The Two Babylons

The story of the swaddled stone does not end with the swallowing of it, and the arresting of the ruin of the children of Saturn. This swaddled stone was said to be "preserved near the temple of Delphi, where care was taken to anoint it daily with oil, and to cover it with wool" (MAURICE's Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 348). If this stone symbolised the "sin-bearing son," it of course symbolised also the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, in whose symbolic covering our first parents were invested when God clothed them in the coats of skins. Therefore, though represented to the eye as a stone, he must have the appropriate covering of wool. When represented as a branch, the branch of God, the branch also was wrapped in wool (POTTER, vol. i., Religion of Greece. chap. v. p. 208). The daily anointing with oil is very significant. If the stone represented the "sin-bearing son," what could the anointing of that "sin-bearing son" daily with oil mean, but just to point him out as the "lord's Anointed," or the "Messiah," whom the idolators worshipped in opposition to the true Messiah yet to be revealed?

One of the names by which this swaddled and anointed stone was called is very strikingly confirmatory of the above conclusion. That name is Baitulos. This we find from Priscian (lib. v., vol. i. p. 180, Note, and lib. vi., vol. i. p. 249), who, speaking of "that stone which Saturn is said to have devoured for Jupiter," adds, "quem Groeci Baitulov vocant," whom the Greeks called "Baitulos." Now, "B'hai-tuloh" signifies the "Life-restoring child." The father of gods and men had destroyed his children by eating; but the reception of "the swaddled stone" is said to have "restored them to life" (HESIOD, Theogon., 1. 495, p. 41). Hence the name Baitulos; and this meaning of the name is entirely in accordance with what is said in Sanchuniathon (lib. i., cap. 6, p. 22) about the Baithulia made by the Phenician god Ouranos: "It was the god Ouranos who devised Baithulia, contriving stones that moved as having life." If the stone Baitulos represented the "life-restoring child," it was natural that that stone should be made, if possible, to appear as having "life" in itself.

Now, there is a great analogy between this swaddled stone that represented the "sin-bearing son," and that Olenos mentioned by Ovid, who took on him guilt not his own, and in consequence was changed into

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a stone. We have seen already that Olenos, when changed into a stone, was set up in Phrygia on the holy mountain of Ida. We have reason to believe that the stone which was fabled to have done so much for the children of Saturn, and was set up near the temple of Delphi, was just a representation of this same Olenos. We find that Olen was the first prophet at Delphi, who founded the first temple there (PAUSA IAS, lib. x., Phocica, cap. 5, p. 321). As the prophets and priests generally bore the names of the gods whom they represented (Hesychius expressly tells us that the priest who represented the great god under the name of the branch in the mysteries was himself called by the name of Bacchus, p. 179), this indicates one of the ancient names of the god of Delphi. If, then, there was a sacred stone on Mount Ida called the stone of Olenos, and a sacred stone in the precincts of the temple of Delphi, which Olen founded, can there be a doubt that the sacred stone of Delphi represented the same as was represented by the sacred stone of Ida? The swaddled stone set up at Delphi is expressly called by Priscian, in the place already cited, "a god." This god, then, that in symbol was divinely anointed, and was celebrated as having restored to life the children of Saturn, father of gods and men, as identified with the Idaean Olenos, is proved to have been regarded as occupying the very place of the Messiah, the great Sin-bearer, who came to bear the sins of men, and took their place and suffered in their room and stead; for Olenos, as we have seen, voluntarily took on him guilt of which he was personally free.

