Chapter XIX
"
Disclosing Phoenician Origin of Solar Emblems on
pre-Christian Monuments in
Briton Coins, and of "Deazil" or Sun-wise
direction for Luck, etc., and John-the-Baptist
as Aryan Sun-Fire Priest.
"The Days were ever divine as to the First
Aryans." --EMERSON. {Society and Solitude, 7, 137.}
"We must lay his head to the East!
My father [Cymbeline] hath a reason for it."
--Prince Guiderius in SHAKESPEARE'S Cymbeline.
"O Sun-God thou liftest up thy head to the world, Thou settest thy ear to (the
prayers) of mankind, Thou plantest the foot of mankind."
"In the right hand of the king, the shepherd {Siba, disclosing Sumerian origin of English word
"Shepherd."} of his
country,
May the (symbol of the) Sun-God be carried." --Sumerian Psalms. {S.H.L., 490-491.}
"The able Panch [Phoenic-ians], the Chedi [Ceti or Catti] are all
highly blest, and know the Eternal Religion -- the Eternal Truths of Religion and
Righteousness." --Maha-Barata. {M.B., Karma Parva, 45, 14-15, cp. M.B.P., 1, 157.}
THE "Sun-worship" which we have just seen reflected in the prehistoric Stone Circles and Cup-marked script in Britain, that are now disclosed to be Phoenician in origin, leads us to discover still further evidence of the Phoenician origin of the "Sun-worship" in Ancient Britain, which was formerly widespread over the land.
This former Sun-cult is attested by the turning of the face of the dead to the East in the Stone and Bronze Age tombs--the memory of which also in the Iron Age is
262
p.263: PHOENICIAN
preserved by Shakespeare in his Cymbeline above cited. It is also attested by its very numerous sculptures and inscriptions on pre-Christian monuments in Britain, besides those of the Cup-marked inscriptions, and of caves and the Newton and other widely diffused sculptured stones; by the profusion of its symbols and stamped legends on the pre-Roman coins of Ancient Britain, by the vestiges of Bel and Beltain rites which still survive in these islands, from St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, and in the "Deazil" or Sun-wise direction in masonic and cryptic rites, and in the "lucky way" of passing wine at table, and in other ways now detailed.
The Early Phoenicians were, as leading Aryans, an intensely religious people. They made religion the foundation of their state and gloried in their knowledge of the Higher Religion, as recorded in their Vedic hymns and in their own epic cited in the heading. And similarly, even in regard to the later Phoenicians, it is noted:--
"In every city the temple was the chief centre of attraction, where the piety of the citizens adorned every temple with abundant and costly offerings." {R.H.P., 320.}
These Early Phoenicians--contrary to the now current notions of popular writers who have confused the real Phoenicians with the mixed Semitic and polytheistic people remaining in the later province of "Phoenicia" after it had been mostly abandoned by the Phoenicians, properly so-called--were monotheists, or worshippers of the One God of the Universe, whom they usually symbolized by his chief visible luminary, the Sun, as we have already seen established by a mass of concrete evidence.
This important fact, now so generally overlooked by modern writers, was well expressed by the late Prof. G. Rawlinson in his great work on the "History of the Phoenicians." He says {Ib., 321-2.}:--
"Originally, when they first
occupied their settlements upon the
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SCOTS
stage of the religion there was no idolatry; when One God alone is acknowledged and recognized, the feeling is naturally that expressed in the Egyptian hymn of praise: 'He is not graven in marble; He is not beheld; His abode is not known; there is no building that can contain Him; unknown is his name in heaven; He doth not manifest his forms; vain are all representations.' " {Records of the Past, 4: 109-113.}
It was this pure and lofty
Monotheism of the Early Phoenicians, expressed in their so-called
"Sun-worship" or "Bel-worship," which they are now
found to have cherished down the ages in the
The early Aryans appear at first to have worshipped the Sun's orb itself as the visible God. In thus selecting the Sun, it is characteristic of the scientific mind of these early Aryans that in searching for a symbol for God they fixed upon that same visible and most glorious manifestation of his presence that latter-day scientists credit with having emitted the first vital spark to this planet, and with being the proximate source and supporter of all Life in this world.
But at an early period, some
millenniums before the birth of Abraham, the Aryans imagined the idea of the
One Universal God, as "The Father-God" behind the Sun, and thereby
gave us our modern idea of God. This is evident in the early Sumerian hymns,
and in the prehistoric Cup-marked prayers in
"The Sun's uprising orb floods the air with brightness:
The Sun's
Enlivening Lord {Savitri,
"The Enlivening or
Vivifying God." Cp. M.V.M., 34.} sends forth all men to
labour." {R.V., 1, 124, 1.}
p.265: ARYO-PHOENICIAN GOD & AKHEN-ATEN
As "Father-God" and
creator and director of the Sun and the Universe he was usually called, as we
have seen, by the Hitto-Sumerians Induru
or "Indara," the Indra of the
[Thus as Induru (or "Indara") he is regularly called by the Sumerians "the Creator;" and so in the Vedas Indra is invoked as "Creator of the Sun" (3, 49, 4), "who made the Sun to shine (8, 3, 6) and raised it high in heaven" (1, 7, 3). He is "Man's sustainer, the bountiful and protector," (8, 85, 20), "the most fatherly of fathers" (10, 48, 1), "aye, our forefather's Friend of old, swift to listen to their prayers" (6, 21, 8). "There is no comforter but Thee, O Indra, lover of mankind" (1, 85, 19). Yet so specially was his bounty associated with the Sun that he still is hailed: "Indra is the Sun" (10, 89, 2).]
