The Druids
"To write concerning the antiquity of the Jews, who they were originally, and how they revolted against the Egyptians, and what country they traveled over, and what countries they seized upon afterward, and how they were removed out of them, I think this not a fit opportunity, and on other accounts, also superfluous; and this because many Jews before me have composed the history of our ancestors very exactly; as have some of the Greeks done it also, and have translated our histories into their own tongue, and have not much mistaken the truth with their histories. But then where the writers of these affairs, and our own prophets leave off, thence shall I take my rise, and begin my history." Josephus's Preface to the Wars of The Jews.
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"The Ionians founded Twelve cities in Asia, and refused to enlarge the number. I imagine, of their having been divided into Twelve states when they lived in the Pelopponnese; just as the Acheans who drove them out are at this day." Herodotus, Book I.145.
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"This was the course of events at that time in Palestine; for this is the name that has been given from old to the whole country extending from Phoenicia to Egypt along the inner sea. They also have another name that they have acquired: the country has been named Judaea, and the people themselves Jews.
I do not know how this title came to be given them, but it applies also to the rest of mankind, although of alien race, who affect their customs. This class also exists among the Romans." Dio's Roman History, Book XXXVII.
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"Such are the principle features of the ancient Israelitish worship, and in every point they agree with the Druidical. The same rites, the same ceremonies, the same feasts, the same God, and in fine, the same religion. If the comparison were carried still further, the identity would be even more striking...
It is not, however, in the more modern times of Greece, when under the jurisdiction of the Roman governors, that we are to expect to find traces of Druidical or Israelitish worship, but in the times of her Homers and Hesiods; then we discover that the same religion and the same rites were in use among the Greeks as among the Egyptians, Persians, Arabians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Gauls, Estruscans, Hindus, Israelites, and Druids." Identity of the Religions Called Druidical and Hebrew, London, 1829.
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"So then if we analyze a religion we find that the lowest of the people know little of it and cling desperately to many misconceptions and superstitions; and that from this travesty of what really is, rises grade after grade...a less erroneous expression of it, until we arrive at that class of souls who consciously seek to welcome the light in all its fulness and make this the one object of their lives. Here then we expect to find the real points of contact between the religion and its sister faiths, and here we sense the presence of the glorious Spiritual Sun, the parent of all the Rays of Light poured into the world.
Now of all the great religions none can be of greater interest to any student of comparative religion than the Christian faith. It presses on him at every turn; it is a problem he cannot escape. He is amazed at the general ignorance of everything connected with its history and origins...For long he is confronted with libraries of books filled with mutually contradictory opinions, and only valuable as a means of sifting out material for future use. He finds as he prosecutes his studies, that everyone of his preconceptions as to early times has to be considerably modified, and most of them indeed to be entirely rejected. He gradually works his way to a point where he can obtain an unimpeded view of the remains of the first two centuries, and gazes around a world that he has never heard of at school, and of which no word is breathed from the pulpit...
He gazes around a world of immense spiritual activity, a vast upheaval of thought and a strenuousness of religious endeavor to which the history of the Western world gives no parallel. Thousands Of schools and communities on every hand, striving and contending, a vast freedom of thought, a mighty effort to live the religious life.
Here he finds innumerable points of contact with other religions; he moves in an atmosphere of freedom of which he has previously had no experience in Christian traditions. Who are all these people--not fishermen and slaves and the poor and the destitute, though these are striving too--but these men of learning and ascetic life, saints and sages as much as many others to whom the name (Christians) has been given for far less reasons? They are all Heretics, say later Church writers, very pestilent folk and enemies of the true faith which we have now established by our decrees and councils." Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, G.R.S. Mead, pp.11-13.
Simeon the Just
Simon the High Priest, the son of Onias, who in his life repaired the House again, and in his days fortified the Temple.
And by him was built from the Foundation the Double Height, the high fortress of the wall about the temple:
In his days the cistern to receive water, being in compass as the Sea, was covered with plates of brass:
He took care of the Temple that it should not fall, and fortified the City against besieging.
HOW HE WAS HONOURED IN THE MIDST OF THE PEOPLE IN HIS COMING OUT OF THE SANCTUARY.
He was as the Morning Star in the midst of a Cloud, and as the Moon at the Full.
