Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
wells in Africa, say Inman, were named Kunim, where Agapæ, or feasts of love, were
celebrated. Thus we see that buns, cakes, kunim, eggs, and such like, all meant the
female principle, unless baked in some such form as this Ta-Aroa.
The Sunday preceding Palm Sunday, which I have shown in my tabular statement
of national festivals as falling in 1874 on the 29th of March, is famous for Cares, Kars,
Fairs, or Fairings, of grey peas or beans, steeped in water and fried with butter. In Germany
Good Friday is called Karr Freytag, meaning Friday of penalty, when Passionday
rites were performed. I show it as the 12th of March, when Christ’s funeral used
to be publicly celebrated; for curiously enough this fete is not “moveable” like the
others, but accords always with our 13th of the solar month. Beans were a dole which
the Romans always gave at funerals. The repast for the dead, says Kennett, was commonly
beans.
Fig 174.—SOLAR LAMB AND CROSS IDEA
1 The ancient Romans, in their three days’ fête of the 9th of May called
Lemuria, always pacified the ghosts of the dead by throwing beans on the altar fire.
In Germany, every man entering a village ale-house on the 9th of May had a Karling
groat put before him which he was bound to spend; and the Church selected that day
to begin her grief and rehearse to the people the stories of the vinegar, the gall, and
the spear.
Erasmus tells us that “Beans contain the souls of the dead, for which cause they
are used in the Parentalia;” and Plutarch says they are of much use in “invoking the
manes.” I cannot help thinking that we should he able to connect this Care Sunday,
when peas or beans are so valued, with the Sacred Bean of Egypt and Japan, which no
priests dare touch, and which is looked upon as most holy, and worshipped as an object
of fertility. It has some peculiarities which are significant.
The great facts of the Vernal Equinox which the rudest poopIe could perceive, were,
that the days and nights were equal, that the Sun had triumphed over winter, and that
fertility was everywhere dominant over death. Some said that Sol and Selene had
been in conjunction, fecundated, and fired all nature; but, however that might be, the
facts of prolific nature were evident, and as young lambs were skipping about at this
season, it is not strange that, in course of time, and before the Christian era, the Vernal
God himself came to be called by the poetic name, Agnus Dei. It is difficult to say
whether the idea was taken from a real Lamb, or from the
god of celestial fire—Agni, whose dwelling all knew was
then in Ares, or Aries, the fiery phallic chief of later times.
It is not surprising that in after-days, when Christians had
accepted as their God one of tho sweetest characters their
devotional feelings were capable of imagining, that they too
called him “the Lamb of God,” and pictured him thus as the
outcome of Sol or Aries, carrying the four-rayed cross of the
seasons, as only a god and no lamb could do. The pietiests
were shepherds and shepherdesses, keen students of nature, and prone to admire her in
1 Roman Ants., p. 361.
445