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 THE MYTHOS OF THE ARK,
 
 THE MYTHOS OF THE ARK. 
 
 J. W. LAKE, 
 
 ACTHOE OF "TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP. 
 
 " Back through the dusk 
 Of ages, Contemplation turns her view- 
 To mark, as from its infancy, the world 
 Peopled again from that mysterious shrine 
 That rested on the top of Ararat" 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, 
 
 MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE. 
 
 Price Sixpence.
 
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 THE MYTHOS OF THE ARK. 
 
 IT is recorded in the Hebrew scriptures that once 
 upon a time, somewhere about 2400 years before 
 the Christian era, the Creator of the world was so 
 incensed at the wickedness of men, that he determined 
 to destroy the whole world, and that to effect this 
 destruction he sent a deluge on the earth which 
 covered the tops of the highest mountains, so that all 
 living things perished excepting only Noah, his wife, 
 and his three sons and their wives, with pairs or 
 sevens of all the various kinds of animals which 
 Noah was commanded to take with him into an ark, 
 or floating house, which God had commanded him to 
 build. These were shut up in the ark for several 
 months, when, the flood having abated, the ark 
 grounded on the top of a high mountain, and its 
 inhabitants, released from their temporary imprison- 
 ment, replenished the earth with a new race of living 
 creatures. 
 
 We have said the Hebrew scriptures record this 
 narrative, and Englishmen are taught to believe that 
 these scriptures are the infallible word of God so 
 the clergy of almost all denominations declare them 
 to be. It is evident that such an event, had it really 
 happened, could never have become a legitimate part 
 of history. It relates altogether to times that are pre- 
 historic, times of which oral tradition alone could telL 
 But in the Jewish history no traces of this tradition 
 
 203'<
 
 4 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 are to he found till after the Babylonish captivity, 
 that is, for the 2000 years immediately following the 
 event. The patriarchs knew nothing of the Flood ; 
 Moses seems equally in the dark concerning it ; Noah 
 is never so much as named in Jewish history, till a 
 comparatively modern period of its annals. The book 
 of Genesis, though placed at the head of the Jewish 
 Bible, is one of the most recent instead of being one 
 of the earliest of its records. Such at least are the 
 conclusions of modern scholars, and those who are 
 familiar with the writings of Colenso, Davidson, 
 Kalisch, and others, know well how irresistible is the 
 evidence on which these conclusions are based. 
 
 Geological researches have long demonstrated the 
 impossibility of such a flood as that of which the 
 book of Genesis speaks, having ever taken place. 
 Yet our clergy are bound by the conditions of their 
 office to teach the men and women of England to 
 regard this narrative as a record of actual fact, to 
 believe that the world was destroyed by a deluge as 
 the book of Genesis states, and that the record of this 
 event has been penned under the influence of a special 
 inspiration from God. 
 
 Now the purpose of this pamphlet will be to show 
 that this story of the Flood is a mere matter of ancient 
 tradition, and ancient tradition is only another mode 
 of expressing ancient fable. But the fables of anti- 
 quity had for the most part a religious, or philoso- 
 phical, or mythological import. As the ancient 
 Egyptians expressed their wisdom through hiero- 
 glyphic inscriptions, so all the ancient priesthood 
 veiled their knowledge in some apologue or fable. 
 As moral teaching even in our own day is often ex- 
 pressed by parable, so the philosophic wisdom of the 
 ancient world found utterance in fables. Win-re 
 moderns would write an essay, the teachers of the 
 ancient world told a story ; and possibly from this 
 habit the latter phrase has come to have so equivocal
 
 The Mytbos of the Ark. 5 
 
 a signification, and the same word is made to stand 
 at once for a narrative and a falsehood. By way of 
 commencing our investigation, the reader's attention 
 is called to the following traditions of the flood. 
 
 TRADITIONS OF THE FLOOD. 
 
 All the ancient religions, many of which were long 
 anterior to Judaism, had in their records similar 
 stories concerning a deluge, to that which the book of 
 Genesis contains. " All the writers of barbarian 
 histories," says Josephus, the Jewish historian, " make 
 mention of this flood and this ark, among whom is 
 Berosus the Chaldean." 
 
 The works of Berosus, who wrote probably in the 
 age of Alexander the Great, i.e., about 240 years before 
 the Christian era, are lost, save detached portions of 
 them which are preserved in the writings of the 
 early fathers, and the account of the Deluge is one of 
 these. Those who lived before the Flood are re- 
 presented as a race of giants, all of whom, save one, 
 became exceedingly impious and depraved. " But," 
 says Berosus, " there was one among the giants that 
 reverenced the gods and was more wise and prudent 
 than all the rest. His name was Noa ; he dwelt in 
 Syria and his three sons, Sem, Japet, Chem, and their 
 wives the great Tidea, Pandora, Noela, and Noegla. 
 This man, fearing destruction, which he foresaw from 
 the stars would come to pass, began in the 78th year 
 before the inundation to build a ship covered like an 
 ark; at length the ocean burst its boundaries and 
 the rain fell violently from heaven for many days, 
 so that the mountains were overflowed and the whole 
 human race buried in the waters, save Noa and his 
 family." 
 
 Another Assyrian tradition relates, that the represent- 
 ative of the tenth generation after the first man, was 
 Xisuthrus, a pious and wise monarch. The god
 
 6 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 Chronos (Saturn or Belus) revealed to him that con- 
 tinual rains, commencing on a certain day, the 15th 
 of the month Dsesius, would cause a general deluge by 
 which mankind would be destroyed. On the command 
 of the deity, Xisuthrus built an immense ship about 
 three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter of a mile 
 broad, ascended it with his family, his friends, and 
 every species of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles, after 
 having loaded it with every possible provision, and 
 sailed towards Armenia. When the rain cleared, 
 he sent out birds to satisfy himself about the condition 
 of the earth. They returned twice, but the second 
 time they had mud on their feet, and the third time 
 they were sent out they returned to him no more. 
 Xisuthrus, who had by this time grounded in some 
 Armenian mountain, left the ship, accompanied only 
 by his wife, his daughters, and the pilot; they erected 
 an altar and offered sacrifice to the gods and were 
 soon raised to heaven for their exemplary piety. 
 The others now left the ship with many lamentations, 
 but they heard the voice of Xisuthrus admonishing 
 them to persevere in the fear of the gods. They 
 settled again in Babylon, from whence they started, 
 and became the ancestors of a new population.* 
 
 The Hindoo records contain a similar and probably 
 a more ancient tradition of the flood, in which the 
 good king Satyavrata takes the place occupied by 
 Noah in the Hebrew record. The Greeks had an 
 exactly similar story of which Deucalion was the 
 hero ; while some coins which were struck at 
 Apamea, named also xi/3uro$, a boat, in the reign of 
 the Emperor Septimius Severus, A.D. 193, represent 
 a chest or ark floating on the waves, and containing 
 a man and a woman. On the ark a bird is perched 
 
 * Kalisch ; Historical Commentary on the Book of Genesis. 
 But the heathen traditions of the flood may be found in 
 Colenso on the Pentateuch. Hugh Miller's ' Testimony of 
 the Hocks,' Hardwick's ' Christ and other Masters,' &c., &c.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 7 
 
 and another is seen approaching holding a twig with 
 its feet. The same human pair is figured on the dry 
 land, with uplifted hands and on several of these 
 medals the name NO (Nfl) is clearly visible.* 
 
 The Egyptian tradition of the flood was recorded, 
 Josephus asserts, by Manetho, but the greater part of 
 the works of that historian have perished and this 
 account is not extant. We shall see, however, when we 
 come to speak of the mythological meaning of the 
 flood, that the Egyptians had a very similar mythos.t 
 
 Traditions of the Flood exist also in the Scandinavian, 
 Celtic, ancient British, Mexican, and the various my- 
 thologies of the new world, and the question naturally 
 suggests itself, What relation do these traditions bear 
 to the Hebrew story which our clergy declare has 
 been given by the special revelation of God 1 It used 
 to be thought a sufficient answer to say that all the 
 Gentile traditions were copies and perversions of 
 the Hebrew record, the prior antiquity of this record 
 being of course assumed. We know now, however, 
 that the Hebrew account is of comparatively modern 
 date. The Jews themselves having no knowledge of 
 such an event as the Deluge till after the period of the 
 national captivity iu Babylon. 
 
 * It is acknowledged that the Bible-records referring to the 
 time previous to Abraham, and which were transmitted to 
 later generations by the descendants of the ancestor of the 
 Hebrew race, in some instances admit of an allegorical inter- 
 pretation. Thus even the name of Noah may possibly have 
 been chosen for the purpose of referring to the time of the 
 Flood. It is well known that the word Noah is derived 
 from the Aryan root ' na ' or ' nach ' which means water, 
 from which the Indian 'naus,' the Latin 'navis,' and the 
 German 'nachen' and 'nass' are derived. The Hidden Wisdom 
 of Christ, p. 1 0, by Ernest De Bunsen. 
 
 The nut, (in German ' nuss ') was a ' naus ' or little ship, 
 a type of the ark, in which the infant deity lay hidden Lesley 
 Man's Oriijin and Destiny, p. 308. 
 
 t See the legend of Osiris and Typhon. Typhon was the
 
 8 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 Dr Donaldson (Christian Orthodoxy, p. 221) says, 
 " the traditions of Babylonian archaeology, preserved to 
 us in the fragments of Berosus, exhibit a remarkable 
 correspondence with those which are incorporated in 
 the Book of Genesis. It might of course be a question 
 whether the Jews during their captivity borrowed 
 the ten generations between Adam and Noah from 
 the ten generations which connect Alorus and 
 Xisuthrus, or whether they conversely furnished the 
 Babylonians with the materials of their own cos- 
 mogony. In the absence of all evidence in favour 
 of the supposition that the Jews had any such cos- 
 mogony before the exile, and with positive evidence 
 of the fact that they borrowed many of their ideas 
 from the heathen nations among whom they sojourned, 
 at the time immediately preceding the formation of 
 their present collection of sacred books, it would be 
 more reasonable to conclude that the Babylonian 
 traditions were the source of the Jewish. With 
 regard to the Deluge, at any rate, every candid in- 
 quirer must admit that even if we had no other ex- 
 planation to offer respecting Noah, the fact that the 
 ark is represented as floating to the mountains of 
 Armenia, points to the local inundation which devas- 
 tated Babylonia and which the Babylonians limited 
 to their own country." 
 
 Dr. Samuel Davidson, in his Introduction to the 
 Old Testament, Vol. I., page 188, says : " Authentic 
 Egyptian history ignores the existence of a general 
 flood, to which there is no allusion in the annals from 
 the epoch of Menes, the founder of the kingdom of 
 Egypt, B.C. 3463, till its conquest under Darius 
 Ochus, B.C. 340, whereas the period of the Noachian 
 Deluge is said to be about 2348 B.C. At the latter 
 time when the whole human race is supposed to have 
 been reduced to a single family, the Egyptian people 
 must have attained to a flourishing and civilized 
 state ; indeed, they were civilized and settled before
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 9 
 
 Menes united them into one great empire, i.e., 
 towards 4000 B.C., the uninterrupted existence of 
 their annals from Menes till Ochus, as well as the 
 absence of all reference to a general flood, proves the 
 non-occurrence of such a disaster." 
 
 The story of Noah's ark having no proper place in 
 legitimate history, must thus be relegated to the realms 
 of mythologic fable. The fables of the ancient world 
 were, however, the means of concealing some secret 
 wisdom, and the ark of Noah forms no exception to 
 this rule. 
 
 THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARK. 
 
 Long before the Jews were acquainted with the 
 story of the flood, they were accustomed to the use of 
 an ark in their religious worship. This ark of the 
 covenant being an oblong box of the same propor- 
 tionate dimensions with the ship or ark of Noah, 
 Josephus calls it the ark of God. It was the most 
 sacred symbol of the Jewish worship, and in it were 
 kept the tables of the law. To this day the ark of 
 the covenant is used in the Jewish synagogues for the 
 purpose of containing the rolls of the Jewish law. A 
 similar ark, however, to that of the Jews was, we 
 know, in use among the ancient Egyptians. " A sculp- 
 ture exists representing Ramases III., accompanied 
 by his priests and high officers, and the sacred bull 
 Apis ; and in this sculpture we see that an ark of the 
 same size and shape as the Jewish ark was carried 
 along upon men's shoulders in the sacred procession." 
 Sharpe's Egyptian Mythology. This was doubtless the. 
 ark of Osiris. A similar sacred chest was also carried 
 in procession by the priests of Isis in the mysteries of 
 that goddess, as related by Apuleius, and those who 
 are familiar with the legend of Osiris well know that 
 this sacred chest or ark contained the phallic emblems 
 of fecundity. A ship or boat also formed one of the 
 sacred symbols of this goddess, who was herself the
 
 10 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 representative of the great mother the maternal or 
 prolific principle of nature. 
 
 The goddesses of the ancient worships are now well 
 known to mythological students to have been the pro- 
 totypes of the Virgin Mary, or mother of God, who is 
 so highly reverenced in the Roman Catholic churches.* 
 They were simply personifications of the maternal 
 principle. The moon had the same signification ; 
 and as the sun, for the most part, was the symbol of 
 the gods, so the goddesses were symbolized by the 
 moon. The bull was in like manner the ancient 
 symbol of fertility, of the sun at the Spring equinox, 
 and the cow was for this reason sacred to Isis, and the 
 symbol under which she was often worshipped. An- 
 tique statuettes are still in existence which picture 
 this goddess with a cow's head, and nursing the infant 
 god Horus, which statuettes, with a human face, 
 would serve for the virgin and child of Catholic wor- 
 ship. The moon was the symbol of all these ancient 
 goddesses, but only the crescent moon was used for 
 this purpose. And this crescent moon, which forms 
 an arc of a circle, was also the symbol of a boat or 
 
 * "The German mariolatry of the middle ages is to a large 
 degree traceable to these previous heathen customs (the wor- 
 ship of the storm goddess, Freia Holda, transformed into Freia 
 the goddess of love, of amorousness, of rejuvenescence, and of 
 fertility). There are a number of highly-coloured hymns to 
 the Virgin, the imagery of which is almost literally taken 
 from similar Freia songs, fragmentary pieces of which latter 
 have come down to us in children's rhymes. Many of these 
 hymns would be perfectly unintelligible if we did not know 
 the poetical surroundings of the Pagan goddess. Freia, the 
 queen of the heavens, the sorrowing mother of Balder (that 
 god of peace who met his death through the traitor Loki),* 
 was transfused into the Mater Dolerona, the ' mother of God,' 
 of the Roman church, but in this transfusion she retained 
 much of her original character." From an interesting article 
 on Freia Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love, in the " Cornh'dl 
 Magazine" for May 1872. 
 
 * See the legend of the Death of Osiris.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 1 1 
 
 ship. In a word, the ship or ark of Noah the bull 
 or cow the crescent moon and the goddesses Isis, or 
 Diana, or Juno, or Ceres, or Venus, or Freia, were 
 symbols possessing a common significance, viz., the 
 fertile principle of nature. In accordance with this 
 view, we find that an egg was also a symbol of the 
 ark a symbol of the germ of animated nature. 
 
 In the pictures of the Virgin Mary in Catholic 
 countries she is often represented with a crescent 
 moon, this crescent being really the symbol of the 
 ship or ark, and denoting the secret mythos which the 
 ark of Noah enshrines. With this thought in our 
 mind, we have only to read again the scripture nar- 
 rative of the flood to see in the pairs or sevens male 
 and female, of all the various forms of animated life 
 in the manifast design of this selection that the ark 
 contained the fertile principle of nature, and in this 
 sense was one and the same symbol with the ark or 
 chest of Osiris. This reverence of the fertile or 
 generative principle was the foundation of all the 
 ancient worship, and it has struck its roots so deeply 
 into the religion of all subsequent times, that we have 
 not to look far to find evidences of it in the religious 
 thought and customs of our own day. Our churches 
 are built in the form of the ark* an oblong square 
 and the principal portion of them bears the name 
 " nave," a word derived from the*Latin, navis, a ship ; 
 that word being in its turn derived from the Greek, 
 Naus, whence our word nautical. "The early Chris- 
 tians were called nautai, or sailors." Riddle's Christian 
 Antiquities. But the word navel has also a similar 
 derivation, the English word being associated with 
 the Greek vavg. The Latin umbilicus being an evi- 
 dent derivation from the Greek O,,paAoj. Jacob 
 Bryant has some very curious remarks with regard to 
 this latter word. He says the term OMPHI was of 
 
 * The chancel is a separate and distinct building appended 
 to a church.
 
 1 2 The My f bos of the Ark. 
 
 great antiquity, and denoted an oracular influence. 
 The true rendering was the oracle of Ham, or Cham, 
 or the sun, or Osiris. The mountains whence these 
 oracles were delivered came to be denominated Har- 
 al-ompi, which al-ompi was changed by the Greeks 
 into Olympus. This word they associated with 
 Omphalos, a navel, and so they said of the sacred 
 oracle of Delphi that it was the umbilicus or navel of 
 the world, and they applied this term to all other 
 sacred mountains whence divine oracles were delivered. 
 It is important to notice here the connection between 
 the term navel, as associated with the word which 
 designates a ship, with the act of birth or generation, 
 and with a divine word or oracle. 
 
 Under the word Noah, the same author says, " The 
 history of the patriarch was recorded by the ancients 
 throughout their whole theology, but it has been 
 obscured by their describing him under so many 
 different titles and such a variety of characters. They 
 represented him as Thoth, Hermes, Janus, Menes, 
 Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Deucalion, Inachus, Prometheus, 
 Saturn, Dionusus, &c., &c. Among the people of the 
 East the true name of the patriarch was preserved. 
 They called him " Noas," " Naus," and sometimes 
 contracted " Nous." But " Nous " is the Greek term 
 for mind, and Bryant proceeds to quote Anaxagoras, 
 who identifies the Eastern Noah with the Greek Pro- 
 metheus. Prometheia, he says, was the mind, and 
 Prometheus was said to renew mankind by new 
 forming their minds. 
 
 Noah or Noas was thus in all probability the 
 etymological parent of the Greek word vtog, new, 
 he having been patriarch or father of the new world. 
 This connection of the ideas of life and mind has 
 been fully shown in my pamphlet on " The Mytho- 
 logical Meaning of Tree and Serpent Worship," the 
 serpent being on one hand the symbol of the gene- 
 rative power, and on the other hand the symbol of
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 13 
 
 the Logos or Divine wisdom. The ark is simply 
 another form of the symbolism through which the 
 old Nature worship found expression. 
 
 To the uninitiated Noah's ark would seem to have 
 not the smallest relation to the Virgin Mary, and yet 
 by an overwhelming amount of evidence we shall 
 show them to be closely associated, to be symbolical 
 of the same mythos, the crescent moon being the 
 navicular symbol that unites them. 
 
