For
the Egyptain gods related to the symbol of the ram, Blavatsky mentions Ammon, Khnoum, and Kneph.
Champollion lists the following as forms of Amon:Amon-Ra, Nef, Noub,
Noum, Cnèph, Cnouphis-ilus, Cnoubis, Chnoumis,
Agathodaemon, Mendes. (Panthéon égyptien, collection des personnages mythologiques de l'ancienne Égypte, d'après les monuments, Firmin Didot, (pp. 1-24).
According to Mythopedia, Amon is one of 'the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon,
ram-headed Amun was a key member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad and the Theban
Triad. Amun was often combined with Ra,
with whom he shared many cosmological similarities. In their respective cults
of worship, each was hailed as a creator deity and the head of the Egyptian
pantheon.
Amon-Ra (1)
Amun was somewhat unique within Egyptian theology, as
he possessed many characteristics emphasized in modern monotheistic deities
(such as Christianity’s God, Judaism’s Yahweh, and Islam’s Allah). Omnipresent
and all-powerful, Amun was unknowable even to his fellow gods and goddesses.
Amun was depicted in a variety of ways, with the most
common being that of a bearded man wearing a dual-feathered plume. He often
wore a short kilt and a feather-patterned tunic.While
Amun was frequently depicted as having blue skin, later representations used
red as well.
Amun’s other representations included a ram-headed
man, a ram-headed serpent, a primordial goose, and a ram-headed sphinx.' (Meehan,
Evan. “Amun.” Mythopedia, November 29, 2022)
According to Blavatsky: 'Ammon or Mon, the “hidden,” the Supreme
Spirit. Ammon-Ra, the generator, is the secondary aspect of the concealed
deity. Khnoum was adored at Elephanta and Philoe) The same with Khnoum and
Ammon;§ both are represented ram-headed, and both often confused, though their
functions are different. Khnoum is “the modeller of men,” fashioning men and
things out of the Mundane Egg on a potter’s wheel;' (Isis Unveiled 2, 465)
Cnouphis, Chnoubis, Ammon-Chnoubis (2)
She gives certain elaborations on the various forms of Amon in her Theosophical Glossary:
Ammon (Eg.). One of the great gods of Egypt. Ammon or Amoun is far older
than Amoun-Ra, and is identified with Baal. Hammon, the Lord of Heaven.
Amoun-Ra was Ra the Spiritual Sun, the “Sun of Righteousness”, etc., for—“the
Lord God is a Sun”. He is the God of Mystery and the hieroglyphics of his name
are often reversed. He is Pan, All-Nature esoterically, and therefore the
universe, and the “Lord of Eternity”. Ra, as declared by an old inscription,
was “begotten by Neith but not engendered”.
Kneph (Eg.). 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. 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.)
Chnouphis
Khnum creating man and woman (3)
(Gr.)(here she seems to be describing the
form of Khnoum) 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. 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
Agathodæmon, symbolized sometimes by a Serpent ;
Chnoumis
(Gr) The same as Chnouphis and
Kneph.
Kneph, temple of Khnum, Esna, Egypt (4)
A symbol of creative force ; The
fact is that all these gods are solar, and represent under various aspects the
phases of generation and impregnation. 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.
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.
Greece
Phrixus & Golden-Fleeced Ram, C 5th B.C (5)
Aries, the first astrological sign, is
represented by the ram, with a general symbolism of rebirth and beginnings. Aries, which
is ruled by the planet Mars, is associated with the Greek myth of Jason and the
Argonauts.The myth tells the story of Phrixus and Helle, who were born of
Athamas, a Boetian king, and the goddess of the clouds, Nephele. Athamas fell
in love with a woman named Ino, and Nephele left in anger, causing a drought in
her wake. Ino attempted to sacrifice Phrixus and Helle in order to end the
drought that had stricken the land. Nephele prevented this from happening by
sending a ram with golden wool to rescue them. The two children escaped on the
winged ram’s back.The ram was initially meant to be sacrificed to Mars, but
Zeus took it and placed it in the sky in his honor. (Hyginus Fabulae 188, Krios Khrysomallos)
Roman Jupiter Ammon, 1st c, AD (6)
According to Blavatsky, 'In his astronomical aspect
Zeus-Dionysus has his origin in the zodiac, the ancient solar year. In Libya
he assumed the form of a ram, and is identical with the Egyptian Amun, who
begat Osiris, the taurian god. (Isis Unveiled I, 263 )
Amun, worshipped by the
Greeks as Ammon, had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar (d. 443
BC), at Thebes (Description of Greece. ix.16 § 1.), and
another at Sparta,
the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias says,consulted
the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks (Description of Greece. iii.18 § 2). At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Amun was worshipped, from the time of Lysander (d.
395 BC), as zealously as in Ammonium. Pindar the poet honored the god with a
hymn. At Megalopolis the god was represented with the
head of a ram (Paus. viii.32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Ammon.
Rome
Ovid describes the importance of the Ram symbol for the Romans at the Spring equinox, recounting the myth of golden fleece:
March 23: Tubilustrium: Nefas
Publicus (ll. 849-876)
The last of the five days (i.e.
of the Quinquatria) exhorts (us) to purify the tuneful trumpets, and
to offer sacrifice to the mighty goddess (i.e. Nerio, the wife of Mars, with
whom Minerva came to be associated). Now you can raise your face to the sun
and say, "Yesterday, he touched the fleece of Phrixus' ram (i.e. on
22nd March the sun entered the zodiac constellation of 'Aries', the Ram)."
