the festival of the harvests. To Horus Bacchus therefore, the Grecian artists and poets gave the cup, the wreath of ivy, or of vine leaves, and the thyrsis, or wand, with vine twigs twined around it; but in all these refinements he is still the Horus, who, bending beneath the weight of flaggons of wine, loaves of bread, and various fruits and vegetables, announced the festival of the harvests: he is the same Horus, who, in a preceding exhibition, was the child, the representative of infant husbandry: the identity of the two characters being acknowledged in the paradoxical expression of liber pater. Venus. If we now trace the origin of VENUS, the reputed goddess of love and beauty, we shall find her to be only the offspring of erroneous ideas, respecting some epithets and characters of the Egyptian Isis. We will first take her history from the Greek mythology, in order to discover what points in that may be analogous to the Grecian epithets and characters of Isis. Venus is represented as springing from the froth of the sea, a sea-shell gliding smoothly on the surface of the waves is wafted by the gentle zephyrs to the foot of Mount Cythera, here the goddess lands, and as she walks, flowers bloom beneath her feet, and the rosy hours who were entrusted with her education, receive and conduct her to heaven, Isis, as the mother of harvests, was called by the Phoenicians, Apherudoth; the nearest Greek word to this, is, Aphrodite, from Aphros, froth; hence the idea of the sea-born nymph. By the Greeks and Romans, Venus was called Cythera, from the mountain, at whose foot she first landed; from other places that laid claim to her, or in which she had resided, she derived various names, as Cypria, from the isle of Cyprus; Erycina, from Mount Eryx in Sicily; Idalia, from Mount Idaliss in Cyprus; Acedalia, from a fountain of that name in Boeotia; Marina and Aphrodita, as produced from the foam of the sea; and Paphia, from Paphos. She was also called the victorious, and the laughter-loving queen. When moving on the ocean, she is feigned to have been borne in a spacious shell, with Cupids, Nereids, and Dolphins sporting round her. When traversing the heavens, her chariot was drawn by swans and doves, accompanied by Cupid and the Graces; she was clad in a light and airy garment, girt, with the famous cestus of love, a mysterious girdle, supposed to excite an irresistible affection. She had temples dedicated to her in all the countries that claimed the honour of being her residence. Her worship differed in different places; in some only incense was consumed upon her altars; in others, a white goat was sacrificed. Women used frequently to consecrate their hair to this goddess. The dove and the swan, the rose and the myrtle were consecrated to her. "To the soft Cyprian shores, the goddess moves, Her attendant Cupid seems to have been a present from the Greek poets; he is however considered as her son. His name signifies love or desire, and Psyche, which means spirit or soul, has been given him for a wife. This is evidently a stroke of Greek metaphysics; the names, or epithets, are purely Greek, they have no correspondencies in the oriental mythology. The Graces have been noticed before; I may just add, that they were supposed to give their attractive charms to beauty of every kind, and to dispense the gift of pleasing. Ignorance of their true origin, has led some to consider them as the daughters of Jupiter and Juno; others call them the daughters of Jupiter and Eurynome; but the most general opinion is, that they were the offspring of Venus and Bacchus. They were represented mostly as three in number, but in time a fourth was added. Their names were Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne and Pasithea. The word Venus is derived from the oriental word Ben-oth, which signifies the daughters, or the damsels. The B was frequently sounded as a V by the eastern nations, and the Greeks uniformly changed the termination oth into some other, more agreeable to their own taste, mostly os or us, were the substitutes, thus of Bach-oth, they made Bac-cus, and of Ven-oth, they made Ven-us, which we now pronounce Ve-nus. There were two persons among the ancients who bore this character, or rather there were two distinct characters to be personified, viz. intellectual beauty, and mental pleasure-and personal beauty and sensual enjoyments; every thing pertaining to the first character, or the celestial Venus, was chaste and delicate; whatever pertained to the latter, or terrestrial Venus, even to her religious rites, was marked by gross sensuality and licentiousness. Opposite as these two characters are to each other, they are both to be traced to different characters assumed on different occasions by the Egyptian Isis. When Isis bore celestial attributes on her head, such as the