The Round Towers of Ireland

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CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND

IT is astonishing how much of the Egyptian and the Indian symbolism of very early ages passed into the usages of Christian times. Thus: the high cup and the hooked staff of the god became the bishop’s mitre and crosier; the term nun is purely Egyptian, and bore its present meaning; the erect oval, symbol of the Female Principle of Nature, became the Vesica Piscis, and a frame for Divine Things; the Crux Ansata, testifying the union of the Male and Female Principle in the most obvious manner, and denoting fecundity and abundance as borne in the god's hand, is transformed, by a simple inversion, into the Orb surmounted by the Cross, and the ensign of royalty. Refer to The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 72.

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Fig. 31

The famous 'Stone of Cabar', Kaaba, Cabir, or Kebir, at Mecca, which is so devoutly kissed by the faithful, is a talisman. It is called the 'Tabernacle' (Taberna, or Shrine) of the Star Venus. 'It is said that the figure of Venus is seen to this day engraved upon it, with a crescent.' The very Caaba itself was at first an idolatrous temple, where the Arabians worshipped 'Al-Uza'--that is, Venus. See Bobovius, Dr. Hyde Parker, and others, for particulars regarding the Arabian and Syrian Venus. She is the 'Uraniæ-corniculatæ sacrum' (Selden, De Venere Syriaca). The 'Ihrâm is a sacred habit, which consists only of two woollen wrappers; one closed about the middle of devotees, to cover', etc., 'and the other thrown over the shoulders.' Refer to observations about Noah, later in our book; Sale's Discourse, p. 121; Pococke's India in Greece, vol. ii. part i. p. 218. The Temple of Venus at Cyprus was the Temple of Venus-Urania. 'No woman entered this temple' (Sale's Koran, chap. vii. p. 119; note, p. 149). Accordingly, Anna Commena and Glycas (in Renald. De Mah.) say that 'the Mahometans do worship Venus'. Several of the Arabian idols were no more than large, rude stones (Sale's Discourse, p. 20; Koran, chap. v. p. 82). The stone at Mecca is black. The crypts, the subterranean churches and chambers, the choirs, and the labyrinths, were all intended to enshrine (as it were) and to conceal the central object of worship, or this sacred 'stone'. The pillar of Sueno, near Forres, in Scotland, is an obelisk. These obelisks were all astrological gnomons, or 'pins', to the imitative stellar mazes, or to the 'fateful charts', in the 'letter-written' skies. The astronomical 'stalls', or 'stables'

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were the many 'sections' into which the 'hosts' of the starry sky were distributed by the Chaldæans. The Decumens (or tenths), into which the ecliptic was divided, had also another name, which was Ashre, from the Hebrew particle as, or ash, which means 'fiery', or 'FIRE'. The Romans displayed reverence for the ideas connected with these sacred stones. Cambyses, in Egypt, left the obelisks or single magic stones. The Linghams in India were left untouched by the Mohammedan conquerors. The modern Romans have a phallus or lingha in front of almost all their churches. There is an obelisk, altered to suit Christian ideas (and surmounted in most instances in modern times by a cross), in front of every church in Rome. There are few churchyards in England without a phallus or obelisk. On the top is usually now fixed a dial. In, former times, when the obeliscar form was adopted for ornaments of all sorts, it was one of the various kinds of Christian acceptable cross which was placed on the summit. We have the single stone of memorial surviving yet in the Fire-Towers (Round Towers of Ireland). This phallus, upright, or 'pin of stone', is found in every Gilgal or Druidical Circle. It is the boundary-stone or terminus, the parish mark-stone; it stands on every motehill lastly (and chiefly), this stone survives in the stone in the coronation chair at Westminster (of which more hereafter), and also in the famous 'London Stone', or the palladium, in Cannon Street, City of London: which stone is said to be 'London’s fate'--which we hope it is not to be in the unprosperous sense.

