antiquity, as whom men think to have been of the Greeks named Ombri, for that, in the general deluge of the country by rain, they only remained alive.” I think it does not require a very fertile imagination to discover here traces of the flood, the first race of men, and the sacred mysterious Om. Br or Pr, in the Eastern language, means sacred and creative,[1] and Omberland will mean, The Land of the Sacred Om.
Thus we have several clear and distinct meanings of Ομφαλος. It was mitis, begnignus. It was the male generative power, as ΧΦαλλος. As Omphale, it was the female generative power, the wife of Hercules, and the navel of the Earth or Nabbi. It was also the prophetic voice of the benignant Om. We shall see by and bye how it came to have all these different meanings. Before we conclude this work, we shall find a similar variety arising from other names connected with this subject, and in particular it should be recollected that we have found the Indian Creeshna or Cristna calling himself Om.
I cannot help suspecting that the ancients often adopted an extraordinary play upon words—a kind of punning. Thus, שר Sr, is the root of Osiris, who changed himself into a bull. He is the Sun. Surya is the Sun, and is the favourite God of Japan, where the celebrated Bull breaks the mundane egg. שור Sur, is a beeve, as Taurus, at the vernal equinox, the leader of the heavenly hosts. שרר Srr, means ruler, or absolute director or Lord.
Brahme is the Sun, the same as Surya. Brahma sprung from the navel of Brahme. The Greeks call the oracles ομφαλοι, or navels of the earth. Srr has the same meaning as ομφαλος—and Sr means funis umbilicalis.
Ομφη means an oracle. The oracle was the spirit of the God, the sanctus spiritus, and came from the ομφαλος. It founded Delphi in the form of a black Dove. A Dove is always the emblem the Holy Spirit. יונה Iune, is Hebrew for Dove. This is the Yoni of India, the Os Minxæ, the matrix. At Delphi the response came from a fissure or crack in the mountain, the Yoni of the earth. This was the emblem of the רוח ruh or Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity.
8. In Psalm xxxiii. 6, it is said, “By the word of Ieue were the שמים smim heavens made; and all the host of them by the רוח ruh breath of his mouth.” Again, ver. 9, “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”
The third person was the Destroyer, or, in his good capacity, the Regenerator. The dove was the emblem of the Regenerator. When a person was baptized, he was regenerated or born again. A Dove descended on to the head of Jesus at his baptism. Devotees profess to be born again by the Holy Ghost—Sanctus Spiritus. We read of an Evil Spirit and of a Holy Spirit; one is the third person in his destroying capacity, the other in his regenerating capacity. We read in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. xvi. 16) of a spirit of Python or a Pythonic spirit, an evil spirit, Python, or the spirit of Python, was the destroyer. But at Delphi he was also Apollo, who was said to be the Sun in Heaven, Bacchus on Earth, and Apollo in Hell.
M. Dubois has observed, (p. 293,) that the Prana or Principle of Life, of the Hindoos, is the breath of life by which the Creator animated the clay, and man became a living soul.” Gen. ii. 7.
The Holy Spirit or Ghost was sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine. As the third person of the Trinity, it was as well known to the ancient Gentiles as to the moderns, as it will hereafter be shewn.
Origen expressly makes the Holy Ghost female. He says, παιδισκη δε κυριας του ἁγιου Πνευματος ἡ ψυχη—“The soul is maiden to her mistress the Holy Ghost.[2]
