8. Manichæus, according to Theodoret, said, in his allegorical language, “That a male-virgin gave light and life to Eve,” that is, created her. And the Pseudo-Mercurius Trismegistus in Pæmander said, that God being male and female, (αρῥενοθηλυς ων,) because he is light and life, engendered by the word another intelligence, which was the Creator. The male-virgin, Theodoret says, was called Joel, or Ιωηλ, which Beausobre thinks was “El, God, and Joha, life-making, vivifying, life-giving, or the generating God.” (So far my friend Beverley.) But which was probably merely the יהו Ieu, אל al, or God Iao, of which we shall treat hereafter. Again, Mr. Beverley says, “In Genesis it is written, ‘God said, Let us create man after our own image and likeness.’ This, then, ought in strictness of language to be a male and female God, or else it would not be after the likeness proposed.”
“The male-virgin of the Orientals is, I know, considered the same by Plato as his Ἑςια, or Vesta, whom he calls the soul of the body of the universe. This Hestia, by the way, is in my view a Sanscrit lady, whose name I take to have been EST, or she that is, or exists, having the same meaning as the great name of the Jewish Deity. Est is shewn in the Celtic Druids to be a Sanscrit word, and I do not doubt of this her derivation. The A terminal is added by the Greek idiom to denote a female, as they hated an indeclinable proper name, such as HEST or EST would have been.” Extract from a letter from Makenzie Beverley, Esq.[1]
Apuleius makes the mother of the Gods of the masculine gender, and represents her describing herself as called Minerva at Athens, Venus at Cyprus, Diana at Crete, Proserpine in Sicily, Ceres at Eleusis: in other places, Juno, Bellona, Hecate, Isis, &c.;[2] and if any doubt could remain, the philosopher Porphyry, than whom probably no one was better skilled in these matters, removes it by acknowledging that Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpine, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs, were all the same.[3]
Valerius Soranus calls Jupiter the mother of the Gods:
Progenitor, Genetrixque Deûm; Deus et idem.
Synesius speaks of him in the same manner:
The like character is also given to the ancient deity Μητις, or Divine Wisdom, by which the world was framed:
And in two of the Orphic Fragments all that has been said above seems to be comprehended. This Deity, like the others, is said to be of two genders, and to be also the Sun.[7]
Μητις, Mr. Bryant says, is a masculine name for a feminine deity,[8] and means Divine Wisdom. I suspect it was a corruption of the Maia or Mia of India.
In Cyprus, Venus is represented with a beard, and called Aphrodite.[9]
Calvus, the poet, calls her masculine, as does also Macrobius.[10]
- ↑ The A at the end of the word EST may be the Chaldee emphatic article; then Vesta would be the Est or the Self-existent.
- ↑ Apuleii Metamorph. L. ii. p. 241.
- ↑ Porphyry ap. Eusebium, Evan. Præp. L. iii. C. xi.
- ↑ Bryant, Anal. Vol. I. p. 315.
- ↑ Orpheus, Eusebii Chronicon.
- ↑ Orphic Hymn, xxxi. 10, p. 224.
- ↑ Bryant, Vol. I. p. 204. Ed. 4to.
- ↑ Bryant, Anal. Vol. II. p. 25.
- ↑ Hesychius Servius upon Virgil’s Æneid, L. ii. 632.
- ↑ Satur. L. iii. C. viii.