 M. Didron in his "Christian Iconography" has an 
 engraving of the Hindoo goddess Maya, her head sur- 
 rounded by a glory, pressing her breasts, from which 
 copious streams of milk flow, by which all living 
 creatures are supported, and in her lap are represented 
 the various animals, strongly reminding one of the 
 groups which form the contents of the toy arks in 
 common use to-day. In a word, Maya as the goddess 
 mother of Nature is the emblem of the ark, since 
 all existing beings may be said to have been born 
 from her, she being but a symbol of the fertilizing 
 properties of Nature. It is time, however, for us to 
 consider the curious light which etymology throws 
 upon the word ark, and though etymology may some- 
 times mislead us, yet the study of words and language 
 is the study which of all others throws greatest light 
 on the ideas which prevailed in the ancient world and 
 on the origin and growth of religious dogma.* 
 
 * ' ' The things which we call words are organic things like 
 animals and vegetables. They have roots and branches. 
 They grow and decay. They have fixed laws to govern their 
 existence, like all other beings. They do not leap from our 
 mouths helter-skelter as the toads and jewels dropped from 
 the mouth of the cruel mother in the fairy tale. They are 
 not accidentally created. We are not their voluntary crea- 
 tors. They breed in us and issue from us, not only from our 
 lips but from our brains, by laws as regular and permanent 
 as those which govern the conception and birth of broods of 
 fishes, birds, or serpents. Language therefore must be a 
 department of natural history. New expressions or idioms 
 appear upon the face of human society just as new species
 
 1 4 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 Our English word ark * is derived from the Greek 
 "PX*!, signifying a beginning in order of time, an 
 entrance into being, first or chief in point of autho- 
 rity. The word in this sense is in common use. 
 The Greek rulers were called Archons, our chief 
 bishops are called ark- or arch-bishops. The science 
 of antiquity is called ark-eology. The chief builder 
 the one who supplies the ideas is called the archi- 
 tect. So the lunette or crescent is called the arc of 
 a circle, and this gives its name to the circular arch. 
 The Greek word for the ship of Noah was Kibotus. 
 Our word ark, however, has evident relation to the 
 Greek apxrj, and serves us as a plain guidance to the 
 mythical meaning of the whole story of the flood. 
 
 " The Greeks called ARGos their most ancient city, 
 and the mythological prototype of all sea-going ships 
 was the ARGo. They considered the gods of 
 ARCadia the most ancient deities. They called 
 their most ancient and sacred religious ceremonies 
 ORGs (opyict), from which the Christians got their 
 opprobrious term 'orgies' for all sorts of heathen 
 ceremonies, especially when they were practised in 
 secresy. The Roman word for any mystery was 
 ARCanum ; for any religious teaching, ORACulum 
 that is an arkite thing knowledge shut up and con- 
 cealed from public view. The old Egyptian word 
 ARK signifies upon the monuments, says Bunsen, 
 conclusion, shutting up, and in Coptic it signifies to 
 guard. From this sense we have the word ara, a 
 citadel, and in this citadel were kept for safety 
 
 and varieties of animals and vegetables have successively 
 made their appearance upon the surface of the earth and in 
 the waters of the sea. And words and languages perish and 
 are preserved in the history of literature precisely like those 
 fossil forms of extinct plants and animals which we study in 
 the geological deposits of the past." Lesley on Language as a 
 Test of Race in "Man's Origin and Destiny." 
 
 * Ark in Sanscrit signifies the sun. Vernou Harcourt's 
 " Doctrine of Deluge," p. 495.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 15 
 
 ancient histories and writings, hence termed archives." 
 Lesley. 
 
 The ark had thus various meanings. It symbolised 
 Noah, the great father of the new world, of which he 
 was at once the parent and first man, and who was in 
 ancient time worshipped as a god.* It symbolised, 
 from the nature of its contents, the fertile principle 
 of Nature, and thus was one and the same with the 
 virgin goddesses of Paganism, with Maia of India, 
 Isis of Egypt, Diana, Venus, and Astarte of Syria, 
 Ceres of Greece, and Juno of Rome, who in turn 
 were ah 1 symbols of the Holy Spirit, i. e., of Deity in 
 its feminine aspect. The episode of Juno on the top 
 of Mount Ida is but another version of the ark resting 
 on the peak of Ararat. The ark, too, was the symbol 
 of salvation ; it was the place of safety by which its 
 occupants were saved from the devastations of the 
 deluge. It was the secret receptacle where divine or 
 creative wisdom was enshrined, and so the ark of the 
 Jews contained the tables of the law, or in later times 
 the roll of Scripture, while the ark of Egypt, repre- 
 senting the grosser idea of Divine wisdom, viz., crea- 
 tive power, contained the symbols of procreation. It 
 is a little singular in this connection that the Jews 
 were ordered to put into the ark of the covenant 
 Aaron's rod that budded, and that consequently 
 symbolised fertility ; and here the idea of the Nature 
 worship was preserved, though redeemed from the 
 grossness that marked it in the Syrian and Egyptian 
 religions. 
 
 This, too, implies a relation to have existed between 
 the ark of Noah and the ark of the covenant or testi- 
 mony.^ The Jewish ark of the covenant was almost 
 an exact fac-simile of the sacred ark of the Egyptians. 
 Faber, in his " Origin of Pagan Idolatry," says the 
 
 * See Harcourt's " Doctrine of the Deluge. " 
 t The ancient meaning of this word is in strict keeping 
 with the preceding remarks.
 
 1 6 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 sacred ark was a necessary instrument in the due 
 celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries. It was borne 
 in solemn procession on the back of an ass, because 
 an ass was deemed a symbol of typhon or the ocean, 
 which sustained upon its waters the ark of the 
 deluge, and its contents, according to Clemens Alexan- 
 drinus, were certain conical pyramids, cakes formed 
 so as to exhibit the semblance of navels, pomegranates, 
 and the symbol of the female principle spoken of in 
 the Old Testament as the " ashera." For the specific 
 meaning of these symbols the reader is referred to my 
 tract on the " Mythology of Tree and Serpent Wor- 
 ship." Faber goes on to show that the sacred ark 
 was but a symbol of the earth or world. The ark 
 was in fact a miniature world, and containing as it 
 did the germ of all animated things, it was regarded 
 as the great mother whence all things sprung. Thus 
 the ark, earth, and goddess were represented by 
 common symbols. The lotus or lily, the egg, the 
 ship, the cow, and the navicular or crescent shaped 
 moon had in the ancient mythology the same typical 
 significance, and all had reference to the myth of the 
 deluge. The ark of Noah was thus symbolical of the 
 earth or world. But according to Josephus the Jewish 
 Tabernacle had a mystical meaning, and s}*mbolised 
 the world. Now, the ark of the covenant was re- 
 garded as a miniature tabernacle. It was, even among 
 the Jews held to be the especial abode of the god, of 
 the source of life, its contents being in early times 
 emblematic of physical, as in modern times they are 
 emblematic of moral or spiritual, life. 
 
 Faber shows that a sacred ark was reverenced in all 
 the ancient religions. This ark was often represented 
 in the form of a boat or ship, as well as by an oblong 
 box or chest. Every writer, he says, who treats of 
 Indian mythology notices the argha or sacred ark of 
 the god Siva or Isa. The whole tenor of the Druidical 
 superstition shows that an ark, or chest, or cell, or
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 1 7 
 
 boat, or cavern, was no less important in the Celtic 
 mysteries than in those of Greece, Egypt, Italy, 
 Phoenicia, Babylon, and Hindostan. The Spanish 
 authors \vho discuss the early history and mythology of 
 the Mexicans tell us that their great god Mezitli, (or 
 Vitzliputzli was carried in a sac-red ark on the shoul- 
 ders of his priests during their progress in quest of a 
 settlement, and that afterwards, when they finally 
 settled in any place the same ark containing the image 
 of the deity was solemnly deposited in his temple. 
 
 Jacob Bryant, in the preface to his Analysis of the 
 Ancient Mythology, says, " Upon enquiry we shall 
 find that the Deluge was the grand epocha of every 
 ancient kingdom," and his work goes to show that 
 this tradition of the destruction of the world by a 
 flood, and the salvation of a single family in a ship or 
 ark, was the mythos that lay at the foundation of 
 all the ancient religious systems. Hence, in all the 
 old worships the tops of mountains were esteemed 
 sacred places. The altar derives its name from the 
 Latin " altus, :} a high place. The altar was also, as 
 we shall shortly see, the equivalent of the ark, and it 
 was also the mountain on which the ark rested 
 AL-TOR the mountain. Various terms, says Faber, 
 are employed by the Greeks to describe this mysteri- 
 ous ark, and they severally, according to their literal 
 import, convey to us the idea of a chest, a boat, a 
 coffin, or a navicular ark, such as that in which Deuca- 
 lion and Pyrrha were preserved at the time of the 
 deluge. The Egyptians and Hebrews, however, styled 
 the ark Tebah,* Baris,f Argo, and Buto, or a coffin. 
 The Hebrews used the word TBH (Teba) to designate 
 the ark of Noah, and AEN (Aron) to designate the ark 
 
 * As Apamea was called the city of the Boat or Ark, so 
 Thebes in Egypt was in like manner the city of the Ark or 
 Coffin, because of the Royal graves there. 
 
 t From which our word bark or barque a ship. 
 
 B
 
 1 8 The Mytbos of the Ark. 
 
 of the covenant.* This latter was intrusted to the sole 
 guardianship of a class of priests the sons or descend- 
 ants of Aaron the sons or priests of the ark showing 
 thus that in all probability Aaron was a mythological 
 and not a real person. " The word TBH," says Lesley, 
 (" Man's Origin and Destiny," page 315), " is an Egyp- 
 tian word, meaning a vase or pot. Gesenius says in 
 his dictionary, that its Hebrew etymology is quite 
 unknown. In the Coptic it means a cavern, a boat, a 
 chest or a sarcophagus or coffin." Lesley also shows 
 by a multitude of curious and striking ideas, that in 
 early times architecture was closely associated with 
 religion symbolised the early religion in stone That 
 religion had its origin, for the most part, in the 
 arkite mythos, in the ship, or house, or chest, on the 
 mountain top, containing the germs of renewed life. 
 Thus one of the most common forms of religious 
 architecture was in Egypt the pyramid or truncated 
 cone, and in Greece the pediment a word synony- 
 mous with pyramid with a cross or urn at the top, 
 (fig. 1.) As, however, Ararat was double peaked, and 
 the ark was, in the current tradition, fabled to rest 
 between the peaks, this pediment or pyramid was 
 sometimes split in two, and the urn, or arn, or ark 
 placed between them (fig. 2). 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 * It would seem probable that the Jews had the ark of the 
 covenant centuries before they knew anything concerning the 
 ark of Noah. As monotheists they stood in great measure 
 aloof from the old world mythologies. The rites and cere- 
 monies of these, however, occasionally crept in among them, 
 and were adopted in their religious worship. Very much of 
 the Jewish ritual was borrowed about the era of Solomon from
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 1 9 
 
 The altar of our Catholic churches, with the sacred 
 chest which contains the consecrated host, is thus 
 symbolical of the mountain with the ark. The chest 
 in question corresponding with the ark or sacred chest 
 of the Jewish and Egyptian worship. But the com- 
 munion-table of Protestant worship is the analogue of 
 the Catholic altar, is, in short, the TBH or Tebah, or 
 ark. There are two sacred places in every house, the 
 table at which meals are taken, the altar, as it were, 
 of the household, and the circle round the fire-side. 
 To sit at one's table is to enter the very sanctuary of 
 domestic friendship. Just now there is a hot dispute 
 among the Church of England clergy as to the proper 
 designation of the piece of church furniture from which 
 the sacraments are dispensed. Some claim it to be 
 only a "table," others declaring it to be an " altar" 
 neither party apparently discerning that the two 
 things have, as church symbols, the same meaning, 
 and have descended from the old arkite worship. The 
 cup on the table, the chest on the altar, the urn on 
 the pediment, are one and the same symbol, and repre- 
 sent the ark on the mountain. Some time back the 
 writer visited the somewhat notorious church of St 
 Albans, Holborn a church in which there is a profuse 
 reproduction of what is called mediaeval symbolism, 
 but which in reality is a symbolism derived from these 
 old worships. Here the "table" is boldly asserted to 
 be an " altar." The writer's attention was arrested by 
 the fact that around the arch dividing the chancel 
 from the church, and on the wall immediately above 
 the table or altar the decoration was the well known 
 water symbol of the Egyptians /s/VWV indicative of 
 the turbulent waves that surrounded the mount of 
 safety and the ark of rest. 
 
 the Egyptians, and the ark had been borrowed at a much 
 earlier period. The Freemasons at the present day use many 
 rites and symbols of whose ancient meaning they are wholly 
 ignorant.
 
 20 The Myth os of the Ark. 
 
 We have seen that the ark was designated by a 
 word which had the meaning of a sepulchre or tomb.* 
 It was the tomb of Noah, and of the remnant of the 
 old world life that it contained ; and these, when the 
 flood subsided, were born as it were into new life. 
 So the ark was the symbol of resurrection or regenera- 
 tion, and in this sense allusion is made to it in the 
 baptismal service of the Church of England in the 
 prayer which asks that the recipient may be saved 
 from the waves of this troublesome world, and be' 
 received into " the ark of Christ's Church." In the old 
 mythology Janus was a representation of Noah. He 
 was represented with two faces, as one that looked 
 upon two worlds, and on the reverse of his coins was 
 a dove circled with an olive branch. " He was repre- 
 sented," says Bryant, " as a just man and a prophet." 
 There was a tradition that he raised the first temple 
 to heaven, and he was regarded as one of the cabiri, or 
 the eight original deities of the ark. He is represented 
 with a key, and is termed the deity of the door or 
 passage ; hence, in reference to him, every door among 
 
 * In early Christian times the altar was in some sense a 
 tomb. The sepulchre of a saint became his shrine that is, 
 a chest or box containing sacred relics. Sometimes churches 
 as well as altars were erected over the graves of the dead, and 
 for the same reason the vaults beneath churches were wont to 
 be used as cemeteries. In the second Council of Nice a law 
 was passed which made bishops subject to deprivation if they 
 consecrated a church without relics that is, remains of a 
 saint. England was at one time sorely puzzled to find relics 
 fast enough for all her new altars (Soame's Anglo Saxon 
 Church, 130), and this led to their fraudulent fabrication. 
 The altar of a saint was in some sense the tomb of the saint, 
 and the chief altar is in this sense regarded as the tomb of 
 the god who is worshipped. The ideas of death and resurrec- 
 tion are closely associated with the mass service performed on 
 Catholic altars, and with the communion service of the Lord'a 
 table, or Tebah, or ark in Protestant churches. 
 
 The word "mystery" applied to the pagan celebration of 
 arkite worship is still applied te the mass and communion 
 services of Christian worship.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 21 
 
 the Latins was called Janua, and the first month of 
 the year was called January, as being an opening of a 
 new era. In this sense the ark had the meaning of 
 the resurrection, and here its symbol was an egg. 
 
 An egg was a common symbol in the mythology of 
 the ancient world. A bull butting an egg with his 
 horns, and thus breaking the shell and liberating the 
 imprisoned life, was the symbol of the opening year 
 at the time when the year had its commencement in 
 the Spring, or season in which the earth's fertility, 
 which had been destroyed by Typhon, or Ahriman, 
 or winter, was renewed by Osiris, or Ormusd, or the 
 Spring sun. Virgil alludes to this idea : " Candidus 
 auratis aperit quum cornibus annum Taurus." This 
 is the meaning of the Pasch or Easter eggs ; they are 
 symbols of resurrection or renewed life, and in this 
 sense were used in the religious rites of Greece, India, 
 and Egypt. 
 
 " The egg," says Jacob Bryant, " as it contained 
 the principles of life, was thought no improper em- 
 blem of the ark, in which were preserved the rudi- 
 ments of the future world. Hence in the Dionusian 
 and in other mysteries one part of the nocturnal 
 ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg." 
 This egg, he asserts, on the authority of Porphyry, 
 was symbolical of the world, and was called the mun- 
 dane egg, or egg which enclosed the world. 
 
 The author of the " Two Babylons " says : " From 
 Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the 
 banks of the Euphrates. The classic poets are full of 
 the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians, and 
 its tale is thus told by Hyginus the Egyptian, the 
 learned keeper of the Palatine library at Tiome in the 
 time of Augustus : " An egg of wondrous size is said 
 to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates, 
 out of which came Venus, who afterwards was called 
 the Syrian goddess, i.e., Astarte. Hence the egg 
 became one of the symbols of Astarte, or Easter, and
 
 22 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 accordingly at Cyprus, one of the chosen seats of the 
 worship of Venus or Astarte, an egg was represented 
 of huge size. The occult meaning of this mystic egg 
 of Astarte (for it had a twofold significance) had refer- 
 ence to the ark during the time of the flood, in which 
 the whole human race were shut up as a chick is 
 enclosed in the egg before it is hatched. The appli- 
 cation of the word egg to the ark comes thus : 
 The Hebrew name for an egg is BEITZ. This in 
 Chaldee and Phoenician becomes BEITH, which is also 
 the term for house, as Beth-el, house of God. The 
 egg was thus the house or ark in which the principle 
 of life was enclosed." 
 
 The egg thus symbolized a tomb and a resurrection 
 destruction and creation. Not a few of the ancient 
 nations, says Dr. Oliver (Signs and Symbols), blended 
 the creation and the deluge so intimately that the 
 same mythos applies to either event. The book of 
 Genesis tells us that in the six hundredth year of 
 Noah's life, in the second month, and the seventeenth 
 day of the month, the flood began, and Noah entered 
 the ark. Plutarch, in his treatise " De Iside et Osire" 
 says " that Osiris, to avoid the fury of Typhon, went 
 into his ark, and that it happened on the seventeenth 
 day of the month Athyr, when the sun was in Scorpio. 
 The Egyptians, he tells us, kept two festivals at oppo- 
 site parts of the year, viz., the spring and autumnal 
 equinox, the spring festival being the resurrection 
 and the autumn festival the death of Osiris ; and he 
 says that on the seventeenth day of the second month 
 after the autumnal equinox Osiris was shut up in his 
 coffin or ark, and this agrees with the very date at 
 which Noah was said to have entered his ark, the- 
 civil year of the Jews beginning with the autumnal 
 equinox. The time of Noah's liberation from the ark 
 was the commencement of the natural year, the time 
 when Osiris was fabled to enter, not the ark, but the 
 moon (Isis), and to bring back the earth's fertility.
 
 The Mytbos of the Ark. 23 
 
 The interval during which Osiris was in the ark sym- 
 bolized the Winter or season of the earth's sterility. 
 The legend of Osiris being slain by Typhon is thus 
 the foundation legend of the old nature worship. It 
 is the sun losing its power the earth deprived of its 
 fertility the death of Osiris, or nature, or Ormusd, 
 slain by Ahriman ; and the opening spring time was 
 the great resurrection festival, when Noah leaves the 
 ark, or Osiris quits his tomb, or the egg gives up its 
 imprisoned life, or the earth's fertility is restored, or 
 the sun's power regained. Easter Day, as now kept 
 in connection with the asserted resurrection of Jesus> 
 is simply the adaptation of a festival of the ancient 
 religion to the purposes of a new faith. It takes it's 
 name from the Saxon goddess Eostre, who is the same 
 with the Syrian Astarte and the Egyptian Isis. The 
 story of the flood has, however, a relation to another 
 mythological idea the " Neros," or succession of ages 
 or cycles, or the renewal of worlds. In the Hindoo 
 mythology this idea finds expression in the Kali Yug, 
 or great year or age of Brahm, at the expiration of 
 which the old world is destroyed and a new world 
 produced. Josephus, however, speaks of a great year 
 composed of six hundred ordinary years ; this consti- 
 tuted the ancient cycle of the Neros. " God," he says, 
 " afforded the patriarchs a longer term of life on account 
 of their virtue and the good use they made of their 
 wisdom in astronomical discoveries, which they would 
 not have had the means of foretelling unless they had 
 lived six hundred years ; for the great year is com- 
 pleted in that interval." Godfrey Higgins, in his 
 Celtic Druids, shows that the ancients thought that 
 six hundred years constituted a soli-lunar period, or 
 a period in which the sun and moon would again 
 sustain exactly the same relations to each other. 
 Thus if at any time there was a new or full moon, at 
 the same moment six hundred years hence there 
 would be new or full moon asain. With each of
 
 24 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 these periods the ancients held that there was a new 
 age and a new world. The Avatars of the Hindoo 
 mythology, and the golden, iron, brass, &c., ages of 
 the Roman mythology, are illustrations of this 
 thought ; and in the celebrated lines of Virgil, pre- 
 dicting the commencement of a new cycle and the 
 return of the golden age, the idea finds very plain 
 -.xpression : 
 
 ' Jam redit et virgo redeunt saturnia regna, 
 Jam nova progenies ccelo demittitur alto." 
 
