"One of the most profound perversions of the past has been made in misapprehending
this primitive sign-language for what is designated "Worship," whether as "Sun-Worship,"
"Serpent-Worship," "Tree-Worship," or "Phallic Worship." The Tree, for example, is a
type, but the type is not necessarily an object of worship, as misunderstood by those who do not read the types when these are rooted in the ground of natural fact. The
forest-folk were dwellers in the trees, or in the bush. The tree that gave them food and
shelter grew to be an object of regard. Hence it became a type of the Mother-Earth as the birthplace and the abode. Hence Hathor was the hut or house of Horus (Har) in the
tree. But worship is a word of cant employed by writers who are ignorant of sign-
language in general. {It explains} nothing and is worse than useless. The Mother and
Child of all mythology are represented in the tree and branch. The Tree was a type of
the abode; the roof-tree, the Mother of food and drink; the giver of life and shelter; the wet nurse in the dew and rain, the producer of her offspring as the branch and promise of periodic continuity. Was it the Tree then the Egyptians worshipped, or the
giver of food and shelter in the Tree? On the Apis stele in the Berlin Museum two preists are saluting the Apis-Bull. This is designated "Apis-worship." But the Apis carries the Solar Disc betwixt its horns. This also is being saluted. Which then is the object of worship? There are two objects of religious regard, but neither is the object of adora-
tion. That is the God in spirit who was represented as the Soul of life in the Sun and Tree, also by the fecundating bull. In this and a thousand other instances it is not a question of worship but of sign language.
Nor did Mythology spring from fifty or a hundred different sources, as frequently assum-
ed. It is one as a system of representation, one as a mould of thought, one as a mode of
expression, and all its great primordial types are virtually universal. Neither do the myths that were inherited and repeated for agesby the later races of men afford any di-
rect criterion to the intellectual status of such races. A mythical representation may be
savage without those who preserve it being savages. When the Egyptians in the time of
Unas speak of the deities devouring souls it is no proof of their being cannibals at that time. Mythology has had an almost limitless descent. It was in a savage or crudely pri-
mitive state in the most ancient Egypt, but the Egyptians who continued to repeat the
Myths did not remain savages. The same mythical mode of representing nature that was probably extant in Africa 100,000 years ago survives today amongst races who are no
longer the producers of the Myths than they are of language itself. Egyptian mythology is the oldest in the world, and it did not begin as an explanation of natural phenomena,
but as a representation by such primitive means as were available at the time. It does not explain that the Sun is a Hawk or the Moon a Cat, or the solar God a Crocodile. Such figures of fact belong to the symbolical mode of rendering in the language of ani-
mals or zootypes. No better definition of "Myth" or Mythology could be given than is
conveyed by the word "Sem" in Egyptian. This signifies representation on the ground of
likeness. Mythology, then, is "representation on the ground of likeness," which led to all the forms of sign-language that could ever be employed....External nature was primar-
ily imaged in the pre-human likeness. It was the same here as in external nature: the
animals came first, and the predecessors of Man are primary in Sign-Language, Mythol-ogy, and Totemism"
Gerald Massey: "Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World"
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