Forlong - Rivers of Life

362
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
visit and adore some. Jesus, like all prophets, left his followers some traces of his feet,
and the wanderer on Mount Olivet will there see pious pilgrims ever fervently worshipping
two foot-prints, which Jesus is said to have impressed before “he ascended up on
high.” The Moslems show their reverence for similar vestigia in this neighbourhood,
which Christians claim to be those of Christ on a stone at the extremity of the eastern
aisle of the Mosk of Omar—that covering of the Mithraic Cave and phallic rock-mound,
forming the natural summit of Mount Moriah. We do not assume too much in urging
that time and research will yet prove Christianity to be here walking in Mithraic
“foot-steps” as she has done so freely in her legends of the cave, or manger-
cradle, and the death and resurrection of her “Sun of Righteousness,” as well as in all
the rites, observances, and twelve attendants who followed him. through his earthly
course.
France, though far removed from the scene of Christ’s labours and miracles, is determined
not to lag behind, and tells her children to look at the south wall of the Church
of Radigonde, Poitiers, where they will see a slab with two foot-prints said to be those of
Jesus when he stood upon this stone and informed the martyred saint of the shrine, that
she was soon to join him in heaven. The affections of Central Europe are divided between
her Pagan and Christian foot-prints, though Germany seems to be a little coarse and
secular in this respect; she used to hold up as sacred two immense foot-prints, a
couple of hundred feet apart, on the rocks of Magdesprung—a village in the Hartz
Moutains—which tradition ascribes to a leap made by a huge giantess from the
clouds, for the purpose of saving one of her beautiful maidens from the violence of an
ancient baron. Italy, scorning such ideas, hangs up to the adoration of the faithful,
drawings of Mary’s “feet” inscribed with sacred lore, such as we see on Boodha’s footmarks,
and often very like the sacred “Shields” or Ancilia of old, and suspiciously
like Yonis, or “the Gate of Life” and “blessed heart,” to all of which Mary is literally
likened. If Boodha and Krishna crushed out the serpent for a time, so did Mary’s Son, she
herself being called “the couch of the whole Trinity;” nay, “Music,” and “Holy Love,”
“the Madre del verbo eterno del Divino Amore,” as Pope Gregory XVI. described her. 1
It is Mary’s foot which I give in fig. 158 copied, minus her lengthened praises, from
that in the glazed frame which used to be suspended in 1840 near the altar of the
Neapolitan Church of St Genaro de Poveri. On the ball of the foot we have an oval
Sun with the old initials of “Mother,” “Water,” and “Matter”; and on the prow
of her “little ship” I place the usual eye, ever so far-seeing and quick to detect evil
or harm to herself and offpring, which early identified the Mother with Sophia,
“Wisdom.”
The foot of Rome’s “Queen-mother and goddess” is seven inches long, “measured
from her true shoe, preserved with the highest devotion in a Spanish monastery.” To
kiss it three times and repeat so many prayer is of unspeakable value, extending even
1 Mariolatry. Lon. W. E. Painter, 1841, pp. 62, 114.