Pagan Origin of Partialist Doctrines

by John Claudius Pitrat

Rivers were reputed as being sacred and divine, because of their utility to vegetation, to animals, and to commerce; and because nations considered water as one of the first principles of nature, and one of the most efficacious agents of the universal life of the Great-Being in which they believed. In Thessalia a sacred crow was fed in honor of the sun. This bird is seen yet on the monuments of Mithra, in Persia. The temples of old Byzantium were consecrated to the sun, to the moon, and to Venus. Their idols represented them; also the star Arcture, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Rome and Italy had also a vast number of monuments of worship addressed to nature, and to its principal agents. Tatius, coming to Rome to share the sceptre of Romulus, erected altars and temples to the sun, to the moon, to Saturn, to light, and to fire. The undying fire, or Vesta, was the most ancient object of worship of the Romans; virgins had the care to perpetuate it in the temple of this Goddess, as the wizards did in their Pyrees. "It was," Jornandes said, "an image of the eternal lights which shine in the heavens."

In Rome there was a famous temple called Tellus, or of the earth, in which the senate often met. The earth was called mother, because it was considered as a deity as well as the manes. There was in the Latium a fountain of the sun, and, near it, two altars upon which Æneas, when landing in Italy, sacrificed. Romulus established the games of the circus to honor both the sun, who in his course measures the year, and the four elements which he modifies by his mighty influence. Aurelian built at Rome the temple of the sun, and decked it with gold and precious stones. Augustus, before Aurelian, had ordered the images of the sun and of the moon to be brought from Egypt, in order to adorn his triumph over Anthony and Cleopatra. The moon had a temple on the mount Aventine.

In Sicily oxen were consecrated to the sun; and the island itself was called the Island of the Sun. The oxen which the companions of Ulysse ate when they landed, were consecrated to this god. The citizens of Assora adored the Chrysas river, that bathed their walls. At Enguyum the people revered the mother-goddesses, the same deities honored in Crete; namely, the major and minor Ursas. In Spain the people of Betic had built a temple to the morning star. The Accitans had erected to the god Sun, under the name of Mars, a statue whose head imitated the rays of the sun. At Cadix the sun was also adored, under the name of Hercules. All the nations of northern Europe, called Celtes, worshiped fire, water, the air, the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, and the springs. The conqueror of Gaul, Cæsar, writes that the Germans immemorially adored the visible cause, and its principal agents, the sun, the moon, fire or Vulcain, and the earth, under the name of Herta. Near Narbonne, a city of Gaul, a temple was dedicated to the wind Circius which purified the atmosphere. At Toulouse there was a temple of the sun. The Franks professed the same religion.

In America the Incas of Peru called themselves the sons of the sun: they dedicated temples and altars to this god, and had instituted feasts in his honor. The moon was associated to his worship, and was considered as the mother of all the sublunar productions; and as the spouse and sister of the sun. In Peru, the star Venus was adored, and also the meteors, the thunder, and Iris, or rainbow. Virgins had the care of keeping alive the perpetual fire. In Mexico the same religion existed. The inhabitants of the Isthmus of Panama, of Brazil, of Florida; the Indians of the coast of Cumana, the Floridians, Virginians, and the Canadians believed that there was a god in the heavens, and that this god was the sun, the spouse of the moon. They worshiped them as the two supreme causes which ruled the world.

The above historical facts lead us to the conclusion that the adoration of the vast body of nature, together with the great soul which was supposed to animate it; and of its principal parts or members, together with the multifarious emanations of the great soul, which was supposed to animate them, was the former and universal religion of mankind, before the coming of Jesus Christ. Therefore the heathens did not worship the idols themselves, to which they had given such and such forms to represent the objects of their adorations; but they worshiped what in their mind they represented, the universe taken collectively, as in the idol of Pan; and the universe taken separately; namely, the important parts of the universe, as in their innumerable idols of the planets, stars, rivers, etc.

As we wish to leave no doubt in the minds of the reader in regard to the certainty of these two great facts, which are a key to the origin of the dogma of endless misery, and of others which we are to trace out, we will bring forth other proofs from the religious and political monuments of ancient peoples; from their celebrations, and from the opinions of their philosophers.