 The great series of revolving ages begins anew. 
 
 Now too returns the virgin Astrea,* returns the 
 reign of Saturn, now a new progeny from high heaven 
 descends ! " The duration of an age was 600 years, 
 and then men looked for wonderful changes to como. 
 It was in the second month of the 600th year of his 
 age that Noah entered into the ark, and it was on 
 the first day of the first month of the 601st year, or 
 the first day of the first year of a new age, that Noah 
 is said to have left the ark and to have commenced 
 the inauguration of a new world. 
 
 Saturn was the Greek Chronos,t the God of Time. 
 Jacob Bryant says he was the same with Janus and 
 Noah. The association of a new rule of justice, of 
 an age of virtue succeeding an age of wickedness, 
 and this under the rule of a virgin goddess, identifies 
 the prediction of Virgil with the mythos of the ark. 
 The zodiacal emblems show the astronomical ex- 
 planation of which the mythos is capable. Taurus 
 or the Bull was the sign in which the sun was, 
 and under which the sun was worshipped at the 
 spring equinox. Hence Osiris was represented by 
 
 * Astrea, in the mythology of the ancients, was the goddess 
 of justice. She resided on the earth during the reign of 
 Saturn in the golden age, but shocked at the impiety and 
 wickedness of men in the succeeding ages, she returned to 
 heaven, and became one of the signs of the zodiac. 
 
 fr Hence our \vord chrone, signifying an old woman, and 
 saturnalia as applied to wild and licentious orgies.
 
 The My thos of the Ark. 25 
 
 the Bull Apis, and Isis represented as a woman 
 with a cow's head. The Bull Apis was marked on 
 the shoulder with a crescent symbolising the moon or 
 ark. The virgin Isis, with a cow's head, nursing 
 Horus, was the prototype of all the virgin goddesses, 
 mothers of God, and queens of heaven of the old 
 classic mythology. At Ephesus she was represented 
 in grotesque though human form, with a multitude of 
 breasts. Here she bore the name Diana, and repre- 
 sented in a crude way the principle of maternity. 
 Greek art represented the Egyptian Isis as a beautiful 
 woman, nursing the infant Horus ; and Mr Sharpe, in 
 his " History of Egypt," tells us that when the worship 
 of Isis was interdicted at Rome, and that of Christianity 
 established in its place, the painters, who hitherto had 
 got their living by painting pictures of Isis and 
 Horus, still continued to paint the same pictures of 
 the Virgin and Child, calling them now Mary and tho 
 Infant Jesus. The old mythological taint still con- 
 tinues, and I have before me while writing a beauti- 
 fully coloured picture of the Virgin Mary, accompanied 
 with a large lunette or curved moon, or ship symbol, 
 thus showing how Christian art still associates with 
 its paintings, as Christian festivals continue in their 
 usages the buns of Good Friday (the cakes that 
 were offered to Astarte) and the eggs of Easter the 
 symbols of the world's most ancient mythologies. 
 
 THE ARK IN ITS CONNECTION WITH THE ANCIENT 
 MYSTERIES. 
 
 The story of the Ark and Deluge is the story of 
 the destruction of an old world and the creation of a 
 new world. The liberation of its occupant is there- 
 fore to the existing age the creation of the first man, 
 an event common to all nations, and the point to which 
 all tradition must converge. The name ark (ap^/ji) 
 signifies first, pre-eminent, and most ancient, and in
 
 26 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 this sense mingles with our common speech to-day. 
 It is well known that all the ancient religions con- 
 sisted of two parts one a system of ceremonies and 
 sacrifices open and common to the masses of the people, 
 the teachings of which were exoteric or public, and 
 another portion which was kept carefully concealed ' 
 from the public eye, in which a high philosophy and 
 a pure morality were taught, and which from the 
 secrecy and mystery in which its proceedings were 
 shrouded was termed esoteric or hidden. To these 
 religious rites mysteries as they were termed only 
 a select few were admitted, and these only after a 
 lengthened probation and passing through a series of 
 symbolical and initiatory rites, in which the candi- 
 dates were surrounded by a variety of terrors and 
 difficulties, and were beset by imaginary dangers and 
 perils, so that their courage of body and mind were 
 put to a most severe test. 
 
 We have seen that the ark signified a coffin or a 
 sepulchre. The English word boat is derived from 
 the Greek xtfiurog, or an ark ; or the Coptic beut, a 
 coffin or sepulchre. Among the Celtic Britons the 
 ark of Aeddon was considered as his temple, or 
 sanctuary, or resting place ; this they were wont to 
 style his bedd, which word, like the Coptic beut, 
 denotes a coffin or sepulchre. The word is used in 
 this sense to-day in Wales in the shrine which so 
 many tourists visit, and which is called indifferently 
 Bethgelert or Beddgelert, meaning the grave of Gelert. 
 In the Book of Genesis the same word is used to 
 designate the ark of the covenant and the soros or 
 coffin within which the dead body of Joseph was 
 deposited. This word was ARN (aron), and it lives 
 in our midst to-day in the word urn, a vase contain- 
 ing the ashes of the dead. 
 
 The ark was thus at once the coffin or the ship of 
 the hero gods. In the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, 
 Plutarch relates that the image of a dead man was
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 27 
 
 carried about in an ark or small boat of a lunette 
 form, which served him as a coffin. This person was 
 Osiris, and this interment they viewed as the dis- 
 appearance of the Deity, and the lamentations occa- 
 sioned by his being dead or lost constituted the first 
 part of the Mysteries. Afterwards, on the third day 
 subsequent to his enclosure within the ark, a proces- 
 sion went down to the sea at night, the priests bear- 
 ing the sacred ark. Into this they poured water 
 from the river, and when this rite had been duly per- 
 formed, they raised a shout of joy, exclaiming that 
 the lost Osiris had been found, that the dead Osiris 
 had been restored to life, that he who had descended 
 into Hades had returned from Hades. The exulta- 
 tions in which they now indulged constituted the 
 second or joyful part of the mysteries. Hence origi- 
 nated those watchwords used by the Mystse : " We 
 have found him, let us rejoice together."* The 
 ancient Mysteries had their celebrations prohibited 
 by law by the Emperor Theodosius in the 4th century. 
 Still the mysteries of Diana were celebrated in the 
 middle ages in many parts of Europe, and the 
 mysteries themselves still live in our midst to-day in 
 the rites and initiations of the Freemasons. The 
 Freemasons' lodge is a temple, or tabernacle, or ark, 
 and the ark itself (for the Freemasons, like the Jews 
 
 * The women weeping for Tammuz or Adonis, the sun god 
 of Syria, alluded to by Ezekiel, and the search of the discon- 
 solate Ceres, in the "Grecian Mysteries," for her lost daugh- 
 ter Proserpine, carried off by Pluto into the infernal regions, 
 are modifications of the same mythos. The reader will be 
 struck with the similarity of this mourning and rejoicing to 
 the Good Friday celebration of the death of Jesus, and the 
 rejoicing on account of his resurrection on Easter Sunday. 
 The scholars of Christ's Hospital, in their Easter visits to the 
 Mansion House, have or had (for the writer is speaking his 
 own experience thirty years since) a piece of paper pinned 
 upon their coats, about three inches long by one inch broad, 
 having printed upon it in black letter the legend, ' ' He is. 
 risen ! "
 
 2 8 The Mytbos of the Ark. 
 
 and Egyptians, use an ark in their rites) is but a 
 miniature representation of the lodge. (Lodge is 
 derived from the Sanscrit loga, signifying the world.) 
 Dr Oliver, who has written very learnedly concerning 
 the rites and symbols of Masonry, calls the ancient 
 Paganism spurious " Masonry," whereas the palpable 
 fact is that Masonry is spurious Paganism is a 
 modern imitation of the ancient mysteries. Dr Oliver 
 says, " Masonry was revealed to Adam in Paradise," 
 and certainly its rites carry their allusions back to a 
 period much more remote than the building of Solo- 
 mon's Temple. 
 
 Reproducing the ancient religion we surely expect 
 to find in Freemasonry the reproduction of the ancient 
 mythos, to find therefore many allusions to the ark. 
 In Mr Mackey's interesting lexicon of Freemasonry, 
 he tells us that the Freemasons call themselves 
 "Noachites," or observers of the commandments of 
 Noah,* and claim that when mankind began to 
 wander once more from paths of purity, the principles 
 of Noah were still perpetuated by that portion of 
 the race whom the Freemasons regard as their im- 
 mediate ancestors. The seven precepts viz., to re- 
 nounce all idols, to worship the only God, to commit 
 
 * The Noachites were a class of people who were not Jews but 
 who were said to be the sons of Noah, because they observed 
 the seven moral precepts called the commandments of Noah. 
 The Talmud recognises these people as pious men. "Who- 
 ever receives the seven commandments," says the oral law, 
 which the Talmud records, " and is careful to observe them, he 
 is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share 
 in the world to come." Hilclioth Melachim, ch. 8, 10. Again, 
 "we are bound," says a Talmudist, " to love as brethren all those 
 who observe the Noachides, whatever their religious opinions 
 may otherwise be. We are bound to visit their sick, to bury 
 their dead, to assist their poor like those of Israel." M'Ca ul'# 
 old Paths. They were probably the virtuous heathen, who, 
 celebrating the mysteries or receiving the sacraments of their 
 religion virtually ranked as the true descendants of Noah to 
 whom under the various names of Osiris, Bacchus, Adonis, 
 Ac., the mysteries related.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 29 
 
 no murder, to abstain from incest, from stealing, to 
 be just, and to eat no flesh with the blood in it, were 
 said to form the constitution of the ancient brethren. 
 Moreover, the acme of masonic science bears the 
 title of royal arch degree. This word arch is merely 
 ap% pronounced soft, the word ark and arch are the 
 same as seen in composition, arch-deacon and arch- or 
 ark-angel. Accordingly we find this Koyal Arch degree 
 has secret reference to the ship mythos, for in Scot- 
 land the royal arch masons bear the title of " Eoyal Ark 
 Mariners." In the Masters or third degree of masonry 
 we have the death of Osiris or Noah, celebrated by 
 the death of Hiram Abiff, the chief builder or 
 architect of the temple. Mr Mackey says that Free- 
 masons take the name Hiramites to indicate their 
 descent from Hiram, arid this term is more particularly 
 used in the Scotch degree of Patriarch Noachite, to dis- 
 tinguish master-masons from the brethren of that 
 degree who profess to descend immediately, and with- 
 out connection with temple masonry, from the sons 
 of Noah. Some learned writers, he adds, embrace 
 all masons under the term Noachites. 
 
 Before the final initiation into the Isidian or 
 Osirian mysteries, some very terrible ordeals have to 
 be passed ; a state of darkness besets the aspirant, in 
 which terrible sounds are heard and across which ap- 
 palling visions flash. The reader will find a very 
 vivid delineation of these terrors in Moore's Epicurean, 
 in which the ceremonies of initiation are very fully 
 described. It is these which are imitated in the 
 ceremonies which the Freemason undergoes before his 
 admission to the degree of master-mason. Mr Mackey 
 says, in the master-mason's degree, which is the per- 
 fection of symbolic or ancient craft masonry, the 
 purest of truths are unveiled amid the most awful 
 ceremonies. None but he who has visited the holy 
 of holies and travelled the road of peril can have any 
 conception of the mysteries unfolded in this degree.
 
 30 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 In the language of the learned and zealous Hutchinson, 
 " the master-mason represents a man saved from the 
 grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation." 
 It testifies our faith in the resurrection of the body, 
 and while it inculcates a practical lesson of prudence 
 and unshaken fidelity, it inspires the most cheering 
 hope of that final reward which belongs alone to the 
 "just made perfect." 
 
 Dr Oliver, in his exposition of " masonic signs and 
 symbols," says, (and he is here illustrating masonic 
 practices, the initiatory rites of this degree by the 
 ancient usages,) " an extraordinary ceremony referring 
 to the Deluge, was used in the initiations which shows 
 how mysteriously that event was preserved and trans- 
 mitted. The violent death of some unhappy individual 
 was here celebrated, whose body they affected to have 
 lost, and much time and many ceremonies were ex- 
 pended in the search, even the aspirant himself was 
 made figuratively to die, and to descend into the in- 
 fernal regions for the purpose of ascertaining the fate 
 of him whose disappearance they ceased not to deplore. 
 This part of the ceremony was performed in darkness, 
 and was accompanied with loud lamentations, the 
 body being at length found, the aspirant was passed 
 through the regenerating medium and was said to be 
 raised from Hie dead and born again. This was the 
 commencement of joy and gladness.* This ceremony 
 bears evident reference to the descent of Noah into 
 the darkness of the ark which was his emblematical 
 coffin." 
 
 Dr Oliver did not write to enlighten the general 
 public, but master-masons who know the mysterious 
 darkness through which they have to pass before 
 entering on the master's degree, and the peculiar rites 
 attending their initiation into it, find them clearly 
 explained by these ancient usages and fables. 
 
 The master-mason's degree embodies the story of the 
 
 * See the legend of the death of Osiris before referred to.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 3 1 
 
 -assassination of Hiram, the architect or master builder 
 of Solomon's temple, who, tradition relates, was 
 murdered by three of the fellow-craftsmen or labourers 
 for refusing to deliver up the secret password that 
 was entrusted only to master-masons. In the initia- 
 tory rites of this degree the incidents of this assassina- 
 tion are rehearsed. The lodge is hung with black and 
 becomes a sepulchral vault dimly lit with tapers in 
 the middle of which is placed a coffin ; the brother 
 about to be admitted is suddenly smitten on the fore- 
 head and falls as if dead, is then in some lodges placed 
 in the coffin or pastos* and covered with a pall. 
 The brethren then stand round in an attitude denot- 
 ing sorrow and revenge. The ceremonies then go on 
 to describe the raising of Hiram by Solomon, in which 
 the brother is restored to life and his initiation after 
 a lecture on life, death, and immortality, is complete. 
 In a word, we have in this masonic degree a repetition 
 of the tradition of the death and resurrection of Osiris, 
 Adonis, &c., and of the entrance of Noah into the ark 
 and his egress from it. 
 
 While in the ancient religions a crude polytheism 
 was taught to the people at large, the initiated were 
 instructed in the great doctrines of the unity of God, 
 the immortality of the soul, and the system of future 
 punishment and reward. The initiated, however, are 
 a select few, and to these the higher and secret 
 doctrines were revealed. As these initiations are re- 
 produced in masonry by the various degrees which 
 are therein conferred, and the meaning of which is 
 kept secret from all but the initiated, so they are to be 
 seen in the communion services of the Christian church, 
 especially in that of the church of Scotland, where it is 
 
 * Clement of Alexandria says, that in the old mysteries, 
 those who had undergone the higher initiation of which the 
 master's degree is a copy, were wont to say, the better to 
 veil their meaning from the uninitiated, I have descended into 
 the bedchamber, i.e. , I have slept the sleep of death.
 
 3 2 The My t /jos of the Ark. 
 
 celebrated only at long intervals, half-a-year it may 
 be. The celebration then takes the character of a 
 general holiday so that the occasion of its observ- 
 ance, from the large gatherings of people that are 
 brought together, has been named the holy fair. 
 
 Faber, who of all authors has given this subject 
 the most elaborate investigation, says, the philosophy 
 inculcated in these mysteries taught that matter was 
 eternal, but that it was liable to endless changes and 
 modifications ; that over it a Demiurgic Intelligence 
 presided, who, when a world was produced out of 
 chaos, manifested himself at the commencement of 
 that world as the great universal father of both men 
 and animals ; that during the existence of the world 
 every thing in it was undergoing perpetual change ; 
 that at the end of a certain great appointed period 
 the world was destined to be reduced to its primeval 
 material chaos, that the agent of its dissolution was a 
 flood either of water or of fire ; that at this time all 
 its inhabitants perished and the great father from 
 whose soul the soul of every man proceeded, and into 
 whose soul all souls must be resolved, was left in the 
 eolitary majesty of abstracted meditation, that during 
 the prevalence of the Deluge and the reign of chaos 
 he floated upon the surface of the mighty deep repos- 
 ing in the bosom of his consort the great mother, 
 who then assumed the form of a ship, but who was 
 likewise represented by the lotos, or the egg, or the 
 serpent, or the navicular leaf, or the lunar crescent ; 
 that the two powers of nature, male and female, or 
 the great creative father, and the great creative mother, 
 were then reduced to their simplest principles and 
 sailed over the face of the illimitable ocean in the 
 form of a ship and mast. 
 
 At the close of the divine year the deluge subsided, 
 and the great father awakening from his deathlike 
 sleep, and bursting forth from the womb of the great 
 mother within which he had been confined, created a
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 33 
 
 new world out of the chaotic wreck of the old world. 
 That a new race of mortals and of animals was 
 produced, and that every thing that had occurred 
 during the existence of the preceding world recurred 
 again in the new one. The mysteries, in short, 
 treated throughout of a grand and total regeneration ; 
 a new birth which related to the old world, the great 
 demiurgic parent, and to every individual man. 
 Hence, the golden figure of a serpent as a symbol 
 of immortality was placed in the bosom of the in- 
 itiated, and hence from the earliest ages, the male 
 and female principle of fecundity were deemed sacred 
 symbols of the great father and the great mother, and 
 were introduced into the orgies (or arg or ark cere- 
 monies*). In the classic mythology Juno was repre- 
 sented sustaining a lunette upon her head and stand- 
 ing on a larger lunette, the crescent being depicted as to 
 appear floating on the surface of the sea, precisely 
 after the fashion of the modern life-boat. 
 
 The Egyptians had two yearly festivals, in the one 
 of which they celebrated the entrance of Osiris, the 
 sun, into the moon, Isis, and in the other, his entrance 
 into that ark in which he was enclosed by Typhon, 
 and thus set afloat upon Oceauus or the Nile. But 
 according to Plutarch this ark was itself a navicular 
 moon.t The account which Diodorus gives is exactly 
 to the same purpose. He tells us that Isis enclosed 
 Osiris within a wooden cow during the turbulent reign 
 of Typhon, or the all-prevailing ocean. Osiris was 
 
 * See Milman's History of Christianity, book 1., chap. 1. 
 Apuleius Metamorphoses, and see also Buchanan's Christian 
 Researches for an account of this worship existing in a de- 
 generate and licentious form among the Hindoos of the present 
 day. 
 
 t These terms simply imply the conjunction of the sun and 
 moon, or, as we say now, the new moon of the spring and 
 autumnal equinox. The first took place in the sign of Taurus 
 or the Bull ; hence the worship of the Bull, and the represent- 
 ation of Isis as a cow ; the latter in the sign Scorpio, the em- 
 blem of Typhon or the destroyer. 
 C
 
 34 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 then indifferently said to enter into the moon, into an 
 ark, and into a cow dedicated to the moon. The 
 moon, therefore, and the cow dedicated to the moon, 
 were alike symbols or hieroglyphics of the ship of 
 Osiris the one astronomically, the other physically. 
 The sacred cow was in Egypt dedicated to the moon, 
 and was called Tebah,* which literally signifies an ark, 
 and she was palpably the same as the ark into which 
 Osiris was driven by Typhon. (Faber's Pag. Idol., vol. 
 3, page 7.) 
 
