The Lords of the Ghostland: A History of the IdealSaltus, Edgar
Religion
The Lords of the Ghostland: A History of the Ideal
Saltus, Edgar
Religions
Apologetically, Tertullian, a Christian Father, remarked: "Some think
our God is the Sun." There were excuses perhaps for those that did.
Adonai, a Hebrew term for the Almighty, is a plural. It means lords.
But the lords indicated were Baalim who were Lords of the Sun.
Moreover, when the early Christians prayed, they turned to the East.
Their holy day was, as the holy day of Christendom still is, Sunday,
day of the Sun, an expression that comes from the Norse, on whom also
shone the light of the Aryan deva.
To shepherds who, in seeking pasture for their flocks, were seeking
also pasture for their souls, the deva became Indra. They had other
gods. There was Agni, fire; Varuna, the sky; Maruts, the tempest.
There was Mithra, day, and Yama, death. There were still others,
infantile, undulant, fluid, not infrequently ridiculous also. But it
was Indra for whom the dew and honey of the morning hymns were spread.
It was Indra who, emerging from darkness, made the earth after his
image, decorated the sky with constellations and wrapped the universe
in space. It was he who poured indifferently on just and unjust the
triple torrent of splendour, light, and life.
Indra was triple. Triple Indra, the _Veda_ says. In that description
is the preface to a theogony of which Hesiod wrote the final page. It
was the germ of sacred dynasties that ruled the Aryan and the
Occidental skies. From it came the grandiose gods of Greece and Rome.
From it also came the paler deities of the Norse. Meanwhile ages fled.
Life nomad and patriarchal ceased. From forest and plain, temples
arose; from hymns, interpretations; from prayer, metaphysics; for
always man has tried to analyze the divine, always too, at some halt
in life, he has looked back and found it absent.
In meditation it was discerned that Indra was an effect, not the
cause. It was discerned also that that cause was not predicable of the
gods who, in their undulance and fluidity, suggested ceaseless
transformations and consequently something that is transformed.
The idea, patiently elaborated, resulted in a drainage of the fluid
myths and the exteriorisation of a being entirely abstract. Designated
first as Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer, afterward more simply as
Brahma, he was assumed to have been asleep in the secret places of the
sky, from which, on awakening, he created what is.
The conception, ideal itself, was not, however, ideal enough. The
labour of creating was construed as a blemish on the splendour of the
Supreme. It was held that the Soul of Things could but loll, majestic
and inert, on a lotos of azure. Then, above Brahma, was lifted Brahm,
a god neuter and indeclinable; neuter as having no part in life,
indeclinable because unique.
There was the apex of the world's most poetic creed, one distinguished
over all others in having no founder, unless a heavenly inspiration be
so regarded. But the apex required a climax. Inspiration provided it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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