Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
obelisks of Egypt, on whose apex the holy fire was made so prominent. They were
divine symbols like these, dedicated to Fertility, or the Fires of Bel. Around them all
holy acts and ceremonies were performed, sacrifices and offerings mades; and adjoining
them, Christianity—the new faith—naturally raised her arks or temples.
They were called clochs, or “the Stones;” also clog-ads, which signifies in Irish
cones or pyramids, as the helmet of that shape, given in Plate XII. 13, see note on p.
349. Clog, being “the head,” became also a bell, and bells were at first conical in form; so
clog-an or clog-cheann is skull or Kal, a name of Siva as the head or glans, but here
signifying, the noisy or “sounding one.” Such bells may have been male, but were, I
think, generally deemed female; for woman is music, which in Irish is Ceol and Cor
—that harp of a thousand strings by which alone creation is possible. These Kelts
(and probably Kooths and Skots—Scotch) called their stone circles clog-ads and
cloch-ans, which Kaldians and Hebrews called Turs, rwf, and Greeks Tursis, tursij; so
that in the Hermes heap or mound, tower, circle, or Gilgal, we are thus made to see the
same god or idea—the Ish or Esh—which is Fire, and which, as Siva is Esh-wār, or the
holder of procreative fire. Gul or Gail is also the Keltic for stone, column, or pillar; and
hence probably the reason why the worshippers of these objects were named Gaels. All
Monoliths, in circlcs or groups, were Gals and Cugals, which General Vallency connects
not only with Cul, tower (Persian Kulè), but with Keol or Ceol—music, 1 which, like
“oracular utterances,” “quivering,” “vibrating,” &c., these gods were held to be
much given to. La Brun describes a tower in Turkey called Kiss-Kole, or tower of
virgins, . . Kiss in Arabic and Persian being “holy, religious,” &c. In Irish Cais-Cuile
or Ceach-Cuile signifies a virgin’s tower, or tower of anniversaries or proclamations,
whilst Cul-luan signifies the return of the moon, another idea closely connected with
the worship of Fertility.
Gal, a Monolith, and Galls, a group of these, are words which recall many memories.
Gāll or Gallus is a cock and a swan, both emblems of the Sun and Jove. Gala
in Greek is milk; hence Ga-lat-tos and the Latin Lac, Lac-tis. In Galilee, we have
the idea of the “rolling sun,” or a “rolling country,” as we sometimes speak of one with
continued mounds or Gals, lg, for this word, is “a heap, wave, or billow,” 2 an in Zechariah
iv. 2, it is the cruise or “oil vessel, from its round form,” and therefore the christening
vessel or Krio, from wbich comes Christ. Repeated as in G-l, G-l, Gilgal, we are to
understand a “circular or rounded heap,” and in Galah, “that which is or makes
naked,” is “smooth and polished,” and “uncovers the shame” (Fürst) terms commonly
applied to Siva; hence, perhaps, those so-called “gala” days, when King David
danced naked “before the Jahveh,” or the earlier ones, which are but covertly recounted
to us, when Aaron made his “molten calf” or rather “cone,” or “heaped form,” and
all the people, after a great feast, rose up to a naked dance, as they had seen was customary
when they lived in the land of Egypt. That there is a bond of union apparently
1 Round Towers, pp. 490-492. These Cs in Keltic are all Ks.
2 Fürst and Dr. Inman.
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