Now Simon is reported to have endeavoured to find an inner meaning in scriptural narratives and mythologies, and against this method we can have nothing to say; it is only when a man twists the interpretation to suit his own prejudices that danger arises. Simon, however, is shown to have appealed to the various sacred literatures known in his time, an eclectic and theosophical method, and one that cannot very well be longer set on one side even in our own days.
The primitive church was not so forgetful of symbology as are the majority of the Christian faith to-day. One of the commonest representations of primitive Christian art was that of the "Four Rivers." As the Rev. Professor Cheetham tells us:
We find it repeated over and over again in the catacombs, either in frescoes or in the sculptured ornaments of sarcophagi, and sometimes on the bottoms of glass cups which have been discovered therein.[135]
The interpretations given by the early divines were many and various; in nearly every case, however, it was an interpretation which applied to the Christian system alone, and accentuated external differences. Little attempt was made to find an interpretation in nature, either objective or subjective, or in man. Simon, at any rate, made the attempt--an effort to broaden out into a universal system applying to all men at all times. This is also the real spirit of pure Christianity which is so often over-clouded by theological partisanship. A true interpretation must stand the test of not only religious aspiration, but also philosophical thought and scientific observation.
Nor again should we find cause to grieve at an attempted interpretation of the Trojan Horse, that was fabricated by the advice of Athena (Minerva-Epinoia), for did not George Stanley Faber, in the early years of this century, labour with much learning to prove its identity with the Ark. True he only turned similar myths into the terms of one myth and got no further, but that was an advance on his immediate predecessors. Simon, however, had centuries before gone further than Faber, as far as theory is concerned, by seeking an interpretation in nature. But, in his turn, as far as our records go, he only attempted the interpretation of one aspect of this graphic symbol, saying that it typified "ignorance." An interpretation, however, to be complete should cover all planes of consciousness and being from the physical human plane to the divine cosmic. The Ark floating on the Waters of the Deluge and containing the Germs of Life, the Mundane Egg in the Waters of Space, and the Mare with her freight of armed warriors, all typify a great fact in nature, which may be studied scientifically in the development of the germ-cell, and ethically by analogy, as the egg of ignorance, the germs in which are, from the lower aspect, our own evil passions.