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NOTES TO THE DEVOTED ONE.
241
" The audible pronunciation of this awful word was believed
to cause the earth to tremble, and all the inhabitants of heaven
to quake with fear." History of Initiation.
"Nor print any mark upon you." It was a custom amongst
some idolatrous nations, when solemnly devoting themselves
to the service of any deity, to be initiated into it by receiving
some marks in their flesh which might never wear out.
Burder's Orient. Cust.
" Subscribe with the hand." This is an allusion to the marks
which were made by punctures, rendered indelible by fire, or by
staining upon the hand or some other part of the body, signifying
the state or character of the person, and to whom he belonged.
The slave was marked with the name of his master the sol-
5
dier with that of his commander the idolater with the name
j
or sign of his god. And the Christians seem to have imitated
this practice, by what Procopius says upon this passage of
Isaiah: " Many marked their wrists or their arms with the sign
of the Cross, or with the name of Christ." Lowth.
The sign of the Cross has ever been a sacred symbol among
heathens as well as Christians.
There has lately been opened near Wareham, in Dorsetshire,
a tumulus, or barrow, containing from twenty to thirty urns,
all of which are rudely formed, and of high antiquity. On the
bottom of one of these urns, in our possession, is the form of a
Cross, partly grooved and partly raised. This is the first urn
that has ever been found with this religious emblem marked
upon it in England, or, we believe, in any other country.
This symbol, found in the gorgeous temples of India, and on a
rude urn in the simple tomb of a British chief, must have been
originally derived from that eastern fountain of knowledge, of
which Plato, in his divine philosophy, drank so deeply 5 who
says, in his Timaits, that the Son of God was displayed on the
universe in the form of an X. Just. Mar. sec. Ixxvii.
In the splendid saloon at the British Museum, appropriated
to the antiquities of Egypt, may be seen numerous figures
holding in their hands cruces ansatas, or crosses with rings,
the emblem of, and the passport to, eternal life.
We will instance No. 41, a statue of Diana Bubastes, on
which are sculptured the lunar boat, the serpent, and the lotus,
all of which are emblems of the Yavana, the Yoni, or Pith ;
which proves, beyond contradiction, that the ancient Indothat
Diana
Egyptians were, in their worship, Pish-de-danaans -,
Bubastes is the Indian Padma-devi, or the goddess sitting on
the lotus and that the ; great pyramid of Egypt, as the Brahmins
told Wilford, was a temple dedicated to the worship of
Padma-devi.
R