Part 7 (1/2)
It is not strange that, thousands of years ago, men wors.h.i.+pped the Sun, and that to-day that wors.h.i.+p continues among the Pa.r.s.ees. Originally they looked beyond the orb to the invisible G.o.d, of whom the Sun's light, seemingly identical with generation and life, was the manifestation and outflowing. Long before the Chaldaean shepherds watched it on their plains, it came up regularly, as it now does, in the morning, like a G.o.d, and again sank, like a king retiring, in the west, to return again in due time in the same array of majesty. We wors.h.i.+p Immutability. It was that steadfast, immutable character of the Sun that the men of Baalbec wors.h.i.+pped. His light-giving and life-giving powers were secondary attributes. The one grand idea that compelled wors.h.i.+p was the characteristic of G.o.d which they saw reflected in his light, and fancied they saw in its originality the changelessness of Deity. He had seen thrones crumble, earthquakes shake the world and hurl down mountains. Beyond Olympus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, he had gone daily to his abode, and had come daily again in the morning to behold the temples they built to his wors.h.i.+p. They personified him as BRAHMA, AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS, MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the nations that did so grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the great columns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and was borne off on the wind, and still he shone on crumbling column and architrave. The roof fell cras.h.i.+ng on the pavement, and he shone in on the Holy of Holies with unchanging rays. It was not strange that men wors.h.i.+pped the Sun.
There is a water-plant, on whose broad leaves the drops of water roll about without uniting, like drops of mercury. So arguments on points of faith, in politics or religion, roll over the surface of the mind. An argument that convinces one mind has no effect on another. Few intellects, or souls that are the negations of intellect have any logical power or capacity. There is a singular obliquity in the human mind that makes the false logic more effective than the true with nine-tenths of those who are regarded as men of intellect. Even among the judges, not one in ten can argue logically. Each mind sees the truth, distorted through its own medium. Truth, to most men, is like matter in the spheroidal state. Like a drop of cold water on the surface of a red-hot metal plate, it dances, trembles, and spins, and never comes into contact with it; and the mind may be plunged into truth, as the hand moistened with sulphurous acid may into melted metal, and be not even warmed by the immersion.
The word _Khairum_ or _Khurum_ is a compound one. Gesenius renders _Khurum_ by the word _n.o.ble_ or _free-born: Khur_ meaning _white, n.o.ble_. It also means the opening of a window, the socket of the eye. _Khri_ also means _white_, or an _opening_; and _Khris_, the orb of the Sun, in _Job_ viii. 13 and x. 7. _Krishna_ is the Hindu Sun-G.o.d. _Khur_, the Parsi word, is the literal name of the Sun.
From _Kur_ or _Khur_, the Sun, comes Khora, a name of Lower Egypt. The Sun, Bryant says in his Mythology, was called _Kur_; and Plutarch says that the Persians called the Sun _Kuros. Kurios, Lord_, in Greek, like _Adona, Lord_, in Phnician and Hebrew, was applied to the Sun.
Many places were sacred to the Sun, and called _Kura, Kuria, Kuropolis, Kurene, Kureschata, Kuresta_, and _Corusia_ in Scythia.
The Egyptian Deity called by the Greeks ”_Horus_,” was _Her-Ra_. or _Har-oeris, Hor_ or _Har_, the Sun. _Hari_ is a Hindu name of the Sun.
_Ari-al, Ar-es, Ar, Aryaman, Areimonios_, the AR meaning _Fire_ or _Flame_, are of the same kindred. _Hermes_ or _Har-mes_, (_Aram, Remus, Haram, Harameias_), was Kadmos, the Divine Light or Wisdom. _Mar-kuri_, says Movers, is _Mar_, the Sun.
In the Hebrew, AOOR, is Light, Fire, or the Sun. Cyrus, said Ctesias, was so named from _Kuros_, the Sun. _Kuris_, Hesychius says, was Adonis.
Apollo, the Sun-G.o.d, was called _Kurraios_, from _Kurra_, a city in Phocis. The people of _Kurene_, originally Ethiopians or Cuthites, wors.h.i.+pped the Sun under the t.i.tle of _Achoor_ and _Achor_.
We know, through a precise testimony in the ancient annals of Tsur, that the princ.i.p.al festivity of _Mal-karth_, the incarnation of the Sun at the Winter Solstice, held at Tsur, was called his _rebirth_ or his _awakening_, and that it was celebrated by means of a pyre, on which the G.o.d was supposed to regain, through the aid of fire, a new life. This festival was celebrated in the month _Peritius (Barith)_, the second day of which corresponded to the 25th of December. KHUR-UM, King of Tyre, _Movers_ says, first performed this ceremony. These facts we learn from _Josephus, Servius_ on the aeneid, and the _Dionysiacs_ of _Nonnus_; and through a coincidence that cannot be fortuitous, the same day was at Rome the _Dies Natalis Solis Invicti_, the festal day of the invincible Sun. Under this t.i.tle, HERCULES, HAR-_acles_, was wors.h.i.+pped at Tsur.
