6& A Note on Boodhism and the Cave 



ruddy peaks of his native hills glowed with one lasting hue — and 

 the dark outline of his forest haunts remained eternally the same ; 

 yet when closer inspected a stirring change was continually taking 

 place : here some antient denizen of the wood came down thunder- 

 ing with decay, and there he saw the juicy sapling rising in its 

 place ; here the Mountain torrent sweeping its devastation before it, 

 and there the Shoalbank growing into land ; and even nearer home 

 the same mighty influence was at work — his forefathers bore witness 

 that his native village had been fixed in the same site from immemo- 

 rable time, and yet a daily, at times perhaps to him a poignant, 

 change was going on — here the old man gathered to his Sires, and 

 there the nursling starting in his stead. This mysterious power 

 became the object of his wonder and therefore of his worship ; but 

 here again the materialising and substantiality craving influences of 

 humanity came into play, and appropriate symbols were sought for. 

 The family of Shem, perhaps influenced by the Star worship of the 

 Sabsean branch, chose the Sun and the Moon — the one as a repre- 

 sentative of the Female, and the other of the Male power which they 

 considered inherent in Nature. It is the fact of not keeping this 

 circumstance in view, viz. that the Sun and the Moon were objects of 

 worship in widely different points of view ; that has caused so much 

 confusion in endeavouring to explain the religious system of the 

 antient Irish. By one class they were adored as King and Qneen 

 of Heaven, as leaders of the Starry Host, this was Sabseism — by the 

 other they were regarded, as I have remarked, as the mere visible 

 symbols of the regenerative powers of nature. It is in this latter 

 point of view in which Moses speaks of them when he blesses Joseph 

 in the " precious fruits brought forth by the Sun, and the precious 

 things put forth by the Moon :" indeed the whole passage strikingly 

 alludes to the fructifying and regenerative powers of nature. " And 

 of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious 

 things of Heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth be- 

 neath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the Sun, and for 

 the precious things put forth by the Moon, and for the chief things 

 of the antient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting 

 hills, and for the precious things of the earth, and fulness thereof \ 

 and for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush," The sym- 



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