By the various writers who have dealt with this subject during the last century, much surprise has been manifested over the fact that for untold ages the people of the earth have worshipped a Trinity. Forster, in his Sketches of Hindoo Mythology, says: "One circ.u.mstance which forcibly struck my attention was the Hindoo belief of a Trinity."
Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, observes that the idea of three persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the nations of the earth, in regions as distant as j.a.pan and Peru, that it was memorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt and India, "flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains of Thibet, and the vast deserts of Siberia." The idea of a Trinity is supposed to have been first elaborated on the banks of the Indus, whence it was carried to the Greek and Latin nations. Astrologically the triune Deity of the ancients portrayed the processes of Nature.
This recondite doctrine as understood by the very ancient people which originated it, involved a knowledge of Nature far too deep to be appreciated or understood by their degenerate descendants, except perhaps by a few philosophers and scholars who imbibed it in a modified form from original sources in the far East.
After the establishment of the Trinity, the creative energy, which had formerly been represented by a mother and child, came to be figured by the mother, father, and the life derived therefrom. Sometimes the Trinity took the form of the two creative forces, female and male, and the Great Mother.
Whenever the two creative principles were considered separately, there always appeared stationed over or above them, as their Creator, an indivisible unity. This Creator was the "Beyond," the "most High G.o.d"--Om or Aleim. It was the Mother of the G.o.ds in whom were contained all the elements of the Deity. Among the representations of the G.o.d-idea which are to be observed on the monuments and in the temples of Egypt appear triads, each of which is composed of a woman stationed between a male figure and that of a child. She is depicted as the Light of the sun, or Wisdom, while the male is manifested as the Heat of the orb of day. She is crowned and always bears the male symbol of life--the crux-ansata.
Later, it is observed that the worship of Light has in a measure given place to the adoration of Heat, in other words Light is no longer adored as essence of the Deity, Heat or Pa.s.sion having become the most important element in creative power.
After the ancient worship of the Virgin and Child had become somewhat changed or modified so as to better accommodate itself to the growing importance of the male, the most exalted conception of the Deity in Egypt seems to have been that of a trinity composed of Mout the Mother, Ammon the Father, and Chons the Infant Life derived from the other two.
Mout is identical with Neith, but she has become the wife as well as the mother of Ammon. Directly below this conception of the Deity is a triad representing less exalted attributes, or lower degrees of wisdom, under the appellations of Sate, Kneph, and the child Anouk; and thus downward, through the varying spheres of celestial light and life involved in their theogony are observed the divine creative energies represented under the figures of Mother, Father, and the Life proceeding therefrom, until, finally, when the earth is reached, Isis, Osiris, and Horus appear as the representation of the creative forces in human beings, and therefore as the embodiment of the divine in the human.
The Deity invoked in all the earlier inscriptions is a triad, and we are a.s.sured that in Babylonia, where Beltis is a.s.sociated with Belus, "no G.o.d appears without a G.o.ddess."
The supreme Deity of a.s.syria was a.s.shur, who was worshipped sometimes as female, sometimes as male. This G.o.d doubtless represents the dual or triple creative principle observed in all the earlier forms of worship.
a.s.shur had no distinct temple, but as her position was at the head of the Pantheon, all the shrines throughout a.s.syria were supposed to have been open to her worship.
According to Bunsen, in the Sidonian Tyrian district, there were originally three great G.o.ds, at the head of which appears Astarte--a woman who represents pure reason or intelligence; then follows Zeus, Demarius, and Adorus. Without doubt this triad represents a monad Deity similar in character to the one observed in Egypt and other countries.
In the minds of all well-informed persons, there is no longer any doubt that in Abraham"s time the Canaanites worshipped the same G.o.ds as did the Persians and all the other nations about them--namely, Elohim, the dual or triune creative force in Nature. As the Sun was the source whence proceeded all light and life as well as reproductive or generative power, it had become the object of adoration, and as the emblem of the Deity, it was worshipped by all the nations of the earth in its three capacities as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer or Regenerator each female and male.
