Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
but a theory based upon the evidence of feeling is as mythological as a myth itself.” 1
Grote says on this subject, that “the curtain which he, writing purely as an historian,
depicts, is all the picture he has to show, but nevertheless the true picture is there, if
we but contrive to lift the curtain.” Zeuses and Ios, Europas and Hellens, Titans,
Toths, and gods are all history in process of incubation: we must unravel the skein
and see the real actors, their acts, principles, and faiths.
This being so, it is necessary to proceed very cautionsly if not suspiciously with
all mythi, and especially to watch over changes, however slight, in the names of gods,
temples, mountains, and rivers, as these usually denote changes of ideas if not of
faiths. This has been entirely lost sight of by Christians till quite lately, and nowhere
is this care more necessary than in dealing with Hebrew writings, and especially with
such roots or words as El, Ja, Elohe, Yahve, Yachave, Adonai, Shadai; and AR, AD,
AL, OB, AB, ABA., or ABADDON, he whom the Christo-Jewish writer of Rev. ix. 11
and xx., mentions as the then hated, though long-loved Apollyon; Abaddon, thus spoken
of, marks a change from Python to a purer Solar worship, at least on the part of the
writer. Clement of Alexandria 2 tells us, that the great symbol of Bacchic orgies, “is
the consecrated serpent,” and that when the Bacchanals have butchered their victims
and feasted, like the Jews, on raw flesh, 3 they crown themselves with snakes, and rush
about shrieking “Eve, Eva, Hevia, Havvale—the female serpent.” Hevia is equivalent
to Zoē, life, from, Greek “to live;” thus what is called “the fall,” ascribed to Eva,
or Hevia the female, and Adam the male, becomes in reality the acts connected with
germination, conceptiom and procluction, and the destruction of virginity—regarding
which the Jews had very unhallowed ideas. Everything sexual was held by the pious
as irreligious, and indulgence was “listening to the voice of the charmer.” Adam “fell”
from listening to Eve, and she from the serpent tempting her—details which merely
assure us, that we have procreative acts signified in all stories regarding Hawa (in
Hindostani, Wind, Lust, Air—Juno) and Chavah or Eve, or as the Arabs called it
Hayyat, life or “creation.” “Eating forbidden fruit was simply a figurative mode of
expressing the performance of the act necessary for the perpetuation of the human
race, an act which in its origin was thought to be the source of all evil.” 4 In the
myth of Pandora the gods are represented as enraged at the creative act of Prometheus;
and so even yet, as in all past times, a large and influential class of religionists
have preached against the legitimate and healthy acts of marital intercourse, as tending
to lower and defile the spiritual nature of both man and woman. In all such
ideas it would seem as if the Zoroastrians had been the leaders, at least in Western
Asia,
The Aryan writers of the Zoroastrian faith undoubtedly held that the procreative
1 2
India in Greece.
“Ante-Nicene Library,” iv. p. 27.
3
Ex. xxxii., which describes a veritable Saturnalia; also Anc. Faiths, I., 565.
4
“Anthropological Journal, July 1870, p. 102. Hawá is also Eve in Hindostani.