It was presumably the re-importation of this Aryan idea of The One Father-God symbolized by the Sun, from Syria-Phoenicia into Egypt, which occurred in or shortly before the reign of the semi-Syrian Pharaoh Akhen-aten, the father-in-law of Tut-ankh-amen, and whom we have heard stigmatized so much lately as "the heretic king" (sic), merely because he introduced into Egypt a purer and more refined form of Sun-worship over that contaminated with the animal worship of the ram-headed god Ammon, which predominated there in his day. The Living God behind the Sun, called by him "The Living Aten," is usually supposed, materialistically, to designate the radiant energy of the Sun in sustaining Life by his beams. But He is referred to as the universal creator, a god of Love and "Father of the king," and he has "hands," and in his pictorial representation each of the Sun's beams ends in a helping hand stretched forth to man. The famous sublime hymn to this "God of the Sun," by Aken-aten and recorded in Egyptian writing over three centuries before David, is generally regarded as the non-Jewish source from which the Hebrews derived the 104th Psalm. {Prof. Breasted; and cp. A. Weigall, Life and Times of Akhnaton 134, etc.} Now this priest-king Akhen-aten was the grandson, son and husband respectively of "Syrian" or Mitani
p.266: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
princesses--the
"Mitani" being a branch of the Hittites and his
"propagation" of Aten-worship began when he was only 16 years old, two years after his
marriage to a "Syrian" princess, and the Aten symbol was previously
used by his mother, also a Syrian, when she was regent of
The later representation of God in human form by the Sumerians and some of the later Aryans was presumably led down to by their long habit of invoking him as "Father" and "King," and thus conjuring up a mental picture of a father and king in human form. Such "graven images" we have seen in the Sumerian seals (Fig. 33, etc.); and amongst some of the later Phoenicians (see Fig. 1, p. 2), and on Phoenician coins, (Fig. 64, etc.), Babylonian seals, in Medo-Persian and later Mithra cult (see Fig. 10, p. 46), and among the classic Greeks and Romans. But the purer "Sun-worshippers" appear to have religiously abstained from making graven images of God, as in the Ancient Briton coins and pre-Christian monuments, as in our Newton Stone; nor is there any reference to such images in the Gothic Eddas. Thus the purer Sumerians sing in their psalms:
"Of Induru [Ia or "Jove"], can anyone comprehend thy Form?
Of the Sun-god, can anyone comprehend thy Form?" {S. Langdon, Sumerian Psalms, 77, where the name is spelt Ea.}
On the other hand, the Phoenicians frequently made statues of Hercules, who, Herodotus tells us, was merely a canonized human Phoenician hero, and thus analogous to St. George. They carved the image of their marine eponymic tutelary Barati or Britannia on their coins (see Fig. 5, p. 9), and elsewhere, as a protecting angel and not God. They also carved grotesque little images of misshapen "pygmies," which, Herodotus states, they carried on the
p.267: BIL NAME FOR FATHER GOD IN BRITON
prow of their ships {Herod.,
3, 37. H. describes these "pygmies," which he calls Pataikoi,
as deformed like Vulcan the smith. They are believed to resemble the misshapen
dwarf figurines of "Ptah, the Smith," common in
"Bel," or properly "Bil," is
the title used for this "Sun" god in the Newton Stone Phoenician
inscription, in both its versions--in the Ogam the short vowel is not
expressed--and this form B-L (i.e., Bil or Bel) occurs in
late Phoenician inscriptions elsewhere,
{B.P.G., 20.} as the title of their Father God. And it is the
title surviving in
This name Bil or "Bel" is now
disclosed to be derived from the Sumerian (i.e.,
Early Aryan) word for "Fire, Flame or Blaze," namely Bil, for which the written word-sign is a picture of a
Fire-producing instrument with tinder sticks. {
As this word "Bil," however, is a purely Sumerian (i.e., Aryan) word, when the Semites of the Chaldees in Babylonia borrowed from the Sumerians the idea of this Father-God, and having no name of their own resembling it with the meaning of "Fire" or "Flame," they appear to have equated that name to their Semitic word "Bal" or "Baal" meaning "Lord, Master or Owner" which they also spelt "Bel" and "Bilu"; {M.D., 156-158.} but which possesses no suggestion of Fire, Flame or the Sun, like the original Sumerian or Aryan word. Yet this Semitic Bel thus derived from the solar Aryan Sumerian Father-God Bil, is often invested with Fire, as the paramount god of their Babylonian
p.268: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
pantheon. And it was clearly through this Semitic form of Bil that the Israelites admittedly appropriated his attributes for their later tribal God " Jehovah,"
{Thus one of the latest Semitic authorities writes:
"Jahweh [Jehovah] assumes the attributes
of the Baals." (J.R.B., 74). And "The Baals of the Canaanites [i.e.,
pre-Israelite people of Phoenicia Palestine] we know were personifications
of the Sun" (Ib. 75).}
who is so often described as encompassed by Fire, and as appearing in Fire to the Hebrew prophets, and as a Pillar of Fire leading the Israelites in the desert; and as "a consuming Fire." {Exodus, 3, 2; 19, 18; Isaiah, 6, 4; Ezek., 1, 4; Deut., 4, 24.}
Now it is of great British and Scandinavian significance that this word Bil or "Blaze" or "Flame" gives us still another of those radical words that have occurred incidentally and disclose the Sumerian origin of a series of words in the English and kindred modern Aryan languages. It discloses the Sumerian origin of the Old English "Bale" for Blaze, Flame and Fire, the Scottish Bail, and the corresponding words in the Norse, Swedish, etc., as seen in this equation:--
Sumerian Origin of "Bil" or "Bel" Blaze and Flame Words
in English and N. European Aryan Languages.
