The Two Babylons
Alexander Hislop
Chapter V
Section IV
The Rosary and the Worship of the Sacred Heart
Every one knows how thoroughly Romanist is the
use of the rosary; and how the devotees of Rome mechanically tell their prayers upon their
beads. The rosary, however, is no invention of the Papacy. It is of the highest antiquity,
and almost universally found among Pagan nations. The rosary was used as a sacred
instrument among the ancient Mexicans. It is commonly employed among the Brahmins of
Hindustan; and in the Hindoo sacred books reference is made to it again and again. Thus,
in an account of the death of Sati, the wife of Shiva, we find the rosary introduced:
"On hearing of this event, Shiva fainted from grief; then, having recovered, he
hastened to the banks of the river of heaven, where he beheld lying the body of his
beloved Sati, arrayed in white garments, holding a rosary in her hand, and glowing
with splendour, bright as burnished gold." In Thibet it has been used from time
immemorial, and among all the millions in the East that adhere to the Buddhist faith. The
following, from Sir John F. Davis, will show how it is employed in China: "From the
Tartar religion of the Lamas, the rosary of 108 beads has become a part of the ceremonial
dress attached to the nine grades of official rank. It consists of a necklace of stones
and coral, nearly as large as a pigeon's egg, descending to the waist, and distinguished
by various beads, according to the quality of the wearer. There is a small rosary of
eighteen beads, of inferior size, with which the bonzes count their prayers and
ejaculations exactly as in the Romish ritual. The laity in China sometimes wear this
at the wrist, perfumed with musk, and give it the name of Heang-choo, or fragrant
beads." In Asiatic Greece the rosary was commonly used, as may be seen from the image
of the Ephesian Diana. In Pagan Rome the same appears to have been the case. The necklaces
which the Roman ladies wore were not merely ornamental bands about the neck, but hung down
the breast, just as the modern rosaries do; and the name by which they were called
indicates the use to which they were applied. "Monile," the ordinary word
for a necklace, can have no other meaning than that of a "Remembrancer." Now,
whatever might be the pretence, in the first instance, for the introduction of such
"Rosaries" or "Remembrancers," the very idea of such a thing is
thoroughly Pagan. * It supposes that a certain number of prayers must be regularly gone
over; it overlooks the grand demand which God makes for the heart, and leads those who use
them to believe that form and routine are everything, and that "they must be heard
for their much speaking."
* "Rosary" itself seems to be from the
Chaldee "Ro," "thought," and "Shareh," "director."
In the Church of Rome a
new kind of devotion has of late been largely introduced, in which the beads play an
important part, and which shows what new and additional strides in the direction of the
old Babylonian Paganism the Papacy every day is steadily making. I refer to the
"Rosary of the Sacred Heart." It is not very long since the worship of the
"Sacred Heart" was first introduced; and now, everywhere it is the favourite
worship. It was so in ancient Babylon, as is evident from the Babylonian system as it
appeared in Egypt. There also a "Sacred Heart" was venerated. The
"Heart" was one of the sacred symbols of Osiris when he was born again, and
appeared as Harpocrates, or the infant divinity, * borne in the arms of his mother Isis.
* The name Harpocrates, as shown by Bunsen,
signifies "Horus, the child."
Therefore, the fruit of the Egyptian Persea was
peculiarly sacred to him, from its resemblance to the "HUMAN HEART." Hence this
infant divinity was frequently represented with a heart, or the heart-shaped fruit of the
Persea, in one of his hands (Fig. 40). The
following extract, from John Bell's criticism on the antiques in the Picture Gallery of
Florence, will show that the boyish divinity had been represented elsewhere also in
ancient times in the same manner. Speaking of a statue of Cupid, he says it is "a
fair, full, fleshy, round boy, in fine and sportive action, tossing back a heart."
