Forlong - Rivers of Life

254
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
I get this Kilkenny Cross, where we see serpents wreathing everywhere, and
eating up each other in the cross, the centre of which is the Sun, as emblematical
of fertility. If we had the old original top we
should no doubt find it was a lingam, or the
favourite female “charm,” instead of of, as here, evidently
altered by christianity, when it succeeded
the older faiths, into a covered recess for a Madona
and Child.
Col. Forbes Leslie in his Early Races of Scotland
gives the same, or greater prominence to the
Serpent in that Island. We see the deity all over his
Scotch sculpturings, and he writes that, “in whatever
quarter of the globe portraiture, sculpture,
history or tradition has preserved to us a know
ledge of the ancient rites of heathen nations (! ?),
the Serpent seldom, if ever, fails to appear as an
object connected with religion.” (II. 409) Indians,
when in sickness and trouble, still use the holy reptile
as Israelites are said to have done in the desert.
Babylonians placed “two exceeding great serpents,
formed of silver,” on the summit of that famous
tower of Babel. (Dio. Sic. II. 9.) The Citadel of
Athens was founded on, and defended by a great
Serpent (Herodotus, VIII. 41); and the Athenians
called their king by the name of Basileus, of which
more elsewhere. With Egyptians as well as Hindoos,
aye, and with ascetic Boodhists, the hooded
canopy must cover the Gods, or what is holy; and
the Typhon Snake of the Nile, and the Rahoo of
Ceylon, must attack Osiris, Soorya or Mithra;
whose enemy the Irans said was Ashi, and Cingalese
Ahi. His Excellency Brugsch Bey, in his address
Fig 123.—SERPENT CROSS OF KILLAMERY,
CO. KILKENNY.
regarding the Jewish Exodus at the Oriental Congress
of 1874, said that “the Serpent of Brass called,
Kereh, or the polished, was regarded as the living
symbol of God,” that is, of Mahā-Deva, or the Lingam-Jhavh: it was “the living or lifegiving
God, which the town of Pithom in Egypt worshipped.” Belzoni’s Theban tomb
shows us that the Serpent was there propitiated with human sacrifices, and the British
Museum abundantly proves that he was worshipped with most obscene rites in almost every
corner of the world. Virgil pictures to us Eneas making offering “to the holy thing” as it