Melchizedek, who was a priest of the most high G.o.d, blessed Abraham, who was a worshipper of the same Deity. On this subject Dr. Shuckford says:
"It is evident that Abraham and his descendants worshipped not only the true and living G.o.d, but they invoked him in the name of the Lord, and they worshipped the Lord whose name they invoked, so that two persons were the object of their worship, G.o.d and this Lord: and the Scriptures have distinguished these two persons from one another by this circ.u.mstance, that G.o.d no man hath seen at any time nor can see but the Lord whom Abraham and his descendants worshipped was the person who appeared to them."
We are told that when chap. xxi., verse 33, of Genesis is correctly translated, Abraham is represented as having invoked Jehovah, the everlasting G.o.d.
In the Hebrew name Yod-He-Vau (Jehovah), was set forth the triune character of the Creator; in other words, this name "comprehended the essential perfections of the great G.o.d," and was used in their Scriptures as a "kind of summary or revelation of the attributes of the Deity."
Although Abraham, while in Egypt, was the worshipper of idols, we are a.s.sured that "the peculiar privilege vouchsafed to him lay in the revelation of G.o.d"s holy name, Yod-He-Vau." There is indeed much evidence going to prove that the people represented by Abraham understood the earlier conception of a Deity, and that while the great universal principle whose name it was sacrilege to p.r.o.nounce was still acknowledged, there was another G.o.d (the Lord), the same as in China, whose worship they were beginning to adopt. "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If G.o.d will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my Father"s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my G.o.d."
He then declared that the pillar or stone which he had set up, and which was the emblem of male procreative energy, should be G.o.d"s house.
As at the time represented by Jacob there was evidently little or no spirituality among the Israelites, this Lord whom they worshipped was simply a life-giver in the most material or practical sense.
The reproductive energy in man had become deified. It had, in other words, come to possess all the attributes of a G.o.d, or of a powerful man, which in reality was the same thing. It is this G.o.d personified which is represented as appearing to Abraham and talking with him face to face. With this same G.o.d Jacob wrestled, while the real G.o.d--the dual or triune principle, the Jehovah or Iav, no man could behold and live.
To conceal the fact that the G.o.d of Abraham originally consisted of a dual or triple unity, and that the Deity was identical in significance with that of contemporary peoples, the priests have, as usual, had recourse to a trick to deceive the ignorant or uninitiated. In reference to this subject G.o.dfrey Higgins says:
"In the second book of Genesis the creation is described not to have been made by Aleim, or the Aleim, but by a G.o.d of a double name Ieue Aleim; which the priests have translated Lord G.o.d. By using the word Lord, their object evidently is to conceal from their readers several difficulties which afterward arise respecting the names of G.o.d and this word, and which show clearly that the books of the Pentateuch are the writings of different persons."(39)
39) Anacalypsis, book ii., ch, i.
Upon this subject Bishop Colenso observes:
"And it is especially to be noted that when the Elohistic pa.s.sages are all extracted and copied one after another, they form a complete, connected narrative; from which we infer that these must have composed the original story, and that the other pa.s.sages were afterwards inserted by another writer, who wished to enlarge or supplement the primary record. And he seems to have used the compound Jehovah Aleim in the first portion of his work in order to impress upon the reader that Jehovah, of whom he goes on to speak in the later portions, is the same Great Being who is called simply Elohim by the older writer, and notably in the first account of the creation."(40)
40) Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, p. 7.
We are informed by Bunsen that El, or Elohim, comprehends the true significance of the Deity among all the Aramaic or Canaanitish races, El representing the abstract principle taken collectively, Elohim pertaining to the separate elements as Creator, Preserver, and Regenerator. Each of these Canaanitish races had inherited these ideas from their fathers, and, although they had become grossly idolatrous, "Moses knew, and educated Israelites remained a long time conscious, that they used them not merely in their real but in their most ancient sense."(41) Maurice and other writers call attention to the fact that Moses himself uses this word Elohim with verbs and adjectives in the plural. That the G.o.d worshipped by the more ancient peoples, namely Aleim, or Elohim, the same who said, "Let us make man in our image," was not the Lord adored at a later age by the Jews, is a fact which at the present time seems to be clearly proven; that it const.i.tuted, however, the dual or triune unity venerated by all the nations on the globe of which we have any record, appears to be well established.
41) Bunsen, History of Egypt, vol. iv., p. 421.
