Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
notion of his supporting the world; and hence that the peering out earth-fast rocks
are his folds and thus appearing show the foundations of his power and prolificness.
My sketch shows what is also usual under these trees—viz., the ordinary Linga on a
platform. The common Syrian coins in the PIates are clearly meant to convey the
same idea, and, in addition, that of Pandora’s Box, or Woman. Ossian seems to have
been cognisant of the occult lore of half-hidden stones, for in Hermes Brittannicus,
p. 70, we read from Ossian:—
“ A tale of the times of old, the deeds of the days of other years,
The murmur of thy streams, oh Lora,
Brings back the memory of the past;
Dost thou not behold a rock with its head of heath?
There the flower of the mountain grows, the thistle is there alone,
Two stones, half sunk in the ground, show their heads of moss;
The deer of the mountain avoids the place,
For he beholds the grey ghost that guards it,
For the mighty lie in the narrow place of the Rock.”
And “the mighty one,” “our Rock,” is a very common Old Testament phrase.