Idolatry and Zoolatry

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Maximus Tyrius, Plutarch, Simplicius of Cilicia, Thomas Taylor · Down to Earth Series · 14 pages

A compilation in two parts — “What is Idolatry?” and “What is Zoolatry?” — built around passages from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and supported by Simplicius, Thomas Taylor, Maximus Tyrius and Plutarch. A contents page sets out the argument in advance, and a closing page lists further reading from the Down to Earth Series.

The first part argues from the history of the word: the term idolatry is of Christian origin, used by the early Nazarenes during the first centuries of our era against nations who used temples, churches, statues and images — all of which the early Christians, having none themselves, abhorred. The outward form of idolatry is then described as a veil concealing one Truth, like the veil of the Saitic goddess, behind which the pious profane see only a celestial locality peopled with divine beings, dwarfs and giants, good and wicked powers, no better than human caricatures, while those endowed with the eye of Shiva discern something else. Sub-headings carry the case further: that the philosophers, sages and adepts of antiquity cannot be charged with idolatry; that the Greek and Latin Churches are as idolatrous as any other religion; and Simplicius and Taylor on why the pagans deified dead men. The second part turns to the veneration of animals, asking why ancient peoples had so strong a dread of killing certain birds — the death risked in Egypt by anyone who killed an ibis or the golden hawk, Zoroaster's ban on their slaughter, and the divination by birds and by eggs that has since decayed into fortune-telling. It then notes that Christians retain sacred birds and animals of their own, the dove of the Holy Ghost and the Bull, Eagle, Lion and Angel of the evangelists, which it reads as symbols of the four elements and of the four lower principles in man, corresponding to the four constellations at the cardinal points of the zodiac. Sacred cows are treated as symbols of creative Nature, with Maximus Tyrius and Plutarch quoted on statues and zoolatry.

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