Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
us to arrange our knowledge scientifically, and in a way favourable to memory and
classification with other matter. The Indian, we know, sows his wet crops, such
as rice and the millets, later in our summer, reaping them towards the end of our
autumn; and sows his wheat crops in our winter, reaping them at our vernal equinox.
Now, remembering all this as we consider each nation’s fetes separately, we cannot
fail to see that whatever names in conneciton with “births,” “deaths,” or “ascensions,”
priests or pietists have given to these periods (and they are quite right in hallowing
them), that yet all these seasons or so-called events, are mere glosses which the philosophor
must cast aside when he investigates the root or origin of the festal period. He
will find that then, indeed, he must give Almighty El, Al or Jah his due, and own
his imperial sway.
These tables do not pretend to denote all the festivals even of the leading faiths,
but only the most prominent ones, in order to satisfy the reader as to my statements
that our religious fetes are nearly all of Solar origin, or have been adjusted, in the
case of real events, to times of Solar phases. I am convinced that diligent enquirers,
who take the trouble to work out these tables fully and accurately, will find great
accumulation of evidence in substantiation of what I urge. The subject is one of
intense interest and will bear vast elaboration, and merits special archeological
investigations beyond the books and time at my disposal.
It is difficult for those who live in the great centres of civilisation—especially if
in a temperate zone, surrounded with luxuries and means at hand to ward off any
disastrous effects of Sol’s heat or alternating seasons—to thoroughly realise with what
vivid interest primitive peoples, in torrid and frozen zones, or on their borders,
watched his various phases, which bring to them happiness, misery, and death;
or sow the germs which ripen fatally, especially in the very young and aged.
Most of us can now by care and forethought resist his fiercest noonday rays; by
clothing, fire, and artificial light defy his wintry blasts, and cheer his days of gloom
and long nights of darkness; and so we rejoice not with pristine man on the Sun’s
victory over fierce Typhon, nor thank Jahveh as of old for “redemption and salvation,”
which by diligence an science we have wrought out for oursielves. If unkind to
us in one part of our planet, he cannot be so everywhere, and through ten thousand
artificial channels, aided by an ever pulsating fluid, man can now call up the powers
of nature at will from every land, to pour forth her treasures where she is richest, and
she responds to us at once, obedient to the great commercial laws of supply and demand.
In the tables I show many fetes and their characteristics, though now obsolete, in
order to elucidate the connection with the ancient Roman festivals, and this especially
so in the case of the Christian communities. Owing, however, to the early reckoning
which made Christ’s birth occur in the September equinox, some confusion may at first
sight appear; but every entry can be verified, though in several instances the ecclesiastical
writers of “the middle ages,” and “the ancient fathers,” must be consulted.
423