OP 
 
 Class. 
 Book. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Discovery of the City that Cain Built and 
 Discovery of the Most Ancient Site 
 
 of the City of Thebes and the 
 Lost Europa, the Princess of Tyre ; 
 
 and 
 
 The Origin of the Swiss Lake Dwellings 
 
 By J. M. WOOLSEY 
 
 Member of the Folk Lore Society of London, and the 
 American Folk Lore Society 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 The Original Garden of Eden Discovered at Last, 
 and the Final Solution of the Mystery of the 
 Woman, the Tree, and the Serpent 
 
 For which the Author won a Pri^e of 
 Ten Thousand Dollars 
 
 It has been Pronounced the Greatest Book of the Century 
 
 ALSO THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 The Discovery of Noah's Ark : Final and Decisive 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 1911 
 
pyfc 
 
 Copyrighted, 1911 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M. WOOLSEY 
 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
INDEX 
 
 PART I.— THE MOON MARSH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. — The Cradle and the Grave 9 
 
 II. — The Slough of Despond and the Quag- 
 mire of Hell 11 
 
 III. — Marsh Building on the Moon and Emigra- 
 tion Legends 15 
 
 The Story of the Spendthrift 15 
 
 Legend of Cartmel Church and Aztec 
 
 Emigration '. . . . 17 
 
 IV.— The Marsh Reed— The New Moon Rod 
 as the Sacred Reed — The Winter 
 Omen 18 
 
 PART II.— THE ANCIENT CITY. 
 
 Chapter I.— The Wall Builders 23 
 
 II. — Founding of the City of Thebes and Dis- 
 covery of the Lost Europa — The Prin- 
 cess of Tyre 27 
 
 III. — The Founding of Jerusalem, the City of 
 
 Peace — Stories from the Rabbis 30 
 
 IV. — Founding of the City of Rome 31 
 
 V. — The Island City and the City of the Sand- 
 
 Bar 32 
 
 VI.— The Illusory City 35 
 
 VII. — Solomon's Temple 36 
 
 VIII. — Diana's Temple — Diana's Temple at 
 
 Ephesus 41 
 
 IX. — Stone Henge 43 
 
 X. — Origin of the Swiss Lake Dwellings .... 44 
 
INDEX 
 
 PART III.— FOUNDATION SACRIFICE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. — Foundation Sacrifice 51 
 
 II. — Foundation Sacrifice 52 
 
 III.— The City Walls 54 
 
 IV. — The Building Sacrifice 56 
 
 V. — Sacrifice Propitiatory 59 
 
 VI. — Christian Sacrifice 60 
 
 VII. — Jewish Sacrifice 63 
 
 VIII. — Remarks on Sacrifice 63 
 
 PART IV.— THE SACRED ISLAND. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Sacred Island 66 
 
 II. — The Sacred Island 68 
 
 III. — Island of Atlantis — Isles of the Genii — Is- 
 land of St. Brandon and the Seven 
 
 Cities, and Enchanted Islands 70 
 
 IV. — Story of Alcmaeon, Latona and Delos . . 72 
 V. — The Azure Islands, or The Wandering 
 
 Rocks 15 
 
 VI. — Birth and Nuptial Islands — Birth Island . 11 
 
 Nuptial Island 79 
 
 VII. — Isle of the Oak Tree — A Finnish Tale . . 79 
 VIII. — The Island of Heligoland and the Frisian 
 
 Law 81 
 
 IX.— Battle Island 82 
 
 X. — The Isle of the Hereafter; or, The Island 
 
 of Souls 83 
 
 XI. — The Island of Eden 86 
 
INDEX 
 
 PART V.— THE CULTURE HERO AND 
 ORIGINAL CIVILIZATION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. — Talisman, Charm-Protector, and Totem 
 
 Pole 88 
 
 II. — Auguries — The Pillar and Guide of the 
 Exodus, Signs, and Portents Observed in 
 Emigration, and the Founding of Cities 91 
 
 Founding of Longa Alba 93 
 
 Auguries 94 
 
 III. — Descent from the Gods 96 
 
 IV. — Eponymous Heroes 97 
 
 V. — Mountain Revelation ; or, The Wise Man 
 
 of the Mountain . 98 
 
 VI. — Guide and Leader of Civilization 1 02 
 
 The Aztec Emigration 1 05 
 
 VII. — The Culture Hero and Origin of Civiliza- 
 tion 106 
 
 VIII. — Culture Hero — Agni, Prometheus, and 
 
 the Firestick Ill 
 
 IX. — Oannes, The Wisdom Fish God of Baby- 
 lon 113 
 
 X. — Manibozho, or Michabo, the Culture 
 Hero, and the "Great Hare" of the Al- 
 
 gonquins 115 
 
 XI. — Sume, the Culture Hero of Brazil 116 
 
 XII. — Leaders and Culture Heroes of Northern 
 
 Europe 117 
 
 Wali or Skeaf, the Foundling Ancestor of 
 the Angles and Danes 118 
 
 PART VI.— COSMOGONY WORLD BUILDING. 
 
 Cosmogony World Building and The Book of Beginnings 1 1 9 
 Egg Theory 1 30 
 
PART FIRST. 
 
 THE MOON MARSH 
 THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 In ancient belief creation and all life began upon the reedy 
 shore of the moon — the moon marsh. 
 
 The Babylonian Eden was planted in the marsh in imi- 
 tation of that little white island ring planted upon the shore 
 of the moon sea. 
 
 In Japan legend the Creator Asi (the reed) arose from 
 the marsh at the beginning and laid the foundation of the 
 world in the deep. 
 
 Athene was the daughter of Poseidon and the Tritonian 
 marsh. (Pausanias: Description of Greece, B. 1, Ch. 14.) 
 Which means the new moon born on the shore of the moon 
 sea or moon marsh. 
 
 According to Pindar man was born in the Cephisian marsh ; 
 similar legends exist among the Libyans. 
 
 At the birth of Kuvad, the first of the Kushite kings of 
 the Zend, he was found in the reeds of the Lake Kashava, 
 which is the modern Zarah. 
 
 In the Popol Vuh of Quiche tradition, the first creation 
 of man took place at Paxil or Cayala — "Land of divided or 
 stagnant waters" (which is the moon marsh). (Bancroft: 
 Pacific Coast Indians, Vol. 2, pp. 716-7.) 
 
io THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Moses was born there in that reedy marsh; Apollo was 
 born there in that little island of the moon marsh, for which 
 Delos is substituted to gratify the vanity of the Greeks. 
 
 "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of 
 many waters." (Psalms 18:16.) 
 
 Isis, the Egyptian Goddess, fled from the snares of her 
 pursuer Typhon to the island of Chebi (the Greek Chemmis). 
 There she brought forth her son Horus, surnamed Nub "the 
 Golden," in the marshes of Buto in Lower Egypt. 
 
 That "berry child" born of Mary the Finland virgin, who 
 fled from her and was found among the reeds and rushes. 
 (Kalevala, Rune 50.) 
 
 According to Pausanias, Dionysus descended to Hades to 
 bring up Semele by the way of the Alcyonian marsh, and that 
 it was at a reed bed where Narcissus beheld his own image 
 and died. 
 
 In the 157th chapter of the Book of the Dead, the chapter 
 reads: "Isis has come, she has gone round about the towns; 
 she has sought out the hidden places of Horus in his coming 
 out from the swamp of papyrus reeds. He has stood against 
 evil, he has come into the divine boat; he has commanded the 
 princes of the world; he has made a great fight." 
 
 That marsh in winter was haunted by water demons and 
 evil spirits. It was there Odysseus encountered the swine herd 
 upon his return home, for there the swine wallowed in the 
 moon marsh. 
 
 There dwelt the fen wolf, and were wolf and the marsb 
 wolf Grendel in the epic of Beowulf. 
 
 It was there Sigurd dug the pit and slew the serpent Fafnir. 
 
 They were the slime pits of Sodom, where Sodom was 
 swallowed up and only the little island of Zoar left, which is 
 the island of the new moon on which is built the new city of 
 Spring, for the lunar scene is brought down to the marshes of 
 Sodom. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY n 
 
 "A most strange creature will come, 
 From the sea marsh of Rhianedd, 
 As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gwynedd, 
 His hair and his teeth and his eyes being as gold." 
 It is the wild boar coming from the marsh at midsummer to 
 root up the summer garden — it is the first ring of the mid- 
 summer moon. (Guest's Mabinogion, p. 503.) 
 
 THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND AND THE 
 QUAGMIRE OF HELL. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 In the ancient Welsh song "The Pacification of Lludd" 
 (Davies' Mythology of the British Druids) we read: "The 
 King is not ensnared as inexpert; he directs with his speech 
 that the quadrangular swamp should be set in order by way- 
 faring torches against the arrogant leader in whose presence 
 there was a spreading flame." 
 
 That quadrangular inclosure is the square garden, the 
 sacred garden, representing the square made by connecting the 
 four cardinal points of the compass; that garden of Eden 
 planted upon the moon and represented upon the earth as a 
 sacred islet contiguous to the shore of a chosen bay or lake. 
 
 At the celebration of the May festival by the British Druids, 
 the moon ark was represented as coming from her long sea 
 voyage, or again as a sunken ship raised, and is about to enter 
 the harbor of the new moon bay when was chanted: 
 
 "A holy sanctuary there is exalting itself on high; the small 
 reeds with joined points declare its praise; fair in its borders 
 the first points shoot forth." 
 
 It is the arrival of the new moon of Spring and the ark is 
 called the avanc or beaver, for like the beaver it was amphi- 
 
12 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 bious and dwells part of the time below and part of the time 
 above the waters. 
 
 At this festival the ark of the god Hu was drawn out of 
 the swamp or marsh by the sacred bulls. It was the same 
 ark of the Israelites drawn over by cows from the land of 
 the Philistines, its place of winter bondage. It is the ark of 
 Noah and the ark of Jason. In the Druidical account the 
 car is drawn out of the marsh by bulls. 
 
 Songs of the British Bards of the Fifth and Sixth Century 
 from Davies' Mythology of the British Druids. Song No. 14 
 Appendix. The scene is at the celebration of the Spring festi- 
 val when the Easter moon or first new moon of Spring was 
 pulled up from the marsh or shallow water on the shore by 
 oxen in mimic representation. 
 
 "In the presence of the blessed ones before the great 
 assembly, before the occupiers of the holm where the house 
 was recovered from the swamp surrounded with crooked horns 
 and crooked swords in honor of the mighty king of the plains." 
 
 It was the house of the beaver or avanc drawn up on a 
 
 little islet called a holm, for the moon was likened to an avanc 
 
 or amphibious beaver half the time submerged or in the water. 
 
 When the train was moving in circular dance and singing 
 
 in cadence with garlands upon their brows. 
 
 Loud was the clattering of shields, and frantic was the 
 mirth round the ancient caldron, gashing their thighs, red with 
 the blood of sacrifice; for the serpent's egg had been "snatched" 
 over the ford that "involved ball resplendent with rays," which 
 is the first ring of the Spring moon, the froth of the moon ser- 
 pents. 
 
 It was there in the pit of conflict the raven in his wrath 
 pierced the bull — this bull represented the god. 
 
 The sun and moon, or summer and winter, were represented 
 as two bulls. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 13 
 
 In the after summer the sun bull as a Sigurd the Volsung, 
 is slain in the west. And at the end of winter the moon bull is 
 slain in the eastern pit of conflict as Gunnar the Niblung — they 
 are the two brothers — Sun and Moon. 
 
 Holm is an islet in the river or by the shore; the serpent's 
 egg is the first new moon of Spring likened to froth produced 
 by the friction of the black ball of the moon serpents; the same 
 as the amrita produced by the churning of the moon waters 
 by the Hindu serpent Vasuki, to produce the "immortal" water 
 of life or Soma — the same Phallic blood of the wounded Saturn 
 which produced Venus, the new moon ring. 
 
 The above froth of the serpent's spittle is the same spittle 
 of the Norse gods and demons, who all spat in a jar and pro- 
 duced the elixir of wisdom personified as the god Kvaser. 
 
 In this moon marsh of the British Druids, stands the tall 
 priest crane, which is the new moon, the priest of the moon 
 altar, who is referred to in the Eddas. He is the Melchizedek 
 or priest king who came out to meet Abraham on his return 
 from the wars; he is the high priest of the moon altar, the first 
 new moon of Spring after the winter war. 
 
 In New Zealand he is called Maui "the swamp hen," 
 "long-legged one" and "Lord of the marsh." (Clark's Maori 
 Tales, p. 54.) 
 
 And this is no corruption of the patriarchal religion at all, 
 as both are different stages of growth and variation of the old 
 lunar and sepent worship. 
 
 It was the same swamp filled with serpents that Siegfried 
 burned and tried out a lake of fat, which is the little lake of 
 the new moon on one rim of the black moon forest. 
 
 The same stymphalian marsh where Hercules shot the 
 stymphalian birds, and the same Lernaen marsh where Her- 
 cules killed the Hydra, the water beast that abode in the marsh, 
 and came out on the land and killed cattle and ravaged the 
 country; it had nine heads, and one of them immortal, and as 
 
i 4 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 fast as one head was crushed, there grew two in its place. It 
 is the head of the moon crushed, and the light or fire put out; 
 then there springs up a new moon with two forks or heads, and 
 one head is immortal — that immortal ring that can never die, 
 but phoenix-like rises from the moon ashes and appears as the 
 new moon ring on the bed of the cold slacked ashes. 
 
 The little sacred island of Avallen or apple orchard at 
 Somerset, England, where stood the Tor of Glastonbury, was 
 originally in a marsh which has since been drained. 
 
 It was an ancient seat of worship in prehistoric times, 
 and in the neighboring banks are found the remains of lake 
 dwellings; it was called by the old Britons "the island of 
 apples" and the "Glassy Island." Celtic romance gathered 
 around the old religious site, and there at Glastonbury Arthur 
 was buried, and by tradition; there Joseph of Arimathea 
 planted his staff made from Christ's crown of thorns which grew 
 two trunks from a single root — which are the two prongs of the 
 new moon. 
 
 In the British Mythology of Davies: Hell was a quagmire, 
 and it was from this mire the avanc or sacred ark of the Britons 
 was drawn by oxen, as the ark of Israel was drawn by cows 
 every Spring. 
 
 "And lest I sink adhesive to the quagmire of that multitude 
 which peoples the depths of hell, I will tremble before the cover- 
 ing stone with the sovereign of boundless dominion." 
 
 The black stone of the moon lay over the depths of the 
 underworld as a trap door ; when one lifted that they entered the 
 lower world and the dead were placed in a stone chest and a 
 flat stone placed over them; they are still to be seen in the 
 churchyards of a century ago; they are the covering stones of 
 vaults. 
 
 In that marsh was the covering stone over the quagmire 
 of Hell. (Davies' Mythology of British Druids, p. 571.) 
 
 In the Babylonian penitential Psalms, we find: "Lord, 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 15 
 
 cast not down thy servant; He sinks in the waters of the swamp; 
 Grasp thou his hand." 
 
 That may be the man of the Aztec exodus seen in a boat 
 on the marsh with hands lifted up as in supplication. 
 
 MARSH BUILDING ON THE MOON AND 
 EMIGRATION LEGENDS. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters. 
 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, that they 
 turn not again to cover the earth." (Psalms: Ch. IV:3-9.) 
 
 (The beams are the pillars of the moon that restrain the 
 waters and protect the earth from the flood.) 
 
 The oldest Athenian sanctuary of Dionysus stood in the 
 marsh of Dimnai. (Anthon and Ency. Brit.) 
 
 Dodona, the most ancient shrine of the Greeks, was sur- 
 rounded by marshes and produced oracles by the vibrations 
 of a caldron when struck with a whip, the lash of which con- 
 sisted of three chains; the walls were composed of many 
 caldrons. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE SPENDTHRIFT. 
 
 As the spendthrift entered the gate of a city, a proclama- 
 tion was being made that any one who would build a palace 
 of gold with golden stairs in the middle of the sea in the course 
 of one night, should have half the kingdom and the king's 
 daughter in marriage, but failure would be punished with 
 death. (Wide Awake Stories, p. 199.) 
 
 It is the shining palace of the new moon built in the black 
 waters of the moon sea in one night, which is the first night 
 of the new moon. 
 
16 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 About 1325 the Aztecs settled on the marshy shore of 
 the west side of the Lake of Mexico on the swamp Tlalcoco- 
 mocco; here they came upon a stone upon which, according 
 to tradition, a certain prince named Copil had been sacrificed 
 by a Mexican priest forty years before, and from this stone 
 had sprung a nopal tree. And at the time the advance guard 
 of the Mexican settlers arrived in sight of the tree, an eagle was 
 seen sitting in the top holding a serpent in his beak — which is the 
 dark moon holding the new moon ring or serpent in his mouth. 
 
 A priest then divinely inspired dived into the pool near 
 the stone and there had an interview with the god of the waters, 
 who allowed the people to settle upon the spot by paying a 
 yearly tax. 
 
 A priest had been previously told in a dream to search for 
 a nopal tree growing out of a stone in the lake with an eagle 
 in the top holding a serpent in his mouth, and there the City 
 of Mexico was founded, and in the centre of a square having 
 four sides and where four roads met at right angles, for in the 
 ancient time cities were built around the temple, and the priest- 
 hood took auguries and omens and went before the people 
 and marked out the site of the city according to astronomical 
 observations, and the settlement was built around a central in- 
 closure which was reserved for the seat of the gods. 
 
 In Lord Kingsboro's Antiquities of Mexico (Vol. 4) is 
 shown a symbolical representation of the Mexican migration 
 from Aztlan. It is a marshy lake, and from the water rises 
 up a tree, and upon the tree stands a dove delivering tidings 
 to a band of pilgrims standing fronting in file. A hand and 
 part of a forearm stretches up from the water holding a plant. 
 A bird's head also is seen emerging and two human heads, 
 and nearby is a canoe afloat which contains a naked person 
 lying upon his back, with arms stretched upward as if in suppli- 
 cation. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 17 
 
 LEGEND OF CARTMEL CHURCH AND AZTEC 
 EMIGRATION. 
 
 (See Lancashire Folk-Lore by Hartland for Legend of 
 Cartmel Church.) 
 
 "Six hundred years ago some monks came over to Lan- 
 cashire from another country, and finding all this part of the 
 kingdom covered with wood resolved to build a monastery 
 in some part of Cartmel Forest ; and in their rambles they found 
 a hill of prospect and prepared to build a church on the summit, 
 and a voice cried out upon the air and forbade them to build 
 upon the summit, but to choose a valley between two rivers, 
 where the one runs north and the other south. And after 
 long search they came upon the two rivers and placed the 
 church midway between the two streams, upon a little island 
 of hard ground in the midst of a morass, which they dedicated 
 to St. Mary, and then built a small chapel on the hill of the 
 voice which they dedicated to St. Bernard. 
 
 The new moon ring is the voice that cried out, and the 
 church is the brown hall of the moon built in the hollow between 
 its forks or two golden streams. 
 
 And mind, a temple was built on an island in the Tiber, 
 dedicated to the sacred serpent of Epidaurus, where the reptile 
 had disappeared among the reeds. (See Aesculapius in An- 
 trum's Dictionary.) 
 
 In the Chichimec period there occurred a division of the 
 Aztecs into Mexicans and Tlatelulcas brought about by a 
 quarrel between priests and nobles, and the nobles were driven 
 out and their new location was miracuously pointed out by 
 a whirlwind which directed them to a sandy point among 
 the reeds of the lake where they found a shield, an arrow, and 
 a coiled serpent, which was considered a most favorable augury, 
 and a settlement was obtained from the Tepanec king on the 
 
i8 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 condition of a yearly tribute. (Bancroft: Pacific Coast In- 
 dians, Vol. 5, p. 357.) 
 
 When the church of Delve in North Ditmarschen was to 
 be built, the people, being unable to decide on a site, caused 
 an image of the virgin to be tied on a pied mare, which they 
 let run whithersoever she would, and wherever the mare was 
 found there the temple should be erected, and the next morning 
 the mare was found in a marshy spot thickly overgrown with 
 thorns and underwood, and the place was cleared and the 
 church built. (Thorpe: Vol. 3, p. 3.) 
 
 The pied mare is the moon with the image of the new 
 moon or virgin; the moon mare runs to the meeting place of 
 sun and moon, and there at the stopping place the sun erects 
 the tall church steeple on the marshy shore of the moon on the 
 evening of the third day. 
 
 The moon is still called the mare, as the sun was the horse; 
 her name comes from Mare (the sea), the origin of our name 
 Mary, who was the ancient moon sea, the mother of all things, 
 and begat all the solar children, the wise men and redeemers. 
 
 THE MARSH REED— THE NEW MOON ROD AS 
 THE SACRED REED— THE WINTER OMEN. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 A reed was one of the four signs of the Aztec year, and 
 ci bundle of reeds stood for a cycle of 52 years, the number 
 of weeks in a year. 
 
 Tezcatlipoca, the evil enemy of Quetzalcoatl, let himself 
 down by a rope twined from a spider's web to a place called 
 Tulla, the land of the Tulas or reeds, where they played a 
 game of ball for the kingdom. (Bancroft's Pacific Coast 
 -Indians, Vol. 3, p. 239.) 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 19 
 
 The Peruvian Indians were found buried with reeds by 
 their sides, and rush mats were found over mummies. 
 
 In that thicket of reeds the boar lay in ambush to slay Idmon 
 the Seer and Adonis at the summer solstice. ( Argonautica : 
 B. 2nd, p. 81.) 
 
 Ea, the God of the sea who provided a way of escape 
 for the Babylonian Noah, confided his warning to a hedge of 
 reeds. Shamashnapishtim heard the address from the field 
 of reeds to flee for his life and take refuge upon the sea. 
 
 "Reed-bed, O reedbed; Frame, O frame; O man of 
 Shurippak, son of Ubara-Tutu. Frame the house! Build 
 a ship! Leave what thou canst — seek life." 
 
 It was the reed that whispered the secret of the long ears 
 of Midas to the world, for it was the voice of wisdom from 
 the deep, the prophet of winter. 
 
 The reed was the emblem of winter, and was put in the 
 hand of Christ to show that the summer reign was over.. It 
 was put in the hand of Prometheus in winter, but in Spring 
 he brought down the fire from the sun in that hollow reed or 
 horn of the moon. 
 
 The reed pipe belonged to the shepherd race of winter, 
 who were of the lunar race, and their reed pipe was inferior 
 to that of the golden lyre of summer; and that is how Pan, 
 the god of shepherds, ventured to set his reed music in opposi- 
 tion to the summer lyre of Apollo and was overcome, and how 
 Midas the moon was cursed with long ears for an adverse 
 decision to Apollo; for Midas was the moon, and that was 
 how the moon became cursed with his long ears, which is the 
 long ring of the new moon turned up in two long ears which 
 the monarch endeavored to conceal; but the secret was dis- 
 covered by his valet or barber, who finding it difficult to con- 
 ceal, dug a hole in the ground, in which he buried the secret; 
 but the reeds grew up upon the spot and whispered the secret 
 to the winds, for the words secreted in the dark hole of the 
 
20 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 moon at the conjunction with the sun, can only be kept for 
 three days while the sun and moon cross tracks every month, 
 for on the third evening the secret is revealed in the long ears 
 of the ass, or first ring of the moon ; for the ass was the symbol 
 of winter, and carried the winter god, as the horse was the beast 
 of the summer sun. 
 
 That is why Christ rode on an ass, and why the winter 
 ass carried the Holy Family to Egypt in winter exile; Midas 
 as the winter satyr and reed god vied with Apollo the summer 
 sun in the same way, and was flayed alive or lost his robe. 
 
 And the king's barber saw the ears of Midas; he it is who 
 shaves the head of the sun, like the bald Elijah and Samson 
 shorn of his strength in sheep-shearing time; and the barber 
 buried the secret at the foot of a cluster of bullrushes in the 
 moon marsh, but the moon cast it up on the third day as it 
 did Jonah, for no secret can be held there for more than three 
 days. 
 
 The rod of generation in Spring has become a hollow, 
 barren reed, the same reed in which Prometheus will bring 
 down fire again in Spring, and in these hollow reeds of the 
 marsh the cradle of the water child Moses will be found afloat, 
 and the land raised and the marsh drained by the sun god Her- 
 cules; the Hydra slain and the city rebuilt in the marsh of the 
 moon waters — the Bulrush is under the dominion of Saturn. 
 
 In the judgment world of the Egyptians, Ani kneels before 
 the god Horus upon a reed mat, and the throne upon which 
 Osiris sits is placed upon reed mats. (British Museum Papy- 
 rus, No. 10,471.) 
 
 The first cemeteries of Busiris and of Mendes were called 
 the "Meadow of Reeds" and the "Meadow of Rest;" they 
 were secluded among the marshes of sandy islets where they 
 were safe from inundation. 
 
 Very anciently in the Egyptian belief the souls of the dead 
 Went to the other world by a ladder through a gap in the 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 21 
 
 mountains of Abydos, and their destination was Sekhet Aaru 
 — "the field of reed plants" and "field of peace" in the north 
 of Egypt. 
 
 They had been born and cradled on the river among the 
 reeds, and when life was done went back to the reedy land. 
 
 In Jewish sacrifice a hollow reed was cut for the ashes of 
 the red heifer, and the red heifer was bound with a rope of bull- 
 rushes. (Barclay's Talmud.) 
 
 In Chaldaean magical texts and incantations, are found: 
 "The huge reed of gold, the pure reed of the marsh"; "the 
 pure dish of the gods"; "the reed of the double white cup 
 which determines favor, the messenger of Merodach am I." 
 (Sayce: Religion of Ancient Babylon, p. 466.) 
 
 Rushes in former times were strewed in banquet halls and 
 churches in place of carpet and used ceremonially. The rushes 
 were brought in a rush cart drawn by twenty or thirty men 
 decked with ribbons ; then followed a religious ceremony, when 
 hymns were sung. 
 
 Among the ancient Hindus the altar was spread with the 
 Kusa or sacred rushes, and on this was poured the libation of 
 soma, and the fire lighted while the priests chanted sacred 
 hymns. 
 
 The pipe reeds which grew about Lake Orchomenus were 
 cut at the rising of Arcturus. (Pliny: B. 16, Ch. 66.) 
 
 Quetzalcoatl, the culture god of the Toltecs, was born 
 of a virgin in the reedy marsh of Tula, the land of reeds. (Lord 
 Kingsboro's Antiquities: Vol. 6, pp. 175, 176.) Like the 
 Egyptian Horus and the Hebrew Moses. 
 
 The word tula is common on the Pacific coast, California 
 and Mexico, for reed, and the name tula found in Central 
 Russia, and the sign of the solar month in Hindu, which cor- 
 responds to the sign of Libra, is Tula (a reed). Libra the 
 Balance is the autumnal sign where the sun was weighed in 
 the balance. 
 
22 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Put a reed in his right hand (Mark 15:19) ; Sponge on a 
 reed (Mark 15:36). 
 
 "There was given me a reed like unto a rod." (Rev. 
 11:1). 
 
 That is the reed in which Prometheus brought fire. 
 
 Toltec, a contraction of Tulatec and Tultec (Charnay). 
 
 According to the traditions of the Quiches, they came from 
 Tulan; there were several by this name — one in the region of 
 the setting sun, and over the sea by several migrations, and 
 in their exodus complained of the extreme cold, the long dark 
 night, and the barren country. ("America" Britannica, pp. 
 704, 705.) 
 
 According to traditions of Guatemala, they refer to a 
 colony from Tulapan. 
 
 There is a river Tule of California; also a lake called 
 Tulare, which may be allied to Tulle, a town in France. 
 
 See Tulisa, the name of the moon maiden in the Hindu 
 tale of the Woodcutter's Daughter. 
 
 And all these tales of Marsh settlements hark back to the 
 reedy shores of the moon lake, the imaginary home of their 
 ancestors. 
 
