Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
and especially so to Saturn—the European Siva. In Byblos, Love or Adonis required
the immolation of boys, just as Siva and Doorga demanded before the British ruled in
India. The founding of a colony or city required a vast hecatomb of children, which, as
population is the life of a land, was simply an offering of faith to the god of production;
and so Abram, who longed for posterity, showed his faith in proposing to sacrifice his
first son. The Carthaginians were celebrated for their fire-offerings. Hamilcar sacrificed
human beings from dawn to sunset at the siege of Syracuse, and when king
Agathocles appeared before their city to besiege it, 200 boys of the best families were
offered to the flames. There Kronus stood like the Jewish Molok with extended red
hot hands, on which when the victims were laid, they rolled into the fire-belly of the
God. Darius Hydaspes, and after him the Greeks and Romans, in vain tried to stop
these sacrifices, which continued until the consulate of Tiberius. Mahomedanism
stopped human sacrifice to the Sacred Stone of the Al-Kaba, it being at one time com-mon
for black-vested priests to offer every seventh day a youth, virgin, or suckling, who
were said to be married to the god by fire. Omar, in conquering Egypt, stopped
human sacrifices to the Nile; Lykurgus put a stop to the sacrifice of m.en to Artemis;
and Kekrops put this partially down in Attica. Themistocles sacrificed three Persian
prisoners to Dionysus before going to battle. In Sicily and Rhodes, a brazen bull
consumed the victims in his red-hot body. At Cesar’s triumph, Mars had two human
victims; and Octavius sacrificed 300 to 400 for his Victory Over Antony. Sextus
Pompeius—first century B.C.—cast men into the sea as offerings to Neptune. Eusebius
complained, in the fourth century A.C., that a man was sacrificed annually to Jupiter
Latiaris. The Druids of Central Europe and Britain, in Cesar’s time, sacrificed slaves
and criminals, smearing with the blood their statues and sacred trees; and the Jews,
for long centuries, used steadily to give up their first-born 1 to their fierce and “jealous
Jahveh.” The Germans, says Tacitus, offered to Woden—their phallic Mercury and
chief god—sacrifices of prisoners. The Lithuanians bought and offered men “without
blemish” to their Serpent gods; and Skandinavians broke the backs of their human
victims over their sacrificial stones or Lingams. The Swedish King On immolated
nine sons to prolong his own life; but the Swedes sacrificed two kings to get good
harvests! A Gothic mother offered up her son to Odin for a successful brew of beer,
by which she desired to win the heart of her husband, King Alfrekr.
All the ancient races of America, North and South, offered up human victims
to their Sun-gods, showing how close the connection between Siva and the Sun was,
even after Solar-worship became comparatively pure. The sacrifices of the Azteks to
their Sun-god Tohil are described as something awful. The Rev. S. Baring Gould, from
whom I glean most of the above, says that “at the dedication of a single Mexican
temple 70,000 men were slaughtered,” and that yearly 4000 to 5000 victims were
immolated between 1486 and 1521, making a pile of 136,000 skulls where the present
1 See, for ample proof of this, Colenso “On the Pentateuch and Moab Stone.”