When the Spanish missionaries first set foot upon the soil of America, in the fifteenth century, they were amazed to find the Cross was as devoutly worshipped by the red Indians as by themselves, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of St. Thomas or to the cunning device of the Evil One. The hallowed symbol challenged their attention on every hand and in almost every variety of form. It appeared on the bass-reliefs of ruined and deserted as well as on those of inhabited palaces, and was the most conspicuous ornament in the great temple of Gozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. According to the particular locality, and the purpose which it served, it was formed of various materials—of marble and gypsum in the open spaces of cities and by the way-side; of wood in the teocallis or chapels on pyramidal summits and in subterranean sanctuaries; and of emerald or jasper in the palaces of kings and nobles.
When we ask the question how it comes that the sign of the Cross has thus been reverenced from the highest antiquity by the races of the Old and New Worlds, we learn that it is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden, in other words, of Atlantis.
Professor Hardwicke says:
“All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story—jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man’s vision lay a paradise of holy joy—a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the mind a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality.”
To quote again from the writer in the Edinburgh Review, already cited; “Its undoubted antiquity, no less than its extraordinary diffusion, evidences that it must have been, as it may be said to be still in unchristianized lands, emblematical of some fundamental doctrine or mystery. The reader will not have failed to observe that it is most usually associated with water; it was ‘the key of the Nile,’ that mystical instrument by means of which, in the popular judgment of his Egyptian devotees, Osiris produced the annual revivifying inundations of the sacred stream; it is discernible in that mysterious pitcher or vase portrayed on the brazen table of Bembus, before-mentioned, with its four lips discharging as many streams of water in opposite directions; it was the emblem of the water-deities of the Babylonians in the East and of the Gothic nations in the West, as well as that of the rain-deities respectively of the mixed population in America. We have seen with what peculiar rites the symbol was honored by those widely separated races in the western hemisphere; and the monumental slabs of Nineveh, now in the museums of London and Paris, show us how it was similarly honored by the successors of the Chaldees in the eastern. . . .
ANCIENT
IRISH
CROSS—PRE-CHRISTIAN—KILNABOY
.
“In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain it was emblematical of creative power and eternity; in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence and freedom from physical suffering; while in both hemispheres it was the common symbol of the resurrection, or ‘the sign of the life to come;’ and, finally, in all heathen communities, without exception, it was the emphatic type, the sole enduring evidence, of the Divine Unity. This circumstance alone determines its extreme antiquity—an antiquity, in all likelihood, long antecedent to the foundation of either of the three great systems of religion in the East. And, lastly, we have seen how, as a rule, it is found in conjunction with a stream or streams of water, with exuberant vegetation, and with a bill or a mountainous region—in a word, with a land of beauty, fertility, and joy. Thus it was expressed upon those circular and sacred cakes of the Egyptians, composed of the richest materials-of flour, of honey, of milk—and with which the serpent and bull, as well as other reptiles and beasts consecrated to the service of Isis and their higher divinities, were daily fed; and upon certain festivals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the people and their priests. ‘The cross-cake,’ says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ‘was their hieroglyph for civilized land;’ obviously a land superior to their own, as it was, indeed, to all other mundane territories; for it was that distant, traditional country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of exquisite delight and serenity, where Nature, unassisted by man, produces all that is necessary for his sustentation.”
And this land was the Garden of Eden of our race. This was the Olympus of the Greeks, where
“This same mild season gives the blooms to blow, The buds to harden and the fruits to grow.”
In the midst of it was a sacred and glorious eminence—the umbilicus orbis terrarum—”toward which the heathen in all parts of the world, and in all ages, turned a wistful gaze in every act of devotion, and to which they hoped to be admitted, or, rather, to be restored, at the close of this transitory scene.”
In this “glorious eminence” do we not see Plato’s mountain in the middle of Atlantis, as he describes it:
“Near the plain and in the centre of the island there was a mountain, not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named Cleito. Poseidon married her. He enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all around, making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water . . .
so that no man could get to the island. . . . He brought streams of water under the earth to this mountain-island, and made all manner of food to grow upon it. This island became the seat of Atlas, the over-king of the whole island; upon it they built the great temple of their nation; they continued to ornament it in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and beauty. . . . And they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates—as is not likely ever to be again.”
The gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, of which we read in Homeric song, and those of Babylon, were probably transcripts of Atlantis. “The sacred eminence in the midst of a ‘superabundant, happy region figures more or less distinctly in almost every mythology, ancient or modern. It was the Mesomphalos of the earlier Greeks, and the Omphalium of the Cretans, dominating the Elysian fields, upon whose tops, bathed in pure, brilliant, incomparable light, the gods passed their days in ceaseless joys.”
“The Buddhists and Brahmans, who together constitute nearly half the population of the world, tell us that the decussated figure (the cross), whether in a simple or a complex form, symbolizes the traditional happy abode of their primeval ancestors—that ‘Paradise of Eden toward the East,’ as we find expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what better picture, or more significant characters, in the complicated alphabet of symbolism, could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a cross: the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual felicity; the other, those four perennial streams that divided and watered the several quarters of it?” (Edinburgh Review, January, 1870.) And when we turn to the mythology of the Greeks, we find that the origin of the world was ascribed to Okeanos, the ocean. The world was at first an island surrounded by the ocean, as by a great stream: “It was a region of wonders of all kinds; Okeanos lived there with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived.
Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk, with mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest upon its outer edge all around.” (Murray’s “Manual of Mythology,” pp. 23, 24, et seq.)
On the mountains dwelt the gods; they had palaces on these mountains, with store-rooms, stabling, etc.
“The Gardens of the Hesperides, with their golden apples, were believed to exist in some island of the ocean, or, as it was someti
mes thought, in the islands off the north or west coast of Africa. They were far famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest blessings of the gods; it was another Eden.” (Ibid., p. 156.) Homer described it in these words:
“Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime, The fields are florid with unfading prime, From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow. Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow; But from the breezy deep the blessed inhale The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.”
“It was the sacred Asgard of the Scandinavians, springing from the centre of a fruitful land, which was watered by four primeval rivers of milk, severally flowing in the direction of the cardinal points, ‘the abode of happiness, and the height of bliss.’ It is the Tien-Chan, ‘the celestial mountain-land, . . . the enchanted gardens’ of the Chinese and Tartars, watered by the four perennial fountains of Tychin, or Immortality; it is the hill-encompassed Ila of the Singhalese and Thibetians, ‘the everlasting dwelling-place of the wise and just.’ It is the Sineru of the Buddhist, on the summit of which is Tawrutisa, the habitation of Sekra, the supreme god, from which proceed the four sacred streams, running in as many contrary directions.
It is the Slavratta, ‘the celestial earth,’ of the Hindoo, the summit of his golden mountain Meru, the city of Brahma, in the centre of Jambadwipa, and from the four sides of which gush forth the four primeval rivers, reflecting in their passage the colorific glories of their source, and severally flowing northward, southward, eastward, and westward.”
It is the Garden of Eden of the Hebrews: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”
(Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)
As the four rivers named in Genesis are not branches of any one stream, and head in very different regions, it is evident that there was an attempt, on the part of the writer of the Book, to adapt an ancient tradition concerning another country to the known features of the region in which he dwelt.
Josephus tells us (chap. i., p. 41), “Now the garden (of Eden) was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts.” Here in the four parts we see the origin of the Cross, while in the river running around the whole earth we have the wonderful canal of Atlantis, described by Plato, which was “carried around the whole of the plain,” and received the streams which came down from the mountains. The streams named by Josephus would seem to represent the migrations of people from Atlantis to its colonies.
“Phison,” he tells us, “denotes a multitude; it ran into India; the Euphrates and Tigris go down into the Red Sea while the Geon runs through Egypt.”
We are further told (chap. ii., p. 42) that when Cain, after the murder of. Abel, left the land of Adam, “he travelled over many countries”
before he reached the land of Nod; and the land of Nod was to the eastward of Adam’s home. In other words, the original seat of mankind was in the West, that is to say, in the direction of Atlantis. Wilson tells us that the Aryans of India believed that they originally came “from the West.” Thus the nations on the west of the Atlantic look to the east for their place of origin; while on the east of the Atlantic they look to the west: thus all the lines of tradition converge upon Atlantis.
But here is the same testimony that in the Garden of Eden there were four rivers radiating from one parent stream. And these four rivers, as we have seen, we find in the Scandinavian traditions, and in the legends of the Chinese, the Tartars, the Singhalese, the Thibetians, the Buddhists, the Hebrews, and the Brahmans.