AS THE SUN SHINETH UPON THE TEMPLE OF THE MOST HIGH, and as the Rainbow giving light in the Bright Clouds:
And as the flower of roses in the Spring of the Year, as lillies by the Rivers of waters, and as the Branches of the Frankincense Tree in the Time of Summer...(Ecclesiasticus 50:1-8...).
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"Simeon the Just was of the survivors of the Great Synagogue. He used to say: Upon three things the world standeth; upon Torah, upon Worship, and upon the showing of kindness." Pirke Aboth, Saying of the Fathers, the Mishna (Talmud).
William Whiston, a translator of the Works of Josephus into English, says that Josephus "was not thoroughly acquainted with several circumstances of history from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes to his own...and so committed many involuntary errors therein." The matter at hand had to do with an alleged visit by Alexander the Great to the temple in Jerusalem, upon which he was met by this Simeon, or a Jaddua, or some other priestly figure of legendary stature. In an article on Alexander the Great the Encyclopedia Judaica states:
"The legend in Josephus ascribes to Alexander things which are highly improbable. After the battle of Issus, Alexander set out hurriedly for Egypt in order to dislodge the Persians from the Mediterranean coast. The siege of Tyre was protracted and Alexander had no time to turn aside from his man route in order to visit a city as unimportant as Jerusalem was then (which is true), or the Jews, who were a small nation. It is obvious (?) that Alexander advanced with his army along the coasts and did not then visit the interior of the country."
The author of this article is correct, but how would he or she know if Alexander did or did not visit that place? If that city in Palestine really was the focus of God's Eye in the world why wouldn't Alexander want to turn aside for the mere two hours it would take to get there, to visit it? The article, of course, though correct, hangs on the delusion that that land there in Palestine, is actually the "land of Israel," and that it is a territory of some vaster (or greater interior) proportions than it really is. Josephus, nevertheless (not to confuse that event with the real event), has one Jaddua, the high Priest, coming out to meet Alexander. Talmudic legends, not understanding what they are reporting, or the meaning of the tradition they have preserved and handed down, say it was Simeon the Just:
"People came and informed Simeon the Just. What did he do? He put on his priestly garments, and he and some of the nobles of Israel who carried burning torches in their hands walked all night, some on one side, others on the other, until Dawn. When dawn arose, he (Alexander) said, 'Who are these?'
They answered" 'The Jews who rebelled against you.' When he reached Antipatras, and the Sun shone, they met. On seeing Simeon the Just, Alexander descended from his chariot, and prostrated himself.
They said to him: 'Should a great king like you prostrate yourself before the Jews?'
He answered, 'The image of this man wins my battles for me.'" Encyclopedia Judaica.
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"Antigonos of Socho received from Simeon the Just. He used to say..."AND LET THE FEAR OF HEAVEN BE UPON YOU.'" Pirke Abot, The Sayings of the Fathers, the Mishna, (Talmud).
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"The chronology of the period is obscure. The date of Ezra is 444 B.C. or thereabouts. Simeon the Just is one of the two men of whom the older was High Priest from B.C. 310 to 291 (or 300 to 270), and the younger (grandson of the elder) was High Priest from B.C. 219-199. Josephus mentions both, Antiq. XII.2.5 and XII.4.10; but he only applies the epithet "the Just" in connection with the older Simeon...If then the elder Simeon be the one referred to as being of the remnants of the Great Synagogue, there is an interval of 110 years between his death...and the death of Jose ben Joezer in B.C. 160. Antigonus of Socho must be placed somewhere within this period, and there is a period of eighty years to be accounted for. The teacher or teachers during those eighty years, if there were any, may have been of too slight importance for their names to be remembered...
Antigonos of Socho. The name is Greek, and may possibly represent some Hebrew name; the teacher was of course a Jew, but the period in which he lived, was one in which Hellenism had become strong as an influence in Jewish life and thought...'FEAR OF HEAVEN,' means the fear of God. Except in Biblical quotations the word God is rather avoided in the Rabbinical literature. It is more usual to speak of 'the Holy One blessed be He,' or 'Lord of the Worlds' or 'King of the kings.' or 'the Name,' or 'The Place,' meaning the 'All Present.' The term 'Our Father who is in Heaven' is well authenticated in Jewish usage, but does not occur very frequently. It is of Jewish not Christian origin. All these expressions are found in 'Aboth.' The Ethics of the Talmud, Sayings of the Fathers, by R. Travers Herford, 1945.