 The Toltecs came from Tollam and entered the valley of 
 Mexico in the Seventh Century, and built their capital, Tollam. 
 
 Aztec, Quiche, and Gautemalan emigrations and expedi- 
 tions all speak of the country variously spelled as Tulan and 
 Tollan — "Land of Reeds," and the coarse reeds growing 
 around the lagoons of Mexico and California are still called 
 Tulas. 
 
 Island of Thule, the ultima of Greek legend, which has 
 various northern locations by Pytheas, who states that its cli- 
 mate was neither earth, air nor sea, but a chaotic confusion of 
 these three elements; which would agree well with the ideas 
 of the ancients in regard to the mysterious nature of the moon 
 marsh likened to the reedy marsh of their own settlements. 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 THE WALL BUILDERS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The first building of the ancient city occurred in Gemini, 
 the Zodiacal sign of the twins more than six thousand years 
 ago, reckoning back by the precession of the equinoxes and the 
 first city of Babylonia. 
 
 The sacred city of Eridu was built at the mouth of the 
 Euphrates more than six thousand years ago, reckoning by the 
 present rate of the river drift, and built in the sign of Gemini, 
 called by the Chaldaeans "Sivan" or the month of "brick 
 laying." 
 
 These twin builders are in substance sun and moon; they 
 occur as Cain and Abel, and Romulus and Remus, and Simeon 
 and Levi in Jacob's blessing. (Genesis 49:5, 6.) 
 
 The moon is fairyland, and the sun and moon are the 
 castle builders of the sky. 
 
 The black giants build the black moon, but the royal arch 
 mason alone, that god of light, can set the keystone of the 
 arch, which is the ring of the new moon. 
 
 The ancients well understood the subject, for they call 
 the builders Cyclops or "circle eyed," having an eye in the 
 middle of their forehead, who are the giant builders — sun and 
 moon. 
 
 The Greeks called the builders of their ancient prehis- 
 toric walls Pelasgians, sons of Neptune, the wall builders of 
 
24 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 the sea; but Pelagaeus was a name of Poseidon, the Nep- 
 tune, the ocean god of the black moon, who helped build the 
 walls of Troy. They were also the Telchines and Dactyli, the 
 forgers of metals in the moon, and controlled the elements and 
 brought clouds and storms, but the Hellenes or solar race drove 
 out the Pelasgi from Greece, as the Heliadae or sun race drove 
 out the Telchines or forgers in Rhodes; they are the Lapithae, 
 or stone builders who drove off the Kentaurs or moon or winter 
 race, and these two races correspond to the Volsung and 
 Niblung, the bright or summer gods who overcome and super- 
 sede the dark races of the moon. 
 
 It was the well known contest between Neptune and 
 Athene, or the Spring fire and the salt sea for the possession 
 of Attica, but Athene was the spring light that mingled with 
 and purified the waters and produced the olive, the symbol 
 of the peace and harmony of Spring. 
 
 We know who the builders were, for Jacob set up the 
 moon pillar at Bethel and Hercules reared the two pillars (twin 
 forks of the moon) at Gades. 
 
 The first great monarch of Chaldea is also the first great 
 temple builder. 
 
 The Phoenician El, the Kronos of Greece, was the founder 
 of Gebal, the first of Phoenician cities. 
 
 Lycaon, the first king of Arcadia, founded the city of 
 Lycosura, on the slope of a mountain, according to Pausanias, 
 the most ancient city in the world. (Pausanias: 8, 38.) He 
 had fifty sons and slew his young son and offered him up at a 
 sacrificial feast to the high god Jupiter; for this offense Jupiter 
 destroyed his dwelling and turned Lycaon into a wolf. 
 
 Lycaon is the Spring sun who creates anew the moon 
 temple. His fifty sons are the fifty-two weeks of the year in 
 round numbers; and the son is the midsummer son slain 
 every year like Adonis and Tammuz and Atys — that only 
 son offered up every year by the Phoenician Kronos, and the 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 25 
 
 only son offered up by the Jewish Jehovah, and Lycaon is the 
 sun Jupiter himself, who becomes a wolf upon the fold. 
 
 Apollo and Neptune built the walls of ancient Troy. 
 They are the sun and moon. Apollo built the fire wall and 
 Neptune built the black wall of water. 
 
 The Xelhua who built the pyramid for the Mexican Quet- 
 zalcoatl. 
 
 (From Bull's Inscription of Khorsabad: Records of Past, 
 Vol. 11): "On the propitious day of the happy month, the 
 month of Sivan, I measured the ground and I moulded bricks. 
 In the month of Ab, the month of the god who lays the found- 
 ing stone of towns and of houses, all the people assembled and 
 performed the ceremony of Sulul. Bel-El lays the foundation 
 of my city; Mylitta Taawth grinds the painting stone in his 
 bosom." 
 
 The Free Masons, originally a Society of stone builders, 
 are now united as a social order. 
 
 That first city ever built, the city of the moon, is con- 
 tinually rebuilt from its ashes, the city of fire and smoke, the 
 city of contention and strife, the city founded in blood. 
 
 It was the city of the east built in Spring and appears on the 
 Zodiac as the city built in the sign of Gemini, by the twin 
 brothers Shin and Bel, or the moon and sun — Shin the moon 
 was the elder, and this sign was called the "month of building" 
 and the "month of bricks." 
 
 These twin brothers were enemies and lived in one house, 
 the moon, and that was the house divided against itself, which 
 forever fell, for it was founded in blood and strife. 
 
 Jacob in his last blessing to the twelve sons, says of Simeon 
 and Levi, who were the divinities of the sign Gemini, "Simeon 
 and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habi- 
 tations." 
 
 "O my soul, come not thou unto their assembly, for in 
 
26 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 their anger they slew a man, and in their self will they dug 
 down a wall." (Genesis: Ch. 49.) 
 
 They appear as the two brothers Romulus and Remus, at 
 the founding of Rome, as Remus, the dark brother leaps over 
 the rim of the dark moon he is slain by a flash of fire from the 
 sun, and becomes the new moon ring, an agent and partner 
 in the building of the city. 
 
 Cain went eastward and built a city in Spring in the 
 desert of Nod, the land of the exile and vagabond, the land 
 of refuge, the first place that would receive him; it was the 
 black desert of the winter moon which had arrived at the 
 Spring equinox. There Abraham went eastward in Spring 
 and planted the tree of life and dug the well in the house of 
 the moon. 
 
 We read of the classical Amphion and Zethus, twin 
 brothers, who built the walls of the city of Thebes, where 
 the stones took their place in obedience to the sound of a lyre, 
 which means the harmony of Spring. The stones are the rings 
 of the moon that nightly take their place until the moon city 
 is complete. 
 
 He is the harper, the moon minstrel, when the winter 
 winds have ceased, and the sun and moon are in harmony, 
 building the Shilo, the city of peace, for the sun and moon 
 were both musicians — the hoarse winter winds have ceased, 
 and have toned down to harmony, as when the morning stars 
 sang together at the beginning. 
 
 We read of Agamedes and Trophonius, the same two 
 brothers, the twin brothers of the sign Gemini in the month of 
 building; these two brothers built a treasure house for Hyrieus, 
 the Arcadian monarch, and left a movable stone in the wall 
 by which his treasures were abstracted by the wall builders. 
 It is the Niblung treasure stolen every year and secreted in 
 the moon vault; and all these temples and palaces are built 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 27 
 
 in the moon sea. Agamades and Trophonius are but specific 
 names of Zeus, the sun and moon. 
 
 The movable stone is the bright ring or door of the moon 
 down through which the gold is stored in the vault of the 
 moon, which is Hades. 
 
 But when the celestial temple of the moon was brought 
 down to the earth it must inherit the mythical origin of its 
 prototype, its bright pillars must come from afar and set by 
 deft and cunning artisans, like the builders of the moon temple, 
 the pillars come from a dark and magic land by night, for out 
 of the dark they come, and into the dark they go, and they 
 must be built of nature stones of God's own workmanship. 
 
 On that part of the old desert moon marked by the first 
 ring of light, was founded variously an altar, shrine, temple 
 or city. 
 
 FOUNDING OF THE CITY OF THEBES AND 
 
 DISCOVERY OF THE LOST EUROPA, 
 
 THE PRINCESS OF TYRE. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The discovery of the most ancient site of the city of 
 Thebes, and the startling revelation of Europa, the lost Princess 
 of Tyre, who disappeared while gathering flowers in her garden 
 by the shore of the sea. 
 
 Her father, Agenor, King of Phoenicia, sent his son 
 Cadmus, accompanied by his mother, in search of the lost 
 maiden. Search was vain, and her mother died broken 
 hearted in Thessaly, and Cadmus was ordered by the Del- 
 phian oracle to cease troubling himself about his sister, and to 
 
28 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 follow a cow as his guide and build a city where she should 
 lie down, and there sacrifice the cow. 
 
 After leaving the temple he saw a heifer slowly going 
 along without a keeper and bearing no mark of servitude, and 
 followed her through Boeotia until she came to where Thebes 
 afterward stood, and there the heifer lay down and was sacri- 
 ficed, and there he founded the city and gave to it the name 
 of his mother: Theba, the "ark" — for he was born in the ark. 
 In her fondling arms his mother held him through the raging 
 flood, and where the ark rested he built the city. 
 
 The above story is like many of its congeners — a moon 
 yarn, which by the ingenuity of mythographers is made to read 
 like history. 
 
 Cadmus, the "easterner" from "Kedem," "the east," is 
 the Adam Cadmun of Phoenicia, and our Hebrew and Chris- 
 tian Adam the sun prince, who returns to the Spring equinox 
 every Spring; he is looking for his sister, the moon princess, 
 who has been stolen by Jupiter and carried off to Hades and 
 transformed to a cow, wearing the two white horns, Jupiter 
 himself having taken the form of a white bull. 
 
 Europa is the wandering Io (the moon) who was likewise 
 changed to a cow, wearing the two white horns of the moon, 
 and cursed to roam the earth in winter lowing with pain, 
 stung by the goad fly, which is likewise the fire bug or ring of 
 the new moon. The heifer is turned loose by day and invis- 
 ible or hidden by the rays of the sun, but at night tied up to 
 a pole, which is the dark moon or dun heifer tied up to that 
 tall pillar of the new moon. 
 
 Europa is the Egyptian Isis, changed to a cow and cursed 
 to wear horns in winter servitude. 
 
 She is the northern Brynhild, cursed in winter sleep to 
 become a mummy wrapped in a husk until Sigurd, her de- 
 liverer, shall come and rip the dark husk of the black moon 
 with a gleaming sword and display the white linen of her 
 under-garment. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 29 
 
 For sacrifice means redemption; it is the red gash of the 
 sword of light upon the black moon ; at that stroke she becomes 
 the spotless virgin of the Spring garden; but for that sacrifice 
 she would have remained forever under the curse. 
 
 The heifer which Cadmus, the sun, saw was the dark 
 moon, the "dun cow" without a keeper; that is, having no 
 mark or brand of an owner. As soon as he branded her with 
 the ring of the new moon he became her keeper and husband, 
 for it was her wedding ring in Spring. She had been lowing 
 with pain and looking for her deliverer. 
 
 But in the after summer the heifer is again stolen by the 
 winter robbers, as the heifer was stolen from Samson by the 
 Philistines, who said to the Philistines: "Had ye not ploughed 
 my heifer, ye would not have solved my riddle," for she had 
 been branded by the Philistines, and had become again the 
 winter cow wearing the yoke (new moon ring) upon her neck, 
 the brand of Hades, the winter monarch. 
 
 Cadmus married Europa, the moon heifer, under the name 
 of Harmonia, for the winter and summer have met at the 
 Spring equinox, and peace and harmony are restored. The 
 old ship Argo, the ark, has returned with the golden fleece. 
 
 (Consult Davies' Mythology of the British Druids, p. 121, 
 for the landing of the ark on May eve, and the sacrifice of 
 the "lowing cow," and on that spot was peace; and again 
 the sacrifice of the two cows at the great stone in the field 
 of Joshua, the Beth-shemite, which had brought back the 
 ark of the Jews from the land of the Philistines. (First Sam. 
 6:14.) 
 
 "A heifer will meet thee in the lonely fields, one that has 
 never borne the yoke and free from the crooked plough, and 
 where she shall lie down on the grass there cause a city to be 
 built and call it Boeotia, "the Cow City." 
 
 In this way the city of Troy was founded by Ilus, who 
 had received a heifer as a prize for wrestling, and was directed 
 
30 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 to follow the cow until she lay down on the hill of the Phry- 
 gian Ate where he founded the city of Troy. 
 
 For in early times the leader, settler and emigrant, on arriv- 
 ing at his destination first erected the family altar like Noah, 
 and all the arkites and offered sacrifice, which was the principal 
 worship of old time, and celebrated in mimic rite to this day, 
 for all religions were founded on blood, without which there 
 could be no redemption. 
 
 A cow of great beauty among the Sabines was sacrificed 
 and hung up in the temple of Diana, for soothsayers had pro- 
 phesied that sovereignty would rest where the cow was immo- 
 lated. (Livy.) 
 
 THE FOUNDING OF JERUSALEM, THE CITY 
 
 OF PEACE— STORIES FROM 
 
 THE RABBIS. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 There were two brothers who had adjoining farms. The 
 one brother had a large family, and the other had none. And 
 the brother with a large family said: "My brother with no 
 family must be lonely," and he took some of the sheaves from 
 his field in the night time and set over on his farm and said 
 nothing about it. And the other brother said: "My brother 
 has a large family and he must have hard work to support 
 them, and I will take some of the sheaves from my farm in the 
 night time and set them over on his farm and say nothing 
 about it." 
 
 And they continued to do this every night, but every 
 morning things seemed to be just as they were at the begin- 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 31 
 
 ning, which the brothers could not understand. But one night 
 the two brothers met with their gifts, and when they beheld 
 and understood, they called that place the Mizpah, or place 
 of meeting, and it was chosen for the site of the city of 
 Jerusalem, or the sacred peace. 
 
 It was the meeting of sun and moon at the Spring equinox, 
 or treaty of peace on the boundary line between two king- 
 doms. 
 
 The sheaves are the same that stood up before Joseph 
 in a dream of the night and did reverence to his sheaf. 
 
 The sun sets the white pillars or sheaves or rings upon the 
 moon, but at daylight the moon sets them back. 
 
 FOUNDING OF THE CITY OF ROME. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 The Romans, when founding their cities, observed peculiar 
 sacred rites — ceremonies probably of Etruscan origin. 
 
 Upon a certain day previously selected by the Augurs 
 as propitious, the founder of the city yoked a bull and cow 
 (which represented the sun and moon) to a brazen plow, the 
 bull upon the outside, and the cow within, and ploughed a 
 deep furrow around the site selected for the future city, while 
 others followed and turned all the sods inward to the city; 
 and the ridge formed in this way marked out the line of the 
 wall and the furrow that of the fosse; but the plow was lifted 
 from the earth over the site of the gateway, for the plow con- 
 secrated the ground, and the gateways were left unploughed 
 or unconsecrated, or there could have been no way of entrance 
 or egress, for it was not lawful to cross consecrated ground. 
 
32 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Queen Dido inclosed her grant of land in an ox hide 
 which was cut in a long string, and the string is the scarlet 
 thread of the new moon. In other tales the site of the city 
 is marked out by a plow, which is the same golden furrow 
 of the new moon of Spring, around the dark inclosure. 
 
 The site left for the gateway over which the plow was 
 lifted, represented the gap between the two forks of the moon. 
 
 The sun pierces the soil of the moon with a golden plow 
 or sword, and in Persian traditions Djemschid, chief of the 
 dynasty of the Achaemenides, was the first to open the Persian 
 soil with a golden sword. 
 
 The first day of the year is a holy day with the Chinese, 
 and the Emperor with the people repair to the "Sacred Field" 
 to offer sacrifice, and the Emperor takes the plow in hand and 
 strikes a furrow, and this is repeated throughout the provinces 
 by the high officials, followed by religious ceremony. 
 
 THE ISLAND CITY AND THE CITY OF THE 
 SAND-BAR. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 The following is a legend discovered by Mr. Pinches, 
 Records of the Past, New Series, Vol. 6, a creation legend 
 from the Semitic time of Babylonian history. 
 
 "The glorious house, chief temple of Eridu, before the 
 deep had been made, before a city had been built, when within 
 the sea the current was; in that day Eridu was made — Eridu 
 was founded within the deep." 
 
 From Babylonian Religion and Myth by L. W. King, 
 of the British Museum: 
 
 "All lands were sea; at length there was a movement in 
 the sea ; there was Eridu made, the holy city was built. Marduk 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 33 
 
 laid a reed upon the face of the waters; he formed dust and 
 poured it out upon the reed that he might cause the gods to 
 dwell in the habitation of their hearts' desire. He formed man- 
 kind with the help of Aruru; they created the seed of man- 
 kind of the Ushu plant, and the Ditti plant of the marsh, and 
 Marduk laid in a dam by the side of the sea — brick he made, 
 cities he built." 
 
 The same feat is accredited to Manibozho, the Algonquin 
 chief, who created the earth from a grain of sand brought 
 from the bottom of the sea. 
 
 After the return of the Babylonian hero of the ark, Bel 
 said to Shamashnapishtim (Noah), "Let him and his wife be 
 as gods and dwell afar off at the mouth of the seas." (Mas- 
 pero: Ancient Chaldea, p. 572.) 
 
 These islands described were pictures of the white moon 
 island, the first land created in the moon sea, and like all other 
 lunar scenes were brought down and located upon the earth. 
 
 A variation is found in Griffis' Religions of Japan, p. 63, — 
 The god stood on the floating bridge of heaven and plunged 
 a jewel-pointed spear into the unstable waters beneath and 
 stirred them up until they gurgled and congealed, and when 
 he drew forth his spear the drops trickling from its point formed 
 an island ever afterward called "The island of the congealed 
 drop," and upon this island the divine pair descended, and 
 the man and woman separated to make the journey around the 
 island, the man to the right and the woman to the left. They 
 are the two forks of the new moon, and the left fork is the 
 woman; these two forks encircle the moon. 
 
 The reed in a Japanese myth, quoted by Tylor in Journal 
 Anthropol, 1876, where at the creation there arose from the 
 soft mud a reed or rush called Asi, from v/hich sprang the 
 the creator of land — that is the Hindu Asi, the Norse Asa, 
 the Hebrew Asa the healer, the Hindu Iswara, the first ring 
 of the moon. 
 
34 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 We can locate the mouth of the river by the following 
 curious tale from the Classics, where it is related that Alc- 
 maeon, afflicted with madness for the murder of his mother 
 Eriphyle, was pursued by the avenging Furies and fled from 
 one place to another, but no place would give him rest, like 
 Cain of old, for the country in which he stopped became barren 
 and accursed for his sake. He was at last informed by an 
 oracle that his only chance of escape from the Furies was to 
 find and dwell in a land which was not in existence at the time 
 of the murder. And this refuge was found on an island at the 
 mouth of the river Achelous, formed by the alluvial deposit 
 of that river. This is decisive. The island is the new moon 
 of the Spring, the new formed land just raised from the moon 
 sea. 
 
 Alcmaeon is the sun prince born of the sun; he has been 
 in exile during the winter, chased from one sign to another, 
 and wherever he attempts a settlement the land is cursed with 
 barrenness, for his rays are feeble. He is Cain, the fugitive, 
 and Bellerophon on the plain of his wandering, and the Wan- 
 dering Jew, and where Moses the murderer fled. 
 
 For as all the ways and acts and thoughts of man were 
 regulated in ancient times by the moon, and the observations 
 of lunar antics, houses of refuge were established upon the 
 earth by most of the ancient nations where the murderer 
 could flee to a city of refuge and be safe if he could reach 
 the shrine or sanctuary of a god; these criminals were pro- 
 tected as well as punished. Cain had a mark upon his fore- 
 head — the ring of the new moon, which was the name of God 
 and the cross of Christ, which was a charm or talisman; and 
 that white island of the new moon sometimes floating, some- 
 times anchored, was the first land ever created at the churn- 
 ing of the waters. 
 
 That white island or sand bar on the margin of the black 
 moon washed as river drift and deposited as a sand bar at 
 the mouth of the moon river. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 35 
 
 Latona was the first wife of Jupiter, the woman who 
 wears a black veil, and persecuted by the jealousy of Juno, 
 who had obtained a promise from the earth to give no shelter 
 to her rival, but Poseidon (Neptune) knew of the island of 
 Delos, then hidden under the waves which had formerly floated 
 upon the sea, and he caused the island to rise and stand fast. 
 
 There Latona found an asylum and gave birth to Apollo 
 and Diana; it was the little Zoar or house of refuge for Lot, 
 and the sand bar for Alcmaeon. 
 
 Delos was a nearby island chosen by the Greeks to rep- 
 resent the white island raised up in the blue waters of the moon, 
 where all the celestial gods were born; that original cave or 
 cell of life from which Adam was born and where he hid him- 
 self when he heard the sun coming, for the moon vanishes at the 
 sight of the sun. Latona was the Hagar persecuted by Sarah. 
 
 They were the wandering rocks of Cyaneae that were 
 destined to stand still and take root when first a ship should 
 pass between them. The ship is the moon ark, the black moon 
 of Spring that enters the Spring equinox, and the rocks are the 
 twin turrets or towers of the moon which stand fast and anchor 
 — where the ark grounds there is built the city of peace. 
 
 THE ILLUSORY CITY. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 "Vismapana," the illusory city — the aerial city of the Gand- 
 harvas, which appears and disappears at intervals; the hallucin- 
 ary city of the Hindus, which is the moon. 
 
 It is the same as Saubha, a magical city — a flying, aerial 
 city, a self-supporting city, visible and invisible by turns, 
 which stood on the shore of the ocean. It was built and owned 
 
36 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 by the Daityas or Titans, a race of demons or giants. 
 
 The city of Ahura Mazda is a heavenly city, guarded by 
 angels, for the Hindu gods live in jewelled cities. 
 
 That heavenly Garden made in the night with jewelled 
 pillars, walls, lawns and pools, with golden birds and perfumed 
 breezes. "The pennons of that city of Kausambi seemed like 
 twining arms." (Which are the arms of the new moon.) 
 
 It is the city described in Tale 1 3 of Sagas, of the far east, 
 produced by a talisman that was fished out of a shallow stream 
 and produced a city upon a plain; and again sold to merchants 
 who also built with it a flourishing city in the midst of a plain 
 surrounded by groves. Every time it was lost it was again 
 recovered to rebuild the city; and the talisman is the first ring 
 of the moon, which is lost every month and returns on the 
 third evening to rebuild the moon with shining pillars. 
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 There shalt thou build an altar unto the Lord thy God, 
 an altar of whole stones. Thou shalt not lift up any iron tool 
 upon them." (Deut. 27:6.) 
 
 "Thou shalt not build if of hewn stones, for if thou lift up 
 thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it." (Exod. 20:25); 
 (Jos. 8:31.) 
 
 The reason why the use of iron was forbidden in the con- 
 struction of the altar and temple was, we are told in the Mishna 
 (Middoth 3, 4) that iron was the chosen symbol of dark- 
 ness and winter, when the sun was a captive in winter and 
 wore the iron mask. 
 
 (Stories from the Rabbis by Abram Isaacs) : King Solo- 
 mon was forbidden to employ iron in building his temple, and 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 37 
 
 summoned his counsellors and laid the case before them; but 
 none could tell how the temple could be erected, and the stone 
 cut without the use of iron. At length one of the sages said: 
 "There is something far mightier than iron." 
 
 For in the days of creation when light and darkness con- 
 tended for the mastery, the Almighty called into life a tiny 
 worm (Shamir) which possessed the power of splitting the 
 hardest rock; but none knew where the worm was to be found, 
 for its hiding place had never been discovered. 
 
 Solomon dismissed the assembly, and by his dazzling signet 
 ring, upon which was written the ineffable NAME, summoned 
 to his presence two Genii. They came like the rushing wind 
 and the rumbling of an earthquake and bowed before him; 
 and they told King Solomon that their king Ashmedai (Asmo- 
 deus) alone knew its secret abode; that their monarch lived 
 far away upon the crest of a lofty mountain where he had dug 
 out a deep pit which he had filled with water and covered with 
 a stone, and that every night he uncovered the fountain and 
 drank of its water. 
 
 It was then Solomon sent his faithful servant Benaiah pro- 
 vided with a chain and ring, both engraved with the name of 
 God — a fleece of wool and some skins of wine, and Benaiah 
 drew off the water of the well and filled it with wine. 
 
 And it was when the sun had set and the stars shone, 
 Ashmedai raised the stone and descended into the well and 
 drank the wine, until a deep sleep fell upon him. It was then 
 Benaiah came from his hiding and fastened the chain around 
 his neck and stamped him with the great seal which bore the 
 name of God. 
 
 And he was taken before Solomon, who said to Ashmedai : 
 "I am about to build a holy temple and need the Shamir stone; 
 tell me where it is concealed." And the evil Ashmedai re- 
 plied: "I have it not; it is in the keeping of the Prince of the 
 sea, and confided to a fowl of the air who is bound by a solemn 
 
38 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 oath to keep it unharmed for all time. High on a mountain 
 top the fowl has made its nest which it never forsakes;" and 
 Benaiah was again summoned to set out upon his journey. 
 
 And it was found that the king of the demons had con- 
 fided this Shamir stone to the keeping of the woodcock of 
 the mountain, and the name of this bird was Nakkar Tura — 
 "the sculptor of the rock." He had borrowed it from Ash- 
 medai to cleave the barren mountain asunder, and into the 
 cleft he dropped the seeds of various plants that the mountain 
 might be clothed with verdure. 
 
 The mountain and the nest of the bird were found, and 
 the nest contained a brood of young which was artfully con- 
 cealed by Benaiah with a glass, so that when the bird returned 
 with food it might see its young, but not be able to feed them. 
 When the bird returned and found the nest glazed over, it 
 went immediately and brought the cleaving stone, and as she 
 was about to cut the glass the messenger of Solomon gave a 
 shout which caused the bird to drop the stone in fright, when 
 the messenger made off with his prize. 
 
 The mountain is the black moon mountain of the sky; the 
 nest is the sun spot or bright ring made by the sun; that is the 
 "eagle's nest"; he is the messenger bird, the first settler and 
 civilizer of that barren waste; he cleaves the mountain with 
 that sword of light and covers it with vegetation; he is seen 
 to cleave that wasteland every Spring after the devastation 
 of winter and build there the shining temple with pillars hewn 
 out of the black rock as by magic. 
 
 The Shamir is the first ring of the Spring moon from which 
 all the other stones or rings are dropped one on each night; it 
 is that sword which hews light out of the darkness until it has 
 built the moon temple of shining white pillars. This Shamir 
 stone was used to cut the stones on the breast plate of the 
 high priests; the Urim and Thummim, which represent the 
 twelve courts or heavenly houses of the ecliptic, which are the 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 39 
 
 twelve halting places of the sun in his annual round of the 
 heavens. 
 
 The Shamir, sometimes called a worm, and again a thorn. 
 Odin transformed himself into this wriggling worm when he 
 bored through the black cavern of the moon to bring back the 
 stolen mead from Gunlad the giantess. 
 
 The two Genii of the deep summoned by Solomon, are 
 the two forks of the moon — the same two ravens or messen- 
 ger birds which sat on the shoulders of Odin and brought him 
 tidings. 
 
 The rock where the great bird fixed its nest is the rock 
 Etam, where Samson fled, the "rock of ages" cleft for Moses; 
 the high mountain rock where Satan drew Christ; the rock of 
 the Acropolis, where Poseidon (Neptune the sea) contended 
 with Athene, the Spring virgin moon, for the mastery, and by 
 their united action soothed and purified the waters and brought 
 forth the olive, the symbol of victory and peace. 
 
 And that fountain where the evil Ashmedai drank, is 
 where the winged horse Pegasus flew up to Mt. Helicon and 
 fixed his abode, and where he produced the fountain Hippo- 
 crene with a blow of his foot. 
 
