Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
of his divinity, and became a stranger and a sojourner, and yet a shepherd here upon
earth, . . . he procured for Adam that he should escape death, and be delivered from
it by the death of another, . . . He himself condescended to become his substitute.” 1
This idea seems to have been present in the minds of the Hebrew writers of Ps. lxxxx.
1; Isa. xl, 11, xlix. 10; Ezek. xxxiv. 13, and Jo. x. 1-16, &c.
Not even the Persian Conqueror Dates presumed to put out Apollo’s fires; he
destroyed most Grecian shrines, but those of Apollo and Diana in Delos he religiously
respected, evidently looking upon them as those of Mithras—the pur ¢ennaon or “everlasting
fire.” Mr. Hanway tells us that on his visiting Bako, the original and moat sacred
spot of the Persian Giberrs, that he found the devotees like Indian Saniyāses, “naked,
and with certain of their limbs fixed for ever in one position;” having saffron on their
foreheads, and greatly venerating the red cow, which we know Egyptians, and after
them, Jews did. The Bakoo fire is in a rocky country, ten miles N.E. by E. of Boko,
where are many little stone temples, but only in one does a soft blue flame issue from the
earth. It is caught up by a hollow bamboo, and there burns about three feet above the
altar. Here reside some forty or fifty poor devotees, praying for themselves and a lost
world. Of course, they are Sivaites of a kind. Apollo is said to have killed the Kuklops
who furnished his father with thunder-bolts, another proof that this race was probably
all-powerful before Jove’s day, and that Apollo-worship tried to efface the older
faith, of which this very Sivaik, one-eyed people were the strenuous and oldest supporters.
Diana, the Sister of Apollo, was the tallest and handsomest of the goddesses.
She too was “ever young,” and from her bow was always emitting darts on men and animals,
yet ever healing and removing the pains and ills of life. She was the Moon which
continually puts forth precious things, as the Jews so well knew, 2 and “the guardian
of mountains and groves;” her car was drawn by two stags, denoting swiftness and
longevity, as that of Ceres was by Serpents, or Passion, Kubele’s by lions, and Venus’
junctis oloribus. 3 Diana was the Triformis and the Tergemina; in Heaven Luna,
on Earth Diana, and in Hades Hekate or Proserpine. 4 Hesiod pictures her somewhat
like the Jewish Cherubim, but with the head of a horse on one side, and a dog on the
other, herself the centre as a man! This must never surprise us however, there being
a Lunus as well as a Luna. The dog usually betokens salaciousness, and the Hippos
fertile power. Some ascribe to Diana the form of a young bull, dog, and lion, 5 and
put a mule in her chariot, because it is barren, to aignify that she can only shine by
the light of the Sun. She is often Phoibe or Phebe, from her Lord Phebus, and as
Hebe she represents coming puberty, 6 and the first early grass of spring. Soma, we
must remember, was worshipped in Eastern as well as western Asia, under both sexes;
but in Europe, those who served Lunus were considered the superior race. Men
worshipping Luna had to appear in women’s clothes, and vice versa. 7 Diana, like
1 Hymn to Apollo, page 37.
2 Deut. xxxiii. 14.
3 [Lat., “by joined (or ‘yoked’) swans.”]
4 [Only under late syncretism. — T.S.]
481
5 Tooke’s Pantheon, p. 212.
6 Pubes vel Hebe, primum capillum pudendorum
significat.
7 Hymn to Delos, Dodd’s trans., p. 97