The Supreme God of the Peruvians, was called Viracocha; known also as Pachacarnac, Soul of the world, Usapu admirable, and other names.

Garcilazo says, “he was considered as the giver of life, sustainer and nourisher of all things, but because they did not see him, they erected no temples to him nor offered sacrifices; however they worshipped him in their hearts, and esteemed him for the unknown God.”

Generally, speaking, the sun was the great object of Peruvian idolatry during the dominion of the Incas. Its worship was the most solemn, and its temples the most splendid in their furniture and decorations, and the common people, no doubt, reverenced that luminary as their chief god.

Herrera mentions the circumstance that at one of the festivals, they exhibited three statues of the sun, each of which had a particular name, which as he translated them were Father and Lord Sun, the Son Sun, and the Brother Sun. He also says, “that at Chucuisaea, they worshipped an idol called Tangatanga, which they said was three and one.”

The Spanish writers consider this doctrine to have been stolen by the devil from Christianity, and imparted by him to this people. By this opinion they evidently declare its antiquity in Peru to have been greater than the time of the Spanish conquest.Those writers and scholars who refuse to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity as taught in the Christian religion, was known during the patriarchal or judaical dispensations, and therefore will not allow that the trinity of the Peruvians had any reference to the dogma of Christianity, contend that their trinity was founded in those early corruptions of patriarchal history, in which men began to represent Adam, and his three sons; and Noah, and his three sons; as being triplicates of the same essential person, who originally was the universal father of the human race: and secondly, being triplicated in their three sons, who also were considered the fathers of mankind. They say therefore, Adam and Noah were each the father of three sons; and to the persons of the latter of these triads, by whose descendants the world was repeopled, the whole habitable earth was assigned in a threefold division. This matter, though it sometimes appears in an undisguised form, was usually wrapped up in the cloak of the most profound mystery. Hence instead of plainly saying, that the mortal who had flourished in the golden age and who was venerated as the universal demon father both of gods and men, was the parent of three sons, they were wont to declare, that the great father had wonderfully triplicated himself.

Pursuing this vein of mysticism, they contrived to obscure the triple division of the habitable globe among the sons of Noah, just as much as the characters of the three sons themselves. A very ancient notion universally prevailed that some such triple division had once taken place; and the hierophants when they had elevated Noah and his three sons to the rank of deity, proceeded to ring a variety of corresponding changes upon that celebrated threefold distribution. Noah was esteemed the universal sovereign of the world; but, when he branched out into three kings (i.e., triplicating himself into his three sons), that world was to be divided into three kingdoms, or, as they were sometimes styled, three worlds. To one of these kings was assigned the empire of heaven; to another, the empire of the earth, including the nether regions of Tartarus; to a third, the empire of the ocean.

So again, when Noah became a god, the attributes of deity were inevitably ascribed to him, otherwise, he would plainly have become incapable of supporting his new character: yet even in the ascription of such attributes, the genuine outlines of his history were never suffered to be wholly forgotten. He had witnessed the destruction of one world, the new creation (or regeneration) of another, and the oath of God that he would surely preserve mankind from the repetition of such a calamity as the deluge. Hence when he was worshipped as a hero-god, he was revered in the triple character of the destroyer, the creator, and the preserver. And when he was triplicated into three cognate divinities, were produced three gods, different, yet fundamentally the same, one mild though awful as the creator; another gentle and beneficent as the preserver; a third, sanguinary, ferocious, and implacable as the destroyer.[11]

The idea of a trinity was rather curiously developed amongst the Druids, especially amongst the Welsh. They used a number of triplicated sentences as summaries of matters relating to their religion, history, and science, in order that these things might be the more easily committed to memory and handed down to future generations. The triads were these:—

1. There are three primeval Unities, and more than one of each cannot exist:

One God;
One Truth;
One Point of Liberty, where all opposites equiponderate.2. Three things proceed from the primeval unities:

All of Life;
All that is Good; and
All Power.

3. God consists necessarily of three things:

The Greatest of Life;
The Greatest of Knowledge; and
The Greatest of Power.[12]

The Druids venerated the Bull and Eagle as emblems of the god Hu, and like the Jews and Indians, “made use of a term, only known to themselves, to express the unutterable name of the Deity, and the letters OIW were used for that purpose.”

