Connecting Jupiter with the sun as a propitious planet, and with Mars
as a destroying planet, Venus with the moon, and Mercury with Saturn,
we have left four colour schemes which suggest the Golden, Silvern,
Bronze, and Iron Ages. The Greek order of mythical ages may have had a
solar significance, beginning as it does with the "golden" period. On
the other hand the Indian and Irish systems begin with the Silvern or
white lunar period. In India the White Age (Treta Yuga) was the age of
perfect men, and in Greece the Golden Age was the age of men who lived
like gods. Thus the first ages in both cases were "Perfect" Ages. The
Bronze Age of Greece was the age of notorious fighters and takers of
life; in Babylonia the bronze planet Mars was the symbol of the
destroying Nergal, god of war and pestilence, while Jupiter was also a
destroyer as Merodach, the slayer of Tiamat. In India the Black Age is
the age of wickedness. The Babylonian Saturn, as we have seen, is
black, and its god, Ninip, was the destroying boar, which recalls the
black boar of the Egyptian demon (or elder god) Set. The Greek Cronos
was a destroyer even of his own children. All the elder gods had
demoniac traits like the ghosts of human beings.
As the Babylonian lunar zodiac was imported into India before solar
worship and the solar zodiac were developed, so too may have been the
germs of the Yuga doctrine, which appears to have a long history.
Greece, on the other hand, came under the influence of Babylon at a
much later period. In Egypt Ra, the sun god, was an antediluvian king,
and he was followed by Osiris. Osiris was slain by Set, who was
depicted sometimes red and sometimes black. There was also a Horus
Age.
The Irish system of ages suggests an early cultural drift into Europe,
through Asia Minor, and along the uplands occupied by the
representatives of the Alpine or Armenoid peoples who have been traced
from Hindu Kush to Brittany. The culture of Gaul resembles that of
India in certain particulars; both the Gauls and the post-Vedic
Aryans, for instance, believed in the doctrine of Transmigration of
Souls, and practised "suttee". After the Roman occupation of Gaul,
Ireland appears to have been the refuge of Gaulish scholars, who
imported their beliefs and traditions and laid the foundations of that
brilliant culture which shed lustre on the Green Isle in late Pagan
and early Christian times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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