The God-Idea of the Ancients Part 4
Not only did Dionysos, and all the rest of the G.o.ds who in later ages came to be regarded as men, represent the sun, but after the separation of the male and female elements in the originally indivisible G.o.d, Maut or Minerva, Demeter, Ceres, Isis, Juno, and others less important in the pagan world were also the sun, or, in other words, they represented the female power throughout the universe which was supposed to reside in the sun.
In most groups of Babylonian and a.s.syrian divine emblems, there occur two distinct representations of the sun, "one being figured with four rays or divisions within the orb, and the other, with eight." According to George Rawlinson, these figures represent a distinction between the male and female powers residing within the sun, the quartered disk signifying the male energy, and the eight-rayed orb appearing as the emblem of the female!(26)
26) Essay x.
During an earlier age of human history, prior to the dissensions which arose over the relative importance of the s.e.xes in reproduction, and at a time when a mother and her child represented the Deity, the sun was worshiped as the female Jove. Everything in the universe was a part of this great G.o.d. At that time there had been no division in the G.o.d-idea.
The Creator const.i.tuted a dual but indivisible unity. Dionysos formerly represented this G.o.d, as did also Om, Jove, Mithras, and others. Jove was the "Great Virgin" whence everything proceeds.
"Jove first exists, whose thunders roll above, Jove last, Jove midmost, all proceeds from Jove; Female is Jove, Immortal Jove is male; Jove the broad Earth, the heavens irradiate pale.
Jove is the boundless Spirit, Jove the Fire, That warms the world with feeling and desire."
In a former work the fact has been mentioned that the first clue obtained by Herr Bachofen, author of Das Mutterrecht, to a former condition of society under which gynaecocracy, or the social and political pre-eminence of women, prevailed, was the importance attached to the female principle in the Deity in all ancient mythologies.
According to the testimony of various writers, Om, although comprehending both elements of the Deity, was nevertheless female in signification. Sir William Jones observes that Om means oracle--matrix or womb.(27) Upon this subject G.o.dfrey Higgins, quoting from Drummond, remarks:
27) See Anacalypsis, book iii., ch. ii.
"The word Om or Am in the Hebrew not only signifies might, strength, power, firmness, solidity, truth, but it means also Mother, as in Genesis ii., 24, and Love, whence the Latin Amo, Mamma. If the word be taken to mean strength, then Amon will mean (the first syllable being in regimine) the temple of the strength of the generative or creative power, or the temple of the mighty procreative power. If the word Am means Mother, then a still more recondite idea will be implied, viz.: the mother generative power, or the maternal generative power: perhaps the Urania of Persia or the Venus Aphrodite of Crete and Greece, or the Jupiter Genetrix of the masculine and feminine gender, or the Brahme Mai of India, or the Alma Venus of Lucretius. And the City of On or Heliopolis will be the City of the sun, or City of the procreative powers of nature of which the sun was always an emblem."
According to Prof. W. R. Smith, Om means uniting or binding, a fact which is explained by the early significance of the mother element in early society. The name of the great Deity Om or Aum scarcely pa.s.ses the lips of its worshippers, and when it is p.r.o.nounced is always reverently whispered. Regarding the mystic word Om, we are told that it is the name given to Delphi, and that "Delphi has the meaning of the female organs of generation called in India the Os Minxoe."
Although the great G.o.d of India was female and male, yet we are a.s.sured by Forlong that the female energy Maya, Queen of Heaven, even at the present time is more heard of than the male principle.
According to Bryant, the worship of Ham is the most ancient as well as the most universal of any in the world. This writer remarks that Ham, instead of representing an individual, is but a Greek corruption of Om or Aum, the great androgynous G.o.d of India, a G.o.d which is identical in significance with Aleim, Vesta, and all the other representatives of the early dual, universal power. "In the old language G.o.d was called Al, Ale, Alue, and Aleim, more frequently Aleim than any other name."
