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The Two Babylons
Alexander Hislop
Chapter II
Section II
The Mother and Child, and the Original of the Child
While this was the theory, the first perons in
the Godhead was practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate
concern in human affairs, he was "to be worshipped through silence alone," that
is, in point of fact, he was not worshipped by the multitude at all. The same thing is
strikingly illustrated in India at this day. Though Brahma, according to the sacred books,
is the first person of the Hindoo Triad, and the religiion of Hindostan is callec by his
name, yet he is never worshipped, and there is scarcely a single Temple in all India now
in existence of those that were formerly erected to his honour. So also is it in those
countries of Europe where the Papal system is most completely developed. In Papal Italy,
as travellers universally admit (except where the Gospel has recently entered), all
appearance of worshipping the King Eternal and Invisible is almost extinct, while the
Mother and the Child are the grand objects of worship. Exactly so, in this latter respect,
also was it in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion,
supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in
images as an infant or child in his mother's arms. (Figs.
5 and 6) From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the
ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of
Isis and Osiris. * In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; ** in Asia, as Cybele
and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as
Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace,
with the boy Plutus in her arms; and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit
missionaries were astronished to find the counterpart of Madonna *** and her child as
devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being
represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman
Catholic artist had been employed to set her up. ****
* Osiris, as the child called most frequently
Horus. BUNSEN.
** KENNEDY'S Hindoo Mythology. Though
Iswara is the husband of Isi, he is also represnted as an infant at her breast.
*** The very name by which the Italians commonly
designate the Virgin, is just the translation of one of the titles of the Babylonian
goddess. As Baal or Belus was the name of the great male divinity of Babylon, so the
female divinity was called Beltis. (HESYCHIUS, Lexicon) This name has been found in
Nineveh applied to the "Mother of the gods" (VAUX'S Nineveh and Persepolis);
and in a speech attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, preserved in EUSEBII Proeparatio
Evangelii, both titles "Belus and Beltis" are conjoined as the titles of the
great Babylonian god and goddess. The Greek Belus, as representing the highest title of
the Babylonian god, was undoubtedly Baal, "The Lord." Beltis, therefore, as the
title of the female divinity, was equivalent to "Baalti," which, in English, is
"My Lady," in Latin, "Mea Domina," and, in Italina, is corrupted into
the well known "Madonna." In connection with this, it may be observed, that the
name of Juno, the classical "Queen of Heaven," which, in Greek, was Hera, also
signified "The Lady"; and that the peculiar title of Cybele or Rhea at Rome, was
Domina or "The Lady." (OVID, Fasti) Further, there is strong reason to
believe, that Athena, the well known name of Minerva at Athens, had the very same meaning.
The Hebrew Adon, "The Lord," is, with the points, pronounced Athon. We have
evidence that this name was known to the Asiatic Greeks, from whom idolatry, in a large
measure, came into European Greece, as a name of God under the form of "Athan."
Eustathius, in a note on the Periergesis of Dionysius, speaking of local names in the
district of Laodicea, says the "Athan is god." The feminine of Athan, "The
Lord," is Athan, "The Lady," which in the Attic dialect, is Athena. No
doubt, Minerva is commonly represented as a virgin; but, for all that, we learn from
Strabo that at Hierapytna in Crete (the coins of which city, says Muller, Dorians
have the Athenian symbols of Minerva upon them), she was said to be the mother of the
Corybantes by Helius, or "The Sun." It is certain that the Egyptian
Minerva, who was the prototype of the Athenian goddess, was a mother, and was styled
"Goddess Mother," or "Mother of the Gods."
**** CRABB'S Mythology. Gutzlaff thought
that Shing Moo must have been borrowed from a Popish source; and there can be no doubt,
that in the individual case to which he refers, the Pagan and the Christian stories had
been amalgamated. But Sir. J. F. Davis shows that the Chinese of Canton find such an
analogy between their own Pagan goddess Kuanyin and the Popish Madonna, that, in
conversing with Europeans, they frequently call either of them indifferently by the same
title. DAVIS' China. The first Jesuit missionaries to China also wrote home to
Europe, that they found mention in the Chinese sacred books--books unequivocally Pagan--of
a mother and child, very similar to their own Madonna and child at home.
One of the names of the Chinese Holy Mother is Ma
Tsoopo; in regard to which, see
Note
Shing Moo and
Ma Tsoopo of China
The name of Shing Moo, applied by the Chinese to
their "Holy Mother," compared with another name of the same goddess in another
province of China, strongly favours the conclusion that Shing Moo is just a synonym for
one of the well known names of the goddess-mother of Babylon. Gillespie (in his Land of
Sinim) states that the Chinese goddess-mother, or "Queen of Heaven," in the
province of Fuh-kien, is worshipped by seafaring people under the name of Ma Tsoopo. Now,
"Ama Tzupah" signifies the "Gazing Mother"; and there is much reason
to believe that Shing Moo signifies the same; for Mu was one of the forms in which Mut or
Maut, the name of the great mother, appeared in Egypt (BUNSEN'S Vocabulary); and
Shngh, in Chaldee, signifies "to look" or "gaze." The Egyptian Mu or
Maut was symbolised either by a vulture, or an eye surrounded by a vulture's wings
(WILKINSON). The symbolic meaning of the vulture may be learned from the Scriptural
expression: "There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath
not seen" (Job 28:7). The vulture was noted for its sharp sight, and hence, the eye
surrounded by the vulture's wings showed that, for some reason or other, the great mother
of the gods in Egypt had been known as "The gazer." But the idea contained in
the Egyptian symbol had evidently been borrowed from Chaldea; for Rheia, one of the most
noted names of the Babylonian mother of the gods, is just the Chaldee form of the Hebrew
Rhaah, which signifies at once "a gazing woman" and a "vulture." The
Hebrew Rhaah itself is also, according to a dialectical variation, legitimately pronounced
Rheah; and hence the name of the great goddess-mother of Assyria was sometimes Rhea, and
sometimes Rheia. In Greece, the same idea was evidently attached to Athena or Minerva,
whom we have seen to have been by some regarded as the Mother of the children of the sun.
