Phallism in Ancient Worship

PHALLISM IN ANCIENT WORSHIPS.

Canesa, THE GOD OF WISDOM, IN THE HINDU PANTHEON.

ANCIENT SYMBOL WORSHIP. INFLUENCE OF THE PHALLIC IDEA THE

IN

Religions of Antiquity. BY

H ODDER M

WESTROPP

AND

C.

STANILAND WAKE.

WITH AN

INTRODUCTION, ADDITIONAL NOTES, AND AN APPENDIX. By ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.

SECOND EDITION, ILLUSTRATED.

NEW YORK:

J.

W.

BOUTON, 706 BROADWAY. 1875-

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874,

By JAMES W. BOUTON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE. The historian Gibbon has remarked that " a lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it

must depend on the influence of some common principle in

the minds of men."

To this we are probably to refer the inquisi-

tiveness that leads individuals to the investigation of the relics

of bygone periods, whether as naturalists, philologists, or his-

The Book of Genesis has been eagerly scruti-

torical inquirers.

nized as containing a divinely-inspired record of the Origin of

Mankind ; and ancient histories are carefully turned over quest of clews in the same direction.

in

The studies of language

and etymology are interesting as affording traces of the ancestry of our modern peoples.

The same plea holds good in regard to

Language and worship are crystallized history.

religious inquiry.

Unbecoming alike are the supercilious disdain and the sanctimonious contempt flung by pretentious men upon ancient ideas

The ignorant cock that scorned the jewel because he knew not how to ascertain its value, and preferred the corn and usages.

which he could scratch out from the dunghill, is an apt likeness of such persons. It is certainly proper to pay due regard to utility and present advantage. to that limit

is

But the disposition to confine the attention

as imbruting and sensual as anything in fetish-

worship or the orgies of the old-time divinities.

The generous

mind will cast aside such a temper, and, in obedience to its own instincts,

hasten to broader

fields of exploration,

whether in

natural science, metaphysical inquiry, or archaeological investigation.

Labor which makes a person

better acquainted with

himself or his fellow-men is not wasted.

In former periods

it

was the practice to check exuberant

Preface.

vi

by destroying records, and inflicting summary penalon those who exceeded the bounds that had been set to

curiosity ties

scientific

and literary pursuits.

Cardinal Ximenes burned the

old Arabic manuscripts ; GaUleo languished in prison ; Socrates

drank the hemlock, and Servetus perished at the stake ;

the

Gauls destroyed the annals of Old Rome, and the Romans those of ancient Carthage and Spain ; the Brahmins were alike maUg-

nant to the population and literature of Hindustan, and the

Moslems equally destructive to the books that fell in their way from Benares and Bactria to Syria and Alexandria. All hoped in this way to put an end to the supremacy of .scholars and rival

nations, and to confine thought to the metes and limits of religious orthodoxy. tially.

They succeeded for a time, but only par-

Knowledge extinguished

in

one place broke forth in

another ; and every nation that burned records and slaughtered teachers speedily declined into insignificance.

At the present time

the Index Expurgatorius of the Vatican, so far from excluding

books from general reading, has become the best medium for advertising them ;

and the achievements of Omar at Alexandria,

Nabonasar at Babylon, and Torquemeda at Sa,lamanca, successful, would require a general holocaust. test against

scientific

to

be

Those who pro-

and archeeological studies as tending

to

unsettle the mind in regard to accepted doctrines, are speaking

too

late.

Devotion which is born of ignorance is not worthy of

being cherished. Nevertheless, there is

little

ground for apprehension that the

foundations of a genuine religious belief will be undermined.

The investigation of the beginnings of a religion is never the work of infidels, but of the most reverent and conscientious minds. will

Those who are at liberty to develop themselves freely,

seldom molest themselves about the opinions of others.

Mystics and philosophers do not clash, but often arrive at like conclusions by different routes and the exercise of different faculties of mind.

The papers of Messrs. Westropp and Wake, showing the influ-

Preface.

vii

ence of " pliallism" upon former religious ideas, are entitled to a

The ripe scholarship of those gen-

candid and careful perusal.

tlemen

beyond question

is

performed

their labor is

;

and the

fidelity with

worthy of praise.

the subject with a delicacy that

which they

They have treated

commendable, and with a

is

dignity and fairness characteristic of the scholar and the sage.

Their purpose, as will be perceived, is not merely to portray its features, but to exhibit it in its relations to

modem idea.

