The Two Babylons

We have seen already, on different occasions, that fire was worshipped as the enlightener and the purifier. Now, it was thus at the very beginning; for Nimrod is singled out by the voice of antiquity as commencing this fire-worship. The identity of Nimrod and Ninus has already been proved; and under the name of Ninus, also, he is represented as originating the same practice. In a fragment of Apollodorus it is said that "Ninus taught the Assyrians to worship fire." The sun, as the great source of light and heat, was worshipped under the name of Baal. Now, the fact that the sun, under that name, was worshipped in the earliest ages of the world, shows the audacious character of these first beginnings of apostacy. Men have spoken as if the worship of the sun and of the heavenly bodies was a very excusable thing, into which the human race might very readily and very innocently fall. But how stands the fact? According to the primitive language of mankind, the sun was called "Shemesh"--that is, "the Servant"--that name, no doubt, being divinely given, to keep the world in mind of the great truth that, however glorious was the orb of day, it was, after all, the appointed Minister of the bounty of the great unseen Creator to His creatures upon earth. Men knew this, and yet with the full knowledge of it, they put the servant in the place of the Master; and called the sun Baal--that is, the Lord--and worshipped him accordingly. What a meaning, then, in the saying of Paul, that, "when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God;" but "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is God over all, blessed for ever." The beginning, then, of sun-worship, and of the worship of the host of heaven, was a sin against the light--a presumptuous, heaven-daring sin. As the sun in the heavens was the great object of worship, so fire was worshipped as its earthly representative. To this primeval fire-worship Vitruvius alludes when he says that "men were first formed into sates and communities by meeting around fires."

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And this is exactly in conformity with what we have already seen(p. 117) in regard to Phoroneus, whom we have identified with Nimrod, that while he was said to be the "inventor of fire," he was also regarded as the first that "gathered mankind into communities."

Along with the sun, as the great fire-god, and, in due time, identified with him, was the serpent worshipped. "In the mythology of the primitive world," says Owen, "the serpent is universally the symbol of the sun." In Egypt, one of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc wit a serpent around it. The original reason of that identification seems just to have been that, as the sun was the great enlightener of the physical world, so the serpent was held to have been the great enlightener of the spiritual, by giving mankind the "knowledge of good and evil." This, of course, implies tremendous depravity on the part of the ringleaders in such a system, considering the period when it began; but such appears to have been the real meaning of the identification. At all events, we have evidence, both Scriptural and profane, for the fact, that the worship of the serpent began side by side with the worship of fire and the sun. The inspired statement of Paul seems decisive on the subject. It was, he says, "when men knew God, but glorified Him not as God," that they changed the glory of God, not only into an image made like to corruptible man, but into the likeness of "creeping things"--that is, of serpents (Rom. i. 23). With this profane history exactly coincides. Of profane writers, Sanchuniathon, the Phoenician, who is believed to have lived about the time of Joshua, says--"Thoth first attributed something of the divine nature to the serpent and the serpent tribe, in which he was followed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. For this animal was esteemed by him to be the most spiritual of all the reptiles, and of a FIERY nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit, without either hands or feet.....Moreover, it is long-lived, and has the quality of RENEWING ITS YOUTH....as Thoth has laid down in the sacred books; upon which accounts this animal is introduced in the sacred rites and Mysteries."

Now, Thoth, it will be remembered, was the counsellor of Thamus, that is, Nimrod. From this statement, then, we are led to the

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conclusion that serpent-worship was a part of the primeval apostacy of Nimrod. The "FIERY NATURE" of the serpent, alluded to in the above extract, is continually celebrated by the heathen poets. Thus Virgil, "availing himself," as the author of Pompeii remarks, "of the divine nature attributed to serpents," describes the sacred serpent that came from the tomb of Anchises, when his son AEneas had been sacrificing before it, in such terms as illustrate at once the language of the Phoenician, and the "Fiery Serpent" of the passage before us:--

"Scarce had he finished, when, with speckled pride,

A serpent from the tomb began to glide;

His hugy bulk on seen high volumes rolled,

Blue was his breadth of back, but streaked with scaly gold.

