and, agreeably to this notion, the annual ceremony of his inclosure within CHAP. III. the floating Moon or ark was reckoned commemorative of his death and burial. His boat in short was the Baris of the infernal mariner Charon : and in it the deceased god floated, during his allotted period of confinement, upon the waters of the sacred Acherusian lake which communicated with the infernal river Nile.

When the ark of Osiris was thus viewed as a coffin, it was termed Soros: and, by way of exhibiting the descent of the god into Hades, his representative the bull Apis, whenever he died, was regularly buried in it'. Yet this same bull appears in the Bembine table floating on the surface of the water in the ship of Osiris: and Diodorus informs us, that every new Apis, into each of which the soul of the deity was believed successively to transmigrate, was solemnly inaugurated into his office by being placed in a boat upon the Nile'. The word Sor itself indeed, or as the Greeks wrote it Soros, is not an arbitrary term, vaguely used to describe a coffin. It properly signifies an or or cow: and it denotes a coffin, only because a cow was symbolical of the ark or coffin of Osiris. Hence we are indifferently told, that the god was inclosed in an ark and in a wooden cow: and hence, as Sor, which properly denotes a cow, is employed to designate an ark or coffin; so conversely Theba, which properly signifies an ark, is used as the appellation of the sacred cow which typified the ship of Isis.

3. These mythologic speculations, which make Hades to be the womb of the great mother, whether she be viewed as a personification of the Earth or of the Ark, have given rise to certain peculiarities of language, which are too singular to be passed over in silence.

Among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, every dead person, who had duly received the rites of sepulture, was indifferently said to enter into his Soros or coffin and to embark in the Soros or ship of Charon. Among the old Druids, an entrance into the grave by death was termed an entrance into the ship of the Earth'. And, among the Arabs, as we may collect from a very remarkable expression in the book of Job, the inclosure of the

' Plut. de Isid. p. 368, 362. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. p. 323. 2 Diod. Bibl. lib. i. p. 76.

Davies's Mythol. p. 231.

BOOK V. deceased within the gloomy interior of a sepulchral cavern was deemed a return into the womb of the great universal mother'.

4. The entrance of Osiris into the ark being the same as his death or descent into the infernal regions, his quitting the ark was of course esteemed his revival or return from Hades. It was likewise viewed as his birth from the womb of his mystic parent the ship-goddess.

This was the regeneration of the Mysteries: and, accordingly, every aspirant, imitating the sufferings and final triumph of the great father, after descending into a mimic hell and after experiencing an inclosure within the womb of the goddess, returned again to the light of heaven and claimed to have been born anew from the womb of her who floated as a ship upon the deluge.

V. There is yet another character sustained by the great mother; which might indeed have been inferred from analogy, which for the most part appears but dimly in the mythologic system of the Gentiles, but which at times is nevertheless positively and explicitly ascribed to her. As the great father is Adam transmigratively reappearing in the person of Noah; so the great mother is Eve transmigratively reappearing in the person of the wife of Noah. Respecting this ancient personage it would be said in the mystic phraseology of the Hindoo divines, that the Earth, the Moon, the Ark, and even Universal Nature itself, were all forms of the first divine female, the general parent of the human race.

1. The most direct proof of the position now before us is to be found in the mythology of Hindostan.

We are told, that Swayambhuva or the first Menu had for his consort Satarupa; that this primeval pair bore also the names of Adima and Iva, pronounced Adim and Eve; that Adim was the first of men, as Eve was the first of women; and that these two were the common parents of all mankind. We are further told, that Satarupa was likewise the wife of Menu-Satyavrata, who escaped with seven companions in an ark when the whole world perished by water: for, as Menu-Satyavrata was a reappearance of Menu-Swayambhuva, so this younger Satarupa was similarly a

⚫ Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. Job i. 21.

reappearance of the most ancient Satarupa who was distinguished by the CHAP. III. name of Eve or Iva. Hence it is evident, that, agreeably to the old doctrine of a succession of similar worlds each tenanted by the same inhabitants as its predecessor, Satarupa or Iva is at once the consort of Adam and of Noah; or rather, to speak in the language of the Brahmens, that she is the consort of the great father, who with his three sons is always manifested at the commencement of every new mundane system. This however is not the only part of Satarupa's character: she is the chief goddess of Hindostan, as well as the transmigrating mother of the human race. Menu and she are declared to be the same as Isa and Isi, or as Brahma and Saraswati: and accordingly she is celebrated as the mother of the World, and is identified with the mysterious Yoni or female energy of nature. But Isi, as we have already seen, is at once the Earth, the Moon, the Ark, the goddess of the infernal regions, and the female principle of fecundity: here we additionally find her to be the first woman both of the old and of the new world, the consort both of Noah and of Adam'.

