In the Zoroastrian triad Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd) is the sun-or power of light, life, heaven, good, Ahrimanes is the power of darkness, evil, death, the earth, matter; and Mithra is the god of sunlight, the power of Truth, the Mediator between heaven and earth.
In the Hindu triad Brahma is the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Siva the Destroyer or Apathy. In the Buddhist triad Buddha is intelligence, the soul, the generative power; Dharma is matter, the body, the productive power; and Sangha represents the union' of the two. (From this union, or as a result of this union Sangha becomes the author of creation.) , Although the Chinese divided nature into the two great parts Yang and Yin it was by the co-operation of these two that Life or the third or neuter principle was evolved.
The grouping of gods in three represented a very early phase of the Greek religion. The three sons of Saturn were Jupiter (Zeus), the god of heaven; Neptune (Poseidon), the god of the sea; and Pluto or Hades, the god of the lower world. The three great deities of the Greeks, however, were Zeus, Hera and Poseidon, who are identified with the Roman Jupiter, Juno and Neptune. The student will recall many others. These have been briefly touched upon only to show how possessed man has been by the idea of "three in one" which was to be used again in the Christian religion in that superbly mystical conception (so tortured by those who would explain it literally) of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