The period in question here is one in which the history, and many of the written records of Israel were passing back out of Europe into the East again. Using the spread of Hellenic culture as its vehicle the mysteries of Israel came down unnoticed to the world at large. The religious commerce between Europe and the East had been going on for centuries, and thus there were no historical alarms going off, or flags being raised as it was happening. Nor do religious historians take note of those conflicts that were being waged between the Selucids and the Ptolemies on the mainland of Europe, as well as in the East, or of the saga of those (Celto-Thracian) Maccabees who also came across the Hellespont into the East at that time. And therefore history barely noticed what all the further conflict was about when all these things were being just as cryptically resurrected again in the Mystery of Christ:
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,
Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus (the mystery of the Druid Hesus suspended on the limbs of the Cosmic Tree), whom I preach unto you is Christ...
But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.
And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, THESE THAT HAVE TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN ARE COME HITHER ALSO...(Acts 17:1-6).
Thus given the conflicts that eventually set the rabbis apart from the later Christians (those who had no idea themselves what these things were all about), the compilers of the Mishna, being of a Puritanical (and Zionist) persuasion themselves, were not disposed to what for them were foreign ideas either. (The analogy is not fully acurate, but trying to convince the rabbis of that time that the Christians were the true expositors of the Torah, must have been like trying to convince traditional Christians that the Church of Latter Day Saints are the true expositors of the Torah in our times...which, of course, they are not). Besides, the rabbis were not interested in history so much as in the Torah itself. They were interested in preserving Torah Judaism. They were interested in holiness. Nor did they have any idea as to the original source of their materials, or the direction from which these traditions came to them. (The Mishna was finally compiled by Rabbi Judah at the end of the second century A.D.). The temple was gone thus a curse on all their houses. All that they knew for certain was that the pieces and the fragments that were brought together to produce the Mishna, came to them with written instructions to "make a hedge for the Torah."
These particular Jews (and there were many other sects of Jews at that time besides these Pharisees), were being specifically set aside by the Spirit to preserve the written elements of the Torah, and to keep them intact. This, so that finally, in the dynamic that exists between the Letter of the Law and the true Spirit of the Law, and in the light of unfolding, present historical realities, the true mystery of the Law, and the true meanings of the Law, could be revealed. As such, the compilers of the Mishna, and those who followed them, could not have known that the story relating Alexander's encounter with the High Priest of Israel had nothing to do with events that occurred in Palestine at all, but resulted from a record of events which recounted a more famous meeting that took place between Alexander and the Jewish High Priest of Central Europe. This encounter was preserved in history by Ptolemy, who went on to become the military governor and eventual king of Egypt after Alexander's death:
"...Too shrewd to pursue horsemen as they escaped over the Romanian plains, they set up their own standards on the edge of the river and spread the news that a Macedonian prince had advance to the extreme northern frontier of the Greek world and meant to keep it. This message must have counted as something of a sensation.
There came, from all corners, barbarian chiefs to visit the young man challenging them in their own sphere. One even came from the upper Danube, and his visit won him a place, albeit anonymous, in history. Alexander probably received him with especial curiosity. As a reader of Herodotus he was well aware that the Danube rises in the land of the Celts. The man thus belonged to a people about whom he must have at least heard reports and with whom his western subjects, on the Albanian coast, must have had some contact for many years. Moreover, as his biographers rarely omit to mention, Alexander's father had been slain by a Celtic dagger...
What Alexander discussed with him, and in what language, we do not know. Only Ptolemy, a friend of the young king, has recorded parts of the conversation for posterity. Alexander, he reports, asked the Celt what his people most feared, 'naturally in the hope that he would reply that it was himself." But the answer was unexpected. The Celt tersely replied that they feared nothing so much as the possibility 'THAT THE HEAVENS MIGHT FALL ON THEIR HEADS.' His words must have impressed the officers present in the tent more than we can understand...
