Trivium

“ So popular did this mythological medley become, that in the tenth century we find certain learned monks embroidering the subject of the poem on their Church vestments. A memoria technica in hexameter lines has also come down to us, showing how the monastic scholar was assisted to remember that grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric belonged to the first division of the sciences called the Trivium, and that the four other sciences belonged to the Quadrivium:—
“Gram.: loquitur; Dia.: vera docet ”

“ The fifty-ninth hexagram, called Hwân ䷺, is formed by the trigrams Khân ☵, representing water, and Sun ☴, representing wind, and it is said on it:— (The symbol of) water and (that of wind) above it form Hwân. The ancient kings, in accordance with this, presented offerings to God, and established the ancestral temple.' The union of the two trigrams suggested to king Wăn the idea of dissipation in the alienation of men from the Supreme Power, and of the minds of parents from their children; a condition which the wisdom of the ancient kings saw could best be met by the influences of religion. ”

“ By restoring the threshold to its proper place in primitive religions, you have rendered a great service to comparative religion, archeology, and even philology. Many a statement by ancient writers was obscure to us, many a word puzzling as to its original etymology and significance, and not a few facts brought to light by recent excavations remained incoherent and mysterious, because we had lost sight of the significance of the threshold, which, very appropriately, you style the first altar of the human race. ”

“ The triangle has, in all ages and in all religions, been deemed a symbol of Deity.
The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the other nations of antiquity, considered this figure, with its three sides, as a symbol of the creative energy displayed in the active and passive, or male and female, principles, and their product, the world; the Christians referred it to their dogma of the trinity as a manifestation of the Supreme God; and the Jews and the primitive masons to the three periods of existence included in the signification of the tetragrammaton--the past, the present, and the future. ”

“ The old order of the Trilobites, which has accompanied us from Primordial times, here fails us, and a few depauperated species alone remain, the sole survivors of their ancient race—small, unornamented, and feeble representatives of a once numerous and influential tribe. ”

“ For a god who tires of his handiwork is still responsible for it, however disillusioned; and when, employing me as his mouthpiece, Mr. Trimblerigg’s maker mocks at the tribal religions which have brought the world so near to ruin, he remains nevertheless a deity tribal in character, albeit a disgruntled one. ”

“ And the tribe of dwarfs one by one died of thirst, for it was a year of fearful heat, and they knew of no other water. Day by day they came shrieking and praying to the spirits of the black shaft to give them back the water. Day by day they flung living men into the pit as sacrifice to join the spirits below, till all, all were dead. ”

“ TRIADS The Triune idea is to be found in the system of almost every nation. All have their Trinity in Unity, three in one, which can be distinctly recognised in the cross. The Triad is the male or triple, the constitution of the three persons of most sacred Trinity forming the Triune system. In the analysis of the subject by Rawlinson, we find the Trinity consisted of Asshur or Asher, associated with Anu and Hea or Hoa. Asshur, the supreme god of the Assyrians, represents the Phallus or central organ or the Linga, the membrum virile. ”

“ The tribe he ruled were smaller than himself, and these I saw descending on the right of the throne, their shining dimmed to a kind of greyness, and each one as it came before the throne bent forward and pressed its lips upon the heart of the king, and in an instant at the touch it became flushed with life and it shot up plumed and radiant, and there was a continuous descent on one side of grey elementals and on the other side a continuous ascent of radiant figures, and I know not what it meant. ”

“ Return for Thy servants’ sake, the tribes of Thine inheritance, that we may inherit for a little Thy holy mountain. We were as from the beginning, when Thou didst not bear rule over us, and when Thy name was not called upon us. If Thou wilt open the heavens, trembling shall seize the mountains before Thee: and they shall be melted, as wax melts before the fire; and fire shall consume the adversaries, and Thy name shall be manifest among the adversaries; the nations shall be put into disorder before Thy face. When Thou shall do glorious things, trembling shall seize the mountains before Thee. ”

“ While La Tribe, lying snug and warm beside him, thanked God for a lot so different from that of such of his fellows as had escaped—whom he pictured crouching in dank cellars, or on roof-trees exposed to the heat by day and the dews by night—the young man grew more and more restive. ”

“ There are gaps, it is true, in the chain that would suffice to break even a herald’s heart; but what else could be expected in the family trees of tribes that were old when the children of the Sun and the Moon, in the first generation, found them possessing the earth? Their progenitors flourished even before time and space had established their empire, and they count among the events of their national history the birth of the Creator. ”

“ The perished tribes and races which they represent all began to exist. There is no truth which science can more conclusively demonstrate than that they had all a beginning. The infidel who, in this late age of the world, would attempt falling back on the fiction of an ‘infinite series,’ would be laughed to scorn. They all began to be. But how? No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;—it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;—and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. ”

“ This seems to call for a slight outline of Geology. The animal and vegetable tribes which have come and gone upon the earth, following each other like the shadows of passing clouds on a Summer’s day, have left their remains in the rocks which at that time were forming. A close investigation of these remains shows that they form the record book of nature, wherein we are permitted to read somewhat of her secrets. This had long been a sealed book to man; but science, as we have seen, constantly extending her domain, at length taught him the alphabet. ”

“ To us, as Masonic Judges, the triangle figures forth the Pyramids, which, planted firmly as the everlasting hills, and accurately adjusted to the four cardinal points, defiant of all assaults of men and time, teach us to stand firm and unshaken as they, when our feet are planted upon the solid truth. ”

