We only now want a key to unlock the portals of this Magh-abadean household; and I flatter myself that this, which I am about to tender, will consummate to an accuracy that very desirable purpose.
Cain’s immediate progeny are they which are included under the above denomination. Their faith and worship are exactly symbolised under its derivative dress. Magh, as before explained, is good; and Abad, a unit; that is, when combined, the Good One, or Unit, the author of fruitfulness and productiveness—in which light alone, as all-bountiful and all-generous, was he recognised by this family.
This unity of the Godhead was what was religiously comprehended under the Phallic configuration of the Round Tower erections; and this, furthermore, elucidates that heretofore enigmatical declaration of the Budhists themselves, viz. that the pyramids, in which the sacred relics are deposited, “be their shape what it will, are an imitation of the worldly temple of the Supreme Being.”[266]
But if Magh-abadean was the name adopted by them with this spiritual tendency, Tuath-de-danaan was that which pictured them a sacerdotal institution. The last member of this compound I have already expounded. It remains that I develop what the two first parts conceal.
Tuath, then, is neither more nor less than a dialectal modification for Budh, which, according to the licence of languages, transformed itself, otherwise and indifferently, into Butt, Butta, Fiod, Fioth, Thot, Tuath, Duath, Suath, Pood, Woad; and in the two last forms—of which one is Gothic, and the other Tamulic—admitted a final syllable,—which was but an insignificant termination,—namely, en, making Pooden and Woad-en; or Poden and Woden.
In these several variations, and the innumerable others which branch therefrom, while the sensible idea is preserved underneath, there is superinduced another of a more refined complexion. Thus, Budh, while it primarily represents the sun, its type, the penis; and again, its sign, a tree, expresses also the attributes of magic, science, divination, and wisdom.
These were the consequences of that mysterious garb in which the priests invested the true elements of their religion. Being themselves the sole possessors of its inward secrets, and all literature and erudition going hand in hand also therewith, it was so dexterously managed, that a sort of reverential feeling attached, not only to those qualities in the abstract, but to the consecrated personages who were their depositories. Hence, while Budh came to signify divination and wisdom, Budha, its professor, did a divine and wise man; and Tuath, being only a modification of the former epithet, Tuatha is the corresponding transmutation of the latter.
Tuatha, therefore, signifies magicians;[267] and so we have the first component of Tuath-de-danaans elucidated. The second requires no Œdipus to solve it, De being but the vernacular term whereby was expressed the Deity; and as I have previously established the import of Danaans to have been Almoners, it follows that the aggregate tenour of this religious-compound-denomination is the Magician-god-almoners, or the Almoner-magicians of the Deity.
As from Budh was formed Fiodh, so from Fiodh arose Fidhius; and as I have before shown that Hercules and Deus were synonymous terms, and both personifications of the Sun, so, accordingly, we find that this symbolical adjunct was reciprocally appropriated to one as to the other.
I dwell upon those terms with the more impressive force, because that the spirit of no one of them has ever before been developed. Me Deus Fidhius, and Me Hercules Fidhius, we where taught at school to consider as appeals to the God of Truth, and the Hercules of Honour. Most assuredly those virtues are comprehended under the radix of the great mysterious Original; but the dictionaries and lexicons that gave us those significations knew no more of what that Original was than they did of the connection between soul and body.