hiram Abif was accomplished; and 5) the reference to Hiram as a potter (2 Chron 4:16), which connects him with Kneph in the Egyptian Mysteries as creator of the mundane egg. A variant of the Hiramic legend is given in the parable of the householder and the vineyard, whose servants and finally son whom he sent to receive the fruits of the harvest were slain (Matt 21:33).

(See also: Hiram Abif, Huram Abif, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)