From Herodotus, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others, we get information concerning the triads amongst the Persians, and which were similar in many respects to those recognised by other eastern nations. Oromasdes and Arimanes were ruling principles always in opposition to each other, viz., good and evil, and springing from light and darkness, which they are said to have most resembled. Eudemus says, “they proceeded from Place or Time.” Oromasdes was looked upon as the whole expanse of heaven, and was considered by the Greeks as identical with Zeus. He was the Preserver; and Arimanes, the Destroyer. Between them, according to Plutarch was Mithras, the Mediator, who was regarded as the Sun, as Light, as Intellect, and as the creator of all things. He was a triple deity and was said to have triplicated himself. The Leontine mysteries were instituted in his honour, the lion being consecrated to him, and the Sun was represented by the emblems of the Bull, the Lion, and the Hawk, united.

In the ancient religions of America, a species of trinity was recognised altogether different to that of Christianity or the Trimurti of India. In some of the ancient poems a triple nature is actually ascribed to storms; and in the QuichÉ legends we read: “The first of Hurakan is the lightning, the second the track of the lightning, and the third the stroke of the lightning; and these three are Hurakan the Heat of the Sky.”

In the Iroquois mythology the same thing is found. Heno was thunder, and three assistants were assigned to him whose offices were similar to those of the companions of Hurakan.

Heno was said to gather the clouds and pour out the warm rain; he was the patron of husbandry, and was invoked at seedtime and harvest. As the purveyor of nourishment, he was addressed as grandfather, and his worshippers styled themselves his grandchildren.

Amongst the Aztecs, Tlaloc, the god of rain and water, manifested himself under the three attributes of the flash, the thunderbolt, and the thunder.

But this conception of three in one, says Brinton, “was above the comprehension of the masses, and consequently these deities were also spoken of as fourfold in nature, three and one.” Moreover, as has already been pointed out, the thunder-god was usually ruler of the winds, and thus another reason for his quadruplicate nature was suggested. Hurakan, Haokah, Tlaloc, and probably Heno, are plural as well as singular nouns, and are used as nominatives to verbs in both numbers. Tlaloc was appealed to as inhabiting each of the cardinal points and every mountain top. His statue rested on a square stone pedestal, facing the east, and had in one hand a serpent in gold. Ribbons of silver, crossing to form squares, covered the robe, and the shield was composed of feathers of four colours, yellow, green, red and blue. Before it was a vase containing all sorts of grain; and the clouds were called his companions, the winds his messengers. As elsewhere, the thunderbolts were believed to be flints, and thus, as the emblem of fire and the storm, this stone figures conspicuously in their myths. Tohil, the god who gave the QuichÉs fire by shaking his sandals, was represented by a flint-stone. He is distinctly said to be the same as Quetzelcoatl, one of whose commonest symbols was a flint. Such a stone, in the beginning of things, fell from heaven to earth, and broke into 1600 pieces, each of which sprang up a god; an ancient legend, which shadows forth the subjection of all things to him who gathers the clouds from the four corners of the earth, who thunders with his voice, who satisfies with his rain the desolate and waste ground, and causes the tended herb to spring forth. This is the germ of the adoration of stones as emblems of the fecundating rains. This is why, for example, the Navajos use as their charm for rain certain long round stones, which they think fall from the clouds when it thunders.

It is said that all over Africa, belief in a trinity of gods is found, the same to-day as has prevailed at least for forty centuries, and perhaps for very much longer. ChaldÆa, Assyria, and the temple of Erektheus, on the Acropolis of Athens, honoured and sacrificed to Zeus (the Sun, Hercules, or Phallic idea) the Serpent and Ocean; and Africa still does so to the Tree-Stem or Pole, the Serpent, and the Sea or Water; and this Trinity is one god, and yet serves to divide all gods into three classes, of which these are types.

Important and interesting notices relative to the nature of the deities worshipped by the ancients are to be found in the treatise of Julius Firmicus Maternus, “De Errore Profanarum Religionum ad Constantium, et Constantem Angg.” Firmicus attributes to the Persians a belief in the androgynous nature of the deity [naturam ejus (jovis) ad utriusque sexus transferentes]. No doubt this doctrine has always been recognised, by many writers, as being held by the philosophers of India and Egypt, and that it constituted a part of the creed of Orpheus, but its connection with Persia has not been so generally acknowledged.