According to the testimony of Higgins, Aleim denotes the feminine plural. The heathen divinities Ashtaroth and Beelzebub were both called Aleim, Ashtaroth being simply Astarte adorned with the horns of a ram.
Ishtar not unfrequently appears with the horns of a cow. We are informed by Inman that whenever a G.o.ddess is observed with horns--emblems which by the way always indicate masculine power--it is to denote the fact that she is androgynous, or that within her is embodied the complete Deity--the dual reproductive energy throughout Nature. The "figure becomes the emblem of divinity and power."(28)
28) Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 311.
Mithras--the Savior, the great Persian Deity which was worshipped as the "Preserver," was both female and male. Among the representations of this divinity which appear in the Townley collection in the British Museum, is one in which it is figured in its female character, in the act of killing the bull. The Divinity Baal was both female and male. The G.o.d of the Jews in an early stage of their career was called Baal. The oriental Ormuzd was also dual or androgynous.
Orpheus teaches that the divine nature is both female and male.
According to Proclus, Jupiter was an immortal maid, "the Queen of Heaven, and Mother of the G.o.ds." All things were contained within the womb of Jupiter. This Virgin within whom was embodied the male principle "gave light and life to Eve." She was the life-giving, energizing power in Nature, and was identical with Aleim, Om, Astarte, and others. The G.o.ddess Esta, or Vesta, or Hestia, whom Plato calls the "soul of the body of the universe," is believed by Beverly and others to be the Self-Existent, the Great "She that Is" of the Hindoos, whose significance is identical with the Cus.h.i.te or Phoenician Deity, Aleim.
According to Marco Polo, the Chinese had but one supreme G.o.d of whom they had no image, and to whom they prayed for only two things--"a sound mind in a sound body." They had, however, a lesser G.o.d--probably the same as the "Lord" (masculine) of the Jews, to whom they pet.i.tioned for rain, fair weather, and all the minor accessories of existence. Upon the walls of the houses of the Chinese is a tablet to which they pay their devotion. On this tablet is the name of the "high, celestial, and supreme G.o.d." The princ.i.p.al word which this tablet contains is "Tien."
Of this Chinese Deity Barlow says: "The Chinese recognize in Tienhow, the Queen of Heaven nursing her infant son." Connected with this figure is a lotus bud, symbol of the new birth.
Originally in Chaldea and in Egypt, only one supreme G.o.d was worshipped.
This Deity was figured by a mother and her child, as was the great Chinese G.o.d. It comprehended the universe and all the attributes of the Deity. It was worshipped thousands of years prior to the birth of Mary, the Mother of Christ, and representations of it are still extant, not only in oriental lands, but in many countries of Europe. Within the oldest temples of Egypt are still to be observed sacred apartments which contain the "Holy of Holies," and to which, in past ages, none might gain access but priests and priestesses of the highest order. Within these apartments are pictured the mysteries of birth, together with the symbols of generation emblems of procreation.
On the banks of the river Nile are observed the ruins of the temple of Philae, which structure, it is said, represents the most ancient style of architecture. Within these ruins is to be seen an inner chamber in which are depicted the birth scenes of the child G.o.d Horus, and, indeed, everywhere among the monuments and ruins of Egypt, is plainly visible the fact that the creative power and functions in human beings, in animals, and in vegetable life, together with Wisdom, once const.i.tuted the G.o.d-idea.
Between the ruins of the palace of Amunoph III. and the Nile are two colossal statues, each hewn from a single block of stone. These figures, although in a sitting posture, are sixty feet high. It is thought that they once formed the entrance to an avenue of similar figures leading up to the palace. It has been supposed that the most northern statue represents Ammon, and that its companion piece is his Mother. It is now believed by many writers, however, that these figures do not represent two persons at all, but that in a remote age of the world's history they were worshipped as the two great principles, female and male, which animate Nature. The fact has been observed that Am or Om was originally a female Deity, within whom was contained the male principle; when, however, through the changes wrought in the relative positions of the s.e.xes, the male element in the Divinity adored came to be represented as a man instead of as a child, he was Ammon. He was the sun, yet notwithstanding the fact that he had drawn to himself the powers of the sun, he was still, himself, only a production of or emanation from the female Deity Om, Mother of the G.o.ds and Queen of Heaven. She it was who had created or brought forth the sun.