The famous labyrinth of Egypt was dedicated to the sun. It formed twelve palaces, representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac. There were in Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, twelve columns adorned with symbols relating to the elements, and to the twelve signs. These gigantic piles had a pyramidal shape to better represent the rays of the sun, and the form of his rising blaze. The statue of Apollo Agyeus was pyramidal. In Egypt, artists were not entrusted with determining the form of the images and statues of the gods. It was one of the prerogatives of the Hierophants, or priests, who were more familiar with astronomy. This fact explains why the number seven, which represented the number of planets, and the number twelve, which represented the number of the signs, were sacred numbers, and were reproduced under all kinds of forms. So the twelve altars of Janus; the twelve works of Hercules or sun; the twelve shields of Mars; the twelve brothers Arvaux; the twelve gods Consentes; the twelve rays of light; the twelve governors in the Manichean system; the twelve adeetyas of the Indians; the twelve azes of the Scandinaves; the twelve wards of the city planned by Plato; the four tribes of Athens subdivided into three frateries according to Cecrops' division; the twelve cushions on which the creator sits, in the theogony of the Japanese; the twelve cantons of the Etruse league, and their twelve Lucumons, or chiefs of cantons; the confederation of the twelve cities of Ionia, and that of the twelve cities of Eolia; the twelve Tcheou into which Chun divided China; the twelve countries into which the Coreans divided the world; the twelve officers chosen to draw the coffin at the funeral of the King of Tunquin; the twelve horses; the twelve elephants, etc., used in that ceremony.

It was the same with the number seven representing the planets. So the seven divisions of the city of Ecbatane; the seven gates of the cavern of Mithra, or sun; the seven floors of the tower of Babylon, with another representing the heaven, and also the temple of Jupiter; the seven gates of the city of Thebes, called each one by the name of a planet; the seven piped flute placed in the hands of the god Pan who represented the universe; the seven stringed lyre of Apollo, or sun; the book of fate composed of seven memorandums; the seven prophetic rings of the Brachmanes, on which the name of a planet was engraved; the seven stones dedicated to planets in Laconia; the immemorial division into seven tribes adopted by the Egyptians and the Indians; the seven idols pompously carried every year by the Bonzes into seven different temples; the seven mystical vowels which formed the sacred formula in the temples of the planets; the seven Pyrees or altars of the monument of Mithra; the seven Amshaspands, or great geniuses, invoked by the Persians; the seven Archangels of the Chaldeans; the seven sounding towers of old Byzantium; the week in all nations, or the period of seven days consecrated each one to a planet, as can be illustrated. For instance, in French, Monday is called Lundi, which is derived from the latin Luna, meaning moon. Tuesday is called Mardi, meaning Mars. Wednesday is called Mercredi, meaning Mercury. Thursday is called Jeudi, meaning Jupiter. Friday is called Vendredi, meaning Venus. Saturday is called Samedi, meaning Saturn. It could also be illustrated by other languages derived from the Latin.

The number three hundred and sixty, which is that of the days of the year, not comprising, however, the epagomenes or complementary days, was also retraced by the three hundred and sixty days comprised in the theology of Orpheus; by the three hundred and sixty cups of the water of the Nile, of which one was poured every day, by the Egyptian priests, in a sacred cask, in the city of Achante; by the three hundred and sixty Eons, or geniuses of the Gnostics; by the three hundred and sixty idols placed in the palace of the Daïri in Japan; by the three hundred and sixty saints, or geniuses, who, the Papists believe, preside to each day of the year, (as seen in their almanacs,) dogma borrowed from the heathens; by the three hundred and sixty minor statues which surrounded that of Hebal, or the god sun, Belus, adored by the ancient Arabs; by the three hundred and sixty chapels built around the mosque of Balk, erected by the care of the chief of the family of the Barmecides; by the three hundred and sixty temples built on the mountain Louham, in China; by the wall of three hundred and sixty stadiums with which Semiramis encompassed the city of Belus, or of the sun, the famous Babylon. In fine, the division of the Zodiac into twenty-seven parts, which express the stations of the moon, and into thirty-six which is that of the decans, was also the object of the political and religious distributions.

Not only the divisions of the heaven, but the constellations themselves were represented in the temples, and their images consecrated among the religious monuments, and on the medals of the cities. The bright star Capella, in the constellation Auriga, had a statue of brass gilt in the city of the Phliassians. To the constellation Auriga statues and other monuments had been erected in Greece under the names of Myrtile, of Hippolyte, of Spherœus, of Cillas, of Erectee, etc. There were seen, also, the statues and tombs of the Atlantides. Near Argos was seen a mound, which was said to cover the head of the famous Medusa, whose type is in the heaven, under the feet of Perseus. The moon, or Diana of Ephesus, was adorned with the figure of the Cancer, which is one of the twelve signs, and the mansion of this planet. The Ursa, adored under the name of Calisto, and the Bootes, under that of Arcas, had their tombs on Arcadia, near the altars of the sun. To the same Bootes a statue was erected at Byzantium, and also to Orion, the famous Nembrod of the Assyrians.