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Erm - Define your Sphinx. Greek or Egyptian? What text or resource has it as four chimeric species rather than two? I'm only familiar with Sophocles and the megalithic Egyptian sources, both of which are lion-human fusions. Are you perhaps refering to the lamassu (which is an Assyrian chimeric with eagle's wings, a human head, a bulls's body, and the paws of a lion) which held the same sort of benevolent "angelic" function? How could this interlink through Judaism and its textuality and historicity, especially given the quantity of time that ancient Israel spent under the control of neighboring Assyria? Indeed, wasn't Daniel put in the lion's den by an Assyrian king? And also that the Assyrio-Babylonians worshipped the feminine aspect of the godhead, Asherah, in conjunction with YHVH.
Second, the four-faced angels are the Seraphim, as in those who spawned the Nephilim, and are generally the top of the pile in hierarchies of angels.
Consider that the Lion, the Bull, and the Eagle are all considered royalty amongst their taxa, and are thus often used in ancient literature as metaphors, similes, and significators for powerful men - this was one function of the lamassu in Assyrian symbology, as a mark of royalty. As for their appearance in the Thoth and other Tarot decks - well, they were put there with conscious intent by symbologists playing upon associative sets established by Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Egyptian sources.
Four has significance within the sense of the Tetragrammaton, although I cannot recall it's significance in Hermetic numerology, nor gematria. And what is the textual source for the Four Horsemen? Revelation of St John? A very tricky document to pare back to the other chapters of the Bible, especially given its temporal dislocation by nearly a century...also difficult to tie into the Gnostic-Manichean thought that generated astrological and cartographic divination systems, given that the former is incorporated into the NT at a post in time after the official division of the Roman Church, soon to be the Catholic Church, from the [Gnostic] heresies enumerated in the Nicean and Lateran Councils. |
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There is a lot of 9 lurking about.