There must have been more to it. Ptolemy could still remember the Celt's answer when, thirty years later, and long since king of Egypt, he dictated a biography of his dead sovereign...Modern scholars have puzzled over this enigmatic reply until it became clear that what seemed rash revealed an attitude to life that was shared by peoples of similar spirit, such as the Achean Greeks, the heroes of Homer...This in turn leads one to suppose that the Celt had uttered words that were, to him, tremendously important and therefore struck a common chord in the leader of the half-savage Macedonians.
We may assume that Alexander must have been moved. The young ruler, already in the process of conquering half the world, was learning in his career that there were men who respected no material barriers, recognizing only the limitations that fate imposed. In his situation this must have affected him almost like an omen." The Celts, by Gerhard Herm, p.35.
The recollections of his father were no doubt the reason Ptolemy Philadelphus (285 to 247 B.C.), sent into Europe, when he was amassing the library at Alexandria, to procure a copy of the Torah translated into the Greek language. The work resulted in the Septuagint Version of the Bible (the LXX), which greatly assisted in the rise of Christianity more than two centuries later (which in turn led to the eventual translation of the Bible into English, and to our present interpretations of the Torah). That the histories and the records of Israel were in a wholesale state of disarray (or disemmination) at that time, with various, and contending factions of Jews ranging from one end of the known world to the other, is further evidenced in the words:
O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as it is this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their tresspass which they have trespassed against thee.
O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our Fathers, because we have sinned against thee...(Daniel 9:7,8).
Both the Western and Eastern churches that emerged out of the confusions of those times, from the reign of Constantine onwards, held that its priestly office, its canon of authority, and its magesterium, all proceeded--with a Christian interpretation of course--from the rites of the Levitical order and the Jewish temple...
Hebrews, chapters 5 to 10...(KJV)
...And so it did, but further study reveals this branch of the Levitical order (Christianity), and thus the Catholic order of priests that eventually proceeded from it (after the time of Constantine), to be more closely related to the Druids of Europe than to the Saducees who officiated at that temple in the East:
"The two privileged classes are the Druids and the Knights. The Druids officiate at the worship of the gods (or what to them are the higher ideas), regulate public and private sacrifices, and give rulings on all religious questions. Large numbers of young men flock to them for instruction, and they are held in great honour by the people. They act as judges in practically all disputes, whether between tribes or between individuals...
All the Druids are under one head, whom they hold in the highest respect. On his death, if any of the rest is of outstanding merit, he succeeds to the vacant place; if several have equal claims, the Druids usually decide the election by voting, though sometimes they fight it out. On a fixed date in each year they hold a session in a consecrated spot in the country of the Carnutes, which is supposed to be the center of Gaul; even today those who want to make a profound study of it generally go to Britain for the purpose...
The Druids are exempt from military service and do not pay taxes as other citizens. These important privileges are naturally attractive: many present themselves of their own accord to become students of Druidism...It is said that these pupils have to memorize a great number of verses--so many that some spend Twenty years in their studies. The Druids believe that their religion forbids them to commit their teachings to writings, although for most other purposes the Gauls use the Greek alphabet. But I imagine that this rule was originally established for other reasons--because they did not want their doctrines to become public property...
A lesson which they take particular pains to inculcate is that the soul does not perish, but after death passes from one body to another; they think that this is the best incentive to bravery, because it teaches men to disregard the terrors of death. They also hold long discussions about the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the universe and the earth, the physical constitution of the world, and the power and properties of the gods; and they instruct young men in all these subjects...
As a nation the Gauls are extremely superstitious; and so persons suffering from serious diseases, as well as those who are exposed to the perils of battle, offer, or vow to offer, human sacrifices, for the performance of which they employ Druids. They believe that the only way of saving a man's life is to propitiate the god's wrath by rendering another life in its place." Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul.
What we discover in Caesar's narrative is a (fallen) pre-Christian observation of the Christian mysteries. We will also discover in another chapter how the cult of Hesus (or Jesus), was an already-established religious phenomenon in Europe before the time of Christ, but we must say something more about it here as we discuss the Druid institution of human sacrifice, in order to further see how the mysteries of Europe constituted the central core of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Caesar continues:
"Some tribes have a colossal image made of wickerwork, the limbs of which they fill with living men; they are then set on fire, and the victims burned to death. They think the gods prefer the execution of men taken in the act of theft or brigandage, or guilty of some offense; but when they run short of criminals, they do not hesitate to make it up with innocent men...
