Forlong - Rivers of Life

62
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
ing facts, especially when put before us by a “learned, critical, historical, and philosophical
writer;” it is but “kicking against the pricks,” as the old saying of “the
Pagans” put it, long before the age of Paul of Tarsus.
The TAU so common in the times ascribed to Abram, whether as the looped
Lingam-in-Yoni, or the plain Bacchic Cross, of my Pl. v. 5, was, said Jews, that which
checked the march of the angel of death—it was in fact a sign everywhere, of salvation
or health (Ezek. ix. 4). The Greek said it was life, and that the Q was death, nox,
or immature life, or the silence of darkness; but we are forgetting our Palms.
At Najran in Yemen, Arabia, Sir William Ousley
describes the most perfect tree worship as still existing
close to the city. The tree is a Palm or Sacred date,
which it appears has its regular priests, festivals, rites,
and services, as punctiliously as have any of the pro-
phets or deities of earth. He writes on the authority of
a MS. of the 9th century after Christ, and adds this note
from a writer on Indian and Japanesc symbols of divinity;
“Arboris truncum in cujus summitate sedet supremus
Creator Deus. Aliud quiddam esset observatione dignum:
sed ego truncum arboris meditor, &c. At sive
Japonenses, sive Indos, sive Tibetanos adeas, ubique tibi
Fig. 17—PALM TREE, WITH CROSS
occurret, virentis arboris religio, ob symbola forsan creationis,
et conservationis rerum recepta, atque retenta;” 1 a
passage which shows us clearly the Lingam signification
of “the trunk” as this will hereafter be abundantly more clear. It is the high bare stem of
the palm which added to the great usefulness of the tree, made it so sacred. It was the
first offspring of Mother Ge, says the Odyssey (lib. VI.), and against it did fair Latona rest
at the moment she gave birth to Apollo—hence the Christian gospel tale. The Koreish
tribe, from which the Arabian prophet sprang, were from earliest known times Worshippers
of the Palm tree, and here as in other lands, had it been succeeded by the
Lingam and latterly by solar and ancestral worship. The Arabs used to hang on the
Palm not only garments or pieces of garments, but arms or portions of their warrior
gear, thereby showing that they saw in the Palm, virility—a Heralkes or Mercury.
They must long have heard from across the water—Sea of Soof, of Toth—the pillar
god—or the obelisk; and they saw in this natural pillar and fruit, the same idea as in
Toth and Osris. Another Arabian god, sometimes called. goddess, was named Asa,
usually written Uzzah, and she or he was worshipped under the form of a tree called
1 Georg. Alphab. Tibetan., p. 142, quoted
from Barlow, p. 108. Translation—“The trunk
of a tree whereon sits Deus, the supreme
Creator. Some other object might be worthy of
observation; but I fix my attention on the trunk
of the tree. Moreover, whether you go to the
Japanese, or to the Tibetan, everywhere will meet
you green tree worship (which has been) transmitted
and preserved as symbolic perhaps of the
creation and preservation of the world.