Thus, while the temple was being erected, the death and resurrection of a Sun-G.o.d was annually represented at Tsur, by Solomon's ally, at the winter solstice, by the pyre of MAL-KARTH, the Tsurian Haracles.
AROERIS or HAR-_oeris_, the elder HORUS, is from the same old root that in the Hebrew has the form _Aur_, or, with the definite article prefixed, _Haur_, Light, or _the_ Light, splendor, flame, the Sun and his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the point in a circle; of the Elder, a pair of eyes; and the festival of the thirtieth day of the month _Epiphi_, when the sun and moon were supposed to be in the same right line with the earth, was called ”_The birth-day of the eyes of Horus_.”
In a papyrus published by Champollion, this G.o.d is styled ”_Har-oeri_, Lord of the Solar Spirits, the beneficent eye of the Sun.” Plutarch calls him ”_Har-pocrates_;” but there is no trace of the latter part of the name in the hieroglyphic legends. He is the son of OSIRIS and ISIS; and is represented sitting on a throne supported by _lions_; the same word, in Egyptian, meaning _Lion_ and _Sun_. So Solomon made a great throne of ivory, plated with gold, with six steps, at each arm of which was a lion, and one on each side to each step, making seven on each side.
Again, the Hebrew word [Hebrew], _Khi_, means ”_living;_” and [Hebrew]
_ram, ”was, or shall be, raised or lifted up_.” The latter is the same as [Hebrew], [Hebrew], [Hebrew], rom, arom, harum, whence _Aram_, for Syria, or _Aramaea, High_-land. _Khairum_, therefore, would mean ”_was raised up to life, or living_.”
So, in Arabic, _hrm_, an unused root, meant, _”was high,” ”made great,”
”exalted_;” and _Hirm_ means an _ox_, the symbol of the Sun in Taurus, at the Vernal Equinox.
KHURUM, therefore, improperly called _Hiram_, is KHUR-OM, the same as _Her-ra_, _Her-mes_, and _Her-acles_, the ”_Heracles Tyrius Invictus_,”
the personification of Light and the Son, the Mediator, Redeemer, and Saviour. From the Egyptian word _Ra_ came the Coptic _Ouro_, and the Hebrew _Aur_, Light. _Har-oeri_, is _Hor_ or _Har_, the chief or _master_. _Hor_ is also heat; and _hora_, season or hour; and hence in several African dialects, as names of the Sun, _Airo, Ayero, eer, uiro, ghurrah_, and the like. The royal name rendered _Pharaoh_, was PHRA, that is, _Pai-ra_, the Sun.
The legend of the contest between _Hor-ra_ and _Set_, or _Set-nu-bi_, the same as _Bar_ or _Bal_, is older than that of the strife between _Osiris_ and _Typhon_; as old, at least, as the nineteenth dynasty. It is called in the Book of the Dead, ”The day of the battle between Horus and Set.” The later myth connects itself with Phoenicia and Syria. The body of OSIRIS went ash.o.r.e at _Gebal_ or _Byblos_, sixty miles above Tsur. You will not fail to notice that in the name of each murderer of Khurum, that of the Evil G.o.d Bal is found.
Har-oeri was the G.o.d of TIME, as well as of Life. The Egyptian legend was that the King of Byblos cut down the tamarisk-tree containing the body of OSIRIS, and made of it a column for his palace. Isis, employed in the palace, obtained possession of the column, took the body out of it, and carried it away. Apuleius describes her as ”a beautiful female, over whose divine neck her long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets;”
and in the procession female attendants, with ivory combs, seemed to dress and ornament the royal hair of the G.o.ddess. The palm-tree, and the lamp in the shape of a boat, appeared in the procession. If the symbol we are speaking of is not a mere modern invention, it is to these things it alludes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Hieroglyph]
The ident.i.ty of the legends is also confirmed by this hieroglyphic picture, copied from an ancient Egyptian monument, which may also enlighten you as to the Lion's grip and the Master's gavel.
[Hebrew: ??], in the ancient Phoenician character, [Symbols], and in the Samaritan, [Symbols], A B, (the two letters representing the numbers 1, 2, or Unity and Duality, means _Father_, and is a primitive noun, common to all the Semitic languages.)
It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or Ruler, Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet.
[Hebrew: ???] simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when it precedes another word, and in English the preposition ”of” is interposed, as [Hebrew: ???-??], Abi-Al, the Father of Al.