The God-Idea of the Ancients Part 9
To this separation of the two original elements in the Deity, and the consequent exaltation of one of the factors in the creative processes, is to be traced the beginning of our present false, unnatural, and unphilosophical masculine system of religion--a system under which a father appears as the sole parent of the universe.
The fact is tolerably well understood that mysticism and the acc.u.mulation of superst.i.tious ideas are the result of the over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the agencies which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became inoperative--when man began to regard himself as a Creator and therefore as the superior of woman--he had reached a point at which he was largely controlled by supernatural or mystical influences.
The fact is observed that in course of time the governmental powers are no longer in the hands of the people; the ma.s.ses have become enslaved.
Their rulers are priests--deified tyrants who are unable to maintain their authority except through the ignorance and credulity of the ma.s.ses. Hence one is not surprised to find that the change which took place at a certain stage of human growth in respect to the manner of reckoning descent was instigated and enforced by religion. Apollo had declared that woman is but the nurse to her own offspring. Neither is it remarkable at this stage in the human career, as women had lost their position as heads of families, and as they were no longer recognized as of kin to their children, that man should have attempted to lessen the importance of the female element in the G.o.d-idea.
Wherever in the history of the human race we observe a change in the relations of the s.e.xes involving greater or more oppressive restrictions on the natural rights of women, such change, whether it a.s.sume a legal, social, or religious form, will, if traced to its source, always be found deeply rooted in the wiles of priestcraft. Since the decay of the earliest form of religion, namely, Nature-worship, the G.o.ds have never been found ranged on the side of women.
Later investigations are proving that the primitive idea of a Deity had its foundation in actual physical facts and experiences; and, as the maternal principle const.i.tuted the most important as well as the most obvious of the facts which entered into the conception of a Creator, and as it was the only natural bond capable of binding human society together, so long as reason was not wholly clouded by superst.i.tion and warped by sensuality, it could not be eliminated. In other words, a Creator in which the more essential element of creative force was wanting, was contrary to all human experience and observation. Indeed nothing could be plainer than that the deified male principle could of itself create nothing, and that it was dependent for its very existence on the female element.
By this attempt to construct a masculine Deity, absurdities were presented to the human judgment and understanding which for ages could not be overcome, and by it contradictions were necessitated which could not be reconciled with human reason and with the ideas of Nature which had hitherto been held by mankind. It was not, therefore, until reason had been suspended in all matters pertaining to religion, and blind faith in the machinations of priestcraft had been established, that a male G.o.d was set up as the sole Creator of the universe.
When women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the capture of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or instruments for the gratification and pleasure of men, Perceptive Wisdom or Light, and Maternal Affection the Preserver of the race, gradually became eliminated from the G.o.d-idea of mankind. Pa.s.sion became G.o.d. It was the Creator in the narrowest and most restricted sense.
Although in an age of pure Nature-worship the ideas connected with reproduction, like those related to all other natural functions, were wholly unconnected with impurity either of thought or deed, still when an age arrived in which all checks to human pa.s.sion had been withdrawn, and the lower propensities had gained dominion over the higher faculties, the influence of fertility or pa.s.sion-worship on human development or growth may in a degree be imagined.
The fact must be borne in mind that curing the later ages of pa.s.sion-worship the creative processes and the reproductive organs were deified, not as an expression or symbol of the operations of Nature, but as a means to the stimulation of the lower animal instincts in man.
With religion b.e.s.t.i.a.lized and its management regulated wholly with an idea to the gratification of man's sensuous desires, religious temples, under the supervision of the priesthood, became brothels, in which were openly practiced as part and parcel of religious rites and ceremonies the most wanton profligacy and the most shameless self-abandonment.
The worship of Aphrodite or Venus, and also that of Bacchus, originally consisted in homage paid to the reproductive principles contained in the earth, water, and sun, but, as is well known, this pure and beautiful worship, in later times, and especially after it was carried to Greece, became synonymous with the grossest practices and the most lawless disregard of human decency.
With the light which in these later ages science and ethnological research are throwing upon the physiological and religious disputes of the ancients, the correctness of the primitive doctrines elaborated under purer conditions at an age when human beings lived nearer to Nature is being proved--namely, that matter like spirit is eternal and indestructible, and therefore that the one is as difficult of comprehension as the other, and that Nature, instead of being separated from spirit, is filled with it and can not be divorced from it; also that the female is the original organic unit of creation, without which nothing is or can be created.
CHAPTER VI. CIVILIZATION OF AN ANCIENT RACE.
The profound doctrines of abstractions or emanations; of the absorption of the individual soul into the divine ether or essence; of the renewal of worlds and reincarnation, were doubtless elaborated after the separation, in the human mind, of Spirit from matter, but before mankind had lost the power to reason abstractly.
Although Pythagoras understood and believed these doctrines, he did not, as is well known, receive them from his degenerate countrymen, but, on the contrary, imbibed them from private sources among the orientals, where fragments of their remarkable learning were still extant. He said that religion consists in knowing the truth and doing good, and his ideas show the grandeur and beauty of the earlier conception of a Deity.