Gothic Norse
Anglo- Old
Swede
Bil = Baela = Bal, Blis = Bael = Bail = Bele = Bl-aze
B l Belyse
Bele Fl-ash
="Blaze ┐ Blus Fl-ame
"Flame ├ = " = " =
" =
" Blase
"Fire" ┘
& pyre. "
F/n on "Gothic Eddic": {V.D., 54, 91.} F/n on "Scot": {J.S.D., 23.}
F/n on "Bl-aze": {This and the corresponding Scandinavian forms seem to be a bilingual Sumerian compound Bil-izi--Izi, being another dialectic name for the word with the same meaning "Fire," and appears cognate with Sanskrit Vilas = "Flash" and the Greek Phalos "bright."}
We now see the significance of the name "St. Blaze" for the taper-carrying saint introduced into Early Christianity as patron of the intermediate solar festival of Candlemas Day; and probably also of the name "Bleezes" or "Blazes" for the old house on the hillock at the foot of Bennachie,
p.269: BEL
commanding a view of the Newton Stone site, and possibly the site of an altar blazing with perpetual fire to Bel, to whom that stone was dedicated.
The "Bel-Fire" or
"Bel-tane" rites and games which still survive in many parts of the
British Isles are generally recognized to be vestiges of a former widely
prevalent worship of "Bel" in these islands, extending from St. Michael's
Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, which is now seen to have been introduced by the
Phoenicians, and to be a survival of the great solar festival celebrations at
the Summer solstice. The name "Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine"
means literally "Bel's Fire."
{"Bel-tane" or "Bel-tine" is defined by old Scottish, Irish and Gaelic writers as "Fire of the god Bil or Bial or Bel." Thus the Irish king Cormac at the beginning of the tenth century A.D. describes "Bil-tene" as Lucky Fire, and defines Bil or Bial as "an idol god." (Cormac's Glossary, ed. Stokes, 19, 38); and Keating states "Bel-tainni is the same as Beil-teine, that is, teine Bheil or Bel's Fire." Its second element Tan in Breton and Tane, Tine or Tene, means "Fire" in Scottish and Irish Scottish with variant Teind or Tynd, "a spark of Fire " (J.S.D., 38, 564) and Eddic Gothic Tandr, "to light or kindle Fire," thus showing Gothic origin of English "Tinder." This Tan or Tene seems to be derived from the Akkadian Tenu for the Crossed Fire-producing sticks (M.D. 1176) with meaning also "to grind [firewood]," ib. The Breton form of the name for Bel-Fire of Tan-Heol is the same Tan (Fire) transposed + Heol, "the Sun" or Bil.}
The rite of Bel-Fire now
surviving in the
{Such a game was practised in the writer's boyhood in the West of
Scotland. And Mr. S. Laing, the archaeologist, who was born in 1810, writes
with reference to these Bel-Fires lighted on the highest hills of Orkney and
Shetland. "As a boy, I have rushed with my playmates through the smoke of
these bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to
Baal." (Human Origins, 1897, 161.)}
As a serious religious ceremony
it was not infrequently practised until about a generation ago by farmers in
various parts of the country and in
p.270: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
the flames {Cormac in the tenth century describes two
fires for the cattle to pass between.} to bring good luck for the rest
of the year. {Cp. H.F.F., 44,
etc.} This clearly shows that it was essentially a simple rite of
ceremonial Purification by Fire and presumably a rite of initiation into the
Solar Religion by "Baptism with Fire," with the addition of
Protection by the Sun as Fire. The fire employed to ignite the bonfire was
doubtless the sacred Fire produced by friction of two pieces of tinder sticks
or "fire-drill," as this method of producing sacred fire was employed
so late as 1830 in Scotland, and was formerly common in the Hebrides, {Carmichael, Carmen Gaddica, 2, 340;
and Martin, Descript. West.
