(Pp. 157-166)
The pyramids of Egypt may be said to correspond, with one significant difference, to the round towers of Ireland. Both are characterised by the highest architectural skill; both are constructed with an evident reference to astronomical purposes; both afford indications that they were inter alia appropriated to sepulture; and both are distinctively of phallic or, more strictly, Sabaic import. But in this last feature a divergence becomes evident. The symbolism of the principle of “generative production” common to both is in the form of the pyramid more emblematic of the female nature (see pp. 267-269), whilst the round towers typify the male—a divergence which the author subsequently treats in more detail. To it may be due the circumstance that these excavations or “wells” which exist beneath the pyramids have not hitherto been found under round towers.
(Pp. 167-176)
In connection with the last paragraph, attention is, however, drawn to the fact that round towers have usually been erected in the vicinity of water; and that this may have been owing to a real, though less dominant, veneration of the female principle, is probable from the extensive use of bathing in the worship of Astarte, the representative of that principle whose peculiar emblemism is apparent in the ornamentation of the round towers. Traces of the apparatus for a bell found on the summit of one of the latter edifices affords no proof of its original purpose as a belfry. For though bells were used in pagan ceremonials, they were not rung to summon worshippers; and the fact may have been that, after their conversion to Christianity, the Irish applied round towers occasionally to the only purpose for which they could then be used in connection with public worship.
(Pp. 177-192)
Recurring to the affinity of Ireland with ancient Persia (Iran), the history of the latter country is traced from its settlement by the Aryans. According to tradition preserved in the collection of sacred books known as the Zendavesta, the original seat of that people was the Eriene-Veedjo, a district situated in the north-western highlands of Asia, of great fertility, and enjoying a singularly mild climate, having seven months of summer and five of winter. Then “the death-dealing Ahriman smote it with the plague of cold, so that it came to have ten months of winter and only two of summer”; and was in consequence deserted by its inhabitants, who gradually overspread the low-lying countries, as far south as the Indus, including Fars, as Persia was then termed. They were a vigorous and energetic race these Aryans, who soon became dominant in their new quarters, substituting the name of their own country (Iran, or the sacred land, formed from the ancient Zend Eriene) for that of Fars, and founding a dynasty, or rather succession of dynasties, which superseded the government formerly in existence. The mixture of races led to a certain diversity of language, and thus originated the Zend and Pahlavi or Sanskrit dialects, which bear a remarkable affinity to Irish (cf. Palaver). There was further a diversity of religions, the old religion of Hushang, a predecessor of Zoroaster, being professed by many long after fire-worship became the dominant faith of Persia.
(Pp. 193-210)