Forlong - Rivers of Life

378
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
In Bas, Pas, or Fas (Fascinum), we have, as already shown, an older god than the
serpent, he who is the “Foot” and “Base” of all things, and in the Basilisk—Latin,
Basiliscus—we see that strange serpent of Egypt, said to be caIled a king of serpents,
or Basileus, because “having a crown on its head of triangular form which it
can inflate at pleasure, whose hissing drives away all other serpents, and whose
breath and even look is fatal.” This Basiliscus was, I think, only deified because these,
its characteristics, were held as peculiar to the creating God. Naturalists call it one
of the Iguanidæ or lizards, and its triangular crown “a membraneous bag,” but there
is some confusion in these matters; Mr. Cooper calls the Asp, the Cerastes—a deadly
viper with two horns rising over a blunt flat head; it is the Greek Aspis, and denoted
in Egypt “divine authority.” Rawlinson seems clear (Anc. Mons. iii. 153).
Woman was ever the serpent, long before Biblical days; 1 and thus the very ancient
Tarentines or men of Tars or Towers, (who ruled all the southern “heel” of Italy long
before it was Magna Græcia, and who held sway all over the great gulf of Tarentum
and the mouth of the Mare Superum) called Venus Basilissa, or the Queen Basilea. 2
Their mountainous coasts they called after the Indo-Aryan ophite god of mountains—Kala-bria
(Calabria), which shows they knew a good deal then about Kala
or Siva, as did the early and later dwellers by the shrine of Pythic Apollo. Tarentum
was originally built by Ia-py-gians and Cretans from Uria, and called after Tarus, a son
of Poseidon, and therefore brother to king Hyrieus, who ordered the first Basileus—
Trophonius—to construct Delphi. Ia-py-gians may be translated serpent-worshippers,
or followers of Io and the Serpent. The Cretan islanders were famed for Serpent and
Fire-worship, and Uria signifies both fire and moon, the last being also the Egyptian
Ureus which they wrote Arau, “the sacred letters denoting a king.” Isis is called Ur,
Pur, Pythius or Python, El or Ilion, (in Phenicia,) Rhea, Lykaon, Lykorea, Ope, Oph,
Ophel, Ops, Oub, and Oupis, 3 so that the origin and faith is unmistakeable.
The Egyptian crowned Isis with a tiara of the very sacred Serpent Ther-muthis,
and Diodorus tells us that the kings of Egypt wore “high bonnets terminating in a
round ball, the whole surmounted by figures of Asps,” 4 and if so, then the Cerastes,
and not the Ureus—their substitute for the Cobra; but whichever it was, the king would
naturally come to be called Basileus, these being symbols of the king of creation. On
the mainland of Karia, adjoining the island of Crete, there was a ling-solo-serpent
temple called shortly Tri-op-on, but which, from its tower, was really the Tor-ope-on, 5
just as Triton is Tirit-On, the tower of the Sun, that is a Lingam. Tauro-polis, or Taurop-olis,
says Strabo, is the serpent-sun-tower, 6 and so we have a twofold meaning in Polis
or Opolis, viz. a cave, or arkite abode, around which early people clustered, and not a
1 Dr. Birch writes: “All the feminine deities
were either represented, or were venerated under
the form of Uræi.” Coorper’s Ser. Myths, p. 74.
2 Iliad, ii., Clas. Man., p. 129.
3 Clas. Man., 339-40. Ody. xiv. This is
APOPHIS or HOF, “the destroyer,” a Coluber Snake
of great length.
4
Holwell, p. 304. Diod. 1. 3.
5
Hol. on Bryant, p. 414.
6
p. 412. Strabo, I. 16.