He declared that there is only one G.o.d who is not, "as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe," but that this great power is diffused throughout Nature. It is "the reason, the life, and the motion of all things."
Plato believed that human beings are possessed of two souls, the one mortal, which perishes with the body, the other immortal, which continues to exist either in a state of happiness or misery; that the righteous soul, freed from the limitations of matter, returns at death to the source whence it came, and that the wicked, after having been detained for a while in a place prepared for their reception, are sent back to earth to reanimate other bodies.
Aristotle held the opinion that the souls of human beings are sparks from the divine flame, while Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, taught that spirit acting upon matter produced the elements and the earth. There is plenty of evidence going to show that the early Fathers in the Christian church believed in the doctrines of reincarnation and the renewal of worlds. Neither is there any doubt but that this philosophy came from the East, where it originated. It is thought that the ancient philosophers who elaborated these doctrines were unable to account for the existence of evil without a belief in the immortality of the soul. Spirit was eternal, as was also matter.
A soul, upon leaving the body, in course of time found its way back to earth, surrounded by conditions suited to its stage of growth. Here it must reap all the consequences of its former life. It must also during its stay on earth make the conditions for its next appearance upon an earthly plane. So soon as through a succession of births and deaths it had perfected itself, it entered into a state of Nirvana. It was absorbed into the great Universal Soul. Nothing is ever lost.
"Many a house of life Hath held me--seeking ever Him who wrought These prisons of the senses, sorrow fraught; Sore was my ceaseless strife!
But now, Thou builder of this tabernacle--Thou!
I know Thee.
Never shalt Thou build again These walls of pain, Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay Fresh rafters on the clay; Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it!
Safe pa.s.s I thence--deliverance to obtain."(60)
60) Edwin Arnold, The light of Asia.
Regarding the opinions of the ancients on the subject of the eternity of matter, Higgins, in his learned work on Celtic Druids, says:
"The eternity of matter is a well known tenet of the Pythagoreans, and whether right or wrong there can be no doubt that it was the doctrine of the oriental school, whence Pythagoras drew his learning. It was a principle taken or mistaken from, or found amongst, the debris of that mighty ma.s.s of learning and science of a former period, of which, on looking back as far as human ken can reach, the most learned men have thought that they could see a faint glimmering. Indeed, I think I may say something more than a faint glimmering. For all the really valuable moral and philosophical doctrines we possess, Dutens has shown to have existed there."
From what is known relative to the speculations of an ancient race, the fact is observed that creation was but a re-formation of matter. Wisdom, or Minerva, formed the earth and the planets; she did not create the heavens and the earth, as did the later Jewish G.o.d.
Of the seven principles of the universe, matter was the first, and of the seven principles of man, the physical body was the earliest. Through evolutionary processes, or through cyclic periods involving millions of years, mind was developed, and in course of time spirit was finally manifested.
Mai, the Mother of Gotama Buddha, was simply matter, or illusion, from which its higher manifestation, mind or spirit, was emerging. She was also the mother of Mercury. A clearer knowledge of the philosophical doctrines which were elaborated at a time when Nature-worship was beginning to decay, reveals the fact that the G.o.d-idea comprehended a profound knowledge of Nature and her laws; that while this people did not pretend to account for the existence of matter, they recognized a force operating through it whose laws were unchanged and unchanging.
With these facts relative to the intelligence of an older race before us, the question naturally arises: What was the degree of civilization attained at a time when the Deity worshipped was an abstract principle involving the actual creative processes throughout Nature? and, notwithstanding our prejudices, we are constrained to acknowledge that these earlier conceptions are scarcely compatible with the barbarism which we have been taught to regard as the condition of all the peoples which existed prior to the first Greek Olympiad. On the contrary, the origin of the philosophical opinions entertained by the most ancient oriental philosophers, and which must have arisen out of a profound knowledge or appreciation of Nature and her operations, point to a race far superior to any of those peoples which appear in early historic times. Regarding these opinions, G.o.dfrey Higgins remarks:
"From their philosophical truth and universal reception I am strongly inclined to refer them to the authors of the Neros, or to that enlightened race, supposed by Bailly to have formerly existed, and to have been saved from a great catastrophe on the Himalaya Mountains. This is confirmed by an observation which the reader will make in the sequel, that these doctrines have been, like all the other doctrines of antiquity, gradually corrupted--incarnated, if I may be permitted to compose a word for the occasion."
Of this cycle, Bailly says: "No person could have invented the Neros who had not arrived at much greater perfection in astronomy than we know was the state of the most ancient a.s.syrians, Egyptians, and Greeks."
Toward the close of the eighteenth century the celebrated astronomer, Bailly, published a work ent.i.tled The History of Ancient Astronomy, in which he endeavored to prove that a nation possessed of profound wisdom and great genius, and of an antiquity far superior to the Hindoos or Egyptians, "inhabited the country to the north of India, or about fifty degrees north lat.i.tude." This writer has shown that "the most celebrated astronomical observations and inventions, from their peculiar character, could have taken place only in these lat.i.tudes, and that arts and improvements gradually travelled thence to the equator."
