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Idolatry
This, then, leads us to the consideration of Idolatry, or the worship of
images, which, as we shall see, arose from the following causes:
I. From the habit of representing by external objects the various things
of the Church; thus not only Divine Qualities and Attributes, but also the various
affections, faculties, virtues, and sciences of man.
II. From the open communication with the Spiritual World which many of the
Ancient Church still retained. When the love of the Ancient Church turned from
love of the neighbor to love of self and the world, communication was given
with evil spirits, who inflowed into the minds of the men. Hence arose first
a perversion of the Doctrine of Correspondences and Representatives—that is,
the magi or wise of the Ancient Church perverted the correspondences and turned
them, for the sake of selfish ends, into such magic arts as to gain power over
the minds of men. From this perversion arose, also, a gradual obliteration or
forgetting of the true science of Correspondences, while, on account of the
great reverence which the ancients had for everything which was old or from
their fathers, the representative images and rituals still were considered holy,
and at last were worshiped as in themselves Divine. Hence, "those whose mental
sight depended upon the senses of the body, and who still wished to see God,
formed for themselves, as idols, images of gold, silver, stone, and wood, that
under these, as objects of sight, they might worship God, while others, who
rejected artificial images from their religion, formed for themselves ideal
images of God in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and in various things upon
the earth" (T. C. R. 11).
Hence then came the worship of the planetary bodies, which we find in all
the Ancient Mythologies, as well as the grosser forms of idolatry, such as the
worship of images of beasts, birds, fishes, serpents, and trees.
A very complete historical view of this gradual rise of the worship of idols
and statues is found in Arcana Caelestia, n. 4580.
"The statues that were erected in ancient times were either for a sign or
for a witness or for worship; those which were for worship were anointed, and
thence they were considered holy, and by them also they had their worship. Thus,
in temples, in groves, in woods, under trees, and in other places. This ritual
derived its representation from this, that in most ancient times stones were
erected on the boundaries between the families of the nations, so that no one
should pass over them to do any evil. And because stones were there on the boundaries,
the most ancients, who in the single things which were in this earth saw corresponding
spiritual and celestial things, when they saw these stones in the boundaries,
thought concerning the truths which are the ultimates of order; but their posterity,
who beheld less of the spiritual and celestial and more of the worldly, began
to think in a holy manner concerning these only from the veneration from the
ancient time, and at last the posterity of the Most-Ancients, who lived immediately
before the flood, and who did not any more see anything spiritual and celestial
in terrestrial and mundane things, as in objects, began to sanctify these stones,
by pouring libations upon them, and anointing them with oil; and then they were
called statues and retained for worship. This remained after the flood, in the
Ancient Church, which was representative, but with this difference, that the
statues served them as means for reaching internal worship; for infants and
children were instructed by their parents what these things represented, and
thus they were led to know holy things, and to be affected by those things which
they represented. Thence it was that the statues with the ancients, in their
temples, groves, and woods, and upon hills and mountains, were for worship.
But when internal things altogether perished, together with the Ancient Church,
and when they began to hold external things holy and Divine, and thus to worship
them idolatrously, then they erected statues for their separate gods."
Thus far, then, as to Polytheism and Idolatry. But Mythology includes also
the knowledge of the various theological doctrinals which were held by the ancient
gentile nations, and these also ought to be included in the study of mythology,
for without a knowledge of them the Pantheon of the ancients will be found lifeless
and unmeaning. And to these doctrinals the New Church alone possesses the key
in the knowledge that is given it concerning the ancient Word, from which the
ancient theology was derived; and, further, in the knowledge of the Correspondences,
according to which the Ancient Word was written.
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