Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
The task of tracing the growth of the earliest streams, as from Tree to Serpent, and
thence to Fire and Sun, is infinitely greater than in the case of book-faiths. So imperceptibly
arose the Serpent on pure phallic faiths, Fire on these and Sun on all, and so
intimately did all blend with one another, that even in the ages of true history it was often
impossible to descry the exact God alluded to; as for instance when Apollo was mentioned,
to know whether the Sun or Python was meant; though the Serpent reached into
ages infinitely darker and more remote than those in which we find men worshipping the
Solar orb, or the glories of the heavenly host. Sol and Serpents were found in the
same temples from Greece to Mexico, and all over India and China. Both claimed
such names as APOLLO-PYTHIUS, the Sun-Stone, Serpent-Stone, the Mudros, the
Helio-gabelus, Baitulos, Beth-el (dwelling-place of the Creator), the APOLLYON of
Christianity, and the ABADIR of earlier days. The Sun was the oracle, yet the Serpent
spoke and was the mouth-piece, as we see in Pi-On, Phebus or P’Obus, the Pyramid
(Koptic, Pi-ra-men) his ray, and Ob-el the obelisk. Pure Lingam, pure Serpent, or pure
Solar worship, can scarcely be found. The Lingam, like the Serpent, is “the oracle,”
“speaker,” or, as we read in Sankoniathon, “Animated Stone,” the worship of which
“Ouranus introduced;” by which the old writer meant that all Palla-dia or Lingams
fell from heaven. These “Animated Stones,” then, spoke long before Serpents; and
we know no names of Sol as a god, which are not connected with Bethe1 and Ops,
Lingam, Serpent, and Fire. In Egypt P’ebus, Oph-el or Elios married Ops, from which
sprang, say some writers, Osiris, Isis, Typhon, Orus, and Athor. 1 No city had a temple
to one and not the other; but so strong at last did Sol rise, that it became as rare to
find a pure serpent temple in Egypt or in Greece, as one to Brahma in India, or to the
Lingam without a serpent near it. Jacob and his people worshipped the pure Bethel;
but the God of Moses spoke to him in a “Serpent-Rod” and a “Burning Tree;” and
then the religion became complicated with an ark and golden cone, then two holy stones
which fell from heaven or Jhavh, for which were substituted two earthly ones with
written laws. 2 The leaders however, also set up a Nissi or “Standard” on an altar,
as well as a serpent on a pole, and Fire upon an Ark; so that here we find a very
gradual growth and close intermixture of faiths; and the same seems true of all races.
The circular solar temples of our ancestors with their monolithic Serpent Avenues
are, I think, not inaptly called Dracontia; whether this be derived, as the Rev. J.
B. Deane thinks, from the Hebrew Derech-On, the Avenue of On; or, as Bryant perhaps
more correctly says, from Trachon or Tar-chon, the Tors or towers which Phenicians
usually erected on mounts and promontories, and at each extremity of their temples.
The more ancient worship in existence before these Kelts or Kymri erected such shrines
as Avebury, is very apparent from the following remark of the Rev. Mr. Deane, who
does not at all write from my point of view: “An aggregate of Baituli formed the first
temples which were erected, and these were generally built in the figures of the hiero-
1
We see Ops in conjunction with Aith in Athiops. [The Heliopolitan theogony has Isis, Osiris, Typhon
(Set), Nephthys, and the elder Horus as the offspring of Geb and Nut (Earth and Heaven). — T.S.]
2
It would seem from Deut. xxviii. 2 that the Jews only wrote on plaster laid over stones, not knowing
the art of Engraving.
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