But then, these crosses are not the symbols of Christianity, but the Egyptian _crux ansata_, the attribute of Isis (who is Venus, and Aphrodite, Nature, also) ♀ or ♀ the planet; the fact that the Earth has the _crux ansata_ reversed, ♁ having a great occult significance upon which there is no necessity of entering at present. Now what says the Church and how does it explain the “dreadful association.” The Church believes in the devil, of course, and could not afford to lose him. “_The Devil is the chief pillar of the Church_” confesses unblushingly an advocate[5] of the _Ecclesia Militans_. “All the Alexandrian Gnostics speak to us of the fall of the Æons and their Pleroma, and all attribute that fall _to the desire to know_,” writes another volunteer in the same army, slandering the Gnostics as usual and identifying _the desire to know_ or occultism, magic, with Satanism.[6] And then, forthwith, he quotes from Schlegel’s _Philosophie de l’Histoire_ to show that the seven rectors (planets) of Pymander, “commissioned by God to contain the phenomenal world in their seven circles, lost in love with their own beauty,[7] came to admire themselves with such intensity that owing to this proud self-adulation they finally _fell_.” ----- Footnote 5: Thus saith Des Mousseaux. “Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons.” p. X.—and he is corroborated in this by Cardinal de Ventura. The Devil, he says, “is one of the great personages _whose life is closely allied to that of the Church_; and without him ... the fall of man could not have taken place. If it were not for him (the Devil), the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Crucified would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries and the Cross an insult to good sense.” And if so, then we should feel thankful to the poor Devil. Footnote 6: De Mirville. “No Devil, no Christ,” he exclaims. Footnote 7: This is only another version of Narcissus, the Greek victim of his own fair looks. ----- Perversity having thus found its way amongst the angels, the most beautiful creature of God “revolted against its Maker.” That creature is in theological fancy Venus-Lucifer, or rather the informing Spirit or Regent of that planet. This teaching is based on the following speculation. The three principal heroes of the great sidereal catastrophe mentioned in _Revelation_ are, according to the testimony of the Church fathers—“the Verbum, Lucifer his usurper (see editorial) and the grand Archangel who conquered him,” and whose “palaces” (the “houses” astrology calls them) are in the Sun, Venus-Lucifer and Mercury. This is quite evident, since the position of these orbs in the Solar system correspond in their hierarchical order to that of the “heroes” in Chapter xii of _Revelation_ “their names and destinies (?) being closely connected in the theological (exoteric) system with these three great metaphysical names.” (De Mirville’s _Memoir_ to the Academy of France, on the rapping Spirits and the Demons).