CARRYING IN PROCESSION THE SYMBOL OF ISTAR
The Magna Dea was all in all to mankind. Her emblem as the goddess of vegetation and of the sustenance of life was the apple or pomegranate. As the goddess of the human soul she is represented as a bird like the Egyptian representation of the soul, a human-headed hawk; or as a dove, the symbol which later on represents the gnostic Sophia, the mother of the child-god, and in Christian dogmatology, the Holy Ghost.
Originally the deity was triune in India, in Egypt, and in other countries. In India we become acquainted with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Creator, the Revealer (or Avatar), and the Transformer (i. e., the one who destroys and renews). In Babylon the universe is divided into the three kingdoms of Heaven, Water and Earth under the three rulers, Anu, Ea and Marduk; and in Egypt men worshiped God the father or Osiris, God the mother or Isis, and God the child or Horus. Similar trinities are met with in other religions, and the Christian Trinity, although not taught by Jesus, is one of the oldest doctrines of the Christian church. Here indeed the Egyptian conception of God as father, mother and child makes its first appearance in the apocryphal writings, for there are passages in heretical gospels where Jesus speaks of the Holy Ghost as his mother. This idea might have been accepted as an orthodox thought if the age had not been strongly ascetic and dualistic, but on that account the feminine character of the Holy Ghost became offensive to the fathers of the church. In Hebrew the Holy Ghost as Ruah was still conceived as a brooding pigeon, but among the Gentile Christians the conception of the third person of the Trinity was translated by the neuter noun πνεῡμα and in Latin by the masculine spiritus. Nevertheless the old symbol of the brooding pigeon was retained and a feminine designation such as Sophia, the consort of God, was occasionally tolerated in the Greek church and among the Gnostics.
| ISIS AND HORUS. From Lenormant. |
EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE DEAD MAN AND HIS SOUL. |
Wings have always been the symbol of thought,
ASTARTE AND THE DOVE.
and serve as a simile to represent the soul not only in Egyptian mythology but also in Babylon and on the Greek islands. A human-headed bird attributed to a primitive period of Babylonian civilization has