This much is claimed especially for the investigations noted in

Whatever may be thought of the men who, accord-

these pages.

modern notions, took such extraordinary views of divine things and resorted to what would be regarded as offen-

ing to our

sive

methods

to

express them, it is certain nevertheless that in

important respects they were equal, if not superior, to the fore-

most thinkers of our boasted nineteenth century. tects learned of them how to build ; scientific

knowledge.

inquiry, and

Our archi-

and they possessed accurate

Our theories

of government,

modes of

even our religious opinions, were derived from the

same sources.

If we have

degraded the ideas which they cher-

ished with reverence, if we have rendered obscene the mysteries of hfe which they adored as pure and instituted by God himself let

us not add to the injury by endeavoring to cast upon them

the reproach which belongs to those who thus calumniate them.

Herein,

it

may be,

the ancients have us at disadvantage.

They worshipped the Supreme Being as the Father of men, and saw no impurity in the symbolism of parentage to indicate the

work of creation.

What is divine to be and to do cannot be im-

modest and wicked to express.

No man born of woman can

with decency impugn the operation of that law to which he owes his existence ;

and he is impious beyond others who regards that

law as only sensual.

We may easily perceive how the phallic

emblems were adopted to denote the kinship of mankind to the Creator.

Those who employed them apprehended no wrong in

so doing, till impurity of life

had caused all that related to the

subject to be considered as indecorous.

Preface.

viii

In these pages the endeavor has been to discourse of the several topics without levity or discourtesy toward any individual or

people.

those

There may be views taken which differ essentially from

commonly entertained, but there is no design to treat any

person, topic, or opinion with disrespect.

It will also

be seen,

from the references, that the facts here presented have generally

been long familiar to the educated pubUc.

The subject is inter-

esting, not merely because of its peculiar character, but as afford-

ing more complete views of ethnology, as well as of the earlier de-

velopment of religious thought.

Nothing of value can be lost,

and much will be gained in every way, by investigation pursued with candor and dispassionately.

INTRODUCTION. Baal None older is than I. When Man came forth. The final effort, wrung from monstrous forms.

And Earth's outwearied forces could no more, I warmed the ignorant bantling on

my breast.

We rose together, and my kingdom spread

From these cold hills to hamlets in the palms. That grew to Memphis and to Babylon While I on towers and hanging terraces. In shaft and obelisk, beheld my sign

:

Creative, shape of first imperious law.

"Masque of the Gods,^' by Bavard Taylor.

The classic scholar whose studies have hardly exceeded the limits prescribed in the curriculum of the universities,

and the

biblical student whose explorations of the Hebrew Scriptures have

not led him beyond the field of exegesis and theological pursuit, are ill-prepared to hear of a larger world than Greece, .Rome, and Palestine, or of an archaic time which almost remands the annals

of those countries into the domain of modern history. Olympian

Zeus with his college of associate deities, afterward Latinized into Jupiter and his divine subordinates, and the Lord alone with his

ten thousands of sacred ones, comprise their idea of the

supernal world and its divinities.

Beyond, they recognize a vague and misty chaos of mythologies, which, not accurately underWhoever would be standing, they superciliously affect to despise. really intelligent, must boldly explore that chaos, voyaging through the " outer world " away from Troy and Greece, as far as Ulysses went, and from biblical scenes to the very heart of the ancient empires. There is no occasion for terror, like that displayed by the mariners who sailed with Columbus into the unknown ocean. Wherever man is to be found, like instincts, passions, hopes, and ambitions will attest a common kindred. Each person's life is in some manner repeated in that of his fellows, and every human soul is a mirror in which other souls, as well as future and former events, reflect their image. It is

more than probable that the diversified customs, insti-

tutions,

and religions of the several nations of the world are less

I

10

Introduction.

dissimilar in their origin than is often imagined.

The differences

uprose in the progress of time, the shifting scenes of climate, condition, and event.

But the original ideas of existence, and

the laws which pertain to all created things, are p.retty much the

same among the various tribes of mankind. The religions, philothe aspirations sophical systems and symbolisms, are outgrowths, of thinking and reverential men to solve and express in suitable form the facts which underlie and constitute all things. We should therefore approach the subject of human faith and Men's beliefs are worship with candor, modesty, and respect. entitled to so much. The unwitting individual may be astonished at beholding men, the masters of the science and thought of their time, adoring gods that are represented as drunken and adulterous, and admitting extravagant stories and scandalous narrations

—

among their religious verities.

