Forlong - Rivers of Life

178
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
misfortunes of the tribes, as I will further on more fully show. Very shortly after this
the nation fell, never again to rise into a kingdom if they ever before gained this rank.
It seems most probable that some insults to tho dominant faiths of all the great nations
of Westem Asia, by this obscure little hill tribe may have tended to their destruction,
for great kings, whatever they may personally think, do not like to bave firebrands
cast into their midst, which most religious questions or reformations are.
Let us look for a moment at the important phase of Ophiolatry, “Divination
by Serpents.” We read that Helenus and Cassandra by means of serpents
were able to see into the future; the serpent, it is said, “cleansed the pass-
ages of their senses by their tongues;” and, adds the "scholiast on Euripid. . . .
serpents approaching licked their ears and made them so sharp of hearing that they
alone among all men could understand the councils of the gods and became very
excellent prophets.” 1 The narrator of the gospel tale of Christ giving sight to the
blind, seems to have borrowed the process from the example of the serpents who cured
the blind Plutus; for Aristophanes says, they licked his eyelids and his sight became at
once “more than humanly acute.” 2 The Paracæ (sic), says Philostratus, ate serpents’
flesh and thus understood the languages of the brute creation; by eating the heart and
liver “they understood their thoughts.” It is the erect serpent-rod of Mercmry which.
conducts mankind to hell: Ceres went thither drawn by serpents; and the reptile’s bite
sent Eurydike to hell. Was not Cerberos the watch-dog of that very hot plate almost
a serpent? He had “dragon’s tail, and a skin studded with serpents’ heads” says
Apollodorus; and looking from “the fathomless abyss up to the realms of eternal light,”
what do we see? Still a serpent! For yonder is Rhea or Ops the serpent, deceiving
her Lord by giving him a Stone (Betulus) to devour, called the “Ab-ad-ir or SERPENT
DOMINUS SOL,” instead of his offspring: in which tale we possibly see the origin of
the gospel saying in regard to the Stone, the bread, and the serpent. 3 This Abadir Stone
was indeed a serpent and sun-stone, for it was a Lingam, and it “assumed a CONICAL
figure,” 4 so that Saturn took to consuming his own strength, which is the ease with
the midsummer sun, when all the crops, as in the tropics, have been by that time
reaped; when the sun may indeed be said to consume himself on bare fields, and
pastures, and desolate, and almost leafless forests, having nought but hard, parched
soils, and naked rocks and stones, from off which his fierce heats have eaten away all
verdure.
In all lands and faiths the serpent is he who gives knowledge. In Eden as well as
in the Punjab it is shown that nāgas or Tak Shaks bring in learning; it is a very
doubtful matter if we can say as much for the pious prophets of mankind. Boodha and
Confucius, as philosophers, are exceptions, and must rank before Thales, Pythagoras,
1 2
Buchart, quoted by Deane, 336.
Spanheim, 212.
3
The bishop or head of the Christian Church of Abysinia is styled Ab-un, which is I suspect derived
from a serpent; it looks very like AB or OB-ON the Serpent-Sun.
4
Serpent Worship, 340.