Thou shalt make a sacrifice by Fire unto the Lord....
The god they most revere is Mercury (Hermes). They have many images of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, the god who directs men upon their journeys, and their most powerful helper in trading and getting money. The Conquest of Gaul.
What is this colossal wickerwork but some fallen and perverse Druid sense of the Great Corporate Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12), in which evil doers shall indeed be brought to justice (especially as the Fires of Divine Judgment are fully ignited at the end of the age)? ...and within which the righteous have indeed offered themselves up as an atoning sacrifice? It is exactly what Paul alludes to when he says: ...and though I give my body to be burned. (1 Corinthians 13:3).
When the Druids of Western Europe sacrificed unwilling victims upon the cross (or in gross wickerworks), or when they executed men in any fashion whatsoever, it was an immediate testimony of their inabilities to interpret the precepts of the Torah (of which they were in possession). But how much further were they from understanding the inner meanings of the Torah than the priests who were officiating over animal sacrifices in Jerusalem? And how much further were they fallen than the Church of today? It are no closer to observing the inner, non-violent tenets of the mystery of Christ in our time (where one is called upon to offer their own life as an atonement for sin) than the Druids were in their time...that is, the Druids then were no further departed from the true meanings of the Law of Moses, from which their observances sprang, than Christianity is in our times...
Moses, looking into the Oracle, thus far off into the future, said...
If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he be put to death, And thou hang him on a Tree; His Body shall not remain all Night upon the Tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him That Day; (For he that is hanged is accursed of God); that the land be not defiled that the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance...(Deuteronomy 21:22,23).
...but the Druids (many of whom went on to become the earliest converts to Christianity), having lost access to the true and epic meanings of Divine Law--not perceiving how the righteous were indeed sent forward to bear in their own lives, and in their own persecutions, the curse of the law itself--literally hung their victims on trees. And in so doing they could not understand how they themselves were the truly "cursed ones," and that it was they themselves who needed to die (to their own fallen ways that is), before they could come alive to the ways of true understanding and true righteousness.We in our time, however, who profess to know that "the law is spiritual," and that "Christ is the fulfilling of the law," do the very same violence to the precepts of Moses. We read: When thou goest out to battle...the priest shall approach and speak to the people...(Deuteronomy 20:1-4), and then literally send an army of chaplains, priests, reverends, rabbis, and imams, out to comfort and enlist young men and women in the un-holy causes of the Gentiles and non-believers, in the commission of their un-holy wars against the truth and each other. Like the Druids of old we are grossly fallen from the twin precepts: The Letter killeth (2 Corinthians 3:6; Romans 8:1-9), and The weapons of our warfare are NOT carnal (2 Corinthains 10:3-6; Ephesians 6:10-17), not to mention THOU SHALT NOT--EVER--NOT EVER--EVER, EVER, EVER KILL!...Behold, the LAMB of God.
Suppose someone knowing absolutely nothing of the Christian religion; and visiting the West for the first time, entered a cathedral complete with all the sacramentals, the trappings, and the images of Christian worship...and in the mysterious center of it all a large Crucifix filling up the whole space behind the altar. Suppose they happened to open up a Bible and began to discover in it certain stories, and certain literary types and images that were suggestive of the Christian mysteries, and of the image there before them; and then suppose to learn more about it they happened upon the following narrative from Proinsias Mac Cana's Celtic Mythology...
"In the first century A.D., Lucan mentions three deities by their Gaulish names: Cruel Teutates propitiated by bloody sacrifice, and uncouth Esus of the barbarous altars, and Taranis whose altar is no more benign than that of Scythian Diana...
According to one of the sources cited by later writers the victims of Teutates were asphyxiated by being plunged headlong into a full vat, THOSE OF ESUS WERE SUSPENDED FROM TREES AND RITUALLY WOUNDED, and those of Taranis were burned, numbers of them together in cages of wood. Obviously these details were not invented by the commentator, but one cannot be sure if he cites them in their true context.
The sacrifice of Taranis echoes Posidonius (as followed by Caesar and many others) who reported in the first century B.C. that the Gauls burned numbers of victims in huge wicker work images. The sacrifice of Esus is not clearly defined, but it may be a remnant of a myth similar to that of the Germanic Odin who hung on the World Tree for Nine days and Nine nights and whose victims were likewise left hanging on trees...