This appears to be the same rite which is repeatedly referred to in the Old Testament of the Hebrews as practised by the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan (i.e., Phoenicia-Palestine), in which children were passed through fire in consecration to "Moloch"--spelt Melek in the old Hebrew--a name which is evidently intended for the "Meleq-art" {This name, spelt M-l-q-r-t, is usually considered to represent Melek-qart or "King of the City."} title of Hercules in the later Semitic Phoenician inscriptions, as the "Baal of Tyre," and other Phoenician cities; and thus connecting it with the Phoenicians:--
"And they built up the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch [Melek]." {Jeremiah, 32, 35, and cp. 2 Kings, 23, 10.}
But it seems that the Semites of
Canaan who adopted the externals of the Sun-cult of their Aryan overlords, had
in their inveterate addiction to bloody matriarchist sacrifices, human and
other--practices also formerly current amongst the Hebrews {W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 1889;
H. L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, Lond., 1909, for sacrifices
of first-born, etc.} --sometimes actually burned their children to death
in sacrifice, in their perverted form of worshipping Bil or Bel. {2 Kings, 17, 31; 21, 6. Ezekiel, 16, 21; 20,
26, etc.} Now this sacrificial perversion of the simple and innocuous
Bel-fire rite appears also to have been prevalent in
p.128: BEL
Chaldees, who were also, as we have seen, addicted to human
sacrifice in their Lunar cult of matriarchy with its malignant demons, under
their Druid priests. Thus they changed the date of this
Bel-Fire festival from the Midsummer solstice to their own May Day festival of
their Mother-goddess on the First of May, which began their lunar Vegetation
Year. Thus we have the vestiges of this sacrificial so-called "Beltane"
rite surviving in
[This sacrificial May Day
"Beltane" rite seems, from the numerous
accounts of its wide prevalence up till a few decades ago, to have been
the more common, as the Aryan element is so relatively small. After cutting a
circle and lighting the bonfire and torches, a cake is made of oatmeal, eggs
and milk and baked in the fire, and divided up into a portion for each boy, one
of the cakes being daubed black with embers. The pieces are then put into a
cap, and drawn blindfolded, and whoever draws the blackened piece is the
"devoted" person or victim who is
to be sacrificed to obtain good luck for the year. This
"devoted" victim is, of course, nowadays released or acquitted with a
penalty, which is to leap three times through the flames.] {For details and refs. see H.F.F., 44, etc.,
336.} {{See also the film The Wicker Man
(British Lion Film Corp., 1973) with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee. – JR, ed.}}
It was possibly, I think, the
eating of the body of the human victims thus sacrificed by the Druid Chaldees
on May Day, as a sacrament, which forms the basis of the historical references
by
The sacred fire for igniting the fire-offering to Bil or Bel, as the God of the Sun, was generated by the Early Aryans and Phoenicians by the laborious friction of two tinder sticks or fire drill, the oldest method of fire-production. This generation of the sacred fire by friction of two tinder sticks was also the method employed in Britain down to the Middle Ages, for preparing the "Perpetual Fire" in shrines, and for the special "Need-Fires" in cases of dire need from plague, pestilence, drought or invasion and also presumably for lighting these Bel-Fires. The repositories for these
p.272: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
sacred "Perpetual Fires,'' thus generated, still exist in Britain in some of our churches--in
Cornwall, Dorset and York--in the so-called "Cresset-stones," some of
which are placed in lamp niches furnished with flues, as pointed out by Dr. Baring Gould, who remarks that
in the early centuries of our era, on the introduction of Christianity,
"the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the Perpetual
Fire." {Strange Survivals, 120.} And as showing
conclusively that the "Need-Fires" lit in Bel-Fire fashion by the
friction of the two tinder sticks were pagan, their lighting was expressly
forbidden by the Church in the eighth century; and the Church
"New-Fire" was transferred to Easter Day, to adapt it to the
re-arranged Christian dates, and was obtained by striking flint and steel.
"But the people in their
adversity went back to their old time-honoured way of prepaying their sacred
fire by wood friction in the pagan (Bel) fashion." {Ib., 122.} And it is significant to notice
that St. Kentigern or St. Mungo (about 550 A.D.), the patron saint of Glasgow and bishop of
Strath-Clyde down to the Severn, and whose many churches still bear his name in
Wales and Cornwall, is recorded to have produced his sacred fire-offering by
friction with two sticks. These medieval British doubtless derived their
knowledge of generating this sacred fire from the ancestral descendants of the
Phoenician Part-olon and Brutus and his predecessor Barats, just as the
Phoenicians had generated their Perpetual Fire in the
The truly solar character of the
proper Bel-Fire festival of the Aryans to whom animal sacrifice was abhorrent,
is seen not only from its date being at the Summer solstice, but also from the
use at that festival of a wheel symbolizing the Sun, which they rolled about to
signify the apparent movement of the Sun, and that the latter is then occupying
its highest point in the zodiac and is about to descend; and, significantly,
this Wheel is also rolled about at Yuletide, the old pagan Fire-Festival at the
shortest day, i.e., the
Winter solstice. {Durandus on Feast of
p.273: BEL
In the Christian period, this pagan Bel-Fire festival of the Summer solstice was early adjusted to Christianity by the Roman Church, for proselytizing purposes, making St. John the Baptist--who, we shall see, is represented in art as carrying the Fire Cross, whose priestly father offered simple Fire-incense offerings in the temple, {Luke, 1, 9.} and who "came to bear witness of The Light" {John, 1, 7.} --the patron saint of the old pagan Bel-Fire festival and transferred the Bel-Fire festivities to the eve of St. John's Day, the 24th of June, when they are still, or were until lately, celebrated in many parts of England, {Details in H.F.F., 346, etc.} as well as in Brittany and Spain, {Ib., 348-9.} also former colonies of the Phoenicians.
