Note 83 — Chapter I · PRIMITIVE SYMBOLISM OF HISTORY

This is one construction of the symbol and is a little tinctured by Éliphas Lévi’s sincere admiration for the understanding which lay behind the Romance of the Rose. The text of Genesis says that a river rose to water the Garden “and from thence it was parted and became into four heads,” or four sources of rivers. These rivers did not water the Garden but the world without, and their names are familiar in the geography of the ancient world. The mystic pantacle of Eden shews therefore an enclosure constituted by a ring or circle of water, an island like that of Avalon, which is another Garden of Apples, and the waters flow out therefrom towards the four points of heaven: they form therefore a cross, and in the centre of that cross is the Paradise. If the reader will bear in mind that, according to the secret tradition, Adam was set to grow roses in the Garden of Eden, he will understand at what place of the world the symbolism of the Rosy Cross takes its origin.