seven rays are so treated, and — while all of the other light sources in the painting cast shadows — the seven rays do not. The Italian secret society of the late 17th century, Knights of the Apocalypse, was founded with the professed aim to defend the Catholic Church against the expected Antichrist, though it was accused of having political motives as well. They wore on their breasts a star with seven rays. In Hindu scripture Agni is a Hindu and Vedic deity depicted in three forms: fire, lightning and the sun. In Hindu art, Agni is depicted with two or seven hands, two heads and three legs. On each head, he has seven fiery tongues, with which he licks sacrificial butter. He rides a ram or a chariot harnessed by fiery horses. His attributes are an axe, a torch, prayer beads and a flaming spear. Agni is represented as red and two-faced, suggesting both his destructive and his beneficent qualities, and with black eyes and hair. Seven rays of light emanate from his body. The Vishnu Purana, a post-Vedic scripture, describes how Vishnu "enters into the seven solar rays which dilate into seven suns." These are the "seven principal solar rays," the source of heat even to the planet Jupiter, and the "seven suns into which the seven solar rays dilate at the consummation of all things...." The 20th-century Hindu scholar, poet and mystic Sri Aurobindo described the Vedic seven rays of knowledge, or Agni, as "the seven forms of the Thought-principle" and wrote that "the seven brilliant horses of the sun and their full union constitutes the seven-headed Thought of Ayasya by which the lost sun of Truth is recovered. That thought is again established in the seven rivers, the seven principles of being divine and human, the totality of which founds the perfect spiritual existence." Syncretistic interpretations Spiritualist Gerald Massey wrote in 1881 of what he described as connections between Vedic scripture, ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He theorized that the Archon Iao, the "Seven-rayed Sun-God of the Gnostic-stones" was also the "Serpent Chnubis," and "the Second Beast in the Book of Revelation." In 1900, he elaborated further, describing the unity of "the seven souls of the Pharaoh," "the seven arms of the Hindu god Agni," "the seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation," and "the seven rays of the Chaldean god