Forlong - Rivers of Life

66
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
was Luna, Laris, Bœotus, Naus, Men, and the mother of all beings. Meno Taurus and
Tauris Lunaris signified the same, and both were the Deus Arkitis; hence the deity,
Meen and Manes, which later became Magnes, and was so applied to great people.
Noah was called the Deus Lunus, because the Moon, or Lunette, was his Ark, as it
was that of all gods.
Deborah the prophetess preferred dwelling under a Palm-tree, and Rebeka’s nurse,
Deborah, was buried under an Oak; first a Beth-el, or altar, probably a Lingam stone,
such as Jacob was partial to anointing (Gen. xxxv. 8, 14), being erected, and of
course under the Oak. On this occasion it was denominated a “place of weeping.”
All connected with these holy trees was deeply venerated, so much so as to have
left their impress even immortlly in language, as in (Sancta) Quercus, ¥lsoj, and
lucus, which still recall to us ideas of something sacred, just as our Bible “Testimony”
and Testament does this, quite irrespective of the strange origin of such words. Every
grand and noble tree was a god~like object; and the abode of deities, and where they
might always be asked to make their presence manifest. No ancient races would start
at being told that sprites or fairies had been seen dancing under a fine or quaint-looking
tree, or that the voice of Jove had spoken to anyone from amidst its branches. Xerxes,
at the bead of his army on his way to Sardis, paused respectfully before a huge Plane
tree, and offered golden ornaments to the deity, and left a guard to protect it; and an
earlier, and perhaps as great a king as he, may be seen on a bas-relief of Koyoonjik
(Nineveh), stopping in his chariot and devoutly saluting a tall Palm tree (Bar-
low, 99). Nor have Persians yet forgotten such ways, although for eleven centuries
they have been strict Islāmees; it is still common in Persia to see grave men addressing
Darakti-fāsels, or sacred trees, and many of these are still said, as in the days of
Moses, to show fires gleaming in their midst. Jeremiah, in ii. 20, alludes to the tree
adoration of his people, and Mr. Bruce tells us that the Abysinians worshipped the
Wanzy tree “avowedly as God.” “In Arabia, Africa, India, China and Japan,”
says Barlow, the same stories still reach us, and still the deity sits “on the summit of
the trunk, sufficiently near for the attendant spirits below to transmit to him readily
(he used in Egypt to be generally she, the goddess Netpe) the prayers offered up by
the faithful. We see the same idea in this deity on the Lingam stump, as we do in
the Pythoness sitting on the serpent-column over Delphi’s thermal fountain; and
Mr Fergusson tells us he sees the same on the panels of the gateway of the Sanchitope.
He considers also that it is only Tree Worship he sees in the altar with angels
depicted by me in fig. No. 5; but I see a good deal more than this. Captain Wilford,
in 10th vol “Asiatic Researches” sap that the tree of life and knowledge is a
Manicheian cross on a Calvary, and as such it is called the “Divine tree” or “tree of
the gods.” If it is a trunk without branches (which is a simple lingam), it is said to be
“the seat of the Supreme One”—Mahā Deva. When two arms are added, it becomes
“the Tri-moorti,” or Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva, who are then said to be seated there;
regarding which, says M. Guiniaut, in his Religions de l’Antiquité, p. 147: “Quand