This was the explanation of the mystery of Isaiah, of the prophets. If the person translating this work from the Hebrew had given to the letters the Greek names Alpha, Beta, &c., the mystery would not have been contained in them; therefore he gave them in the Hebrew. Mr. J. Jones says, these Gospels were published in the beginning of the second century. They were received by the Manichæans, and the Gnostic sects, particularly that of the Marcosians (probably followers of Marcus). The Gnostics existed, as will be proved, not only before St. Paul, who wrote against them, but also before the Christian æra.[1]
It will be objected here, that in the Mpeth, and in several other instances, the Mem or Muin is not the Mem final, but the common Mem or Muin, which stands only for 40. The objection seems reasonable, but I think a great number of circumstances, which I shall produce in the course of this work, will satisfy my reader, that the mystical use of the M final was transferred to the common M, in the languages which had not an M final, and in which another letter was used for the number 600. I suspect that a regard for the sacred character of the M was the reason why the Greeks, in their language, never permitted a word to end with the letter M. Thus the superstition of the Hebrews caused them to use the Teth ט t and Vau ו v for 15, instead of the Jod י i and He ה e, the name of their God. This cannot be attributed to a custom with the Greeks of writing the Hebrew B by MP, because, had not the mystery been alluded to, it would have been written Beta. I am not ignorant that the Greeks wrote the double B by M P, as noticed by Georgius[2] and Dr. Clarke, in his Travels in Greece: but I suspect it arose from this sacred mystic practice getting into use among ignorant, uninitiated people.
When the chief priest placed his hands on the candidate for orders or for initiation into the priesthood, he Samached him, that is, he made the mark of the cross, or marked the candidate with the number or sign of 600.[3] This letter in the Hebrew means 60 and 600, (the two famous cycles of the Indians,) the Samach being, in fact, nothing but the M final.
And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of Wisdom; for Moses (סמך smk) samached him, laying his hands upon him. Deut. xxxiv. 9, χειροτονια.
The Mem final—the letter Samach—was adopted for the 600, because the cycles of 60 and 600 are, in reality, the same, or one a part of the other: they would equally serve the purposes of the calendar. If they reckoned by the Neros, there were 10 Neroses in 6000; if the reckoning was made by 60, there were 100 times that number in 6000 years. This we shall understand better presently. This explanation of the Samach completes what I have said respecting the X being the mark for 600, in my Celtic Druids, Ch. iv. Sect. ix.
In the Coptic language there is a very peculiar use of the letter M. Ptolomeos is there written Mptolomeos: on which Dr. Young says, “The prefix M of the Copts, which cannot be translated, is frequently found in the inscription, with the same indifference as to the sense.”[4] Thus in the quotation above, from the Gospel of the Infancy, it is not written Beth or Peth, but M-Peth. The M is nothing but a sacred Monogram prefixed, and meaning precisely the same, as the + or X, which is found often prefixed to words and sentences in the writings of the dark ages. It is the Samach.
But M is the sign of the passive as well as of the active principle, that is, of the Maia. Thus it is the symbol of both; that is, of the Brahme-Maia; and this is the reason why we find this the Monogram of the Virgin upon the pedestal of the Goddess Multimammia, and of the Virgin Mary, with the Bambino, or black Christ, in her arms, as may be seen in many places in Italy.