 It is the story of Midas and Silenus of the Classics. Midas 
 is the sun whose touch turns all things to gold, and Silenus is 
 the moon, the Ashmedai in milder form. Midas fills the same 
 moon fountain with the wine of Spring, which Silenus the toper 
 drinks and becomes sleepy, and is captured by Midas for the 
 purpose of obtaining the secret of his wisdom. 
 
 Ashmedai drank at that fountain at night when he lifted 
 the black stone covering of the moon well, the same rock Jacob 
 lifted to water the sheep of Rachel, and the black stone rolled 
 back from the sepulchre of Christ; it is how Odin had to 
 pawn his eye or put out his eye of day, the sun, before the 
 moon fountain will open at night, for the moon fountain is 
 covered by day with the black stone. 
 
4 o THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 The Ashmedai and Silenus are the winter destroyers which 
 the sun every Spring is obliged to conciliate and obtain their 
 assistance in the annual warfare of the year, for the moon de- 
 prived of the civilizing rays of the sun runs back to savagery. 
 
 Ashmedai, the winter moon, is brother to King Solomon, 
 as Silenus is brother or the other self of Midas, or as Loki to 
 Odin, but the good and the evil have to blend to restore har- 
 mony. 
 
 The Venus must wed the half savage Vulcan the smith; 
 the Spring moon has to be cast in the sea and wed the dragon 
 of the deep. 
 
 That fountain where Ashmedai and Silenus drank is 
 where Heabani, the Babylonian satyr, drank with the beasts of 
 the field — that man of savage mien and matted locks; he is 
 the winter moon redeemed by the harlot Venus, the sunshine 
 of Spring. 
 
 To us these moon pillars are known to come from the 
 sun, millions of miles away, when one is set up every night 
 until the temple is complete, but in remote times the moon was 
 supposed to shine by its own light — self-luminous, and to the 
 uneducated the pillars were seen to come out of the unknown 
 darkness by some mysterious agency. 
 
 And the builders of the ancient temples, as giants or 
 strangers, must come from afar, and the temples of the earth 
 must be built as far as possible after the model of the moon 
 temple without the mark or sound of a hammer. 
 
 Solomon retained Ashmedai until the temple was built, 
 and one day when alone, said to Ashmedai: "What, pray, is 
 your superiority over us?" If it be true, as written in Num- 
 bers 23 :22, "He has the strength of a unicorn." Ashmedai 
 replied: "Just take this chain from my neck and give me thy 
 signet ring, and I will soon show thee my superiority." And 
 as soon as Solomon complied with his request, Ashmedai threw 
 the ring in the sea, where it was swallowed by a fish; and he 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 41 
 
 transported Solomon four hundred miles away in a foreign 
 land, where for three years he wandered up and down as a 
 vagrant, begging his bread from door to door with a staff and 
 water jug, and became at last head cook at the palace of King 
 Ammon, and while acting as cook, Naama, the King's daugh- 
 ter, fell in love with him and eloped to a foreign land, and 
 one day as Naama was preparing a fish for dinner she found 
 within it the ring the demon had flung in the sea, and by this he 
 recovered his throne. . 
 
 The fish is the black moon that swallows the sun ring, the 
 British Ceridwen or Ceres, who swallowed Guion the little 
 sun ring ; the same ring Sakuntala lost while bathing in a sacred 
 pool, the ring of her betrothal. (Dowson's Hindu Classical 
 Dictionary.) 
 
 The ring is the new moon, that magic ring which has power 
 over all things in heaven and earth; the key that unlocks all 
 mysteries and betrays all secrets. 
 
 DIANA'S TEMPLE. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 DIANA'S TEMPLE AT EPHESUS. 
 
 A marsh was selected for the site of Diana's temple at 
 Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world, to represent 
 its prototype, the shining temple of the moon, which stood 
 upon the marshy shore of the moon sea. 
 
 The foundation was laid first with layers of charcoal to 
 represent the burnt and charred surface of the moon, and this 
 covered with fleeces of wool to imitate the fleece of the sun- 
 light, which covered the dark orb with a robe of light. 
 
42 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Before the temple was built it was thought it would be 
 necessary to bring the rock from foreign lands, but one day 
 a shepherd, by name Pixodorus, while watching his flocks, saw 
 two rams fighting, but as they missed stroke on the charge, one 
 fell and knocked a chip from the rock which was found to be 
 lustrous white on the inside, and revealed a quarry from which 
 the temple was built. 
 
 (The chip knocked off the moon is shown by the scratch 
 or first ring of the moon which reveals the crystal rock within.) 
 
 The wheels that moved the stone in the construction of 
 the temple were 12 feet in diameter, and were the two wheels 
 of the sun and moon to represent the twelve hours of night 
 and day, or the twelve months of the year. 
 
 But the architect found it impossible to place the keystone of 
 the arch over the doorway, and gave up in despair, and in his 
 worry fell asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed that the stone 
 fell in position of itself, and when he awoke he found the key 
 stone of the arch in its proper place; and the keystone was the 
 ring of the new moon ; it was Diana herself who had taken her 
 seat on the throne, which was the ring of the new moon, the 
 throne of all the gods. 
 
 In the temple, when completed, was placed a statue of 
 the Goddess of ebony and covered with bronze and alabaster 
 to represent the three forms of the Goddess in the three seasons. 
 
 The late excavations have verified the statement of the 
 charcoal and bags of wool placed in the foundation in its early 
 construction; they have been dug up fresh and well preserved. 
 
 To this temple the debtor fled and was safe, and all the 
 offenders of the law were immune within a bow shot of the 
 temple. Precious stones and treasures were deposited there 
 for safe keeping in the care of the Goddess. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 43 
 
 STONE HENGE. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 These gigantic remains are built with striking analogies 
 throughout Europe, Asia and Peru, and based upon the same 
 leading astronomical and cosmical conceptions, and were every- 
 where of unknown origin and referred to giants, Pelasgi, 
 Demons and Cyclops, most ancient dragon temples. 
 
 The megalyths of Stone Henge of Britain belong to a 
 prehistoric age of cyclopean remains as found in Greece, Asia 
 Minor, Italy, and the islands of the Aegean Sea, for in that 
 early age immense stones were scattered over the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 Stone Henge was a Druidical temple called the "City of 
 Stones" and "Caer siddi" (the circle of the Zodiac). Its 
 grand entrance to the northeast, like the gates and portals of 
 other temples and caverns in reference to the summer solstice. 
 
 The builders of Stone Henge were up to date with all the 
 astronomy extant in their time; they understood the leading 
 principles of astronomy, the orbits of the planets, the precession 
 of the equinoxes, and the metonic cycle, etc. 
 
 The temples of that time were constructed according to 
 known cycles: 12 — 19 — 30 — 60. Twelve, the number of 
 the solar months — nineteen the metonic cycle — thirty the de- 
 grees of a sign, and sixty the sexagenary circle. 
 
 Stone Henge was a cosmical temple dedicated to the 
 worship of their national religion. The mysteries of Ceridwen, 
 the British Ceres, were celebrated there in the Fifth Century 
 of the Christian Era side by side with Christianity. 
 
 On the morning of midsummer day the sun arose just over 
 the top of the "Friars Heel" at Stone Henge, which was a 
 large upright stone and pointed — a rough stone unworked. 
 
44 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 For the Gnomon stone of Stone Henge was stationed for 
 taking the summer solstice; but at Abury the Gnomon stone 
 was set to observe the exact time of the winter solstice. 
 
 Heads and horns of buffaloes have been found there, proof 
 of bovine worship and sacrifice. 
 
 Stone Henge and Avebury succeeded the old dragon tem- 
 ples of ancient serpent worship, but the altar preceded theini 
 all and was erected in a grove and afterward followed by the 
 temple and church. 
 
 This primitive altar was first built of white stones by the 
 sun in his holy temple of the moon, and copied upon the earth 
 by the foolish race of men. 
 
 These planetary temples that were at once religious and 
 astronomical have been broken up for the building of barns and 
 pig-styes, and the stones used in their construction were at that 
 time very numerous and of large size found lying loose on the 
 surface, and not as has been supposed drawn from a great dis- 
 tance. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE SWISS LAKE DWELLINGS. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 Lacustrine sites are found by hundreds on the Swiss lakes 
 of Zurich, Geneva, Neufchatel, Brienne, and they are found 
 in France, Lombardy, Austria, Germany, and in Eastern 
 Europe, Scotland, and North Wales, Asia, Africa, and South 
 America. 
 
 The Swiss Lake dwellers were a semi-pastoral people and 
 drove their herds home to their lake settlements at night. 
 
 Bones of the domesticated ox, sheep, and goat have been 
 identified. But more abundantly are the wild animals of the 
 chase as Urus, Bison, stag, boar, roe and fox, but the horse 
 had not been domesticated until later. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 45 
 
 The Swiss Lake dwellers were a peaceful race; their 
 houses were not fortified. 
 
 It is now known that the Lake dwellers of Switzerland 
 were the same race and civilization contemporary with the main 
 land and other parts of civilized Switzerland. 
 
 In the bronze age the men were of all small stature, and were 
 of a mixed character with surrounding nations. For the Swiss 
 Lake dwellers can be traced from the stone age through the 
 ages of copper and bronze to their latest age of iron. 
 
 It has been generally supposed that these lake dwellings 
 were constructed for defense and security. But they could 
 have built the same protected towns in the adjacent hills much 
 stronger, safer and more convenient with far less labor and 
 expense. The primal idea must have been religious. 
 
 They were evidently moon worshippers of the old type, 
 and their villages were built on piles to imitate the moon city 
 built on white pillars in the moon waters as taught by that 
 one: "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters." 
 (Psalms 104:3.) 
 
 For the moon worship dominated the ancient world; it be- 
 gan in savagery and furnished the warp of our religion of to-day. 
 Agreeable to this view they believed the whole earth set upon 
 pillars. 
 
 "For the pillars of the earth are the lords, and he hath set 
 the world upon them." (1st Sam. 2:8). 
 
 The foundations of many of the ancient cities and temples 
 of higher civilization were laid down in the marsh. 
 
 "The glorious house chief temple of Eridu, when within 
 the sea, the current was ; in that day Eridu was founded within 
 the deep." (Records of Past, New Series, Vol. 6 — Baby- 
 lonia) . 
 
 A bridge of the bronze period connecting the hut with the 
 shore was found thirteen feet wide at Lake Brienne — (for the 
 thirteen lunar months of the year). 
 
46 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 The platforms of their one-story huts were usually about 
 27 feet long, representing the number of days of the lunar 
 month. And lunar head-rests used for pillows while sleeping 
 and shaped like the disc of the moon are found among their 
 remains. 
 
 In 1856 at Cumarola, Italy, forty warriors were found 
 buried together in one place in the Marl beds. (Gastaldi Lake 
 habitations.) The number held sacred in common with the 
 Mound builders and rude nations. 
 
 In the graves of the Swiss Lake dwellers there were found 
 buried with each skeleton forty flakes of the tusks of the wild 
 boar pierced at each extremity. 
 
 Lake dwellers are mentioned by Herodotus and others; a 
 powerful tribe who lived on platforms resting upon piles on 
 Lake Prasias, south of Roumelia (Herod. V. 16) and a 
 powerful tribe once checked the Persian army. 
 
 There was nothing more remarkable about them in their 
 physical, intellectual and moral character than other races of 
 their time, which had been in motion and commotion from 
 Paleolithic times since the retirement of the glacial age. 
 
 The early origin of the Lake dwellers and their lake occu- 
 pancy is nebulous and indefinite ; probably they had followed up 
 the retreating glaciers of the ice age which had formerly driven 
 them south to the Mediterranean. 
 
 They had existed from the early stone age up through 
 the copper and bronze to the iron age of the Roman period. 
 Mixed with surrounding tribes and nations, suffered invasion 
 and tribal war, and from later schooling and the introduction 
 of iron and superior warlike implements had advanced more 
 rapidly, and through the change and improvement of the times 
 had gradually abandoned or been forced to leave their Lake 
 dwellings. They were scarce even in Roman times. 
 
 It is supposed that upon the introduction of iron and 
 superior warlike weapons, the Swiss Lake dwellers were over- 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 47 
 
 run and subjugated by Eastern invaders, and the Lake dwell- 
 ings were gradually abandoned. 
 
 In their earliest known period they were semi-civilized, 
 progressive people, had domesticated animals, wove garments, 
 raised wheat and barley, and had overland trade; and accord- 
 ing to their industrial remains are found to have advanced 
 steadily upward in improvement from the stone age to the 
 Roman period. 
 
 Their tools, weapons, and industrial implements are found 
 to have been continually improved from ruder prototypes like 
 their domestic animals. 
 
 Their civilization came from abroad from the Mediter- 
 ranean and the Euphrates, over prehistoric trade routes. 
 
 Lake dwellers, like the mound builders, had no written 
 language, though doubtless they lived in the Swiss lakes 
 through the early ages of Babylonian civilization; even as the 
 rude tribes of Indians on the Ohio and Hudson and Mohawk 
 rivers lived there all through the time of the civilization of 
 Central America and Mexico. 
 
 Even in the highest stage of the Aztec civilization there 
 were wild tribes upon the outskirts of the Empire who menaced 
 and fought back their civilization, its tyranny and restraint. 
 
 Lake dwellings were predominant in Central Europe; 
 their greatest development was found in the lakes bordering 
 on both sides of the Alps which offered superior attractions 
 for their habits of life. These Lake dwellings and marshes 
 were the favorite sites of all the early nations, but continued 
 longer in Central Europe, being more remote from high civil- 
 ization. 
 
 Though doubtless pile dwellings were used for defense 
 and safe retreats in forests, lakes, and marshes, by fugitive tribes 
 and outcasts, they were also the chosen seats of early communi- 
 ties for quiet, domestic life, affording a bountiful supply of 
 fish and game together with vegetable food. 
 
48 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Their settlements were of various sizes; some covering 
 thirty acres of ground, some built in bays and in retreats shel- 
 tered from the wind. Their lakes were subject to great change 
 in outline like our great lakes of the Northwest, some of which 
 are now hundreds of feet lower than their ancient margins; 
 lakes raised and lowered by geological fractures, and the eleva- 
 tion or depression of their outlet. Some of the Swiss lakes 
 have deepened, some by the drifting of the hill dirt down, drove 
 back and deepened the lake. Others have dug their way out 
 by wearing a channel and left their bottom dry land, and some 
 have increased their area by the deepening of their outlet. 
 
 Venice, the city of Venus, who was born of the sea, has 
 been built on a marshy sea-covered plain where islets have 
 been formed by the action of the currents assisted by art suf- 
 ficiently hard to be built upon, seventy or eighty of which 
 have been appropriated, upon which the city of Venice now 
 stands. 
 
 The tide lays bare daily a great plain of mud — the city 
 for the most part is built upon piles and stones. 
 
 A grand canal cut through the city in the form of a ser- 
 pent (letter S reversed) divides the city in two parts; again 
 146 smaller canals subdivide the city or water streets. The 
 gondola is their car and coach. Three hundred bridges cross 
 the canals so that one can travel also upon land. 
 
 Although the marshy islands of Venice served as a retreat 
 and defense against barbarian invaders like the crannogs of 
 the British Isles, it may have been originally founded upon the 
 old lunar superstition universal in the ancient world, whose 
 people built their villages upon piles and moon pillars; and 
 that grand canal cut through the city in the form of an S 
 reversed, which represented that ancient dragon, the king of 
 all waters and the deep. 
 
 The first settlements were on the shores of lakes and the 
 marshes of river bottoms. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 49 
 
 London arose from a rude cluster of pile dwellings — the 
 relics principally belong to the Roman era. 
 
 Glastonbury was formerly a lake village covering between 
 three and four acres, where have been found remains of both 
 the bronze and iron ages. 
 
 The Aztecs came from the north, as seven tribes from 
 Aztlan, and settled in the reedy marsh on the border of a lake 
 in the Mexican valley and built their capital on piles. 
 
 We have seen how a marsh was selected for the site of 
 Diana's temple, at Ephesus, on the shore of the Aegean sea, 
 541 B. C. 
 
 And Dodona, the most ancient shrine of the Greeks, was 
 surrounded by marshes; and the oldest Athenian sanctuary of 
 Dionysus stood in the marsh of Dimnai. ( Anthon : Class Dic- 
 tionary.) 
 
 How the first temple of Eridu at the mouth of the Eu- 
 phrates was raised from the sea. 
 
 The moon was from the beginning the water carrier and 
 distributor of the waters, and controlled the tides of the ocean, 
 and was also the god of wisdom, and was brought down to 
 inhabit the sea and came out of the sea, for the old Babylonian 
 as Oannes, the fish god and instructor of their race for many 
 ages, and incarnations. 
 
 Viracocha — "foam or fat of the sea" — the Peruvian 
 builder and civilizer, raised out of Lake Titicaca and built 
 cities and towns on the lake, which are still the wonder of 
 nations. 
 
 Dagon, the culture god and civilizer of the Phoenicians, 
 was a fish god. 
 
 The Phoenician Derceto of Askelon, was the goddess 
 of moisture and birth, and her worship was held upon the sea- 
 shore; she figured as a woman above, and a fish below the 
 waist. 
 
 The goddess Berytus came out of the sea, and so did 
 Venus. 
 
50 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 How Jonah, the preacher, came out of the sea; and how 
 Christ and his fishermen disciples dwelt around the shore of 
 the sea; and after the Babylonians and Hebrews had moved 
 up their moon-pillared temples to high ground, they still retained 
 their pillars, and had in Solomon's temple a molten sea with ten 
 bronze lavers — five on the north and five on the south of the 
 court of the priests. (1 Kings, VII, 23-40.) And this was 
 modelled after the more ancient Babylonian sea, which harked 
 back to the pillared sea of the moon, which was the original 
 model of all earthly temples and the fountain of wisdom to the 
 ancient world. 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 FOUNDATION SACRIFICE 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The tales of these ancient cities built by magic and super- 
 natural agency, are tales of that city of white pillars built in 
 the moon marsh, built of Hermaic pillars, which are brought 
 from a foreign land in the night, and planted in the marsh of the 
 moon sea. 
 
 There are always the two first stones in the foundation 
 of that moon temple that sink in the marsh and disappear; 
 it is only on the third night that the stone or ring of the new 
 moon stands firm, and appears on the third night bathed in the 
 blood of sacrifice or sunlight, the blood of the sun. 
 
 Before Romulus could build Rome his brother Remus 
 must be slain, and as he leaped over the black moon wall, he 
 was slain by the flash of sunlight. 
 
 Cain could not build his city until Abel was slain, and 
 God protected the assassin and gave him a passport. 
 
 Before the world could be redeemed the Only Son must 
 be slain, and his own father gave him up to the executioners, 
 though he begged for his life, and that the "cup might pass 
 from him." 
 
 Once the Slavs on the Danube purposed founding a new 
 city, and the heads of the people sent out men early before 
 sunrise to take the first boy they met and put him under the 
 foundation. (Grimm: p. 1143.) 
 
52 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 He is the first ring of light born upon the moon. For the 
 foundation stone must be bathed in blood. Sacrifice existed 
 formerly over the world and began in savagery. A victim 
 must be buried under a wall or bridge to render the wall secure, 
 and this victim, willing or not, became a protecting spirit and 
 guardian angel as buried under bridges and walls, and under 
 dykes and fortresses. Before a bridge could be built in India 
 the piers must rest on the heads of children. 
 
 And the oracle consulted requires the sacrifice of the only 
 son of a widow, where a chief has been slain, and that place 
 is selected for the site of the temple. 
 
 At such festivals human sacrifice was slain and eaten. 
 
 And that son of the widow is the sun child, or ring of light 
 slain upon the moon, his widowed mother, at the third day of 
 her darkness. 
 
 FOUNDATION SACRIFICE. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 Sacred buildings required a sacrifice; this sacrifice was 
 offered to the god under whose protection the edifice was 
 placed, and he became the Tutelar god. 
 
 When King Canut, surnamed "the saint," was first build- 
 ing churches, in Danish tradition, he prayed God that he might 
 build them strong enough to last to the end of the world; and 
 he went to the seashore and obtained froth with which he 
 ordered his masons to build, and this froth became hard as 
 stone, which will never decay. They were called "froth 
 walls" — a white, porous stone which imitated the white froth 
 of the new moon on the shore of the dark moon, that froth or 
 amrita churned by the fire bolt or serpent of fire from which 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 53 
 
 Venus, the new moon of Spring was made, which were the 
 first moon temples created. (Thorpe: Vol. 2nd, p. 246.) 
 
 A little child was buried in the wall of the Eifel tower at 
 Winneburg; at the church of Blex, in Oldenburg, the founda- 
 tions gave way, and a child was bought from a poor family 
 at Bremerleke and buried alive in the foundation. 
 
 Walls of buildings were seen to sink in the ground or the 
 black waters of the moon, unless constructed when the moon 
 was auspicious. They sank the first two nights of the dark 
 moon in occultation, but on the third night when the ring of the 
 new moon or cornerstone apears, it is found that blood has 
 been shed, and the foundation of the temple rendered secure, 
 and the pillars are then added one every night until the moon 
 temple is complete. 
 
 To us it is the blood of the sun which anoints the first pillar, 
 which is the three pillars in one; but in the early ages of super- 
 stition the moon was supposed to be self-luminous. 
 
 Cities and thrones and kingdoms must be founded with 
 blood. At the time of the old Babylonian creation, it was 
 found that some ingredient was wanting, and the god Bel cut 
 off his own head and kneaded the clay with his blood to create 
 man. 
 
 A city could not be built without the blood of Uranus, or 
 the murder of Remus. The year could not begin, nor the 
 Spring opened, without the slaughter of the lamb or the blood 
 of sacrifice. 
 
 The Uranus must be maimed that his blood might flow 
 upon the moon sea to fertilize the waters — a peace offering to 
 the angry winter sea; and the fruit of this strange union was 
 love and peace. The blood of the sun alone could open the 
 moon door of life. 
 
 The black giants build the black walls of the moon, and 
 the white pillars are set by the sun; after two stones have 
 sank the victim is found, and the third stone is bathed in blood 
 
54 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 which is what we call the new moon, for the moon waters 
 are unstable for a foundation. 
 
 King Vortigern attempted to build a strong tower, but it 
 always crumbled down, and the wizards spake sentence that 
 the tower could not be built until the ground stones were wet 
 with a child's blood that was of woman born, but no man had 
 begotten. (Grimm; p. 1 143.) 
 
 That is the new moon child born of an incubus, or night- 
 mare, but of no man begotten, like Merlin the Enchanter of the 
 British Druids, and Christ the miraculous child of all My- 
 thology, seen suddenly born from the dark womb of the moon 
 as by magic. It is while the moon has been in a trance and 
 visited by an incubus, or the christian Holy Ghost in the dark 
 dream of the night. 
 
 The Holy Ghost is the flash of moonlight made by the 
 sun in his sleep upon the moon. 
 
 These skeletons have been found walled up or buried 
 under east and west foundations of old buildings in Europe, 
 and the skeletons laid in the hard marl and covered with an oak 
 slab. 
 
 These earthly stories present a fac-simile of all the scenes 
 and phenomena of the moon stage. 
 
 THE CITY WALLS. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 We can locate the wall, for Joseph is a fruitful bough by 
 a well whose branches run over the wall. (Gen. 49:22.) The 
 wall is the black moon over which runs the vine of the new 
 moon. 
 
 The waters were a wall to Israel on their right hand and 
 left as they passed through the Red sea. They are the black 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 55 
 
 walls of the moon through which runs the red road or dividing 
 line of the new moon rod. (Exodus 14:29.) 
 
 Rahab, the harlot, dwelt on that town wall. (Josh, 
 2:15.) 
 
 The ass crushed Balaam's foot against that wall. (Num. 
 22:25.) 
 
 The little sister of Solomon's song: 
 "If she be a wall we will build upon her a palace of silver; 
 If she be a door we will inclose her with boards of cedar." 
 
 "I am a wall, and my breasts like towers" — that is the chink 
 in the wall where Pyramus and Thisbe of Babylon whispered 
 their love and their vows. 
 
 The little silver keyhole or new moon ring, where light 
 shone through the black wall of the moon, and the same keyhole 
 through which Peeping Tom saw the nakedness of Lady 
 Godiva, for which he was smitten with blindness. 
 
 The black wall of the moon on which the doom of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar was written — the "Mene and Tekel." 
 
 The victor in the Olympic games on going home entered 
 his native city in triumph through a breach made in the walls 
 purposely for his reception; it was to imitate the breach made 
 by the sun through the black wall of the moon. 
 
 "Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty 
 are in their habitations. O, my soul! come not thou into their 
 secret! Unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united; 
 for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self will they 
 dug down a wall." (Gen. 49:5, 6.) 
 
 It is the breach made in the wall of the moon, the gate or 
 silver door; the rent Remus made when he leaped the wall of 
 Romulus; the Ginungagap or breach made in the moon house 
 by the fire wedge as told in the Norse creation. 
 
 They are the Jacob and Esau, the white and black, who 
 quarrelled while still in their mother's womb (the moon) for 
 dominion. 
 
56 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 THE BUILDING SACRIFICE. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 A bridge was built near Rosporden, in Cornwall, but as 
 soon as the rain storm swelled the river, the bridge was de- 
 stroyed, until a child of four years old was buried under its 
 foundation. It was put naked into a barrel and given a con- 
 secrated light in one hand and a bit of bread in the other. 
 The child in the barrel with a torch represented the new moon 
 ring concealed in the dark room which will appear on the 
 third night. 
 
 In "Slav Sagas" there is a tale where Manoli, the master 
 builder's young wife, was buried. He was to build the clois- 
 ter of Arges, but every night the work was destroyed, and he 
 dreamed that a woman should be buried before the work could 
 stand, and he told his assistant builders the dream, and they 
 agreed that whoever of the wives of the masons came first 
 next morning to bring her husband his breakfast, should be 
 immured in the wall of the cloister, and an oath was sworn 
 that none might betray. 
 
 The next morning Manoli, the young wife of the master 
 mechanic, came through a flood and tempest with her loving 
 gift, though he had prayed God for the rain storm and the 
 tempest to keep her back, but no power could save her, for 
 it was the unalterable fate. She was buried behind the brick, 
 still crying to her husband to save her and her unborn child. 
 
 This sacrifice became a guardian spirit, like the sword of 
 Eden and the cherubs, which stood at gates and entrances, like 
 the head of Bendigeid Vran cut off and buried in the White 
 Mount in London, and buried with his face toward France, 
 that no evil might come from that way. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 57 
 
 A story tells that Copenhagen in the olden time was to 
 be surrounded by a wall; but no wall would stand — what 
 was built was destroyed until the builders took a little girl and 
 put playthings before her, and while she sat playing, twelve 
 masons built a wall over her while drums were beaten and 
 trumpets sounded, and from that day the builders were able 
 to raise the walls. (It is giving children to Moloch; a piacu- 
 lar sacrifice or expiatory atonement.) 
 
 The castle of Liebenstein was built in the same way, where 
 a child was buried among the foundation stones; its own 
 mother sold her child to be walled up, and a cake was given 
 the child, and while the masons did their work the child looked 
 out from the hollow in the wall and said: "I see mama yet," 
 and when the opening grew smaller it said: "I see mama 
 still." And after the last stone had filled the opening its voice 
 was still heard crying: "I can't see mama any more!" 
 
 A living child was buried to the east of the churchyard 
 to stay the plague in Denmark and Sweden and in France; 
 sometimes a priest was thrown alive in the ditch. Quintus 
 Curtius, a Roman knight, plunged into a crevice which had 
 sprung up on the forum Romanum, as a sacrifice for his people. 
 
 A living man or animal must be sacrificed to insure the 
 edifice. Often of old the builders took the first animal they saw 
 or met and bricked it up in the wall or under the foundation, 
 and this animal became the guardian spirit. 
 
 In Southern Sweden, it is said, no church has been built 
 there without having a bull or cock buried under its founda- 
 tions. 
 
