Forlong - Rivers of Life

482
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Hermes, also presided over the Streets as Trivia, for whom suppers were laid out in
Athens, on the evenings of new moon, for the poor of the city. She was Lucina and
Ops, and assisted her mother Latona at the birth of Apollo. She came to all who
called upon her seven times, thus showing herself to be presider over the week, and
goddess of days, which her name Dia embraced; for in Keltic the word sig-
nifies both “Day” and “God.” 1 At Ag-batana (Ek-batana), the city of the seven
tiers, crowned with her temple, she is called Anais, Aena, Anaitis and Aphro-
dite. 2 Delos, Pur-polis, and the sacred Isle of Asteria teem with stones regarding
her. On the latter, its people said, the Sun first shone, and round it his fire ever
raged. Delos was the Astor or Star of the god, “the deep abyss;” and Latona was
Matter, Maut, or Moder, “without form and void”—the Lot, Leto, Letho, or hidden
thing, that darkness which was over “the face of the deep”—for here struggling
light strove to come forth from the darkness in the manner which the writer of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation must have had in his mind, and learned from Greek
story, if he had not read Kallimakus.
“ Astrea called; for that the Thunderer arms,
Eluding like a star thou shoot’s from heav’n
Down to the deep abyss; and such thy name
Till bright Latona dignified thy cliffs.” 3
Holwell tells us that fwl, Lot, is the gum, myrrh, because its virtues lie hidden till it
meets water, and that on this account the ancients called Latona “the hidden one,” “for
the sun and moon were fetched away out of their diffusion through the watery chaos
in which they had before lain hid;” 4 the signification of which is given in Latin,
to the effect that Jupiter was at firt held to be ethereal heat which was resisted and
obstructed by dense dark air (Juno), but which at last “by means of mysterious or
hidden ways (leto-ways) he contrived to overcome, and through the agency of Ash,
Esh, or Vesta, and Delos—the fires of sexual love, he produced the Sun and Moon,
Apollo and Diana. Heaven’s clouds and Skies often signify the Strugglers, \yqjc
Shechakim, for cloud and light are thought to struggle with each other.
All nations associate horses with the Sun, for he is the swift orb “which hasteneth
to run his course.” Hence, the worship of the horse has always been closely allied to
Sun-worship. Horses’ heads and a chariot yoked with fiery steeds usually represent
him. In Hindooism, we are told he is the father of the Aswini-Koomara, or children
of the horse—the twins on the zodiac. The Queen of Heaven in the form of the great
Goddess Parvati, having to flee from his fierceness, disguised herself as a mare; but
she was no more successful than IO when she turned herself into a heifer. Phebus
impregnated the mare, producing the all-important deities—the Aswini. I have already
considered the subject of Pegasus—the winged horse of the Sun—and the Pi-galians
or Phigalians, in my investigation as to the radical Pi, which readers should bear in
mind. Hippa (a mare) appears to have been a term applied at times both to the Sun and
1
The Druids. Rev. R. Smiddy, p. 14.
3
Hymn to Delos, p. 111.
2 Smith’s G. and R. Geo., p. 800.
4 Holwell’s Originals, p. 125.