Among the most sacred plants or flowers were the lotus and the fleur de lis, both of which were venerated because of some real or fancied organic s.e.xual peculiarity. The lotus is adored as the female principle throughout Nature, or as the "womb of all creation," and is sacred throughout oriental countries. It is said to be androgynous or hermaphrodite--hence its peculiarly sacred character.
It has long been thought that this lily is produced without the aid of the male pollen, hence it would seem to be an appropriate emblem for that ancient sect which worshipped the female as the more important creative energy.
Of the lotus, Inman remarks: "Amongst fourteen kinds of food and flowers presented to the Sanskrit G.o.d Anata, the lotus only is indispensable."
This emblem, as we have seen, was the symbol of the Great Mother, and we are a.s.sured that it was "little less sacred than the Queen of Heaven herself."
Regarding the lotus and its universal significance as a religious emblem, Payne Knight says:
"The lotus is the Nelumbo of Linnaeus. This plant grows in the water, and amongst its broad leaves puts forth a flower, in the center of which is formed the seed vessel, shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and punctured on the top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds grow. The orifices of these cells being too small to let the seeds drop out when ripe, they shoot forth into new plants, in the places where they were formed, the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish them until they acquire such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open and release themselves, after which, like other aquatic weeds, they take root wherever the current deposits them. This plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the productive power of the waters, upon which the creative spirit of the Creator operated in giving life and vegetation to matter. We accordingly find it employed in every part of the Northern hemisphere, where the symbolical religion improperly called idolatry does or did prevail.
The sacred images of the Tartars, j.a.panese, and Indians are almost all placed upon it, of which numerous instances occur in the publication of Kaempfer, Sonnerat, etc: The Brama of India is represented sitting upon a lotus throne, and the figures upon the Isaic table hold the stem of this plant, surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the cross representing the male organs in the other: thus signifying the universal power, both active and pa.s.sive, attributed to that G.o.ddess."(19)
19) Symbolism of Ancient Art.
The lotus is the most sacred and the most significant symbol connected with the sacred mysteries of the East. Upon this subject, Maurice observes that there is no plant which has received such a degree of honor as has the lotus. It was the consecrated symbol of the Great Mother who had brought forth the fecundative energies, female and male.
Not only throughout the Northern hemisphere was it everywhere held in profound veneration, but among the modern Egyptians it is still worshipped as symbolical of the Great First Cause. The lotus was the emblem venerated in the solemn celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis in Greece and the Phiditia in Carthage.
In referring to the degree of homage paid to the lotus by the ancients, Higgins says: "And we shall find in the sequel that it still continues to receive the respect, if not the adoration, of a great part of the Christian world, unconscious, perhaps, of the original reason of their conduct." It is a significant fact that in nearly all the sacred paintings of the Christians in the galleries throughout Europe, especially those of the Annunciation, a lily is always to be observed.
In later ages as the original significance of the lotus was lost, any lily came to be subst.i.tuted. G.o.dfrey Higgins is sure that although the priests of the Romish Church are at the present time ignorant of the true meaning of the lotus, or lily, "it is, like many other very odd things, probably understood at the Vatican, or the Crypt of St.
Peter"s."(20)
20) Anacalypsis, book vii., ch. xi.
Of the lotus of the Hindoos Nimrod says:
"The lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expanse calyx represents the ships of the G.o.ds floating on the surface of the water, and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof... but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of the flower came to have certain other significations, which seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at Benares."(21)
21) Quoted in Anacalypsis.
In other words it was a phallic emblem and represented the creative processes throughout Nature. Susa, the name of the capital of the Cus.h.i.tes, or ancient Ethiopians, meant "the City of Lilies." In India the lotus frequently appears among phallic devices in place of the sacred Yoni. From the foregoing pages the fact will be observed that the G.o.d of the ancients embodied the two creative agencies throughout the universe, but as nothing could exist without a mother, the great Om who was the indivisible G.o.d and the Creator of the sun was the mother of these two principles, while the Tree of Life was the original life-giving energy upon the earth, represented in the creation myths of the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve or Adama.