While thus we have seen how much of the patriarchal faith was hid under the mystical symbols of Paganism, there is yet a circumstance to be noted in regard to the swaddled stone, that shows how the Mystery of Iniquity in Rome has contrived to import this swaddled stone of Paganism into what is called Christian symbolism. The Baitulos, or swaddled stone, was stroggulos lithos (BRYANT, vol. ii. p. 20, Note), a round or globular stone. This globular stone is frequently represented swathed and bound, sometimes with more, sometimes with fewer bandages. In BRYANT, vol. iii. p. 246, where the goddess Cybele is represented as "Spes Divina," or Divine hope, we see the foundation of this divine hope held out to the world in the representation of the swaddled stone at her right hand, bound with four different swathes. In DAVID's Antiquities Etrusques, vol. iv. plate 27, we find a goddess represented with Pandora's box, the source of all ill, in her extended hand, and the swaddled globe depending from it; and in this case that globe has only two bandages, the one crossing the other. And what is this bandaged globe of Paganism but just the counterpart of that globe, with a band around it, and the mystic Tau, or cross, on the top of it, that is called "the type of dominion," and is frequently represented, as in the accompanying woodcut in the hands of the profane representations of God the Father. The reader does not now need to be told that the cross is the chosen sign and mark

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of that very God whom the swaddled stone represented; and that when that God was born, it was said, "The Lord of all the earth is born" (WILKINSON, vol. iv. p. 310). As the god symbolised by the swaddled stone not only restored the children of Saturn to life, but restored the lordship of the earth to Saturn himself, which by transgression he had lost, it is not to be wondered at that it is said of "these consecrated stones," that while "some were dedicated to Jupiter, and others to the sun," "they were considered in a more particular manner sacred to Saturn," the Father of the gods (MAURICE, vol. ii. p. 348), and that Rome, in consequence, has put the round stone into the hand of the image, bearing the profaned name of God the Father attached to it, and that from this source the bandaged globe, surmounted with the mark of Tammuz, has become the symbol of dominion throughout all Papal Europe.

NOTE G, p. 75.

The Identification of Rhea or Cybele and Venus.

In the exoteric doctrine of Greece and Rome, the characters of Cybele, the mother of the gods, and of Venus, the goddess of love, are generally very distinct, insomuch that some minds may perhaps find no slight difficulty in regard to the identification of these two divinities. But that difficulty will disappear, if the fundamental principle of the Mysteries be borne in mind--viz, that at bottom they recognised only Adad, "The One God" (see ante, pp. 14, 15, 16, Note). Adad being Triune, this left room, when the Babylonian Mystery of Iniquity took shape, for three different FORMS of divinity--the father, the mother, and the son; but all the multiform divinities with which the Pagan world abounded, whatever diversities there were among them, were resolved substantially into so many manifestations of one or other of these divine persons, or rather of two, for the first person was generally in the background. We have distinct evidence that this was the case. Apuleius tells us (vol. i. pp. 995, 996), that when he was initiated, the goddess Isis revealed herself to him as "The first of the celestials, and the uniform manifestation of the gods and goddesses.... WHOSE ONE SOLE DIVINITY the whole orb of the earth venerated, and under a manifold form, with different rites, and under a variety of appellations;" and going over many of these appellations, she declares herself to be at once "Pessinuntica, the mother of the gods [i.e. Cybele], and Paphian Venus" (Ibid. p. 997). Now, as this was the case in the later ages of the Mysteries, so it must have been the case from the very beginning; because they SET OUT, and necessarily set out, with the doctrine of the UNITY of the Godhead. This, of course, would give rise to no little absurdity and inconsistency in the very nature of the case. Both Wilkinson and Bunsen, to get rid of the inconsistencies they have met with in the Egyptian system, have found it necessary to have recourse to substantially the same explanation as I have done. Thus we find Wilkinson saying: "I have stated that Amun-re and other gods took the form of different deities, which, though it appears at first sight to present some difficulty, may readily be accounted for when we consider that each of those whose figures or emblems were adopted, was only an EMANATION, or deified attribute of the SAME GREAT BEING to whom they ascribed various characters, according to the several offices he was supposed to perform" (WILKINSON, vol. iv. p. 245). The statement of Bunsen is to the same effect, and it is this: "Upon these premises, we think ourselves justified in concluding that the two series of gods were originally identical, and that, in the GREAT PAIR of gods, all these attributes were concentrated,

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from the development of which, in various personifications, that mythological system sprang up which we have been already considering" (BUNSEN, vol. i. p. 418).

