Part 20 (1/2)
XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
”And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction, introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, acc.u.mulated the allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities of their metaphysics.
”These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and circ.u.mstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, served to form them into new combinations.
XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Wors.h.i.+p of the Sun, under the cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
”In const.i.tuting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews towards the wors.h.i.+p of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened this propensity from day to day. As long as the const.i.tution of the state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws opposed these innovations, and r.e.t.a.r.ded their progress; nevertheless the high places were full of idols; and the G.o.d Sun had his chariot and horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of Yahouh; but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had dissolved the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and solicited by their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination for profane opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.
First, the a.s.syrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the tribes, filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which very soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this defenceless country, introduced their opinions; and the religion of Moses was doubly mutilated. Besides the priests and great men, being transported to Babylon and educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans, imbibed, during a residence of seventy years, the whole of their theology; and from that moment the dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan), the archangel Michael,* the ancient of days (Ormuzd), the rebel angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by his total silence respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
* ”The names of the angels and of the months, such as Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with the Jews:” says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem. See Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365 angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels, seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
”The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient national wors.h.i.+p; but the former, aided by the propensities of the people and their habits already contracted, and supported by the Persians, their deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the latter; and the Sons of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
* ”The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists,” says Diogenes Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, ”is derived from that of the Magi, and many a.s.sert that of the Jews to have the same origin.” Lib. 1. c. 9. Megasthenes, an historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
”A fortuitous a.n.a.logy between two leading ideas was highly favorable to this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less surprising in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of its formation.
”After the a.s.syrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some judicious men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not fail to predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular turn of being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and regeneration, uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants, in their enthusiasm, had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to re-establish the nation in its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become once more a powerful, a conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of an empire extended over the whole earth.
”Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with the impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer, who was to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of David.
”On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly a.n.a.logous. The cry there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king, G.o.d, conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between the oracles of different nations, and those of the prophets, excited the attention of the Jews; and doubtless the prophets had the art to compose their descriptions after the style and genius of the sacred books employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was therefore a general expectation in Judea of a great amba.s.sador, a final Saviour; when a singular circ.u.mstance determined the epoch of his coming.
* This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the ancients.
”It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided into two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good, terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to terminate in six thousand more.
”By these records, the first authors had understood the annual revolution of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts), and the two systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of six thousand. These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained, having received an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and astrological sense, it happened that the annual world was taken for the secular world, the thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of years; and supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in the age of evil, they inferred that it would end with the six thousand pretended years.*
* We have already seen this tradition current among the Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas. Of this description is the idea of the four ages of the world among the Indians. Originally these four ages were merely the four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver; autumn the age of Venus, or of bra.s.s; and winter the age of Mars, or of iron. Afterwards when astronomers invented the great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which were thus measured were easily converted into so many revolutions of the sun. Thus the different periods of creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical periods. In the same manner the creation of the world has been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as these different seasons have served for the fict.i.tious period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been adopted by different nations for the commencement of an ordinary year. Among the Egyptians this period fell upon the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the sun enters cancer. Among the Persians the year commenced at first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from thence the first Christians were led to suppose that G.o.d created the world in the spring: this opinion is also favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created by the G.o.d of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or G.o.ds in the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word constantly means in the Hebrew books. If we farther observe that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world was created by the decans, by those very genii whom, according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn, and who were called Elohim. It may be farther asked why the plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me, and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to wit, the Elohim. The reason of this etymology is to be found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose G.o.ds were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the Persians, and Egyptian decans.
”Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to reckon near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the world.* This coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind.
Nothing was thought of but the approaching end. They consulted the hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term; the great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to put an end to so many calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some person finally was said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort was sufficient to establish a general certainty. Popular report became an established fact: the imaginary being was realized; and all the circ.u.mstances of mythological tradition, being a.s.sembled around this phantom, produced a regular history, of which it was no longer permitted to doubt.
* According to the computation of the Seventy, the period elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation was princ.i.p.ally followed. It is well known how much, in the first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the world agitated the minds of men. In the sequel, the general councils encouraged by finding that the general conflagration did not come, p.r.o.nounced the expectation that prevailed heretical, and its believers were called Millenarians; a circ.u.mstance curious enough, since it is evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
”These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
(Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
”By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed, on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
* ”The Persians,” says Chardin, ”call the constellation of the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology of the Phoenicians,” for Pherecydes, their disciple and the master of Pythagoras, said ”that Ophioneus Serpentinus had been chief of the rebels against Jupiter.” See Mars. Ficin.
Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2. I shall add that ephah (with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the man.*
* In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to attract, to draw after us.