crescent moon, the dog star, or some other celestial sign, she then was queen of heaven, or Venus Urania, a title of later date, but which evidently had reference to Isis, because Astarte, one of the names of Isis, is also one of the names of Venus. When Isis bore terrestrial attributes, such as the heads of several animals, or was represented with a number of breasts, or with an infant Horus on her lap, she was then considered as a teeming mother, as a nurse, as the inciter to sensual pleasures, and to unrestrained licentiousness: such was the terrestrial Venus. The meaning of some of the names of this personage, and the practices that were sanctioned by the name of religious worship, are best passed over in silence; I shall therefore forbear to take farther notice of them. It is scarcely needful to add, that the Venus Urania, the celestial Venus, who inspired the mind with sentiments of virtue, and elevated it to the most sublime speculations, and to intellectual beauties, had but few votaries; while the temples, the groves, and the altars of Venus the popular, were numerously attended. The young women, who, in certain countries, carried in procession the baskets decorated with flowers and fruit, wherein the symbols of the first state of mankind lay inclosed, were inseparable from these ceremonies, and, in a peculiar manner devoted to the goddess of harvests, the nurse of animals and men. They resided in tents and groves, consecrated to the goddess of harvests. These tents or tabernacles were called Succoth Ben-oth, the tents of the daughters or maidens. In the beginning, and even before the introduction of idolatry, these young females were employed in keeping the places of the assembly, and the utensils for the sacrifices, perfectly clean; they had also symbolical names assigned to them, adapted to their respective offices. By this it appears, that in the beginning of these ancient institutions, every thing was intended for instruction; but when the true meaning of the symbols and ceremonials was lost, they all became so many mysteries, and wonderful stories; all was interpreted in an arbitrary manner, and error was every where introductory of absurd superstition, and practices of the most criminal nature. Such was the case with respect to the ceremonies of the festival of the harvests. The word Venus having become a mere arbitrary term, was supposed to be the name of the deity who was the object of adoration in the groves of Succoth Ben-oth. We find these tents of the women noticed in the prophecy of Baruch, and again, in the first Book of Kings, chap. xvii. ver. 29. 30.." Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places, which the Samaritans had made; and the men of Babylon made Succoth Ben-oth. F From the groves, wherein Isis, or the queen of heaven, was worshipped, on account of the agreeable shade which they afforded, she was often called Astaroth, the queen of the groves; to this agree the Askra of the Greeks, and the Lucina of the Romans. When, as in April, to denote the sun's being then in Taurus, Isis wore the horns, and sometimes the entire head of the heifer, she was considered then as queen of the herds, and worshipped by the people of those countries, in which the chief occupation was that of breeding and feeding cattle, under the name Asteroth. In the temple of this idol, Saul's armour was hung up. "And the Philistine's found Saul and his three sons on the Mount Gilboa; and they cut off Saul's head, and stripped off his armour, and sent it into the land of the Philistines round about, to be shown in the houses of their idols and to the people; and they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the walls of Beth Shan." 2 Sam. xxxi. ver. 10. When bearing the sign of the fishes, she was then deemed the queen of fishes, her name was then Aderdagat, from Ader, Hebrew, great, and Dag, a fish. Diodorus Siculus speaks of one of these idols at Ascalon, which he describes as having the face of a woman, and the rest of the body a fish. The confounding of the two Hebrew words Dagon and Dag, has led some to conclude that the idol Dagon was part man and part fish; but the scriptures intimate that this idol was a human figure; from his name, which means corn, it is probable that he bore some marks of husbandry. Eusebius, who was bishop of Cæsarea, in the neighbourhood of Azoth, says, that Dagon was worshipped there as the god of husbandry: but to return to the subject before us. If Horus, when announcing the harvests, was called Dagon, i. e. the corn, Isis, when performing a similar office, received an appropriate name, and she was Amalcta Appherudoth, that is the queen of harvests. In softening these eastern words, and accommodating them to their own ideas, the Greeks changed Asteroth to Astarte, which is one of the names of Venus, of |