66 as the actual circumstance of two successive worlds led to the doctrine of an endless mundane succession, each patriarch was alike received as a Creator, a Preserver, and a Destroyer."* Sir William Jones very strongly reprobates the principle which would resolve these triads into the doctrine of the Trinity. In his essay on the gods of Italy, Greece, and India,t he says, Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two missionaries have been absurd enough, in their zeal for the conversion of the gentiles, to urge, that the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa (Siva) were no other than the Christian Trinity; a sentence in which we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, or impiety predominates. The three powers, creative, preservative, and destructive, which the Hindus express by the trilateral word OM, were grossly ascribed by the first idolaters to the heat, light, and flame of their mistaken divinity the Sun; and their wiser successors in the East, who perceived that the Sun was only a created thing, applied those powers to its Creator; but the Indian Triad and that of Plato, which he calls the Supreme Good, the Reason, and the Soul, are infinitely removed from the holiness and sublimity of the doctrine which pious Christians have deduced from texts in the gospel." another point of view," says Captain Wilford, "In * Fab. Pag. Idol. b. vi. c. 6. “Brahma corresponds with the Chronos or Time of the Greek mythologists; Vishnu represents Water, or the humid principle; and Iswara (another name of Siva) Fire, which recreates or destroys as it is differently employed." It seems not altogether improbable however but these Triads which are quaintly termed by Purchas, "an apish imitation, of the Trinity, brought in by the devil;"* might originate from a tradition of the Holy Trinity, revealed to Adam, and propagated by his descendants through the antediluvian world. Known consequently to Noah and his family, this doctrine would spread with every migration of their posterity; and as it certainly formed a part of that original system which is now termed Masonry, so it was introduced into every perversion of that system, until the doctrine of a divine Triad resolvable into a monad, was universally disseminated in every nation, and was admitted by every people in the world. In successive ages the true purport became lost or misunderstood, but the principle remained, though its application ceased to be made to the true God and Father of all, and was generally transferred to the three sons of Noah, as a triplication of the mortal Father of the human race. The Grecian Triad consisted of Jupiter-Neptune-Pluto; the Orphic of Phanes-UranusChronus; the Platonic of Tagathon - Nous Purch. Pilgr. b. ix. c. 10, Psyche; the Eleusinian of Bacchus-ProserpineCeres; the Egpytian of Trismegistus or Osiris→ Isis-Horus, perhaps of Eicton-Cneph-Phtha; the Persian of the triplasian Mithras or Ormisda— Mithra-Mithras; the Phenician of Ashtaroth— Milcom-Chemosh;* the Tyrian of Belus-Venus -Thammuz; the Celtic of Hu-Ceridwen Creirwy; the Gothic of Woden-Friga-Thor;† the Peruian of Tangatanga, or Three in One and One in Three; and the Mexican of VitzliputzliTlaloc-Tescalipuca. In our own country the Triad was usually represented by THREE PILLARS; and many monuments remain which shew to what an extent this system of devotion was carried by the British Druids. These Pillars were not always uniform either in dimensions or situation, but were differently placed, either triangularly or in a right line; and were certainly objects of adoration to the superstitious natives. The celebrated Pillars at Boroughbridge were of this nature. They consist of three colossal, upright stones placed at about two hundred feet distant from each other; and stand about twenty two feet above the surface of the ground, measuring on an average sixteen feet in circumference. They * This was the form of that abominable Triad worshipped by King Solomon in his dotage, on the three peaks of Mount Olivet. 2 Kings xxiii. 13. + Olaus Magnus, in his history of the Goths, tells us that the Lithuanians worshipped a Triad consisting of Fire, Wood, and Serpents. Pennant's Tour from Alston Moor to Harrogate. p. 96. are termed by the country people, The Devil's Arrows, which corroborates the opinion that they were British Deities; for it is a singular fact, that every monument which has this name attached to it, is supposed to have been peculiarly sacred.* Leland tells us that there were originally four Pillars, and that one of them has been destroyed.‡ This might have been of still more extensive magnitude, and designed to express the triad completed in a monad. The three stones which formed one of the Adyta in the stupendous Druid Temple at Abury in Wiltshire, said by Gough in Camden, to have served for a Chapel, are called by Aubrey, The Devil's Quoits. A Kist-vaen in Clatford bottom in the same County, is also composed of three upright stones, and is called, The Devil's Den. In the parish of Llan Rhwy-Drus, in that grand depository of Druidical superstition, Anglesey, are the remains of this species of idol. Gibson in Camden informs us that they are placed triangularly; one is eleven feet, and the others ten and nine feet in height. On a mountain near Kil y maen lhwyd in Caermarthenshire, is another specimen of this kind of monument, placed near a circular temple. In Penrith Church Yard, in the County of Cumberland, still remain Three Pillars placed triangularly, and erected on other stones to avoid The reasons for this belief are fully discussed in my "Antiquities of Grimsby," p. 59, 60. + Itin. v. 8. Vid. also Drake's Hist. of York. p 27. the supposed contamination of the earth. Two of them are about twelve feet, and the third about six feet in height. The two former enclose a space of ground which is traditionally denominated The Giant's Grave; and the latter is called The Giant's Thumb. Now the British deities were all esteemed giants; and the tradition in this instance corresponds with the fact. Besides, the Pastos, or symbolical grave, in which the candidate suffered a mythological interment, was said to be guarded by the gigantic deity Buanwr, and if these three pillars formed constituent parts of an adytum, which is highly probable, the name it now retains is perfectly consistent with the pure principles of British mythology. Much has been written on the subject of these Pillars by all our best antiquaries, who seem to agree that they were of British erection, though they puzzled to account for their being inscribed with a CROSS. But this doubtless arose from the anxiety uniformly displayed by the first christian missionaries to transfer the devotional attachment of the natives from a lifeless image to the eternal God, by assuming the great emblem of christianity, which had indeed been previously used by the Druids, but with a different allusion. And this conjecture is strikingly exemplified by the fact, that a christian church was erected within the actual bounds of this sanctuary of idolatry. Such were the representatives of Hu-Ceridwen -Creirwy, the principal deities of the ancient |