 In the church of Dalby, in Denmark, a goose or gander 
 is buried. In Gudme a sow; in Viby a black sheep. 
 
 A church in Jutland was founded upon two grey hounds. 
 
 And this was a common practice in northern Europe, 
 
 from unknown time down, and the skeletons of children and 
 
58 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 adults and of various animals have been found in modern times 
 immured in walls and over doorways and beneath the founda- 
 tions of temples, arches and bridges. 
 
 Foundations smeared with human gore, and all from an 
 insane lunar superstition — the blood of the sun seen shed upon 
 the moon altar — all through the ancient world. 
 
 A ship could not be launched without a sacrifice; the 
 fleet of Agamemnon at Aulis would not move until his own 
 daughter Iphigenia had been slain. 
 
 And at the return voyage of the Trojans the fleet would 
 not move without the sacrifice of Polyxena, the daughter of 
 Priam and Hecuba. 
 
 The sacrifice survives to-day in christening a new launch 
 with wine, and coins and sacred texts are still buried under 
 cornerstones of churches and public edifices. 
 
 All public works and important undertakings were begun 
 with sacrifice — they sacrificed before going to war. 
 
 An animal buried under the cornerstone of a church as a 
 wolf, goat, sow or dog, brought security to the edifice, and 
 the ghost of the animal (like the ghost of the moon which it 
 represents) wandered about at night as a Kirk-Grim or pro- 
 tecting spirit; as the little sun child was seen walled up in the 
 moon, or swallowed up in its waves as an offering — it was the 
 soul of the sun; its death was meritorious; it became sanctified 
 and was a guardian of the moon temple, its guardian and 
 oracle. 
 
 With this belief the mother could give up her babe to 
 die as she does to-day, in the fond assurance that it is only 
 lent and still lives with Jesus. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 59 
 
 SACRIFICE PROPITIATORY. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 It was the maiden thrown in the Nile, an offering for a 
 fruitful season, an offering to the water god ; a Jonah thrown in 
 the sea to still the waves; a sacrifice taught by the moon; that 
 holy fire thrown upon the moon waters. That maiden hovering 
 over the sea in the Japan story, whom the raging water of the 
 moon-sea as a dragon was waiting to devour, and when the 
 maiden fell, the sea was stilled, and she wed the dragon; the 
 Venus, the maid of beauty, wed to the sea smith Vulcan. The 
 Atathensic of the Iroquois myth precipitated in the sea — the 
 mythical Jonah of Paul's time. That lamb slain every Spring, 
 and the house doors washed with the red blood as the door of 
 the moon temple was bathed with the rays or blood of the new 
 born sun, the Sun of Life. 
 
 Among the Dayaks of Borneo, upon the erection of a house, 
 a deep hole is dug for a post, and the post suspended over the 
 hole in which a slave girl is placed; then the lashing of the 
 pole is cut and the pole caused to descend and crush the 
 maiden. (Tylor: Primitive Culture, p. 96.) 
 
 For this foundation sacrifice exists as well in the lowest 
 savage life as in high civilization. 
 
 The rod of life, the first new moon of Spring, which raises 
 the dead, divides and heals the waters, becomes the foundation 
 stone of the first city laid down in the moon waters in Spring. 
 
 Remus, the brother of Romulus, vaulted the boundary 
 line of the moon, and fell burned as the smoking ring of fire, 
 which is the first new moon of Spring. Romulus, his brother 
 (the sun) slew him with a flash of fire or sword of light as he 
 leaped over the rampart of the moon. 
 
60 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 CHRISTIAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 It was customary in the old time to bury a dog or boar 
 alive under the cornerstone of a church, that its ghost might 
 haunt the churchyard and drive away those who might pro- 
 fane the place. (Henderson's Folk Lore, p. 274.) 
 
 In Sweden the beast which haunts churchyards is called 
 Kyrkogrim; at that place the founders of Christian churches 
 used to bury a lamb under the altar, and when the lamb, or 
 at other times the grave sow appeared to the grave-digger, it 
 was a presage of death. (Henderson; p. 274.) 
 
 As late as 1843, when a new bridge was built at Halle, 
 the common people wanted to have a child buried under the 
 foundation to render it steadfast. (Henderson: p. 274.) 
 
 But the favorite offering among Christians was the lamb 
 buried under the altar or under the cornerstone of a church — 
 it was the lamb of God. 
 
 In the old churchyards of Northern Europe a horse was 
 buried before any corpse was interred, for in their belief the 
 devil claimed the first soul buried in a new churchyard. 
 
 The belief that the devil claimed the first child baptized 
 in a new church was everywhere widespread. It was the 
 sacrifice of the crossroad, where the sun and moon met, and 
 the moon will never allow the sun to cross her path without a 
 tribute of blood; that is the toll bridge; that is the coin de- 
 manded by old Charon the ferryman of the death boat. 
 
 In later times of foundation sacrifice the mortar was tem- 
 pered with the blood of beasts. Or sometimes the shadow of 
 some stranger passing was caught upon the wall, and a reed 
 applied to the shadow for a personal substitute, and then the 
 reed and the shadow walled in. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 61 
 
 Gould, in Strange Survivals," p. 2, quotes: "We are told 
 by an Italian historian that when Sessa was besieged by the 
 King of Naples, and ran short of water, the inhabitants put a 
 consecrated host in the mouth of an ass and buried the ass 
 alive in the porch of the church, and at the completion of the 
 ceremony the windows of heaven opened and the rain de- 
 scended." 
 
 The ass is the black moon, and was the beast of burden 
 for the sun children and carried Jacob's family to Egypt 
 (Winter Hades) and carried the Holy Family there. 
 
 The consecrated wafer in the ring of the moon put in the 
 mouth of the black donkey, which was an offering to the moon, 
 which was the rain god of all antiquity, savage and civilized 
 alike — the same wafer used in the Eucharist. 
 
 The foundations of temples, houses and bridges were laid 
 in blood and under the cornerstone was placed a child, or dog, 
 or wolf, a cock, goat, or criminal; and every church was asso- 
 ciated with some animal dedicated which went by the name 
 of the Church Grim, or the church ghost, and the ghost of this 
 animal wandered about the churchyard at night or abode in 
 the church tower. 
 
 The same superstition has been brought down to the pres- 
 ent time, that of depositing coins, papers, or a bible as guar- 
 dians and talismans under the foundation of churches and public 
 edifices, relics of ancient sacrifice. 
 
 For earthly houses of worship represented moon temples, 
 and the priest at the altar personated the first pillar of the moon 
 temple, that high priest Melchizedek of the moon altar. 
 
 The following is from an inscription of Sennacherib : "The 
 ancient Timin of its palace those of old time had stamped its 
 clay with sacred writing and repeated it in the companion 
 tablets." Again, p. 31, "The Timin of old times had not 
 been forgotten owing to the veneration of the people. With 
 a layer of large stones I enclosed its place and I made its deposit 
 
62 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 secure." (Inscription of Sennacherib: Records of the Past, 
 Vol. 1, P . 29.) 
 
 In the old Druidical religion of Britain, the Druidesses, who 
 were wives and daughters of the Druids, who resided in an 
 island at the mouth of the river Loire, were obliged every year 
 between sunrise and sunset to demolish and rebuild the roof 
 of their temple, and if any of their number should let fall the 
 least part of the sacred material, she was torn in pieces by her 
 companions. 
 
 But no year passed without the accident; it was the yearly 
 sacrifice of the rebuilding of the temple. It was the maiden 
 destined to be the bride at the Easter wedding who is de- 
 stroyed, and the third day reborn as the Spring flame of love ; the 
 new moon like the feet of Signy, the sister of Sigmund, the 
 Volsung at the Spring conflagration of the moon when the 
 winter tree of Siggeir the Goth is uprooted and his palace 
 burned, and Signy is burned all but her feet, which is the new 
 moon found in the ashes of the burned moon. She is reborn 
 as the Easter moon. Sacrifice means salvation and rebirth; 
 and all these savage tales are of the sun and moon humanized 
 to appear like history. 
 
 On laying the foundation of a Christian church in the 
 Sixth Century of the Christian Era, the wall fell through the 
 working of evil spirits as soon as erected, and it was foretold 
 that they could never be made permanent until a human victim 
 was buried alive under the foundation; when Oran, a com- 
 panion of St. Columba, offered himself and was buried alive* 
 and at the end of three days St. Columba had the earth re- 
 moved to take a last look at his old friend, when Oran stood 
 up to the surprise of all, and began to reveal the secrets of his 
 prison house, and declared that all that had been said of hell 
 was a mere joke. 
 
 He is the new moon which rises from the grave on the third 
 day. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 63 
 
 JEWISH SACRIFICE. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 "Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of 
 Hinnom and burnt his children in the fire after the abomina- 
 tions of the heathen." (2nd Chron. 28:3.) 
 
 "Inflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, 
 slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks." 
 (Isaiah 57:5.) 
 
 "For the stone shall cry out of the wall and the beam out 
 of the timber shall answer it. Wo to him that buildeth a town 
 with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity." (Habakkuk 
 2:11. 12.) 
 
 "In his day Hiel the Beth-elite built Jericho, he laid the 
 foundation thereof in Abiram, his first born, and set up the 
 gates thereof in his youngest son Segub." (1 Kings, 16:34.) 
 "Cursed be the man before the Lord that riseth up and 
 buildeth this city of Jericho; he shall lay the foundation thereof 
 in his first born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the 
 gates of it." (Josh. 6:26.) 
 
 This was written after the Jews had been captive in 
 foreign lands, and had reformed, but for ages the Jews were 
 not much if any above the Canaanites, and their altars ran red 
 with blood. 
 
 REMARKS ON SACRIFICE. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 We read of the Grecian General Aristodemus, who slew 
 with his own hand his virgin daughter in obedience to the 
 command of the Delphian oracle, which bade him sacrifice 
 his own virgin daughter, an offering to the infernal deities for 
 
64 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 success in battle; which is the same poetic fancy as that of 
 Iphigenia and Jeptha's daughter — the giving to the aerial 
 forces of nature a personal name and terrestrial habitation. 
 
 The first place of worship was an altar stone — the stone 
 of sacrifice which preceded the temple which still continued 
 the altar of sacrifice, and has continued on to the present time — 
 that circle of the new moon altar where a humanized god is 
 slain and his body and blood are devoured by the moon mon- 
 ster that demands blood. For all sacrifice has been taught by 
 the moon. 
 
 Were these monster tales of human sacrifice ever supported 
 by fact, or were they destructive forces of nature personified 
 and distorted by the fiction of poets? How much of this shall 
 we believe? Shall we believe that ever even in savage times, a 
 human victim was offered up? Yes; it was the old inheritance 
 of savagery continued on in a less degree in the ages of civil- 
 ization. Why not? When within our own time the Hindu 
 mother threw her babe in the Ganges to be devoured by a 
 crocodile, and threw herself upon the funeral pyre of her hus- 
 band as a suttee, that pyre of human faith, and worshipped 
 that same crocodile and mummied his remains in a sacred cham- 
 ber of the dead, for the crocodile was the symbol of death — 
 Hades — or destroying power, the evil power to which they 
 were subject; and they were taught like ourselves to kiss the 
 rod and bless the hand that gave it, as Christian mothers to-day 
 give their babes to Christ the God of Life and Death, by whose 
 magic power they will be reborn in immortality. That croco- 
 dile is now worshipped as Siva, the destroyer. 
 
 For in ancient Europe slaves and captives of war were 
 sacrificed in heaps, and in Mexico, four hundred years ago, 
 the hearts of captives in war were torn out and held up to the 
 sun while still throbbing with life, and millions of Christians 
 have been slaughtered in modern Europe and offered up to a 
 Christian God, and in Africa to-day the wives and slaves are 
 buried alive with their departed chief. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 65 
 
 For they looked upon death in despair, and cried to the 
 heavens and earth for help, and studied and imitated the won- 
 ders of heaven, but principally the moon with its blood-stained 
 face, its alternate destruction by fire and resurrection to life 
 on the third day, and they built moon altars on which they lit 
 fires and offered incense and bowed before the moon and 
 waved their hands and threw kisses at the moon, and the 
 women purified the temple with holy water and wiped and 
 dried the floor with the long tresses of their hair. For sacrifice 
 was taught by the moon, and the Hindu suttee in reverence 
 followed her ordinance; and as the ship of the moon arrived 
 every Spring at the equinox with the solitary hero and redeemer 
 (the new moon) and departed at the end of summer as the 
 Golden Fleece in the same ship, their departed heroes were 
 placed on a burning ship in the same way and turned seaward 
 to carry them home. 
 
PART FOURTH. 
 
 THE SACRED ISLAND 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 One of the most surprising and unintelligible features of 
 the ancient religions is their universal reverence for sacred islands 
 and insular inclosures in bays, lakes, and at the mouth of a 
 river. 
 
 Dr. Borlase speaks of huge remains of Druidical monu- 
 ments in the Isles of Scilly, where Druidical mysteries were cele- 
 brated. 
 
 Meroe was a sacred island in the Nile, formed by two 
 tributaries, the Astaphos and Abaras. (Ency. Brit., Vol. 5, 
 
 Elephanta is the sacred island near Bombay with its rock 
 hewn cave and statuary. 
 
 The Sacra Insula of the Tiber was the sacred island near 
 its mouth, caused by the bifurcation of the river; the sacred 
 serpent brought by the Romans from Epidaurus went ashore 
 on this island. 
 
 The sacred island of Dilvun lay in the Persian Gulf, which 
 Dilvun is Diluvium, the island of the deluge or the deep. 
 
 They are there found to exist among the rude and half civil- 
 ized races as well as among the most enlightened. 
 
 Manitoulin (spirit islands) in Lake Huron, were sacred to 
 the Huron Indians. 
 
 From Stephens' travels in Yucatan we learn that on the 
 sacred island of Cozumel, in Yucatan, existed a sacred temple 
 which was visited by vast multitudes of natives from all parts 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 67 
 
 of the peninsula; the roads leading to it were paved with cut 
 stones. (Stephens II, p. 122.) 
 
 The Isle of Mona or Man, between Britain and Hybernia, 
 was a sacred island and seat of the Druids. 
 
 There is the sacred delta of Orissa containing the deposits 
 of three rivers on the extreme southwest of Bengal, and the 
 whole delta is sacred ground; "every town is filled with temples 
 and its best acres devoted to the gods; one year they are de- 
 stroyed with drouth and another by flood, still their life is 
 given up to toil and the worship of the all destroying Siva." 
 
 The temple of Jupiter Ammon was an island oasis of 
 verdure, a garden in the sandy desert west of Egypt. 
 
 This white island in the dark waste of the moon was likened 
 to an oasis, a Tadmor in the wilderness, a Palmyra in the 
 desert. 
 
 Artificial tanks and ponds were made adjacent to temples 
 containing small islands crowned with appropriate fauna, and 
 in the lake swam sacred birds and fish. 
 
 They appropriated also the wedge at the junction of two 
 rivers and cut off the broad end of the peninsula by a moat but 
 the favorite location was the sand bar at the mouth of the river. 
 
 And little islands in marshes and in the bend of the river 
 were chosen for settlements around which grew the city. 
 
 The city of Paris was bora on that little island "La Cite," 
 inhabited by the Parisii, an ancient Gallic town before its 
 appearance in history. 
 
 The name Paris still suggests the abode of the Peris, or 
 fairies, the moon or fairy race. 
 
68 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 THE SACRED ISLAND. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 Why was all this worship transferred from the main land 
 to adjacent islands in the sea, when often more eligible and 
 convenient sites were obtainable upon the shore? 
 
 The origin is not hard to divine, for these mundane islands 
 represented the moon, that island of the sky where all our 
 religions and religious rites were born, for the moon was the 
 most ancient of the gods and the father of the Sun God who 
 became his vassal. 
 
 The moon to the ancients was the source of water. In 
 lunar romance the dark moon was an ocean lake or black 
 river, and the new moon was fished up or raised up as a 
 garden or habitation for man; in Cosmogony it was the first 
 land that appeared at the creation. 
 
 But the moon was far away, and nearby islands took its 
 place for convenience upon which temples and churches were 
 reared after the divine original, and inherited its vast repository 
 of legends which received a local adaptation. 
 
 And all the sacred islands of the earth were but mundane 
 representations of their lunar prototype, and the scenes and 
 marvellous tales which were true only to their original home 
 have been adapted to their new environment upon the earth. 
 
 And this is how our sacred islands in fable have become 
 migratory and at one time floating, and at another sunken 
 to the bottom of the sea, and again raised to become new 
 Edens to give birth to gods and heroes. 
 
 How they sailed as birds and air balloons and phantom 
 ships, disappearing and reappearing in their annual journey 
 through the twelve houses of the Zodiac, each of which had 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 69 
 
 a stationary moon for a theatrical stage and opened only once 
 every year at the arrival of the sun and then closed until the 
 next annual arrival. 
 
 This island Delta stood at the mouth of the river Nile 
 at Buto. It was at the mouth of the Euphrates as Eridu; and 
 it was at the mouth of the Eridanus as Spina, or the spinal 
 column of the new moon. It was at the mouth of the Achelous 
 for Alcmaeon -the fugitive ; it was the first island planted in the 
 sea according to ancient belief. 
 
 This sandbar, delta, or wedge which we call the new 
 moon was a triangle — the pyramid represented this triangle 
 or new moon on each of its four sides. 
 
 The Greeks swore a sacred oath by this equilateral triangle. 
 
 These twelve celestial islands of the Zodiac as halting 
 places and caravanseries of the aerial ship received appropri- 
 ate names, and a new name for almost every tale, as "Sunlit 
 Hill," "Land of Rings," "Beacon Hill," "Black Castle," 
 "Iron Castle," "Isle of Ebony," "Flower-pot Inn," or as in 
 the voyage of Maildun "Island of the Burning River," "Isle 
 of the Blacksmiths," "Island guarded by a wall of water," 
 "Island standing on one pillar," "Isle of the Blest." 
 
 The stopping places and ports made by the Argo were 
 all moon islands; so were those of the wandering Ulysses. 
 
 Once every year a merchant ship made a voyage to these 
 ports; it brought rich silks and linens and precious stones, and 
 the gold of Ophir; it traded in amber and olive oil and charms 
 and wonder-working talismans; it carried passengers escaped 
 from a burning city and pilgrims bound to a foreign land; 
 sometimes a ship waving the white flag of peace, and sometimes 
 a pirate ship hung with the black flag of death. 
 
 The earth was an island to our forefathers; an inverted 
 bowl or hollow sphere resting on the primeval waters. 
 
 India was an island to the Hundus; their holy Mt. Meru 
 was upon an island. 
 
70 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 For the moon furnished the type of creation for the other 
 planets. 
 
 Hengist, the Saxon invader of Britain, desired of Vorti- 
 gern a grant of as much land as he could compass about with a 
 bull's hide; and after his request was granted he cut the bull's 
 hide into a long thong and encompassed a large tract of land 
 where he built a castle which was called Thong Castle, which 
 was the Isle of Thanet. 
 
 The thong is the long lash or rope of the new moon which 
 encircles the old estate or domain of the dark moon island. 
 
 It was thrown up to him in after years in the Gododin, 
 Song 29, Davies' Mythology of British Druids, p. 379: "He 
 it was who robbed us of the fair Thanet and with the white 
 and fresh hide." 
 
 ISLAND OF ATLANTIS; ISLES OF THE GENII; 
 ISLAND OF ST. BRANDON AND THE 
 SEVEN CITIES, AND EN- 
 CHANTED ISLANDS. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 There existed in ancient times the island of Atlantis, in 
 the middle of the Atlantic, which was sunken by an earth- 
 quake and flood for the sins of its inhabitants — a fabulous 
 island overwhelmed in the sea like Delos and Rhodes and 
 the "Cities of the Plain"; they are all images and reflections 
 of the moon island now seen floating on the surface of the 
 moon sea and again buried and submerged. 
 
 The Chinese had the Isles of the Genii which have been 
 the objects of search like our Atlantis; voyagers of discovery 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 71 
 
 have come in sight but, driven back by storm or adverse winds* 
 could never land. 
 
 Then there was the island of St. Brandon, which existed 
 until recent times in the Atlantic, a flying island a little west 
 of Ireland which was discovered by an Irish monk in the sixth 
 century, while in search of the islands of Paradise; many expe- 
 ditions were sent out in search of the island which ended in 
 disapointment. 
 
 Again there was the Isle of the Seven Cities; it was at 
 the conquest of Spain and Portugal by the Moors that multi- 
 tudes of Spanish Christians fled over the sea to escape slavery, 
 headed by seven bishops, and after battling with the waves 
 were landed upon an unknown island in the midst of the At- 
 lantic, where the ships were burned to prevent the return of the 
 colony — none ever returned. 
 
 These phantom islands were sometimes enchanted; some 
 could be seen from the coast at long intervals, as Hy-Brasail 
 could be seen from the coast of Ireland once in seven years; 
 some others the priests had tried to disenchant by throwing 
 on them sparks of lighted turf, or shooting fiery arrows toward 
 them, which are the flashes of sunlight thrown upon the dark 
 moon at conjunction which is under a spell, and becomes dis- 
 enchanted by the sun rod. 
 
 The Phantom Island which seemed to rise from the lake 
 when something remarkable was about to occur. It appeared 
 shortly before the death of Charles the XII, and also before 
 the death of Gustav III, when the island again became visible. 
 (Swedish Fairy Tales, by Hoffburg, p. 59.) 
 
 At the end of summer the island rising is a death omen, 
 like seeing the "Trees of gold, the sign that dying eyes be- 
 hold." 
 
72 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 STORY OF ALCMAEON, LATONA, AND DELOS. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 There was a man in Greek legend called Alcmaeon, who 
 had slain his mother Eriphyle, in consequence of which he was 
 struck with madness and pursued by the avenging furies, and 
 an oath was exacted from every land that he should be denied 
 a habitation or dwelling place. He then fled, and wherever he 
 set his foot the land became cursed with famine and changed 
 to a desert. 
 
 He then consulted an oracle and was told that the only 
 way of escape lay in finding a land that was not in existence 
 at the time of his murder, and this he found at the mouth of the 
 river Achelous — a sandbar at the mouth of a river which the 
 rain and floods of winter had built up above the sea; here he 
 married Callirhoe, the daughter of the river god. 
 
 This is one of the most important stories to be found upon 
 the subject. 
 
 The above Alcmaeon was the son of Amphiaraus, the pro- 
 phet and warrior, who concealed himself to avoid the Theban 
 war which he knew would prove fatal, but his wife revealed 
 his hiding place, for which she was to receive the necklace of 
 Harmonia. The expedition proved fatal to Amphiaraus, who 
 was swallowed up by the earth on the battlefield, and his son 
 Alcmaeon, in obedience to his father's command, slew his 
 mother in revenge. 
 
 The characters in the play are all lunar. Amphiaraus was 
 concealed in the dark moon for three days, which is the utmost 
 time the moon can keep a secret ; he was hidden under his wife's 
 gown, who was the faded moon sitting in sackcloth when she 
 was offered the golden necklace (new moon collar) if she 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 73 
 
 would betray her husband, which she was obliged to accept 
 on the third evening, when the light of the necklace betrayed 
 the hiding place of her husband. 
 
 The tragedy takes place at the end of summer and is of 
 annual occurrence. Alcmaeon slew his mother at the same 
 time with the sword of light (and Amphiaraus and his wife 
 take the same journey as Tammuz and Ishtar, and Cadmus 
 and Harmonia to the land of shades) . 
 
 And Alcmaeon becomes the fugitive like Cain, Bellero- 
 phon, and the Wandering Jew through the winter journey of 
 the southern signs, when the ground is frozen. Fury drives 
 them on irresistibly as the law of attraction or gravitation ; they 
 cannot stop; the sun prince has the yearly journey to perform 
 around the ecliptic in whatever house station or constellation 
 he would wish to remain; he is hurried on — famine follows his 
 track, vegetation has ceased. 
 
 No land will allow him to make a settlement to sow or 
 reap, for it would bring but the winter thorns and thistles as 
 it did for Adam and Cain. The first fertile land that the 
 sun prince will find on that route will be at the Spring equi- 
 nox; then the sun has gained sufficient altitude and warmth 
 of rays to attract the attention of the earth, and at the con- 
 junction at that time on the third day of darkness, he will dis- 
 cover the land foretold by the oracle, the little white island 
 of the new moon, the sandbar at the mouth of the moon river, 
 the land of Nod for Cain, the Zoar for Lot, the Delos for 
 Latona, the New Jerusalem, the Shilo of peace. 
 
 Again in Greek legend the island of Delos once floated 
 under the surface of the sea until the time when the goddess 
 of Latona was in travail and looking for a land of rest, for 
 Juno had bound the earth, by an oath, not to receive her 
 when Neptune in pity struck the bed of the sea with his 
 trident and caused the island to appear at the surface and float 
 as an ark. It was then moored by Jupiter and commanded 
 
74 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 to stand fast for the reception of the goddess on the eve of 
 her delivery. 
 
 For as the island was hidden under the sea at the time 
 of the oath, it was released from the obligation like the land 
 found by Alcmaeon. 
 
 The island is the new moon of Spring, the little white 
 island in one corner of the dark moon sea. Latona is the black 
 moon giving birth to the infant sun-child, or ring of the new 
 moon on the third evening of her occultation, for she has been 
 in concealment for three days. 
 
 It is the contest in Springtime between Neptune as the 
 winter sea, and storm, and Minerva, the Spring moon for the 
 possession of Attica, the fight between land and water, as the 
 dry land appears for the landing of the ark — the same moon 
 island raised up by magic whenever the emergency requires. 
 
 The island of Anaphe, one of the Sporades, was said to 
 have arisen by thunder from the bottom of the sea in order to 
 receive the Argonauts during a storm and returning from Col- 
 chis. It is the white island of the new moon. 
 
 Keightley's Mythology: Tale of the Dwarf's Banquet, 
 where Olaf sailed and ran against the mountain of the giants, 
 and cut it through and separated it from the island beside it. 
 The little island cut off is the new moon. 
 
 With the Tonga islanders of the Pacific, their god Ton- 
 galoa went fishing with a celestial fish hook, and he sat up in 
 the sky and let down his hook in the ocean, and when his lime 
 began to tighten he pulled with prodigious strength and brought 
 up points of rock and tops of hills and mountains, when his 
 line broke and left instead of a fish the island of Tonga, which 
 he gave for a home to the islanders, for they likened the origin 
 of their own island to that of the white island of the new 
 moon fished up from the moon lake. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 75 
 
 THE AZURE ISLANDS, OR THE WANDERING 
 
 ROCKS. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 The Azure Islands, or the Wandering Rocks, stand at the 
 entrance of the Euxine; they have many names and are called 
 the "Cyaneae," and also called the "Crushers," for they were 
 fabled to float about and crush vessels attempting to pass be- 
 tween them. They have a curious history and were celebrated 
 in the Odyssey and also in the Argonauts. Pindar says they 
 were alive and moved swift as the storm wind. 
 
 They were the dread of mariners ; no birds passed through, 
 not even the sacred doves which carried the ambrosia to Father 
 Jove, but the smooth rock takes away some one of them, and 
 then Jove supplies another. One of the rocks reaches to 
 heaven with its sharp top, enveloped in cloud; no man can 
 ascend this smooth and polished stone. But the fates had 
 decreed that they should become "rooted to the deep" when- 
 ever a vessel succeeded in passing through them, which feat 
 was accomplished by the Argo. As the Argo approached 
 the islands they let fly a pigeon, which passed through with 
 the loss of its tail, and the Argo followed, which likewise lost 
 part of her stern. 
 
 The rocks are the two horns of the moon; they were 
 wandering for three days in the dark and submerged in passing 
 from one constellation to the next where they were to appear 
 as new moon. It describes the tallest one of the rocks or 
 moon forks as smooth and reaching to the sky, which is the 
 right hand limb of the moon. 
 
