The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

thing in connection wit11 them was symbolical and hada hidden ~ueaning, and the initiates were not allowedon pain of death to divulge their real nature. Herodotus,who was initiated in the Mysteries of Egypt,makes this apparent when he refers to the goat-likeappearance of the god Pan. He says : " It is not thatthey [the initiates] believe h8 [Pan] really had thatform; they think him like the other gods ; but thereason [of his goat-like appearance] being connecte!with religion, I am not at liberly to explain it(Birch's Wilkinson, Jol. iii, p. 1%). The "hiddenthlngs of darkness, however, are now being mademanifest in this enlightening day (the beginning of theMillennium), and we know that the mystic reason forthe goat part of the Satyrs is connected with theirpanic and their sudden flight to hide themselves onhearing of the violend death oi their chief; for "Berkha,"the word for " fugitive," signifies also " he goat." Oneof the epithets of the god Pan, the head of the Satyrs,was Capricornus, which means " goat-horned."Origin of Sun and Fire Worship.The Chaldean name for Nimrod, the son of Semiramis,was Zero-ashta, from zero "the seed," andashta th!, woman." But the word Ashta also means"the A!:, so that Zero-ashta, "the seed of thewoman, became Zeroastes or Zoroaster, the wellknownname of the head of the fire-worshippers. Ingeneral history the Zoroaster of Bactria is mostfrequently referred to ; but the voice of antiquity isclear and distinct to the effect that the Arst and greatZoroaster was an Assyrian or Chaldean, and that hewas the founder of the idolatrous system of Babylon,and therefore Nimrod (Suidas, tom. i, p. 1133). Afterhis death the deified Nimrod was fabled to have been