In his simplicity he may conceive

that he has a right to contemn, and even to scoff at, such pro-

But the infatuation and absurdity are only There is a fuller, profounder meaning, which sanctifies the emblems and legends which ignorant and superficial men dedigious infatuation.

apparent.

nounce.

M. R6nan speaks justly as well as eloquently: "It is

sacrilege, in a religious light, this making sport of

symbols con-

secrated by Time, wher^ein, too, man had deposited his first views of the divine world." *

Religions were never cunningly devised by priests, or ambitious leaders, for the purpose of enabling them to hold the human mind in abject bondage.

Nor did they come into existence, full-grown,

like Athen6, the Jove-born ;

nor were they constructed from the

lessons of sages or even of prophets.

They were born, like men,

not mature. but infantile; the body and life as a single entity, without a definite evolving of the interior, symbolized idea, yet containing all potentially ; so that time and growth were required to enable the intelligent mind to distinguish rightly between the

form and the substance which it envelops and shadows forth.

When this substance, like tlie human soul, has fully developed, the external forms and symbols

become of little value, and are

cast off and rejected like chaff from the wheat.

Yet for the sake

of their use they are to be valued and respected.

The well-

thinking medical student never indulges in ribald hilarity at or in the presence of the corpse which he dissects, from reverence for * tltudes cTHistoire Religieuse, Frothingham's translation.

Introduction.

il

the human soul that was once its tenant. lose their sacredness

But religious symbols

when they are employed to supplant the

idea which alone had rendered them valuable.

Let there be no contempt, then, for the Children of the Mist,

who love to gaze backward into the past to ascertain what man has been, and to look within to learn what he is and ought to be.

They are not prophets without inspiration, or apostles that have no mission. Behind the vail is the Shekinah have authority to lift aside the curtain.

;

only the anointed

Modern science somewhat audaciously has endeavored to set aside the time-honored traditions of a Golden Age.

'

We do not

undertake to controvert the new doctrine, so necessary to establish the recently-traced relationships between

men and monkeys.

The same social law which allows every man to choose his own company, can be extended perhaps

to

the

selection

of his

kindred. But, so far as we are able to perceive, there have been cycles

of human development, analogous to the geological periods, that

have been accomplished upon the earth. Men, nations, and civilizations, like the seasons, have passed over the great theatre of existence. We have often only the traces of them in a few remains of language, manufacture, and religion. Much is lost save to conjecture. Judging from our later observations of human progress, there must have been a long term of discipline that schooled them ; yet, perhaps, it was the divine intuition and instinct implanted in them that enabled them to achieve so

much. It is not possible, however, to extend researches back far enough to ascertain. We are not equal to the task of describing the fossils of a perished world.

We are compelled to

read the archaic history through the forms and mysteries * of *

By mysteries the educated reader will not understand merely doctrines or

symbols, or even secrets as such, but a system of discipline and instruction in esoteric learning which was deemed too sacred and recondite for those who had not complied with the essential conditions. Every ancient country had its sacerdotal order, the members of which had been initiated into the mysteries; and even Jesus defended his practice of discoursing in parables or allegories, because that only to his disciples was

mysteries of the given.

kingdom of God, whereas

it

given to understand the

to the multitude

it

was not

The priests of Egypt, the Magians of the ancient countries beyond

the river Euphrates, the priests of Phoenicia and the other countries of Western Asia, were all members of sacerdotal colleges that might not divulge the esoteric knowledge to the uninitiated.

Even the Brahmins of India are said

Introduction.

12 religion,

and the

peculiarities of language, rather than in the

pages of the annalist. The amber of mythology has served to preserve to us the most of what is to be learned on these topics. The primitive religion of mankind is perhaps only to be ascertained when we know accurately their original habitats. like the gilded butterfly, eludes our search. lonia, Syria, Phoenicia,

But this,

India, Persia, Baby-

The Vendidad

Egypt, were but colonies.

indicates a country north of the river Oxus ; and Sir William Jones,

adopting the story of the learned

Sufi,

Mohsan Fani, declared

monarchy once existed there long before the Assyrian empire the history of which was engrafted upon that of the Hindoos, who colonized the country between the river Indus and the Bay of Bengal. In conformity with the his belief that a powerful

;

views of this writer, Sir William accordingly describes the primeval religion of Iran and the Aryan peoples as consisting of " a firm belief that One Supreme God made the world

by his power and continually governed it by his providence a pious fear, love, and adoration of him a due reverence for parents and aged persons a paternal affection for the whole human species, and a compassionate tenderness even for the brute creation." But, however much of truth there may be in this description, it evidently relates only to the blonde races. We see plainly enough ;

:

—

—

;

the engrafting of " history," or rather legends, in countries, as well as among the Brahmins of India.

records, tracing their patriarchs to

many other The Hebrew

Egypt and Assyria, are prob-

to have also their mysteries at the present time ; and the late Godfrey Higgins relates that a Mr. Ellis was enabled, by aid of the masonic tokens, to

That there is enter the penetralia of a temple in the presidency of Madras. some such " freemasonry " existing in many of the countries which we denompagan, is probable.