Firmicus, after speaking of the two-fold powers of Jupiter (that is, the deity being both male and female) adds, “when they choose to give a visible representation of him, they sculpture him as a female.” Again, they represent him as a female with three heads. It was a figure adorned with serpents of a monstrous size. It was venerated under the symbol of fire. It was called Mithra. It was worshipped in secret caverns. The rites of Mithra were familiar to the Romans, but they worshipped them in a manner different from the Persian ceremonies. Firmicus had seen Mithra sculptured in two different ways: in one piece of sculpture he was represented as a female with three faces, and infolded with serpents; and in another piece of sculpture he was represented as seizing a bull.

Classic writers abound with references, not simply to a plurality of gods among the heathen, but to a trinity in unity and unity in trinity, sometimes approaching in the similarity of their broad outlines the doctrine as held by orthodox religionists. Herodotus calls the deity of the Pelasgians, Gods, and it is admitted that the passage evidently implies that the expression was used by the priests of Dodona. The Pelasgians worshipped the Cabiri, and the Cabiri were originally three in number, hence it is inferred that these Cabiri were the Pelasgian Trinity, and that having in ancient times no name which would have implied a diversity of gods, they worshipped a trinity in unity. The worship of the Cabiri by the Pelasgians is evident, for Herodotus says, in his second book, “that the Samothracians learnt the Cabiric mysteries from the Pelasgians, who once inhabited that island, and afterwards settled in Greece, near Attica.” Cicero testifies that the Cabiri were originally three in number, and he carefully distinguishes them from the Dioscuri. A passage in Pausanias states that at Tritia, a city of Achaia, there is a temple erected to the Dii Magni (or Cabiri); their images are a representation of a god made of clay. “We need not be surprised,” said a writer once, “that Pausanias should be puzzled how to express the fact that, though it was the temple of the three Cabiri, yet there was only one image in it. Is not this the doctrine of a trinity in unity?”

Potter informs us that those who desired to have children were usually very liberal to the gods, who were thought to preside over generation. The same writer also says:—“Who these were, or what was the origination of their name, is not easy to determine: Orpheus, as cited by Phanodemus in Suidas, makes their proper names to be Amaclides, Protocles, and Protocleon, and will have them to preside over the winds; Demo makes them to be the winds themselves.” Another author tells us their names were “Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, and that they were the sons of heaven and of earth: Philocrus likewise makes earth their mother, but instead of heaven, substitutes the sun, or Apollo, for their father, where he seems to account, as well for their being accounted the superintendents of generation, as for the name of t??t?pate?e?; for being immediately descended from two immortal gods, themselves,” saith he, “were thought the third fathers, and therefore might well be esteemed the common parents of mankind, and from that opinion derive those honours, which the Athenians paid them as the authors and presidents of human generation.”

