Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
not know if their symbolism reached to a Crux Ansata, but this Tau was
no donbt that holy sign of life which rendered, or aided in rendering, the Egyp-
tian Scarabeus so sacred, and. what the Jewish Seer alluded to as “stamped upon
the. foreheads of the faithful.” The Samaritan cross which they stamped on their
coins was No. 1. but the Norseman preferred. No. 2—the circle
and four stout arms. of equal size and weight, and called it Tor’s
hammer. It is somewhat like No. 3, which the Greek Christians
early adopted, though this is more decidedly phallic, and shows
clearly the meaning so much insisted on by some writers as to
all meeting in the centre. The later Greeks do not seem to have
thought of these early crosses, as having any connection with
their new faith—the Christian, and it is now generally acknowledged
that they had a solar origin. So far as I know, the cutting
of a live tree into a T—tau or Deity, is unique on the part of the Druids. Borlase in
his Cornwall thus describes the operation. “The Druids all consenting. pitched on the
most heautiful Oak tree, cut off its side branches, and then joined two of them to the
highest part of the trunk, so that they extended themselves on either side like the arms
of a man" (p. 108); the whole of this they called “Thau or God, that on the right Hesus,
that on the left Belenus, and he the middlc, Tharanis,” which we may grant our valiant
author of the History of Thorn Worship, meant the thorn, or upright divider. 1
Maximus Lyrius tells us that amongst the Kelti, a tall Oak was considered not
only an idol, but the very image of Jupiter. PIiny, in his Natural History, says
that there were worhippers of the Oak throughout France, whom the Greeks called
Drus. He calls them French Magi and Dryade, that is priests of the Oaks, and
sorcerers. The Oak was esteemed by Greeks and Romans the arbor Jovi sacra, the
tree devoted to God, and so was it amongst the Hebrews, who called. it El-on, as
much as to say the Tree of God. 2 Turner shows that Deukalion, the Greek Noah,
“preached or prophesied by or under an Oak or tree, not after, but before the Flood,”
as Abraham did under the Oaks of Mamre. Both Noah and Deukalion were instructed
by a IOne or Dove—the latter, I should say, for all evidence is converging to prove
to us, that Deu-kal-ion was Siva or Deva-Kala, or :incarnation of this Lingam God.
Deu-kal-ion and his were the beloved of God—Dod-Donai, or Do Adonai; and the
Greeks, as is here well shown, had “corrupted the traditions of the East.” They called
Dodona m…a tîn Wkian…down, a sea-nymph, or goddess who had come to them by the
sea or way of the Sea. Sphanheim derives Dodona from (hnvy dwd) Duda Iona or Amabiles
Columba, which is, I suspect, Kali, or the Yoni, and hence the myths about Arks,
Jonahs, Ionaha, and Doves; in the mythology of “the ark and the Ionah,” Holwell
amd Bryant’s Mythology says, that there is a continual refrerence to the Moon: The Ark
1 London: Nisbet & Co., 1872.
2 Dodd’s translation of Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos. Note, p. 126.
Fig. 20—TOR’S HAMMER
AND ANCIENT CROSSES
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