Ænon or עינן oinn, where John baptized, was called by a figure of speech only Ænon, or the fountain of the sun. The literal meaning was, The Fountain of the Generative Power.
Mr. Faber, speaking of the calves set up by Jeroboam, says, “that they were, in their use and application, designed to be images of the two sacred bulls which were the living representations of Osiris and Isis, is both very naturally asserted by St. Jerome, and may be collected even from Scripture itself. Hosea styles the idols of Jeroboam the calves of Beth-Aven: and immediately afterwards speaks of the high places of the God Aven, whom he denominates the sin of Israel. Now we are told, that when Jeroboam instituted the worship of the calves, he likewise made high places in which their priests might officiate. The high places, therefore, of the calves are the high places of Aven; the temple of Aven is the temple of the calves; and Aven, the sin of Israel, is the same as at least one of the calves, which are also peculiarly described as being the sin of Israel. But the God, whose name by the Masoretic punctuation is pronounced Aven, is no other than the Egyptian deity Aun or On: for the very God whose worship Hosea identifies with that of the calves, is he of whom Potipherah is said to have been the priest: the two appellations, which our translators variously express, Aven and On, consisting in the Hebrew of the self-same letters. On, however, or Aun, was the Egyptian title of the sun, whence the city of On was expressed by the Greeks Heliopolis; and the sun was astronomically the same as the Tauric God Osiris: consequently On and Osiris are one deity. Hence it is evident, that the worship of Jeroboam’s calves being substantially the worship of On or Osiris, the calves themselves must have been venerated, agreeably to the just supposition of Jerome, as the representatives of Apis and Nevis.”[1] The calves were probably emblematical of the Sun in his male and female character—Baal and Baaltis.
5. We have seen that Strabo says, the temple of Ammon was called ἱερον Ομανου, and we have also seen, that the first syllable of the word אם am was no other than the celebrated Hindoo word Aum, which designated the Brahmin Trinity, the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer. These three letters, Sir W. Jones tells us, as stated above, coalesce and form the mystic word OM. In the Geeta, Cristna thus addresses Arjun: “I am generation and dissolution.” It was from the last idea that Heliopolis, or the city of On, was called in some of the old versions of the Bible the city of destruction. Here are evidently the Creator and the Destroyer. Mr. Strauss says, that Bethaven means place of unworthiness.[2]
The word אם am in the Hebrew not only signifies might, strength, power, firmness, solidity, truth, but it means also mother, as in Genesis ii. 24, and love, whence the Latin Amo, mamma. If the word be taken to mean strength, then Amon will mean (the first syllable am being in regimine) the temple of the strength of the generative or creative power, or the temple of the mighty procreative power. If the word am mean mother, then a still more recondite idea will be implied, viz. the mother generative power, or the maternal generative power: perhaps the Urania of Persia, or the Venus Aphrodite of Crete and Greece, or the Jupiter Genetrix, of the masculine and feminine gender, or the Brahme-Maia of India, or the Alma Venus of Lucretius. And the city of On or Heliopolis will be the city of the Sun or city of the procreative powers of nature, of which the Sun was always the emblem.[3]
I have proved in my Celtic Druids, Ch. ii. Sect. xxiv. that the old Latin was Sanscrit, and I may affirm, that the Alma of Lucretius is of Oriental, not Grecian, origin. The Greeks knew not the word Alma. This word, I think, means Al the preserver, and ma mother: it will then mean, the preserving mother Venus. I think in this case no one can doubt that the עלמא olma of the