Again, the Tritopatoreia was a solemnity in which it was usual to pray for children to the gods of generation, who were sometimes called tritopateres. The names of the Cabiri, as Cicero says, are Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, and Dionysius: this fact is supposed to give us a little insight into the origin of the word tritopateres, or tritopatreis. Philocrus, as we have seen, makes them the sons of Apollo and of the earth: this fact will help us to develop the truth: the two last hypostases emanated from the Creator: thus in the Egyptian Trinity of Osiris, of Isis, and of Horus, Isis is not only the consort, but the daughter of Osiris, and Horus was the fruit of their embrace, thus in the Scandinavian Trinity of Adin, of Trea, and of Thor, Trea is not only the wife, but the daughter of Odin, and Thor was the fruit of their embrace, as Maillet observes in his Northern Antiquities (vol. ii.), there is the Roman Trinity of Jupiter, of Juno, and of Minerva, Juno is the sister and the wife of Jupiter, and Minerva is the daughter of Jupiter: now, it is a singular fact, that in the Pelasgic Trinity of the Cabirim, two of them are said to have been the sons of Vulcan, or the Sun, as we read in Potter (vol. i.) Hence we see, it has been contended, the mistake of Philocrus: there were not three emanations from the Sun, as he supposes, but only two: their name tritopateres, which alludes to the doctrine of the trinity, puzzled Philocrus, who knew nothing of the doctrine, and he is credited with coining the story, to account for this appellation: the Cabiri were, as is known from Cicero, called Tritopatreus, Dionysius, and Eubuleus. Dionysius is Osiris, and Eubuleus and Tritopatreus are the two hypostases, which emanated from him: the name of the third hypostasis is generally compounded of some word which signifies the third: hence Minerva derived her name of Tritonis, or Tritonia Virgo: hence Minerva is called by Hesiod (referred to in Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary), Tritogenia: hence came the Tritia, of which Pausanias speaks: hence came the Tritopatreus of Cicero: hence came the Thridi of the Scandinavians. We read in the Edda these remarkable words: “He afterwards beheld three thrones raised one above another, and on each throne sat a man; upon his asking which of these was their king, his guide answered, ‘he who sits upon the lowest throne is the king, and his name is Hor, or the Lofty One: the second is Jaenhar, that is Equal to the Lofty One; but he who sits upon the highest throne is called Thridi, or the Third.’”

Pausanias has a number of passages which bear upon this subject, and seem to prove conclusively that the Greeks recognised the doctrine of a trinity in unity and worshipped the same. In his second book he says: “Beyond the tomb of Pelasgus is a small structure of brass, which supports the images of Diana, of Jupiter, and of Minerva, a work of some antiquity: Lyceas has in some verses recorded the fact that this is the representation of Jupiter Machinator.” Again, in Book I., when describing the Areopagite district of Athens, he says:—“Here are the images of Pluto, of Mercury, and of Tellus, to whom all such persons, whether citizens or strangers, as have vindicated their innocence in the Court Areopagus, are required sacrifice.” “In a temple of Ceres, at the entrance of Athens, there are images of the goddess herself, of her daughter, and of Bacchus, with a torch in his hand.”

That the grouping of the three deities was not accidental is evident from the frequency with which they are so mentioned, and other passages show that they were the three deities who were worshipped in the Eleusinian mysteries. Thus in Book VIII., Ch. 25:—“The river Lado then continues its course to the temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, which is situated in territories of the Thelpusians: the three statues in it are each seven feet high, and all of marble: they represent Ceres, Proserpine, and Bacchus.” In another passage (Book II., Ch. 2) he says:—“By a temple dedicated to all the gods, there were placed three statues of Jupiter in the open air, of which one had no title, a second was styled the Terrestrial, and the third was styled the highest.”

The learned say, of course, it is clear that the missing title should have been the God of the Sea, as the others were the God of Heaven, and the God of the Earth. Another passage in Pausanias confirms this:—“In a temple of Minerva was placed a wooden image of Jupiter with three eyes; two of them were placed in the natural position, and the other was placed on the forehead.... One may naturally suppose that Jupiter is represented with three eyes as the God of the Heaven, as the God of the Earth, and as the God of the Sea.”

It has been remarked that Pausanias records the tradition that this story of the three-eyed Jupiter comes from Troy, and it is known that the Trojans acknowledged a trinity in the divine nature, and that the Dii Penates, or the Cabiri of the Romans, came from Troy. Quotations from the translation of the Atlas Chinesis of Montanus, by Ogilby, show that the three-eyed Jupiter was an oriental emblem of the trinity:—“The modern learned, or followers of this first sect, who are overwhelmed in idolatry, divide generally their idols, or false gods, into three orders, viz., celestial, terrestrial, and infernal: in the celestial they acknowledge a trinity of one godhead, which they worship and serve by the name of a goddess called Pussa; which, with the Greeks, we might call Cybele, and with Egyptians, Isis and Mother of the Gods. This Pussa (according to the Chinese saying) is the governess of nature, or, to speak properly, the Chinese Isis, or Cybele, by whose power they believe that all things are preserved and made fruitful, as the three inserted figures relate.”

