Forlong - Rivers of Life

518
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
If the inquiry displease him, he retired; and if he approves of it, he incites his bearers
to go forward, and in this manner they collect his answers. The priests undertake no
ordinary or sacroed business without thus consulting him. He gives out the predictions
concerning the year, and instructs then about ‘the symbol’ and when it ought to make
its procession to the sea.” Lucian is not, however, always trustworthy; for although he
speaks of the credulity of the vulgar, he was easily deceived himself, saying he saw the
priests on one occasion “lift the god up, when he threw them down, and quitting their
shoulders, walked by himself in the air.” I am not clear as to the actual “deliverer
of the oracles,” although I have read different translations of Lucian; from these I
have culled what seems best to convey his meaning. He most particularly explains
that “neither the throne of the Sun or Moon have images;” that beside the empty
throne of the Sun, there was in the inner “Holy of Holies,” the great Trinity, of
which the centre God or figure was evidently the most important aspect of the whole
shrine; it wns a mysterious “Sign or Symbol”—clearly the Phallus, or a Jupiter Amon,
Eduth, Baitulos, or Lingam euphemised into a statue of gold—“without any peculiarity.”
None of these spoke, it seems, save the bearded Apollo in the recess.
Asyria and Babylon may be regarded as holding even more strictly than Egypt,
to Solar worship, 1 or, perhaps I should say, Tsabeanism—as embracing “all the host of
heaven.” Research proves that the very bricks of the great palace disentombed at Birs
Nimrood were coloured, to represent the fancied planetary hues of Saturn, Jupiter,
Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon—in all seven colours; and Herodotus specially
mentions also the seven-walled and seven-coloured palace of Median Ekbatana.
All these Babylonian gods, like Elohim and Jahveh, had their peculiarities, sacrifices,
appointed festivals, and disinct priesthood; and also, says Sir H. Rawlinson,
their Arks and Tabernacles, that is female energies.
From Herodotus we gather, that in his day the Asyrians for the most part worshipped
only two gods, Dionynsus and Urania, that is, the sun and moon; 2 as did
the Arabians Orotal and Chand—the disk of gold, and the diskus of silver, the former
of which the Persiam Aryans translated into Zartushti, or the golden disk, after whom
they called their prophet Zerdusht, which the Greeks changed to Zoroaster—the
Messiah or Sun-God. Berosus, as quoted by Syncellus, makes Zoroaster the first king
of the Babylonians, clearly showing us that Zerdusht in earlier days was a purely solar
term, like Bel, Ba-al, or Al, the first phallo-solar God, or God-King of all these peoples.
Egypt also meant the same, whether Am-on or Osiris was spoken of; in the former
name, the meaning “Secret,” or “God of the secret parts,” is implied, which may
signify merely the subterranean Lingam form which is usually hid away deep down in
a secret place of the temple, whilst some figure, statue, or other euphemism represents
this to the public. I wish now to draw attention in the Jewish scriptural terms Milkom,
Molok, Kiun, or Chiun, and Rephan, or Rephaim, which some theologians and their
1 Jour. R. As. Soc., xvii. 11, p. 23.
2 H.F. Talbot, Jour. R. As. Soc., iii. 1, 1867.