Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Ararat have also a story of a great White Snake, and of a royal race of serpents to
which all others do homage.” In this White Snake we see the Sivaik Phallic-
Worship which Krishna,”the black one,” tried to put down. All the stones, phalli, and
bulls of the latter are black, those of Siva being white; so in this regard for the white
by these ancient northern peoples, we seem to see that they had not, up to such time,
ever been much impressed. with the worship of the Black Stone of Emesa, which
Heliogabalus strove to revive; but the Krishna. phase would seem, from various tales
and legends—especially that which comes to us from Loch Awe, close to Loch Nell—to
have reached the Scotch Kelts. We read that “one Fraoch fought and killed, after a
fierce battle, a very terrible black water-snake, which dwelt in and about Loch Awe,”
this, “on account of a golden-haired lassie;” which I would translate “on account of
the country of light-haired people,” who had been turning towards Krishnaism, or
to Nox, rather than Osiris. Not long ago we were told of the discovery, by Dr
Angus Smith, of numerous white quartz-stones in various newly-opened Karns and
megalithic Caverns, which were especially abundant in the neighbourhood of Loch
Etive. We may remember that all good Sivaites were fond of these symbols about their
houses, and even persons; and that the Greeks used to release one another from obligations
by giving and receiving a white stone, which, says the same writer in Good
Words already quoted, “is a custom probably alluded to in the book of Revelations, in
the promise, ‘To him that overcometh . . . . . I will give a white stone, and in the stone
a new name written.’ ” In the present instance, the white stones were found in Dr.
Angus Smith’s karns near Loch Etive, and apparently “in a great oviform karn,
120 feet long by 30 feet wide, and running north and south, which was opened up at
the village of Ach-na-goul (Place of the Stranger), near Inverary.” Mr Phené thinks
he has established that there was here a place both for worship and sepulchre; and
why not? Do we not still worship and bury in the same spots all over “barbarous
Europe,” as a Hindoo friend of mine often called it when he read of such customs?
The white circular or ovicular and conical stones in all these Keltic karns or barrows
have been found on projecting ledges of rock, where such existed, and together or
alternating with each other, as I show in the “Sacred Cave,” page 167, Fig. 144. In
India, where the people have generally been more civilised, earthen figures—baked or
merely sun-dried, of all qualities and quaint shapes, but chiefly cones, eggs, vases, and
little “Mamojee” objects have prevailed, such as I show under the Holy Banian Tree,
Fig. 1, page 31. We may remember that Mr Hobhouse, in his “Grecian Travels,” told
us he found Christians had similarly placed their treasures, as figures of St John, IOn,
or others, in the rocky niche “within the dews of Kastaly”—that holy water of the
Delphic cleft, where I believe they still are.
The result then seems established, that Phallic, Serpent, Fire, and Solar Worship
pervaded every part of our islands as well as all other lands; as also Ancestral,
with sacrifices, human and other, to Phallic, Serpent, and Solar gods and natural