In the doctrine relating to the Virgin Mary as held by the Church of Rome, there is a remarkable resemblance to the teaching of the ancients respecting the female constantly associated with the triune male deity. Her names and titles are many, and though diversified, mostly pointing to the same idea. Some of these are as follows:—“The Virgin,” conceiving and bringing forth from her own inherent power. The wife of Bel Nimrod; the wife of Asshur; the wife of Nin. She is called Multa, Mulita, or Mylitta, or Enuta, Bilta or Bilta Nipruta, Ishtar, Ri, Alitta, Elissa, Bettis, Ashtoreth, Astarte, Saruha, Nana, Asurah. Amongst other names she is known as Athor, Dea Syria, Artemis, Aphrodite, Tanith, Tanat, Rhea, Demeter, Ceres, Diana, Minerva, Juno, Venus, Isis, Cybele, Seneb or Seben, Venus Urania, Ge, Hera. “As Anaitis she is the ‘mother of the child;’ reproduced again as Isis and Horus; Devaki with Christna; and Aurora with Memnon.” Even in ancient Mexico the mother and child were worshipped. Again she appears as Davkina Gula Shala, Zirbanit, Warmita Laz. In modern times she reappears as the Virgin Mary and her son. There were Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishter of Arbela, just as there are now Marie de Loretto and Marie de la Garde.

She was the Queen of fecundity or fertility, Queen of the lands, the beginning of heaven and earth, Queen of all the Gods, Goddess of war and battle, the holder of the sceptre, the beginning of the beginning, the one great Queen, the Queen of the spheres, the Virgo of the Zodiac, the Celestial Virgin, Time, in whose womb all things are born. She is represented in various ways, and specially as a nude woman carrying an infant in her arms.[13]

The name Multa, Mulita, or Mylitta, Inman contends is derived from some words resembling the Hebrew meal, the “place of entrance,” and ta, “a chamber.” The whole being a place of entrance and a chamber. The cognomen Multa, or Malta, signifies, therefore, the spot through which life enters into the chamber, i.e., the womb, and through which the fruit matured within enters into the world as a new being. By the association of this virgin goddess with the sacred triad of deities is made up the four great gods, Arba-il.We are here reminded of the well-known symbol of the Trinity which seems to have been as abundantly used in ancient times, at least in some countries—Egypt for instance. This is the triangle—generally the equilateral—which of course symbolised both the trinity in unity and the equality of the three. Sometimes we get two of those triangles crossing each other, one with the point upwards, the other with the point downwards, thus forming a six-rayed star. The first represents the phallic triad, the two together shew the union of the male and female principles producing a new figure, each at the same time retaining its own identity. The triangle with the point downwards, by itself typifies the Mons Veneris, the Delta, or door through which all come into the world.

The question has arisen:—“How comes it that a doctrine so singular, and so utterly at variance with all the conceptions of uninstructed reason, as that of a Trinity in Unity, should have been from the beginning, the fundamental religious tenet of every nation upon earth?”

Inman without hesitation declares “the trinity of the ancients is unquestionably of phallic origin.” Others have either preceded this writer or have followed suit, contending that the male symbol of generation in divine creation was three in one, as the cross, &c., and that the female symbol was always regarded as the Triangle, the accepted symbol of the Trinity. The number three, was employed with mystic solemnity, and in the emblematical hands which seem to have been borne on the top of a staff or sceptre in the Isiac processions, the thumb and two forefingers are held up to signify the three primary and general personifications. This form of priestly blessing, thumb and two fingers, is still acknowledged as a sign of the Trinity.

The ancients tell us plainly enough that they are derived from the cosmogonic elements. They are primarily the material and elementary types of the spiritual trinity of revelation—types established by revelation itself, and the only resource of materialism to preserve the original doctrine. The spirit, whether physical or spiritual, is equally the pneuma; and the light, whether physical or spiritual, equally the phos of the Greek text: so that the materialist of antiquity had little difficulty in preserving their analogies complete.