The early Christians and heretical

sects had also their signs of recognition,

and were distinguished lilce the ini-

inate, uncivilized and

TimThe mysteries most familiar to classical

tiates of the older worships, according to their grade, as neophytes (i

othy iii. 6), spiritual, and perfect.

readers are the Eleusinia, which appear to have descended firom the pre-

Pococke declares them to have been of Tartar

historic periods.

origin,

which is certainly plausible, and to have combined Brahminical and Buddhistical ideas.

Those admitted only to the Lesser Mysteries were denomi-

nated Mystis, or vailed ; those initiated into the Greater Mysteries were Socrates was not initiated, yet after drinking the hemlock

epoptai, or seers.

he addresses Crito " We owe a cock to ^sculapius." This was the peculiar offering made by initiates on the eve of the last day, and he thus sublimely asserted that he was about to receive the great apocalypse. :

Introduction.

13

The Garden of Eden appears to have been known to the king of Tyre (Ezekiel xxviii. 13-16), who is

ably no exception. well

; styled " the anointed cherub " the Assyrian

(xxxi.

is

also described

3-18) as a cedar in Lebanon, " fair by the multitude of his

branches, so that all the trees of Eden that were in the garden

God envied him

" and Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is also assured that he shall " be brought down with the trees of Eden

of

;

into the nether parts of the earth.'' is

reputed to have emigrated, and

From that region Abraham its

traditions are probably

therefore consecrated as religious legends. If we

had time and space to follow this subject, we might be

able to show that the period when the

Hebrew patriarch is sup-

posed to have removed from the region of the Upper Euphrates, revolutions were occurring there which changed the structure of

"Your fathers,'' said Joshua to the assembled Israelites, " your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even

society.

Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor ; and they served other gods." * The Persian legend of " Airyana-vaeja, of the good creation which Anra-mainyas (Ahriman)

full

of death

and the Hebrew story of the garden of Eden J which was by the headwaters of the Oxus, Tigris, and Euphrates, where dwelt the man and the woman till the successful invasion of filled with evils,'' f

the Serpent, indicate the Great Religious War of which traditions exist in

the principal countries of ancient time.

It occurred

between the nations of the East and the nations of the West, the Iranians and Turanians, the Solar and Lunar nations, the Lingacitas and the Yonijas, those who venerated images and religious Vast bodies of men symbols, and those who discarded them. were compelled to abandon their homes, many of them skilled Tribes and dynasties emiin the arts of civilization and war. grated to escape slavery and destruction ; and other chmates received and cherished those who had been deemed unworthy to

These events are superimposed upon the history of every Whether the migration mentioned by Juno of the gens inimica, the Trojans, from Troy to Italy, bearing its political genius and conquered divinities, depicts any actual occurrence, we do not undertake to say but convulsions did take place, by which peoples once living as one nation, the Hindoos and Persians, Greeks and Romans, Germans and Slaves, were divided live.

people.

;

* Joshua xxiv. 2.

f

Vendidad, i. 5-12.

% Genesis ii. and UL

14

Introduction.

The Ethiopian

from each other and removed to other regions.

or Hamitic races underwent a like overturning and dispersion,

probably from their contests with the blonde invaders of the North.

Thus, the second chapter of Genesis describes the river

Pison, as compassing the land of Ethiopia or Cush, which was

evidently situated

people of

this

upon the Erythraean or Arabian

Sea.

The

region appear to have occupied or colonized

India, Babylonia, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and other countries of the

West.

They were the builder-race par excellence ; and carried

civilization,

architecture, mathematical science,

political institutions wherever they went.

their arts

and

Their artisans, doubt-

erected the temples and pyramids of Egypt, India, and Babylon ; excavated the mountain of Ellora, the islands of Salsette and Elephanta, the artificial caves of Bamian, the rocks of Petra and the hypogea of Egypt ; built the houses of Ad in

less,

Arabia, the Cyclopean structures of India, Arabia, and the more

western countries ; constructed ships for the navigation of the seas and oceans, and devised the art of sculpture.