 The dove is the white messenger bird from the sun; the 
 two planets of the sun and moon are in conjunction, and as 
 the sun passes over the moon the black yawning jaws of the 
 moon chop off the tail or hinder part of the light which is 
 
76 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 the new moon, the tail of the dove and also the tail of the 
 Argo. 
 
 The rocks are now stayed and anchored and the passage 
 between them is left open and wide apart between the forks. 
 
 The scene is the same as that of the serpent biting or 
 bruising the heel of Adam. 
 
 The time of the year is at the Spring equinox, and the 
 Argo, or ark of Noah, is bringing home the golden fleece 
 or olive branch; that is the same dove of peace which brought 
 rest for Noah. The Argo and the ark of Noah are one and 
 the same vessel, the contention of the wandering rocks, like 
 that of the Volsung and Niblung, has ceased, and they all 
 declare peace for Shilo has come. 
 
 The scene is the same as that of the Sabine women rush- 
 ing between the Romans and Sabines, for 'tis holy ground 
 alike for the wolf and the lamb and the end of war. 
 
 The legend of the wandering rocks is still further valuable, 
 for it shows that the throne of Zeus, like that of Jehovah, is 
 upon the moon, for it is the path by which the doves carry 
 nectar to Jove. 
 
 Pliny has given a description of the Vandimonian Lake, 
 renowned for its floating islands, which one could not fail to 
 identify with the moon. He says the Lake is in the form of 
 a wheel lying on its side, uniform in its shape. No vessel is 
 seen on its waters, for it is a sacred lake. It contains grassy 
 islets covered with reeds and rushes which float on its surface. 
 (The lake shaped like a wheel is the blue moon lake; the 
 reeds and rushes are the dark spots seen on the surface.) 
 Again, "Each of these islets has a distinct form and size, and 
 all have their edges smoothed off by continually rubbing 
 against the shore and against each other. All are equal in 
 height and buoyancy, for they sink into a sort of boat with a 
 deep keel, which is seen from every side, and there is just 
 as much of the islands above as below water." 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 77 
 
 The islands described above are the white rings of the 
 moon, their edges smooth by constant attrition; each one is 
 boat shaped. 
 
 He continues: "At one time these islands are joined to- 
 gether like part of the main land; (this is the full moon). At 
 another they are driven apart and scattered by the winds; 
 (these are the rings scattered during the wane of the moon). 
 
 Sometimes the smaller ones stick to the greater; again all 
 are driven together in one spot and add to the land on that side, 
 and now here, now there, increase or diminish the surface 
 of the lake. 
 
 The water of this lake flows out in a stream which, after 
 showing itself for a little space, runs under ground in a cave. 
 (It is the last golden ring or stream of the moon which dis- 
 appears from the old moon and runs under ground for the 
 three dark nights, and then rises in the next constellation as the 
 new moon ring.) 
 
 "Anything cast in this stream before it enters the cave 
 is carried to the place where it reappears." 
 
 It is the same lost ring or cup which runs on as the moon 
 stream or track and reappears in the next constellation as new 
 moon, or lost cup after the three dark nights; this it does every 
 month until it completes the annual circuit of the Zodiac. 
 
 It was originally a lunar story which has been imported 
 from the moon, and naturalized upon the earth and shouldered 
 upon the credulity of the age. 
 
 BIRTH AND NUPTIAL ISLAND. 
 
 BIRTH ISLAND. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Jupiter was born in that island of Crete, and his mother 
 retired to the black cave at his birth. Homer was born 
 
78 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 upon the island of Chios; Apollo was born on the island of 
 Delos; and these earthly islands were the chosen representa- 
 tives of the moon island, and inherited its romantic history. 
 The freaks and antics of the moon island brought down and 
 domesticated upon its earthly representatives. There Christ 
 was born in that little white manger of the moon island. 
 The Hindu god Krishna was called "the island born." 
 Bacchus at his birth changed by Jupiter to a kid (the sun in 
 Capricorn, the winter goat), and transferred to Nysa, an island 
 formed by the river Tryton (three in one), there to be reared 
 by the nymphs. The place was a lake divided by a ford, 
 which is the new moon or ford of lo, dividing the moon sea 
 as a causeway, and one of the symbols of Bacchus is an 
 equilateral triangle. 
 
 Odyseus was born on this island of Ithaca substituted 
 for the moon to which he returned after the Trojan war and 
 settled at the Spring equinox. 
 
 Asteria, sister of Latona, flung herself from heaven and 
 became the island afterward known as Delos; she was the 
 stiller of the moon sea in Spring like the Jonah, like Atahensic, 
 and the woman thrown down in the Japan sea and became the 
 wife of the moon dragon, who was the sea, and together they 
 wed upon the white island. 
 
 The island of Rhodes, in the Aegean Sea, at one time 
 submerged by a deluge until the sun saw the maid of the 
 island, loved her, and beat back the sea. He then married 
 her and she became the mother of seven children, the first 
 civilizers of the island. 
 
 It was the Holy Isle where the god Poseidon and Aethra 
 met, and where the hero Theseus was begotten. It was the 
 wedding of sun and moon in Spring. (Ency. Brit. "Theseus," 
 294.) 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 79 
 
 NUPTIAL ISLAND. 
 
 At the elopement of Orm and Aslog (in Norse Myth- 
 ology), they discovered an island on the third day at evening, 
 but could not land until in despair Orm cried upon the name of 
 God and made the sign of the cross, when the storm ceased 
 and a landing place appeared, which was the fiat or name of 
 God, which is the new moon ring or word of life pronounced 
 upon the moon desert, which is the key or cross or talisman 
 which opened the moon door and raised the white island for 
 a landing place — the island of "Luce" or white island. 
 
 They ran away from the island of the last sign or con- 
 stellation preceding the Spring festival at the Spring equinox, 
 where they were three days trying to land; it is the island or 
 moon station of the Spring festival or Gretna Green, the 
 wedding island. 
 
 This marriage occurs every year at the Spring festival; 
 from the place they leave, it requires three days or three dark 
 nights to find the next landing or new moon. 
 
 ISLE OF THE OAK TREE. 
 
 A FINNISH TALE. 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 On a stretch of swamp, on an earth knoll, at the far end 
 of all the heath, Kaitolainen wept much, the wretched one, 
 sorely lamented. 
 
 A sandy ridge grew up there, a secret isle formed itself 
 by spells; from it a sandy mountain arose, a golden hillock 
 raised itself, where the three seas had rubbed, where the waves 
 
80 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 had swept along, four maidens found a sapling oak, carried 
 it to a border of a sandy isle — from it grew an awful tree, 
 a mighty oak shot up. 
 
 The swamp is the moon marsh, and it is at the far end 
 of the heath or border of the moon where the three waves or 
 seas swept in a delta a sandy ridge, a triangle formed by 
 magic spells — and the four maidens are the four seasons who 
 plant the oak, "The Tree of Life," in the sandy isle. 
 
 In Lake Titicaca there is an island of the same name. 
 The name means Tiger rock, and according to their tradition 
 before the arrival of man the island was inhabited by a tiger 
 which carried upon its head a ruby, and by its light the whole 
 lake was illumined — it was a sacred island. 
 
 The ruby on the head of the tiger is the new moon; it 
 corresponds to the jewel on the head of the serpent in other 
 tales. 
 
 There Manco, Capac and Oello, the children of the sun 
 were born, and became the ancestors of the Peruvian Incas. 
 
 The most ancient temple of the sun among the Peruvians 
 was in the Island of Titicaca, where are found the remains of 
 a higher civilization than at Palenque. 
 
 It was that island mountain where Sinbad's ship went to 
 pieces; that mountain of loadstone which drew the nails out 
 of the ship. The foot of the mountain was covered with 
 wrecks and heaps of human bones, and precious treasures, 
 and the stones of this mountain were of crystal and rubies. 
 
 The nails drawn out of the ship are the silver nails or 
 rings by which the moon ship is nailed together, and one by 
 one they are drawn out as the moon wanes toward conjunc- 
 tion with the sun, when the last nail disappears and the moon 
 ship has fallen in pieces. 
 
 (Dascent Norse Tales: Tale of the Blue Belt). "Came 
 a bird flying with an island in its claws, and let fall on the 
 fleet and sank all the ships." 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 81 
 
 THE ISLAND OF HELIGOLAND AND THE 
 FRISIAN LAW. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 Twelve of their wisest men were chosen by the Frisians 
 to compile a code of laws, and after collecting all the tribal 
 laws of their nation, they selected an island of the sea to hold 
 council. But the vessel was driven far out to sea by a tempest 
 by which they lost their bearings and cried upon Forseti (the 
 god of the judicial assembly and of eternal law), when they 
 suddenly perceived a thirteenth man in the boat who seized 
 the rudder and brought the vessel to an island and disem- 
 barked when they saw the stranger fling his battle axe to a 
 distance, and where the axe fell a fountain gushed forth, and 
 there the stranger expounded a code of laws and then vanished. 
 And they all exclaimed alike that Forseti himself had been 
 among them. And the island was called Heligoland, or the 
 Holy Land, and the water of that fountain became sacred 
 to man and beast, and there was founded their future seat 
 of learning. 
 
 The axe or blade thrown was the sword of the sun 
 or the new moon of the Spring equinox thrown upon the 
 shore of the black moon; and that new moon is the divine 
 wisdom, the word of light and knowledge, and that thirteenth 
 man in the boat is the thirteenth moon, or month which com- 
 pletes the lunar year. 
 
82 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 BATTLE ISLAND. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 Light and life were born in the moon island, and there 
 the sunlight returns to die. It was the annual battle fought 
 every year at Spring and Fall — in the Spring the moon king 
 was vanquished as a serpent or giant, and in the Autumn the 
 sun-king was slain, and all these battles took place on the 
 moon island. 
 
 In the Northern Mythology it was there Volsung fell, 
 and there Sigmund, his son, fell in the battle of the Holm- 
 gang, or the "Isle meeting," where he fought with King Lingi 
 (the Isle King) for the hand of Hiordis the fair. (Lingi is 
 Hades, and Hiordis answers to Proserpine). She is the Hero- 
 dias who demanded the head of John the Baptist. (Matthew 
 14:3-10). The Delilah. 
 
 Sigmund came from far over the sea to fight him, for 
 Sigmund's kingdom is in the East, the constellation of Spring, 
 and Lingi holds the West — it was fought at the close of 
 Summer. 
 
 "On went the Volsung banners and on went Sigmund before, 
 And his sword was the flail of the tiller on the wheat of the 
 
 wheat-threshing floor." 
 "But his shield was rent from his arm and his helm was sheared 
 
 from his head, 
 But who may draw nigh him to smite for the heap and the 
 
 rampart of dead." —(Sigurd the Volsung, p. 60), 
 
 The last great battle of the gods at Ragnarok (the Norse 
 millenium) is to be fought on the island. 
 
 When Sigurd had given the death wound to Fafnir (Hades 
 masked as a man serpent) he told Sigurd they would have 
 their last battle on that island. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 83 
 
 "Oh Fafnir what of the isle and what hast thou known of its 
 
 name, 
 Where the gods shall mingle edges with Surt and the sons 
 
 of flame." 
 "O child! O strong compeller! Unshapen is it hight, 
 There the fallow blades shall be shaken and the dark and the 
 
 day shall smite; 
 When the Bridge of the Gods is broken and their white steeds 
 
 swim the sea, 
 And the uttermost field is stricken last strife of you and me." 
 
 (Sigurd the Volsung: B. Regin, p. 126). 
 
 THE ISLE OF THE HEREAFTER 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ISLAND OF SOULS 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The White Island of the West, the sunset island, is the 
 ring of the after summer moon, the land of birth and of death, 
 the beginning and end of all things. 
 
 The Greek writers refer to the Island of Leuce, the "White 
 Island of the West." It lay in the Euxine at the mouth of the 
 river Dnieper, an Elysian field; it was given to Achilles by 
 Thetis; there Achilles and Helen were married. After death 
 the island was still inhabited by his ghost. 
 
 The White Island of the West occurs in the Hindu Myth- 
 ology. Krishna dwells in the "holy White Island of the 
 West." This island contains the water of immortality; it never 
 decays, but lives on preserving the seed of life throughout all 
 changes and wrecks of other worlds. 
 
84 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 The tomb of the Egyptian god Osiris was shown on the 
 sacred island of Philae in the river Nile; it was called the "Holy 
 Field." 
 
 There his votaries filled three hundred and sixty bowls of 
 milk daily to Osiris, one for each day of the year. 
 
 The Egyptian dead entered upon an island in the eternal 
 city; they have left us Vignettes of the departed souls attending 
 to their varied industries in the Archipelago of "Ialu" the "field 
 of reeds." (Maspero: 192.) 
 
 With the Greeks these Isles of the Blest were beside the 
 "deep eddying ocean." (Hesiod: Works and Days, 
 162-77.) 
 
 The fairies were supposed to have subterranean galleries 
 under the sea which communicated with the main land, for 
 the bright world of the moon was seen to rise above the waters 
 and then sink, and from this an underworld was suggested, a 
 bright land under the waves. This was Mother Holly's green 
 meadow or orchard under the sea. 
 
 The Ultima Thule was an island at the uttermost ex- 
 tremity of the world. It was a floating, shifting island that lay 
 beneath the waves of the sea sometimes called "Land under 
 the Waves"; it sometimes rises to the surface. It enjoys per- 
 petual summer and perennial verdue and fruits; its coast was 
 surrounded on one side by a wall of rock in which the griffin 
 built her nest. It was a magic island; its inhabitants were 
 magicians; its fruits possessed the power of life and death; its 
 waters healed; it was visited by magic or charm stones carried 
 on the wings of eagles or griffins. (Waifs and Strays of 
 Celtic Tradition.) 
 
 Quetzalcoatl the Toltec, civilizer after a reign of peace in 
 the Golden Age, retired to the sea pursued by his persecutor 
 and avenger, and there embarked in a vessel made of serpent 
 skins bound for the sacred Isle of Tlapallan. 
 
 Hasisadra, the Babylonian Noah, lived in a charmed island, 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 85 
 
 an Elysian field at the mouth of a river; there he received and 
 healed the hero Gilgames. (Maspero: 585.) 
 
 When St. Patrick was about to die, directed by a heavenly 
 messenger, he gave orders that his body should be placed in 
 a cart to which two young oxen of the herds of Conall should 
 be yoked, and left to find their own way, and wherever they 
 chose to stop there he should be buried. (Like the cows sent 
 back with the ark of Israel from the land of the Philistines left 
 to find their own way to the land of Canaan.) 
 
 The Norsemen sent their dead in a lighted ship to find 
 their way to the land of rest. The ship is the moon, lit by 
 that pillar of fire that guided Israel to the promised land. 
 
 The Kingdom of Tuoni, the realm of the departed, was 
 on the Isle of the hereafter. (Kalevala: Rune 4, p. 58.) 
 
 The holy island of the "adder stone" and the island of 
 the "strong door" where the twilight and pitchy darkness are 
 mingled together. ("Song of Taliesin" — Davies' Mythology, 
 British Druids, pp. 164, 165.) 
 
 The earth to all the ancients was a great island. In the 
 Homeric Mythology the Elysian fields lay on the western 
 margin of the earth by the stream of the ocean and also called 
 Isles of the Blessed, and by the poets Elysian, but in later 
 times were moved down to the lower world. 
 
 The Celtic Tirfaton, the land beneath the waves, and the 
 Irish Tir-na-nog, the land of youth, and Moy-mell, the plain 
 of honey. These islands were inhabited by the fairies and 
 peopled by the Shee (fairy women) ; their country was far 
 out in the Atlantic under the waves. 
 
 In Gaelic Tir-fa-ton, the land beneath the waves, en- 
 chanted islands sunk in the sea under a spell, but sometimes 
 seen above the sea every seven years, but would be free from 
 the spell and remain permanently above water if anyone could 
 succeed in throwing fire upon them. 
 
86 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 They are the moon island, like Delos, sunken during the 
 period of winter — the seven months. 
 
 Eden is described as the little white island of the new 
 moon of Easter in Spring, but in after summer becomes the 
 sunset isle of the west; they both become stationary isles just 
 hidden from view. 
 
 THE ISLAND OF EDEN. 
 
 Chapter XL 
 
 That island at the mouth of the river was the Garden 
 of Eden, planted in the desert of the moon, for the first dwell- 
 ing of Adam. It is every year accursed, often sunken, and 
 then raised again for a land of refuge. There Cain fled after 
 he killed his brother to the land of Nod, the land of "outcasts" 
 and "vagabonds." There Moses fled after he killed the Egyp- 
 tian, his brother. 
 
 It was the temple to which all murderers and those in 
 peril fled for protection; that Kalevala, "the land of heroes," 
 the land of culture heroes, where the first civilization was born. 
 
 These fabulous islands were as firmly rooted in belief as 
 witchcraft and divination. And the seas, lakes and oceans 
 everywhere were spotted with these imaginary isles of refuge, 
 for the persecuted or the shades of the departed. 
 
 They were the theme of poets and romancers down through 
 the Middle Ages, and even to our own time ; sometimes hidden 
 under the waves and seen in shadowy form; again visible and 
 visited at rare intervals, and gorgeously portrayed by naviga- 
 tors. (Not very reliable.) 
 
 For ages they clung to their old moorings with rare valor 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 87 
 
 and hardihood, and even after their imaginary foundations 
 had been ploughed up or sunken by the keels of adventurous 
 mariners, they would reappear in some new retreat less exposed 
 to view, as migratory as their lunar prototype. 
 
 So enchanting was the belief in their existence that after 
 all research had failed, it was held by some in the credulity 
 of their age that the islands were rendered invisible to mortals 
 by magic like the Holy Grail, and that none but the pure 
 in heart were able to behold them. 
 
 But the great commercial enterprise of modern times and 
 the cruel despotism of truth has denied them at last a resting 
 place in the sea, for they were a delicious dream for languor — ■ 
 a haven of rest for the weary — "over there." Hereafter they 
 can exist only in the boundless sky beyond the reach of navi- 
 gation or the vista of the telescope. 
 
PART SIXTH. 
 
 THE CULTURE HERO AND ORIGIN 
 OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 TALISMAN, CHARM, PROTECTOR, AND 
 TOTEM POLE. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The sun and moon were in constant sympathy, living and 
 dying alternately. The moon was the mirror of the sun, the 
 other self, which always went on before the sun in his journey 
 like the friendly dog and the faithful Luxman to Rama, and 
 stopped every month and held secret council in the darkened 
 chamber of the moon. 
 
 And that mysterious nature existing between the sun and 
 moon was brought down to earth and originated totemism, the 
 friendship and brotherhood between man and sympathetic ani- 
 mals, as taught by the sun and moon, and underlies the totem- 
 istic animal worship of the ancient world, more especially that 
 of the Egyptians. 
 
 That totem pole of the North American Indians is the same 
 pole or pillar set up by Jacob on his journey from Beer-sheba 
 to Haran, a covenant pole at Bethel or Luz, the city of light, 
 and there he took on god the sun for a companion, helper, and 
 friend. (Genesis 28:18.) And that pole is the pillar of the 
 new moon, the chief pillar of God's temple whose two arms 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 89 
 
 twine around the Throne of God; that chief pillar around 
 which the ancient religions centre from the age of savagery to 
 the present time. 
 
 And the moon, the faithful friend and companion of the 
 sun was represented by the dog, the faithful friend of man; 
 and the moon shed the dew and the fertilizing rain, the milk 
 of heaven, and for this reason she was likened to a cow, and 
 the cow was worshipped as her living representative on earth, 
 
 And as the sun and moon were ancestors of mankind, their 
 living representatives on earth became ancestors, and received 
 the same homage and worship as their prototypes, the sun 
 and moon. And originated the Manes worship or the worship 
 of dead ancestors — calling up the departed spirits of the dead, 
 as Ulysses performed sacrifice, and brought forth the shades of 
 Agamemnon and Achilles. And as the witch of Endor raised 
 the ghost of Samuel for Saul; and Odin called by magic rune 
 songs the ghost of the old giantess to prophecy. And all these 
 dead called up are the dark dead moon awakened from slumber 
 when the soul awakes, as seen in the ring of light we call the 
 new moon. 
 
 It originated the talisman, a magical figure of the moon, 
 or a heavenly sign as a planet or star, or constellation engraved 
 upon a sympathetic stone or metal, and was worn to avert 
 evil disease or death, and supposed to wield the same power 
 and influence as the original, as our cross worn upon the person 
 which is that of the moon worn as an amulet and protector, as 
 the bell in the church steeple, a charm or spell to drive away 
 evil spirits. 
 
 Saints were buried in the crypt of the church and temples 
 were dedicated to saints as guardians. Stone Henge is the 
 tomb of Pendragon, who fell in a great battle between Britons 
 and Saxons. The head of Bendigeid Vran was buried under 
 the White Mount in London as a charm against invasion. 
 
 According to Ovid the sacred fire of Vesta at Rome was 
 
9 o ' THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 kept burning throughout the year on the circular fireplace; 
 this fire was brought from Troy, and upon this hung the fate 
 of the city. 
 
 It was the Tutelary god of the city — the St. George to 
 England, the St. Denis to France, the St. Joseph to Spain. 
 
 A talisman, pearl of great price ; the Shamir stone of Solo- 
 mon. The talisman, no matter what its name or form, is the 
 new moon, that protector, that sword of light which frightened 
 away the dark and evil things — it was the sword of Eden. 
 For the moon was the mirror of the sun, the other self. 
 
 The statue of Diana which Orestes brought back from the 
 Tauric Chersonese to Argos; Jacob took the household gods, 
 the Penates, which are the twin forks of the moon, the Tera- 
 phim, with him to his new settlement. These Teraphim were 
 consulted as household gods. Dardanus took the Penates from 
 Samothrace to Troy, and after the destruction of Troy Aeneas 
 brought them to Lavinium, which city he was fabled to have 
 founded in Italy. 
 
 The Penates or household gods are the twin forks of the 
 moon, which were taken from the old city of the moon every 
 year and carried to the new city of the Spring equinox. 
 
 It is the black stone of the Caaba of the Temple of Mecca, 
 which had fallen from heaven for a protector. It was carried 
 off by the Carmathians and not restored until twenty-two years 
 after, and then only for a great ransom. The black stone rep- 
 resented the black moon, a meteorolite, which had fallen from 
 heaven. 
 
 The Lares and Penates — gods of inferior power at Rome, 
 were of many classes, who watch over cities, houses, and cross- 
 ways, and of various rank; spirits of ancestors who watch over 
 the safety and prosperity of individuals, whom families honored 
 at the hearth and chapel, and a watchdog became their natural 
 symbol. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 91 
 
 AUGURIES. 
 
 THE PILLAR AND GUIDE OF THE EXODUS, 
 
 SIGNS AND PORTENTS OBSERVED 
 
 IN EMIGRATION, AND THE 
 
 FOUNDING OF CITIES. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 Colonies were led out in the olden time in obedience to 
 prophecy, and their prophet and oracle was the moon, and 
 their cities were laid out astronomically and astrologically. 
 
 They determined by auguries from the heavenly spheres, 
 by wind and clouds and smoke, and visible phenomena, prac- 
 tised incantations and prophesied. 
 
 It was the new moon, the omen stick; that lighthouse 
 that guides the mariner to his destined abode. 
 
 The site of the city was made known by signs and por- 
 tents — a shield or an Ate thrown down from heaven to mark 
 the site of Troy, or the golden wedge thrown down to the 
 Peruvians to mark the site of Cuzco, their sacred city, which 
 is the new moon of the Spring equinox. 
 
 The moon became the leader and guide in all emigrations — 
 that moon with its pillar of fire which led Israel to the promised 
 land of the Spring equinox (which originally required but 
 three days). That Aaron, the speech friend of Moses, who 
 went before with the pillar of fire, without which Moses the sun 
 did not dare to venture, for Aaron was the pillar of the fire, the 
 priest of the altar, the Melchizedek, the mast of the moon 
 boat — that was the ark that led Israel from Egypt back to 
 
92 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Canaan, the promised land, with the bones of Jacob for a pilot. 
 (Genesis: Ch. 50). That pillar of the new moon which 
 always goes before the sun on her monthly journey, was the 
 pillar of the speaking oak in the prow of the Argo, and the 
 pillar of the ship of old Wainamoinen, the Finland Noah, 
 which was built of three magic words — which is the new 
 moon ring built of three rings — one ring for each of the three 
 dark nights. 
 
 The gods charged certain animals to guide the colonists 
 on their way. Among the Sabine colonists sent out, one was 
 guided by a woodpecker into Picenum, another by an ox into 
 the land of the Opici. The Hirpini of Italy were guided by a 
 wolf, the same winter wolf that suckled the Roman twins. 
 
 With the ancient Peruvians the divine Manco Capac and 
 Mama Oello Huaco, the children of the sun, taught the arts 
 and sciences of civilized life. They were first seen to advance 
 along the high plains in the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, 
 and bore with them a golden wedge, and directed their follow- 
 ers to take up their abode wherever the sacred treasure should 
 sink in the ground; and the wedge sank in the valley of Cuzco 
 and disappeared forever. The wedge is the new moon of the 
 Spring equinox which splits the black moon at Easter. The 
 Baal-peor, the opener, the same wedge of the Norse creation, 
 that split the moon at Ginungagap. To this sacred city of 
 Cuzco the Peruvian made his pilgrimage as the Mahomedan 
 does to Mecca and the Christian to Jerusalem. 
 
 Viracocha was a generic name of divinity and given to 
 Manco Capac — this name, according to Prescott, signifies 
 "Foam of the Sea," or lake, and in the ancient native legends 
 it was said that he had neither flesh nor bone; a swift runner, 
 he leveled mountains and drained marshes. 
 
 Antinoe, the daughter of Cepheus, the son of Aleus, built 
 the town of Mantinea in obedience to an oracle, and made a 
 serpent her guide, and that is why the river which flows by 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 93 
 
 the town was called Ophis (serpent), but according to the 
 Iliad of Homer, it was a dragon. (Pausanias: Book 8, 
 Ch. 8). 
 
 The town of her dream was the new moon of the Spring 
 equinox. Antinoe is the moon of the old year now fallen 
 asleep for the three dark nights; she is dreaming of her future 
 home in the next constellation in which she will awake on the 
 third night as the new moon mistress. 
 
 Alexander, the son of Philip, built the modern Smyrna in 
 consequence of a dream under a plane tree growing in the 
 water in front of the temple of Nemesis, who directed him to 
 build a town on that site. (Pausanias: Book 7, Ch. 5). 
 
 This is the same dream the savage had to interview his 
 protecting totem, or guardian spirit ; the same dream of Abraham 
 and Nebuchadnezzar, and Pharaoh; it is the same inebriate 
 sleep of Noah. The sun falling asleep on the dark moon 
 for three nights, and the moon will give no answer to his dream 
 until the third night, when it will be revealed by the new moon 
 from which no secrets can be hidden. 
 
 FOUNDING OF LONGA ALBA. 
 
 Aeneas was told by an oracle that his colony should be 
 guided by a pregnant sow designed for sacrifice, which should 
 break loose and escape to the bushes on a fruitful eminence, 
 and that eminence was Longa Alba, named after its prototype 
 the long white ring of the new moon. 
 
 The Norsemen forced from home by the persecution of 
 Harald Fairfax in the year 874, embarked for Iceland carry- 
 ing their carved door-posts with them ; they were thrown over- 
 board in the sea as they neared the shores, and where they 
 were landed by the waves on the coast, there they settled. 
 These were their household gods which drifted and marked 
 out their place of settlement. They were the twin posts of the 
 
94 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 new moon of Spring, the same which Rachel stole from her 
 father Laban, the same carved totem pole of the Pacific Coast 
 Indians. 
 
 In the tragedy of Electra (Euripides) Orestes was warned 
 by the gods to flee to the altar of Minerva where he would be 
 safe from the Furies — "where votes being placed equal will 
 preserve thee" and "hereafter the law shall be fixed that the 
 defendant shall always escape by equal votes — for thee it 
 behooves to dwell in a city on the streams of Alpheus (Aleph 
 the ox) near the Lycaean enclosure." 
 