Thus the boy-god came to be regarded as the "god of the heart," in other words,
as Cupid, or the god of love. To identify this infant divinity, with his father "the
mighty hunter," he was equipped with "bow and arrows"; and in the hands of
the poets, for the amusement of the profane vulgar, this sportive boy-god was celebrated
as taking aim with his gold-tipped shafts at the hearts of mankind. His real character,
however, as the above statement shows, and as we have seen reason already to conclude, was
far higher and of a very different kind. He was the woman's seed. Venus and her son Cupid,
then, were none other than the Madonna and the child. Looking at the subject in this
light, the real force and meaning of the language will appear, which Virgil puts into the
mouth of Venus, when addressing the youthful Cupid:--
"My son, my strength,
whose mighty power alone
Controls the thunderer on his awful throne,
To thee thy much afflicted mother flies,
And on thy succour and thy faith relies."
From what we have seen already as to the power
and glory of the Goddess Mother being entirely built on the divine character
attributed to her Son, the reader must see how exactly this is brought out, when
the Son is called "THE STRENGTH" of his Mother. As the boy-god, whose symbol was
the heart, was recognised as the god of childhood, this very satisfactorily
accounts for one of the peculiar customs of the Romans. Kennett tells us, in his Antiquities,
that the Roman youths, in their tender years, used to wear a golden ornament suspended
from their necks, called bulla, which was hollow, and heart-shaped. Barker,
in his work on Cilicia, while admitting that the Roman bulla was heart-shaped,
further states, that "it was usual at the birth of a child to name it after some
divine personage, who was supposed to receive it under his care"; but that the
"name was not retained beyond infancy, when the bulla was given up." Who so
likely to be the god under whose guardianship the Roman children were put, as the god
under one or other of his many names whose express symbol they wore, and who, while he was
recognised as the great and mighty war-god, who also exhibited himself in his
favourite form as a little child?
The veneration of the "sacred heart"
seems also to have extended to India, for there Vishnu, the Mediatorial god, in one of his
forms, with the mark of the wound in his foot, in consequence of which he died, and
for which such lamentation is annually made, is represented as wearing a heart
suspended on his breast (Fig. 41). It is
asked, How came it that the "Heart" became the recognised symbol of the Child of
the great Mother? The answer is, "The Heart" in Chaldee is "BEL"; and
as, at first, after the check given to idolatry, almost all the most important elements of
the Chaldean system were introduced under a veil, so under that veil they continued to be
shrouded from the gaze of the uninitiated, after the first reason--the reason of fear--had
long ceased to operate. Now, the worship of the "Sacred Heart" was just, under a
symbol, the worship of the "Sacred Bel," that mighty one of Babylon, who
had died a martyr for idolatry; for Harpocrates, or Horus, the infant god, was regarded as
Bel, born again. That this was in very deed the case, the following extract from Taylor,
in one of his notes to his translation of the Orphic Hymns, will show. "While
Bacchus," says he, was "beholding himself" with admiration "in a
mirror, he was miserably torn to pieces by the Titans, who, not content with this cruelty,
first boiled his members in water, and afterwards roasted them in the fire; but while they
were tasting his flesh thus dressed, Jupiter, excited by the steam, and perceiving the
cruelty of the deed, hurled his thunder at the Titans, but committed his members to
Apollo, the brother of Bacchus, that they might be properly interred. And this being
performed, Dionysius [i.e., Bacchus], (whose HEART, during his laceration, was snatched
away by Minerva and preserved) by a new REGENERATION, again emerged, and he being restored
to his pristine life and integrity, afterwards filled up the number of the gods."
This surely shows, in a striking light, the peculiar sacredness of the heart
of Bacchus; and that the regeneration of his heart has the very meaning I have
attached to it--viz., the new birth or new incarnation of Nimrod or Bel. When Bel, however
was born again as a child, he was, as we have seen, represented as an incarnation of the
sun. Therefore, to indicate his connection with the fiery and burning sun, the
"sacred heart" was frequently represented as a "heart of flame."
So the "Sacred Heart" of Rome is actually worshipped as a flaming heart,
as may be seen on the rosaries devoted to that worship. Of what use, then, is it to say
that the "Sacred Heart" which Rome worships is called by the name of
"Jesus," when not only is the devotion given to a material image borrowed from
the worship of the Babylonian Antichrist, but when the attributes ascribed to that
"Jesus" are not the attributes of the living and loving Saviour, but the
genuine attributes of the ancient Moloch or Bel?
