Chapter 989

[←979]

That Io is identical, allegorically, with Isis and the Moon is shown by her being “cow-horned.” The allegory undeniably reached Greece from India, where Vâch—the “melodious Cow” of the Rig Veda, “from whom mankind was produced” (Bhâgavata Purâna) is shown in the Aitareya Brâhmana as pursued by her father Brahmâ, who was moved by an illicit passion, and changed her into a Deer. Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter’s passion, becomes “horned.” The Cow was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of nature, Isis, Vâch, Venus—the mother of the prolific God of Love, Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol, with the Egyptians and the Indians, became the Bull, as testified to by the Apis and the Hindû Bulls in the most ancient temples. In Esoteric Philosophy the Cow is the symbol of Creative Nature, and the Bull (her calf) the Spirit which vivifies her, or the “Holy Spirit,” as Dr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.