The letter 'S', among the Gnostics, with its. grimmer or harsher brother (or sister) 'Z', was called the 'reprobate' or 'malignant' letter. Of this portentous sigma (or sign) 'S' (the angular and not serpentine 'S' is the grinding or bass 'S'--the letter

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[paragraph continues] 'Z'), Dionysius the Halicarnassian says as follows: that the 'letter S makes a noise more brutal than human. Therefore the ancients used it very sparingly' ('Περἰ συνθες': see, also, sect. 14 p of Origin and Progress of Language, vol. ii. p. 233).

Notwithstanding the contentions of opposing antiquaries, and the usually received ideas that the 'Irish Round Towers' were of Christian, and not heathen, origin, the following book, turning up very unexpectedly, seems to settle the question in favour of O’Brien, and of those who urge the incredibly ancient devotion of the Round Towers to a heathen myth--fire-worship, in fact.

'John O’Daly, 9 Anglesea Street, Dublin. Catalogue of Rare and Curious Books, No. 10, October 1855, Item 105: De Antiquitate Turrum Belanorum Pagana Kerriensi, et de Architectura non Campanilis Ecclesiasticæ, T. D. Corcagiensi, Hiberno. Small 4to, old calf, with numerous woodcut engravings of Round Towers interspersed through the text, £10. Lovanii, 1610.' The bookseller adds 'I never saw another copy of this curious old book.' This book--which there is no doubt is genuine--would seem finally to settle the question as to the character of these Irish Round Towers, which are not Christian belfries, as Dr. George Petrie, and others sharing his erroneous beliefs, persistently assure us, but heathen Lithoi, or obelisks, in the sense of all those referred to in other parts of this work. They were raised in the early religions, as the objects of a universal worship. All antiquaries know of what object the phallus stands as the symbolical representation. It needs not to be more particular here.

The 'Fleur-de-Lis' is a sacred symbol descending from the Chaldæans, adopted by the Egyptians, who converted it into the deified 'scarab', the emblem of

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the Moon-god; and it is perpetuated in that mystically magnificent badge of France, the female 'Lily', or 'Lis'. All the proofs of this lie concealed in our Genealogy of the Fleur-de-Lis (p. 47 and following pages, also post), and the 'Flowers-de-Luce', or the 'Fleurs-de-Lis', passim. It means 'generation', or the vaunt realized of the Turkish Soldan, 'Donec totum impleat orbem'. The 'Prince of Wales’s Feathers', we believe to be, and to mean, the same thing as this sublime 'Fleur-de-Lis'. It resembles the object closely, with certain effectual, ingenious disguises. The origin of the Prince of Wales’s plume is supposed to be the adoption of the king's crest (by Edward the Black Prince, at the battle of Cressy), on the discovery of the slain body of the blind King of Bohemia. Bohemia again!--the land of the 'Fire-worshipping Kings' whose palace, the Radschin, still exists on the heights near Prague. We believe the crest and the motto of the Prince of Wales to have been in use, for our Princes of Wales, at a much earlier period, and that history, in this respect, is perpetuating an error--perhaps an originally intended mistake. We think the following, which appears now for the first time; will prove this fact. Edward the Second, afterwards King of England, was the first Prince of Wales. There is reason to suppose that our valiant Edward the First, a monarch of extraordinary acquirements, was initiated into the knowledge of the abstruse Orientals. An old historian has the following: 'On their giving' (i.e. the assembled Welsh) 'a joyful and surprised assent to the King's demand, whether they would accept a king born really among them, and therefore a true Welshman, he presented to them his new-born son, exclaiming in broken Welsh "Eich dyn!", that. is "This is your man"--which has been corrupted into the present motto to the Prince of Wales's crest, "Ich

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dien", or "I serve". The meaning of 'I serve' in this view, is, that 'I' suffice, or 'the Lis', or 'the act', suffices (refer to pages and figures post), for all the phenomena of the world.