For one of her distinguishing titles was Ophthalmitis (SMITH'S Classical Dictionary,
"Athena"), thereby pointing her out as the goddess of "the eye."
It was no doubt to indicate the same thing that, as the Egyptian Maut wore a vulture on
her head, so the Athenian Minerva was represented as wearing a helmet with two eyes,
or eye-holes, in the front of the helmet. (VAUX'S Antiquities)
Having thus traced the gazing mother over the
earth, is it asked, What can have given origin to such a name as applied to the mother of
the gods? A fragment of Sanchuniathon, in regard to the Phoenician mythology, furnishes us
with a satisfactory reply. There it is said that Rheia conceived by Kronos, who was her
own brother, and yet was known as the father of the gods, and in consequence brought forth
a son who was called Muth, that is, as Philo-Byblius correctly interprets the word,
"Death." As Sanchuniathon expressly distinguishes this "father of the
gods" from "Hypsistos," The Most High, * we naturally recall what Hesiod
says in regard to his Kronos, the father of the gods, who, for a certain wicked deed, was
called Titan, and cast down to hell. (Theogonia)
* In reading Sanchuniathon, it is necessary to
bear in mind what Philo-Byblius, his translator, states at the end of the Phenician
History--viz., that history and mythology were mingled together in that work.
The Kronos to whom Hesiod refers is evidently at
bottom a different Kronos from the human father of the gods, or Nimrod, whose history
occupies so large a place in this work. He is plainly none other than Satan himself; the
name Titan, or Teitan, as it is sometimes given, being, as we have elsewhere concluded,
only the Chaldee form of Sheitan, the common name of the grand Adversary among the Arabs,
in the very region where the Chaldean Mysteries were originally concocted,--that Adversary
who was ultimately the real father of all the Pagan gods,--and who (to make the title of
Kronos, "the Horned One," appropriate to him also) was symbolised by the
Kerastes, or Horned serpent. All "the brethren" of this father of the
gods, who were implicated in his rebellion against his own father, the "God of
Heaven," were equally called by the "reproachful" name "Titans";
but, inasmuch as he was the ringleader in the rebellion, he was, of course, Titan
by way of eminence. In this rebellion of Titan, the goddess of the earth was concerned,
and the result was that (removing the figure under which Hesiod has hid the fact) it
became naturally impossible that the God of Heaven should have children upon earth--a
plain allusion to the Fall.
Now, assuming that this is the "Father of
the gods," by whom Rhea, whose common title is that of the Mother of the gods, and
who is also identified with Ge, or the Earth-goddess, had the child called Muth, or Death,
who could this "Mother of the gods" be, but just our Mother Eve? And the name
Rhea, or "The Gazer," bestowed on her, is wondrously significant. It was as
"the gazer" that the mother of mankind conceived by Satan, and brought forth
that deadly birth, under which the world has hitherto groaned. It was through her eyes
that the fatal connection was first formed between her and the grand Adversary, under the
form of a serpent, whose name, Nahash, or Nachash, as it stands in the Hebrew of the Old
Testament, also signifies "to view attentively," or "to gaze" (Gen
3:6) "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant
to the eyes," &c., "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave
also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Here, then, we have the pedigree of
sin and death; "Lust, when it had conceived, brought forth sin; and sin, when it was
finished, brought forth death" (James 1:15). Though Muth, or Death, was the son of
Rhea, this progeny of hers came to be regarded, not as Death in the abstract, but as the god
of death; therefore, says Philo-Byblius, Muth was interpreted not only as death, but as
Pluto. (SANCHUN) In the Roman mythology, Pluto was regarded as on a level, for honour,
with Jupiter (OVID, Fasti); and in Egypt, we have evidence that Osiris, "the
seed of the woman," was the "Lord of heaven," and king of hell, or
"Pluto" (WILKINSON; BUNSEN); and it can be shown by a large induction of
particulars (and the reader has somewhat of the evidence presented in this volume), that
he was none other than the Devil himself, supposed to have become incarnate; who, though
through the first transgression, and his connection with the woman, he had brought sin and
death into the world, had, nevertheless, by means of them, brought innumerable benefits to
mankind. As the name Pluto has the very same meaning as Saturn, "The hidden
one," so, whatever other aspect this name had, as applied to the father of the gods,
it is to Satan, the Hidden Lord of hell, ultimately that all came at last to be traced
back; for the different myths about Saturn, when carefully examined, show that he was at
once the Devil, the father of all sin and idolatry, who hid himself under the
disguise of the serpent,--and Adam, who hid himself among the trees of the
garden,--and Noah, who lay hid for a whole year in the ark,--and Nimrod, who was hid
in the secrecy of the Babylonian Mysteries. It was to glorify Nimrod that the whole
Chaldean system of iniquity was formed. He was known as Nin, "the son," and his
wife as Rhea, who was called Ammas, "The Mother." The name Rhea, as applied to
Semiramis, had another meaning from what it had when applied to her, who was really the
primeval goddess, the "mother of gods and men." But yet, to make out the
full majesty of her character, it was necessary that she should be identified with that
primeval goddess; and, therefore, although the son she bore in her arms was represented as
he who was born to destroy death, yet she was often represented with the very symbols of
her who brought death into the world. And so was it also in the different countries where
the Babylonian system spread.
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