 It is the city of the Spring equinox in the sign of Taurus 
 the ox, the dividing line between the two houses of north and 
 south, or summer and winter — each house would cast six 
 votes, and the verdict would result in a tie or aquittal. 
 
 Where Apollo slew the serpent at Delphi, there arose a 
 torrent of water. And when Cadmus slew the serpent on the 
 site of Thebes, there arose a fountain of water ; he was obliged 
 to have that water to perform sacrifice, and we find the same 
 serpent in the Hindu Mythology, where Indra slew the serpent 
 Vritra for withholding the waters, and the serpent is the black 
 winter moon pierced with the sword of light. 
 
 AUGURIES. 
 
 The moon went before to show the route as the standard 
 bearer, and determined the omens. 
 
 In the Aztec Exodus (Bancroft Pacific Coast Indians, 
 Vol. 5, pp. 326, 327) — The skull and cross-bones of Huitziton 
 the high priest, directed his followers to the chosen land of 
 promise; his bones were carried in an urn or ark on the 
 shoulders of four priests ("God bearers") and through these 
 priests the god should make known his will to his people. (The 
 skull was the black moon, and the cross-bones are the two 
 forks of the new moon). 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 95 
 
 Dardanus took the Penates from Samothrace to Troy, and 
 after the destruction of Troy Aeneas brought them to Italy 
 and set them up at Lavinium, a city of Latium; they were 
 patron divinities — the public Lares; they were the guardians of 
 the state, and in substance the sun and moon; consequently 
 ancestors. We know just what they are for Rachel (the moon 
 and wife of Jacob) hid them under the camel's gear and sat 
 upon them. It was at the conjunction of sun and moon, and 
 the two forks of the new moon were concealed under the black 
 pall of the moon; they could only be hidden for three days — 
 on the third night they appear as new moon from under the 
 camel's harness, which is Rachel (the black moon) sitting 
 upon the two forks of the new moon ring. They are carried 
 by emigrants in their Exodus; they go before as cloud and 
 pillar of fire, for the Israelites; they are the only two to cross 
 the ford and enter Canaan, the Joshua (sun) and Caleb (the 
 moon dog). 
 
 The Palladium or statue of Minerva (moon) was thrown 
 to earth and fell in Trojan territory, and Ilus placed it in a 
 temple, and upon that talisman depended the safety of the city; 
 it was stolen from Troy by the Greeks and Troy fell. It was 
 the light of the moon temple, the luck of "Eden Hall"; the 
 wisdom tree of Eden stolen through Eve and the serpent. It 
 was the totem tree or moon pillar Jehovah (the sun) set up at 
 parting from Eden, the garden of the east, when he left, and 
 appointed Eve its guardian, for when the tree failed his own 
 strength would fail, for it was his own image, his shadow and 
 other self. 
 
 This tutelar image of the new moon was kept in most 
 ancient cities as sacred, upon which the safety of the city de- 
 pended; at Rome, not even the pontifex maximus was allowed 
 to behold it. 
 
 The Carthagenians, when digging a foundation for their 
 city, dug up the head of a horse which was considered a favor- 
 
96 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 able augury, and the head of the horse was the new moon ring. 
 
 It was said that in digging the foundation of the temple 
 of Jupiter Capitolinus, that a human head was found still un- 
 decayed, and trickling with blood, a sign that this place was 
 destined to become the head of the world. (Niebuhr 1, 490). 
 
 It is the black head of the moon trickling with the blood 
 of the new moon, which was the building site for the sacred 
 city founded in blood, common to all Mythologies. 
 
 DESCENT FROM THE GODS. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 Of old kings and nations were vain of their celestial origin, 
 and traced their descent from the gods and solar heroes ; showed 
 their graves and their foot prints, the cities they had founded, 
 and the walls and columns they had raised. 
 
 "I am Assurbanipal, descendant of the god Assur and 
 Beltis, the son of the great king of Eriduti, whom Assur and 
 Sin, the lord of crowns, from distant days, the account of his 
 name prophesied to the kingdom." (From a cylinder in the 
 British Museum.) 
 
 The Chaldeans traced their descent from the moon-god. 
 The city of Ur was dedicated to the moon-god, and the moon- 
 god in their system was father of the sun-god. (Sayce: 
 p. 149.) 
 
 The Jews trace their descent from their god through fabu- 
 lous heroes and mythical chronologies. 
 
 The royal house of Tyre claimed descent from the Tyrian 
 Baal. The royal families of Hellas were descended from Zeus 
 and the Romans from Jupiter. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 97 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon royal families trace their descent from 
 Wodan; and all the ancient nations and tribes of importance 
 prefaced their early history with a heroic age of marvelous 
 achievements. 
 
 But it is now known that the highest type of human intelli- 
 gence of to-day is but a cultivated savage, whose remote an- 
 cestor was but a cave dweller, and a bone-gnawing cannibal. 
 
 EPONYMOUS HEROES. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 The Greeks were pre-eminent for inventing eponymous or 
 personal names to account for the name of a country. As: 
 
 Hellen, the founder of the Hellenes; 
 
 Cilix, who gave his name to Cilicia ; 
 
 Pelops to Peloponesus; 
 
 Phoenix, who established himself at Phoenicia; 
 
 The Lydians derive their name from Lydus ; 
 
 Pelasgians from their founder Pelasgiis; 
 
 Dorians from Dorus; 
 
 Aeolians from Aeolus; 
 
 Ionians from Ion; 
 
 Romans from Romulus; 
 
 Latins from Latinus. 
 
 And all these are but mythical names called into existence 
 by assonance to account for the name of a country or people. 
 
 As there was an Aram invented for the Arameans, and a 
 Canaan for the Canaanites; an Italus for Italy, and a Brutus 
 for Britain. 
 
98 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 MOUNTAIN REVELATION, 
 
 OR 
 
 THE WISE MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 The first seat of the Aryan race was on Mt. Alborg, which 
 is Al-burg (God's city). 
 
 The Accadians of Babylonia traced their origin to the 
 mountains southwest of the Caspian sea — the "mountains of 
 the East." There arose Nisir, the "mountain of the world" — 
 their primitive home and the cradle of the human race. 
 
 We have a like origin of the Sumerian civilization, who 
 in tradition were said to have brought down from the moun- 
 tains a system of writing to lower Babylonia, which was trans- 
 formed and modified into the Cuneiform, or wedge letter writ- 
 ing, and in time adopted by ten different nations. (Maspero: 
 p. 550, and King 1910). These Sumerians had oblique eyes, 
 of Mongol type. 
 
 There was Mt. Meru of the Hindu on which was situated 
 Swarga, the heaven of Indra; it contained the cities of the 
 gods and celestial spirits, the Olympus of the Hindus; its 
 earthly representative lay north of the Himalayas. It was 
 called "Golden Mountain," "Jewel Peak," "Lotus Moun- 
 tain" and "Mountain of the Gods." 
 
 In ancient belief civilization first began in the moon and 
 came down from the moon mountain to the earth. Prome- 
 theus, the civilizer of Greece, came down from the moon with 
 that horn of light (the new moon) which he had wrenched 
 from the sun — he was a Titan, and brought fire to man. Great 
 civilizers and culture heroes came down from the moon; they 
 .are generally half savage and clothed in skin; semi-monsters, 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 99 
 
 for the moon was half white and half black, a shaggy monster 
 that dwelt at the mountain pass. 
 
 The Babylonian Eabani was one of them, the wise man 
 called down to help the Babylonians in travail; he dwelt at 
 the water trough of the moon and drank with the beasts; he 
 had the horns of a goat and the legs and tail of a bull, but he 
 was a wise being and knew all things, past, present and future. 
 
 Chiron, the kentaur, was one of these wise men; he lived 
 in the cave of the moon and was half horse and half man, and 
 taught the young solar heroes and educated Hercules, Achilles, 
 Aesculapius and Jason — he was their uncle, the moon. Or he 
 was Pan, the mountain shepherd, goat-formed, and identified 
 with the goat-formed Mendes of Egypt. Or as an old bald- 
 man of the desert places — like Elijah and Elisha (II Kings, 
 2:23), or in Christian times a John the Baptist, covered with 
 hair and feeding upon grasshoppers and wood honey. 
 
 For the moon was the culture hero, the wise man who took 
 all forms, as beast, bird and fish, and was brought down to 
 civilize and educate the nations of the earth. For he was 
 the great prophet and priest, and came originally out of the 
 moon sea as that ring of light, as an Oannes for the Baby- 
 lonians; he was born of water; he was the classical Proteus, 
 Nereus, and Phorcys, the "sea elders" and servants of Nep- 
 tune. And he was the Jonah, the preacher, who came out of 
 the sea to preach to the Ninevites; he was the wise man, the 
 helper and friend. 
 
 In the old time the moon was a fire-smith, and kept the 
 moon forge, and manufactured swords, and appears in the old 
 Norse Saga as Regin the smith, the "Master of Masters"; 
 he educated the young solar hero Sigurd the Volsung, for he 
 was uncle to Sigurd, for he was the brother to his mother. 
 He is the same as Wailand the smith, but later as the gods were 
 promoted, the old blacksmith became with the Greeks an 
 Hephaestus, the Olympian artist. 
 
ioo THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Colonies were led down from the moon mountain following 
 the course of the celestial river, as Noah led his family down 
 from the ark mountain. 
 
 The colony of the historic Odin came from the same place, 
 the mountain of the east and the river Tanais, or serpent river 
 on the boundary line between Europe and Asia, even as Abra- 
 ham had to come from the east and cross the river Jordan, and 
 Jason the Grecian settler of Iolcos had to cross the river 
 Enipeus. 
 
 Minos, king of Crete, the law giver, received his law from 
 Mount Dicte, the dictator or speech mountain upon the island 
 of Crete, a high mountain covered with snow the greater part 
 of the year. 
 
 Tuisco or Teut, according to Tacitus, the founder of the 
 ancient Germanic nation, was a gray-bearded man with bare 
 head and covered with the skin of an animal; and the three 
 principal tribes of the Germans are descended from his son 
 Mannus. 
 
 The German ancestor Mannus was the son of the German 
 god Tuiston, and from this stem, Tuiston was derived Teu- 
 tones, and the Teuton and the above Mannus is from the root 
 "man" which heads the Hindu race as Manu and Menes of 
 Egypt, and Manus Manu, Minos Mona, all belong to this type, 
 and mean as well moon as man, for they were interchangeable 
 as the moon was called the moon man. 
 
 Zoroaster received his "book of the law" from a high 
 mountain amidst the thunder and lightning revealed by Or- 
 muzd as the Zend Avesta, the "living word." 
 
 Mohammed came down from that mountain with his laws 
 and precepts written upon shoulder blades. 
 
 Moses, the Hebrew law-giver, received his revelation from 
 the same burning mountain Sinai, which is the mountain of the 
 moon — Sin "the moon." And the Chinese left the land of 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 101 
 
 the "five summits" and the "four canals" and settled in the 
 remote east. 
 
 In the Pehlavi (Persian) traditions, Kaiumers, the wise 
 man, the first to govern the world, and first to teach men the 
 use of fire and implements, descended from a mountain cov- 
 ered with the skin of a tiger. All beasts and birds were obe- 
 dient to his command and came to his aid in battle. 
 
 Deucalion brought down his new colony from Mt. Par- 
 nassus. Noah brought his herd from Mt. Ararat, and the 
 Hindu Manu descended from Mt. Meru. 
 
 And this is all rot and rubbish! It is not to our half- 
 civilized ancestors we have to go for record and revelation. 
 Where would you look for the origin of the civilization of 
 Europe to-day? Up in the Alps? — the very last place to re- 
 ceive civilization. Where would you look for the origin of the 
 high civilization and culture of the Athenians? Up in the 
 crags of Olympus, which is even to-day but half civilized? 
 
 Mountain tops in all ages and at the present time show a 
 state of society illiterate and uncultured. 
 
 These mistaken notions arose in this way, for the moon 
 to them was a holy mountain; the dwelling place of the wise 
 man Thoth, and Hermes, and Heabani, and Aaron the priest, 
 and Melchizedek; and the mountain from which the mythical 
 Moses brought down his law for the Hebrews. 
 
 The moon was the wise man, the speech friend and in- 
 terpreter to the sun; it made hieroglyphics and wrote signs 
 and symbols and revelations upon the moon table. 
 
 But the moon was too far away, and nearby mountains 
 took its place and were stocked with home-made sages like 
 Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist, to utter new laws and doc- 
 trines, such as the nation had taught them to proclaim. 
 
 And that is how the ancient Accadians and Sumerians 
 have an old tradition that their letters and written characters 
 were brought down from the highlands. And this is how our 
 
102 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 high mountain peaks became sacred — a Sinai from Sin (the 
 moon); a Nebo, "speech mountain"; Olympus, the heavenly 
 mountain. 
 
 And that is how Mt. Helicon became sacred to Apollo, and 
 the seat of the Muses, though covered with snow like Par- 
 nassus the greater part of the year, and Helicon was in Boeotia, 
 and the Boeotians were considered a stupid race by the 
 Athenians. 
 
 That is how the wild Thracians brought civilization into 
 Greece, when the Thracians were but barbarians themselves, 
 for the original Thracian or Pierian tribes dwelt about Helicon 
 and Parnassus. (Anthon Class. Die. — Thracia.) 
 
 And on Parnassus was the renowned oracle of Delphi, and 
 that is how the wisdom of Eumolpus, Musaeus and Thamyris 
 came from Thrace, a wild country which spoke a barbarian 
 language even in the time of cultured Greece. 
 
 There lived Orpheus, the great healer, soothsayer and en- 
 chanter, who dwelt in a cavern — Orpheus, the founder of the 
 mysteries — Orpheus the harper, at the sound of whose lyre 
 the rocks and the trees swayed to and fro and the wild beast 
 left his lair. The Orpheus torn in pieces while his harp sang 
 his death song, floating down to the sea. 
 
 GUIDE AND LEADER OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 "When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord moving, 
 then ye shall remove from your place and go after it" (Josh. 
 3:3), and when they crossed the Jordan the waters were 
 divided. 
 
 And that is the path of the new moon ring seen cut through 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 103 
 
 the black waters of the old black moon sea of which the 
 Jordan is its chosen representative. 
 
 Moses was not allowed to go over the Jordan; the only 
 one to cross that river was the new Spring leader, the Spring 
 prince, like Abraham of old, one from beyond the river, the 
 Jason who leaped the ford, the Joshua or new born sun of 
 Spring who had been guided all the way there by that "leaning 
 pole," that pillar of light, the new moon, — he is himself the 
 pillar, for Moses, the king of the old year, is dead. 
 
 The moon leads the way in all pilgrimages to new set- 
 tlements ; it was the pillar of cloud by day, or a dark moon, but 
 was a pillar of fire by night, and when it arrived at the meet- 
 ing or chosen place it stopped and pitched camp — that was 
 sacred ground, for there the new city was to be built. 
 
 The foundation of the Dodonean oracle was established 
 by a black pigeon which had fled from Thebes in Egypt and 
 uttered its prophecy upon the oaks of Dodona. 
 
 That is the purple dove, the purple moon that brought the 
 news to Noah on the third day. 
 
 These friendly animals divinely appointed to lead the emi- 
 grant to his place of settlement as beast, bird, bull, cow, bear, 
 fish, pole, or image, and all animate and inanimate things, are 
 but the one and the same thing — the moon, the great leader, 
 who under symbolic names indicates the stopping place by 
 standing still. 
 
 These animals are sent as guides to lead the emigrants 
 to their new home and locate the site of cities, churches and 
 monasteries. 
 
 The Opicians were led by a bull which draws the golden 
 furrow of the new moon. 
 
 The Aryan settlers of India had an antelope for their 
 leader and guide ; and the Brahmans of India still wear its skin, 
 and the god Krishna was called the "black antelope." 
 
 The deceased Egyptian armed with the Phylacteries, and 
 
io 4 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 muttering incantations as protectors, went westward over the 
 desert guided by a friendly bird or praying mantis to seek the 
 "field of reeds" — crossed the desert infested with serpents and 
 ferocious beasts, and ascended the mountain which surrounded 
 the world sometimes carried up by the cow Hathor. 
 
 Battus followed the raven to found Cyrene; Cadmus fol- 
 lowed the cow to found Thebes; the Hirpini followed the 
 track of a wolf, and a woodpecker led the Sabines. 
 
 Perseus founded Mycenae, for here the scabbard of his 
 sword fell off. (Pausanias : 11, 16). 
 
 In the Chichimec period there occurred a division of the 
 Aztecs into Mexicans and Tlatelulcas — a quarrel between 
 priests and nobles, and the nobles were driven out and their 
 new location was miraculously pointed out by a whirlwind to 
 a sandy spot among the reeds of a lake where were found a 
 shield, arrow, and coiled snake, which was considered a most 
 favorable augury. (Bancroft: Pacific Coast Indians, Vol. 5, 
 p. 357). 
 
 The ancient priestly colonies were led by an oracle, and 
 wherever the auguries were favorable they pitched camp, 
 raised an altar stone, and established an oracle; and the town 
 and city grew around it. 
 
 In a Chocktaw legend a great prophet marched at their 
 head and carried a pole which he planted every evening erect 
 in front of the camp, and the next morning the pole was always 
 seen leaning in the direction they were to proceed that day, 
 and after a time they arrived at a mound on Nanih Waiyah 
 Creek and encamped for the night, and the pole planted at 
 the base of the mound over night stood erect in the morning, 
 and they knew by this omen they had reached the promised 
 land. 
 
 A dove led the family of Noah's ark to its haven of rest, 
 for it was the divine messenger bird and symbol of Spring; 
 and a fish conducted the Hindu ark of Manu to the same desti- 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 105 
 
 nation, as the dolphin carried Apollo to the seat of his new 
 temple at Delphi. And all these symbols represent the same 
 moon pillar. Joshua (the sun) and Caleb (the dog) led 
 Israel to Canaan, for the moon always goes before the sun as 
 the leader and was likened to a dog who goes before his master 
 on the journey. 
 
 The moon is the Luxman or faithful friend that guides all 
 the exiles home to the east; the moon is seen to proceed before 
 the sun and find the promised land, the Shiloh and the garden 
 of the east. 
 
 THE AZTEC EMIGRATION. 
 
 The Aztecs traced their origin to Aztlan, and separated at 
 the place of the seven caves. (Ency. Brit. "Mexico.") 
 
 They had a renowed captain and leader called Huitziton, 
 who conducted them through long and perilous journeys, through 
 unknown lands, and when full of years and wisdom was caught 
 up to the gods and left his skull and bones as relics to consult 
 as to the road they had to follow in search of Anahuac or 
 Mexico, their future home. 
 
 The Aztecs, in fulfillment of prophecy, founded their temple 
 of Tenochtitlan or "place of the stone cactus" where a cactus 
 should be found growing upon a rock and perched upon the 
 cactus should be an eagle holding a serpent. 
 
 According to Mr. Bancroft — ("Pacific Coast Indians") — 
 Huitzilopochtli was the mythic leader of the Aztecs, the lead- 
 ing race of the Nahuan nation, who came from a northern 
 country called Aztlan, "the water land." Atl "water"; the 
 above leader was a war god and chief deity of the Aztecs, and 
 was also called Mexitl, meaning "moon," also "Hare" and 
 "Navel" all which are lunar names or symbols. The Arabs 
 were called sons of "Hobal"; "sons of the moon" likewise. 
 
 Quetzalcoatl was the god of peace — a tall, white man of 
 
106 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 massive brow and flowing beard; he taught the art of govern- 
 ment, and especially instructed the husbandman and silver- 
 smith, forbade sacrifice, and offered only bread, roses and per- 
 fume. He was the "god of air," but having incurred the enmity 
 of another deity, he was forced to leave the country, but in 
 his farewell at the shore of departure promised again to return 
 to his people. 
 
 Tezcatlipoca rose up against Quetzalcoatl ; he descended 
 from the sky on a rope of a spider's web and commenced his 
 work of destruction. He came as a handsome youth dressed 
 as a merchant selling pepper-pods, and presented himself before 
 the princess, the daughter of King Huemac, whom he se- 
 duced, and overturned law and order and set up vice and im- 
 morality. 
 
 He is the Trojan Paris, the winter moon, the red serpent, 
 the red Egyptian Typhon, the long red wing of the winter 
 moon, who has come to seduce the Argive Helen, the Proser- 
 pine, the Europa, and our Eve of the Summer Garden. 
 
 THE CULTURE HERO AND ORIGIN OF 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 In the old time a nation could not hold up her head without 
 a divine ancestor and a heroic age; it was a national pride and 
 glory — an inspiration. 
 
 An Adam as a patron of civilization heads the fabulous 
 history of man's beginning and culture among all the early 
 people. 
 
 None of the ancients knew their remote origin; they had 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 107 
 
 for history ancient songs, heroic tales and tradition. All civil- 
 izations have been developed from rude beginnings, and by 
 slow degrees, and not by mythical and semi-divine heroes. 
 
 They have come up from the savage through the hunter, 
 barbarian, and semi-civilized by long, slow stages of growth. 
 
 But for a written language to record events, it is doubtful 
 if even the landing of Columbus, or the settlement of James- 
 town colony, would be distinctly remembered to-day. But 
 few families have preserved the record of their own ancestors 
 for more than three or four generations, and beyond that they 
 fall back upon the common mythical "three brothers" or "nine 
 partners." 
 
 In regard to their origin, some had fallen from the skies, 
 and that the earth was their place of banishment. Others had 
 been confined in the earth and crept up through a hole or open- 
 ing in the earth toward the light like the children of Saturn, 
 swallowed in the moon and crept toward the opening, or first 
 ring of light. 
 
 Scarce a tribe but had a tradition of miraculous origin, 
 whose ancestors had come over great waters in a ship, or had 
 come down from high mountains, or else were autochthonous 
 or indigenous — born of their own soil. Or a colony that had 
 fled from famine, war, and pestilence. An Aeneas who had 
 fled from burning Troy to settle in Latium. A Moses that 
 iled from Egypt to lead a colony to Canaan, or the murderer 
 Cain to found the first city of the East. 
 
 These nebulous reclaimers from barbarism who came as a 
 Cecrops, a Draco, or Prometheus, served as a figure-head on 
 which to hang the nation's birth and early civilization, or a 
 name to which the beginning of law and order could be at- 
 tached. 
 
 These benevolent foreigners who brought seed corn and 
 the vine and taught the women to weave, are the sun and moon 
 humanized. 
 
108 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 No tribe or race of people has ever civilized until it became 
 stationary; barbarous nations of invasion brought no civiliza- 
 tion with them, but adopted the civilization of the conquered. 
 
 Man arrives at a higher stage of culture by the enforced 
 demands of civilization, which draw out and develop his latent 
 capacities. 
 
 The rich, warm river bottoms of semi-tropical coun- 
 tries, with their great variety and abundance of food products, 
 offered greater inducements for early civilization and sedentary 
 life, while the hill country with its light and arid soil was occu- 
 pied by roving bands of shepherds. 
 
 And these early seats of Central American, Babylonian 
 and Mediterranean occupation were in a far advanced stage, 
 while the northern hill and forest ranges were as yet semi- 
 barbarous. 
 
 The first inhabitants built in the river marsh, but the higher 
 and later civilization burned or hewed the forest. 
 
 Many of the mountain and desert tribes contiguous to the 
 Babylonians and Egyptian civilizations were fully equal or su- 
 perior to their civilized neighbors in native physical and mental 
 power, and possessed in as high degree the germs of civilization, 
 but loved better their wild freedom of lawless impulse rather 
 than the restraint of civic life. 
 
 There has always been a great reverence for antiquity — 
 we have inherited oracles of wisdom — wise, because ancient, 
 for time casts a halo over the past and demands reverence; but 
 in more recent times people have learned to think for them- 
 selves, and we find the further back we go upon the calendar, 
 instead of being wise, the less people knew. 
 
 Without a written language and contemporaneous history, 
 oral traditions are confused and soon forgotten; and in time 
 separate tribes and states are absorbed by larger communities, 
 until the original parts are lost in a central government. 
 
 For all nations had come down through Jong ages of 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 109 
 
 savage and barbarous life before records were kept, and by 
 the time they were called upon for a history, they were obliged 
 to fall back upon the legendary tales of heroic ages, the common 
 property of all the early nations who had converted gods into 
 national heroes and brought them down as ancestors and given 
 them birth upon their own soil. Such were Gilgames and 
 Heabani for Babylonia; Hercules and Theseus for Greece, 
 and Joshua and Samson and Gideon for Canaan. 
 
 For the sun and moon were anthropomorphised, and be- 
 came the instructors of the human race and the chief agents in 
 the history of social and political development. 
 
 A Hercules was no longer the sun to the Greeks, but a 
 pioneer in Greek civilization. Vulcan, the powerful god of 
 fire, had become a worker of metals and made armor and war- 
 like weapons. 
 
 And as the nations grew in importance they gave themselves 
 a high and renowned antiquity and descent from the gods; 
 and we find a solar hero at the head of all the ancient royal 
 dynasties. And the Greeks in common with other nations 
 pretended to have brought a high civilization with them, but 
 Thucydides, their most reliable historian, acknowledged him- 
 self that the proud nation of the Greeks was at first but a race 
 of barbarians. 
 
 The moon in ancient belief was where civilization first 
 took place and from thence directed to the earth. The sun met 
 in conjunction or conference with the moon at the Spring 
 equinox, planted the tree or pillar, dug the well and purified 
 the waters which from there descended to the earth to restore 
 vegetation. This was the wedding of sun and moon in Spring, 
 and also of the earth, and this was the oiginal civilizer, bene- 
 factor, and culture hero who has appeared in the early history 
 among all civilized nations as a hero and demigod, a Prome- 
 theus for Greece, a Kaiumers for Persia, an Adam for the 
 Jews. 
 
no THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 The moon in legend was a morass subject to overflow, and 
 her atmosphere impure when left to herself, and sometimes 
 represented as a wilderness or forest of wild beasts, which every 
 winter broke from the rule and restraint of the sun, and which 
 every Spring the sun as soon as he had acquired sufficient 
 strength as a Hercules, cleansed the Augean stables, or like 
 Christ, purged the Temple, overturned the seats and drove out 
 the money-changers ; or a Ulysses, who drove out the horde of 
 winter vagabonds on his return to Ithaca. 
 
 Hu the great led the Gallic race from Asia to western 
 Europe; he was a warrior, legislator, priest and magician. 
 
 Odin or Wodan, chief deity of Scandinavia and North 
 Germany, led a colony from the border of Asia and brought 
 with him a rudimentary civilization and the Runic alphabet. 
 
 These leaders are incarnations of the solar energy, or a 
 portion of divine essence embodied in human or supernatural 
 form, as mortal heroes and divine instructors; they are the 
 moon as a wise man, or Hermes brought down and located 
 upon the earth. 
 
 The Euphratean valley had a Nimrod. The Cretans have 
 a law-giver Minos; the Germans have a Mannus. 
 
 The Egyptian Osiris taught agriculture, invented the 
 plow and hoe and vine culture; Isis invented the loom together 
 with her sister Nephthys. 
 
 There was no worship of the gods before the time of 
 Osiris; he appointed offerings, regulated ceremonies and built 
 cities. 
 
 Cecrops brought civilization from Sais in Egypt to Athens, 
 for it was said "about that time the gods began to dwell among 
 men." 
 
 Argos was founded by Danaus, who fled from Egypt with 
 fifty daughters — the fifty-two weeks of the year personified. 
 
 Pelops led a colony from Asia Minor, and gave the name 
 of Peloponesus to the southern peninsula of Greece. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY in 
 
 Cadmus came from Phoenicia and introduced writing and 
 the beginning of law and order. 
 
 The Greeks had a Prometheus, the bestower of all knowl- 
 edge upon mankind. A Phoroneus who founded and brought 
 civilization to Argos. 
 
