Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Kora, heat, or heart; if Fire, Cnidos; she was the Mylita or Mulita and Demeter of
Arabia and Babylon, and in Europe “our mother Europa.” She was Helos and Geris,
or the Earth, Hestia in Greece, and Vesta in Rome; the Atys or Ko-Atus of Phrygia,
that is, Hekate, and in Europe the very womanly Friga. When in a cave the Sarmatians
called her Nia, and others Nox and Nigra, “the dark abyss,” “the winter solstice,”
“the Womb of time,”—that where in the seed slumbers and is preserved; for she is
often Selene and Sita, “the field-furrow” and “grain-receiver,” whose Lord is the
plough, or Jehovah-Nissi, the “staff” or “banner,” and “comforter.” Everywhere
she is Theba, Teba, or Boat of Life, man’s first Argos; and was claimed as. a mother by
that old race whose history we have yet to fathom, and whom we call after their demigod
Pelasgus of mythic nomenclature, concerning whom a few words.
The great Pelasgian race ruled in all “Asia Minor, the Grecian Peninsula, and
the whole of Northern Greece” certainly more than 2000 B.C., says Baldwin; 1 and
they, say Strabo quoting Ephorus, established the Oracles of Dodona, 2 so that their
history ought to be a history of the ancient faiths. There seems no questioning that this
people sprang from Aryanized races who came from the East, and it is granted also
that the “Greeks were a family group of this people:” they were clearly a commixture
of the great Ethiopic race, and “represented a mixture of several branches of the Aryan
family,” and some extent, especially in the early period of their existece, “a mixture
of the races who dwelt in the Phenician cities of Asia Minor.” The Leleges were an
important branch of this people, and seem,” says Hesiod, “to have been gathered from
among all the nations of the earth.” “They were much disposed to wander,” says
Strabo, “ready to remove from settlement to settlement, and to experience both great
increase and sudden diminution of their number.”
Poseidon, who, like Dionysus and Hercules, had the appropriate name of Phale,
or Pale-On—that is, Sun-phallus—was called the Father, and Larissa, or the Yoni,
the mother of the Pelasgi; which is equivalent to the Jewish story that we are all
descendants of Adam and Eve. The Pelasgi were undoubtedly the remains of a great
race holding many provinces and states when Greeks came upon the scene, for we
are told by the very best authorities that they ruled all Asia Minor, Hellas, and “the
whole region of Etruria; nor do we know the ultimate. to which they were extended.” 3
Long before the days of Dorians and Ionians, probably before Leleges and Kaukones, 4
they were a very numerous people, supposed to have been for a long time in a
wandering state. 5 Their chief capital was Larissa, and they clearly loved the Yoni
form of faiths, though no doubt the Lingam-god was also worshipped all over their
possessions. They were allies of Priam, and one of their great chiefs was called Apis,
or the bull, whose female energy—Apia—was the cow, or earth. The Apis of the
Pelasgians, we are told, conquered the Pelo-ponnesus and called it Apia, that is “their
1 2
“Prehistoric Nations,” p. 162. Strabo, vii.-vii., 10.
3
Plut. in Rom. 1; Strabo, v., 339.
4
The Kaukones are said by Homer to have aided the Trojans. They occupied N.W. Greece and
Asia Minor.
5
Holwell “Myth. Dic.,” 323.