This fact of the association of
the Bel-Fire rites with John-the-Baptist suggests that the latter, who bears an
Aryan Gentile and non-Hebrew name, was himself an Aryan Gentile and of the
Fire-Cross cult; and this seems supported by many other facts, presuming Gothic
affinity, which require mention here. His initiatory rite of Baptism is wholly
unknown in Judaism, whereas it is a part of the ancient ritual of the Sumerian
and Aryan Vedic and Eddie Gothic Sun-cult, wherein Baptism is called by the
Goths Skiri (or "The Scouring") which is radically identical with the name
"Sakhar" applied to it by the Sumerians.
{Sakhar (
And John-the-Baptist is called
"Skiri-Jon" by the Christian Goths of
{He offered simple Fire-incense in the temple "in the course of Abia"
(Luke i, 5.) Ab, the 5th month of the Syrio-Chaldean calendar, was
devoted to the worship of Bel the Fire-god, and was called by the Sumerians
"Month of Bil or Gi-Bil" (?Gabriel).
and presumably a Gentile,
p.274: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
and his name
"Zacharias," which has no meaning in Hebrew, is apparently the
The presence of Gentile Sun-priests
in the temple on Mt. Moriah at Jerusalem is explained by the fact that, besides
the name "Moriah"--which is recognized as meaning "Mount of the Morias
or Amorites" {Encycl.
Biblica., 3200.} --that
temple, long before the occupation of Jerusalem by David and its rebuilding by
Solomon, was a famous ancient Sun-temple of the Hittites or Morites.
Ezekiel says, "
{Similarly, in the other Amarna reference to this temple AL(W) No. 55
(Brit. Mus. 12) l. 31, the word read "Nin-ib" is followed by "buz."
"Ib" and "Nin-ib" are defined as the Sun-god Uras (Br.
10480, etc.). "Ib" also means "enclosure," temple (Br.
10488 and M.D. 1146) and "seer or priest " (Br. 10482). Ib-u-su
thus could mean "
This Hittite (or Jebusite) king of Jerusalem, who is regarded as a kinsman of the Aryan Kassi princes of Babylonia, {Kassi princes were staying with him and he defended them: AL(W), 180 II. 32, etc.} bore the Gentile name of Erikhi or Urukhi-ma, {The first element Eri or Uru is the Sumerian for "man or hero" (Br. 5858) and thus disclosed as Sumer source of Greek 'Eros, Sanskrit and Latin Vir, Gothic Ver, Anglo-Saxon Were and English "hero."} and was obviously a Sun-Fire worshipper. In his official letters to Aken-Aten, to whom he was at the time tributary, he addressed that Sun-worshipping Pharaoh, who, it will be
p.275: JEBUSITE
remembered, called himself
"Son of the Sun," as "My Sun, the great Bil Fire-Torch." {AL(W) 181, (184, etc.).
The Israelitic occupation of the
Sun-temple and its court on
The temple which Solomon began to build on Mt. Moriah about 1012 B.C., and which was built mainly through the agency of Phoenicians from Tyre, was presumably merely the rebuilding of the old Hittite Bil or Bel shrine, and continued to be shared by the Jebusites, of whom we are informed that "the children of Judah could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day" {Joshua xv, 63; Judges i, 21.} --i.e., until the date of compiling the Old Testament, about the 6th century B.C.
p.276: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
The Solomon temple had for its porch the characteristic Phoenician pillars of the Bel Sun-temple, it was consecrated by "Fire from Heaven," {2 Chron. vii, 1.} it contained images of the Sun, {2 Chron. xiv, 5; xxxiv, 4 and 7, Revised Version.} and of Sun-horses, {2 Kings xxiii, 11.} and it and its court continued to be used, more or less, for Sun and Bel worship down to the period of its destruction about 580 B.C.
[Solomon worshipped
"Baal" {1 Kings xi, 5.} as
well as Iahvh--and "Baal" is used in the Old Testament occasionally
as a title of Iahvh or Jehovah. {Hosea,
ii, 16; Jer. xxxi, xxxii.} He set in the porch the two colossal pillars
of the Phoenician Bel temples under their Phoenician names, and supposed to
represent the Phoenician deity. {1 Kings
vii, 21. These two pillars are described by Herodotus, ii, 44. They bore the
Phoenician names of "Buz-Iakin" (Boaz-Jachia). Cp. Encycl.