Thus, riding on his curls, he seemed to pass

A rolling fire along, and single the grass."

It is not wonderful, then, that fire-worship and serpent-worship should be conjoined. The serpent, also, as "renewing its youth every year, was plausibly represented to those who wished an excuse for idolatry as a meet emblem of the sun, the great regenerator, who every year regenerates and renews the face of nature, and who, when deified, was worshipped and the grand Regenerator of the souls of men.

In the chapter under consideration, the "great fiery serpent" is represented with all the emblems of royalty. All its heads are encircled with "crowns or diadems;" and so in Egypt, the serpent of fire, or serpent of the sun, in Greek was called the Basilisk, that is, the "royal serpent," to identify it with Moloch, which name, while it recalls the ideas both of fire and blood, properly signifies "the King." The Basilisk was always, among the Egyptians, and among many nations besides, regarded as "the very type of majesty and dominion." As such, its image was worn affixed to the headdress of the Egyptian monarchs; and it was not lawful for any one else to wear it. The sun identified with this serpent was called "P'ouro," which signifies at once" the Fire" and "the King," and from this very name the epithet "Purros," the "Fiery," is given to the "Great seven-crowned serpent" of our text.

Thus was the Sun, the Great-Fire-god, identified with the Serpent. But he had also a human representative, and that was Tammuz, for whom the daughters of Israel lamented, in other words Nimrod. We have already seen the identity of Nimrod and Zoroaster. Now,

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Zoraster was not only the head of the Chaldean Mysteries, but, as all admit, the head of the fire-worshippers. The title given to Nimrod, as the first of the Babylonian kings, by Berosus, indicates the same thing. That title is Alorus, that is, "the god of fire." As Nimrod, "the god of fire," was Molk-Gheber, or, "the Mighty king," inasmuch as he was the first who was called Moloch, or King, and the first who began to be "mighty" (Gheber) on the earth, we see at once how it was that the "passing through the fire to Moloch" originated, and how the god of fire among the Romans came to be called "Mulkiber." It was only after his death, however, that he appears to have been deified. Then, retrospectively, he was worshipped as the child of the Sun, or the Sun incarnate. In his own life-time, however, he set up no higher pretensions than that of being Bol-Khan, or Priest of Baal, from which the other name of the Roman fire-god Vulcan is evidently derived. Everything in the history of Vulcan exactly agrees with that of Nimrod. Vulcan was "the most ugly and deformed" of all the gods. Nimrod, over all the world, is represented with the features and complexion of a negro. Though Vulcan was so ugly, that when he sought a wife, "all the beautiful goddesses rejected him with horror;" yet "Destiny, the irrevocable, interposed, and pronounced the decree, by which [Venus] the most beautiful of the goddesses, was united to the most unsightly of the gods." So, in spite of the black and Cushite features of Nimrod, he had for his queen Semiramis, the most beautiful of women. The wife of Vulcan was noted for her infidelities and licentiousness; the wife of Nimrod was the very same. Vulcan was the head and chief of the Cyclops, that is, "the kings of flame." Nimrod was the head of the fire-worshipers. Vulcan was the forger of the thunderbolts by which such havoc was made among the enemies of the gods. Ninus, or Nimrod, in his wars with the king of Bactria, seems to have carried on the conflict in a similar way. From Arnobius we learn, that when the Assyrians under Ninus made war against the Bactrians, the warfare was waged not only by the sword and bodily strength, but by magic and by means derived from the secret instructions of the

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Chaldeans. When it is known that the historical Cyclops are, by the historian Castor, traced up tot he very time of Saturn or Belus, the first king of Babylon, and when we learn that Jupiter (who was worshipped in the very same character as Ninus, "the child"), when fighting against the Titans, "received from the Cyclops aid" by means of "dazzling lightnings and thunders," we may have some pretty clear idea of the magic arts derived from the Chaldean Mysteries, which Ninus employed against the Bactrian king. There is evidence that, down to a late period, the priests of the Chaldean Mysteries knew the composition of the formidable Greek fire, which burned under water, and the secret of which has been lost; and there can be little doubt that Nimrod, in erecting his power, availed himself of such or similar scientific secrets, which he and his associates alone possessed.