The account of Teutates rite recalls a scene pictured on the famous Gundestrup Cauldron (see Ezekiel 11:2-11). It has also been compared to death by drowning in a vat of mead, beer, or wine which is ascribed by legend...to the story of an Irish king who is wounded, the house in which he is trapped burned down around him, and he finally perishes in a vat of liquor while attempting to escape the flames (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-7; Matthew 7:22-27). The fact that this elaborately contrived death takes place at Samhain, the sacred festival marking the end of Summer, suggests that we have to do here with a recurrent mythological theme and, more specifically, with the rite related to sacred kingship.
At the same time, it is to be noted that these Irish narratives belong to the well known motif of the Three-fold death in which the person fulfills an unlikely prophecy by suffering three different deaths, in these cases by wounding, burning, and drowning (see 2 Peter 3:5-7).
And just as Mercury-Lugh is a god of warrior prowess as well as arts and crafts so the Mars of Gaulish inscriptions is more than a god of war: (see Isaiah 66:15,16; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9), he is a god of healing, fertility, and protection, the guardian of his people and of their material prosperity, whether against disease or against hostile armies." p.29.
...would it not all seem like the same religion? And would not the activities of the modern churches, with all their tribal (nationalistic) entanglements and ecclesiastical shenannigans--Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, High Protestant, Baptist, and the supposedly non-demominational evangelical groups--support such a conclusion? Wouldn't each of them appear to be offshoots of the same Druid religion of old?
Robert Taylor, whether out of true love or disdain for the Mystery of Christ I do not know, but certainly out of no love for the organized Church, when comparing the story of the Crucifixion with Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, says:
"No author ever displayed greater powers of poetry, with equal strength of judgment, in supporting through the piece the august character of the divine sufferer. The spectators themselves were unconsciously made a party to the interest of the scene: its hero was their friend, their benefactor, their creator, and their saviour; his wrongs were incurred in their quarrel--his sorrows were endured for their salvation. 'He was wounded for their transgressions, and bruised for their iniquities; the chastisement of their peace was upon him, and by his stripes they were healed.' (Isaiah 53:5). 'He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.' The majesty of his silence, whilst the ministers of an offended God were nailing him by the hands and feet to Mount Caucuses, could only be equaled by the modesty with which he relates, while hanging on the cross, his service to the human race, which had brought on him that horrible crucifixion:
'I will speak...See what, a god, I suffer from the gods! For mercy to mankind, I am not deemed worthy of mercy;...But in this uncouth appointment, am fixed here, a spectacle dishonoured by Jove!...On the throne of heaven scarce was he seated...On the powers of heaven He showered His various benefits, thereby confirming His sovereignty;...But for unhappy mortals had no regard, but all the present race willed to extirpate, and to form anew...None save myself, opposed His will...I dared, and boldly pleading, saved from the destruction--saved them from sinking to the realms of Night...For which offense, I bow beneath these pains...Dreadful to suffer, piteous to behold.'
In the catastrophe of the plot, his especially professed friend, Oceanus, the Fisherman, as his name Petraeus indicates (Petraeus was an interchangeable synonym of the name Oceanus), being unable to prevail upon him to make his peace with Jupiter, by throwing the cause of human redemption out of the cause of his (own) hands, 'forsook him and fled.' None remained to be witness of his dying agonies, but the chorus of ever amiable and ever faithful women, which also bewailed and lamented him (Luke 23:27), but were unable to subdue his inflexible philanthropy. Overcome at last by the intensity of his pains, he curses Jupiter in language hardly different in terms, and but little inferior in sublimity to the 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani' of the Gospel. And immediately the whole frame of Nature becomes convulsed: the earth shook, the rocks rent, the graves were opened (see Ezekiel 37); and in a storm that seemed to threaten the dissolution of the universe, the curtain fell on the sublimest scene ever presented to the contemplation of the human eye: A Dying God. The Diegesis, pp.192-94.
The Straight Path, the Mysteries of Europe
Notes From Europe, the Children of Dan
Please consider the following chapters in the Addendum: The Straight Path (And the Mysteries of Europe); The Greek Myths, and the Children of Dan, and Notes From Europe.