 THE ARK CONSIDERED AS A TYPE OF BAPTISMAL 
 REGENERATION. 
 
 Baptism as a symbol of regeneration was a religious 
 rite in common use in the ancient religions. John 
 the Baptist, we are told, preceded Jesus, and baptism 
 by immersion in water was the initiatory rite by 
 which admission into the Essenian community could 
 alone be obtained. Tertullian, in his treatise " De, 
 Baptismo," says that in Egypt disciples were admitted 
 into the religion of Isis and Mithra by means of 
 Baptism. This they think sets them free from their 
 perjuries and accomplishes their regeneration. The 
 Persians derived the practice of Baptism from India, 
 the cradle of the world's ancient faiths. The use of 
 water, the agent of material cleansing, as a symbol of 
 moral purification is so natural that every religion of 
 antiquity might have adopted it on entirely indepen- 
 dent grounds. But coupled with baptism we find the 
 idea, not only of purification, but also of regeneration 
 or new birth,t and this idea connects the rite with the 
 
 * Thebes was the chief city of Egypt, the city where the 
 Ball Apis was worshipped and buried. 
 
 t Baptismal regeneration is a question that at the present 
 moment divides the Established Church into two hostile par- 
 ties. The High Church party, however, who advocate this 
 doctrine, have all the authority of antiquity in their favour. 
 This was the ancient significance of the baptismal rite ; but 
 this furnishes no evidence of its being a true doctrine.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 35 
 
 fundamental idea of the ark and flood, of a regenerate 
 or new-born world, and of a regenerate or new-born 
 man in the person of Noah, which doctrines formed 
 the basis of the ancient worship. 
 
 As water had once purified the world from sin, and, 
 destroying the old, had produced a world altogether 
 new ; so immersion in water was the typical rite for 
 the purification and new birth of the soul. As in the 
 ancient mysteries, those who were initiated were made 
 to undergo a figurative death, so on the completion of 
 the rites they were said to have been new born. To 
 this day the distinctive title of the Brahmin in Hin- 
 dostan is "twice born," and a Brahmin who loses 
 caste by travelling can only recover it by being born 
 again, either from a golden woman or a golden cow, as 
 symbols of the great mother. Another mode of 
 regeneration practised in India, and traces of which 
 are still found throughout Europe, especially in Ire- 
 land, is by squeezing the individual through a small 
 hole in a rock. There is an orifice of this description 
 near the famous Elephanta cavern temple, and another 
 in the island of Bombay. This latter place, a natural 
 crevice on the side of the Malabar hill, communicating 
 with a cavern below, which opens towards the sea, is 
 still used by the Hindoos as a mode of gaining puri- 
 fication from their sins, which, they say, is effected 
 by their going in at the opening below and emerging 
 from the orifice above. This orifice is deemed sym- 
 bolic, as the door of each mithraitic cavern and the 
 door in the floating moon through Avhich the ancients 
 fabled all souls were born, and the door in the side of 
 the ark through which Noah and his companions 
 emerged to a new life in a new world. 
 
 That a connection was held to exist between the 
 rite of baptism and the tradition of the Deluge is 
 amply evidenced by the way in which the earliest 
 Christian writers connect the two together an associ- 
 ation which is still to be found in the Church of
 
 36 The Myt/jos of the Ark. 
 
 England baptismal service. The writer of the second 
 epistle of Peter alludes to the destruction of the world 
 by water on account of its wickedness, and to its then 
 pending destruction by fire, and says, "nevertheless 
 we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven 
 and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 Tertullian writing about the close of the second cen- 
 tury says, De Baptismo, " As after the waters of the 
 flood, whereby the ancient iniquity was purged away 
 after the baptism, if I may so speak, of the world, the 
 dove sent from the ark announced to the earth that 
 the wrath of heaven was pacified ; so by the same 
 disposition of spiritual effects the dove of the Holy 
 Spirit sent forth from heaven where the church is a 
 spiritual ark, flies down to our earth, that is to our v 
 flesh, emerging from the laver after our former state 
 of sin, and brings the peace of God. But the world 
 again relapses into delinquency, and in this evil too 
 baptism may be compared to the Deluge." 
 
 Origen, who wrote a century later, says, in a homily 
 on the Hebrew story of the Flood, "as at the Flood 
 Noah was told to make an ark and to introduce to it, 
 not only his sons and relatives, but also animals of 
 every sort, so our Noah, Jesus Christ, at the bidding 
 of his Father, made an ark and dens in it for the 
 reception of various animals. Thus people who are 
 saved in the church are compared with those, whether 
 men or beasts, who were saved in the ark," and then 
 he goes on to assert that there are degrees among 
 them, but that the lower pass through ascending 
 stages till they come to that which is occupied by 
 " the sons or relatives of our true Noah or Rest." 
 And in commenting upon the fourteenth chapter of 
 Ezekiel, Origen has these remarks which the reader 
 would do well to consider in connection with what has 
 been said of the typical ceremonies of the master's 
 degree in Masonry, " I once heard a Jew say Noe, 
 Daniel, and Job are introduced because each of them
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 37 
 
 saw three periods, one of joy, one of sorrow, and 
 again one of joy. Consider Noe before the Deluge 
 when the world was in its bloom ; the same Noe 
 afterwards preserved in the ark (which, in another 
 place, he says was shaped like a pyramid the pyra- 
 mid was the tomb of Osiris) amidst the wreck of the 
 whole earth. Consider how, after the Deluge, he went 
 forth and planted a vineyard and became, as it were, 
 the author of a second world." 
 
 Enough has now been said to indicate that Noah 
 was a mythological fancy, not an actual historical 
 personage. The name signifies rest safety salva- 
 tion. Dr. Donaldson has some curious remarks in 
 this direction. He says : " An apostle has told us 
 that the ark of Noah is a type of baptism (1 Peter 
 iii. 20. 21), and it was by baptism that the mystae 
 were admitted to the privileges of initiation. It 
 could not therefore be an accident that those who 
 were received into that shadowy church of heathenism 
 were expressly taught to consider and speak of them- 
 selves as having just escaped from the waves of a 
 stormy sea, and as having found shelter and peace." 
 And then he goes on to show that Solomon, the 
 " man of peace," dedicated his temple on the seven- 
 teenth day of the seventh month, the day on which 
 Noah, "the man of peace" or rest, emerged from the 
 ark and erected his altar. The dove with the olive 
 branch is to this day a symbol inseparably associated 
 with the ark ; but the dove is also the bird sacred to 
 Venus as the symbol of the great mother, while the 
 Peacock, the symbol of the rainbow, (another arkite 
 emblem, the first arch or ark of the covenant,) was 
 the bird sacred to Juno, the queen of heaven, and 
 the great mother of the gods among the Romans. 
 
 The ark has also a meaning of another character. 
 As in another class of solar myths, the Cross symbol- 
 ized the Phallus and the Logos, and as the creative act 
 came also to imply the idea of creative wisdom, so the
 
 38 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 ark, as the symbol of the renovation of the physical 
 world, came to signify also its intellectual and moral 
 reger"~ation. And so the ark came to symbolize 
 Divine A\*sdom, or the Logos, and was in this higher 
 sense the symbol of salvation, the emblem of the 
 Christ. It bears this higher meaning of Divine 
 wisdom as used in the Jewish synagogue, and it is 
 employed in this higher sense in the rites of modern 
 Freemasonry. As the coffin belongs to the Masters' 
 degree, so the ark is the symbol of the Royal Arch or 
 Ark degree. In the synagogue it contains the sacred 
 books, the word or wisdom of God, and in the Free- 
 masons' lodge it contains the book of the constitutions 
 of the society the secret or sacred wisdom, i.e., the 
 " Logos." In the ancient world Noah was often 
 worshipped as God,* in the same way as Jesus, in his 
 character of Christ, is worshipped as God at the pre- 
 sent day. There are times when a distinction is made, 
 and Noah and Christ regarded as subordinate to God, 
 but at other times the characters are merged into one, 
 and then they were regarded as God. In the heathen 
 temples the ark was thought to contain the God, 
 to be the divine dwelling place, and it was on the ark, 
 between the cherubim that covered it, that in the 
 Jewish temple God was thought to be especially 
 present. In Catholic and Ritualistic, nay even in the 
 majority of Protestant churches, it is on the altar or 
 communion table the substitutes for the ark of Jew- 
 ish and heathen worship that God is held to be 
 actually present to-day. These are placed in the 
 central and most sacred portions of the churches, the 
 chancel being to Catholics and Protestants the holy of 
 holies of Christian worship. In Freemasonry the 
 Royal Arch or Ark (^) degree constitutes the summit 
 of masonic science. Here the fulness of the secret 
 wisdom is imparted, and to this degree, as to the 
 
 * Vernon Harcourt, on the Worship of Noah in the East. 
 See Doctrine of the Deluge.
 
 The Myth os of the Ark. 39 
 
 communion rite of churches, only a select few are 
 admitted. These constitute, as it were, the esoteric 
 brotherhood the fully initiated. In the ancient mys- 
 teries of Isis and Osiris in Egypt, and of Ceres and 
 Bacchus in Greece, the candidate, after witnessing 
 the terrible celebration of the death of the god, was 
 at length led out of the darkness and terrors into a 
 chamber where, amid a flood of dazzling light, he was 
 permitted to gaze on a beautiful and resplendent 
 statue of the goddess Ceres or Isis. In this scene of 
 celestial splendour the secret doctrine was revealed, 
 and he who had before been called a " mystes," or 
 novice, was now termed an " epoptes," or eyewitness. 
 
 Apuleius, who in the second century underwent 
 initiation into the mysteries of Isis, has written a 
 lengthened account of the proceeding and its pre- 
 paratory rites. In one of these the priest tells him, 
 " The gates of the shades below and the care of our 
 life being in the hands of the goddess, the ceremony 
 of initiation into her mysteries is as it were to suffer 
 death, with the precarious chance of resuscitation. 
 Wherefore the goddess, in the wisdom of her divinity, 
 hath been accustomed to select as persons to whom 
 the secrets of her religion can with propriety be 
 intrusted, those, who standing as it were in the 
 utmost limit of the course of life they have com- 
 pleted, may through her providence be in a manner 
 born again, and commence the career of a new exist- 
 ence."* Apuleius' Mdamorph. 
 
 Apuleius, after alluding to the pledge of secresy 
 which binds him, proceeds to tell as much as he dare 
 concerning the final process. " Listen," he says, " to 
 what I shall relate. I approached the abode of 
 death, with my foot I pressed the threshold of Pro_ 
 
 * St Paul and other New Testament writers repeatedly 
 draw illustrations from the rites employed in the mysteries 
 the new birth, the death unto sin and the life unto righteous- 
 ness, the perfect man, &c., &c.
 
 40 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 serpine's palace, I was transported through the- 
 elements and conducted back again. At midnight I 
 saw the bright light of the sun shining. I stood in 
 the presence of the gods, the gods of heaven and 
 of the shades below, ay, stood near and worshipped. 
 And now have I only told thee such things that 
 hearing thou necessarily canst not understand, and 
 being beyond the comprehension of the profane,* I 
 can enunciate without committing a crime." 
 
 The Royal Arch or Ark degree is virtually a copy 
 of this final rite of initiation. It is here that the 
 Masonic holy of holies is open to the newly admitted 
 brother, or companion as he is now called. The 
 actual vision of the goddess is however here replaced 
 by the revelation of the most sacred and ineffable 
 name of God. This, the legend of the rite relates, 
 was discovered in the ruins of Solomon's Temple, by 
 some master masons coming accidentally upon the 
 perfect remains of an arch. Removing the keystone, 
 they cast lots who should go down. The mason on 
 whom the lot fell being let down by a rope, brought 
 up a scroll, which proved to be the lost book of the 
 law. Coming to another arch, they opened it, and 
 here found a white marble pedestal, on which was a 
 plate of gold, and on this plate were inscribed double 
 triangles, in which was engraven the long lost sacred 
 word of the Master Mason the grand omnific Royal 
 Arch word. This consisted in the triple name of 
 God, JAO-BUL-ON too sacred to be spoken in one 
 
 * Compare with this Paul's letter to the Church at Corinth, 
 a city where these mysteries were periodically held. " How- 
 beit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect (initiated). 
 . . . We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the 
 hidden (secret) wisdom. . . . Eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love him. The 
 natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for 
 they are foolishness to him : neither can he know them, for 
 they are spiritually discerned."
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 41 
 
 breath, so three Masons have to repeat it, taking 
 each a syllable. 
 
 JAO or JAH was the Hebrew name of God, which 
 the Jews were forbidden to pronounce ; which the 
 Book of Exodus relates was revealed to Moses, and 
 which rabbinical tradition relates might only be 
 uttered by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies on 
 the great day of atonement, and then amid the sound 
 of cymbals and trumpets, which prevented the people 
 from hearing it. The Jews believed that this name 
 possessed unbounded powers. " He who pronounces 
 it, they say, shakes the heavens and earth, and 
 inspires the very angels with astonishment and 
 terror." They declare that a sovereign power at- 
 taches to this name ; that it governs the world by its 
 power. The Rabbins call it " Shem hamphoresh," 
 the unutterable name, and say that David found it 
 engraved on a stone while he was digging the founda- 
 tions of the earth. (Mackey's Lexicon}. None dared 
 to enter the temple of Serapis who did not bear 
 on his breast or forehead the name Jao or J-ha-ho, 
 a name almost equivalent in sound to that of the 
 Hebrew Jehovah, and probably of identical im- 
 port, and no name ^as uttered in Egypt with more 
 reverence than this of Jao. In the hymn which the 
 hierophant or guardian of the sanctuary sung to the 
 initiated this was the first explanation given of the 
 nature of the Deity. " He is one and by himself, and 
 to him alone do all things owe their existence. (From 
 the German of Schiller, quoted in " Time and Faith."} 
 Bui or Bel was the name of God among the Pheni- 
 cians, and signifies lord or master. On was the name 
 under which the sun was worshipped in Egypt, so 
 the city ON was called by the Greek Heliopolis. 
 Joseph's wife was a daughter of Potipherah, a priest 
 of On. Thus Dag-on signifies the fish god. Mr Brown, 
 in his recently published little book, " Poseid-on," a 
 deity allied to the Latin Neptune, says with regard
 
 42 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 to the word On or Aun : " Its Egyptian sense is the 
 enlighteuer, teacher, or instructor, of which the sun 
 is the natural type. The Semitic root, " an," signifies 
 primarily labour or energy, especially procreative 
 power. Hence the Aun is the great enlightener or 
 teacher, and also the procreator of all, from whom all 
 spring or are descended, according to the saying, 
 ' Omnia ex ovo,' all things from the egg, 66n, aun." 
 The word Aun transposed is the equivalent of Noah, 
 and Mr Brown traces an identity of character between 
 the Aun and the Babylonian fish god Cannes, whom 
 be also identifies with Noah, as the enlightener as 
 well as the procreator of the world. It is this triple 
 name of deity, JAO-BUL-ON, involving the full 
 description of his attributes, the philosophy of the 
 creation and government of the world, the existence 
 of one sole and supreme God, the creator of all 
 things, the father of all men, the all-wise, the all- 
 good, the eternal, who was, and is, and is to be, 
 that constitutes the grand secret or sacred wisdom 
 enshrined in the Royal Arch * Degree. " The fear of 
 the Lord," says a Hebrew writer, " is the beginning 
 of wisdom." It was in the sense of their teaching the 
 true law of life, and unveiling the providential gover- 
 nance of the universe, that the mysteries of Paganism 
 were the shrine of secret wisdom. This knowledge 
 that God is one, that the soul is immortal, that the 
 practice of righteousness is its true salvation, is the 
 secret wisdom of which Freemasonry boasts, and this 
 wisdom is a portion of the Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 Godfrey Higgins (" Anacalypsis," voL i., page 73), 
 shews that the Hebrew ty&O is represented by the Greek 
 a r/fl, and that it has the meaning of " wisdom" as well 
 as " beginning,'' that in fact the accredited authority 
 
 * The word " arch " in the sense of wisdom has passed into 
 the familiar language of daily life. We call a shrewd person 
 " arch," and more vulgarly say he is " an old one," an ancient, 
 i.e., an arkite.
 
 The Mythos of the Ark. 43 
 
 of the Jews the Jerusalem Targum renders the first 
 verse of Genesis thus, " By wisdom God created the 
 world," a rendering which the account of wisdom 
 given in the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs 
 amply justifies. Throughout all the east Noah was 
 held in reverence as a divine lawgiver, and Vernon 
 Harcourt asserts (" Doctrine of the Deluge") Noah 
 was one and the same, as shown by etymological 
 identity of name, with the great traditional lawgivers 
 or patriarchs of the Gentile world, Menu in India, 
 Minos in Greece, Menes in Egypt, and Numa in Rome. 
 The ark also was one with the moon, and while in the 
 ancient religions the sun symbolised divine power, the 
 moon symbolised the spirit or wisdom of God. Both 
 spirit and wisdom arc feminine, and hencejire. aliiecL 
 'to the" goddesses Lsis, Astarte, Juno, &c., of w-homih 
 moon was the symbol, and who, notwithstanding their 
 multiform names were one and the same goddess the 
 great mother of nature. But Athena and Pallas in 
 
 Greece, and Neith the tree goddess of Egypt, and 
 Minerva among the Romans, were goddesses of wis- 
 dom,* and thus it is that the ark of which these 
 goddesses_ffiexe_the_ type, was not^ onlyTike them the 
 symbol of fertility, but was tSe^^nboJ_pf divine wis- 
 dom atsoT Noalythe genius of the ark, is the root of 
 the GreeTc word vovg, signifying wisdom, while the 
 moon, the intermediate and connecting symbol, has a 
 similar sense. Men in the Greek is the moon, and 
 from this comes the Latin mens, the mind, and mensis, 
 a month, " Menes" and " Minos," the wise legislators of 
 antiquity are allied to the same root. The moon was 
 the great measurer of time, of weeks and months, 
 whence the word mensuration, and as the priestesses 
 who gave the divine oracles in a fit of frenzy or mad- 
 ness were supposed to be under the influence of the 
 moon, we have the words maniac and lunatic denoting 
 
 * Our seats of learning are called to this day "Alma Mater" 
 by those who have been educated in them.
 
 44 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 an insane person, a person of disordered mind ; more- 
 over the Latin mensa, a table, carries us again into 
 close relation with the altar or ark. The term manes, 
 as applied to the dead and to the infernal gods, to the 
 ghosts or spirits of the dead in hades, is in the same 
 connection with "mens" and "meen" and "menes." 
 It relates to the people in the ark or tomb, and is 
 thus connected with both moon and ark. The crescent 
 moon was the universal emblem of the goddesses of 
 antiquity, of whom the ark with the germs of life 
 within it was a symbol also. Mythologically, there- 
 fore, they have one and the same significance, and 
 thus the picture of the virgin by Albert Durer repre- 
 senting a beautiful woman with the crescent symbol, 
 is a picture that represents not the mother of Jesus, 
 but the beautiful woman that was worshipped in the 
 ancient world, and of whom the moon and the ark 
 were symbols. This crescent is to-day the well-known 
 symbol of the Mahometan faith a faith which sprung 
 up among the self-same Arabian tribes of idolaters, who, 
 making cakes* wherewith to celebrate the worship of the 
 queen of heaven, gave to the corrupt Christian church 
 of the fourth century the idea of making the mother of 
 Christ a goddess under the title of the Virgin Mury.t 
 Had space permitted it would have been pos- 
 sible largely to have extended the evidence which 
 has here been adduced in proof of the mytho- 
 logical identity of Noah's ark with the moon and 
 goddess worship of antiquity, and with the cultus of 
 the Virgin Mary in modern times. It has, however, 
 been fully shown that the story of the Ark and Flood, 
 
 * See Jeremiah vii. 18. 
 
 t In time of deepest trouble and affliction prayers are 
 offered in the Romish Church to the Blessed Virgin the 
 genius or goddess of the ark of salvation. Mr Hislop, in 
 "The Two Babylons," p. 401, gives a prayer offered by the 
 Archbishop of Turin in 1855, on account of the ravages of the 
 vine disease, which were spreading ruin through the country, 
 addressed conjointly to Noah and the Blessed Virgin.
 