The Dahomans are said by Skertchley to deny the corporeal existence of the deity, but to ascribe human passions to him; a singular medley. “Their religion,” he says, “must not be confounded with Polytheism, for they only worship one god, Mau, but propitiate him through the intervention of the fetiches. Of these, there are four principal ones, after whom come the secondary deities. The most important of these is Bo, the Dahoman Mars; then comes Legba, the Dahoman Priapus, whose little huts are to be met with in every street. This deity is of either sex, a male and female Legba often residing in the same temple. A squat swish image, rudely moulded into the grossest caricature on the human form, sitting with hands on knees, with gaping mouth, and the special attributes developed to an ungainly size. Teeth of cowries usually fill the clown-like mouth, and ears standing out from the head, like a bat’s, are only surpassed in their monstrosity by the snowshoe-shaped feet. The nose is broad, even for a negro’s, and altogether the deity is anything but a fascinating object. Round the deity is a fence of knobbed sticks, daubed with filthy slime, and before the god is a flat saucer of red earthenware, which contains the offerings. When a person wishes to increase his family, he calls in a Legba priest and gives him a fowl, some cankie, water, and palm oil. A fire is lighted, and the cankie, water, and palm oil mixed together and put in the saucer. The fowl is then killed by placing the head between the great and second toes of the priest, who severs it from the body by a jerk. The head is then swung over the person of the worshipper, to allow the blood to drop upon him, while the bleeding body is held over a little dish, which catches the blood. The fowl is then semi-roasted on a fire lighted near, and the priest, taking the dish of blood, smears the body of the deity with it, finally taking some of the blood into his mouth and sputtering it over the god. The fowl is then eaten by the priest, and the wives of the devotees are supposed to have the children they crave for.”

The principal Dahoman gods, described by Skertchley, are thus mentioned by Forlong:—

Legba, the Dahoman Priapus, and special patron of all who desire larger families.

Zoo, the god of fire, reminding us of Zoe, life.

Demen, he who presides over chastity.

Akwash, he who presides over childbirth.

Gbwejeh, he or she who presides over hunting.

Ajarama, the tutelary god of foreigners, symbolised by a whitewashed stump under a shed, apparently a Sivaic or white Lingam, no doubt called foreign because Ashar came from Assyria, and Esir from the still older Ethiopians.

Hoho, he who presides over twins.

Afa, the name of the dual god of wisdom.

Aizan, the god who presides over roads, and travellers, and bad characters, and can be seen on all roads as a heap of clay surmounted by a round pot, containing kanki, palm oil, &c.

“So that we have Legba, the pure and simple phallus; Ajarama, ‘the whitened stump,’ so well known to us in India amidst rude aboriginal tribes; and Ai-zan, the Hermes or Harmonia, marking the ways of life, and symbolised by a mound and round pot and considering that this is the universal form of tatooing shown on every female’s stomach,—Mr. Skertchley says, a series of arches, the meaning is also clearly the omphi. Mr. S. says that Afa, our African Androgynous Minerva, is very much respected by mothers, and has certain days sacred to mothers, when she or he is specially consulted on their special subjects, as well as on all matters relating to marrying, building a house, sowing corn, and such like.”[14]

Some years ago a writer, speaking of the Sacred Triads of various nations, said: “From all quarters of the heathen world came the trinity,” what we have already revealed shows that the doctrine has been held in some form or other from the far east to the extreme verge of the western hemisphere. Some of the forms of this Triad are as follows:—India—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva: Egypt—Knef, Osiris as the first; Ptha, Isis as the second; Phree, Horus as the third: the Zoroastrians—The Father, Mind, and Fire: the Ancient Arabs—Al-Lat, Al Uzzah, Manah: Greeks and Latins—Zeus or Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto: the Syrians—Monimus, Azoz, Aries or Mars: the Kaldians—The One; the Second, who dwells with the First; the Third, he who shines through the universe: China—the One, the Second from the First, the Third from the Second: the Boodhists—Boodhash, the Developer; Darmash, the Developed; Sanghash, the Hosts Developed: Peruvians—Apomti, Charunti, Intiquaoqui: Scandinavia—Odin, Thor, Friga: Pythagoras—Monad, Duad, Triad: Plato—the Infinite, the Finite, that which is compounded of the Two: Phenicia—Belus, the Sun; Urama, the Earth; Adonis, Love: Kalmuks—Tarm, Megozan, Bourchan: Ancient Greece—Om, or On; Dionysus, or Bacchus; Herakles: Orpheus—God, the Spirit, Kaos: South American Indians—Otkon. Messou, Atahanto.