Moses triumphed and led the Israelites out of the land of bondage. It was at this period that true science became lost to Egypt, for the priests, abusing the implicit confidence of the people, allowed that knowledge to degenerate into brutalising idolatry. Such is the rock of peril for esoteric science; the truth must be veiled, yet not hidden from the people; symbolism must not be disgraced by a lapse into absurdity; the sacred veil of Isis must be preserved in its beauty and dignity. It was over this that the Egyptian priesthood failed; the vulgar and the foolish understood the hieroglyphic forms of Isis and Hermanubis as real things, so that Osiris was understood to be an ox, while the wise Hermes was a dog. The transformed Osiris masqueraded in the fantastic guise of the bull of Apis, nor did the priests hinder the people from adoring flesh intended for their kitchens. It was time to save the holy traditions; Moses established a new nation and forbade all worship of images; but the people unfortunately had dwelt long among idolaters and memories of the bull of Apis remained with them in the desert. We know the history of that Golden Calf to which the children of Israel have been always a little addicted. Moses, however, did not wish the sacred hieroglyphics to pass out of memory, and he sanctified them by their consecration to the purified worship of the true God. We shall see how all objects which entered into the cultus of Jehovah were symbolic in character and recalled the venerable signs of primæval revelation. But we must first finish with the Gentiles and follow through pagan civilisation the story of materialised hieroglyphics and of ancient rites degenerated. CHAPTER V MAGIC IN GREECE We pass now to the period when the exact sciences of Magic assumed their natural external form, being that of beauty. We have seen in the _Zohar_ how the human prototype rose in heaven and was reflected below in the waters of being. This ideal man, this shadow of the pantomorphic god, this virile phantom of perfect form was not destined to dwell alone in the world of symbolism. There was given to him a companion under the beneficent sky of Hellas. The celestial Venus, the chaste and fruitful Venus, the triple mother of the three Graces, rose in her turn, no longer from the sleeping deeps of chaos, but from the living and flowing waves of that echoing archipelago of poetry, where islands embroidered with green trees and flowers seem as the vessels of gods.