6th c. mosaic zodiac in a synagogue (7)
The seeds were parched by the trick of the wicked stepmother (i.e. Ino),
and the grain had not sprouted as it usually (did): (a messenger) had been sent
to the oracle to report by a sure prophecy what cure the Delphic (god) would
prescribe for the barren earth. Tarnished also like the seed, he reports that
the deaths of Helle and of young Phrixus are sought by the oracle. And, when
the citizens, and the season, and Ino compelled a reluctant king (i.e.
Athamas) to submit to these impious orders, Phrixus and his sister,
covering their brows with head-bands, stand together before the altar and
bewail their joint fate. Their mother (i.e. Nephele, cloud) sees (them)
by chance as she hung in the air, and beats her bare breasts with her hand in
shock, and, with the clouds as her companions, she dives down into the
dragon-born city (i.e. Thebes, founded by Cadmus, who sowed the dragon's
teeth), and snatches her children away from there; and, so that they can
make their escape, a ram, gleaming with gold, is provided; it conveys the two
(of them) over the wide seas. The girl held on to the left-horn (too) weakly,
they say, when she called the name of the water after herself (i.e. theHellespont,
the straits that link the Aegean to the Propontis, or the Sea of Marmora).
Her brother almost died with her, when he tries to help (her) as she falls, and
he extends his outstretched hands as far as possible. He wept at losing his
partner in their twin peril, unaware that she has been joined to the azure god (i.e.
Neptune). On reaching the shore, the ram becomes a constellation (i.e.
Aries); but his golden fleece arrives at the halls of Colchis (i.e. a
city on the eastern sea-coast of the Black Sea).
9 (Ovid, Fastii, Book 3, March)
Judaism
Mosaic in Santi Cosma e Damiano (8)
Blavatsky posits a link between lamb sacrifice in Judaism and the symbolism of Aries (Theosophical Glossary, 'Ammon'). The Torah gives various indications: 'According to the norms
regarding sacrifices in the former temple, a lamb could be offered in various
situations: a common person could offer a lamb as a sin offering in atonement
for his sin (Lev 4,32-35), or as part of a rite of purification (Lev 12,1-8;
14,10-32), or as a communion sacrifice (Lev 3,7-10); the Passover lamb was, in
fact, a special type of communion sacrifice (Exod 12,1-14.21-28).' (The Sacrificial Symbolism of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation) According to Saul Youdkevitch: 'We said that the lamb (Aries) represents the
ego, and we toast it on the good fire of enthusiastic and positive work, then
we eat it with Matsa and Maror'(Nisan-Aries).
Christianity
Agnus Dei (9)
Blavatsky, referencing H. T. Colebrooke, (Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, London, 1837, Vol. I, p. 190. [In the one-volume ed. of 1858, this occurs on p. 119. It is an essay
originally published in the Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1801, Vol.
VII, pp. 232-85) has observed that:'it is, to say the least, a strange coincidence, remarked even by some
Christian clergymen, that Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, should have the
symbols, identical with the Hindu God Agni. While Agnus Dei expiates and
takes away the sins of the world, in one religion, the God Agni, in the
other, likewise expiates sins against the gods, man, the,manes, the soul, and repeated sins; as shown in the six prayers accompanied by six oblations.' (Cross and Fire, Collected Writings, 2:143-149;
The Theosophist (1:2), November, 1879, pp. 35-36.) For a referenced connection, she gives Edward Kenealy, The Book of God : the Apocalypse of Adam-Oannes(p. 88)('Agnus Dei (the
Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks' (The Secret Doctrine 1, 383). Jean Marie Ragon posits a connection between the Agnus Dei and the sign of Aries specifically (La Messe et ses Mysteres, 1844, p. 347).
Historically speaking, Rupert
Gleadow gives some basic considerations concerning the origin of the symbol:
'For
the Ram, to begin with, is definitely not a Babylonian constellation. It was
also thought not to be Egyptian because on the later system of decans it fell
in Capricorn. But the Ram and the Boat were both extremely important in Egypt this
cannot be explained if both were invisible at the rising of Sothis. It has of
course nothing to do with the later position of Aries as the first sign of the
12. The Ram was important because it culminated when Sirius rose, and the
Boast as a particularly obvious sacred emblem which stood on the same occasion
conspicuously high in the sky. If we accept the identity of the Boat with our
own Pegasus, the Ram was an Egyptian and not a Babylonian constellation.' (The Origin of the Zodiac, 1968 212-213)
4- See Colorful Paintings of the Zodiac Signs From an Ancient Egyptian Temple
Newly restored, the Ptolemaic era reliefs were previously covered by a layer of dirt and soot
April 4, 2023 Christopher Parker
PS -For a more recent use of this type of research on 19th century sources, albeit with all the more mystical, theosophical perspectives removed, Blavatsky's research, but with more conservative conclusions, if you will, see
Acharya S, Suns Of God; Krishna, Buddha, And Christ Unveiled ( 2004)
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