 The Myth os of the Ark. 45 
 
 given in the Book of Genesis, is simply a tradition or 
 legend founded on an ancient mythological fancy or 
 fable, and is not what Englishmen are taught to regard 
 it as being, a supernatural revelation from the eternal 
 God, only and specially given to the Jewish people. 
 We have seen that it constituted the mythos which 
 was unfolded in the ancient mysteries, where the 
 hiding of Noah in the ark typified physical death, and 
 in a spiritual sense death to all the passions and vices 
 of human nature ; while his release from the ark typi- 
 fied the resurrection from the dead and the new birth 
 of the soul. The original meaning of all being a 
 symbolic representation of the death of the sun-god in 
 Autumn,* his sojourn in the tomb during the sterile 
 and stormy months of winter, his resurrection to life 
 and fertility and joy and gladness in the bright and 
 happy festival of the opening spring. Our Good- 
 Friday mournings for the death of Jesus, and our 
 Easter rejoicings for his resurrection, are Pagan cele- 
 brations adapted to Christian purposes.* The death 
 of Jesus or Christ was, simply, the death of a good 
 man, was a death that knew no restoration to human 
 life, for resurrection of this kind is not accorded to 
 our human nature, t The spirit of a man does not 
 die at all, and, therefore finding continued life needs 
 
 * The Pagan goddess "Freya," from which our Friday takes 
 its name, and from whose worship our Good- Friday derives its 
 custom of cross buns, is simply a form of Astarte or Venus or 
 Isis. The cross marked on the cakes is the Grecian x , not 
 the cross of Christian reverence f. It has the significance of 
 fertility. The cakes offered to Astarte were called boun, 
 whence our word bun, from the Greek /3ovs, an ox. The ox 
 was sacred to Isis. The Tauribolia or baptismal rites in bul- 
 lock's blood were sacred to the Eleusinian goddess. Our town 
 of Oxford was once the site of a temple dedicated to Isis. It 
 now stands on the banks of the river Isis, on the spot, where 
 during the Roman rule, a temple of Isis stood. The ox sacred 
 to Isis now appears in the name and also in the arms of the 
 city. The Bull was a prominent feature in the cherubim that 
 overshadowed the Jewish ark c f the covenant. 
 
 t Consult English Life of Jesus, by T. Scott. Esq., new 
 edition, pp. 316-319.
 
 46 The Mytbos of the Ark. 
 
 no resurrection. The idea of a dying God was a Pa- 
 gan idea, and is a huge fallacy when understood in a 
 literal sense, though it becomes a sublime truth when 
 its esoteric or hidden meaning is perceived. It is 
 taught, however, in its grossest and crudest and falsest 
 sense to English minds to-day, and our Good-Friday 
 celebrations to mourn the crucifixion of Jesus as the 
 deathof agod lieopen to the reproof which Xenophanes, 
 B.C. 520, gave to the Egyptian priests. Holding himself 
 enlightened views as to the oneness and spirituality 
 and eternity of God, he questioned the priests con- 
 cerning the meaning of the mournings in which they 
 indulged at the celebration of the death of Osiris, and 
 was naturally puzzled at their grief for the sufferings 
 of one they called a god. He could not understand 
 how Osiris could have two natures, one human and 
 one divine, and he argued with them " that if they 
 thought him a man they should not worship him, 
 while if they thought him a god they should cease to 
 talk of his sufferings." (Sharpens History of Egypt.) 
 
 It has been shown that this mythos of death and 
 resurrection, elevated from a physical to a moral 
 atmosphere, understood as relating to the new birth 
 or regenerate spirit of man, to the human and godlike 
 principles that unite in his nature, to the struggle of 
 the quickened soul to leave the thraldom of the 
 body, and to find the freedom of the spirit, to rise 
 from the death of sin to the life of righteousness was 
 the secret wisdom which the ancient mysteries en- 
 shrined. In this sense the mythos of the ark has 
 passed from the ancient mysteries to the baptismal 
 and communion services of the Christian church ; 
 services which every student of early Christian history 
 knows were copies of heathen usages and rites. We 
 have thus traced the Arkite mystery and shown it to 
 be one and the same with the secret rites of Freemasons 
 as practised in their lodges at the present day. In a 
 word, we have in the story of the ark, when it is pro- 
 perly comprehended, the germ and development of
 
 The My t bos of the Ark. 47 
 
 man's religious nature. The story of the struggles of 
 humanity to find out God, the record of the ceaseless 
 strivings of the human soul after the life of virtue 
 and goodness which alone can entitle it to immortality. 
 In unfolding the mythology of the ark, it has become 
 necessary to unfold the hidden meaning of Masonry, to 
 shew the secret wisdom which it professes to enshrine. 
 Practically, this is unknown to masons themselves, 
 their rites, like the rites of antiquated churches, have 
 become for the most part empty and meaningless 
 forms ; the lectures delivered in the lodges, put often 
 a secondary meaning into these rites, so that they now 
 only serve as a crude illustration for a few trite moral 
 maxims, and Freemasonry as it exists in England is 
 simply a benefit association for the wealthy classes, 
 or an order of good fellowship, and it has as little to 
 do with secret wisdom, as a lodge of Foresters or Odd- 
 fellows. Its signs and passwords are its only real 
 secrets and these none but the members of the masonic 
 brotherhood ought to wish to know. They are, how- 
 ever, trivial matters of no more general concern than 
 the private marks which houses of business employ. 
 Freemasonry in its true meaning is a church, not a 
 benefit society. Its worship is the grand religion of 
 nature, Spiritual Pantheism, the religion of which 
 Noah, Menu, Menes, Buddha, Socrates, Christ, and 
 Paul, and the great, and good, and wise, of every age 
 and of every land are and have been the preachers. It 
 is the opponent of all narrow and exclusive theological 
 faiths, and though it is itself in its organisation a 
 sect, yet its platform is one on which men of every 
 faith and of every clime may meet. It is the old 
 arkite religion existing in our midst in almost the 
 purity of its ancient form ; and if a living soul were 
 put into it to-day, if Freemasons knew that their 
 system was a religion, and not a mere social club, 
 they Avould inaugurate a religious reformation and lay 
 the foundation stones of a universal church. That 
 which of old Noah was fabled to have found in the
 
 48 The Mythos of the Ark. 
 
 ark when the deluge was destining all things else, 
 rest, peace, salvation, the enlightened devotee of the 
 old world religions, the worshipper of Isis and Osiris, 
 of Ceres and Bacchus, of the Persian Mithras and the 
 Syrian Adonis found in the innermost recesses of the 
 temple after he had borne the penances and privations 
 of the initiatory rites ; so the Jew found this peace on 
 the day of atonement, when the veil was uplifted from 
 the holy of holies, and the Ark of God was seen, and the 
 Christian reaches an ark of rest and finds a refuge 
 from the ills of life, an assurance of the salvation his 
 soul seeks, when he kneels before the altar at which 
 mass is celebrated, or sits at the sacred table around 
 which the brethren of the church assemble. And 
 thus in like manner the Freemason has a sacred shrine, 
 around which all his hopes and aspirations centre, 
 and in the revelation which is made to him in the 
 Royal Arch degree of the sacred name by which the 
 power, and attributes, and love, and wisdom of the 
 Great Architect, and framer, and upholder of the uni- 
 verse are described ; of the path of duty he himself is to 
 pursue, of the virtues he should practise, the hopes he 
 should cherish and the trust he should display ; he 
 finds an oasis in life's desert, an ark of safety amid the 
 boisterous waves of its trouble and its strife ; for here, 
 as in the holiest sanctuary of the church, the true word 
 of life is, or ought to be, sounded in his ears, the true 
 guidance is, or ought to be, found, the divine mystery 
 is, or ought to be unveiled, and the purposes of Pro- 
 vidence made clear. Here at last the temple of truth is, 
 to his thought, reached, of truth that quickens the angel 
 nature of the man, and that through a life of love and 
 virtue, and purity on earth, conducts him to the life 
 that is everlasting. Here he thinks salvation is attained, 
 the haven of safety reached. And so he feels that 
 
 Here he can bathe his weary soul 
 In seas of heavenly rest, 
 And not a wave of trouble roll 
 Across his peaceful breast.
 
 49 
 
 The following extract from a letter from T. L. STRAXOE, 
 Esq., Malvern, late a Judge of the High Court of Madras, 
 to a friend, who had forwarded him a copy of the " Mythos 
 of the Ark," and inserted now with his kind permission, 
 strikingly corroborates what has been said in pages 40, 41. 
 
 " I have read a good portion of Mr- Lake's ' Mythos 
 of the Ark ," and see that it is full of interesting matter, 
 especially on the subject of Masonry. Two Koyal Arch- 
 Masons, in my part of India, at a considerable interval of 
 time, got admission into the Shrines of Hindu Temples, 
 througli the use of the sacred word, AUM, (pronounced 
 Otne) their hidden name for God. One of them told me 
 that he saw within the shrine distinct masonic symbols, 
 intermixed with Hindu idolatrous ones, and that they use 
 the very same ceremonials as the Masons do when pronounc- 
 ing the said secret name of Aum. He further told me that 
 the Masons have two more words expressive of the name 
 of God, adjoined to this Hindu one, one being derived from 
 the Jews and one from the Egyptians. I see Mr Lake 
 gives this triple word as JAO-BUL-ON, deriving it from 
 Jewish, Phoenician and Egyptian sources, now it is clear 
 from what 1 mention as to India, that Aum is one of the 
 three words. Taking Mr. Lake to be well informed on the 
 subject, I should identify the last word of the three he gives 
 with the Indian Aum, and not the Egyptian On, there being 
 a positive necessity for bringing in the Indian word. The 
 subject is most interesting as showing the contact of nations 
 at some very remote period, I doubt not the close alliance 
 between the Egyptian Mysteries and Masonry and between 
 the former and the Mythos of the Ark." 
 
 In a subsequent letter to the author, Mr. Strange, says, 
 " I have written to my friend to furnish me with such in- 
 formation as he might be at liberty to give me respecting 
 the Triune name for God, which you have in your " Mythos 
 of the Ark." I did not venture to put the word before him 
 but asked him whether he might tell me, in what order, 
 as to nationality, the three names of God composing it 
 stand. This he has done and it certainly supports you. It 
 is thus; 
 
 1st. 2nd. 3rd. 
 
 Jewish. Assyrian or Indian and 
 
 Babylonian. Egyptian 
 
 Jao of course was first Phosnician, then Jewish ; Bui, first
 
 5 
 
 Chaldean and then Phoenician, and the last word, if Aum and 
 On are to be identified, first Indian then Egyptian. But I 
 feel a good deal of doubt on this latter subject, it strikes me 
 that if the Egyptians had received {his as a secret name for 
 God, and passed it on to the Masons, they could not have 
 have given it the publicity which they have given to On. 
 My friend however, with the author of " Poseid-on ," and the 
 author of " The Book of God, the Apocalypse of Adam, 
 Cannes ," all identify " On " with " Aum " 
 
 Note by the Author, 
 
 Mr. Mackay (Lexicon of Freemasonry, p 158,) also 
 identifies the Indian Aum with the Egyptian On, he says, 
 " The Egyptians gave to the God 'On' the same attributes 
 that the Hebrews bestowed on Jehovah, the word in Greek 
 signifies BEING or EXISTENCE, the same as the name Jehovah 
 in Hebrew, THE HINDOOS USED THE WORD AUM OR AUN ." 
 
 Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis, vol 1, p 110), identifies 
 OM or AUM the not to be spoken word with the Egyptian 
 On aud the Hebrew Jehovah, and he adds, this is what is 
 meant by the fourth commandment, which we render, Thou 
 shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God, (but which 
 ought to be Jehovah thy God) in vain." 
 
 Mr. Higgins also says, "that as a pious Jew will not 
 utter the word Jehovah, so a pious Hindoo will not utter the 
 word Om. The letters which represent it in its tri-literal 
 form A.U M., stand the first for the Creator, the second for 
 the Preserver, and the third for the Destroyer." 
 
 Dr. Oliver, in his 'Signs and Symbols' says, "the chief 
 varieties of the sacred Name among ancient nations were 
 Jah, and Bui or Baal, and ON or OM." 
 
 India was the source from which all the religions of the 
 ancient world sprang. There the mythos of the ark took its 
 rise, and thus it is that Freemasonry reproducing much of 
 the ancient Egyptian ceremonies, reproduces also much 
 that had its birth in the Hindoo temples of a remote anti- 
 quity. 
 
 It is easy to conceive how the Hindoo A.U.M, or OM 
 may have become changed into the Egyptian ON, when 
 Masonic writers tell us that in many of the Royal Arch 
 Chapters the word ON is corrupted into LUN.
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 MYTHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP. 
 
 " Make thee a flery serpent, and set it up on a pole." 
 
 SAYING OF JEHOVAH, IN THE BOOK OF NUMBERS 
 
 " They worshipped serpents void of reason." 
 
 BOOK or WISDOM. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, 
 
 MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE. 
 
 1870. 
 
 Price Sixpence.
 
 TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP. 
 
 A FEW months ago, under the sanction and assist- 
 1JL ance of the Indian Council, Mr Fergusson published 
 a costly volume of engravings and photographs, with 
 explanatory essays illustrating the mythological sculp- 
 tures adorning some ancient remains of Buddhist archi- 
 tecture now existing in Central India, the Topes or 
 funeral mounds of Sanchi and Amravati, dating about 
 the first and fourth centuries of the Christian era. 
 Although Mr Fergusson's researches were, in the first 
 instance, conducted in the interests of architecture and 
 art, yet the repeated appearance in these decorative 
 sculptures (which, like the paintings of Egypt, repre- 
 sented scenes from the daily life and customary usages 
 of the period to which they belonged) of the tree or 
 the serpent, portrayed as objects of popular adoration, 
 led him on to the study of the mythological significance 
 of these emblems. Hence the splendid volume which 
 he has recently published, and which he entitles " Tree 
 and Serpent Worship, or Illustrations of Mythology 
 and Art in India in the first and fourth centuries after 
 Christ." 
 
 In a notice of an earlier work of Mr Fergusson's 
 (" Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture") 
 which appeared in the Journal of Sacred Literature 
 for the year 1862, allusion is made to an engraving of 
 one of the sculptured panels of the gateway of the 
 Sanchi monument, on which is represented the wor- 
 ship of a Tree. This is seen placed on an altar, "be- 
 fore which devotees are prostrating themselves in 
 prayer, while angels, with crowns of glory, are floating in
 
 4 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 the air above. It is just such a scene as a fervid imagin- 
 ation might picture to itself before the high altar of a 
 Koman Basilica, and such as Christian painters who 
 love the poetry of their art are wont to represent. We 
 have only to substitute the Cross for the Tree, and the 
 resemblance would be complete." 
 
 Struck by this similitude, Mr Fergusson has devoted 
 a portion of his recent volume to shewing the large use 
 which has been made of Tree and Serpent symbols in 
 almost every religious system which the world has 
 known, not excepting the Hebrew and Christian. He 
 also points out the prevalence of Serpent worship among 
 the Hindoos and the semi- civilised tribes of Africa at 
 the present day. It is the defect of Mr Fergusson's 
 book that, while it calls attention to some very curious 
 and very startling facts, it does not offer any sufficient 
 or satisfactory explanation of them. If the worship of 
 the Serpent or Tree was in ancient times so universal, 
 it is evident that there must have been some sufficient 
 reason for the practice. Mr Fergusson's abstinence from 
 speculation is the more provoking when it is remem- 
 bered that the recent investigations of students in com- 
 parative mythology have by no means failed in obtain- 
 ing light upon the subject. But, though giving us 
 little of his own thought, he does not fail to utilise the 
 labours of others. 
 
 " The worship of the serpent," he quotes from Mr 
 Bathurst Deane's admirable work, published early in 
 the present century, " may be traced in almost every 
 religion through ancient Asia, Europe, Africa, and 
 America, and its prevalence is only to be accounted for 
 on the supposition that a corrupted tradition of the 
 Serpent in Paradise had been handed down from gene- 
 ration to generation," and that, consequently, all the 
 serpent symbolisms found in the heathen mythologies 
 were distorted copies of this narrative. "We can accept 
 Mr Deane's collection of facts, though we feel ourselves 
 obliged to repudiate his theories. Mr Deane wrote his
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 5 
 
 book at a time when it was the custom to assume the 
 Book of Genesis to be the oldest literature in the world. 
 The fallacy of this assertion, however, is now too well 
 known to need exposure. The religions of Egypt and 
 of India date from a period long anterior to the infancy 
 of the Jewish nation, and in the ancient Hindoo theo- 
 logy, as now in the modern Hindoo religion, the ser- 
 pent was one of the most frequent symbols. " How 
 great and how general," says Mr Maurice, in his ' His- 
 tory of Hindostan,' vol. i., p. 68, "was the veneration 
 of the serpent in ancient times throughout Hindoostan, 
 is evident in every page of their mythologic history, in 
 which almost every fabulous personage of note is repre- 
 sented as grasping or as environed with a serpent." 
 In this theology the serpent, though more or less asso- 
 ciated with Brahma and with Vishnu, was yet especially 
 the symbol of the terrific Siva, the destroying yet re- 
 generating member of the Hindoo Trimurti or Trinity. 
 The Hindoo philosophy discerned that death was 
 closely associated with reproduction, so it made the 
 god of destruction to have a beneficent as well as an 
 evil character. Hence the serpent has come in the 
 mythological systems of other nations to bear a double 
 signification, to be sometimes the symbol of beneficence 
 and healing, as in the serpent of ^Esculapius, and some- 
 times the symbol of malevolence and destruction, as in the 
 Persian Ahriman, or the Devil of Christian theology.* 
 In the serpent worship of ancient times the serpent 
 was regarded as the symbol of a beneficent God. It 
 represented wisdom, reproduction, eternity, life, genera- 
 tion, &c. Thus the great creating spirit of the Egyptian 
 
 * In the early Hindoo theology, and in the Hindoo religion 
 of the present day, Siva, the terrific god of destruction, is 
 worshipped, and the serpent that represents him is a symbol 
 that is honoured. The Persian Ahriman and the Devil of 
 modern theology are distinguished from the good and benefi- 
 cent deity, and are contemned instead of being worshipped. 
 The serpent, as a symbol of Siva, however, represented repro- 
 duction rather than destructiveness life not death.
 
 6 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 mythology, the primordial Cneph, was symbolised 
 by a serpent. The name Cneph, Jacob Bryant* 
 derives from Can Oph, the serpent of the sun ; the great 
 or chief or royal serpent. The serpent occupies a very 
 prominent place in the celebrated Egyptian symbol of 
 Divine Providence, which is found adorning the portico 
 of every Egyptian temple, viz., a winged globe with 
 serpents issuing from it. Here the serpent represented 
 the creative wisdom of God, that principle of wis- 
 dom issuing from the Father (the globe), by which the 
 world was made, the wings in this symbol signified 
 the divine omnipresence, the pervading energy of God, 
 the Holy Spirit. In_all the ancient philosophic or 
 mythological systems, the_jdeas of creation and of wis- 
 dom were closely and^mseparably associated, and the 
 serpent wM3he^ymbflLflj3oth J _,~The earliest concep- 
 tion of thedivine wisdom arose from the wonder ex- 
 cited in the minds of men as they contemplated the 
 mysterious power with which animals and plants are 
 invested, of reproducing their species. Hence the 
 earliest worship was nature worship, and the pervading 
 thought of this worship centered around these wonder- 
 ful generative or productive powers. 
 
