The character and power of Kneph are indicated in terms no less lofty and comprehensive than those applied to the omnipotent Brahm. He is described in the ancient Hermetic books as the "first God, immovable in the solitude of his Unity, the fountain of all things, the root of all primary, intelligible, existing forms, the God of Gods, before the etherial and empyrean Gods and the celestial." In America this great Unity, this God of Gods, was equally recognised. In Mexico as Teotl, "he who is all in himself" (Tloque Nahuaque); in Peru as Varicocha, the "Soul of the Universe"; in Central America and Yucatan as Stunah Ku or Hunab Ku, "God of Gods, the incorporeal origin of all things." And as the Supreme Brahm of the Hindus, "whose name was unutterable," was worshipped under no external form and had neither temples nor altars erected to him, so the Supreme Teotl and the corresponding Varicocha and Hunab Ku, "whose names," says the Spanish conquerors, "were spoken only with extreme dread," were without an image or an outward form of worship for the reason, according to the same authorities, that each was regarded as the Invisible and Unknown God. The Mundane Egg, received as a symbol of original, passive, unorganized, formless nature, became associated, in conformity with primitive notions, with other symbols referring to the creative force or vitalizing influence. Thus in the Hindu cosmogany Brahma is represented, after long inertia, as arranging the passive elements, "creating the world and all visible things." Under the form of the emblematic bull the generative energy was represented breaking the quiescent egg. Encircled by the folds of the agatho-demon, a type of the active principle, it was suspended aloft at the temples of Tyre. For the serpent, like the bull, was an emblem of the sun or of the attributes of that luminary--itself the celestial emblem of the "Universal Father," the procreative power of nature. "Everywhere," says Faber, "we find the great father exhibiting himself in the form of a serpent, and everywhere we find the serpent invested with the attributes of the Great Father and partaking of the honours which were paid him."[8] Under this view, therefore, we may regard the compound symbol of the serpent and the egg, though specifically allusive to the general creation, as an illustration of the doctrine of the reciprocal principles which, as we have already seen, enters largely into the entire fabric of primitive philosophy and mythology. Thus have we shewn that the grand conception of a Supreme Unity and the doctrine of the reciprocal principles existed in America in a well defined and easily recognised form. Our present inquiry relates to the symbols by which they were represented in both continents. That these were not usually arbitrary, but resulted from associations, generally of an obvious kind, will be readily admitted. CHAPTER V.