Mathematics and astronomy, alphabetical as well as hieroglyphical writing, and many other sciences, perhaps those which have been discovered in later times, were possessed and cultivated by these " blameless Ethiopians,* most ancient of men." The Hebrew Scriptures, which have been regarded as especially the oracles of religious truth, develop the fact, as has been already suggested, of a close resemblance of the with the surrounding nations. is

earlier Israelites

Their great progenitor, Abraham,

described as emigrating from the region

of Chaldea, at the

^junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the character of a dis-

Yet he and his imme-

senter from the religion of that country, f *

The term Ethiopian cannot be regarded, when applied to any ancient Like other names, it had a and was applied to Zeus or Jupiter, and also to PromeThe best-defined opinion connects it with the serpent-worship, which

people, as indicating negro or negroid origin. religious meaning,

theus.

prevailed, along with that of the lingam,

peoples.

It is noticeable that

golian tribes a world apart. the populations of other

among the Cushite and kindred Mon-

ethnology has given the Chinese and

There seems to be a wall between them and

climates.

The Chinese

nevertheless manifested

themselves occasionally tpon the surface of Asiatic history ; and the Tartars

have often appeared as invaders and conquerors, designated in the metaphors

and allegories of the old languages, as floods of waters, destroying the world. \ Joshua xxiv. 2, 3.

P X fi

s H

O < O

D z;

«

Introduction.

iS

ciate descendants appear to have at least employed the same re-

and forms of worship as the people of Canaan and Phcenicia, who are recorded to have already occupied Pales-

ligious symbols

He erected altars wherever he made a residence ; and " planted agrove " or pillar in Beer-sheba, as a religious emblem.f

tine.*

He is also represented as conducting his son to the land of Moriah, to immolate him as a sacrifice to the Deity, as was sometimes done by the Phoenicians ; and as was afterwards authorized in the Mosaic law.J

One of the suffets, or judges, Jephthah the

Gileadite, in like manner sacrificed his own daughter.at Mizpeh ; §

and the place where Abraham built

his

altar

selected as the site for the temple of Solomon.

was afterwards

Jacob is twice mentioned as. setting up a pillar, calling the place Beth-el, Tf and as making libations. On the occasion also of forming a treaty of amity with his father-in-law, Laban, the Syrian, he erected a pillar and directed his brethren to pile up a cairn, or heap of stones to which were applied the names Galeed, or circle, and Mizpeh, or pillar. Monoliths, or " great stones," appear to have been as common in Palestine as in other countries, and the cairns and circles (gilgals) were equally so, as well as the mounds or "high places." The suffets** or "judges," and the kings, mainSamuel the prophet worshipped tained them till Hezekiah. at a high place at Ramah, and Solomon at the "great stone," or high place in Gibeon.ff There were also priests, JJ and we suspect At Mizpeh, probably at the pillar, kadeshim, stationed at them. was a seat of government of the Israelites ; and Joshua set up Jephthah a pillar under the oak of Shechem, by the sanctuary. the judge made his residence at the former place, and his daugh||

;

* Genesis xii. 6 ;

xiii. 7-

Genesis xxi. 33.

•|-

% Leviticus xxvii. 28, 29.

§ Judges xi. 30, 31, and 34-40. 2 Chronicles iii.

I

Tf

i.

Genesis xxxviii. 18-22 ;xxxv. 1-15.

** Tlie suffet was a magistrate under the Phcenician system, as is observed at

The patriarchal government was that of sheiks, as among the nomadic Arabs, while the Israelites of Goshen and the desert are described 'as being organized like the' Arabs of the towns. \\ I Kings iii. 4. See also ch. xv. 14; xv. 14; xv. 14; xxii. 43. 2 Kings xii. Carthage.

2 ;

xiv.

4 ; xv. 4.

\\ 2 Kings xxiii. 9.

i6

Introduction.

ter, the Iphigenia of the Book of Judges, was immolated there. Samuel was also inaugurated there as suffet of Israel. There were other " great stones " mentioned, as Abel,, Bethshemesh or Heliopolis ; Ezel, where David met with Jonathan and Ebenezer, erected by Samuel on the occasion of a victory over the ;

Philistines.

