Craft he calls wisdom; and, perversely blind, Seeking to reign, erects new deities: At last 'I make the Universe!'

How many deities Hath this false standard given the human race!

Our selves and our affaires we may neglect, But not our Deities, which these Christians Prophane deride and scoffe at; would new Lawes Bring in and a new God make.

Oh that my breath had power With my last words to blast their Deities.

Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of gods,yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number, representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties, and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship.

He superintended the feasts and festivals in honor of the deities.

Among them there were great distinctions of rank, but the high-priests held the most honorable station; they were devoted to the service of the presiding deities of the cities in which they lived,such as the worship of Ammon at Thebes, of Phtha at Memphis, and of Ra at On, or Heliopolis.

Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva; respecting these deities they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of manufactures, that Jupiter possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars.

They rank in the number of the gods those alone whom they behold, and by whose instrumentality they are obviously benefited, namely, the sun, fire, and the moon; they have not heard of the other deities even by report.

Adj. satanic, diabolic, devilish; infernal, hellborn^. Mythological and other fabulous Deities and Powers 979.

As a rule, the men of any age stand such a test no better than the neighbors of Philemon and Baucis, who expelled the deities they failed to recognize.

[6450]Alexander in India, after his victories, became so insolent, he would be adored for a god: and those Roman emperors came to that height of madness, they must have temples built to them, sacrifices to their deities, Divus Augustus, D. Claudius, D. Adrianus: Heliogabalus, "put out that vestal fire at Rome, expelled the virgins, and banished all other religions all over the world, and would be the sole God himself."

" "There are no gods, heavens are toys, Selius in public justifies; Because that whilst he thus denies Their deities, he better thrives.

As a piece of unwonted luxury he had purchased a little iron lamp, which burned in front of the images of his household deities.

These prodigies were expiated by victims of the larger kind, according to the response of the aruspices; and a supplication was ordered to all the deities who had shrines at Rome.

I heare some Musique: O ye Deities, Send you this heavenly consort from the spheares To recreate a love-perplexed heart?

The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.

There, also, the older god of the sky and light, Dyâus, once common to all members of the Indo-European family, gave way to the more active deities, Indra, Zeus and Odin, divinities of the storm and the wind, but which, after all, are merely other aspects of the ancient deity, and occupied his place to the religious sense.

In many mythologies the gods of light and warmth are, by a natural analogy, held to be also the deities which preside over plenty, fertility and reproduction.

I have endeavored to explain this widespread belief in hermaphroditic deities in my work entitled, The Religious Sentiment, Its Source and Aim, pp. 65-68, (New York, 1876).

The prayers addressed to these deities breathe as pure a spirit of devotion as many now heard in Christian lands.

When such water reservoirs and groups of trees have been founded by Hindoos, several sculptured figures of their deities, or red painted stones, are commonly found placed on them.

In other houses, again, the front walls were painted in fresco, with terrible-looking dragons, tigers, lions, twice or thrice as large as life, stretching their tongues out, with hideous grimaces; or with deities, flowers, arabesques, etc., without sense or taste grouped together, miserably executed, and bedaubed with the most glaring colours.

All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative principlethe active, or male, and the passive, or female.

The statues of the heathen deities, as well as the altars on which the sacrifices were offered to them, and the priests who presided over the sacred rites, were always anointed with perfumed ointment, as a consecration of them to the objects of religious worship.