And not only do we find this tradition of the Garden of Eden in the Old World, but it meets us also among the civilized races of America. The elder Montezuma said to Cortez, “Our fathers dwelt in that happy and prosperous place which they called Aztlan, which means whiteness. . . .
In this place there is a great mountain in the middle of the water which is called Culhuacan, because it has the point somewhat turned over toward the bottom; and for this cause it is called Culhuacan, which means ‘crooked mountain.’” He then proceeds to describe the charms of this favored land, abounding in birds, game, fish, trees, “fountains enclosed with elders and junipers, and alder-trees both large and beautiful.” The people planted “maize, red peppers, tomatoes, beans, and all kinds of plants, in furrows.”
Here we have the same mountain in the midst of the water which Plato describes—the same mountain to which all the legends of the most ancient races of Europe refer.
The inhabitants of Aztlan were boatmen. (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol.
v., p. 325.) E. G. Squier, in his “Notes on Central America,” p. 349, says, “It is a significant fact that in the map of their migrations, presented by Gemelli, the place of the origin of the Aztecs is designated by the sign of water, Atl standing for Atzlan, a pyramidal temple with grades, and near these a palm-tree.” This circumstance did not escape the attention of Humboldt, who says, “I am astonished at finding a palm-tree near this teocalli. This tree certainly does not indicate a northern origin. . . . The possibility that an unskilful artist should unintentionally represent a tree of which he had no knowledge is so great, that any argument dependent on it hangs upon a slender thread.” (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 266.) The Miztecs, a tribe dwelling on the outskirts of Mexico, had a tradition that the gods, “in the day of obscurity and darkness,” built “a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they male their abode upon a mountain. The rock was called ‘The Place of Heaven;’ there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness. The children of these gods made to themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees, and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs. Subsequently there came a great deluge, in which many of the sons and daughters of the gods perished.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 71.) Here we have a distinct reference to Olympus, the Garden of Plato, and the destruction of Atlantis.
And in Plato’s account of Atlantis we have another description of the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of the world: “Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers and fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again the cultivated fruits of the earth, both the edible fruits and other species of food which we call by the name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments . . . all these that sacred island, lying beneath the sun, brought forth in abundance. . . . For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods were increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessi
ve zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them.”
All this cannot be a mere coincidence; it points to a common tradition of a veritable land, where four rivers flowed down in opposite directions from a central mountain-peak. And these four rivers, flowing to the north, south, east, and west, constitute the origin of that sign of the Cross which we have seen meeting us at every point among the races who were either descended from the people of Atlantis, or who, by commerce and colonization, received their opinions and civilization from them.
Let us look at the question of the identity of the Garden of Eden with Atlantis from another point of view:
If the alphabet of the Phoenicians is kindred with the Maya alphabet, as I think is clear, then the Phoenicians were of the same race, or of some race with which the Mayas were connected; in other words, they were from Atlantis.
Now we know that the Phoenicians and Hebrews were of the same stock, used the same alphabet, and spoke almost precisely the same language.
The Phoenicians preserved traditions, which have come down to us in the writings, of Sanchoniathon, of all the great essential inventions or discoveries which underlie civilization. The first two human beings, they tell us, were Protogonos and Aion (Adam and ‘Havath), who produce Genos and Genea (Qen and Qenath), from whom again are descended three brothers, named Phos, Phur, and Phlox (Light, Fire, and Flame), because they “have discovered how to produce fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and have taught the use of this element.” In another fragment, at the origin of the human race we see in succession the fraternal couples of Autochthon and Technites (Adam and Quen—Cain?), inventors of the manufacture of bricks; Agros and Agrotes (Sade and Ced), fathers of the agriculturists and hunters; then Amynos and Magos, “who taught to dwell in villages and rear flocks.”
The connection between these Atlantean traditions and the Bible record is shown in many things. For instance, “the Greek text, in expressing the invention of Amynos, uses the words kw’mas kai` poi’mnas, which are precisely the same as the terms ohel umiqneh, which the Bible uses in speaking of the dwellings of the descendants of Jabal (Gen., chap. iv., v. 20). In like manner Lamech, both in the signification of his name and also iv the savage character attributed to him by the legend attached to his memory, is a true synonyme of Agrotes.”
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