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.

In speaking of such allegories and tracing the correspondences between certain symbologies and the natural facts of embryology, Simon speaks of the “cave” which plays so important a part in so many religious allegories.  As the child is born in a “cave,” so the “new man” is also born in a “cave,” and all the Saviours are so recorded to have been born in their birth legends.  The Mysteries of antiquity were for the most part solemnized in caves, or rock-cut temples.  The Epoptae deemed such caverns as symbols both of the physical world and Hades or the Unseen World, which surrounds every child of man.  Into such a cave, in the middle of the Ocean, Cronus shut his children, as Porphyry[136] tells us.  It was called by the name Petra, or Rock, and from such a Rock Mithras is said to have been born.[137]

Faber endeavours to identify this symbolical cave with the Ark,[138] which may be permissible from one aspect, as the womb of mother nature and of the human mother correspond analogically.

In the “new birth” of the mysteries, the Souls were typified as bees born from the body of an ox, for they were to gather the honey of wisdom, and were born from the now dead body of their lower natures.  In the cave were two doors, one for immortals, the other for mortals.  In this connection the cave is the psychic womb that surrounds every man, of which Nicodemus displays such ignorance in the Gospels.  It is the microcosmic Middle Distance; by one door the Lower Soul enters, and uniting with its immortal consort, who descends through the door of the immortals, becomes immortal.