"Almost all the Tartar princes," says
Salverte (Des Sciences Occultes, Appendix, Note A, sect. xii. p.
490), "trace their genealogy to a celestial virgin,
impregnated by a sun-beam, or some equally miraculous
means." In India, the mother of Surya, the sun-god, who
was born to destroy the enemies of the gods (see ante, p. 96), is
said to have become pregnant in this way, a beam of the sun
having entered her womb, in consequence of which she brought
forth the sun-god. Now the knowledge of this widely diffused myth
casts light on the secret meaning of the name Aurora, given to
the wife of Orion, to whose marriage with that "mighty
hunter" Homer refers (Odyssey, lib. v. ll. 120, 121). While
the name Aur-ora, in the physical sense, signifies also "pregnant
with light;" and from "ohra," "to
conceive" or be "pregnant," we have
in Greek, the word oap for a wife. As Orion, according to Persian
accounts, was Nimrod; and Nimrod, under the name of Ninus, was
worshipped as the son of his wife, when he came to be deified as
the sun-god, that name Aurora, as applied to his wife, is
evidently intended to convey the very same idea as prevails in
Tartary and India. These myths of the Tartars and Hindoos clearly
prove that the Pagan idea of the miraculous conception had not
come from any intermixture of Christianity with that
superstition, but directly from the promise of "the seed
of the woman." But how, it may be asked, could the idea
of being pregnant with a sunbeam arise? There is reason to
believe that it came from one of the natural names of the sun.
From the Chaldean zhr, "to shine," comes, in
the participle active, zuhro or zuhre, "the
Shiner;" and hence, no doubt, from zuhro, "the
Shiner," under the prompting of a designing priesthood,
men would slide into the idea of zuro, "the seed,"--"the
Shiner" and "the seed," according to
the genius of Paganism, being thus identified. This was
manifestly the case in Persia, where the sun was the great
divinity; for the "Persians," says Maurice, "called
God Sure" (Antiquities, vol. v. p. 22).
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