Forlong - Rivers of Life

228
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
about 200 A.C. complained that the devil customarily made a sign on the foreheads of
the worshippers of the Persian god Mithra, who was at this time one of the deities of
the Romans. He accused Christians of adoring the cross, and before him Justin Martyr
said that Christians made the sign of the Greek Khi, X or c (that which may be seen
on the large Phalli in the British Museum mentioned at page 207) on all occasions
and upon all sorts of things, to denote the first power of God (Apol. II. i). In those
days the Khi was written like the Algebraic plus +, as we see it on the Sigeian stone
of 500 B.C. given to us by the Rev. Dr Bosworth; and it was this Kiasmos that is seen
common to all lands and from the most ancient days, as in the symbol for Venus situated
below her circle, but also in that of all other planets and many constellations.
I give here in Fig. 99 the planetary symbols, and many of the sacred sectarian and
other hieroglyphs to which ancient men have attached much significance. Several of
the emblems have been already dwelt upon, and the others I will hereafter refer to.
Fig 99.—PLANETARY AND SECTARIAN SYMBOLS.
The term cross was never applied to the Cross of Christ, till about the 2d century
or days of Justin Martyr, 110 A.C., who however always used the term Stauros. It
is believed that owing to some early French version of the gospels using Croix, and
hence Crucifix, for Stauros, our English translators used Crux as applicable to anything
in the shape of the Greek c, + or X—Kiasm; but a very ancient meaning of crux,
common I believe before the Christian era was sorrow, grief, repentance, and the
Romans never understood by Crux a straight line or a beam with a transverse upon it.
Suidas tells us that the Stauros was a straight piece of wood fixed in the ground, and
signifies stability and strength, tenns always applicable to Maha-Deva. The Roman
Furca was like a Y or Upsilon U, which is the Druidic phallic-tree, and this is what
Scaliger thinks Christ was crucified upon, as Jews never used crosses for punishments.
Had this however been the case, the gospel-writers would, it is thought, have called
such dikranon or phourke, and not Stauros. But is matter little; both are highly