Forlong - Rivers of Life

Introductory Chapter.
With this explanation as to the early days of my Chart, when the gods moved on
the waters of life, we shall resume the passage down our Streams of Faith.
Mr Lesley would place Ancestral worship as man’s first faith, just as others would
place Serpent before Phallic, and others again, strong in Kaldean history, claim the
first place for Sun, and the classic scholars of Latin literature say the name of Fire;
my own travels and studies in eastern lands have however convinced me, that the
order in which I here place these four early symbolic objects of man’s adoration is in
the order in which they mostly flourish, though the idea of the second is in the first,
and abundantly in all that follow.—1st, Tree; 2nd, Phallic; 3rd, Serpent; 4th, Fire;
5th, Sun; 6th, Ancestral; being the adoration and worship of Ancestors, their tombs
and writings: a faith deeply impregnated with all other streams, and with the worship
of a representative man, as Amen, Herakles, Brahma, Abram, &c.
To the above, some writers would add worship of Fetishes and Spirits (Demonology)
and Animal worship, which is said to have flourished in Egypt 3100 years
B.C.; but although I admit a sort of worship in all nations of particular birds and
animals, yet this is rather confined to the various sects of the main Faiths, and may
be here understood to be carried along with, and included in, one or other of these six
great streams, just as that of Apis is included in my second stream.
Thus the ancient monkey, our gorilla, is the most intelligent, and called the most
powerful of intelligent animals. He has disappeared from India, although his
name has attached itself to the great Hanoomān monkey of our denser forests of the
East. He was an attendant upon Rām, the 7th Avatár or incarnation of Vishnoo, of
sub-Vedic times. He lent all his power to Rām, and is represented as bringing back
to him his heavenly spouse, here as elsewhere, the female power of God, Maya or
Mary, called in the poems of the Mantra era, “Sita,” a “field furrow,” or seed
vessel, female or Sakti, the names given by Hindoos to each consort of the gods,
or to God manifested as Logos, Yoni, Juno, &c. In admiration of Hanoomān’s
aid and devotion to Rām, he was venerated and then adored, and is at this time an
object of worship by some Hindoo sects which are seen embraced in my sub-Vedic
stream; just as I do not show separately in the Christian stream those who adore and
kiss the toe of Peter, Christ’s powerful though not always faithful or very truthful
attendant and exponent, so I do not show monkey worship as a Faith. Some followers
of Hanoomān worship, when they come into power, are seen to revive the animal
symbol of their sect, as in western India, when wealthy nobles, in the days of Siwajee,
A.C. 1650, gave great grants of land to be devoted to the maintenance of monkeys:
there we find them daily fed at the gates of these villages; all the revenues left after
maintaining the estates are devoted to this purpose. This monkey deity is the son of
Maroot (see Vedic Devas), the god of storms and wind, and of Anjooni, a woman of
the mountain, probably some real person.
Rām himself is only a great deified chief, whose true parentage is hid far back in
27