Stolen Legacy

Page 167



Page 167

story of the Memphite Theology of the Egyptians, which takes us back to between 4 and 5 thousand B.C. This means that the doctrines of the early Ionians arose neither at their time (the fifth century B.C.), nor at the time of Pentateuch (the eighth century B.C.), nor yet at the time of Moses (the eleventh century B.C.), but at the time of the Memphite Theology ( 4 and 5 thousand B.C.) and therefore definitely point to Egyptian origin.

2. The Eleatic philosophers have been named as (i) Zenophanes who was a satirist (ii) Zeno whose treatment of space and time led to a reductio ad absurdum and (iii) Parmenides who alone deserves notice. He has been credited with the definitions of Being and non-Being, which he expressed as 'that which is' and 'that which is not'. In other words, nature or reality consists of two properties, i.e., a positive and a negative. But Parmenides introduced no new doctrine, when he defined the principle of opposites. This principle was used by Pythagoras in his theory of numbers; by Socrates in his proof of the immortality of the Soul; by Plato in his Theory of Ideas and the distinction between phenomena and noumena; and by Aristotle in his definition of the attributes of Being. In all these instances it has been shown that the doctrine of opposites originated from the Egyptian Mystery System, in connection with which Gods were represented as male and female, and temples carried double pillars in front of them to indicate positive and negative principles of nature.

3. The late Ionic philosophers have been named as (i) Heracleitus who taught that the world was produced by fire, through a process of transmutation; and that since all things originate from Fire, then Fire is the Logos.

(ii) Anaxagoras, who taught that Mind or Nous is the source of life in the Universe and

(iii) Democritus, who taught that atoms underlie all material things; that life and death are merely changes brought about by variation in the mixture of atoms, which do not die because they are immortal. Now, taking these doctrines in the order in which they come, their Egyptian origin has been fully established.

(a) The doctrine of Fire has been traced to the Egyptians, whose Mystery System was a Fire Philosophy and who worshipped the God of Fire in their pyramids. The word pyramid is a Greek word, whose derivative pyr means fire. This doctrine takes us back to the pyramid age in Egypt 33 hundred B.C. when, of course, the Greeks were unknown.

(b) It must be noted that the doctrine of the Logos has been identified by Heracleitus with the doctrine of Fire. This is as it should be,