. . .
ANCIENT IRISH CROSS--PRE-CHRISTIAN--KILNABOY.
"In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain it was emblematical of creative power
and eternity; in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and
immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence and freedom from
physical suffering; while in both hemispheres it was the common symbol
of the resurrection, or 'the sign of the life to come;' and, finally, in
all heathen communities, without exception, it was the emphatic type,
the sole enduring evidence, of the Divine Unity. This circumstance alone
determines its extreme antiquity--an antiquity, in all likelihood, long
antecedent to the foundation of either of the three great systems of
religion in the East. And, lastly, we have seen how, as a rule, it is
found in conjunction with a stream or streams of water, with exuberant
vegetation, and with a bill or a mountainous region--in a word, with a
land of beauty, fertility, and joy. Thus it was expressed upon those
circular and sacred cakes of the Egyptians, composed of the richest
materials-of flour, of honey, of milk--and with which the serpent and
bull, as well as other reptiles and beasts consecrated to the service of
Isis and their higher divinities, were daily fed; and upon certain
festivals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the people and their
priests.
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