 " It is remarkable," says Dean Milman in his ' His- 
 tory of Christianity/ " how widely, almost universally 
 extended throughout the early world, appears the in- 
 stitution of a solemn period of mourning about the 
 autumnal, and of rejoicing about the vernal equinox. 
 The suspension or apparent extinction of the great 
 vivifying power of nature, Osiris or lacchus ; the desti- 
 tution of Ceres, Isis, or the earth, of her husband, or 
 her beautiful daughter torn in pieces, or carried away 
 into their realms by the malignant powers of darkness, 
 their reappearance in all their bright and fertilising 
 agency, these different forms were the great annual fast 
 and festival of the early heathen worship." 
 
 * Analysis of the ancient mythology.
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 7 
 
 Goethe gives utterance to a very similar idea. He 
 
 " The Utilitarians suspect you of an intention of 
 robbing them of their God, if you object to their ador- 
 ing Him who gave horns to the ox wherewith to de- 
 fend itself, but I humbly beg to be allowed to adore 
 Him whose creative wealth permitted him to create, 
 after many thousand plants, a plant in which all the 
 rest are contained, and to produce, after many thousand 
 species of animals, a being which contains them all, 
 viz., man. 
 
 " It is customary to adore Him who gives the cattle 
 its food and meat and drink according to its wants ; 
 but I adore Him who gave the world such astonishing 
 powers of production, that though but the millionth 
 part of them be exerted, the world is so crowded with 
 beings, that wars and pestilence, deluges and conflagra- 
 tions, cannot prevail against them." 
 
 The thought that commanded the admiration and 
 reverence of Goethe was the thought that prompted 
 the earliest idea of worship. The Hindoo Vedas, the 
 oldest religious books which the world possesses, bear 
 ample testimony to the fact that nature worship, the 
 worship that sees God in surrounding objects, in the 
 wonderful powers and properties that these manifest, 
 was the basis of the earliest religions of which human 
 records tell. Of this nature worship we shall show the 
 Tree and the Serpent to have been the chief and special 
 symbols, and these were reverenced because they were 
 conceived of as being typical of the reproductive 
 powers of vegetable and animal life. The choice of the 
 Tree for this purpose seems to be very natural and ap- 
 propriate ; why the serpent should have been chosen 
 does not so clearly appear. We have, however, abun- 
 dant testimony that the serpent, when used as a reli- 
 gious symbol, was made to bear this signification ; that 
 in the earlier mythologies it typified the reproductive 
 energy of animal life, and that later on, as these mytho-
 
 8 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 logies became more recondite, and as religious specula- 
 tion, assumed a more philosophic character, the serpent 
 became the symbol of creative power and of Divine 
 wisdom. Thus Mr. Fergusson throughout his book 
 speaks of Tree worship as being the sister religion to 
 Serpent worship, and he endeavours to show that while 
 in India the two are repeatedly found together, yet, by 
 a species of mythological selection, the Aryan races 
 of the Western world have almost invariably pre- 
 ferred the Tree symbol before the Serpent symbol, and 
 that consequently in the mythologies of northern 
 Europe we find repeated evidences of Tree worship and 
 but few indications of Serpent worship, moreover the 
 Serpent in these mythologies has an evil significance and 
 occupies a degraded position. Yet Europe takes its 
 name from the serpent, signifies the great or chief ser- 
 pent, while in this country the remains of a great ser- 
 pent-temple are still to be seen at Abury in Wiltshire. 
 The word Abury is virtually the name Europe trans- 
 posed, and it also signifies the great serpent. 
 
 Dr. Stukely, in a letter to Mr. Gale of Stamford, 
 dated June 25th, 1730, which I find quoted by Dr. 
 Oliver in his lecture on Masonic Signs and Symbols, 
 and also by the learned author of the " Book of God," 
 says, " The stupendous temple at Abury, in Wiltshire, 
 is a picture of Deity, most*particularly of what they 
 anciently called the Father and the Word who created 
 all things. This figure you will find on the top of all 
 the obelisks. A snake proceeding from a circle is a 
 procession of the Son (or Divine Wisdom) from the 
 great First Cause." 
 
 The Rev. Bathurst Deane, to whose work on Ser- 
 pent Worship allusion has already been made, says, 
 " From a circle of upright stones, erected at equal dis- 
 tances, proceeded two avenues in a wavy course, in 
 opposite directions ; these were the fore and hinder 
 parts of the serpent's body passing from west to east. 
 Within this great circle were four others considerably
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. g 
 
 smaller ; the head of the serpent was formed of two 
 concentric ovals, and rested on an eminence which is 
 the southern promontory of the Hackpen* (Serpent' s- 
 head) hills." 
 
 Mr. Jacob Bryant, in his " Analysis of the Ancient 
 Mythology," says that the word " Ab," which in 
 Hebrew means Father, has also the same meaning as 
 the Egyptian " Ob," or " Aub," and signifies a " Ser- 
 pent " thus etymologically uniting the two ideas. 
 
 The fact that, in connection with the Druidical 
 religion, serpent worship established itself in this coun- 
 try, and has left a vivid memorial of its presence in the 
 Abury ruins, serves as a sufficient witness of its pre- 
 valence in the ancient world. Our object, however, is 
 to ascertain its meaning. The serpent was, in all the 
 old worships, the symbol of the Deity ; if, therefore, we 
 discover the hidden significance which attached to this 
 symbol, we shall be able to throw considerable light 
 upon the early forms of religious thought, and possessing 
 the first link, we shall find it a great help towards com- 
 prehending the subsequent development of religious 
 doctrine. 
 
 As a religious symbol the serpent had sp.vp.ra.1 mp.an- 
 ings, all associated with ideas relating to eternity, repro- 
 ITuction, wisdomTlife, T&cT M. Lajard, in his "Ke- 
 chjjrohes^sTTr le cuTte de Vefrus^" riuys, " Thinvonjjslach. 
 ' signifies' life ' iiLthe.greater part ot tlie semitrclanguages 
 significs_also 'a serEenjLlH- 
 
 Tn the ancient mythologies of the more northerly 
 European nations, the Tree is much more conspicuous 
 as a religious symbol than is the Serpent. A Tree of 
 Knowledge and a Tree of Life are here continually met 
 with as sacred symbols, while the serpent as an object 
 of direct worship is far less frequent. From an article 
 on ' Sacred Trees,' in the ' Journal of Sacred Litera- 
 ture,' for 1882, we make the following quotations in 
 
 * From "Pen," head, and "Hag," the old English word 
 for serpent. " Anacalypsis," by Godfrey Higgins.
 
 lo Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 support of the prevalence of Tree symbolism or Tree 
 worship in the ancient religious systems. 
 
 " The fact of a certain Tree of Life heing introduced 
 at the commencement of the sacred records by one who 
 had been carefully educated in all the learning of the 
 Egyptians, would lead one to suppose that the Egyptians 
 themselves possessed a knowledge of such a Tree.* On 
 the sacred monuments of the ancient Egyptians we do 
 find a Tree having a relation to the life in Paradise, and 
 furnishing therein the required support of immortality. 
 The monuments of the ancient Assyrianst also show a 
 sacred Tree, symbolical of the divine influence of the 
 life-giving Deity." 
 
 " The most generally received symbol of life is a tree, 
 as also the most appropriate, and as we recognise two 
 different forms of life a spiritual life, the life of the 
 soul, and a physical life,~the life of the body so these 
 may be represented either by two trees, as sometimes 
 
 found (theJTree "+' TCnnwIftdgn p;ndJJTg_Trap. nf T.ifpj^m-j 
 
 in reference to universal life, by one tree alone." 
 
 "As a symbolical tree of universal life, the ash 
 ' Yggdrasill,' the mundane tree of the Scandinavian 
 mythology claims the pre-eminence. It is described 
 in the Eddas as the greatest and best of trees. Its 
 triple root reaches to the mythic regions of the frost 
 giants and the ^Esir, and penetrates the nebulous 
 niflheim ; its majestic stem overtops the heavens, and 
 its branches fill the world. It is sprinkled with the 
 purest water, whence is the dew that falls in the dales, 
 and its life-giving energy is diffused throughout all 
 nature. This tree is evidently a symbol of that inscru- 
 table power which is the life of all things thus repre- 
 senting, under an arborescent form, the most ancient 
 
 * There are reasons for believing that the early chapters of 
 the Book of Genesis were borrowed from a Chaldean rather than 
 from an Egyptian source. 
 
 t For a full exposition of the symbolical meaning of the 
 Assyrian Tree, see Dr Inman's ' ' Ancient Faiths, embodied 
 in Ancient Names."
 
 Tree and^rpent Worship. 13 
 
 theory of Mature, analogous (fang the Christmas Tree 
 Indian Parvati, the goddess of '"..proof of the Egyptian 
 in the Egyptian Isis, and in the figiwu the fact that in 
 with in the museums of Italy, called . Egypt had the 
 Ephesians,* a variety of the Indian Bha\ is often sub- 
 
 " The sacred tree of the ancient British 
 the oak the tree sacred to Druidical worshrp by the 
 oak in Palestine was regarded as the emblem ci?land 
 Divine covenant." (This, however, had another sym'ng 
 among the early Jews, which closely allies the tree witi. 
 the prevalent Nature worship of the ancients). " It 
 is also worthy of remark that the same Hebrew word 
 alah, which signifies an oak, means also an oath, and 
 the root of this word is al, mighty or strong, the origin 
 of the name of Deity in many of the ancient languages.'' 
 Among the Greeks the oak of Dodona was the seat of 
 the oldest Hellenic oracle, and the priests sent forth 
 their decrees on its leaves. v 
 
 The figure of Xutpi or Neith, the goddess of Divine ^ 
 life, was represented on the sepulchral monuments of / 
 the Egyptians as seated among the branches of the \ 
 'Tree of Life' in the paradise of Osiris, and repre- \ 
 
 sented the goddess dispensing the divine sustenance o / 
 
 the immortal soul. 
 
 The ' Horn,' the sacred tree of the Persians, is 
 spoken of in the Zendavesta as the " Word of Life," 
 as the author of salvation and as the announcer of it, 
 as the Tree of Life and as the source of the living water 
 of life. " The plant ' Horn,' when consecrated, is re- 
 garded as the mystical body of God, and when par- 
 taken of as a sacrament is received as the veritable 
 food of eternal life." 
 
 The ' Horn,' when thus consecrated, was supposed 
 to give life, and when partaken of by the worshippers 
 was regarded in the same light as Christians have since 
 regarded their Eucharist, viz., as the substance of God 
 
 * This figure was an image of the goddess Multimammia, or 
 the many-breasted virgin. See Montfaucon's plates.
 
 14 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 symbols, tree, serpent, cross, phallus, logos, and memra, 
 were in course of time regarded as symbolical of Christ, 
 and eventually lost themselves in Christianity. 
 
 We have called attention to the fact that an ancient 
 Buddhist sculpture represents an act of adoration of a 
 character identical with the religious ceremonial of the 
 Roman Catholic Church, except that a tree was used 
 in the place of a cross as the central symbol of the rite. 
 The cross and the tree, however, are synonymous sym- 
 bols. In Christian literature we very often find the cross 
 spoken of as a tree, as though the terms were inter- 
 changeable, as, indeed, they are. Thus in the 10th 
 chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Peter, speaking of 
 Jesus says, " whom they slew and hanged on a tree" 
 (iiri |6Xou). Under this word Dr Parkhurst, in his 
 Lexicon has the following remarks. " In Eevelations 
 BuXov rqg Zuvis, " the Tree of Life " denotes Christ as 
 being the author of eternal life ; while in the following 
 quotation from ' Hymns Ancient and Modern,' the 
 cross and the tree are evidently in the common language 
 of Christian worship interchangeable terms. 
 
 " Christ by coward hands betrayed, 
 Christ for us a captive made, 
 Christ upon the bitter tree, 
 Slain for man, be praise to Thee."' 
 
 Again, 
 
 " See His hands and feet are fastened, 
 So he makes His people free. 
 Not a wound whence blood is flowing, 
 
 But a fount of grace shall be ; 
 Yea the very nails which nail Him, 
 
 Nail us also to the Tree. 
 
 The following has been submitted to my notice in this 
 connection. It is from the ' Hymnal Noted ' by the 
 Rev. R. Roper, and complaint was made to the Bishop 
 of Exeter concerning it in June 1857. It is question- 
 able, however, whether it would be made a matter of 
 complaint now
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 15 
 
 "Faithful cross ! above all others, 
 
 One and only noble tree ! 
 None in foliage, none in blossom, 
 None in fruit thy peer may be ; 
 Sweetest wood and sweetest iron ! 
 Sweetest weight is hung on thee. 
 
 " Bend thy boughs ; Tree of Glory ! 
 
 Thy relaxing sinews bend, 
 For a while the ancient vigour 
 
 That thy birth bestowed, suspend ; 
 And the King of Heavenly beauty 
 
 On thy bosom gently tend." 
 
 The origin of this strange compound of heathenism and 
 Christianity is to be found in a hymn written in the 
 sixth century by Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers. From 
 the concluding portion of this the following lines are 
 taken, of which the verses just quoted are a literal 
 translation. 
 
 " Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis, 
 Silva talem nulla profert fronde, flore, germine 
 Dulce ferrum, dulce lignum, dulce pondus sustinent. 
 
 "Flecte ramos arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera 
 Et rigor lentescat ille quern dedit nativitaa, 
 Et superni membra regis tende miti stipite. 
 
 Thus it is that the Tree of Life becomes the Cross, the 
 " wood whence salvation cometh." 
 
 It is now well-known to the learned that the Cross 
 is a pre-Christian symbol. Not, indeed, till the third 
 century of the Christian era was the figure of a Cross 
 used as a symbol in Christian worship, it was then 
 used in baptism for purposes of exorcism, the sign of 
 the cross being supposed to possess great efficacy 
 against all sorts of evils, and particularly against the 
 machinations of evil spirits (See Mosheim). Not till 
 nearly the sixth century was the " crucifix" the cross 
 of the crucifixion, employed. Hitherto, from the 
 third century, the cross used was the Pagan symbol, 
 and it was employed in the sense attached to it in the 
 old Pagan faiths, viz., deliverance from evil and eternal 
 life. This cross was but the Tree symbol in another 
 form, though after the sixth century it merged into the
 
 1 6 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 Cross of Calvary. Nevertheless to this hour the mean- 
 ing of the Cross in Christian usage retains very much 
 of its old significance, and while on Good Friday it is 
 regarded as the dolorous symbol of suffering and death, 
 on Easter-day it becomes the symbol of resurrection 
 and joy the emblem of eternal life ; in other words, 
 while on Good Friday the Cross has its proper Christian 
 significance, on Easter- day it inherits all the pleasing 
 associations that belonged to its pagan prototype. The 
 ancient cross was the same with the sign tau, which 
 Ezekiel in his vision saw stamped as a mark of salva- 
 tion on the foreheads of the faithful Jews (Ezek. chap. 
 9). The passage which in the English translation is 
 rendered " set a mark," is thus given in the vulgate, 
 " Et signa Thau (cross a cross) super frontes virorum 
 gementium." This " than" or "tau " T was the sign 
 of eternal life, and under the name of the crux ansata, 
 was placed in the hand of all the Egyptian gods as a 
 symbol of their divinity. It was in fact the Phallus 
 and Yoni combined, the latter being signified by the 
 superadded ring. In the Samaritan form -|- this tau 
 
 symbol was stamped on all the Hebrew coins,* and in 
 
 this form it constituted the famous hammer of Thor, 
 
 J the Norse symbol of divinity. So, according to 
 
 Longfellow, King Olaf, when keeping Christmas at 
 Drontheim, 
 
 " Oer his drinking horn, the sign 
 He made of the cross divine, 
 
 As he drank and muttered his prayers ; 
 But the Berserks evermore, 
 Made the sign of the hammer of Thor 
 
 Over theirs." 
 
 But these symbols, says Mr Baring Gould, in his 
 
 ' In this form we see the origin of what is called the Greek cross 
 the form of cross adopted by the Greek Church, and very 
 largely employed in Church architecture and decorations 
 in this country. This cross, it is evident, belongs to the 
 old religions, the ancient sun or nature worship, and has no 
 connection with the instrument on which Jesus suffered death.
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 1 7 
 
 " Myths of the Middle Ages," were the same, and he 
 quotes the following story in proof. 
 
 " One of the Sagas describing the sacrifice at Lade, 
 at which King Hakon, Athelston's foster son, was pre- 
 sent relates : ' ]STow when the first goblet was filled, 
 Earl Sigurd spoke some words over it, and blessed it 
 in Odin's name, and drank to the king out of the 
 horn ; and the king then took it, and made the sign of 
 the cross over it. Then said Kaare of Grey ting, What 
 does the king mean by doing so ? will he not sacrifice ? 
 But Earl Sigurd, replied the king, is doing what all of 
 you do who trust in your power and strength, for he is 
 blessing the full goblet in the name of Thor, by making 
 the sign of his hammer over it before he drinks it." 
 
 The Druids were accustomed to convert the sacred 
 oak into the form of a cross, (and thus to make the tree 
 and cross symbols identical,) by cutting off all the boughs 
 and fixing the two larger ones into the stem at right 
 angles to it, thus the form of a cross was produced, and 
 over this was inscribed " Thau " (Qiog). In the article 
 on " Sacred Trees " before alluded to, there occurs the 
 following paragraph 
 
 " The Buddhists have their sacred trees. In Ceylon 
 there is the ' bogaha ' or god's tree. Captain Wilford, 
 in an article in the 10th volume of the Asiatic Researches, 
 says that the "tree of life and knowledge," or the 
 Jambu tree, is represented in the shape of a Manichean 
 cross placed on a calvary. It is called the ' divine 
 tree,' the ' tree of the gods.' When the tree is repre- 
 sented as a trunk without branches it is then said to 
 be the seat of the Supreme One.* When two arms 
 were added as in the Christian cross, than the Trimurti 
 (Indian trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), were said 
 to be seated there." 
 
 * The Phallus was often worshipped under the form of a 
 conical stone ; the Obelisk and the Pyramid are symbols of a 
 similar character. They had the same meaning as the Tree 
 stem without branches, and symbolised the Great Father, God.
 
 1 8 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 The parallel which this offers to the practice of the 
 British Druids is very remarkable, as is also the resem- 
 blance of the latter form to the Christian cross. 
 
 The tree and cross are here found to be virtually the 
 same symbols, implying the element of physical life, 
 which was typical of the Creator in the early nature 
 worship. We shall now proceed to show their identity 
 as symbols of the higher intellectual life of the soul. 
 
 The tree of life is often used as a figure in the devo- 
 tional literature of the Jews, having, however, no rela- 
 tion to the tree of which the Book of Genesis speaks. 
 Thus, in the Book of Proverbs, wisdom (of which be it 
 remembered the serpent was the universal symbol), is 
 described as " a tree of life to them which lay hold 
 upon her." 
 
