Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
doubt unhewn stones (Lingams), gave way to Altars made of earth without steps,
then altars on which “no tool has been waved,” then graven or fashioned stones or
Betyls, or, as the Greeks said, Baituli or superior Lingams; then to built altars,
with and without steps, then to covered ones, as Arks, with BetyIs or Eduths (Exod.
xvi. 34) inside of them, and hence called Beth-Els; then to glorious “Rays of
Light,” or Obelisks within and without these; and lastly, to shorten a long story,
came Cathedrals, with grand spires, pillars, and domes, representing all the above
ideas, and a great many more which it could not enter into the mind of Elohists or
Jhavhists to conceive of; and so it was with Tree, Lingam and Serpent Faith, as I
trust to yet make clear.
Kaldia has always been called the cradle and greatest stronghold of Ophiolatry
(although I am unable to acquiesce in this opinion), yet, even in the time of
Herodotus, we gather from his complete silence regarding Serpent Worship, that Python
had then—5th century B.C., evidently paled before advancing civilisation, principally,
no doubt, owing to the culture of Astronomy, before which stronger ideas than the
Draconian have gone down. Of course, however, ophiolatry had not disappeared, for we
know from Diodorus, that in his day (1st century B.C.), in the temple of Belus, Rhea
sat on a golden throne with two lions at her knees, and near her two silver serpents,
whilst the great image of Juno had in its right hand the head of a serpent. A careful
observer may note here some serious elements of destruction, from which the gorgeous
shrines around us now are not altogether free, in fact, are waging an unequal war.
Better for the serpent that he had been near that altar on “which no tool had waved,”
for the lions, the gold and the silver marked rising Sol and Luna, and the trappings
denoted an advancing and new faith, as fatal to ophiolatry as the art and culture
which enshrine the ritualist follies of England, are to her old faith; for who smiles so
much at these, as the cultivated minds who dress out the pageant, the engraver, the
architect, and all their staff; they are men devoted to science and historic art, and in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are, of all men, those who have ceased to worship
among these figments of the past.
In reformed Kaldia then, Bel became the chief deity, though, as the learned
knew, but they only, his name sprang from the older faith, Ob-el, the Serpent God.
By and by he got such names as Sar, Sir, and Lord, or the. Bread-maker, or Breadgiver,
which carries back the memory to the still older faith of Maha-Deva or Toth,
him before whom the Jewish leader placed the pot of manna in thankfulness for the
bread which had been rained from heaven. It was not unnatural to confuse the
organ of fertility with the Source—the Sun, and thia is what occurs in changiug
Ob-el to Bel or Sar, and then comhining them into Bel-i-ar and Beli-al, whom
Bryant and others call the Light God. It matters not for our present pwyose if
Beliar be from Bel, and Aur, and both from golden Ob-el or from the Hebrew rwa
Aur, light; enough that a light waa here fatal to OB, and that it was daily waxing