There is a tradition which a.s.serts that every morning a melodious sound is emitted from the first named of these two colossal figures as he salutes his rosy-fingered Mother whom he acknowledges as the source of all Light and Wisdom. The bodies are described as being "without motion, the faces without expression, the eyes looking straight forward, yet a certain grand simplicity occasions them to be universally admired."
The G.o.ddess Disa or Isa of the North, as delineated on the sacred drums of the Laplanders, was accompanied by a child similar to the Horus of the Egyptians.(29) It is observed also that the ancient Muscovites worshipped a sacred group composed of a mother and her children, probably a representation of the Egyptian Isis and her offspring, or at least of the once universal idea of the Deity.
29) Jennings, Phallicism.
The following is from Payne Knight:
"A female Pantheitic figure in silver, with the borders of the drapery plated with gold, and the whole finished in a manner surpa.s.sing almost anything extant, was among the things found at Macon on the Saone, in the year 1764, and published by Caylus. It represents Cybele, the universal mother, with the mural crown on her head, and the wings of pervasion growing from her shoulders, mixing the productive elements of heat and moisture by making a libation upon the flames of an altar. On each side of her head is one of the Discouri, signifying the alternate influence of the diurnal and nocturnal Sun; and, upon a crescent supported by the tips of her wings, are the seven planets, each signified by a bust of its presiding deity resting upon a globe, and placed in the order of the days of the week named after them.
"In her left hand she holds two cornucopiae, to signify the result of her operation on the two hemispheres of the Earth; and upon them are the busts of Apollo and Diana, the presiding deities of these hemispheres, with a golden disk, intersected by two transverse lines, such as is observed on other pieces of ancient art, and such as the barbarians of the North employed to represent the solar year, divided into four parts, at the back of each."(30)
30) Symbolism of Ancient Art.
It was doubtless at a time when woman const.i.tuted the head of the gens, and when the feminine element in the sun, in human beings, and in Nature generally was regarded as the more important, that Latona and her son Apollo were worshipped together. Latona, Apollo, and Diana const.i.tuted the triune G.o.d. The last two were the female and male energies, the former being the source whence they sprang. As soon as one is divested of a belief in the popular but erroneous opinion that the G.o.ds of the early Egyptians and Greeks were deified heroes of former ages, he is prepared to perceive the fact that, although to the uninitiated these G.o.ds appear numberless, in reality they all represent the same idea, namely: the dual, moving force in Nature, together with Light or Wisdom.
We have seen that when among the nations of antiquity civilization had reached its height, the G.o.d-idea was represented by the figure of a woman with her child; subsequently, however, as these nations began to decline, the creative energy comprehended simply physical life, or the power to reproduce, and was represented by various emblems which will be noticed farther on in this work. In still later ages, after male reproductive power had become G.o.d, and when, through superst.i.tion and sensuality, the ma.s.ses of the people had descended to the rank of slaves, monarchs, representing themselves to their ignorant subjects as the source of all blessings, even of life itself, appropriated the t.i.tles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration which had formerly belonged to it. From this fact has doubtless arisen the opinion so tenaciously upheld in recent times, that the G.o.ds of the ancients were only deified heroes of former times.
If, during the earlier ages of human existence, all the G.o.ds resolved themselves into the sun, and if Light and Life, or Wisdom and the power to reproduce and sustain life, const.i.tuted the Deity, then of course G.o.d or the sun would be female or male, or both, according to the prevailing belief in the comparative creative and sustaining forces of the s.e.xes.
From what appears in the foregoing pages the fact has doubtless been perceived that the worship of a Virgin and Child does not, as is usually supposed, belong exclusively to the Romish Christian Church, but, on the contrary, that it const.i.tutes the most remote idea of a Creator extant.
