The
decussated symbol is not unfrequently planted upon what Christian
archaeologists designate 'a calvary,' that is, upon a mount or a cone.
Thus it is represented in both hemispheres. The megalithic structure of
Callernish, in the island of Lewis before mentioned, is the most perfect
example of the practice extant in Europe. The mount is preserved to this
day. This, to be brief, was the recognized conventional mode of
expressing a particular primitive truth or mystery from the days of the
Chaldeans to those of the Gnostics, or from one extremity of the
civilized world to the other. It is seen in the treatment of the ash
Yggdrasill of the Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of
the Buddhists. The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian
crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for
the oval or sphere above it. With the Gnostics, who occupied the
debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic
paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized
death as well as life. In every heathen mythology it was the universal
emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, by whatsoever name she was
addressed--whether as Mylitta, Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Mata, or Venus;
and the several eminences consecrated to her worship were, like those
upon which Jupiter was originally adored, of a conical or pyramidal
shape.
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