 Mr Godfrey Higgins in his ' Anacalypsis,' says that 
 our English word "book" has the derivation from the 
 name of the heathen god " Bacchus." The Latin word 
 liber, which signifies a book, whence our word library, 
 or collection of books, is derived, was also one of the 
 names of this god Bacchus. From liber is also derived 
 our word " liberty," signifying in its higher sense the 
 freedom which knowledge confers ; the freedom which 
 was given to slaves, and the general liberty or licence 
 which was allowed at the festival or orgies of Bacchus, 
 may, in connection with the other meaning that the 
 name liber bears, have originated the custom formerly 
 observed in this country of conferring liberty, or secur 
 ing freedom or exemption from punishment to the 
 learned under the title " benefit of the clergy." But 
 liber signifies also the bark or inner rind of a tree, on 
 which books were originally written. Thus we have 
 one name signifying a tree, a god, and a book. It is 
 owing to this connection of a tree with a book that we 
 speak of the leaves of a book as we do of the leaves of 
 a tree, and the similarity is preserved in the Latin, when 
 we speak of the folios of a book and of the foliage of a 
 tree. Again, the word edition used with reference to
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 1 9 
 
 books, derived from the Latin edo, I eat, allies the idea 
 of books with the fruit of the tree ; thus the tree of 
 knoAvledge becomes the book of wisdom, aiid as we 
 have a tree of life, so we have also the conception of a 
 book of life, and the tree spoken of in the Revelations, 
 whose leaves were to be for the healing of the nations, 
 is simply a symbol for the " Book of Life." 
 
 In the mythologies of the eastern as distinguished 
 from the western world the serpent held a more con- 
 spicuous place, was the higher symbol as drawn from 
 the animal creation. The tree most commonly sym- 
 bolised physical life, while the serpent had the added 
 meaning of spiritual life. 
 
 " In almost all the emblematical groups of the In- 
 dians," we meet, says Godfrey Higgins, " with the ser- 
 pent in some shape or other. When it has its tail in 
 its mouth no doubt it is the emblem of eternity. But 
 though it is admirable for this purpose that is but a 
 small part of its meaning. It is worthy of observation 
 that it is found in very nearly the oldest of the Budd- 
 hist monuments ; and the serpent most particularly 
 chosen in India, and often found in Egypt, where it is 
 not a native, is the cobra, or naga, or hooded snake. 
 This Buddhist foreigner in Egypt sufficiently shews that 
 the Buddhist worship came to Egypt before the inven- 
 tion of hieroglyphics. It is always found in connec- 
 tion with the linga as the emblem of the creative 
 power." (Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 544). We pass now 
 to consider serpent worship as it existed among the an- 
 cient Hebrews. In the historical and prophetic books 
 of the Old Testament we have repeated evidence that 
 prior to the Babylonish captivity the Hebrew worship 
 was a mixture of Paganism and Judaism, and that 
 Jehovah was often worshipped in connection, with the 
 heathen deities. 
 
 " It is remarkable," says Dr S. Davidson, " that the 
 fundamental doctrine of Mosaism, viz., that there is but 
 one God the creator and preserver of all, invisible,
 
 2O Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 eternal, omnipotent, holy, and just was all along in- 
 adequately apprehended till the captivity. A few 
 choice spirits grasped it with sufficient distinctness, and 
 adhered to it, while to the mass of the people Jehovah 
 was no more than a superior God beside other deities. 
 Polytheism had deeply penetrated the vulgar mind, 
 and though the nation frequently sought Jehovah with 
 convictions of sin and repentance, such conversions, 
 called forth by external circumstances, were transient 
 in their effects. A manifold idolatry, partly of Zabian 
 and partly of Egyptian origin, had its altars in all the 
 cities of the land, in the streets of Jerusalem, and in 
 the very temple of Jehovah immediately before the exile, 
 as we learn from Jeremiah (chaps, vii., xliv). There 
 is no evidence to show that the ceremonial law was 
 observed by the Jews with anything like regularity or 
 strictness. The great feasts themselves, such as the 
 Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, &c., were allowed 
 to fall into desuetude, as the historical books attest. If 
 the externals of religion were negligently attended to, 
 religion itself must have been sickly." (Introduction 
 to the Old Testament, vol. i., p. 340).* 
 
 That during the reigns of the Jewish kings serpent 
 worship prevailed among the Hebrew people is evi- 
 denced by the fact recorded of Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 
 3) that " he removed the high places, and brake the 
 
 * See also "The Worship of Baalim in Israel, "by Dr. H. Oort, 
 translated by the Bishop of Natal. On page 46 the Bishop 
 supplies the following note with reference to the idol, or Ash- 
 era, erected by Maacha, the mother of King Asa (see 1 Kings 
 xv., 13) the proper translation of which should be, ' She, 
 Asa's mother, made on the Ashera something detestable. ' "It 
 seems plain that the Ashera was in reality a phallus, like the 
 Linga of the Hindoos the male symbol employed as a sign 
 of the fertilizing and life-giving power of the Sun. It was 
 exhibited in various forms, sometimes in rude representations of 
 the organ itself, but usually in a more refined form, as the 
 trunk of a tree, dead or living, a pillar, &c." We forbear, for 
 obvious reasons, further quotation, and refer the student to 
 the work itself.
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 2 1 
 
 images, and cut down the groves (Ashera), and brake 
 in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made : for 
 unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense 
 to it, and he called it Nehushtan."* -^ 
 
 We have here the most positive evidence of the >. 
 existence of serpent worship among the Hebrew people 
 as late as the days of Hezekiah. The image was an / 
 effigy of a serpent set on a pole, associated that is with ( 
 a phallic emblem. The story of Moses having erected \ 
 this effigy in the wilderness some 800 years previously 
 is simply a legend framed in later ages to explain, and 
 in some degree to excuse the practice of this idolatry, 
 the Book of Numbers,- in which this incident is re- 
 corded, being not only modern in date, but unhistori- 
 cal in character. The serpent on a pole is virtually , 
 the serpent on a tree. It is Divine wisdom on the / 
 symbol of productive life, and forms one of the most / 
 expressive and most recondite of all the symbols of the/ 
 ancient world. 
 
 The crude ideas of Nature worship found a refined 
 expression in the ancient philosophical systems both 
 of India and Greece. The fecund principle of Nature 
 became, as the idea of a Divine personality grew up, 
 the creative energy of God ; and this creative energy 
 was symbolised in the philosophy of Plato by the 
 Divine wisdom or Word of God. By this was meant 
 the operating power of God, and, by means of this, 
 (a something distinct from the Divine essence some- 
 thing emanating from the Divine essence) it was 
 thought that God made the world. Plato's chief 
 God the eternal and self-existent Father like the 
 Hindoo Brahma, was conceived of as pure spirit ; that 
 which comes into contact with matter the maker 
 
 * In a note on this word in the " Old Testament History," 
 edited by Dr. W. Smith, the writer says, " Ashtoreth is per- 
 haps the proper name of the goddess, while Ashera is the 
 name of the image or symbol of the goddess. There ivas per- 
 haps a connection betiveen this symbol or image and the sacred 
 symbolic tree, the representation of which occurs so frequently in 
 Assyrian sculptures."
 
 2 2 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 and former of the world was conceived of as an eman- 
 ation from the eternal Father, the Demiurgos or Logos, 
 the word or wisdom of God. God, it was thought, not 
 directly, but by his wisdom, his first-born and only- 
 begotten Son, made the world. That which in the 
 popular worship was symbolised by the serpent, Plato, 
 in his philosophy, symbolised by the conception of the 
 Logos, the word or wisdom of God. 
 
 About two centuries before the Christian era the 
 streams of Hebrew and Grecian thought met and 
 mingled at Alexandria, and in the presence of the 
 refined speculations of Plato concerning' deity, the 
 Jews grew ashamed of those early traditions which 
 their literature contained, which represented God in 
 the grossness of a human form, so they imagined a 
 personification of the Divine wisdom called " Sophia," 
 and said that God made the world by this Sophia or 
 wisdom, and that he appeared to Abraham and Noah 
 by his angel or word both terms having the identical 
 meaning of the Logos,* The famous brazen serpent 
 called Nehushtan, is called in the Targums Memra, 
 or the Word, and Justin Martyr, f evidently perpetrat- 
 ing a little pious fraud, changes the symbol while he 
 retains the meaning, He says that "when the Israelites 
 in the desert were set upon and destroyed by venomous 
 beasts, vipers, asps, and all sorts of serpents, Moses, 
 by particular inspiration from God, made the sign of 
 the cross, and placed it by the Holy Tabernacle, and 
 declared that "if the people would look upon that 
 'cross' and believe they should be saved." So the 
 tree, or tau, 01 cross, with a serpent upon it, represented, 
 
 * Philo Judaeus, in commenting upon man being made in the 
 image of God, says, " No mortal thing could have been formed 
 on the similitude of the Supreme Father of the universe, but 
 only after the pattern of the second Deity, who is the Word of 
 the Supreme Being ; it is fitting that the rational soul of 
 man should bear before it the type of the Divine Word, of 
 which the human mind is the similitude and form. 
 
 t 'Apology,' L 77.
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 23 
 
 in the mythical ideas which prevailed in Justin Mar- 
 tyr's time, Divine wisdom or the Logos crucified, for, 
 since the death of Christ, the cross, which in the 
 heathen religions was only used as the symbol of life, 
 came also, when it had been introduced into Christian 
 worship, to be used as the symbol of death. Still, even 
 to this day, this latter signification is invariably the 
 minor one, and the cross, as used in Christian worship, 
 is the symbol of eternal life, of salvation rather than 
 of destruction. This significance it would never have 
 had, had it not inherited the associations which had 
 belonged to it in the ancient faiths, where it was iden- 
 tical with the Tree, the Linga, and the Phallus. 
 
 It may seem a startling idea to many to speak of 
 " Serpent worship " as prevailing among the early 
 Christians. Yet history bears ample testimony to the 
 fact. Of the numerous sects into which the Christians 
 of the second century were divided, one of the most 
 singular was the sect of the " Ophite," or Serpentin- 
 ians. These superadded to the doctrines of the Egyp- 
 tian Gnostics the notion that the Serpent of Genesis 
 by which Eve was tempted was either Christ Himself, 
 or the ^Eon "Sophia" or " Logos," concealed under the 
 form of that reptile, whence they kept a mimber of 
 serpents, and paid them a kind of worship. Mosheim 
 tells us that this .sect arose before the Christian era, 
 but that after that period some of its members became 
 Christian, and thus there were two sects of Ophites, 
 one Jewish, the other Christian. M. Didron gives the 
 following account of this sect, ' Christian Iconography,' 
 p. 190 : 
 
 " The Ophites, another gnostic sect, considered the 
 god of the Jews not only to be a most wicked but an 
 unintelligent being. They gave a strange interpretation 
 of the fall of man through the temptation of the ser- 
 pent. According to their account Jaldabaoth, the 
 wicked demi-god, adored by the Jews under the name 
 of Jehovah, was jealous of man, and wished to prevent
 
 24 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 the progress of knowledge ; but the serpent, the agent 
 of superior wisdom, came to teach man what course he 
 ought to pursue, and by what means he might regain 
 the knowledge of good and evil : the Ophites conse- 
 quently adored the serpent, and cursed the true God 
 Jehovah. It seems probable that the part here assigned 
 to the serpent was prompted by certain reminiscences 
 of the Phenician and Egyptian religions, in which the 
 serpent was reverenced as a beneficent being." Dr 
 Oliver, in his "Signs and Symbols," says, " the Ophites 
 declared that the serpent which they worshipped was 
 Jesus Christ. This serpent they kept in a cage, and 
 at certain times they opened the cage door, and called 
 the serpent : the animal then came out, and, mounting 
 the table, twined itself about some loaves of bread, this 
 bread they broke and distributed to the company, who 
 all kissed the serpent in turn. This they called 
 their eucharist." Here, then, we have another proof 
 of the identification of the serpent with the Logos or 
 Divine Word, in the mythological systems of the 
 gnostic Christians. The serpent, however, was the 
 special emblem of fecundity or reproduction, of the 
 productive powers of nature. Hence the Logos is also 
 said to be the creator and producer of all things. " By 
 him were all things made, and without him was not 
 anything made that was made." The serpent is some- 
 times said to be the symbol of desire or love. Clement 
 of Alexandria admits that the sin of Adam lay in in- 
 dulgence of this character (Stroma iii., pp. 552-566, 
 Potter), and Milton in his ' Paradise Lost,' attributes 
 carnal and lascivious effects to the fruit of the forbid- 
 den tree. Many modern scholars have felt compelled 
 to take this view of the story of the Fall, among others 
 may be cited Dr Donaldson, the learned author of the 
 Book of Jashar, pp. 59-62, and also an anonymous 
 tract (De arboribus scientiae et vita3), published in Ger- 
 many in 1849, but attributed by English scholars to 
 the late Archbishop Whately. See Donaldson's Christ- 
 ian Orthodoxy, pp. 215.
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 25 
 
 Mr. Higginssays (Anacalypsis, vol.i. page 791), "In 
 Genesis there are no fallen angels. All these came 
 into the Mosaic religion on the return from Babylon. 
 The destroyer or serpent of Genesis is correctly the 
 renovator or preserver. In Genesis there is a tree of 
 knowledge and a tree of life.* This tree of life evi- 
 dently proves the meaning of the mythos to be that 
 Adam would die at some time, that he would wear 
 out unless he ate of the fruit of that tree. The ser- 
 pent, by persuading Eve to taste of the fruit of the 
 tree of knowledge, &c., taught her what is meant by 
 being naked, and thus by inducing procreation, was 
 the preserver of the species. The plain literal mean- 
 ing of the words shows very distinctly that this was 
 one of the meanings. In this tradition we have the 
 origin of the Ophites or Oriental emblematical ser- 
 pent worshippers, to account for whom our antiquarians 
 have been so much perplexed. They worshipped the 
 saviour regenerator, but not the devil in our meaning 
 of the word." Mr Mackay, in his " Progress of the 
 Intellect," says, " The women of Syria still employ the 
 serpent as a charm against barrenness "(vol.i.,p.421.)f 
 
 * In many of the forms in which this mythos is found in the 
 ancient mythologies, the "Tree of Knowledge," and the 
 " Tree of Life " are one. 
 
 f The following paragraph, which appeared in the ' Daily 
 News ' in November last, shews that a similar mystical signi- 
 ficance still attaches to the serpent symbol. ' ' A curious 
 picture of Arab life has just been exhibited before the Court 
 of Assize at Constantia in Algeria. A native named Ben- 
 Kammari was accused of mutilating his wife by cutting off 
 her nose and upper lip in a fit of jealousy. The mother of the 
 victim said that to cure her son-in-law, she had consulted a 
 much venerated Marabout, who had given her as a charm for 
 her daughter, a serpent's head wrapped up in hemp leaves, 
 which was to be placed in the folds of the husband's turban. 
 The woman appealed to the public present to prove that by 
 this method she would have cured the man of his suspicions, 
 and several Arabs at once took off their head gear and trium- 
 phantly shewed the same talisman, while a native officer of 
 the Court, without being consulted, called out to the judge,
 
 26 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 The Rev. P. Percival, speaking of the Hindoo wor- 
 ship of the serpent (Land of the Veda, pp. 208), says, 
 " the figure of a serpent is occasionally sculptured on a 
 Linga, thus investing the block of stone with a doubly 
 sacred character," and he gives an engraving of a 
 Hindoo paying his devotions before such a symbol 
 placed on an altar beneath a tree, evidently erected by 
 the way side, like the crosses which are set up in 
 Catholic countries. The Linga in India was repre- 
 sented by a conical stone, and it possessed the same 
 mythological meaning as the pole, or phallus, or tree, in 
 the western world. The serpent on the linga, which 
 the Hindoo to this day regards as the sacred symbol of 
 reproduction or regeneration, is thus identical in its 
 significance with the serpent on the pole or cross, 
 which the Israelites of old worshipped, and which was 
 a sign of life and salvation to them. Many of the 
 readers of the interesting series of pamphlets issued 
 under the able and indefatigable editorship of Mr 
 Scott, have been much perplexed to understand the 
 meaning of the familiar symbol which he has adopted 
 as a monogram, and which, in the use he makes of it, 
 has a mythological meaning, differing very widely from 
 the conventional sense which ordinarily attaches to it. 
 It is, in fact, the symbol of the mythos we have just 
 explained. 
 
 " The Brazen Serpent," says Mr Higgins, was called 
 Aoyos, or the Word, by the Chaldee Paraphrast, and 
 for this they used the Chaldee word Memra. Thus 
 the cross, or linga, or phallus, with the serpent upon 
 it was called by the letters which convey the idea of 
 word or voice, lingua or language. Hence came the 
 Phallus, the emblem of the generative power in India, 
 to be called the ' Linga,' " (Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 523.) 
 
 We have thus the serpent as a mythological symbol 
 identified in its meaning with the Logos, with the theo- 
 
 ' Yes I have also a serpent's head ; it gives strength to the 
 man and fidelity to the woman.' "
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 27 
 
 logical Christ, with, the Cross, the Tree, and the Phal- 
 lus ; with the latter, however, not in its purely literal 
 meaning, but when regarded as being the philosophical 
 emblem of creative or reproductive power, of eternal 
 and perpetuated life. 
 
 That the Cross, when used as a religious symbol in 
 pre-Christian times, had a Phallic signification is very 
 ably and clearly shown in an article on pre-Christian 
 Crosses in the January number of the Edinburgh 
 Eeview, from which the following extracts are made : 
 
 " In the demolition of the famous Serapeum, or 
 Temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, the tree-tau was 
 found and was placed there, says Mr King ('Gnostics and 
 their Gems') as the symbol of eternal life. This cross 
 seems to be the Egyptian Tau, -& that ancient symbol 
 
 of the generative power, and therefore transferred into 
 the Bacchic mysteries. Such a cross was found on the 
 wall of a house of Pompeii in juxtaposition with a 
 Phallus, both symbols embodying the same idea." 
 
 Farther on, the writer thus sums up his argument : 
 " We have endeavoured, in the first place, to demon- 
 strate the universality of the symbol, and, secondly, 
 that under every variety of circumstance, as well in 
 every age as by every people, from the dawn of secular 
 history to the present hour, it has been held by all in 
 the same superstitious veneration, been honoured with 
 the same distinguishing rites, and always has expressed 
 the same doctrine or mystery. The language of defin- 
 ition varies, but the definition itself is substantially the 
 same in every case. In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain, 
 it was emblematical of creative power and eternity; in 
 India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and immor- 
 tality ; in the two Americas of rejuvenescence and 
 freedom from physical suffering, while in both hemi- 
 spheres it was the common symbol of the resurrection, 
 or the sign of the life to come." 
 
 The symbolism of the world's ancient faiths is still 
 perpetuated in the rites of Freemasonry, though very
 
 28 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 few masons are at all aware of their real significance, a 
 secondary, or esoteric, sense being generally assigned to 
 them. So Dr Oliver, one of the few men who have 
 really made the science of Masonry their study, says, 
 in a lecture delivered to the brethren of his order, 
 " You are not ignorant that the serpent has an estab- 
 lished place among our emblems, although its true 
 allegorical significance is not given in our accustomed 
 disquisitions . . . though commonly introduced into 
 all the groups of emblematical characters, its origin 
 and secret reference are not satisfactorily accounted for 
 in the Masonic lectures. The serpent," he adds, " was 
 a symbol almost co-equal with the institution of 
 Masonry on this globe by the first created man," and, 
 after asserting that the absolute worship of the Serpent 
 became an institution prevalent throughout the whole 
 workl, he continues : " They were universal emblems 
 of life and health, received the appellation of the bene- 
 ficent daemon (aya&o-daif^euv), and were visible repre- 
 sentatives of the god of creation and providence. Still 
 more remarkable is it that there was always attached 
 to the serpent an undefined idea of some restoration to 
 the Divine favour, which was expected to be accom- 
 plished by a gratuitous sacrifice." (Oliver's ' Lectures 
 on Signs and Symbols.') 
 