As has been hinted, there is little doubt that the earliest worship of the woman and child was much simpler than was that which came to prevail in later ages, at a time when every religious conception was closely veiled beneath a mixture of astrology and mythology. After the planets came to be regarded as active agencies in reproduction, and powerful in directing all mundane affairs, the Virgin of the Sphere while she represented Nature was also the constellation which appeared above the horizon at the winter solstice, or at the time when the sun had reached its lowest point and had begun to return. At this time, the 25th of December, and just as the days began to lengthen, this Virgin gave birth to the Sun-G.o.d. It is said that he issued forth from her side, hence the legend that Gotama Buddha was produced from the side of Maya, and also the story believed by the Gnostics and other Christian sects that Jesus was taken from the side of Mary.(31)
31) The fact will doubtless be remembered that a similar belief was entertained concerning the birth of Julius Caesar.
Within the churches and in the streets of many cities of Germany are to be observed figures of this traditional Virgin. She is standing, one foot upon a crescent and the other on a serpent's head, in the mouth of which is the sprig of an apple tree on which is an apple. The tail of the serpent is wound about a globe which is partially enveloped in clouds. On one arm of the Virgin is the Child, and in the hand of the other arm she carries the sacred lotus. Her head is encircled with a halo of light similar to the rays of the sun.
One is frequently disposed to query: Do the initiated in the Romish Church regard these images as legitimate representations of Mary, the wife of Joseph and Mother of Christ, or are they aware of their true significance? Certainly the various accessories attached to this figure betray its ancient origin and reveal its ident.i.ty with the Egyptian, Chaldean, and Phoenician Virgin of the Sphere.
The fact has already been observed that in the original representation of the "Temptation" in the cave temple of India, it is not the woman but the man who is the tempter, and a singular peculiarity observed in connection with this ancient female Deity is that it is SHE and NOT HER SEED who is trampling on the serpent, thus proving that originally woman and not man was worshipped as the Savior. Another significant feature noticed in connection with this subject is that the oldest figures which represent this G.o.ddess are black, thus proving that she must have belonged to a dark skinned race.
This image, although black, or dark skinned, had long hair, hence not a negress. The most ancient statue of Ceres was black, and Pausanias says that at a place called Melangea in Arcadia there was a black Venus. In the Netherlands only a few years ago, was a church dedicated to a black G.o.ddess. The Virgin of the Sphere who treads on the head of the serpent represents universal womanhood. She is the Virgin of the first book of Genesis and mother of all the Earth. She represents not only creative power but Perceptive Wisdom. Although this G.o.ddess is usually seen with the lotus in her hand, she sometimes carries ripe corn or wheat.
The mother of Gotama Buddha was called Mai or Maya, after the month in which the Earth is arrayed in her most beautiful attire.
Maya is the parent of universal Nature. According to Davis, the mother of Mercury "is the universal genius of Nature which discriminated all things according to their various kinds of species," the same as was Muth of Egypt. Mai is said to mean "one who begins to illuminate." She was in fact the mother of the sun whence everything proceeds. She was matter, within which was concealed spirit.
In the representations of Montfaucon appears the G.o.ddess Isis sitting on the lotus. Her head, upon which is a globe, is surrounded by a radiant circle which evidently represents the sun. On the reverse side is Ieu, the word "which is the usual way of the ecclesiastical authors reading the Hebrew word Jehovah." Referring to this from Montfaucon, G.o.dfrey Higgins observes: "Here Isis, whose veil no mortal shall ever draw aside, the celestial Virgin of the Sphere, is seated on the self-generating sacred lotus and is called Ieu or Jove."(32) She has also the mystic number 608 which stands for the Deity. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s show plainly that it is a female representation, although connected with the figure appears the male emblem to indicate that within her are contained both elements, or that the universe is embodied within the female.
32) Anacalypsis, book v., ch. iv.