Forlong - Rivers of Life

Ancestor Worship.
turn men into gods, and are reluctant to allow that their gods are men.” India has
not yet arrived at that stage when morality in its gods or religions is essential to a
firm belief in the divine inspiration of them; this is a high stand-point which was not
reached even in the belief accorded to a Christ or Mahomed. Miracles, bold assertion,
and perseverance, have created and sustained most Faiths, and success has been to the
faithful full proof of Divine origin, although we must grant that the honest, meek,
thoughtful and long-suffering Boodha, and philosophic Confucius, desired only to present
their teachings to men for what they were intrinsically and morally worth, and
not beeause they taught them. How different in the Christian and Moslem world—
there a blind, unreasoning belief is demanded as a proof of Faith, doubters are told
that they live in a world of mysteries; that all is miracle, and “what we know not
now we shall know hereafter”—assertions suitable to any and all faiths. Mr. Lyall
emphatically asserts that the religions of Asia have been formed “by deifing authentic
men,” and not “by impersonating natural phenomena.” Yet this does not go to the
root of the matter. I willingly grant that “Siva the ascetic” or “Roodra the fierce,”
may be deified men, but not so Linga-jee and Maha-deva, not their equivalents, IAO,
El, or Jahveh, by whom Siva and Jupiter, if they were men, were symbolized.
Moses, Romulus or Quirinus, with rod and Quiris or javelin in hand, may have
existed, indeed we may almost assert did exist, but they were divine because of the
symbol of God which they were commanded to take in their hand and go forth with
to do the bidding of their God, or Gods. 1 This Rod or Lingam then was no man or
deified man, but the creative emblem—the first and real God, and the carrier was merely
the decent blind—a mere object or instrument for displaying the emblem or God.
We are everywhere told, as I show elsewhere, that it was the object put in the hand
which denoted the deity; and not the corpus vile. The king without phallic crown
and mace, and unless duly anointed as the Linga ist is no king, and can be treated as
other men; but with these, he stands like Moses, “instead of God,” whether in the
presence of Pharaoh or on the mountain top; 2 hence we have to study these objects
mostly, and not the mere puppet-carriers, and minutely search for the esoteric meaning
and etymological roots, if we would successfully get to the meaning and purposes of
the exoteric object, king, god, or faith. It is quite true also, as I think Max Müller
somewhere says, that “a general agreement has of late years been arrived at by most
students of mythology, that all mythological explanations must rest on a sound etymological
basis,” but we are not quite agreed as to the “bases.” It is explained that
Jahveh or J h v h, is IAW, that from Toth we have Theus, Deus, &c., but this leaves us
pretty much us we were; we want to know the root, i.e., origin or cause of I and A,
or of O. T. D, &c..; for in faiths these are the real roots and “bases.” After getting
these, our etymological structures may rise, and be of vast service to us, but without
these we are building solely on imagination, and the greater our structure, the pro-
1 Exod. iv. 17-20, vii. 9, 10; Num. xvii. 6, &c.
2 Exod. iv, 16, xvii. 9.
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