Biblica, 4933.} About this time "the Children of Israel served
Baal;" {Judges ii, 11-13.} and
fifty years later a successor, Ahab, "served Baal and worshipped
him," {1 Kings, xvi, 31.} so
that there were only "seven thousand in
The Sun-worship in the temple, as
described by Ezekiel, is especially significant. He refers to a non-Judaist
image at "the door of the gate of the inner court where was the seat of
the image which provoketh to jealousy," {Ezek. viii, 3, etc.} and he calls it by the name used by the
later Phoenicians for their image of Melqart and Resef (Tasia). {C.I.S.T., 88, 2, 3, 7; and 91, 1. This
"Salmu," properly Sumerian "Salam," is especially applied
to Sun-god. M.D., 879.} He further says: "In the inner court of the Lord's house, at the
door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about
five and twenty men with their backs
to the temple of the Lord
and their faces towards the East, and they worshipped
p.277:
the Sun towards the East." {Ezek. viii, 16.} And here it is important to note that the sacred place of the Sun-worshippers was in the court inside the porch, on the flat top of the sacred mount of their ancestors, and outside the Jewish sanctuary containing the tabernacle and ark, which for them was defiled by its bloodshed meat offerings.
Similarly, in the new temple,
rebuilt by the Sun-worshipping Cyrus the Medo-Persian, as "The house of
God of Heaven," and begun about 535 B.C. {Ezra, i, 2, etc.; vi, 4, etc.} --for which services he was
affiliated to Iahvh as "The Messiah" or "The Lord's
anointed" {Isaiah xlv, 1 and
cp. xliv, 28.} --Bel worship appears also to have been practised,
more or less. {Ezra ix, 1 etc., about
450 B.C. Hosea ii, 16, etc., xiv, 3; and later books Amos to Malachi.
The word "
p.278: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
prophets generally addressed
the people, as also did our Lord on many occasions; and even this court is termed 'The House of the Lord,' and is 'The
The Cross-sceptre or staff
traditionally carried by John-the-Baptist was also an especial emblem of the
"Sun-god" Nin-ib of
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commands by Christ to his hearers
and disciples, each to "take up his Cross and follow Me,"
{Matt. xvi, 24, etc. The word used here for cross is stauros,
usually employed in classic Greek for a stave, or wooden bolt, cognate with
Gothic stafr or staff, sanskrit stavara, "firm." It
seems cognate with the
were references to the visible,
Fiery Red Cross sceptre-symbol of the Sun-cult of the One Father-God of the
Hittite
This now suggests that not only
the Cross-carrying John-the-Baptist and his father, the Fire-priest Zacharias,
but also Christ of Galilee of the Gentiles, were Gentiles of the Aryan religion
of the One and Only Father-God with his symbol of the Sun Cross, and its
associated rite of Baptism, and whose ancient Aryan shrine was at
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It is also noteworthy that the
traditional place to which the infant Christ was carried in the Flight to
{Baedeker's
This, again, appears to connect Christ with the Aryan Sun-cult.
Racially, also, we are informed that the Virgin Mary was "the cousin of Elisabeth, {Luke i, 36.} the mother of John-the-Baptist," and that Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron." {Luke i, 5.} Now "Aaron," latterly used as a generic term for the priesthood in Jerusalem, is shown by leading biblical authorities to have been "a name extremely probably absent altogether from the earliest document of the Hextateuch in its original form, and apparently introduced by the editor" {Enc. Bibl. 2.} scribes later. This raises the possibility that the name AHRN, as "Aaron" is spelt in the old Hebrew, is really derived from the name of "Araunah," the Jebusite king and evidently priest-king of the Sun-temple at Jerusalem; for the Hittite kings were usually priest-kings, and the title Ibus or "Jebus-ite," we have seen, implied priesthood. That name, commonly rendered "Araunah," is spelt in the old Hebrew variously as ARUNH, AURNH, ARNIH, and ARNN. The statement, therefore, that Elisabeth was "of the daughters of Aaron," might mean that she was a descendant of Araunah, the Hittite or Jebusite priest-king of Jerusalem, and that her cousin Mary, the mother of Christ, was also in the royal line of descent from the pre-Israelitic Aryan king of Jerusalem. Such a descent would account for the repeated references to the
p.281: MICHAEL'S MOUNT OR CASTLE OF THE
Jewish fears that Christ claimed
a temporal kingship as "King of the Jews" (? Jebus) in
{The references to Jewish rites of circumcision, etc., in regard to Christ are not necessarily historical but possibly additions of later Jewish convert copyists for proselytizing purposes. They do not appear in Mark; the earliest and most authentic of the gospels. The Davidic genealogy also, which differs widely in its two versions in Matthew and Luke, refers only to Joseph, who is represented as not being the father of Our Lord.}
The location of the holy family
in
Resuming now our survey of the
Bel-Fire rites in ancient Britain, we find that one of the earliest or earliest
of all centres in Britain for these ancient Bel-Fire rites was at the ancient
Phoenician tin-port itself in Cornwall, or "Belerium," as the Romans called it. That tin-port, St. Michael's
Mount, rising as a spiry islet, and natural temple, off Marasion with its
{It is called "Din Sol" in the Book of Landaff (C.B., 1, 4;
and L.H.P., 91). Din is Cornish for the Cymric and Scottish Dun,
"a fort or town" (as in "Dun-Barton"), and is the Gothic
Eddic Tun, "an enclosure or dwelling," and thus the Gothic
source of the English "Town," from
Its old sacred character is also
reflected in its Roman title of "Forum Jovis" or "Market of
Jove," as Bel we have seen was Ia or "Jahveh," and he was
usually called "Jove" (or Jupiter) by the Romans in their eastern
provinces and elsewhere, where the Bel cult was prevalent; and the thunderbolts
which they put in the hands of Jove were of crackling tin, possibly with
reference to that Phoenician metal. The Fire festivals surviving, or till
recently surviving here and in
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SCOTS
associated especially with the tin mines worked by the ancient Phoenicians.