“ The total absence of these anthropomorphous tribes among the records of a former world, had led some to believe that the type of organization most nearly resembling the human, came so late in the order of creation, as to be scarcely, if at all, anterior to that of man. ”

“ In following adventures the usual transformations take place, and mankind, in their tribes, are led forth from a great rock, Tiri saying to them: "Ye must divide and people all the earth, and that ye shall do so I create discord and make you enemies of one another." ”

“ The geologist will tell us not to look at one but at the various families, of all kinds and of all habits, which his science has brought to light, and so many of whose remains he has disinterred from the earth. Every formation abounds with them. They flourished through every epoch. The epochs are many. The tribes which existed and perished in them are many. ”

“ Not one of the natural groups of organisms—which, we have designated as tribes, or phyla, on account of the blood-relationship of all the species included in them—is of such great and exceeding importance as the tribe of Vertebrate Animals. For, according to the unanimous opinion of all zoologists, man also is a member of the tribe ”

“ Words are always felt to be too poor to describe the refulgence of the hues of many of the feathered tribes;—the metallic gloss of the Trogons and the oriental Gallinaceæ, the gem-like flashings of the Humming-birds and the Birds of Paradise. ”

“ Now if, by means of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, we seek for man’s position in that Natural System of animals which formed the subject of the last two chapters, the incontrovertible fact will at once present itself to us, that man belongs to the tribe, or phylum, of the Vertebrata. ”

“ As Rome gradually acquired possession of more of the surrounding territory, the number of tribes also was gradually increased. When Appius Claudius, with his numerous train of clients, emigrated to Rome, lands were assigned to them in the district where the Anio flows into the Tiber, and a new tribe, the tribus Claudia, was formed. ”

“ The institution which stands out most clearly in early history is the tribe, and I will therefore turn to an element of ancient tribal life, and an element which has to do with the practical organisation of that life, namely, the tribal assembly. ”

“ Ten generations are given, from Adam to the Flood, and the remarkably long lives of the Patriarchs have suggested to many the probability of error or misunderstanding. Some have supposed that each name represents a tribe, the lives of whose leading members have been added together. ”

“ See the remarks on the Services of the Ancestral Temple, pp. 300, 301.
Thick grew the tribulus (on the ground) ,
But they cleared away its thorny bushes.
Why did they this of old?
That we might plant our millet and sacrificial millet;
That our millet might be abundant,
And our sacrificial millet luxuriant.
When our barns are full,
And our stacks can be counted by tens of myriads,
We proceed to make spirits and prepared grain,
For offerings and sacrifice.
We seat the representatives of the dead, and urge them to eat [1] :—
Thus seeking to increase our bright happiness. ”

“ There are a number of ways in which these lower-class deities can be installed. Their images are made either of wood, stone, or metal.2 No temples or shrines are erected in their honour.3 An ordinary way of representing them is by drawing a trident, (trishūl, a weapon peculiar to god Shiva) in red-lead and oil on an upright slab of stone on a public road, on any dead wall, on the confines of a village, or a mountain side, or a hill top, in an underground cellar, or on the bank of a stream.4 Some people paint tridents in their own houses. ”

“ Other remarkable signs are the triad, in the shape of dots placed in a triangle, and the triskele, which are seen on many objects. There was evidently importance attached to the numbers “Three” and “Nine;” but it is impossible to tell what was the true meaning in the mythology of these people of the triad, which is very common on the jewels and other objects illustrated in this work, [228] and it is remarkable that some of the graves are made to represent the above signs. ”

“ Now the rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial structures is an earth-mound. If a hundred, or hundreds, of men could drag the huge stones many leagues, as they must have done to bring them to their destined place, they could have drawn each of them up a long slanting mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone at its base. ”

“ Since the features of the parent tribe are handed down from one generation to another, there is nothing more natural than that we should retain the historical features of our ancestors, viz., the stamp of gravity which the events of their time impressed upon their faces. ”

“ Like the successive geological formations, the tribes of [Pg 500] mankind may be arranged, according to their relative conditions, into successive strata. When thus arranged, they reveal with some degree of certainty the entire range of human progress from savagery to civilization. A thorough study of each successive stratum will develop whatever is special in its culture and characteristics, and yield a definite conception of the whole, in their differences and in their relations. When this has been accomplished, the successive stages of human progress will be definitely understood. ”

“ Inman declares without hesitation that the trinity of the ancients is unquestionably of phallic origin, and others have strenuously contended and apparently proven that the male emblem of generation in divine creation was three in one, and that the female emblem has always been the triangle or accepted symbol of trinity. ”

“ Many forms are found—circular, oval, rectangular, triangular, pear-shaped, and annular. The more ordinary forms are found in mounds and graves in all parts of the country; other forms are more restricted geographically, and probably exhibit features peculiar to the works of a particular clan, tribe, or group of tribes. Even these simple forms may have possessed some totemic or mystic significance; it is not impossible that the plainer disks may have had significant figures painted upon them. ”

“ Let us now pass on to examine and clearly limit our conception of an organic tribe. By tribe, or phylum, we understand all those organisms of whose blood relationship and descent from a common primary form there can be no doubt, or whose relationship, at least, is most probable from anatomical reasons, as well as from reasons founded on historical 43 development. ”

“ And hence arises the not wholly fanciful conjecture that the people who erected the great mound had some dim idea of the Triune character of God. The serpent was the emblem of His wisdom, as the solar circle was of His Eternal Unity; and this marked reverence for the triple-peaked mountain seems to indicate that with a knowledge of His unity was combined a recognition of His threefold manifestation. ”