 In some forms of the mythos of the Temptation, the 
 woman, not the serpent, is represented as the tempter. 
 In the Hamiltonian collection of Etruscan pottery, 
 there are frequent representations of the Tree and Ser- 
 pent which at first sight might be taken as illustrations 
 of the story of the Fall. Several engravings from these 
 are given by the author of ' Time and Faith," in his 
 interesting volumes. One represents a tree laden with 
 fruit, around the stem of which a serpent is twining ; 
 on the left stands a woman in the act of plucking the 
 fruit and presenting it to a man. The superior stature 
 and dignity of the woman in this picture, implying her 
 superior rank, marking her in fact as a goddess ; on
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 29 
 
 the right of the tree Hercules is seen returning from 
 Tartarus, bringing -with him the three-headed dog Cer- 
 berus, the guardian of the gates of hell a token that evil 
 has now been subdued, and even death itself conquered. 
 The subject, therefore, is that of a restoration rather 
 than a fall, and the offering of the woman is the fruit 
 not of a forbidden tree but the fruit of the tree of life, 
 of health, and immortality, the qualities of which are 
 indicated by the serpent coiled around the trunk. Mr. 
 Godfrey Higgins gives a figure from Spence's Polymetis, 
 in which we have, from the gems of Ancient Greece, 
 another version of the Mosaic mythos. This is a tree, 
 with a serpent coiled round it ; this serpent is repre- 
 sented whispering into the ear of a man, who is in- 
 duced thereby to pluck the fruit. Mr Higgins says, 
 " This is the serpent ' Heva' tempting Adam ! Eve is 
 here the serpent." The Hebrew word Hava, trans- 
 lated in the authorised version " Eve," signifies a 
 " giver of life," and the same word Hava, in the Chal- 
 dean language signifies a serpent. 
 
 Under the word Eva, Jacob Bryant, in his ' Analysis 
 of the Ancient Mythology,' has the following : " Cle- 
 mens Alexandrinus says (and Epiphanius says the 
 same) that this term signified a serpent, if pro- 
 nounced with a proper aspirate. . . . Some think 
 that the invocation Eva ! Eva ! (used in the celebration 
 of the Bacchic mysteries) related to the great mother of 
 mankind who was deceived by a serpent ; but I should 
 think that Eva was the same as Eph, Epha, Opha, 
 which the Greeks rendered o<pis, Ophis, and by it de- 
 noted a serpent." 
 
 One of the 'Targums' says that a serpent, and not 
 Eve, his wife, tempted Adam. But the Ophites re- 
 garded the serpent not as a tempter but as a redeemer 
 or saviour, hence, says Godfrey Higgins, the real object 
 of their worship was the principle of fecundity which 
 Eve represented, and Eve, or the serpent, had the 
 same signification as of old had Isis, Ceres, Astarte,
 
 30 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 the types of Nature's fruitfulness, or as the Virgin 
 Mary, the "mother of God," has among our modern 
 devotees. 
 
 So it was common, in ancient times, in order to give a 
 miraculous character to the births of great or learned 
 men ; to assert that they were serpent-born ; that they 
 had sprung from the embraces of a serpent, which here 
 was made a symbol of the Divine Spirit. A birth of this 
 kind was claimed for Cecrops, the first king or founder 
 of Athens, who, it was said, was half-man and half- 
 serpent. So Pythagoras was fabled to have sprung 
 from the embraces of his mother with the god Apollo 
 the python or serpent of the sun. So the 
 mother of Alexander the Great, Olympias, declared, 
 during her pregnancy, that she was with child by a 
 dragon the meaning being simply to claim a divine 
 character, manifested either by superior strength or 
 wisdom for the child so distinguished. So the story of 
 Cadmus sowing serpents' teeth and producing armed 
 men admits of a similar explanation. It is a fable 
 implying that "knowledge is power." Cadmus was 
 said to have introduced letters, but he was also con- 
 nected with the Ophitae or Serpent worshippers, and, 
 at his death, was, it is related, changed into a serpent 
 of stone. Bryant says, " That the priests of the Ophitae 
 were very learned, and that those who had been in- 
 structed by them were called serpents," and long after 
 the superstition in its grosser form had passed away 
 the forms of speech which it originated remained, and 
 thus we have the New Testament recording that Jesus 
 gave utterance to the maxim, " Be ye wise as serpents." 
 
 The stone pillar that formed so conspicuous an orna- 
 ment in the front of Egyptian temples, and which had 
 the same meaning as the stone pillar or linga of the 
 Hindoos, was called an obelisk, a composite word sig- 
 nifying god and serpent. Obelisks, originally serpent 
 symbols, in the name they still bear, testify to the pre- 
 valence of the worship in which they found their
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 3 1 
 
 origin. A pillar or obelisk still stands in the signi- 
 ficantly shaped enclosure in front of St Peter's at Rome, 
 presenting on a huge scale an exact fac-sirnile of the 
 well-known Hindoo Argha, or type of the reproduc- 
 tive power of nature. 
 
 The seraphim and cherubim of the Jewish mythology 
 have also the meaning of fiery serpents. This has been 
 pointed out by the learned and ingenious author of the 
 ' Book of God,' who quotes Faber as follows : " It is 
 the mystery of our holy language, says Rabbi Bechai, 
 that a serpent is called a seraph, as an angel is called a 
 seraph." And in accordance with this supposed mys- 
 tery, Faber adds, it has been imagined that Satan 
 tempted Eve under the form of one of those resplendent 
 winged serpents which are denominated seraphim ! ' 
 (Faber's Pag. Idol. i. 448) The word cherub also, God- 
 frey Higgins asserts, has the meaning of serpent See 
 Parkhursf s Hebrew Lexicon. 
 
 We have been speaking of the serpent in its connec- 
 tion with the more ancient of the world's mythological 
 systems, and in these we have invariably seen it re- 
 garded as a divine and beneficent symbol. In more 
 modern mythologies, and especially in the Christian 
 theological systems, the serpent occupies a very dif- 
 ferent position, and here it is regarded as possessing an 
 evil and maleficent character. It is the symbol of 
 destruction rather than of life. It becomes " that old 
 serpent the devil." This change of character marks an 
 important change or reformation which took place in 
 the faiths of the ancient world about 600 years before 
 the time of Christ. It originated in the dual system 
 of the ancient Persians in the reformation effected in 
 that faith by the traditional Zoroaster. Here the origin 
 of evil was ascribed to the malevolence of an evil god, 
 and this evil god, Ahriman, was symbolized by a ser- 
 pent. When we consider the instinctive horror with 
 which this reptile is invariably regarded, it is a legiti- 
 mate matter of surprise that it should ever have been
 
 32 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 made an object of worship as the symbol of the wise 
 and beneficent God. That this was done, however, is 
 a fact which is not now to be questioned, the proofs 
 that remain to us are absolutely overwhelming. It 
 would seem, however, that the advancing intelligence 
 of mankind revolted against a worship that in its literal 
 sense was so disgusting, and in the reformation that was 
 eifected the serpent was degraded by being made the 
 symbol of an evil and malignant power, of a power that 
 was ever opposing and doing battle with the good and 
 beneficent God. Thus Ormuzd and Ahriman were re- 
 presented in continual strife, and all the gods of the 
 later pagan mythologies as soon as the pagan systems 
 felt the influence of this change of thought made their 
 gods to battle with some malignant dragon, some mon- 
 strous serpent. Under the influence of this reform the 
 Jews, who till the days of Hezekiah had burnt incense 
 to a serpent effigy in the streets of Jerusalem, now 
 after their return from captivity, embodied the story of 
 the Fall into their literature, which story they evidently 
 copied from the Persian mythos. This mythos is thus 
 quoted from the Zend-Avesta, by Kalisch : 
 
 " The first couple, the parents of the human race, 
 Meshia and Meshiane, lived originally in purity and 
 innocence. Perpetual happiness was promised to them 
 by Ormuzd, the creator of every good gift, if they per- 
 severed in their virtue. But an evil demon (Dev) was 
 sent to them by Ahriman, the representative of every 
 thing noxious and sinful. He appeared unexpectedly 
 in the form of a serpent, and gave them the fruit of a 
 wonderful tree, Horn, which imparted immortality, and 
 had the power of restoring the dead to life. Thus evil 
 inclinations entered then- hearts ; all their moral excel- 
 lence was destroyed. Ahriman himself appeared under 
 the form of the same reptile, and completed the work 
 of seduction. They acknowledged him instead of Or- 
 muzd as the Creator of everything good ; and the con- 
 sequence was that they forfeited for ever the eternal
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 33 
 
 happiness for which they were destined." (See Colenso 
 on Pentateuch, vol. iv). This mythos presents us with 
 perhaps the earliest known instance of the serpent 
 appearing in an evil character in the mythological 
 systems of the ancients. The Jews during their resi- 
 dence in Babylon came in contact with the purer ideas 
 that marked the reformed Persian faith, and on the 
 conquest of the Chaldeans by the Persians and the 
 deliverance of the Jews, their writers spoke of Cyrus, 
 the Persian monarch, as being the Messiah or Christ of 
 Jehovah, thus owning, with him, a close fellowship of 
 faith. Immediately afterwards we find them re-editing 
 their literature and prefacing their own book of early 
 traditions (Genesis) with the myths of the Persian cos- 
 mogony. 
 
 The bonafide Jewish literature shews that no know- 
 ledge of these myths existed among the Jews till the 
 comparatively late period of their return from Babylon. 
 It has been well remarked in this matter that " the 
 Jews went into captivity a nation of idolaters, and 
 came out from it a band of puritans." This estimate of 
 the serpent as an evil principle pervades the New 
 Testament, where it becomes in the Book of Eevela- 
 tion identical with the deviL 
 
 The religion of Jesus was a moral reform. It coun- 
 selled personal piety, without reference to mythological 
 ideas. It simply ignored mythology. When, how- 
 ever, Christianity became, after the death of Jesus, 
 formulated into a religious system, the stream of myth- 
 ology mingled with it. One of the most important of 
 the early heresies was that introduced in the third cen- 
 tury by Mani, which, under the name of Manichaeism, 
 mixed up the religion of Christ with a form of Persian 
 Buddhism. This placed the Devil as an evil principle 
 in strong and marked antagonism to Christ as the re- 
 presentative of the good god, and although this system, 
 as a whole, was finally rejected, it yet largely tinged 
 the theology of the great Christian Father Augustine, and
 
 34 Tree and Serpent Worship 
 
 it tinges still more the "Evangelical Christianity" of our 
 own day. The earlier sect of the Ophites was evidently 
 an attempt to make Christianity harmonious with the 
 more ancient mythological systems in which the ser- 
 pent was the Agatho-daemon, the emblem of the good 
 god. In the mythologies of Greece and Rome, and 
 Phoenicia, which, being derivatives from the more an- 
 cient religions of Egypt and India, are comparatively 
 modern, we find the serpent symbol in a transitional 
 state. In the earlier myths it is an object of reverence 
 or worship. Through Cecrops it was the great Father of 
 the Grecian people. It symbolised Apollo as in Egypt 
 it symbolised Cneph. It spoke the oracles at the 
 various shrines, or inspired the priestess to deliver 
 them. The modern version of this myth represents 
 the Python as a malignant serpent which persecuted 
 the mother of Apollo, and which the god, when born, 
 attacked and killed ; but the name of Apollo's festival, 
 the Pythia, and the name also of Apollo's priestess, 
 shew that the name Python once had a very different 
 significance. Bryant says that originally Apollo and 
 the Python were the same, and the name Tripos, of 
 the place whence the oracles were delivered, was a vari- 
 tion for Tor-opus or Tor-ophis ; the serpent-hill or 
 temple where they were both worshipped being one 
 and the same deity. (' Analysis of Ancient Mytho- 
 logy,' 1-464.) In this connection it will be interesting 
 to notice an etymology derived from the root Ophis, a 
 Serpent, viz., Ops, power, rule, dominion Opuleus, 
 wealthy Opus, work whence our words option, opu- 
 lent, operative, and in the Greek, o-rro/ia/, I see, whence 
 our word optics and its derivative the serpent repre- 
 senting wisdom, power, foresight, and being the type 
 of the demiurgos, or creative or generative power, by 
 which all things were made, and riches and wealth 
 accumulated. Again, in the classical mythologies, 
 Pluto, the god of the lower regions, is by some mytho- 
 logists regarded as the same with Plutus, the god of
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 35 
 
 riches, while in the Christian theology the Devil and 
 the Serpent are convertible terms. Thus in the 
 later forms of classical mythos we have Apollo slaying 
 the Python ; Hercules destroying the Hydra ; the Con- 
 stantine medal of the Cross surmounting a Serpent ; the 
 national legend that till lately had its symbol on our 
 own gold coin of ' St. George and the Dragon,' and in 
 the mythological corruptions of the religion of Jesus 
 which make up the popular Christianity, we have Him 
 vanquishing the Devil, and the ' Old Serpent' cast into 
 the bottomless pit and chained for a thousand years.* 
 
 The use of the ' Tree, 1 as the mythological symbol of 
 eternal life, has long sunaved the employment of the 
 ' Serpent ' for a similar purpose ; and in the Christian 
 legends of the middle ages the ' Tree of Life ' was re- 
 peatedly identified as the prophetic symbol sometimes 
 of Christ and sometimes of the Cross. From a copious 
 essay on this subject, published in German, by Dr. 
 Piper, a translation of which is given in the ' Journal 
 of Sacred Literature' for January 1864, and continued 
 in subsequent numbers, we borrow the following ex- 
 tracts : " We direct attention, first of all, to two 
 representations external to the Church. These appear 
 to be taken from the Tree of Paradise.t The one occuis 
 in a faith and ritual outside of revelation we refer 
 to the adoration paid to a 'Tree of Life' in the religion 
 of Zoroaster. The sacred writings of the Persians speak 
 of the tree Horn, which is called the Head of the Trees ; 
 it is regarded as the Tree of Immortality, the juice of 
 which will confer life on man at the resurrection. 
 Besides this, there is a description of a ' Tree of Life ' 
 
 * The legend of St. Patrick, who introduced the Christian 
 religion into Ireland, banishing the snakes and reptiles, may 
 have been but a figurative way of saying that Christianity 
 supplanted the old religion, of which Serpent worship was a 
 conspicuous feature. 
 
 f The story in Genesis is, as is now well known, the copy, 
 not the original.
 
 36 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 in a Jewish work written before the Christian era, the 
 'Book of Enoch. 1 " 
 
 The legend of the cross on which Christ suffered, 
 having been made from the wood of the ' tree of know- 
 ledge,' appears in the middle ages in several forms, one 
 which was current in the thirteenth century relates, 
 " that Eve along with the forbidden fruit broke off a 
 branch from the ' tree of knowledge,' which she in her 
 distraction of spirit brought with her from Paradise. 
 Stuck into the ground by her, it grew to a great tree, 
 under which Abel was killed, at a later time it was 
 used in the building of the most holy place in the 
 temple of Solomon, and finally it yielded the beams 
 out of which the cross was made." Another legend 
 contained in an old French poem by the priest Herman 
 of Valenciennes, says, " that after the fall of Adam, 
 God rooted out the tree of knowledge and cast it over 
 the wall of Paradise. A thousand years after, it was 
 found by Abraham, who planted it in his garden, 
 on which a voice from heaven announced to him that 
 this was the tree on the wood of which the Redeemer 
 should be crucified." The Tree of Knowledge and the 
 Cross of Christ have been associated from the earliest 
 periods of Christianity. In the Gospel of Nicodemus 
 after Christ has visited Hades ; the personification of 
 Hades addressing Satan, says, ' Behold and see that the 
 dead one has gone from me ; what therefore thou hast 
 gained through the ' Tree of Knowledge,' thou hast 
 lost through the ' Tree of the Cross." So St Augustine 
 in a sermon on ' Eve and Mary,' says, " As we have 
 been made dead by a tree, so have we been made alive 
 by a tree. A tree discovered to us our nakedness, and 
 a tree has covered us with the leaves of mercy," &c. 
 Similar illustrations could be cited in great numbers. 
 Those adduced, however, serve to show how early and 
 how continuously the Tree and Cross symbol have been 
 united, and though to the latter symbol there attaches 
 a special significance, derived from an actual historical
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship. 37 
 
 event, the death of Jesus ; yet to this has been super- 
 added the significance which attached to the Tree 
 symbol in the ancient worships, and thus, in Christian 
 usage, the Cross is more often made the symbol of the 
 resurrection. 
 
 We see then a chain of gradual and progressive 
 development linking the modern doctrine of the Cross 
 as the means of life and salvation, with the Tree and 
 Serpent worship of the early world. The Life-giving 
 Cross is but a reproduction of the symbol of the life- 
 giving Tree. The Tree of life, the Book of life, the 
 Word of life, the Agathodsemon, the Serpent of ^Escula- 
 pius, the Sophia, the Logos and the Christ are seen 
 to be but natural and progressive evolutions from the 
 primitive ideas of worship, and are not special revela- 
 tions from God to man. As the Church of Eome, the 
 mother of all our modern churches, adopted the great 
 mass of Pagan ceremonial in her worship, so in her 
 theological fancies she embodied much more than was 
 worth retaining in the ancient mythological thought, 
 except for astute purposes of superstition. Eeligion 
 has thus been a gradual growth and not a spasmodic 
 revelation, and the doctrines concerning which 
 churches now differ with such Christian bitterness and 
 strife, are for the most part mere Pagan fancies. This 
 ' Tree and Serpent worship ' shews us plainly to our- 
 selves, and makes it evident beyond the power of con- 
 tradiction, that all our modern Christian doctrine has 
 its roots in Pagan thought, and has not been given 
 by supernatural revelation to man. The old nature 
 worship which deified the fertile properties of nature 
 was the earliest worship of which a record remains. 
 In this worship God was emphatically ' the Creator,' 
 and the sun and moon, the Tree and the Serpent were 
 the symbols nnder which He was adored. The first 
 chapter of Genesis, which relates the story of Eve's 
 temptation and of Adam's fall, is a plain and unmis- 
 takable reproduction of one of the myths or legends of
 
 38 Tree and Serpent Worship. 
 
 this ancient faith. It is a copy of a tradition, or rather 
 of a poetic allegory, that belonged to the earlier world. 
 But on this narrative all the doctrinal systems of our 
 modern churches depend ; it is the common founda- 
 tion on which they have all been built. The fall of 
 man is the only basis on which the doctrine of the 
 atonement can rest. If there was no fall, the atone- 
 ment is a manifest superfluity, and it could not then 
 have been the mission of Jesus of Nazareth to have 
 made one. Our knowledge of the ' Tree and Serpent 
 worship ' of the ancient heathen world proves that the 
 Jewish narrative of Adam and Eve, and the forbidden 
 fruit, is but an old heathen fancy, a fable and not a 
 fact, and, being so, there is but one opinion at which 
 reasonable men can arrive with regard to the doctrine 
 of the atonement which rests so exclusively upon it, 
 and which apart from it has no possible basis. 
 
 Surely in the presence of these facts the hour is ripe 
 for a new reformation. Our churches are giving to the 
 people the stones of fossilised and obsolete fables in 
 place of that living bread of spiritual truth, for want 
 of which the multitude are famishing. It is full time 
 for a change to come ; t o use the wise words of 
 Lessing, it is time to give up what the churches call 
 Christianity, and to give the RELIGION OF CHRIST a 
 trial. 
 
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