Forlong - Rivers of Life

200
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
activity of Siva’s nature, which the Lotuses crowd upwards to receive. The sacred
vase (woman) is here also being presented to the Lingam and to the holder of the Crux
Ansata. The ray of the Sun is the Darter, Enlivener, Spiritualiser, or Life-Giver and
so are hands, as well as all goads, thorns, or horns, whether those of Isis, Dionysus, or
Moses. Horus as “the vault of heaven” is often seen stretching forth his hands to
quicken all life and the ends of Isis’ horns were also often
shaped with hands if her energies were meant to be considered
in activity. In this other illustration from Mr.
Sharpe’s volume we see, I believe, a king worshipping
Isis or the Yoni, as the sealed and embattled tower, with orbs
of eternal vision over it, and the Sun shedding forth his
hand-like rays from which Cruces Ansatæ are issuing to
fly over the ark and its worshipper; man, is here
asking to be blessed with all the good that he desires—no
doubt progeny. 1 Mr Sharpe holds this to be a King Adon-
Ra-Bakan worshipping the Sun, but it is as clearly Yoni
worship, as the last figure is Lingam; the woman being
Fig 79—WORSHIP OF ISIS AND ADON-RA.
there the vase-holder, the figure abounds with lotuses
presented to a manly quiescent person, whom Mr. Sharpe
takes to be a Theban king worshipping Amon-Ra. He evidently sits before his symbol
—the Lingam, on the tall palm-like stem, to receive the adoration of women, as
Krishna Maha Rajas still do at the shrines of the eastern Apollo.
It of course took time, probably a vast period of time, for the grand arks of Egypt
and Solomon to develope from the little “chest” or Aron, which wanderers like those of
Sinai constructed for their gods and divining tools, and how much longer to grow into
little dark adyta, and then buildings worthy of the name of temples; for I conceive
there is no doubt, that as from the Nomad’s hut we have risen to palatial domi-
ciles, so ecclesiastically, from the grove we rose to arks or itinerating sanctuaries, then
to fixed abodes or natural caverns, and so on, by little and little, till our gorgeous
cathedrals are the outcome of the cultivated religious idea. The Greek borrowed his
faith and learning, if not his very blood, from his great predecessors of whom we yet
know so little—the Phenicians; and we first hear of Greeks bowing down in the presence
of sacred groves, and then claiming reverence for their sacred stories regarding
the Beotian boat or Argos, and afterwards busying themselves about arks and
Argonats, with which the people’s whole early history is so intimately mixed up;
Beotia means “the country of the Boat.” Arkites have in all nations contributed
a very important part to the world’s history, and amongst them Jews may indeed
be proud to appear, not only in ancient days, but at present, and to class their
faith with the modified Arkite ones which Europe has for the moot part adopted.
Her “Queen of heaven,” and mother of her god, is the “Immaculate sailing Venus,”
1 [This is drivel: the figure depicts the solar-monotheist worship of Aten as the sun-disk. — T.S.]