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...glyphic being, it must be said, familiar to the Nation.

Mercury Trismegistus the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus, to whom many ancient occult works are attributed has enough virtues without crediting him for the invention of common writing, despite the fact, let us say, that his thought or his invaluable Genius MISMAHEL a spirit or guiding intelligence associated with Mercury in Etteilla’s system could have dictated it to him. But here the cabalistic script served him as an original, with the exception that he invented the permutations of the twenty-two letters, which he composed and adopted, and finally distinguished and fixed the natural, compound, and forced sounds.

It is so true that he was a copyist of cabalistic writing, or an imitator if one prefers, as all Nations have been of him, that almost all these letters preserved words, complete meanings, and entire discourses, which is the characteristic of cabalistic writing.

I am well-founded in maintaining what I say, by the knowledge I have of this sublime writing, and also because it is agreed that the letters of new languages do not express

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complete meanings, like the letters of ancient languages.

Cabalistic writing was necessarily as veiled as the hieroglyphic was easy to recognize, since, as we have just pointed out, the former was copied from internal forms, and the others from external forms.

The Greeks, the Arabs, and the Romans, like almost all Nations, since the Jews must be exempted because they repudiated all images original: "simulacre"; refers to the Jewish prohibition against graven images or idols, were forced to attach themselves to hieroglyphs. From this came their foolish Divinities, most of whom had never existed.

From hieroglyphic writing came the true and then the false Talismans, upon which, as well as upon the pyramids, the aforementioned Peoples necessarily placed false cabalistic writings. Nevertheless, this only became absolutely general as they moved away from the first Egyptians.