A colony of Brahmins settled near the Imans, and in Northern Thibet, where in ancient times they established celebrated colleges, particularly at Nagraent and Cashmere. In these inst.i.tutions the treasures of Sanskrit literature were supposed to be deposited. The Rev. Mr. Maurice was informed that an immemorial tradition prevailed at Benares that all the learning of India came from a country situated in forty degrees of northern lat.i.tude. Other writers are of the opinion that civilization proceeded from Arabia; that the old Cus.h.i.te race carried commerce, letters, and laws to all the nations of the East.
Which of these theories is true, if either, may not with certainty be proved at present; yet that in the far distant past a race of people existed whose achievements exceeded those of any of the historic nations may not be doubted.
That the length of the year was calculated with greater exactness by an ancient and forgotten people than it was by early historic nations is proved by the cycle of the Neros. This cycle, which was formed of 7.421 lunar revolutions of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds, or 219,146 days and a half, was equal to 600 solar years of 365 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 36 seconds, which time varies less than three minutes from the present observations of the year's length. The length of the year as calculated by the Egyptians and other early historic nations was 360 days, which fact would seem to indicate that a science of astronomy had been developed in an earlier age which by the most ancient peoples of whom we have any historic records has been lost or forgotten. It has been said that if this cycle of the Neros "were correct to the second, if on the first of January at noon a new moon took place, it would take place again in exactly 600 years at the same moment of the day, and under all the same circ.u.mstances."(61)
61) G.o.dfrey Higgins, Celtic Druids, ch. ii., sec. 14.
The Varaha Calpa has the famous cycle of 4,320,000,000 years for its duration. This system makes the Cali Yug begin 3098 years B.C. A dodecan consisted of 5 days, and 72 dodecans formed a natural year of 360 days.
According to the earlier calculations, 360 solar diurnal revolutions const.i.tuted a natural year. The doctrine of the ancients concerning these cycles is thus set forth by G.o.dfrey Higgins:
"The sun, or rather that higher principle of which the sun was the emblem or the shekinah, was considered to be incarnated every six hundred years. Whilst the sun was in Taurus, the different incarnations, under whatever names they might go, were all considered but as incarnations of Buddha or Taurus. When he got into Aries, they were in like manner considered but as incarnations of Cristna or Aries, and even Buddha and Cristna were originally considered the same, and had a thousand names in common, constantly repeated in their litanies--a striking proof of ident.i.ty of origin. Of these Zodiacal divisions the Hindoos formed another period, which consisted of ten ages or Calpas or Yugs, which they considered the duration of the world, at the end of which a general renovation of all things would take place. They also reckoned ten Neroses to form a period, each of them keeping a certain relative location to the other, and together to form a cycle. To effect this they doubled the precessional period for one sign--viz: 2160 years--thus making 4320, which was a tenth of 43,200, a year of the sun, a.n.a.logous to the 360 natural days, and produced in the same manner, by multiplying the day of 600 by the dodecans 72 = 43,200. They then formed another great year of 432,000 by again multiplying it by 10, which they called a Cali Yug, which was measurable both by the number 2160, the years the equinox preceded in a sign, and by the number 600. They then had the following scheme:
A Cali Yug, or 600 (or a Neros) 432,000 A Dwapar, or Duo-par Age....864,000 A Treta, or tree-par Age... 1,296,000 A Satya, or Satis Age....1,728,000 --------- 4,320,000
altogether 10 Ages, making a Maha Yug or Great Age. These were all equimultiples of the Cycle of the Neros 600, and of 2160, the twelfth part of the equinoctial precessional Cycle, and in all formed ten ages of 432,000 years each."(62)
62) Anacalypsis, vol. i., p. 232.
The two great religious festivals of the ancients occurred the one in the spring, at Easter, when all Nature was renewed, the other in the autumn, after the earth had yielded her bounties and the fruits were garnered in. It was at these gatherings that the Great Mother Earth received the devout adoration of all her children.
It is supposed that the Neros, or cycle of 600, is closely connected with this worship, and that it was invented to regulate the season for these festivals. In process of time it was discovered that this cycle no longer answered, that the festival which had originally fallen on the first of May now occurred on the first of April. This, we are told,
"led ultimately to the discovery that the equinox preceded about 2160 years in each sign or 25,920 years in the 12 signs, and this induced them to try if they could not form a cycle of the two. On examination, they found that the 600 would not commensurate the 2160 years in a sign, or any number of sums of 2160 less than ten, but that it would with ten, or that in ten times 2160, or in 21,600 years, the two cycles would agree; yet this artificial cycle would not be enough to include the cycle of 25,920. They, therefore, took two of the periods of 21,600, or 43,200; and, multiplying both by ten--viz: 600 X 10 = 6000, and 43,200 X 10 = 432,000--they formed a period with which the 600-year period and the 6000-year period would terminate and form a cycle. Every 432,000 years the three periods would commence anew; thus the three formed a year or cycle, 72 times 6000 making 432,000, and 720 times 600 making 432,000."(63)
63) Higgins, Anacalypsis, p. 235.