Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
conferred on many gods, as well as goddesses. Even Ool-Kan, “the Lord of Fire”
(Vulcan) was, says Cicero, called Ops, and the offspring of Ops and Terra; Diana and
Vesta shared this proud name with Rhea, Cybele, and Juno. As, from a literary
point of view he was “Passion,” emblematically the Serpent really represented nearly
every god and goddess; and in nearly every land, from the sacred cone of Japan in
the East, to the oceanic base of the Andes in the West, he was the king of hills as
well as king of men. In the eyes of the ancients, his sacred figure made every object
on which it was traced, whether a temple, wall, pillar, or rude stone, at once most
holy; and the starry sphere, as well as earthly ball, seemed full of him; he was all
wisdom, and opened the eyes of the blind as well as the dark gates of futurity; nay, he
inspired men to unfold the darkness of the past, and to reveal the cosmogony which
the gods had veiled; he healed the sick, comforted the afflicted, gave joy and offspring
to those who longs for such, and prosperity and power to nations. These may rise
and fall, nay, all be submerged in a universal cataclysm, and buried under the waters
of the ocean for many months; yet he—Pytho—rises to shiine out again as powerfully
as ever in the so-called new world. He was more powerful that Jehovah, or Jhavh,
or Jahve-Elohim, for he it was who at once spoilt, say Jews and Christians, all the “very
good” that was said to have been created and who therefore forced Jehovah to wipe
out his great creation after he had done his best to improve it for over two thousand
years. The new creation, at once and universally, again acknowledged Pytho’s sway,
and has, and ever must hold empire unbounded and invulnerable, against all assaults,
save those directed by scientific and rational mental culture.
All persons, especially ascetics and those who for private reasons eschewed
camal desires, shunned the Serpent, calling it Woman, and a burning fire, whose very
touch all were to beware of, so that we find our god female as well as male. In the
Greek mythic tale of creation, Pandora was woman, on whom the gods had lavished
all the treasures of their beneficience, mental, moral, aDd personal, and whom Jove
sent to corrupt man—the new creation of Prometheus, so that Pandora is here the
Serpent. But so was Zeus, as well as the Sun, Fire, and Water, for all these terms and
attributes are applied to him at times by the Greeks and the Asyrians. The Serpent,
or Fire, was the first god of the Trinity of Nineveh—great Hea-Hiya or Hoa—without
whom there could be no creation or life, and whose godhead embraced also the female
element water. Hea, as the Serpent, was the “Ruler of the Abyss,” the jwj chavach,
cleft or cave, and “King of the Rivers,” 1 well as the Eve of the Jewish Genesis.
“The emnity” between this Eve and the Serpent (Nakash) is not comprehended
by Christians; for, as Dr. Donaldson and other Hebraists have pointed out, the translation
here is incorrect, or at least the meaning of her—woman—“bruising the Serpent’s
head,” and it “bruising her AKAB,” is obscured; and necessarily so, as it is too gross
to put before the ordinary reading public. Dr. Donaldson further assures us, as the
1 Ancient Faiths, I. 86.