Throughout the ages, this force, or creative agency has been symbolized in various ways, many of which have been noted in the foregoing pages.
We have observed that notwithstanding the fact that the supremacy of the male had been established, the sacred Yoni and the lotus were still reverenced as symbols of the most exalted G.o.d. Finally, when the masculine energy began to be worshipped as the more important agency in reproduction, the female, although still necessary to complete the G.o.d-idea, was veiled.
Among the sect known as Lingaites, those who adored the male creative power, Man, Phallus, and Creator in religious symbolism signified one and the same thing in the minds of the people. Each represented a Tree of Life, the beginning and end of all things.
Tree-worship was condemned by the councils of Tours, Nantes, and Auxerre, and in the XIth century it was forbidden in England by the laws of Canute, but these edicts seem to have had little effect. In referring to this subject, Barlow says: "In the XVIIIth century it existed in Livonia, and traces of it may still be found in the British Isles."(22) The vast area over which tree- and plant-worship once extended, and the tenacity with which it still clings to the human race, indicate the hold which, at an earlier age in the history of mankind, it had taken upon the religious feelings of mankind.
22) Essays on Symbolism, p. 118.
So closely has this worship become entwined with that of serpent and phallic faiths, that it is impossible to consider it, even in a brief manner, without antic.i.p.ating these later developments; yet linked with earth- and sun-worship, it doubtless prevailed for many ages absolutely unconnected with the grosser ideas with which it subsequently became a.s.sociated.
CHAPTER III. SUN-WORSHIP--FEMALE AND MALE ENERGIES IN THE SUN.
"When we inquire into the worship of nations in the earliest periods to which we have access by writing or tradition, we find that the adoration of one G.o.d, without temples or images, universally prevailed."(23)
23) G.o.dfrey Higgins, Celtic Druids.
Underlying all the ancient religions of which we have any account, may be observed the great energizing force throughout Nature recognized and reverenced as the Deity. This force embraces not only the creative energies in human beings, in animals, and in plants, but in the earlier ages of human history it included also Wisdom, or Law--that "power by which all things are discriminated or defined and held in their proper places." The most renowned writers who have dealt with this subject agree in the conclusion that, during thousands of years among all the nations of the earth, only one G.o.d was worshipped. This G.o.d was Light and Life, both of which proceeded from the sun, or more properly speaking were symbolized by the sun.
In Egyptian hymns the Creator is invoked as the being who "dwells concealed in the sun"; and Greek writers speak of this luminary as the "generator and nourisher of all things, the ruler of the world." It is thought, however, that neither of these nations worshipped the corporeal sun. It was the "centre or body from which the pervading spirit, the original producer of order, fertility, and organization, continued to emanate to preserve the mighty structure which it had formed."
It is evident that at an early age, both in Egypt and in India, spiritualized conceptions of sun-worship had already been formed.
We have seen that Netpe, the G.o.ddess of Light, or Heavenly Wisdom, conferred spiritual life on all who would accept it. The Great Mother of the G.o.ds in India was not only the source whence all blessings flow, but she was the Beginning and the End of all things.
Of "Aditi, the boundless, the yonder, the beyond all and everything,"
Max Muller says that in later times she "may have become identified with the sky, also with the earth, but originally she was far beyond the sky and the earth."(24) The same writer quotes the following, also from a hymn of the Rig-Veda:
24) Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 221.
"O Mitra and Varuna, you mount your chariot which, at the dawning of the dawn is golden-colored and has iron poles at the setting of the sun; from thence you see Aditi and Diti--that is, what is yonder and what is here, what is infinite and what is finite, what is mortal and what is immortal."(25)
25) Ibid.
