Forlong - Rivers of Life

22
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Darwin, then, for our present purpose may range at will, speculating as to what
we were some 3000 years B.C.; and the English Dr Hales, writing in 1700 A.C.,
may assure us that 3500 B.C. was Kronos’ birth; his co-religionist, Archbishop Usher,
writing a hundred years earlier, with fool-hardiness even for a priest, though all
Biblicists here follow him, asserts that “the world was created on Sunday, October
23d, 4004 B.C., and Adam and Eve on Friday the 28 th May,”—some say that the time
in each case was four o’clock in the afternoon! and he adds, like the unknown old
Hebrew writer, “Adam and Eve were in the image or likeness of God,” but of what
God? The ancient Hebrew, which the Jews were unable to decipher in Nehe-
miah’s days, or fifth century B.C. (so far as we know of that Hebrew, for, as before
said, it had only “cuneiform signs,” and no vowels), says in the Jewish Genesis,
Elohim (gods plural, and male and female 1 ) “created the heaven and the earth,” at
some unknown time, called here “the beginning.” Now philologists all tell us that
El was the sun-god, and my studies place his name as prominent about 3500 B.C.
El- and HIM, 2 our early monosyllables, form a natural plural; and as we read on
we find El and “Him,” the plural gods, called Elohim, which is the androgynous or
bi-sexual male and female god, so commonly adored then in Egypt as in India, and undoubtedly
then worshipped in Syria by Israelites as well as Canaanites, of which further.
Keeping at present to Genesis, we can gather the proof of the double god; for the
“Gods” say in the 2 d verse that the Logos (translated the Spirit, or as the more
full and learned literature of India says, “his creative spirit”), the “spouse,” “the
dove,” &c. “moved on the face of the waters,” which last word should be noted, for
Salacia is the goddess of water or lustfulness; and in much that follows, it will be
seen that waters and seas are the signs of Isis, Astarte, Mylita, Maiya, Juno, Venus,
Ceres, 3 Eve, Frea, Friga, and many another name, denoting the original female creating
source. It is the fertilising stream which God as Brahm move upon: as Mahadeva,
in his creative capacity, he shrouds Maya or Sophia the spirit of wisdom.
Genesis, i. 26, is still more explicit; there God speaks to his Spirit (for she
or it must be there, as he would not speak to himself), “Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness,” and accordingly “male and female created he them;”
therefore Elohim was either androgynous, or this Spirit was the heavenly goddess,
who by “him” created all things. In proof of the bi-sexual gods of ancient peoples,
and of the constant identity of one god with another in Vedic days during the reign
of Brahmanism in the east, and of Greek and Latin supremacy in Europe, I will here
quote from the beautiful and very ancient poem, “De Mundo,”—
“ Jove first exists, whose thunders roll above,
Jove first, Jove midmost, all proceeds from Jove;
Female is Jove, Immortal Jove is male;
Jove the broad Earth, the heavens irradiate pale;
1 [i.e. it is a feminine stem (ALH) with a masculine plural ending (IM). — T.S.]
2 Dr Inman, and see my glossary Elohim and God. The title used in Genesis is \yhla jwr , or pneuma qeou.
3 This C may be G, but not K, the root being Ge, the earth: She was Ge-Meter. [The identification of
Demeter with Gé the Earth goddess was widespread in antiquity but not universal; the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter for example distinguishes them, making Gé complicit in the abduction of Persephone. — T.S.]