The Pineal Gland: The Eye of God

As the pineal gland was the one most recognized and written about by the earlier adepts, it is the logical beginning of any occult discussion of the endocrine chain. The epiphysis cerebri, or pineal body, secures its name from its peculiar shape (the pinus, or pine cone) and arises in the fifth week of the human embryo as a blind sac branching off from that section of the brain which is next in front of the mid-brain—the diencephalon—which includes the area of the third ventricle and adjacent parts. The distal, or remote, portion of this sac becomes the body of the gland. The proximal portion (the point of attachment or origin) remains as the stalk. Is not this pine cone the one to which E. A. Wallis-Budge refers in his Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, when in describing the entry of Ani into the presence of Osiris in the Egyptian ritual of Coming Forth by Day as “the so-called ‘cone’ on Ani’s wig,” for which the good Egyptologist could find no intelligent reason? Is this not also the whirring cone which was among the symbolic playthings of the child Bacchus and which Bastius describes as a small cone-shaped piece of wood around which a cord was wound so that it might be made to spin and give out a “humming noise”? (See Orpheus, by G. R. S. Mead.) Those acquainted with the esoteric function of the pineal gland or who have experienced the “whirring” sound attendant upon its activity will realize how apt is the analogy.