["The boundary of each tin
mine in
"Still to this age the hills
around Mount's Bay are lighted at Midsummer eve with the bonfire, and still the
descendants of the old Dunmonii wave the torch around their heads after the
old, old rite." {L.H.P., 15.} And
similarly in
The Stone Circles, which we have seen to be early Phoenician, also appear to have been especial sites of these Bel-Fire rites, and for the production of the sacred Fire. {For Circles at Stennis, Merry Maidens, etc., L.S., 191, etc.; and D. MacRitchie, Testimony of Tradition.} And we have seen that these rites were latterly held within a circle cut on the turf, which suggests that the Stone Circles were thus used as Sun temples. And we have found that the "Cup-mark" inscriptions on circles and their neighbourhood are prayers of the Sun-cult.
Altogether, the Phoenician origin
and introduction of the Bel-Fire rites into
The Sun-wise direction of walking around a sacred or venerated person or object in the direction of the hands of a clock or watch, in the direction of the Sun's apparent movement in northern latitudes, from east to west, is admittedly part of the "Sun-worship" ritual. It is inculcated in the old Aryan Vedic hymns and epics for respect and good luck and is called "The Right Way" or "Right-handed Way" (pra-) Daxina, the "Deasil" or "Right-hand Way" {Or Dessil, in Gaelic Deesoil, Deisheal, J.S.D., 150. The root of these words is Da, "the right hand" in Sumerian.} of the Scots, who call the opposite direction "Withersins" or "Contrary to the Sun," which is considered unlucky. This sun-wise direction is that in which the votaries are usually figured walking on the old Sumerian sacred seals in approaching the enthroned "Sun-god"; and it is the direction in which all Indo-Aryan votaries approached and passed
p.283:
Buddha, and in which Buddhists and Hindus still pass their sacred monuments, as opposed to the disrespectful and unlucky way of the devil-worshippers in the contrary direction. This Sun-wise direction and its solar meaning as "The Right Way" were commonly practised and well-recognized formerly in England, as evidenced by Spenser in his Faery Queen, when he makes the false Duessa in her enmity to the Red Cross Knight and Fairy Queen emphasize her curse by walking round in the opposite direction:--
"That say'd, her round about she from her turn'd,
She turn'd her contrary to the Sunne,
Thrice she her turn'd contrary, and return'd,
All contrary: for she the Right did shunne."
It is still practised in
This Sun-wise or "
[Thus, in recording the practice
of this "Dessil" in the
Solar symbols in Ancient Britain are also especially profuse and widespread on the pre-Roman Briton coins, pre-Christian monuments and caves, although they have not hitherto been recognized as of solar import. On Early Briton coins the very numerous circles (often arranged in
p.284: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
groups like cup-marks) sometimes concentric and rayed, along with wheels and crosses, spirals, single-horse sometimes with horseman, hawk or eagle, goose, winged disc, etc. (see Fig. 44), now disclosed to be purely solar symbols, have not hitherto been recognized as such, but are described by numismatists merely as "ring ornaments, annules, pellets or rosettes of pellets" and the rayed discs as "stars," and regarded apparently as being merely decorative devices, and without symbolic meaning. {E.B.C., 46 and 58, etc., passim; and numismatic works generally.} And the horse and horseman type, although invariably represented single, and not in competition nor with chariots, are fancied to be horse and chariot racing in Olympian games borrowed from Macedonian coinage, notwithstanding that the latter is devoid of the Briton associated solar symbols.
The circle symbol for the Sun's disc was early used by the Sumerians, as we have seen, in their cup-mark script, and it is one of the common ways of representing the Sun in the Sumerian and Hitto-Phoenician seals. In these seals the Sun is also represented by the dual and concentric circle, rayed circle, petalled and rosetted circles, spirals and swastikas, precisely as we find it figured in all these conventional ways in the Early British coins. {See Sumerian and Hitto-Phoenician originals in D.C.O.; W.S.C., etc.}
The equivalence and interchange of these various conventional ways of representing the Sun are well seen in the series of Briton coins here figured (Fig. 44).
It will be noticed that the Sun
above the Sun-horse is figured as a simple disc or the dual Sun-disc
(corresponding to "cups") in b, rayed in a, rosetted as circles around a central one in c, as a
wheel with 2 concentric circles
and spirals in d, as circled disc with reversed or returning swastika
feet and concentric circle with spirals in e, and as
Sun-hawk with the dual Sun-disc in f. In g and i the upper
Sun symbol is 8-petalled, rayed, and the horse tied to one of the Sun-discs and
in i the horse is reversed with the "returning' Sun; whilst in h the single Sun-disc is borne by
the Sun Eagle or Hawk with head duplicated to picture the "returning"
Sun. In c, moreover, is seen the legend Aesv,
p.285:
spelt in other mintages Asvp,
etc. {Asvp, Eciv, Eisw, see E.B.C., 385-6,
389, 410, and C.B.G., 1, lxxxix.} which significantly is the Vedic
Sanskrit name for the Sun-horse, now found to be derived from the Sumerian word
for "horse." {Sumerian Ansu
(or AS ?), "a horse,"
FIG. 44.--Sun Symbols: Discs, Horse, Hawk,
etc., on Early Briton Coins.