We have seen that although the two s.e.x-principles which underlie Nature const.i.tuted the Creator, the ancients thought of it only as one and indivisible. This indivisible aspect was the sacred Iav, the Holy of Holies. When it was contemplated in its individual aspect it was Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, each of which was female and male.
The difficulty of the ancients in establishing a First Cause seems to have been exactly the same as is ours at the present time. When we say there must have been a G.o.d who created all things, the question at once arises, Who created G.o.d? According to their theories, nothing could be brought forth without the interaction of two creative principles, female and male; yet everything, even these principles, must proceed from an indivisible energy--an energy which, as the idea of the s.e.x functions became more and more clearly defined, could not be contemplated except in its dual aspect. So soon, therefore, as the Great First Cause was separated into its elements, a still higher power was immediately stationed above it as its Creator. This Creator was designated as female. It was the Mother idea Even G.o.ds could not be produced without a mother.
In referring to the doctrines contained in the Geeta, one of the sacred writings of the Hindoos, Faber observes:
"In the single character of Brahm, all the three offices of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are united. He is at once the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer. He is the primeval Hermaphrodite, or the Great Father and the Great Mother blended together in one person."
The fact that a trinity in unity, representing the female and male energies symbolized by the organs of generation, formerly const.i.tuted the Deity throughout Asia is acknowledged by all those who have examined either the literature or monumental records of oriental countries. The Rev. Mr. Maurice bears testimony to the character of Eastern religious ideas in the following language:
"Whoever will read the Geeta with attention, will perceive in that small tract the outlines of all the various systems of theology in Asia. The curious and ancient doctrine of the Creator being both male and female, mentioned on a preceding page, to be designated in Indian temples by a very indecent exhibition of the masculine and feminine organs of generation in union, occurs in the following pa.s.sage: "I am the Father and Mother of this world; I plant myself upon my own nature and create again and again this a.s.semblage of beings; I am generation and dissolution, the place where all things are deposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all Nature. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things." "(42)
42) Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. iv., p. 705.
According to Sir W. Jones, the Brahme, Vishnu, and Siva coalesce to form the mystic Om, which means the essence of life or divine fire. In the Bhagavat Geeta the supreme G.o.d speaks thus concerning itself: "I am the holy one worthy to be known"; and immediately adds: "I am the mystic (trilateral) figure Om; the Reig, the Yagush, and the Saman Vedas." It is a unity and still a trinity. This Om or Aum stands for the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer or Regenerator, and represents the threefold aspect of the force within the sun. The doctrine maintained throughout the Geeta is not only that the great life-force represents a trinity in unity, but that it is both female and male. On this subject Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, says:
"This notion of three persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the nations of the earth, established at once in regions so distant as j.a.pan and Peru, immemorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt and India, and flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains of Thibet, and the vast deserts of Siberia."
We have observed that the idea of a trinity as conceived by the so-called ancients, although at all times founded on the same conception, viz., that of the reproductive powers of Nature and especially of mankind, differed in expression according to its application. Although in human beings this triune creative idea was expressed by the mother, father, and child, as set forth in the temples and on the monuments of Egypt, when applied directly to the sun and the planets, it appears as the Creator, Preserver, and Regenerator or Destroyer.
Destruction, or the absence of the sun"s heat, represented by winter, was necessary to life, and therefore the Destroyer was also the Regenerator and equally with the Creator and Preserver const.i.tuted a beneficent factor in the G.o.d-idea. In fact as this third element really embodied the substance of the other two, it finally became the supreme G.o.d, little afterward being heard about the Creator and Preserver. The Regenerator or Destroyer was of course the sun, which in winter died away and rose again in the spring-time as a beneficent Savior or renewer of life. The principle involved in these processes represented Fertility, Life, reproductive energy. As applied to mortals, it comprehended the power to create combined with perceptive Wisdom or Knowledge.
This idea, portrayed as it was by a mother and her child, linked woman with the stars. It produced the "Virgin of the Sphere," Queen of Heaven, "Isiac Controller of the Zodiac," at the same time that it made her the mother of all mankind.
Every year this Virgin of the Sphere as she appeared above the horizon at the winter solstice gave birth to the sun. Astronomically this new sun was the Regenerator, by which all Nature was renewed.
