Skinner's Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery (1875)

J. Ralston Skinner · Planetary Rounds and Globes Series · 404 pages

*A complete scanned book of 404 pages — by a long way the largest file in this section — reproducing J. Ralston Skinner's Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures, first published in 1875. Its full title states the subject exactly: the source of measures originating the British inch and the ancient cubit, by which was built the Great Pyramid of Egypt and the Temple of Solomon. Because it is a photographic scan of a Victorian printing rather than a modern typesetting, the text is not always crisp, and the file is about 22 MB*, so it will take a moment to open.

Skinner describes his own book, in the introduction, as an essay or study rather than strictly a work: a series of developments based on the use of geometrical elements given expression in numerical values, founded on integral values of the circle as rediscovered by John A. Parker and, earlier, by Peter Metius in the sixteenth century. The largest of his claims is stated there too — that the system from which those values derive was anciently held to rest in nature, or in God, as the law by which creative design is practically exerted, and that it is to be found underlying the structure of the Bible. The introduction supplies the working apparatus for the rest: the Hebrew alphabet with the values and powers of the letters, some of their supposed symbols, and remarks on the hieroglyphic use of the letters. Skinner is careful about what he is not claiming, and says so plainly: all he asserts is that the ancients used these values, so that the usual offensiveness attaching to any stated idea of squaring the circle is not involved. The book is quoted repeatedly in The Secret Doctrine and in this series, which is why it is held here in full — a reader following a reference to Skinner can go straight to the source rather than take the quotation on trust.

Read the full text (PDF, 22.4 MB, 404 pages)