The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

THE CELTIC MYSTERIES. 117
countries, which were formed by the migration of the
first descendants of Noah and his family. 18
The Druids did not worship idols in the human shape,
because they held that the divinity, being invisible,
ought to be adored without being seen. But we are
told that they did occasionally erect, like the primitive
Buddhists of the east, 19 in retired places, statues of
Isis 20 or Ceridwen which must ; have been gigantic
stones, 21
rough as when taken from the quarry, 22 the
Betulia of the eastern nations, 23 which are ritually con-
secrated, and invested with peculiar and distinctive properties.
These stones, so highly venerated, 24 so enthu-
siastically adored, were the representations of the great
British deities, whose abundant merits have been so
extravagantly eulogized by the bards. These deities, by
what variety of names soever they may have been designated,
all melt into two, a male and a female, the great
father and mother, 25 who were worshipped under the
appellation of Hu and Ceridwen, and bore the same
conspicuous character with the Egyptian Osiris and
Isis ; the Grecian Bacchus and Rhea, or any other
supreme god and goddess who represented the great
father and mother of mankind in the mysteries of idolatrous
antiquity.
18 Vid. Mi 19
1. i.
supra, Fab. Pag. Idol., vol. ii., p. 340.
20 The Scandinavians had a goddess of this name. (01. Rudbeck.
Atlant., vol. ii., p. 212.)
21 " Several of the idols of the old Arabs," says Sale, in his Pre-
liminary Discourse to the Koran, "were no more than large, rude
stones, the worship of which the posterity of Ishmael first intro-
duced These stones they at first only compassed out of
devotion ; but at last it ended in rank idolatry ; the Ishmaelites forgetting
the religion left them by their father so far as to pay divine
worship to any stone they met with." Captain Hamilton describes
one of the idols in the Indian Temple of Jagun-nath, as being "a
huge black stone of a pyramidal form ;" or, in other words, a stone
pillar.
22
Bryant. Anal., vol. i., p. 13.
"
The mighty pile of magic planted rock
Thus rang'd in mystic order, marks the place
Where, but at times of holiest festival
The Druid leads his train." MASON.
24 Dr. Gordon informs us that the Irish peasants still pay these
stones an awful respect. (Hutch. Cumb., vol. i., p. 243.)
25 We find Pindar (Nem. Od. 6.) asserting the dignity of the great
mother, where he says that all the gods as well as men sprang from
her fruitful womb.