 Bacchus was said to have come from the east, which has 
 caused so many to believe in an Indian origin of the Bacchic 
 worship, but "east" refers to the Spring equinox where the 
 Spring begins, and not from India. 
 
 We must remember Cadmus came from the east and went 
 out at the west. 
 
 And Odin came from the east, and so did Quetzalcoatl, 
 none of whom had any knowledge of India. 
 
 And all these were culture heroes and tribal ancestors of 
 the heroic age. 
 
 CULTURE HERO. 
 AGNI, PROMETHEUS AND THE FIRESTICK. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 The Agni, the Prometheus, the Pramantha, the Firestick, 
 the Magic Wand, the Cross of Christ — all one — the New 
 Moon, the Great Redeemer, civilizer and culture hero of all 
 nations. 
 
 Of all the phenomena in heaven and earth, there was none 
 so strange as the moon — that one of never ending change; it 
 sometimes appeared as a burning mountain, again as a dark 
 abyss of waters, and again as a white island in a lake, and 
 again a verdant lawn, a swamp and morass, or a woodland 
 grove; then a city of walls and castles, for the moon was sup- 
 posed to be self-luminous. Even late in Roman times Her- 
 
ii2 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 cules was said to ride in the sun and Hermes (the wise man) 
 in the moon. 
 
 The moon held a ring of fire — that deathless one that arose 
 from the funeral pyre every month on the third day; the moon 
 wrote with a pen of fire. 
 
 This new moon ring was the chief of all mysteries from 
 the days of savagery; it was called a firestick; in the Hindu 
 he was Agni the fire god (Latin Ignis: fire) and was con- 
 sidered the mediator between gods and men; he was repre- 
 sented with two tusks (the two horns of the moon) and carried 
 a flaming javelin. He was said to be born of two pieces of 
 wood by friction, for the fire child as soon as born from the 
 friction of two sticks was said to have devoured his father and 
 mother — that is, consumed the wood. 
 
 Agni was born of the black moon as a log ground by the 
 fire wheel of the sun in passing the moon, when the little fire 
 child is seen born as the first ring of the moon. 
 
 That firestick or flint knife was the first man of all the 
 ancient religions, and called by many names, as rod of life, 
 magic wand, that rod of fertility in the hand of Jacob, the rod 
 in the hand of Moses, that serpent rod of Mercury, the first 
 redeemer and creator of all ages, an Adam of the Hebrews, a 
 Prometheus of the Greeks, the first wise man and redeemer 
 who stole fire from the sun and brought it down in a ring of 
 light. 
 
 And as fire was born by the friction of wood it explains 
 the origin of the first human beings from trees. They all have 
 the same origin; in the old Norse or Icelandic the two first 
 children, Ask and Embla, born of two trees on the shore of 
 the sea, are the two forks of the moon on the shore of 
 the dark moon waters. They are the same in the Iranian or 
 Persian, the same twin forks of the moon born on the Ribas 
 tree, which is the black bush of the moon. They are the two 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 113 
 
 children seen by the bush in the sign Gemini "the twins" on the 
 old star maps. 
 
 Consult Babylonian Religion and Myth by L. W. King 
 of British Museum, where Marduk, with the help of Arum, 
 created the seed of mankind of the Ushu plant and the Ditti 
 plant of the marsh. 
 
 CANNES, THE WISDOM FISH GOD OF 
 BABYLON. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 The solar energy was manifested in various forms — some- 
 times as a mortal hero for the preservation of mankind, but 
 more commonly as a leader in emigration ad civilization. 
 
 In the Hindu the god Vishnu became a fish to save the 
 Hindu Manu from the flood. 
 
 Oannes, the Fish God, a half fish man, amphibious, in- 
 troduced the art of writing and all learning to the Babylon- 
 ians. This being called Oannes — (Ea — the god of the sea) 
 retired to the sea every night, and every morning came out on 
 the shores of the Persian Gulf which washed the shores of 
 southern Babylonia. He appeared for the first time in the 
 reign of the first King Aloros. In the third reign he appeared 
 as Anudata or law-maker; in the fifth reign as Eneubulos — 
 Anu Bel; in the seventh reign as Ano-dakon — Anu Dagon, 
 which is the dagon fish god of the Philistines. (Maspero: 
 Dawn of Civilization.) 
 
 Again in the Bamboo books of Chinese classics it says: 
 "There was a time when the heavens were wrapped in mists 
 for three nights, a great fish appeared on the river Loh, and 
 
ii 4 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 the Emperor sacrificed five victims to the fish. And they were 
 visited with rain for seven days and nights, and the fish floated 
 off to the sea and left a writing." The three nights of dark 
 mists were the three dark nights of the moon, whose light the 
 sun had obscured, and the writing left is the ring revelation of 
 the new moon on the third night. 
 
 Again upon a time a glorious light came forth from the 
 river Ho at the decline of day, and a dragon horse appeared 
 bearing in his mouth a cuirass with red lines on a green ground, 
 and laid it upon the altar and went away. 
 
 And again in after times there was a coming at the de- 
 cline of day, and on the banks of the Loh a red light apeared, 
 and a tortoise arose from the waters with a writing in red lines 
 upon its back, and laid it upon the altar — this was in the reign 
 of Yao. 
 
 Again in the reign of Shun, in his fourteenth reign, he 
 raised an altar at the Ho, and as the day declined a great light 
 appeared, and a yellow dragon issued bearing a scheme upon 
 his back in lines of red and green, and laid it upon the altar. 
 
 Again in the time of Yoa, a tall man came from the river 
 Ho with a white face and a fish body, and left a chart about 
 regulating the water, and returned in the deep. 
 
 Again at the beginning of the Tchou dynasty a red man 
 came out from the Loh and gave Liu Shang a writing which 
 said: "As a back bone you must assist Tchang." (Baby- 
 lonian Record, 1888.) 
 
 And all these writings were from the pen of the new 
 moon finger which wrote the doom on the black wall of the 
 moon for Daniel in a night vision. (Dan., Ch. 2:19.) 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 115 
 
 MANIBOZHO OR MICHABO, THE CULTURE 
 
 HERO, AND THE "GREAT HARE" 
 
 OF THE ALGONQUINS. 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The most universal ancestor of New England, whose ex- 
 ploits, according to Mr. Brinton, were told from the Carolinas to 
 Hudson Bay, was Manibozho the "Great Hare" of the 
 Algonquins; a common ancestor, inventor of picture writing, 
 and founder of worship, who created the earth from a grain 
 of sand brought from the bottom of the sea. 
 
 He was called the "Great White One" and the grandson 
 of the moon; his father was the "West Wind" and his mother 
 died in giving him birth. His life was a battle with his brother 
 the Flint Stone, whom he broke in pieces and scattered over 
 the lands, and changed his entrails to fruitful vines. (Brinton: 
 Myths of the New World.) 
 
 The flint stone is the dark moon, bored, fractured and 
 broken by the sun, even as the Egyptian Osiris, and the Ab~ 
 syrtus of the Argonautic expedition were rent in pieces, and 
 the entrails of the flint stone or scattered limbs of Absyrtus 
 and Osiris are the scattered rings of the moon which become 
 the fruitful vines of the summer time. 
 
 WAINAMOINEN, THE WISE AND ANCIENT. 
 
 He is the Wainamoinen, the wise and ancient hero of 
 the Finlanders, who sowed grain in the ashes of the forest, 
 
n6 THT ANCIENT CITY 
 
 burned down by the fire eagle, and then sang a song of en- 
 chantment : 
 
 "Rise, O earth from out thy slumber, 
 From the slumber-land of ages, 
 From my ploughing and my sowing, 
 From my skilled and honest labor. 
 Ukko, thou O God up yonder, 
 Thou that livest high in ether, 
 Let the rain fall down from heaven, 
 Let the cloudlets drop their honey." 
 
 — (Crawford's Kalevala). 
 
 SUME, THE CULTURE HERO OF BRAZIL. 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 Sume was a white man with thick beard, who came across 
 the ocean from the direction of the rising sun; had power over 
 the elements and commanded the tempest. 
 
 The trees of the forest retired from their place and made 
 for him a path; wild animals became tame and crouched at 
 his feet. 
 
 Lake and river stood firm under his tread, but at last, 
 persecuted like Quetzalcoatl, he retired to the bank of a river 
 and left the country, but left the prints of his feet in the rocks 
 and the sand of the coast, which are still to be seen. (Ban- 
 croft: Pacific Coast Indians, V. 5, p. 24.) 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 117 
 
 LEADERS AND CULTURE HEROES OF 
 NORTHERN EUROPE. 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 
 The religions of Europe and Asia are but different strata 
 of the same religion, not that either grew out of the other, but 
 all have been growing from the beginning, side by side, bor- 
 rowing and exchanging ideas. 
 
 And Heimdal, Mannus, Halfdan, Scef, Skelfir, Scyld and 
 Skjold are virtually one and the same projenitor and original 
 patriarch of the royal families of Sweden, Denmark, Saxland 
 and England in part. (From Prof. Rydberg.) 
 
 This same leader and civilizer is the Hindu Agni who 
 knew all wisdom and all science. (Rig. V. Ill- 1 , 17:X21, 5.) 
 He instructed men in religion and sacrifice. (VI, 1,1) born 
 in heaven, air and the waters (1, 95, 3). 
 
 He was the divine and holy white god, and has white 
 teeth and horns, and all these above are visibly the new moon — 
 the first ring of the moon, and the same with Prometheus 
 (classic) and Pramantha (Hindu) and the flint knife of the 
 Red Man, or the fire stick which was the first ancestor and 
 civilizer of man. 
 
 He was Odin, the golden worm that bored down through 
 the black cavern of the moon and brought up that ring of fire 
 hidden in the cavern of Gunlad the giantess. 
 
 As the Hindu Agni split the moon mountain with his 
 tongue and brought forth that ring of life which the Dasyus 
 (the dark enemies of the gods) had concealed in the moon 
 mountain, which identifies Odin the Norse god with the Hindu 
 Agni, the fire god, and they are both the new moon ring of 
 
n8 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 the Spring equinox, which was the fountain of life kept by the 
 giant Mimer, from which Odin drank the same divine food, the 
 nectar and ambrosia given to Apollo at his birth, and the 
 same amrita or water of life churned from the ocean by the 
 Hindu gods; that fire produced by the friction of the sun and 
 moon as they cross at the Spring ford and strike fire by friction 
 and beget the fire child Agni. 
 
 And these are all tales of the year, the opening of Spring 
 and the golden reign, succeeded by the "axe age," the "sword 
 age" with "cloven shields" and the "iron age" of winter. 
 
 WALI OR SKEAF THE FOUNDLING ANCESTOR 
 OF THE ANGLES AND DANES. 
 
 And there came from the unknown an oarless, rudderless 
 boat, and drifted ashore with a little babe sleeping upon a 
 sheaf of wheat, and the boat bore upon its mast head a shield, 
 and they raised him up as a foster child and called him Skeaf, 
 from the sheaf on which he lay, and when he grew to man- 
 hood he was raised on the shield and crowned king; he ex- 
 celled all men in wisdom and reigned in peace and prosperity 
 until the time of his departure had come. 
 
 And when he died they carried his body to the seashore, 
 and laid it again upon the same mystic boat which had brought 
 him, and the vessel drifted silently away to the unknown. 
 
 He is the Knight of the Swan sent from Paradise to earth; 
 he is the Lohengrin who arrived in a boat drawn by a swan 
 with a golden chain, and again departed in the same boat 
 when his time had come. He is Orpheus, the Spring and 
 Summer harper slain, whose harp floated down the river sing- 
 ing his death song. He is the Norse Balder (the Good) sent 
 home in that same ship, the Ring-horn, the luanr ark. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 119 
 
 And all these civilizers are visibly the first ring of the Spring 
 moon. The Agni of the Hindu, the same with the Praman- 
 tha, the Prometheus, the fire stick and the flint knife. 
 
 PART SIXTH. 
 COSMOGONY WORLD BUILDING 
 
 AND 
 
 THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS. 
 
 In the time of the mythical Moses the earth was a hollow 
 dome resting on the primeval abyss of waters as a boat ; through 
 this hollow of the interior the sun passed. 
 
 "Thou shalt not make a likeness of anything above the 
 earth, nor of the waters under the earth." 
 
 — (Hebrew Decalogue.) 
 
 The earth was the centre of the universe, and the milky 
 way was the old deserted path where the sun moved at the be- 
 ginning of the world. 
 
 That a solid firmament or floor of the heaven was placed 
 above the earth to shut off the waters above the earth, and a 
 window had to be opened when it rained as in the time of the 
 great flood, "the windows of heaven were opened." 
 
 And in Babylonian belief a world as large as ours existed 
 on the other side of the iron firmament, with seas, canals, 
 and rivers, and beings unknown. (Maspero: Dawn of Civil- 
 ization, p. 97.) 
 
 In Egyptian texts of creation on the day of creation Shu 
 was creator, and the earth was raised up under his feet as a 
 long table, and heaven appeared above his head as a ceiling of 
 iron, upon which rolled the divine ocean. 
 
120 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 In Hindu the supreme being raised the earth and placed it 
 upon the summit of the ocean, where it floats like a mighty 
 vessel, and from its expansive surface does not sink beneath 
 the waters, and like Hebrew, rests on waters under the earth. 
 (Wilson: Vishnu Purana, Vol. I, p. 65.) 
 
 "For he hath founded the earth upon the seas, and estab- 
 lished it upon the floods." (Psalm 24:2.) 
 
 In early ages sun and moon, stars, earth, air, and ocean 
 were living beings, and self-conscious. 
 
 The Homeric world was a plane bounded by the visible 
 horizon, and around this plain of earth ran the river of the 
 ocean, a deep flowing river, which was the boundary between 
 the world of light and the world of darkness; and beyond this 
 river of the ocean was a land of giants and Cimmerians, who 
 lived in darkness. 
 
 To the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, some believed 
 the sun and moon passed over the world by day, and under 
 the world by night; and others believed the sun and moon 
 revolved around the earth in a horizontal plane. (Maspero: 
 p. 544.) 
 
 To the early Greeks Colchis was the eastern extremity of 
 the earth, and the pillars of Hercules was the western. 
 
 In the fifth Cosmogonical tablet of the Chaldeans, "he 
 opened the great gates of heaven (sunrise and sunset), and 
 fixed its bolts, and made himself steps." They are the steps 
 by which the sun climbs from the gate of rising to the zenith 
 at noon. 
 
 The earth to the Norseman was an island of the sea, sur- 
 rounded by the stream of the ocean ; and the earth would again 
 sink in the sea after the battle of Ragnarok. 
 
 The thunder was the bang of the heavenly door, or the 
 roar of the chariot wheels. 
 
 And the lightning was the flashing tongue of the storm 
 demon. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 121 
 
 The rainbow was stretched out to give warning of war 
 or drought. 
 
 And the luminaries were set in heaven to count days and 
 years for man, and they had magic for science, and fairy tales 
 for history. 
 
 The first ring of the moon was personified, deified, and 
 called Eros by the Greeks, and in Hindu he was called Kama, 
 the god of Amor and love, for when the new moon returned 
 to the Spring equinox it became the season of amor, and the 
 lightning of the heavenly fire came down, which during winter 
 had lost its thunderbolt, and the waters were released and fer- 
 tilized, and the rainbow maiden who had been in hiding again 
 appeared; vegetation sprang up from the grave; all nature 
 heard the shout from that hill of shouting, the mount of the 
 East, where the shout first went up on the morning of creation, 
 and the glad tiding went forth, and heaven and earth sang 
 together in harmony and accord; and for want of a better 
 theory, this new creation was thrown back to the beginning of 
 time, for the new creation occurs at no other time of the year. 
 And this new moon pillar was set up on end and became the 
 wedding post, an Eros, or God of Love; the wedding of sun 
 and moon, consequently of the earth, which is in sympathy 
 with every phase and change of the sun and moon, and this 
 pillar by association became the creator and begetter, for in 
 their belief it impregnated and fertilized the moon waters. 
 This ray was the rod that divided the moon waters, for Moses 
 sweetened the bitter waters of Marah. It was the peeled rod 
 or phallus for Jacob which fertilized his flocks and was deified 
 as a creator when the world and the universe were called out of 
 darkness and chaos, and it was at the Spring equinox where 
 the nuptials at that time were celebrated in the sign of Aries 
 the lamb, consequently called the marriage festival of the lamb. 
 
 This Springtime was thrown back to the original creation,, 
 and the Eros or Kama was supposed to have animated the 
 
122 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 chaotic waters when the universe was in nebular form; this 
 divine seed or generator of the new moon, called Protogonus 
 or first born, was the desire that arose in the unorganized matter 
 and brought harmony out of chaos, acting as sperm or yeast, 
 for he was born not of father or mother, and as Kama in the 
 Hindu was even held superior to the gods; it was divine fire 
 "the unborn," "the self existent" ; this seed was the life and soul 
 of matter. 
 
 This indestructible ring of fire or soul of the moon the 
 first principle which survives the conflagration of the moon, 
 and rises from its ashes on the third day, has been amplified 
 and expanded in the marvellous flights of fancy, until it be- 
 comes all things. It is time, it is eternity, and it is Alpha and 
 Omega; the beginning and end of all things. He was the 
 first redeemer of the chaotic waste and awakened life on the 
 moon waters, and as love mingled together and harmonized 
 the elements. 
 
 "Without a father of thy wondrous frame, 
 Thyself the essence whence thy essence came." 
 
 In Hebrew Legend, he is that Shamir or serpent worm 
 called into life by the Almighty to assist in creation when light 
 and darkness were struggling together in chaos; it was the old 
 serpent, grey and ancient, the little giant, the dwarf wonder — 
 the first ring of the moon that tamed the wild warlike elements 
 that would not unite, and inspired them with fire and passion; 
 for he was the primal germ that caused the first movement in 
 the unorganized abyss ; that magic wand seen to spring up from 
 the dark abyss of the moon, born without father or mother. 
 
 This new moon ring or word was the wisdom or embodi- 
 ment of God the Logos found in the primitive religions in 
 Proverbs 8:22 had dwelt with God from the beginning; and 
 in Job 28 :20 it had assisted in creation ; and in Sirach 24 : 1 23 
 the spirit of God created before all things. It was the word 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 123 
 
 of creation; it was "Divine Reason." Logos was mediator 
 from aforetime when the shout was heard from the hill of 
 shouting, the word or voice of creation. 
 
 The general idea of a watery mist transformed and or- 
 ganized by the fire rod or first primitive ring of the moon, 
 which is sometimes called the Divine Breath or Divine Word, 
 Love, or Eros, or Life Germ, generally concealed in the abyss 
 which generates motion and inspires life, or again represented 
 as a golden egg which hatched the projenitor or active creator 
 Narayana. 
 
 Seed lay in the ocean. All father Odin the uncreated 
 lay in the abyss and willed what came into being; in this abyss 
 lay the supreme powers before creation. 
 
 Sometimes referred to as a spontaneous generation of the 
 powers of nature drawn together by amor. 
 
 Throughout the ancient religions this creative force is kept 
 in view in the mysteries; he was a Phanes, the first principle 
 of things, the Orphic Phanes, God of Light existed before 
 the sun. 
 
 He runs all through Mythology as the charm word or 
 spell, whether cross, crescent, horseshoe — all one; the magic 
 spell that breaks enchantment, slays giants, dispels darkness, 
 breaks fetters, open doors and bars, and conquers all obstacles. 
 The new moon, or first born ring of the Easter moon. 
 
 There appeared to be something in nature that bound 
 the heavens and earth and sea together in a bond of sympathy 
 and love, and that power was deified as Eros or Kama who 
 personified the harmony of their movements. 
 
 They beheld the chaos of the nebulous moon acted upon 
 by the redeeming light, as we now see what we call mind 
 acting upon unorganized matter. 
 
 From the phallic origin of life here they inferred a alike 
 beginning at the first, and we are carried back to the dawn 
 of time when a celestial phallus or solar beam, or the phallic 
 
124 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 blood of a maimed Uranus fell upon the primeval waters which 
 were feminine and begat life. 
 
 The phallus was worshipped as the type of creation — 
 the generating power of the universe. 
 
 In the Egyptian account Ra the ancient one existed in the 
 primordial ocean in the abyss of Nu before creation — eyes 
 closed and shut in a lotus bud as a pre-mundane sun; and the 
 Norse Odin who lay in the abyss and willed creation. 
 
 That Eros, the first ring of the moon, was the seed of life 
 left in Pandora's box, the Lif, and Lifthrauser, the twin forks 
 of the moon that will be concealed in the earth at the destruc- 
 tion of the world and survive Ragnarok. 
 
 In one account Earth Erebus and Love were the first of 
 beings, and Love (Eros) issued from the egg of night floated 
 in chaos and illuminated all things by his torch, where before 
 existed strife and confusion of elements. 
 
 In Japanese the rush Asi as creator sprang from the sur- 
 face of the moon water, and became the creator, and that 
 rush Asi is the Asa God Odin of the Norse who is the same 
 reed or rush (new moon ring) who lay in the primitive abyss 
 and willed creation. The name is heard in the Asura of the 
 Hindu and the Egyptian Osiris, and the European Aesir, and 
 in a cosmogonic hymn of the Rig Veda it is said that dark- 
 ness existed at the beginning, and desire arose upon it, the seed 
 of mind and thought, and crosswise was stretched out the ray 
 line of the Gods — which was the spider's web or rod of the 
 new moon. 
 
 The Babylonian god, Asari, was the son of Ea, and this Ea 
 was lord of the garden ; this Asari, the son of Ea, was the bene- 
 factor of mankind, cured disease, raised the dead. He corres- 
 ponded to Osiris of the Egyptians. The foundation Eridu, 
 the garden of Ea goes back to 6000 B. C. 
 
 For that new moon ring is the source, the embryo, the 
 Genesis, the main spring, the magnet, the pivot, the loadstar, 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 125 
 
 the leaven, the beginning and end of all things, and the key 
 of all Mythology. 
 
 That seed ring is the compressed light of the world, that 
 moon, though it illumes the heavens, can close in the twinkling 
 of an eye, and be thrust in a vest pocket; that seed ring which 
 continues to drop rings until its orb is full. 
 
 He was the mysterious Melchizedek or priest king without 
 beginning or end of days, who met Abraham at the moon door 
 when he returned from the battle between the Spring kings and 
 the Winter kings at the victory of the Spring over Winter at 
 the Spring equinox. He was priest of the moon altar. 
 
 In the general belief of the ancients, water held all things 
 in solution, and was the source of all life and generation. In 
 the Babylonian account all things were water-born; the sun, 
 moon, earth, and all the Gods, and all living things had sprung 
 from the primeval ocean. 
 
 In Hindu Narayan, the supreme Lord, sprang from the 
 waters which were his first moving place. 
 
 In the Cosmogonical ideas as taught by the moon, the 
 chaos or protoplasm was acted upon by a creative power, 
 either within or without its waters, as a churning or moving 
 of its waters by wind, divine breath or voice, or as the seed 
 of life born concealed in its waters. 
 
 Cosmogonies are of long slow growth, and passed through 
 many editions of more advanced thought and refined specu- 
 lations as the nations grew in importance. 
 
 In their effort to fathom the origin of the world, and trace 
 chaos to cosmos, the ancients employed the present as a lever 
 to pry up the past and discover if possible the origin and 
 evolution of matter, and the mystery of being, which gave 
 rise to many confused and contradictory theories of the phil- 
 osophical schools of the old world; but they were amended 
 from time to time as knowledge increased, and bequeathed to 
 
126 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 posterity as sacred traditions, which we now know were in- 
 spired by the observations of natural phenomena. 
 
 It was an attempt to explain the unkown by the known 
 and create a past by the materials of the present. 
 
 And the present annual evolution of the year must resemble 
 the cosmical beginning of the past. 
 
 Every year when the sun and moon arrived at a certain 
 place in the east at Springtime, there was witnessed a renewal 
 of life and verdure and a resurrection from the grave of winter, 
 and this scene by inference was thrown back to the beginning 
 of time. 
 
 In a general view as taught in the ancient schools, a watery 
 chaos filled all the space afterward occupied by heaven, earth, 
 and underworld, and called variously Chaos, the Abyss, or the 
 Deep, and generally figured as a dragon, giant, or monster; 
 and that the present order of things was evolved from the form- 
 less chaos or abyss of waters which was the eternal matter 
 of the universe. 
 
 This primeval sea of waters has still to be fought and sub- 
 dued every year at the Springtime, as when the Babylonian 
 Merodach fought the dragon Tiamat, as later accomplished 
 by Sigurd the Volsung, or St. George. 
 
 The moon was the battle ground between the rival powers 
 of light and darkness; or the sun and moon; and the moon 
 the wise man taught all theories of world making and evolu- 
 tions. 
 
 Every year the world ran back in winter, the sea revolted 
 the waters of Marah were again bitter and had to be healed 
 by the sun rod. 
 
 Sometimes the creator combats and destroys the personified 
 abyss or chaos as a female dragon or monster; sometimes he 
 weds with her as Adam's first wife. All the solar gods had 
 to take this dark woman for his first wife. Jupiter married 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 127 
 
 Latona; Abram had to cohabit with Hagar the hag, Jacob 
 with Leah the dark one, and Adam with Lilith. 
 
 All the ancient Cosmogonies were founded upon observa- 
 tions of the moon, for the moon was a nebulous fog acted 
 upon by the redeeming ring of light until its orb was filled with 
 light, and then torn in pieces. The Egyptian God Osiris torn 
 in fourteen pieces, the same number of rings as contained in the 
 full moon. Again as Actaeon torn in pieces by fifty dogs — the 
 fifty-two weeks of the year in round numbers. As Pentheus 
 torn in pieces by his own mother Agave; and as Orpheus torn 
 in pieces by the Thracian women, and as the garments of 
 Christ parted, and distributed by lot, which is the same cosmic 
 legend. 
 
 And the old theories of creation from civilized to savage, 
 all follow the plan and scheme marked out and taught by the 
 moon, the creation by sacrifice. 
 
 In the Scandinavian account creation began at Ginungagap 
 (which means yawning gap) which is the gap or rent in the 
 moon. 
 
 As the nebulous ball of the moon was seen to split and 
 divide between the two contending forces of fire and water, a 
 like condition must have prevailed at the beginning when all 
 the elements were in confusion, and accordingly a like theory 
 was postulated for the universe at the beginning with the fire 
 upon one side and the ice upon the other. 
 
 And when the first battle was over, a giant had been 
 formed which was the monster universe — he was called the 
 giant Ymer, and this monster, as yet crude and uncivilized, 
 was split apart to form the heavens, the earth and the lumi- 
 naries. 
 
 And this splitting process, or the dividing asunder of the 
 moon and her alternate reconstruction, have permeated not only 
 the building of the universe, but also that of the Gods who 
 have suffered a like fate. They were torn up and devoured by 
 
128 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 our savage ancestors, and we still eat their mangled flesh and 
 drink their blood. 
 
 In the old Babylonian account, this chaos was called the 
 dragon Tiamat, who was split asunder by Marduk with the 
 sword of light, which is the old black moon split in twain by 
 the organizer. 
 
 For creation was the struggle between the gods of light 
 and darkness, between confusion and order; and the old chaos 
 personified as the dragon Tiamat, and the visible heaven was 
 formed of its skin. 
 
 In Persian instead of a giant Ymer, they have the Divine 
 Bull, or the primitive ox, slain from the foundation of the 
 world, which is the same moon under a different symbol. 
 
 In Vedic and Maori legend, heaven and earth were united 
 in embrace, and produced children, which were imprisoned in 
 darkness, but they were rent apart by the children of Saturn, 
 which are the rings seen escaping from the ark of the black 
 moon. 
 
 In Hindu it was Viswa-Karma (omnificent) the personi- 
 fication of the creative power; the supreme architect of the 
 universe, "all seeing," beyond the comprehension of mortals, 
 sacrificed himself to himself, and at the beginning offered up 
 all worlds in a Sarva-Medha, or general sacrifice, and ended 
 by sacrificing himself. He was lord of arts, and the artificer 
 of the Gods, and the return of all things to the beginning. 
 (Dawson's Hindu Classical Dictionary.) 
 
