Forlong - Rivers of Life

340
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
No blessing can be asked or granted from the altar of any Catholic Church until
the candles are lighted. 1 If a. woman, when pregnant, desires to be blessed by the
Christian Church, she is instructed to “wait on her knees at the door of the church
with a lighted taper in her hand;” nor can any cross be blessed until three tapers are
lighted by “the man of God,” and placed at its base. See Picart II. 117, where he
gives some graphic plates of Christian Phallo-solar-fire rites.
Colonel Forbes Leslie, in his Early Races, remarks: “We are not dependent on
inference, however rational, for a knowledge of the fact that fire was an object of
adoration to our heathen ancestors, even so late as the 11th century; for in the laws
of Cnut, fire appears as one of the objects, the worship of which is forbidden.” This
diligent author has collected examples of fire-adoration from Cornwall to Perthshire,
through Ireland and the Hebrides, and winds up with a statement, “that practice derived
from fire-worship continued up to the. present century, and that Beltane fires were
numerous in Aberdeenshire (his own county) in 1864.” 2
Not only, however, do we find fire and serpents thus late on the field of Northern
Europe, but we have the IOnic horseshoe with which the serpent is so closely identified.
The same author remarks that “superstition clung to this symbol so hallowed
by antiquity, and even impressed it on the Christianity by which it was superseded;
and this to such an extent, that the horseshoe was inserted in the pavement, or its figure
sculptured on the entrance, to churches in Britain that were built 1000 years after the
introduction of Christianity.” This IOnic symbol is found over all sorts of places,
generally doors, throughout Europe. The “Quarterly” mentious “omnibus vans, and
prison doors.” I have heard of a stalwart agriculturist in these Islands who exclaimed:
“He is lucky who has found a good horseshoe, for its price is far above rubies.”
In Godwin’s Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites, under the head of Feasts of the
Expiation, which we have reason to believe was at one time a period of human
sacrifice, we have the great Winter-Christmas Saturnalia, or Juvenalia festival of
Lights and Fires described, when not only the temples of Jews and Christians, but
every house, had to be carefully lighted. Jews taught that the lights must be held in
the left hand, and the holder must “walk between two commandments” 3 which seems to
denote the climatic or solar turn of the year. This old writer tells us that it was
“woman’s peculiar province to light their lamps;” and that “there are certain prayers
appropriated to this festival, and among the rest one in praise of God, who hath ordained
the lighting up of lamps upon Solemn Days.” Here we see a close resemblance
between the faith of the Jew and the Islāmi, whose wives are enjoined personally to
see to the lighting of the household lamps on Venus’ Eve. Jerusalem, we know,
acknowledges the God of Agni to the present hour by annually giving out that holy
1 2
Picart II., p. 13.
II., pp. 419-420.
3
“Cer. and Relig. Customs of the World, from the French,” Lon. 1741, a large and valuable work, but
Author’s name suppressed.