The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 215 of 236

The Crux Ansata

The second type was that of a T, or TAU, cross surmounted by a circle, often foreshortened to the form of an upright oval. This was called by the ancients the Crux Ansata, or the cross of life . It was the key to the Mysteries of antiquity and it probably gave rise to the more modern story of St. Peter’s golden key to heaven. In the Mysteries of Egypt the candidate passed through all forms of actual and imaginary dangers, holding above his head the Crux Ansata, before which the powers of darkness fell back abashed. The student is reminded of the words In hoc signo vinces. The TAU form of the cross is not unlike the seal of Venus, as Richard Payne Knight has noted. He states: “The cross in this form is sometimes observable on coins, and several of them were found in a temple of Serapis [the Serapeum], demolished at the general destruction of those edifices by the Emperor Theodosius, and were said by the Christian antiquaries of that time to signify the future life.”

Insight

The crux ansata — the ankh — is the most widely attested cross-form in the ancient Mediterranean. In Egyptian iconography it is the sign of life held by the gods to the nose of the king, and is regularly placed in the hands of mummies and statues. The Coptic Christians of Egypt, after their conversion, adopted the ankh as their cruciform symbol precisely because it already carried the meaning of life-bestowal — Coptic crosses to this day often retain the loop. The continuity Hall draws between the ankh and the later Christian cross is not Theosophical fancy: it is documented in early Christian Egyptian funerary stelae and in the writings of Socrates Scholasticus (Ecclesiastica Historia V.17), who reports that the Christians of Alexandria recognized the ankh inscriptions in the destroyed Serapeum as their own symbol.

Augustus Le Plongeon, in his Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and Quiches, notes that the Crux Ansata, which he calls The Key to the Nile and the Symbol of Symbols, either in its complete form or as a simple TAU, was to be seen adorning the breasts of statues and bas-reliefs at Palenque, Copan, and throughout Central America. He notes that it was always associated with water; that among the Babylonians it was the emblem of the water gods; among the Scandinavians, of heaven and immortality; and among the Mayas, of rejuvenation and freedom from physical suffering.

Concerning the association of this symbol with the waters of life, Count Goblet d’Alviella, in his Migration of Symbols, calls attention to the fact that an instrument resembling the Crux Ansata and called the Nilometer was used by the ancient Egyptians for measuring and regulating the inundations of the river Nile. It is probable that this relationship to the Nile caused it to be considered the symbol of life, for Egypt depended entirely upon the inundations of this river for the irrigation necessary to insure sufficient crops. In the papyrus scrolls the Crux Ansata is shown issuing from the mouths of Egyptian kings when they pardoned enemies, and it was buried with them to signify the immortality of the soul. It was carried by many of the gods and goddesses and apparently signified their divine benevolence and life-giving power. The Cairo Museum contains a magnificent collection of crosses of many shapes, sizes, and designs, proving that they were a common symbol among the Egyptians.