Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
ably resembling in the upper part or glans the Helio-agatho-belus of the temple of
Venus at Emisa; Fig. 8 of this plate also shows the temple in Section and Elevations
as given in Waring’s Monuments.
The rudest Irish idol appears to have been the “Crom-cruach,”—“a great erect
stone.” Sometimes these were of black wood, plated with thin gold, chased in radial
lines, denoting that they were “Sun-stones.” The Ultonians had a favourite idol called
Kerman-Kelstach, which had for its pedestal the golden stone of Clogher, like, says
Moores the first Grecian Hermæ. The two Phenician columns to Fire and Wind had
windows at the four cardinal points, and were sculptured with the zodiacal signs, a
very common thing among sufficiently educated peoples. The first sculpturings we see
on these among illiterate races, is that winding ascent to all Meroos, like those on the
Tumuli of Kentucky and Bretany (Plates V1., 10; VII, 7), reminding us of a natural
peculiarity of Lingams. The Skoti, or Kelts of Scotland, marked theirs with strange
side lines and curves, solar and serpent hieroglyphs, as shown in Plates IX., 1, 3; XI.,
4, 2, 11, and as in this Newton stone of Aberdeenshire,
drawn from a large original sketch
kindly sent me by Col. Forbes Leslie of Rothie-
Norman. One race is supposed to have erected the
stone simply as a Phallus; the succeeding one to
have engraved or scratched its sides, and a third to
have executed the Iarge characters.
But I must now hasten on to make a few
general observations upon the marked Phallo-Fire
Worship of the Greeks and Romans, too commonly
called “Fire and Ancestor-worship,” it not being
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Fig. 164.—TWO VIEWS OF THE NEWTON STONE,
ABERDEENSHIRE.
perceived that the ancestor came to be honoured and worshipped only as the Generator,
and so also the Serpent, as his symbol.
The “Signs” or Nishāns of the generating parents, that is the Lares and Penates,
were placed in the family niches close to the holy flame—that “hot air,” “holy spirit,”
or “breath,”—the active force of the Hebrew B R A, and the Egyptian P’ta—the
“engenderer of the heavens and earth,” 1 before which ignorant and superstitious races
prayed and prostrated themselves, just as they do to-day before very similar symbols.
The Greeks and Romans watched over their fires as closely as do our Parsees or
Zoroastrians. The males of the family had to see that the holy flame never went out,
but in the absence of the head, and practically at all times, this sacred duty devolved
on the matrons of the home. Every evening the sacred flame was carefully covered with
ashes so that it might not go out by oversight, but quietly smoulder on; and in the
early morning the ashes were removed, when it was brightened up and worshipped.
In March or early spring it was allowed to die out; but not before the New-Year’s
1 Gen. i. 1, and Mankind, their Origin and Destinty, by M. A. Balloil, p. 530.