Mythologically, after the higher truths contained in these doctrines were lost, it came to be the Savior, the Son of the Virgin, the seed of the woman, which was to bruise the serpent"s head.
That the religion of an ancient race comprehended a knowledge of the evolutionary processes of Nature may not be doubted. The myths still extant, and even the oldest a.s.syrian inscriptions which have been deciphered, reveal the fact that the seeds of the visible universe were hidden in the "great deep"--that animal creation sprang from the earth and the sea through the influence of the sun"s rays.
It is now known that the philosophy of an older race involved a belief in the Eternity of Matter. The abstruse doctrine of Reincarnation and the Renewal of Worlds seems to have formed the basis of their philosophy. According to these speculations, a portion of the earth was destroyed or resolved into its primary elements every six hundred years, while at the end of each Kalpia, or great Cycle of several thousand years, the entire earth was renovated or absorbed into the two fecundating principles of the universe. These two indivisible forces represented by Vishnu rested in the water, or brooded on the face of the deep. When stirred by love for each other they again became active, and from the germs of a former world, which had been absorbed by themselves, created again the earth and everything upon it. In other words, "the earth sprang from the navel of Vishnu or Brahme." According to the Buddhists of Ceylon, the universe has perished ten different times, and each time has been renewed by the operations of Nature, or by the preservation of germs from a former world. In their mythology these germs are represented by a parent and a triplicated offspring. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that this monad trinity is the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer with their great parent, the Mother of the G.o.ds, which in process of time came to be regarded as male. According to Wilford, Hindoo chronology presents fourteen different periods, six of which have already elapsed; we are in the seventh, which began with the flood. Each of these periods is called a Manwantara, the presiding genius or Deity of which is a Menu. At the close of each dynasty a total destruction of the world takes place, everything being destroyed except the ruler, or Menu, who "escapes in a boat." Each new world is an exact counterpart of the one destroyed, and each Menu is a representation of all preceding ones. Thus the history of one dynasty serves for all the rest. This doctrine of a triplicated Deity appearing at the beginning of a new creation may be traced in nearly every country of the globe. Among the Buddhists of China, Fo is mysteriously multiplied into three persons in the same manner as is Fo-hi, who is evidently Noah. Among the Hindoos is observed the triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva springing from the monad Brahm or Brahme. This triad appears on the earth at the beginning of each Manwantara in the human form of Menu and his three sons. We are a.s.sured that among the Tartars evident traces are found of a similar G.o.d, who is seated on the lotus. It is also figured on a Siberian medal in the imperial collection at St. Petersburg. The Jakuthi Tartars, who are said to be the most numerous people of Siberia, worship a triplicated Deity under the three denominations of Artugon and Schugo-tangon and Tangara. Faber tells us that this Tartar G.o.d is the same even in appellation with the Tanga-tanga of the Peruvians, who, like other tribes of America, seem plainly to have crossed over from the North-eastern extremity of Siberia. Upon this subject the same writer remarks thus:
"Agreeably to the mystical notion so familiar to the Hindoos, that the self-triplicated Great Father yet remained but one in essence, the Peruvians supposed their Tanga-tanga to be one in three, and three in one: and in consequence of the union of hero worship with the astronomical and material systems of idolatry they venerated the sun and the air, each under three images and three names. The same opinions equally prevailed throughout the nations which lie to the west of Hindostan. Thus the Persians had their Ormuzd, Mithras, and Ahriman: or, as the matter was sometimes represented, their self-triplicating Mithras. The Syrians had their Monimus, Aziz, and Ares. The Egyptians had their Emeph, Eicton, and Phtha. The Greeks and Romans had their Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; three in number, though one in essence, and all springing from Cronus, a fourth, yet older G.o.d. The Canaanites had their Baal-Spalisha or self-triplicated Baal. The Goths had their Odin, Vile, and Ve, who are described as the three sons of Bura, the offspring of the mysterious cow, and the Celts had their three bulls, venerated as the living symbols of the triple Hu or Menu. To the same cla.s.s we must ascribe the triads of the Orphic and Pythagorean and Platonic schools; each of which must again be identified with the imperial triad of the old Chaldaic or Babylonian philosophy."(43)
43) Faber, Pagan Idolatry, book vi., ch. ii., p. 470.