“Regeneration, in the Hebrew mysteries, is symbolised by the flight from Egypt, the body, and, therefore, land of bondage for the soul, across the Red Sea into the Wilderness of Sin, the scene of ordeal where the mystical forty days are expressed in a like term of years.
The Redemption is typified by the passage of the Jordan, which divides this wilderness of trial from the promised land of spiritual perfection and rest. This Jordan, or river of judgment, could not be passed by Moses because he had failed in the ordeal of his initiation.
The ultimate deliverance of Israel was reserved for Joshua, a name identical with Jesus, who had remained faithful throughout. Jordan corresponds to the Acheron of the Olympian mysteries, which all souls, descending to the under-world, were compelled to traverse. And Limbo, Paradise, Avernus, the Elysian Fields, Tartarus, Purgatory, and the rest, all denote, under various names, not localities, but spheres or conditions of being, recognised alike in the Hebrew, Pagan, and Christian systems, and subsisting in man himself. And the passage of Christ through the under-world represents occultly the work of Redemption within the human kingdom, precisely according to the Hermetic doctrine of transmutation that is, the Redemption of Spirit from matter, allegorically termed the conversion of the baser metals into gold.
It is not the soul only of the Christ that rises from the Hades of materiality and ascends into Heaven. It is also His glorified body, His rational mind, His regenerate affections. The risen body of Christ Jesus is that reconciled and enlightened human nature which is figured by the outermost of the three measures of meal leavened by Divine grace; and by the third head of the Hadean dog, Cerberus, drawn upward into the light of day by the Solar hero, Herakles. The risen mind and affections of “our Lord” consist in those pure sciences, loves and memories which have been strong and durable enough to reach from earth into Heaven and to become part of the inward man.” (Anna Kingsford e Edward Maitland. The Credo of Christendom, pp. 102-103; emphasis added)