Forlong - Rivers of Life

110
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
forty days the fertilising waters of heaven. It contained, we are told, all the elements of
Elohim’s creative power, and in due time, about nine months and three days from the
ceasing of the rains, “Noah removed
the covering of the ark,”
and then came forht the pent-up
energies of Maiya; her symbol
the dove, with the mystic olive
sacred to her, marshalled the
way, and pointed to Nature’s
first birth—the mountain peaks.
We see many resemblances here
to Vedic tales. The top of
mighty Himālaya, called Himachāl,
is “the first born,” and
represents a race of gods, from
Fig. 36—SEA, ARK, AND DELUGE
whom sprang Pārvati, great
Siva’s spouse, but of this more
hereafter, for we must return to the probable growth of religion among our
primeval races. They began to see in life, and all nature, a God, a Force, a
Spirit; or, I should rather say, sorne nameless thing which. no language of those
early days, if indeed of present, can describe. They gave to the outward creative
organs those devotional thoughts, time, and praise, which belonged to the Creator;
they figured the living spirit in the cold bodily forms of stone and tree, and so worshipped
it. As we read in early Jewish writings, their tribes, like all other early races,
bowed before Ashar and Ashera, as others had long before that period worshipped
Belus and Uranus, Orus and Isis, Mahadeva, Siva, Sakti, and Pārvati. Jupiter and
Yuno or Juno, or rather the firs ideas of these, must have arisen in days long subsequent
to this. All such steps in civilisation are very slow indeed, and here they had
to penetrate the hearts of millions who could neither read nor wrire, nor yet follow the
reader or the preacher; so centuries would fleet past over such rude infantile populations,
acting no more on the inert pulpy mass, than years or even months now do; and
if this were so after they began to realise the ideas of a Bel and Ouranos, how much
slower, before that far back stage was won? Their first symbolisation seems clearly to
have been the simple Line, pillar, or a stroke, as their male god; and a cup or eircle as
their female; and lo! the dual and mystic IO which early became a trinity, and has
stood before the world from that unknown time to this: In this mystic male and
female we have the first great androgynous god. Still the idea was felt to be imperfect,
and creation still impossible; for Passion, that holy or “Heated Spirit” or
“Breath,” was wanting in the simple IUO, and this felt want was, I think, the origin of
various representative forms, on which I will not here say more, than that the serpent