The Original Goddess Semiramis Of Babylon The worship of - TopicsExpress

The Original Goddess Semiramis Of Babylon The worship of Ishtar-Easter spread throughout the ancient pagan world, where she was venerated in almost every segment of society. The original of this Goddess, however, loomed upon the historical scene in Babylone. From The Two Babylons by Hislop, pages 20-22, we find this information about the original of this Great Mother Goddess—Semiramis. The Babylonians in their popular religion, supremely worshiped a Goddess Mother, and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms (Figs. 5 and 6). From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshiped under the names of Isis and Osiris.* In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; * in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius;§ in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy;11 in Greece, as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast,¶ or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; ** and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of Madonna ** and her child as devoutly worshiped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.* The original of that mother, so widely worshiped, there is reason to believe, was Semiramis, * already referred to, who, it is well known, was worshiped by the Babylonians, * and other eastern nations, § and that under the name of Rhea, ||the great goddess “Mother.” It was from the son, however, that she derived all her glory and her claims to deification. That son, though represented as a child in his mother’s arms, was a person of great stature and immense bodily powers, as well as most fascinating manners. In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. viii. 14) under the name of Tammuz, but he is commonly known among classical writers under the name of Bacchus, that is, ‘‘The Lamented One.’’ ¶ To the ordinary reader the name of Bacchus suggests nothing more than revelry and drunkenness, but it is now well known, that amid all the abominations that attended his orgies, their grand design was professedly ‘‘the purification of souls,’’ * and that from the guilt and defilement of sin. This lamented one, exhibited and adored as a little child in his mother’s arms, seems, in point of fact, to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name, Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified‘‘The Son,’’* As Semiramis, the wife, was worshiped as Rhea, whose grand distinguishing character was that of the great goddess ‘‘Mother,’’* the conjunction with her of her husband, under the name of Ninus, or ‘‘The Son,’’ was sufficient to originate the peculiar worship of the ‘‘Mother and Son,’’ so extensively diffused among the nations of antiquity; and this, no doubt, is the explanation of the fact which has so much puzzled the inquirers into ancient history, that Ninus is sometimes called the husband, and sometimes the son of Semiramis.§ This also accounts for the origin of the very same confusion of relationship between Isis and Osiris, the mother and child of the Egyptians; for as Bunsen shows, Osiris was represented in Egypt as at once the son and husband of his mother; and actually bore,as one of his titles of dignity and honour, the name ‘‘Husband of the Mother.’’|| The Babylonian worship of the Great Mother spread throughout the known world. This Mother Goddess was known by different names, but the form of her religion has not transformed since antiquity. The Layman’s Bible Encyclopedia, William C. Martin, The Southwestern Company, Nashville, TN, 1964, page 209, gives the following facts about Easter. EASTER, an annual celebration observed by much of the Christian church, commemorating Christ’s resurrection. Modern observance of Easter represents a convergence of three traditions: (1) The Hebrew Passover, celebrated during Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew lunar calendar; (2) The Christian commemoration of the ‘crucifixion’ and resurrection of ‘Jesus’, which took place at the feast of the Passover; and (3) The Norse Ostara or Eostra (from which the name, ‘‘Easter’’ is derived), a pagan festival of spring which fell at the vernal equinox, March 21. Prominent symbols in this celebration of the resurrection of nature after the winter were rabbits, signifying fecundity, and eggs, colored like the rays of the ‘‘returning sun’’ and the northern lights, or aurora borealis.’’