I have said that the name Cyclops, in this religious code, was meant to figure forth the energies of the atmosphere; I need but mention their denominations to establish my proof. They are “Steropes,” from στεροπη, lightning; Argues, from αργης, quick-flashing; and Brontes, from βροντη, thunder. Even the celebrated name of Hercules[217] himself, and the twelve labours poetically ascribed to him,—who, we must observe, many ages before the Tirynthian hero is fabled to have performed his wonders, or his mother Clymena to have been born, had temples raised to him in Phœnicia and Egypt, as well as at Cadiz and the Isle of Thasos,—are nothing more than a figurative denotation of the annual course of the solar luminary through the signs of the Zodiac.
In support of this I shall quote the authority of Porphyry, who was himself born in Phœnicia, and who assures us that “they there gave the name of Hercules to the sun, and that the fable of the twelve labours represents the sun’s annual path in the heavens.” Orpheus, or the author of the hymns that pass under his name, says that Hercules is “the god who produced time, whose forms vary, the father of all things and destroyer of all; he is the god who brings back by turns Aurora and the night, and who moving onwards from east to west, runs through the career of his twelve labours; the valiant Titan, who chases away maladies, and delivers man from the evils which afflict him.” The scholiast on Hesiod likewise remarks, “The zodiac in which the sun performs his annual course is the true career which Hercules traverses in the fable of the twelve labours; and his marriage with Hœbe, the goddess of youth, whom he espoused after he had ended his labours, denotes the renewal of the year at the end of each solar revolution.” While the poet Nonnas, adverting to the sun as adored by the Tyrians, designates him Hercules Astrokiton (αστροχιτων), or the god clothed in a mantle of stars; following up this description by stating that “he is the same god whom different nations adore, under a multitude of different names—Belus, on the banks of the Euphrates; Ammon, in Libya; Apis, at Memphis; Saturn, in Arabia; Jupiter, in Assyria; Serapis, in Egypt; Helios, among the Babylonians; Apollo, at Delphi; Æsculapius, throughout Greece,” etc. etc.
Even the father of history himself, the great Colossus of the Greeks, whilst claiming for his countrymen the honour of instituting their own theogony, evinces in the attempt more of misgiving and doubt than was consistent with the possession of authentic information. His words are these: “As for the gods whence each of them was descended, or whether they were always in being, or under what shape or form they existed, the Greeks knew nothing till very lately. Hesiod and Homer were, I believe, about four hundred years older than myself, and no more, and these are the men who made a theogony for the Greeks; who gave the gods their appellations, defined their qualities, appointed their honours, and described their forms; as for the poets, who are said to have lived before these men, I am of opinion they came after them.”
But even this assumption, were it conceded to the utmost, would not militate against the doctrine which I have laid down; for Homer’s education was received in Egypt, and India was the medium which illuminated the latter country; nothing, therefore, prevents our yielding to the stream of general authority in ascribing the introduction to the Pelasgi. The word χρονος itself, or “the father of Jove,” was nothing more than an equivalent with the Latin tempus; and for the very best possible reason, because the revolutions of this planet, as of the other celestial orbs, came, from their periodical and regular appearances, to be considered the ordinary measurements of the parts of duration or time.
It must, no doubt, appear a contradiction that Chronos—the “son of Uranus, and Terra,” as we were told at school, and the first person, as somewhere else stated, who was honoured with a crown—should be called an “orb,” and have “periodical appearances”; and that those appearances should regulate our estimate of days, weeks, years, and seasons. The difficulty, however, will cease, when we consider that though the sun, moon, and stars were the primary objects of false worship, the deification of dead men, deceased heroes, afterwards crept in, the consequence of which was a mixed kind of idolatry, consisting of stars and heroes, or heroines, deceased—a planet being assigned to each as the greatest possible honour. “That whom men could not honour in presence, because they dwelt far off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from far, and made an express image of a king, whom they honoured, to the end that by their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent, as if he was present.”[218]
Let us now see how the religion of the ancient Irish harmonises with that of the Dabistan, as illustrated in the composition of some of our ancient names. Here Baal, or Moloch, and Astarte are obviously in the foreground; whilst the popular and vernacular names for those luminaries amongst the peasantry themselves, namely, Grian for the sun, Luan for the moon, Righ for king, and Rea for queen, in their appropriation to several localities throughout the country, indicate but too plainly the melancholy tale of their former deification.
To instance some few of those names, that strike me as demonstrative of this Sabian worship, I shall begin with
Baltinglas.[219]—This name of a town and mountain in the county of Wicklow, and province of Leinster, is equivalent to Baal-tinne-glass, that is, “Baal’s-fire-green,” alluding to the colour of the grass at the spring season. These igneous betrayals of human frailty and superstition were celebrated throughout Ireland at both the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, in honour of the twin divinities so often adverted to in the course of this book. The eve of the vernal one was called Aiche Baal-tinne, that is, the night of Baal’s fire, the eve of the autumnal, Aiche Shamain, that is, the night of the moon’s solemnity; on both which occasions fires were lighted on all “the high places” dedicated to their worship.
The return of these respective seasons gave rise to various superstitions amongst the illiterate populace, one of which was that of borrowing a piece of money at the first sight of the new-moon, if they had it not themselves, as an omen of plenty throughout the month.[220] And their praying to that luminary, when first seen after its change, is so well known as to be mentioned even by a French writer, whom Selden, De Diis Syriis, quotes in these words:—“Se mittent a genoux en voyant la lune nouvelle, et disent en parlant a lune, laise nous ausi sains que tu nous as trouvé.”[221]
The new moon nearest to the winter solstice was celebrated with peculiar ceremonies. On that night the chief Druid, attended by crowds of the people, used to go into the woods, and cut with a golden sickle a branch of the mistletoe of the oak, which he would carry in procession to the sacred grove. This golden sickle or crescent corresponded in form and nature with that which Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman emperor, wore at his coronation, to intimate his adherence to the Phœnician doctrines in which he had been early instructed—his adopted name still further intimating that he had been, what it literally signifies, Heliogabalus, that is, priest of the sun.[222] The crescent itself is the favourite badge of Sheevah, the matrimonial deity of the Indians, which he is represented as wearing in front of his crown.