Even the trinity in unity, as we have already observed, was one of the secrets revealed to the initiated in the Pagan polytheism; and was taught in the mysteries long before the sect Christians adopted the ascetic habits of the Essenes and Egyptian Therapeutæ. In these mysteries this trinity had a twofold allusion--under one meaning it was a personification of physical, and under the other of moral, principles; in the physical sense, those natural principles were personified, which, by their inherent properties, viz., motion, attraction, repulsion, etc., produce these changes which we perceive in matter. But of all these principles, the _Sun_ was looked up to as the grand omnipotent nucleus, whose all-vivifying power is the vital and sole source of animative and vegetative existence upon this globe--the glorious fountain out of which springs all that man ever has, or ever can call good, and as such, the only proper object of the homage and adoration of mankind. Hence the Sun, as we are informed by Pausanius, was worshipped at Eleusis under the name of "The Savior." If it is urged that the Sun cannot properly be regarded as a principle in Nature, the objection is good with respect to the universal systems which "_circle other Suns_;" but of our Solar system, he is _the_ principal. Of the thousand Pagan personifications of the Sun, which appear absurd and ridiculous when taken in the literal sense, but which are rational and highly scientific when the veil of allegory is withdrawn, one of the most beautiful is that of the solar Deity under the name of Adonai,* Tammuz, or the Adonis of the Syrians. This allegory represents him, after being glorified as "The most High God," in his _exalted_ reign of summer, as resigning his place in the heavens to the zodiacal animals of the winter signs; and is figured as being slain or mutilated by them, more especially by the wild boar, under whose malefic ascendancy the sun seems annually to expire. * Adonai is synonymous with Jahouh, or Jehovah. Throughout the Psalms, the _Sun_ is "the Lord God," and Zion means the zodiac. And, as personated in the beautiful Adonis, he is fabled as being mutilated in his genital parts by the boar; that is, by similitude, he is deprived of his genial or generative power over Nature during the winter. But when the annual rains of summer had swelled the river Adonis (so called from the god), its waters became tinged red by some mineral, and were fabled to be the blood of the beauteous Adonis, annually mutilated as aforesaid:-- "While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea,--supposed with blood Of Tammuz, yearly wounded." In lamentation over this most shocking outrage against genial Nature,--or rather to celebrate the yearly victory over it, the Sidonian damsels, _not wholly without significance_, assembled to hail the renovation of the prolific powers of Tammuz, or Adonis, as manifested in their God of summer.