a shape never met in the class of antique gems, though so much affected in Medieval art, on account of its supposed mystic virtues" (The Gnostics, p. 201).

Fig. 252.

One of the Gnostic Gems, reputed the most efficacious of amulets, is of red jasper, and presents the Gorgon's Head ("Gorgoneion"), with the legend below, "APHгN POPоMANAAPH". "I protect Rhoromandares."

In India, the "Great Abad" is Bhudda, Bauddha, Buddha, or Baddha. There is a connection suggested here with the "Abaddon" of the Greeks. In the same way, a relation may be traced with "Budha's Spiritual Teacher;" who was the mythic Pythagoras, the originator of the system of transmigration, afterwards transplanted to Egypt, and thence to Greece. Thus in Sanscrit it is "Bud'ha-Gooros," in Greek it is "Putha-Goras," in English it is "Pythagoras;" the whole, "Budha's Spiritual Teacher."

The crista, or crest, or symbolic knob of the Phrygian cap or Median bonnet, is found also, in a feminine form, in the same mythic head-cover or helmet, for it unites both sexes in its generative idea, being an "idol." In the feminine case-as obviously in all the statues of Minerva or Pallas-Athene, and in the representations of the Amazons, or woman-champions, or warriors,-everywhere the cap or helmet has the elongated, rhomboidal, or globed, or salient part in reverse, or dependent on the nape of the neck. This is seen in the illustration of the figure of the armed "Pallas

Athene," among our array of these Phallic caps. The whole is deeply mythic in its origin. The ideas became Greek; and when treated femininely in Greece, the round or display-which in the masculine helmet was naturally pointed forward, saliently or exaltedly (the real "christa," or "crest") --became reversed or collapsed, when worn as the trophy on a woman's head. On a narrow review of evidence which evades, there is no doubt that these classic helmets with their "crests," this pileus, Phrygian cap, Cap of Liberty, or the Grenadiers' or Hussars' fur caps, or cocked hats, have all a phallic origin.

The Cardinal's "Red Hat" follows the same idea in a different way; it is a chapel, chapter, chapiter, or chapeau, a discus or table; crimson, as the mystic feminine "rose," the "Queen" of Flowers, is crimson. The word "Cardinal" comes both from Cardo (Hinge, Hinge-Point, "Virgo" of the Zodiac), and also from Caro, It. Carne, flesh,—the "Word made flesh."

It is probable that these mythological hints and secret expressions, as to the magic working of nature, were insinuated by the imaginative and ingenious Greeks into dress and personal appointments. In the temples, and in templar furniture, mythological theosophic hints abound; every curve and every figure, every colour and every boss and point, being significant among the Grecian contrivers, and among those from whom they borrowed-the Egyptians. We may assume that this classic Grecian form of the headcover or helmet of the Athenian goddess Pallas-Athene, or Minerva, not only originated the well-known Grecian mode of arranging women's hair at the back, but that this style is also the far-off, classic progenitor of its clumsy, inelegant imitation, the modern chignon, which is only an abused copy of the antique. In our deduction (as shown in a previous group of illustrations) of the modern military fur caps-particularly the Grenadier caps of all modern armies, as well as those of other branches of the military servicefrom that common great original, into which they can be securely traced, the mythic Phrygian cap when red, the

VENUS "ATTIRING" OR "ARMING."

277

Vulcan's pileus when black, we prove the transmission of an inextinguishable important hint in religion.

The following are some of the most significant talismans of the Gnostics :

In fig. 255 we have the representation of the Gnostic Female Power in Nature,-Venus, or Aphrodite, disclosing in the beauty, grace, and splendour of the material creation. On the other, or terrible, side of her character, the endowments of Venus, or of the impersonated idea of beauty,

change into the alarming; these are the attributes of the malific feminine elementary genius born of "darkness" or 'matter," whose tremendous countenance, veiled as in the instance of Isis, or masked as in that of the universal