Aditi is the Great She that Is, the Everlasting. Muller refers to the fact that another Hindoo poet "speaks of the dawn as the face of Aditi; thus indicating that Aditi is here not the dawn itself, but something beyond the dawn." This G.o.ddess, who is designated as the "Oldest," is implored "not only to drive away darkness and enemies that lurk in the dark, but likewise to deliver man from any sin which he may have committed." "May Aditi by day protect our cattle, may she, who never deceives, protect us from evil."
In the Egyptian as in the Indian and Hebrew religions, the two generating principles throughout Nature represent the Infinite, the Holy of Holies, the Elohim or Aleim--the Ieue. Within the records of the earliest religions of Ethiopia or Arabia, Chaldea, a.s.syria, and Babylonia, is revealed the same monad principle in the Deity. This monad conception, or dual unity, this G.o.d of Light and Life, or of Wisdom and generative force, is the same source whence all mythologies have sprung, and, as has been stated, among all peoples the fact is observed that the religious idea has followed substantially the same course of development, or growth. Within the sacred writings of the Hindoos there is but one Almighty Power, usually denominated as Brahm or Brahme--Om or Aum. This word in India was regarded with the same degree of veneration as was the sacred Ieue of the Jews. In later ages, the fact is being proved that this G.o.d, into whom all the deities worshipped at a certain period in human history resolve themselves, is the sun, or if not the actual corporeal sun, then the supreme agency within it which was acknowledged as the great creative or life-force--that dual principle which by the early races was recognized as Elohim, Om, Ormuzd, etc., and from which the productive power in human beings, in plants, and in animals was thought to emanate.
Prior to the development of either tree or phallic worship, the sun as an emblem of the Deity had doubtless become the princ.i.p.al object of veneration. Ages would probably elapse before primitive man would observe that all life is dependent on the warmth of the sun"s rays, or before from experience he would perceive the fact that to its agency as well as to that of the earth he was indebted both for food and the power of motion. However, as soon as this knowledge had been gained, the great orb of day would a.s.sume the most prominent place among the objects of his regard and adoration. That such has been the case, that the sun, either as the actual Creator, or as an emblem of the great energizing force in Nature, has been worshipped by every nation of the globe, there is no lack of evidence to prove; neither do we lack proof to establish the fact that, since the adoption of the sun as a divine object, or perhaps I should say as the emblem of Wisdom and creative power, it has never been wholly eliminated from the G.o.d-idea of mankind.
Bryant produces numberless etymological proofs to establish the fact that all the early names of the Deity were derived or compounded from some word which originally meant the sun.
Max Muller says that Surya was the sun as shining in the sky. Savitri was the sun as bringing light and life. Vishnu was the sun as striding with three steps across the sky, etc.
Inman, whose etymological researches have given him considerable prominence as a Sanskrit and Hebrew scholar, says that Ra, Ilos, Helos, Bil, Baal, Al, Allah, and Elohim were names given to the sun as representative of the Creator.
We are a.s.sured by G.o.dfrey Higgins that Brahme is the sun the same as Surya. Brahma sprang from the navel of Brahme. Faber in his Pagan Idolatry says that all the G.o.ds of the ancients "melt insensibly into one, they are all equally the sun." The word Apollo signifies the author or generator of Light. In the Rig Veda, Surya, the sun, is called Aditya. "Truly, Surya, thou art great; truly Aditya, thou art great."
Selden observes that whether the G.o.ds be called Osiris, or Omphis, or Nilus, or any other name, they all center in the sun.
According to Diodorus Siculus, it was the belief of the ancients that Dionysos, Osiris, Serapis, Pan, Jupiter and Pluto were all one. They were, the sun.
Max Muller says that a very low race in India named the Santhals call the sun Chandro, which means "bright." These people declared to the missionaries who settled among them, that Chandro had created the world; and when told that it would be absurd to say that the sun had created the world, they replied: "We do not mean the visible Chandro, but an invisible one."