Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
drink this consecrated meat and drink, shall become partakers of the Divine nature.
Any one who wishes to see how Christians got many of the ideas and ceremonies of
their Eucharist, and why Paul said you cannot be the partakers of the Lord’s tables,
and of the tables of devils, should read this very Christian author at page 405, and
thereabouts. 1 I will hereafter show their Mithraic origin.
Severe and horrible, however, as sacrifice becomes in several Phallic phases of faith,
we must yet remember that we are indebted to Phallic faith and Phallic lore for nearly
all that adorns ancient works of art and all that enriches poetry and classic literature.
It first worshipped the beauties, peculiarities, and grotesque forms of nature, in all
animal and bird life, and was the first to appreciate what is loveliest on earth and grand
in heaven. In regard to animals, we see many which continued to be esteemed by Christians
for several centuries after Christ; if Diana or Phebe was set aside as a name, not so
her Antelope, nor the Dove, Iona, and Fish. These all abound upon the Christian tombs;
the “Ever-Virgin” sheltered and loved all animals, and with the weakness of her sex
preferred the society of hunters, of whom Phebus was chief. It has been said that the
Antelope w'as liked by early Christians, bcause Pliny, the naturalist, wrote that it
“had powers to draw forth serpents out of their holes by its breath, and then
trampled them to death.” I fear we must relegate this very much further back, and
to Phallic lore, as the antelope is a peculiarly violent and nauseous animal when in
heat. We probably better see the Virgia-Diana idea in that old old Asyrian sculpture,
which I give as figure 9 in my Plate V., where the great king of the “Tree of Life”
carries his little virgin about with him, and the spots denote woman. The maid of
Rome was the Artemis of Greece and the Bubastes of Lower Egypt; but before them
all she was the great Dia-Ana, or goddess Ana or Anat, of which I will speak much
in treating of Asyrian and: Kaldian Faiths. We shall not be far wrong in closely
connecting this goddes with the Queen of Heaven—Maya, to whom “the bird of the
tombs and night” belonged. The owl was also sacred, we know, to Athena or Minerva,
or as creation to her as Pallas-Athene, which I consider means Pallas and Athene, or
a Sri-linga, that is all organs, or Perfected Nature.
Christians were very particular to the fish, but, indeed, may be said to have carried
on freely, all the ancient ideas, as which faith has not after its
first attempt at purification? On Christian tombs especially
do fish abound, commonly crossed as in this figure 110,
which reminds us that crossed serpents denote their act of
intercourse, and in this symbolism the fish would be very
Fig 110.—FISH AND WOMAN IDEA,
ASYRIAN AND CHRISTIAN.
natural and usual, because denoting new life in death. Dorceto,
the half-fish and half-woman of the temple of the Dea Syria at
Hira, was, says Lucian, the perfection of woman; she was the
mystic Oanes, Athor, and Venus, whom Egyptians have handed down to us embalmed.
1 “Origin of Religious Beliefs,” by the Rev. S. Baring Gould.