The bearing of all this upon the question of the identification of Cybele and Astarte, or Venus, is important. Fundamentally, there was but one goddess--the Holy Spirit, represented as female, when the distinction of sex was wickedly ascribed in the Godhead, through a perversion of the great Scripture idea, that all the children of God are at once begotten of the Father, and born of the Spirit; and under this idea, the Spirit of God, as Mother, was represented under the form of a dove, in memory of the fact that that Spirit, at the creation, "fluttered"--for so, as I have observed, is the exact meaning of the term in Gen. i. 2--"on the face of the waters." This goddess, then, was called Ops, "the flutterer," or Juno, "The Dove," or Khubele, "The binder with cords," which last title had reference to "the bands of love, the cords of a man" (called in Hosea xi. 4, "Khubeli Adam"), with which not only does God continually, by His providential goodness, draw men unto Himself, but with which our first parent Adam, through the Spirit's indwelling, while the covenant of Eden was unbroken, was sweetly bound to God. This theme is minutely dwelt on in Pagan story, and the evidence is very abundant; but I cannot enter upon it here. Let this only be noticed, however, that the Romans joined the two terms Juno and Khubele-or, as it is commonly pronounced, Cybele--together; and on certain occasions invoked their supreme goddess, under the name of Juno Covella-(see STANLEY's philosophy, p. 1055)--that is, "The dove that binds with cords." In STATIUS (lib. v. Sylv. 1, v. 222, apud BRYANT, vol. iii. p. 325), the name of the great goddess occurs as Cybele--

"Italo gemitus Almone Cybele

Ponit, et Idaeos jam non reminiscitur names."

If the reader looks, in Layard, at the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity, he will see this very idea visibly embodied. There the wings and tail of the dove have two bands associated with them instead of feet (LAYARD's Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 418; see also accompanying woodcut, from BRYANT, vol. ii. p. 216; and KITTO's Bib. Cyclop., vol. i. p. 425).

In reference to events after the Fall, Cybele got a new idea attached to her name. Khubel signifies not only to "bind with cords," but also "to travail in birth;" and therefore Cybele appeared as the "Mother of the gods," by whom all God's children must be born anew or regenerated. But, for this purpose, it was held indispensable that there should be a union in the first instance with Rheia, "The gazer," the human "mother

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of gods and men," that the ruin she had introduced might be remedied. Hence the identification of Cybele and Rheia, which in all the Pantheons are declared to be only two different names of the same goddess (see LEMPRIERE'S Classical Dictionary, sub voce), though, as we have seen, these goddesses were in reality entirely distinct. This same principle was applied to all the other deified mothers. They were deified only through the supposed miraculous identification with them of Juno or Cybele--in other words, of the Holy Spirit of God. Each of these mothers had her own legend, and had special worship suited thereto; but, as in all cases, she was held to be an incarnation of the one spirit of God, as the great Mother of all, the attributes of that one Spirit were always pre-supposed as belonging to her. This, then, was the case with the goddess recognised as Astarte or Venus, as well as with Rhea. Though there were points of difference between Cybele or Rhea, and AStarte or Mylitta, the Assyrian Venus, Layard shows that there were also distinct points of contact between them. Cybele or Rhea was remarkable for her turreted crown. Mylitta, or Astarte, was represented with a similar crown (LAYARD'S Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 456). Cybele, or Rhea, was drawn by lions; Mylitta, or Astarte, was represented as standing on a lion (Ibid). The worship of Mylitta, or Astarte, was a mass of moral pollution (HERODOT., lib. i. cap. 199, p. 92). The worship of Cybele, under the name of Terra, was the same (AUGUSTINE, De Cavitate, lib. vi. cap. 8, tom. ix., p. 203).