The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of NatureVolney, C.-F. (Constantin-François)
Religion
The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature
Volney, C.-F. (Constantin-François)
Ethics; History -- Philosophy; Religions; Revolutions
"At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
"The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
of the air where light abounds.
A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5. Injustice. See
Isis and Osiris.
"The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
own.
"They represent the world also by the number five, being
that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus. The Indians have
the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
things terrestrial. Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
"The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
like that animal he is of a reddish color. Now Typhon
signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
formed from the same root hamr). Jamblicus has farther told
us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
and evil of the ancients."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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