Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
connecting liber with a book. Ceres’ daughter, Proserpine, was the holder of the
“Balance” in the old zodiacs, and Romans called her Libera; he, the Balance, being
Libra; so that the idea of this Season which Leo or Sol opened with his fires, was the
conjunction of the young maid with Libra. There are more signs in the zodiac than
“the Balance,” which have a very different meaning from what is popularly supposed.
As the pious and orthodox author of Idolomania says, “I would rather not explain what
the Gemini mean,” and so he might have said of the two fish and Virgo, or mother Ceres,
for they were identical. Egypt shewed this mother to be as bad as her daughter,
inasmuch as, instead of her daughter’s “Balance,” the elderly lady carried in her hand
the blue lotus, emblem of celestial love, which is frequently seen on the back of
Leo, and is there addressed, as Mr. Maurice tells us,—
“ Child of the sun! Why droops thy withering head,
While high in Leo flames thy radiant sire?”
Blue is Siva’s colour, and Leo in flames is Siva, or the Lingam, as Agni, god of
paasion. To Ceres, say some, as the firat goddess of ceremonies (Cereris-monita?), we
owe the beginning of all religious rites. 1 Let us remember, also, that Libra was not in the
old faith always separate from Virgo; as in the case of Christianity, here one disciple
proved false; the Scorpion merged in Virgo, and the claws, “bruisers,” or “crushers”
became the sign of Libra (see Baldwin’s Pre-Historic Nations, p. 118, and many
other works); and the Serpent, we may remember, is called in Gen. iii 15, he who is to
“bruise" Eve on the “Akab,” mistranslated heel. Higgins shews us in his Anacalypsis,
that the words liber, free (from “the solar frh of Egypt”), and lier, a book,
are indissolubly connected. Bookish-men, or men of Bac, Boc, or Bacchus, were
free from all the laws which controlled others as to place or war, and this has con- -
tinued down to our time in what is known as “benefit of clergy.”
From the Sun came Apollo, who was worshipped, like Iakos, with great shouts
and merriment, for Iako signifies in Greek “to make So great noise;” inasmuch as he is
IO-Bakoth and IO-Triumphe, the god of triumph; whoever approached to his processions
or to join in his fêtes, did so with such exclamations as.”Hosanna to the
highest,” or “Save, oh save us, thou great Sun god!” This the Jews thoroughly understood,
and hence their “feast of trumpets,” with such shouts as above.
Let us, then, clearly understand that the sign of “the Scales” was by no means
“the Balance,” which Europe has generally accepted; nor was it a mere book or
liber, but something more vitally connected with the Liber-pater. If “justice” be
meant as his sign, it is that which is meted out by the Sun of Righteousness (dikiosÚnh),
the fertilizer, the Toth or Pillar-god of justice—Hermes, the base of all
learning and civilization, who was also the tree-stem on which the people always wrote
in Europe as well as Asia, just as the Egyptian did on his Toth or pillar. Teutons
also danced and shouted round their Boko (bocco) or holy beech, as others did round
1 [Poss. a ref. to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. See Frazer, Spirits of the Corn &c. — T.S.]
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