Forlong - Rivers of Life

510
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Mithras. Mitra was the “Announcer,” and is therefore called Light, and presides over
Love; and as the morning star is often Venus, this Anaid is clearly Anahid, the Venus
Urania or Mylita of Asyria, and Alita or Alilat of Arabia.
In the second century the whole Christ-idea seems more and more to have ripened
out of Serapian lore, for “the philosophers then understood by Serapis nothing more
than the ‘Anima Mundi,’ that spirit of which universal nature was the body, holding
like many in our own day, the doctrine of the
. . . . ‘One harmonious whole
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.’
“Serapis had become merely the idea of the Supreme Being, whose manifestation
upon earth (they were now told) was Christ.” 1 Hadrian writes to his friend, Servianus:
“Those who worship Serapis are also Christians; even those who style themselves
the Bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. The very patriarch himself, when
he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to adore Serapis, by others to adore Christ.
There is but one God for them all; him do the Christian, him do the Jews, him do all
the Gentiles also Worship;” and, adds Mr King to this ancient Confession of Faith:
“There can be no doubt that the head of Serapis, marked as the face is by a grave and
pensive majesty, supplied the first idea . . . . . of portraits of the Saviour.” 2 Thus
then the leading ideas as to the one Supreme God, as well as the very likeness of Christ,
are shaped from Serapis; and, seeing all the rites and ordinances, and the best of the
dogmas come from Zoroastrian, Boodhistic, and Mithraic faiths, there is not much left
to spring from the Vale of Nazareth, save miracles and such like matter to which we
now attach no great importance.
In the time of Hadrian, Serapis often appeared seated in all his attributes, with
Isis standing before him holding the jingling Sistrum in one hand, and a sheaf of wheat
in the other, with the inscription: “Immaculate is our Lady Isis;” which “are the very
terms applied to that personage who succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and
ceremonies. . . . . . . Her devotees carried into the new priesthood the former badges
of their profession, the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure and the surplice, omitting
only and unfortunately the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed. The
sacred image still moves in procession as when Juvenal laughed at it.” 3 Yes, and the
Black Virgins which used to be so highly reverenced turned out when critically
examined to be basalt figures of Isis!
Orpheus clearly states that Jove (that is IAO), the Sun (Phebus), Pluto and Bacchus
are all one; and an oracle quoted by Julian say, “all these are one, and all are Serapis;”
whilst the Apollo of Claros answered enquirers as to who Iao was:
“ Regard Iao as supreme above,
In winter Pluto, in Spring’s opening Jove:
Phebus through blazing Summer rules the day,
Whilst autumn owns the mild Iao’s sway.”
1 King’s Gnostics, p. 68.
2 Ibid., p. 69
3 King, op. cit., p. 71; Juvenal, VI. 530.—“Escorted by the tonsured surpliced train.”