Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
This list is of course very imperfect; because the names of the Gods are infinite,
and all writers prefer those titles only under which the Deities sound sacred in
their own eyes. I recommend my readers to try and make out a list for themselves,
and they will find how many difficulties are to be encountered in trying to please all.
Even the Parent Gods are best named by means of their early emblematic titles, if I
may so call them, viz., the Breath, the Ruach, Life, Atma, the Rock, the Oracle,
Speaker, Word of Life, Logos, &c.; and, as more especially the female or Passive Energy,
by such suggestive names as Máya, Illusion, Mirror, Water, the Ocean, Egg, Ark-boat,
the Shekina or Roe, Floral Wreath or Cornucopia; Sophia or Minerva, as Wisdom, etc.
The Jew—Ezra or other, gave us a key to the Faith when he made the Elohim and Ruach
create mankind “in the image of the Elohim”—“Zakar and Nekabah” 1 —for he therein
reveals a wealth of meaning in connection with the other faiths around him, regarding
which no subsequent suppression or change of early names and meanings can deceive us.
There is a wonderful uniformity in the names AUM, OM, ON, the Keltic OUM,
the Magian and Mexicau HOM; the Græco-Egyptian A’OM, Am-ON, A-Men, and
compounds of these with B, R, and T, running into the Chinese T-AO and AO,
Egyptian A-TON, A-TOTH or A-TIR; the Polynesians T-ARO, etc. Osirians called
God “the All-seeing,” “the Formless;” Medes and Persians, Zervan-Akerene, or
“Uncreated Time,” “The Infinite One,” and Bā-Ga, the “Great God,” 2 corresponding
to the Hindoo Bāga-vān, who was Aum-Viraj or Pothos—“Desire,” in whom centred
the Tri-Moorti, or He of “three parts yet one.” Greeks called him ’Entopan, œn-to-pan
the All-Fathr, and Kelts, En-De, “The One God.”
From Eastern tongues—parents of the present Sanskrit, we got Zeus, Theus,
Deus, Dium; Old German, Tu-is-ko, whence Tuesday; Lithuanian Die-was; Keltic
De, Dia, etc.; for the East called “the Heavens,” “Sky,” “Light,” “Air,” and
“Heavenly Father”—Diu and Deva or Daëva, in Sanskrit and Zend. The root is
simply Di, signifying “Dividing,” “Scattering,” 3 and so the Sun as “Scattery of the
Clouds”—“the Milk Cows of Earth,” as the Sanskrit Aryans called these, was the
Creating Father, and his emblem “that which divides” and lets loose the Generative
Froces of Nature. When people quarrelled, they in time disliked each other’s Gods, and
pointed out traits in their characters which, though formerly considered divine and
holy, they now said were fiendish and debased, 4 and so the above class of words in time
came to signify Evil and Devil. Thus when the Zoroastrian separated himself from his
Indo-Sanskrit brother, he called the Devas, Devils. Herodotus called the Supreme
God of Kaldia, Zeus-Belos, meaning “Jove-Lord;” Lord; not Bal-Shemen, “The Lord of
Heaven,” which Hebrews wrote Bal-Shemaim, \ymc lub. This was the Ur, Aur, or Fire
and Light God, whom Arabians called Noura and Naero; the ELON or “Exalted
1 Gen. i. 27
2 So we have in the sacred town of Bágistán
merely the signification of the Stan or “Place” of
Bāga, or Prajāpati.
3 The Rev. Mr. Valpy’s Etym. Dic. Is, es, and ur are
affixes common to Gods, as in Is-is, Osir-s, Tu-is, &c.
4 This is now taking place in Europe in regard to
the Jewish Jehovah and Elohim.