(After Evans) {E.B.C.,
Plates: a, Pl. 411; b, 5, 14; c, 15, 8; d, 14, 3; e,
14, 1; f, 14, 6; g, E., 2; h-i, E., 4.}
Note varied forms of Sun's
Disc above horse, as circle, rayed, wheel, spiral, swastika, winged Disc. Also
Cross in a, Horse tied to Sun in g and i and the legend Aesv,
the Vedic name for Sun-Horse. And in a the Sun-horse leaps over the Gate of
Sunset, as in Hittite Seals, see Fig. 37.
complete evidence, therefore, could be forthcoming for the solar
character and Hitto-Sumerian origin of these emblems
p.286: PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS &
SCOTS
on the Ancient Briton coins. The interchangeability of the Sun's vehicle seen in the British coins, etc., as Horse (Asvin), Deer (or Goat), Goose, and Hawk or Falcon is voiced in the Vedas, and often in dual form:--
"O Asvin (Horse) like a pair of Deer
Fly hither like Geese unto the mead we offer . . .
With the
fleetness of the Falcon." --R.V. 5, 78, 2-4.
The Deer, Goat and Goose, symbols associated with the Sun by Hitto-Sumerians and Phoenicians, and on Briton coins, etc., are seen in next chapter.
This solar character of these
devices on the Early Briton coins is still further seen in the specimens in
Fig. 67. p. 349. The Sun is borne on the shoulders of the Eagle or Hawk, which
in the third transfixes with its claws the Serpent of the Waters or Death. In
the second the winged horse is tied to the Sun and is passing over the 3
"cup-marks" of "Earth" (or Death). And on its obverse is
the legend Tascia, the name of the Hitto-Sumerian archangel
of the Sun, as we found in the cup-mark inscriptions in
The Sun-Horse, figured so freely on the Briton coins, does not appear on Early Sumerian or Hittite seals, where its place is taken by the Sun-Hawk or Eagle. But it appears later and on Phoenician coins {For the galloping horse on Phoenician coins of Carthage and Sicily, sometimes with Angel and Ear of Barley, see Duruy, Hist. Romaine, 1, 142, etc., and P.A.P., 1, 374.} and on the Greco-Phoenician coins of Cilicia from about 500 B.C. (see Figs. later), and on archaic seals from Hittite Cappadocia. {C.M.C., Figs. 141, 148.} This horse is presumably the basis of Thor's horse (or Odinn's) of the Goths and Ancient Britons-on which Father Thor himself as Jupiter Tonans, The Thunderer, with his bolts, latterly rode, and he is so figured riding on early Briton monuments.
p.287:
The traditional worship of "Odinn's horses" still persists in some parts of England--for example in Sussex, where I observed bunches of corn tied up to the gables of several old timbered cottages and steadings, and was told that it was to feed "Odinn's horses" as a propitiation against lightning bolts. Offerings of grain to Indra's Sun-horses are repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic hymns; and the horses are invoked also in prayers as the vehicle for Indra's visitations:--
"They who for Indra, picture his horses in their mind,
And harness them to their prayers,
Attain by such
(pious) deeds an (acceptable) offering." --R.V., 1, 20, 2.
The Sun-horse of the Ancient Britons is also the source of the modern superstition regarding the good luck of finding a horse-shoe pointing towards you--on the notion that it might have been dropped by Odinn's horse.
The Spirals also, which are found on British coins (as in Fig.
44, etc.), on Bronze Age work and on prehistoric monuments and rocks in
Britain, and usually in series of twos, are already found in Sumerian, Hittite
and Phoenician Seals, and as a decorative device on vases, etc., in old
Phoenician settlements in Cyprus and Crete and along the Mediterranean. Yet the
meaning of this spiral does not appear to have been hitherto elicited. It is
now seen by our new evidence to represent the dual phases of the Sun of the
Sumerians. The right-handed or westward moving spiral represented the Day Sun,
and the left-handed or eastward moving spiral represented the
"returning" Sun at Night--as we have already seen illustrated through
the Sumerian cup-marks, with standard Sumerian script and on the amulets of
And so widespread was "Sun-worship" formerly in Ancient Britain, and so famous in antiquity were the
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SCOTS
Ancient Britons as
"Sun-worshippers," that Pliny remarks that the Ancient Persians, who
are generally regarded as the pre-eminent Sun-worshippers of the
These further facts in regard to the source and
prevalence of "Sun-worship" and Bel-Fire rites in the religion of the
One God in Early Britain furnish additional proof that these elements of the
Higher Civilization and Religion and their names were introduced into the
FIG. 44A.--St. John-the-Baptist with his Cross-sceptre or Sun-mace.
(After Murillo.)
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