Since Isi is certainly the Isis of Egypt, we must conclude that the same character was sustained also by the latter goddess; and thence by Ceres, Venus, Astartè, Rhea, and all the other divinities with whom she is severally identified. I am not able indeed to bring direct proof in every case: but the propriety of such a conclusion is greatly corroborated by our finding, that the ancient Druids spoke of their Ceridwen just as the Hindoos speak of their Isi or Satarupa. The Celtic goddess was the Earth, the Moon, the Ship of the deluge, and the regent of Hades: but she was likewise viewed as the first woman, and was revered as a personification of the gencrative powers*.

2. Such being ultimately the character of the great mother, we shall perceive the reason, why she is feigned, like the great father, to have mysteriously triplicated herself.

As the primeval Brahm or Menu is multiplied into the forms of the three younger gods; so the primeval Isi or Satarupa is multiplied into the

Asiat. Res. vol. v. p. 247, 251, 252., vol. xi. p. 111, 112.. Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 85, 89, 90, 101, 104.

2 Davies's. Mythol. p. 184.. Pag. Idol.

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BOOK V.

forms of the three younger goddesses. These, under the names of Saraswati, Parvati, and Lacshmi, are severally the wives of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnou while Isi herself, from whose unity they all proceed and into whose unity they may again be resolved, is eminently the consort of the great paternal Isa; from whom, in a similar manner, the three gods proceed, and into whom they similarly resolve themselves. This double unity male and female, producing a double triad of gods and goddesses, and thus completing the sacred number eight, is manifestly Adam and Eve with their three sons and three daughters at the commencement of the antediluvian world, and Noah and his wife with their three sons and three daughters at the commencement of the postdiluvian world. Yet, as the mother was made to sustain certain additional characters; so the daughters, being viewed as only portions or emanations of their great parent, were equally made to sustain additional characters. Isi existing alike in all the three; each, as a form of Isi, is at once the Earth, the Moon, the Ark, and the regent of Hades. Hence originated the great triple goddess of the Gentiles, whose fabled nature bears the strictest analogy to that of their great triple god. The three-fold Isi of Hindostan is evidently the three-fold Isis or thrice invoked Dark Goddess of Egypt, the three-fold Night or black Venus of the Orphic poet, the three-fold Diana of Greece and Scythia, the three Parca or Erinnyes of the fabled Inferum, the three floating eggs from which the three great gods were produced, the three Worlds into which the Universe is feigned to be divided '.

3. What is thus variously set forth in the mystic jargon of the epoptæ, is sometimes literally and unreservedly declared to us.

Saturn, whom we have seen to be palpably the same as Adam reappearing in the person of Noah, is said to be the husband of Rhea or Opis, the Satar-Upa of the Hindoos. These are the parents of three sons and three daughters and, agreeably to their number, the World, that universal empire of their father, is divided for them into three portions. The same

'Asiat. Res. vol. xi. p. 110, 111, 112. vol. iii. p. 161, 163. Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 21, 22, 33, 70, 81, 116, 119, 125, 136. Bryant on the plagues of Egypt. p. 170. Cudworth's Intell. Syst. b. i. c. 4. p. 414. properly 354. Orph. Fragm. p. 406. Pearson on the Creed. vol. ii. p. 57 Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 40. Orph. Hymn. lviii. Ixix.

genealogical arrangement occurs in the fable of Phtha or Vulcan; whom CHAP. III. Jamblichus identifies with the navicular Osiris, and who is celebrated as the wonderful architect of the floating World. We learn from Pherecydes, that Vulcan espoused Cabira, the daughter of Proteus; who bore to him the three Cabiri and the three Cabiræ'. Here the sea-nymph Cabira evidently occupies the place of Rhea or Isi or Iva: and accordingly she will prove to be the same person, as the ocean-born Venus, and as the navicular Ceres. Euthymius tells us, that Venus was a Cabira; and Ceres, whom Mnaseas enumerates in his list of the Samothracian Cabiri, is by Pausanias styled Cabiria. The complete number of the Cabiric deities, as given by Pherecydes, amounts precisely to eight; namely a father and a mother, with three sons and three daughters. Now, as the father was one of those eight great gods whom the Egyptians represented sailing together in a ship, and as he is likewise identified with Osiris whom Typhon set afloat in an ark; as the Cabiri are said to have constructed the first ship, as they are fabled to have consecrated the relics of the ocean, and as they were deemed the tutelary gods of navigation: the whole Cabiric family, which consists of four males and four females, must be collectively those eight persons, who were preserved in an Ark when all the rest of mankind were overwhelmed by the waters of the deluge.

Jamb. de myster. sect. viii. c. 3. Pherec. apud Strab. Geog. lib. x. p. 472. Herod. lib. iii. c. 37.

2

Euthym. Zegab. Panop. apud Seld. de diis Syr. synt. ii. c. 4. p. 211, Pausan. Boot. P. 578.

3 Euseb. Præp. Evan. lib. i, c. 10. Aristoph. Iren. ver. 275. Schol. in loc.