 "I am the cell; I am the opening chasm. I am the place 
 of reanimation, the landing stone, the harbor of life, existing 
 of yore in the great seas from the time when the shout was 
 heard at the side of the rock." (Da vies' Mythology British 
 Druids, p. 163.) 
 
 The Janus, the opener of the gate of life at the silver door 
 of the moon. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 129 
 
 Hebrew Beth-peor and Beth-pazzer. The house of "gap- 
 ing" and "dividing" asunder. 
 
 The Baal-peor, the master of the opening. 
 
 The golden wedge of Ophir, and that golden wedge that 
 fell from heaven and cleft the ground for the sacred city of 
 the Peruvians. 
 
 In the Cosmogony of Egypt. Ptah, the Egyptian He- 
 phaestus, was the "opener," the divine architect. 
 
 Splitting process. Minerva coming from the cleft head of 
 Zeus, which was the moon, split by the sword of Hephaestus. 
 
 In Hindu Cosmogony Agni split the mountain open with 
 his tongue (new moon) and brought forth the mead which the 
 Dasyus (hostile powers) had concealed in the mountain, as 
 Odin bored a hole down in the cavern of the giantess to obtain 
 Suttungs, mead of life; and it was the arrow or golden wedge 
 of the sun which cleft the moon plant, and children were passed 
 through cleft trees to be healed following the example or the 
 way of life pointed out by the sun, the great healer, and made 
 finger rings of sacred wood and plants as antidotes for poison, 
 as the sun made the all healing ring. 
 
 The gap in the moon mountain where so many mythic 
 battles have been fought annually between Gods and Titans; 
 it was the Pass of Thermopylae. The pass where Oedipus 
 slew his father, which is the young sun of the Spring slaying 
 the old. It was the gap cleft for Moses in the moon mountain. 
 
 It was according to the necromancy of nature every Spring, 
 and every time of new moon, to fish up that island from the 
 dark blue waters of the moon which was thrown back by the 
 ancients, as the process by which the original creation of the 
 planets was accomplished by being fished up from the chaos 
 of waters. 
 
 Within the waters lay the earth, and Vishnu took the 
 form of a boar and lifted the earth above the waters upon his 
 tusks, which are the two forks of the moon seen lifting land 
 
i 3 o THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 out of the moon water. (Wilson: Vishnu-Puran, p. 57- 
 59-62.) 
 
 In Egyptian heaven, earth and reptiles were raised from the 
 primordial waters Nu. "I raised them from the primordial 
 waters Nu. I was alone. I found no place on which I could 
 stand." 
 
 Among American Indians it was a musk-rat or Coyote 
 or beaver that first brought earth up from the bottom of the 
 deep which grew to a world. 
 
 The Pimas, a tribe of Central America, said the earth 
 first appeared as a spider's web, which is the thread of the new 
 moon, floating on the bed of the moon sea. 
 
 In Chinese legend an egg floated and swam to and fro; it 
 rocked and rolled — it hatched and grew into wide spreading 
 land. 
 
 In Japan, a male and female gave birth to the land of 
 Japan with a heavenly spear made of a jewel; they stood on 
 the floating Bridge of Heaven and stirred the ocean with the 
 spear until the brine was churned into foam; some foam 
 dropped from the spear point, and became an island called 
 Onogoro, or self-curdled ; that foam was the new moon ring. 
 
 In Maori legend, Maui, the culture hero, made a fish 
 hook of his grandfather's jawbone, which he obtained from 
 the lower-world, and went fishing; and while he sat he sang 
 a magic song, and as the waves boiled, he pulled hard and 
 raised the struggling fish to the surface, which settled and be- 
 came the North Island of New Zealand. 
 
 All these theories embody the same idea differently ex- 
 pressed ; in a word it is the white island of the new moon fished 
 up from the moon sea, the first land created. 
 
 EGG THEORY. 
 
 In the Orphic Cosmogony the egg produced by chaos was 
 silver white. (Lobeck: Aglaophamus, p. 473.) 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 131 
 
 An egg encompassed by the good serpent ; Agatha Daimon 
 was in the temple of the Tyrian Hercules. 
 
 Again he was Ptah, the opener of the world egg; the 
 Baal-peor, the opener; as Vulcan cleft the head of Jove to 
 give birth to Athene, who is the Spring moon. 
 
 In the Greek, it is Leda, the swan who lays the egg which 
 hatched the twins Castor and Polux (who are the twin forks 
 of the moon). 
 
 All these incubators are the moon or water bird brooding 
 upon the moon waters. 
 
 In the Egyptian Ra was a luminous egg and hatched in 
 the east by the celestial goose. 
 
 Mr. Bryant remarks that a large hieroglyphic egg, either 
 of Leda or Nemesis, was suspended in the temple of the 
 Dioscuri in Laconia. (Bryant Analysis: V. 11, p. 319.) 
 
 Among the cosmogonical tales of Korea, is the following, 
 which is decisive. It says that a golden egg of great size and 
 shaped like a gourd, was found on a mountain, and on being 
 opened was found to contain a rosy boy, and he wedded the 
 daughter of a well dragon. 
 
 The gourd-shaped egg is the first ring of the moon, which 
 is the Spring moon, or Eros, and the well dragon's daughter 
 is the Venus churned from the sea ; she is also the Spring moon 
 born of the well dragon, the sea monster. 
 
 Mr. Bryant observes that the dove Oinas was represented 
 hovering over the mundane egg, which was exposed to the 
 fury of Typhon (who is the sea, the ocean personified as a 
 dragon). 
 
 In Hindu Cosmogony: The self-existant created the waters 
 and deposited in them a seed which became a golden egg, in 
 which he himself was born, as Brahma, the progenitor of all 
 worlds, and as the water was the place of his first movement, 
 he was called Narayana. 
 
 And this cosmic egg or seed of life which is the Eros, 
 
1 32 THT ANCIENT CITY 
 
 desire, or love principle, is the first ring of the moon which acts 
 as leaven in the lump of Chaos. 
 
 In the Egyptian papyrus of Ani, the perfected is heard to 
 say: "I am the perfected soul in the holy egg of the Abtu 
 fish." (The fish is the black moon which holds the white 
 egg or moon ring, the soul of the moon.) 
 
 Again in the same papyrus, "O thou who art in the egg 
 (that is Ra) who shineth in thy disk, or riseth in thy horizon, 
 and doth shine like gold above the sky." 
 
 In the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptian book of the 
 dead, the arisen soul is heard to say: "I rise out of the egg 
 in the land hidden; may my mouth be given me to speak 
 before the great lord of the underworld." In fact the mummy 
 case represented that cell or cript from which Christ was re- 
 born, the manger and the cave, the egg or cell of transformation ; 
 on the day of his birth he is purified and says: "I am purified 
 m my double nest." (It was the cave nest of Machpelah, 
 "double division.") 
 
 Egyptian book of the dead: May I rise, even I like a 
 hawk of gold coming forth from its egg. May I fly; may I 
 rise eve I. 'May I gather myself together as a golden hawk 
 with the head of a phoenix and sit down among the great 
 gods. 
 
 This is the egg theory of creation by a brooding process, 
 sometimes brooded over by a feathered serpent or bird serpent 
 brooding over the waters. 
 
 There are ancient representations of the mundane egg en- 
 compassed by the Agathodaenmon or good serpent, the same 
 serpent that embraced Eve in its winter folds. 
 
 In the Northern Mythology Brynhild in a sleep trance is 
 surrounded by the seven-fold serpent on Hindfel. It is the 
 dark orb of the moon surrounded by the white circle of light 
 or the new moon. 
 
 Davies, in his Mythology of the British Druids, has given 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 133 
 
 a description of the celebration of the Spring festival in Druidi- 
 cal times. 
 
 When the Avanc was drawn out of the shallow of a 
 local lake by a bull, "Lively was the aspect of him who in his 
 prowess had snatched over the ford that involved ball which 
 casts its rays to a distance, the splendid product of the adder 
 shot forth by serpents." 
 
 It represented the new moon of Easter, drawn out of the 
 moon waters. This new moon was hatched from the in- 
 volved ball of serpents' froth or spittle, which the serpents to- 
 gether blew up in the air and called a serpent's egg. 
 
 Again in the Egyptian, the creator of the world, under 
 the name of Cneph, who was the Agathodaemon, or good 
 serpent, was represented thrusting forth an egg from his mouth, 
 and this might throw light on the Indian serpent mound of 
 Adams Co., O., where the serpent is seen thrusting forth an egg 
 from his mouth. 
 
 The Anquinum, or snake's egg, was the most potent of all 
 charms among the British Druids. It was formed of the saliva 
 or froth of a mass of writhing serpents and then tossed up in 
 the air. It was then caught by a Druid priest in his cloak, 
 and carried off at full speed upon a horse pursued by the ser- 
 pents until they were stopped by a running stream. This 
 Anquinum must be procured at a certain time of the moon 
 which is in the Spring at the time of Easter. 
 
 The involved ball, or Anquinum, is the moon spittle or 
 froth, and the serpents are stopped by the running stream of 
 the new moon, which darkness cannot cross. It is the same 
 as the fairy cup stolen from the fairies in other tales. 
 
 This saliva or froth is the same spittle of all the gods in a 
 jar which formed Kvaser, the God of Peace and Amity be- 
 tween the Asas and Vans at the Spring festival. 
 
 An egg was chosen as the type of creation and beginning 
 of life, also of resurrection and future life. 
 
134 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 The dark moon surrounded by a ring of light, which is 
 the new moon, or fire ring offered a fit type for the generation 
 of the universe from chaos; the black moon was likened to an 
 egg encompassed by a generative principle of light and life, 
 and likened to a serpent, and this serpent creator was the oldest 
 and greatest of the gods, the "ancient of days" the indestruct- 
 ible. 
 
 Among the Finns the mother bird hatched the world's 
 egg at the vernal equinox. 
 
 The Persians and Syrians both expressed their divine an- 
 cestors as the progeny of eggs. (Bryant's Analysis, V. 1 1 , 
 p. 319.) 
 
 Hence eggs were consecrated and used in the mysteries 
 (which celebrated the mysteries of life) and are still in sym- 
 bolical use at our Easter. 
 
 The moon to the ancients was the mother of all things; 
 she was represented by the British Druids as a great Caldron 
 or cup, holding the nine maidens or water damsels, who were 
 called by the Greeks the nine muses. They were made nine 
 to represent the nine months of prenatal life of human beings, 
 for the moon carried in her womb the seeds of all life — these 
 nine maids were fairies; they lived in the bosom of the water, 
 where they celebrated nightly orgies; they foretold the deluge. 
 This caldron of the ruler of the deep was first warmed by the 
 breath of the nine damsels. 
 
 This caldron had a ridge of pearls around its border, 
 which is the ring of the new moon on the rim of the moon 
 lake and corresponds to the necklace of Harmonia; this cal- 
 dron of Ceridwen (British Ceres) brewed the water of inspira- 
 tion, corresponding to the amrita of the Hindus; and there 
 the first sentence of the mysteries had been pronounced, and 
 these mysteries had been four times pronounced at the quadrangu- 
 lar inclosure — "and whoever is not bound by his sacred oath, 
 in the hands of the sword bearer, shall he be left, and before 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 135 
 
 the entrance of the gate of Hell shall the horns of life be burn- 
 ing." The horns of light are the two forks of the new moon, 
 which shows that the entrance of hell is in the moon, as well 
 as the entrance to God's throne. (Davies' Mythology of 
 British Druids, pp. 166-219-223.) 
 
 These damsels by their song move the waters to harmony; 
 there the song of creation began; these damsels occur in 
 Egypt and among the Greeks occur as the nine muses, they 
 sing around the altar of Zeus, and sing the origin of the world, 
 of Gods, and men, and celebrate the glory and renown of 
 Zeus, as Cherubim and Seraphim; they sing around the same 
 throne of Jehovah, they sing at the banquets of the Gods and 
 at the marriage festival of Spring, and chant the death song 
 of heroes as the Greek Homer and Aegir the old Norse sea 
 king. 
 
 As the primitive universe was called into existence, made 
 and perfected by harmony and rhythm by the magic of the 
 heavenly spheres, and the elements in a heavenly choir, and the 
 air tuned to anthem and song. 
 
 The original creation took place on the margin of the 
 moon in the moon marsh, that white island was the first land 
 that ever appeared above the water. The scene of the Greek 
 creation according to Pindar was in the Cephisian marsh, 
 which represented the moon marsh brought down for the ex- 
 altation of the Greeks. 
 
 In general all the ancient nations, both civilized and sav- 
 age, were agreed that the first creation began in the moving 
 of the waters, or by the churning of the primeval waters, in 
 like manner as they beheld the moon waters churned by the 
 fire stick or magic rod of the new moon. 
 
 In the oldest cave rocks of India is found depicted the spirit 
 of God brooding over the waters. 
 
 1 hat spirit of the moon waters personified as a Narayana, 
 "mover of waters,'" which is the first ring of the moon, as the 
 
136 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 Melchizedek, or priest king of the moon altar without begin- 
 ning or end of days. 
 
 And this creation was accomplished by a power without 
 the abyss described as a divine wind, breath, or voice; some- 
 times as a bird passing over the watery abyss, as we now be- 
 hold the ring or wand of light passing over the dark waters 
 of the moon; or again this creative power lay concealed in its 
 depths as a seed or egg of divine intelligence, the first power 
 of creation. 
 
 In the Egyptian Thoth the moon-god, called "The tongue 
 of Ra, the sun-god" created by his voice, and the world came 
 forth out of the mist at his call. 
 
 Thoth gave the world light when all was darkness. That 
 tongue of Ra, that fiery tongue which came out upon the 
 moon like the handwriting upon the wall — the golden pen, the 
 first word ever spoken. 
 
 In the Persian account Ormuzd created by his word "Hon- 
 over." 
 
 In the Babylonian Silik-Mulu-Khi, son of Ea, created the 
 world by breathing on the primeval sea. 
 
 In the Japan account the creator was called Asi; he arose 
 out of the mud like a reed or rush, which was again the same 
 wonder-working rod of the new moon. 
 
 In the Phoenician account the creator was the divine breath 
 or wind upon the waters, a general evolving power, a wind 
 enamored of its own elements in a conjugal way, breathed upon 
 the primeval waters. 
 
 In the Polynesian account the heaven or air-god Tangaloa 
 as a bird hovered over the waters. 
 
 In the Kalevala of the Finns an eagle floated over the 
 waters by rocking to and fro in the cradle of the waters. 
 
 With the Quiches of Central America Gucumatz or Quet- 
 zalcoatl, the feathered serpent, presided over the sea in the dark- 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 137 
 
 ness, and the creators and rulers said "Earth," and the earth 
 was formed like a cloud, which was created by a word. 
 
 Again in poetic fancy the universe was sung into harmony 
 by the harmonious flow of vocal sounds, as in Druidical Britain, 
 by the song of the nine sea maidens, who lived in the sea, cor- 
 responding to the nine muses of the Greeks ; their voices moved 
 the waters, or again in the Norse, the waters were self-moving 
 at the creation. 
 
 "So perished the Gap of the Gaping and the cold sea 
 swayed and sang." 
 
 As in the Hebrew the morning stars sang together (Job 
 38:7) and the shout went up« 
 
 In the Mosaic account the "Spirit of God moved upon 
 the waters," and the dry land appeared and floated upon the 
 sea, as heard in the commandment, "Thou shalt not make an 
 image of anything in heaven above or of the waters under the 
 earth." 
 
 No matter whether a divine word or breath or voice or 
 divine wind, or a dove or hovering bird, or a maiden, or a 
 Jonah cast in the sea, or the olive oil of healing in the hands 
 of Athene in her contest with Neptune for dominion; they are 
 all one, visibly the first ring of the new moon moving over the 
 moon sea at the Spring equinox, "when the good and the evil 
 wed and beget the best and the worst." 
 
 Hebrew Cosmogony principally drawn from Babylonian 
 and Persian. 
 
 No two accounts of the Semitic nations agree in all their 
 details, but are varied in proportion to the time they have been 
 separated or influenced by commercial activity, or literary cul- 
 ture. Even the Babylonians had several accounts of their 
 flood, cosmogony and theogony; the Greeks have various ac- 
 counts of their gods and their wonder workings. The Phoeni- 
 cians have various cosmogonical traditions and discrepancies. 
 
 "And darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the 
 
138 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 spirit of God moved upon the waters. (Gen. 1 :2.) The same 
 scene as Christ, the new born sun of Spring, stilling the sea. 
 
 The Hebrew Cosmogony is of late origin and does not deal 
 with the genesis of matter, but simply says, "In the beginning 
 God created" without defining the aeon, and that the formless 
 void was acted upon by a creative or formative force which 
 takes personal form — "the spirit of God moved upon the 
 waters." 
 
 In a later version the old theory of the earth resting upon 
 the primeval sea as an island was abandoned, and the earth had 
 escaped from its moorings and hung in the air. 
 
 "He has spread out the North over the Void and hung 
 the earth upon nothing." (Job 26:7.) 
 
 Traditions similar to the Hebrew are found among other 
 nations. The Etrurian creation takes place in six periods of 
 a thousand years each ; in Persian Mythology Ormuzd, the God 
 of Light by his word, created the world in six periods of a 
 thousand years each. 
 
 The old religious conceptions and mental aberrations of 
 our gullible ancestors are fast being obliterated by the growing 
 doubt in the reality of the outer world and the negation of posi- 
 tive ideals. 
 
 Historical and positive Christianity has been superseded by 
 moral rationalism and philosophical nihilism, and many of the 
 first scholars of the age deny all knowledge and all reality, and 
 openly and firmly declare that "nothing can be known." 
 
 Things in themselves cannot be known — that only phe- 
 nomena are known. All knowledge is relative; there is no 
 knowledge absolute. 
 
 All wisdom and science is but an aggregate of common 
 sense, like the penny savings in a bank. And religion like 
 science is but a product of the human mind, and it is man 
 only that reveals God. 
 
 The knowledge of an absolute is impossible; knowledge 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 139 
 
 can extend no further than between a subject and an object. 
 God is only a logical abstraction, and an abstraction is no knowl- 
 edge but a mere conception deduced from physical phenomena ; 
 being, time, space and motion are but empty abstractions and 
 transparent infinity; and have no existence when deprived of 
 visible or sensible objects, like the numbers of arithmetic, which 
 are of themselves abstract, and mean nothing and are but an 
 empty name when used without reference to an object. 
 
 Our feeling, thought, will, reason, and action are but phy- 
 sical and chemical action, and mind cannot be separated from 
 matter, and cannot exist without a material basis, like the blaze 
 of a torch, and all mind and soul but a modification of matter 
 like force ; mental is but physical action. 
 
 All matter and mind will be inertia until acted upon by a 
 force, the force which acts strongest will prevail. 
 
 Reason and reflection, but a growth of mind from rude ani- 
 mal instinct. 
 
 Dreams, visions and revelations are but the distorted re- 
 flections of wakefulness. 
 
 In materialism the soul is only a function of the body, and 
 both perish at death. 
 
 Growth in one direction is atrophy in another. For if the 
 yesterday had not died, where would have been to-day? 
 
 Forces are now co-operating to awaken the possibilities 
 that lay slumbering in the dormant and undeveloped future. 
 
 In Greek religion the Fates (Moira) were at the head 
 of the Pantheon before whom Zeus bowed his head. In 
 Christian religion it remains in part as predestination. 
 
 The universe is but a co-operative society for what aim or 
 end is unknown, and depends upon its power of reproduction 
 for its own existence and preservation, which is only preserved 
 by perpetual creation. 
 
 Every living being is in a constant state of change, and 
 the earth is but a battle field for the sword-play and pastime 
 
i 4 o THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 of the elements. Every leaf and blossom of the Spring, every 
 throb of life, and the joy and song of the bird is but a form of 
 death. For it has been truly said that a new eternity is begun 
 at every moment. 
 
 In Hindu the destroying power is the generator, and death 
 and destruction but a form of creation and rebirth. 
 
 In a Hindu saying: "The only thing that is stable, is insta- 
 bility." 
 
 In a poetical view, it has been maintained there is no oppos- 
 ing principle in nature, and that the seeming war and strife of 
 the elements is but the noise of the shuttle and loom and the 
 respiration of cosmic existence. And that every sound, how- 
 ever harsh and discordant to us, is music somewhere. 
 
 But to science nature is but a whirlpool of endless move- 
 ment to which law and order and design are unknown, for 
 when we speak of being, time, space and motion, we speak from 
 a human standpoint. 
 
 Jacobi says nature reveals only fate; only an indissoluble 
 chain of causes without beginning and without end, excluding 
 both providence and chance. She works without will; she 
 takes counsel neither of the good nor the beautiful; creating 
 nothing; she casts up from her dark abyss only eternal trans- 
 formations of herself, unconsciously, and without end. 
 
 And we are wondering still what happened in the night of 
 the world, for the ancients are no oracle upon the subject. 
 Visionaries tell us there is a correspondence between the creation 
 of the universe and the human individual — that earthly things 
 are but shadows of the divine above; that the visible is but the 
 image of the invisible, and the correspondence of the outward 
 and the inner, and that the terrestrial corresponds to the celes- 
 tial house, and why they are not apparent to the vulgar is for 
 the want of receptive power. 
 
 The orthodox believe creation originated from benevolent 
 design; but rationalists believe it originated from the blind un- 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 141 
 
 knowing forces of nature. That the universe is run by physical 
 and chemical laws; that there is nothing supernatural but every- 
 thing rational. 
 
 Evolution can advance only by warfare and strife — light 
 struggles with darkness; that there is a life evolving power in- 
 herent in nature. Creation and dissolution — are one, and in- 
 separable. 
 
 That in the beginning there existed in all matter the possi- 
 bilities of life. The consuming fire under a milder form of sun- 
 light is creative. That the present condition is but the chaotic 
 powers in higher development. That by the churning of chaos 
 the elements were separated and organic life began, and that 
 this evolution is still in progress and will continue until the highest 
 possibilities of life are reached, when the earth will begin to 
 decay, and like the moon loose heat, air and water the susten- 
 ance of life. 
 
 For all worlds have a career marked out that cannot be 
 changed; that all life and death are but a conflict of the ele- 
 ments, and this process of change and evolution will go on 
 through eternity, the end of which is but the beginning. 
 
 Under a more scientific aspect, organic evolution is from 
 formless protoplasm itself evolved from inert matter and all this 
 evolution has been referred to known and recognized laws of 
 physics and chemistry, and what we call life and soul is not 
 soul but living matter, having physical and chemical properties. 
 Thought and reason are but physical action. (Darwin and 
 Lankester.) 
 
 That the universe is governed by universal attraction and re- 
 pulsion (which is negative attraction) and behind the positive 
 is a negative process. 
 
 It is now known that the world is swimming through 
 an ocean of ether, the all prevading medium which is elastic, has 
 no weight, offers no resistance; it is called an elastic solid; it 
 reflects light and heat, but to the highest reach of thought is 
 
142 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 still an inconceivable nothingness. It has been advocated that 
 all matter is but one substance in infinite forms and manifesta- 
 tions, compressed into solids or dissipated in nebula and that 
 electricity is the ambassador of the universe; that nature is all 
 one, which moves in all motion, bound in one tie, and that all 
 life is one that lives in all life, and that the universe itself is one 
 living body and soul, the universal being. 
 
 In the Hindu, the universe is filled by Purusha of sunlight 
 lustre beyond the darkness; "Purusha, great lord mover of ex- 
 istence, the undecaying — sees without eyes, hears without 
 ears — great primeval Purusha, ancient one, soul of all things, 
 eternal, universal diffusion, incapable of birth; form not per- 
 ceptible to the eye, known through the heart. By him creation 
 is ruled considered as earth, water, fire and ether; the one God 
 hidden in all things, the universal soul." 
 
 To science and rationalism this is but visionary abstraction. 
 It is now taught that in the changes that take place power 
 is never destroyed, but simply escapes into new conditions. 
 That the various forms of force are mutually convertible into 
 each other, and at the same time power like matter is inde- 
 structible; its total amount in the universe being conserved or 
 remaining perpetually unchanged. 
 
 The records of our earth stored in our hills and valleys, and 
 engraved upon rocks, give proof that our world is continually 
 being destroyed and reconstructed. We find everywhere the 
 eternal evolution of matter and never ending unrest of that 
 nature which is creative but blind. 
 
 This war of gods and giants and their slaughter and trans- 
 formation, is but the evolution and development of nature, its 
 civilization, its alternate destruction and regeneration ; for matter 
 cannot be annihilated, only changed ; the world and the universe 
 were created by war; they can exist only by war; as nations 
 are built up by war, the same coercive and inexorable law of the 
 universe, which can never die. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY 143 
 
 The beginning of life is chemical change — it ends with the 
 same phenomena. Creation and destruction, not voluntary, but 
 an eternal necessity of matter. 
 
 Apparently there is no creator but evolution, a natural un- 
 folding as of plant life, a spontaneous development, as hair 
 grows upon the head, and nails upon the fingers' end, by the 
 natural self-begtting power of nature, emanations from the in- 
 dwelling life principle pervading the universe, — and the life 
 evolving power of matter; that there can be no loss of energy 
 to the universe; energy disappears in one form to reappear in 
 another. 
 
 Degeneration and regeneration, but different aspects of 
 the one thing. 
 
 The old world ideas of Cosmogony, Theogony, and The- 
 ology, are fast disappearing before the rationalistic school, which 
 makes reason the supreme authority in all things, and rejects 
 all divine revelations, miracles and supernatural absurdities, and 
 acknowledges only the agency of physical and natural causes. 
 
 And throughout nature there is nothing independent, noth- 
 ing self-existing; but all things are interdependent; there never 
 was any first cause — nothing is Self; nothing can move or rest 
 of itself; nothing can say stop! stay! but is hurried on by irre- 
 sistible force. There is no volition; even our thought and will 
 are involuntary, but ruled and governed by a multitude of 
 forces, and the strongest force prevails. 
 
 Blind laws bring all good and evil alike; there is no free 
 will — it is external phenomena acting upon the mind. 
 
 All things in the universe proceed from the Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy, and things we call matter are only forms of 
 actions and energy, and matter itself is but the manifestation of 
 energy. Matter and force have existed from all eternity and are 
 inseparable. 
 
 Our sun and moon are fire-born, yet in that molten mass 
 
i 4 4 THE ANCIENT CITY 
 
 lay concealed the possibilities and potentialities of future life, 
 the common endowment of all matter. 
 
 We talk of matter and force, we talk of gravity, of attrac- 
 tion and repulsion. We talk of light, heat, electricity and 
 the ether, as entities; but they are an appearance only, and all 
 alike illusory. And the wisest man knows not and may never 
 know what they are, for their origin and destiny are beyond 
 the utmost limitations of human thought. 
 
 We have been told of an eternity as something of the future, 
 but time and eternity are one, and we are living to-day in the 
 midst of an eternity that had no beginning and knows no end; 
 for we have always been, and shall always be, though never 
 again conscious of the present self, for we are a part of the 
 universe. 
 
 Day and night are one, for what is day but night lit up 
 with a torch to make darkness visible? 
 
 Day dawned "child of the night; it turned and slew its 
 mother. The mother kissed her babe and died"; and yet the 
 mother died not, but was transformed to an angel of light. 
 
 Life and death are one; all life is slowly dying; all death 
 is slowly waking to life. Life and death are each to each, the 
 other self. "For death so called is but old matter dressed in 
 some new figure, and a varied vest. Thus all things are but 
 altered, nothing dies." 
 
 And up and down, and to and fro, and here and there, are 
 seeming only, and good and bad, and right and wrong, are but 
 one to the infinite, where everything is greatest and least, every- 
 thing is best and worst, and we find ourselves flying through 
 space with lightning speed upon a phantom ship that knows 
 no end, no aim, no goal, and live in a land of illusion and lies.