Our readers will certainly inquire what then is this invisible _all_? How is it that our scientific methods, however perfected, have never discovered any of the magical properties contained in it? To this we can answer, that it is no reason because modern scientists are ignorant of them that it should not possess all the properties with which the ancient philosophers endowed it. Science rejects many a thing to-day which she may find herself forced to accept to-morrow. A little less than a century ago the Academy denied Franklin’s electricity, and, at the present day, we can hardly find a house without a conductor on its roof. Shooting at the barn-door, the Academy missed the barn itself. Modern scientists, by their wilful skepticism and learned ignorance, do this very frequently. Emepht, the supreme, first principle, produced an egg; by brooding over which, and permeating the substance of it with its own vivifying essence, the germ contained within was developed; and _Phtha_, the active creative principle proceeded from it, and began his work. From the boundless expanse of cosmic matter, which had formed itself under his breath, or _will_, this cosmic matter—astral light, æther, fire-mist, principle of life—it matters not how we may call it, this creative principle, or, as our modern philosophy terms it, law of evolution, by setting in motion the potencies latent in it, formed suns and stars, and satellites; controlled their emplacement by the immutable law of harmony, and peopled them “with every form and quality of life.” In the ancient Eastern mythologies, the cosmogonic myth states that there was but water (the father) and the prolific slime (the mother, _Ilus_ or _Hylè_), from which crept forth the mundane snake-_matter_. It was the god _Phanes_, the revealed one, the Word, or _logos_. How willingly this myth was accepted, even by the Christians who compiled the New Testament, may be easily inferred from the following fact: Phanes, the revealed god, is represented in this snake-symbol as a _protogonos_, a being furnished with the heads of a _man_, a hawk or an eagle, a bull—_taurus_, and a lion, with wings on both sides. The heads relate to the zodiac, and typify the four seasons of the year, for the _mundane_ serpent is the _mundane_ {147} year, while the serpent itself is the symbol of Kneph, the hidden, or _unrevealed_ deity—God the Father. Time is winged, therefore the serpent is represented with wings. If we remember that each of the four evangelists is represented as having near him one of the described animals—grouped together in Solomon’s triangle in the pentacle of Ezekiel, and to be found in the four cherubs or sphinxes of the sacred arch—we will perhaps understand the secret meaning, as well as the reason why the early Christians adopted this symbol; and how it is that the present Roman Catholics and the Greeks of the Oriental Church still represent these animals in the pictures of their evangelists