FORLONG, James George Roche.

£3,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington

Rivers of Life, or Sources and Streams of the Faiths of Man In All Lands; First edition of this ambitious work of comparative religion, delineating the continuities between world cultures throughout human history. Among the civilizations and religions it covers are the Babylonians, Zoroastrians, Ancient Greeks and Romans, Hindus, Buddhists, and cultures from across Scandinavia, Polynesia, and Africa. The publication was issued to subscribers only.An engineer by training, Forlong's (1824-1904) interest in world religions stemmed from his time in Asia serving as a Major General in the Indian Army. He categorized all religions into six types of worship: tree, phallic, serpent, fire, sun, and ancestor. These types formed "streams" flowing throughout human culture, with their progression and interactions here visualized in the large accompanying chart.Forlong's interpretations and his abandonment of Christianity were scandalous to many, particularly his emphasis on the sexual nature of religious symbolism, but his work was influential among such as Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, who described it as "an invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation" (Crowley, p. 211).

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