But Hezekiah appears to have changed the entire Hebrew

He removed the Hermaic or Dionysiac statues, and the conical omphalic emblems of Venus-Ashtoreth overthrew the mounds and altars, and broke in pieces the serpent of brass made by Moses, to which the people had burned incense " unto those days." Josiah afterwards also promulgated the law of Moses, and was equally iconoclastic. He removed the paraphernalia of the worship of the sun, destroyed the image of Semel, or Hermes, expelled the kadeshim, or consecrated men and women, from the cloisters of the Temple, and destroyed the statutes and emblems of Venus and Adonis. * We have suggested that Abraham was represented in the character of a dissenter from the worship prevailing at " Ur of the Khasdim." As remarked on a subsequent page by Mr. Wake, " that some great religious movement, ascribed by tradition to Abraham, did take place among the Semites at an early date, is undoubted." It may have been the " Great Religious War." The religion of the patriarchs appears to have had some affinity with that of the Persians, insomuch that some writers intimate an identity of origin. This was certainly the case at a later period. Other peoples were also driven to emigration. Many Scythian nations abandoned their former seats. The Phoenicians left their country on the Erythrean Sea, and emigrated to religious polity.

;

the shores of the Mediterranean.

The Pali, or shepherds on the

Indus, removed to the west.

A part of the population of

Asiatic Ethiopia, or Beluchistan,

it

is

supposed, also emigrated.

The Hyk-sos,f during the Sixth Dynasty of the Old Monarchy, * 2 Kings xxiii. 4-20.

Manetho translates this term, from the "sacred language," kingly shepHe seems to hesitate, however, for he also remarks that " some say that they were Arabians," and that " in the sacred books they were also styled captives." Shos signifies Arabian, )•

herds ; hyk signifying king, and sos a shepherd.

Are we not allowed to suppose them to be shepherds as They appear to have introduced the horse into Egypt, which makes this idea seem plausible. and sus a horse.

rearing and using horses ?

Introduction.

appeared in Egypt.

17

Josephus, abandoning his

own history of

Jewish Antiquities, construes the account by Manetho, in regard to them, as relating to the ancient Hebrews, remarking: "Our

ancestors had the dominion over their country.'' *

If we might

interpret the story of Abraham and other patriarchs as we would

the traditions of o'ther nations, we would assign to it a religious

or esoteric meaning rather than a secular and historical one, and fix a later period for the beginning of

the authentic annals.

The

early association of the Shemitic with the Ethiopian nations, however, appears to be abundantly corroborated by profane as well

as sacred history. Similarity of customs indicate that the " chosen people,"

if

they had a separate political existence, were in other respects substantially like the earlier nations.

We may expect to find

these resemblances close enough to show even a family likeness.

Of course, every intelligent reader is aware that the Hamitic and Shemitic populations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, belonged to what is denominated the Caucasian or Indo-Germanic race. The earliest deity of the Ethiopian or Hamitic nations, whose worship was most general, was the one known in the Bible by the designation of Baal. titles,

He bore, of course, a multiplicity of

which were often personified as distinct tiTibx aleim, or

divinities

;

besides having in Syria a separate

season of the year.

name

for every

In the Sanscrit language he was styled

Maha Deva, or Supreme God

and after the Aryan conquest, was added to the Brahmin Trimourti under the title Siva. Other names are easily traced in the Hamitic languages as Bala in Bel, the tutelar deity of Babylon Deva Nahusha, or Dionysus, of Arabia and Thrace Iswara, or Oseiris, of Egypt. In western mythology he become more generally known through the Phoenicians. In Tyre he was Mel-karth, the lord of the city in Syria he was Adonis and Moloch but all through Europe he is His twelve labors best known by the hero-name Hercules. ;

;

;

;

;

;

typify the sun passing through the signs of the zodiac ; his con-

quests in the west show whither the Phoenician navigators di-

maypoles, Bal-fires, and other remnants of old worships, exist as his memorials. The story of his achievements is a fair outline of the history of Phcenician rected their course ; while the

adventure. * Against Afion, i. 25.

Introduction.

1

" The wonderful and universal power of light and heat," says

most modest and amiable writer, Mrs.Lydia Maria Child,* "has caused the Sun to be worshipped as a visible emblem of Water is recognized deity in the infancy of nearly all nations. that

Hence the obvious symbol of divine influence. Hindostan. The sacred rivers, fountains, and wells abounding in

as another

Invisible, pervad-

Air is likewise to them a consecrated emblem. ing

all

space, and

necessary to the

naturally suggests the spirit of God.

life

of

creatures,

all

it

Nearly all languages de-

scribe the soul

by some phrase

breath of life.'

Brahm is sqmetimes called Alma, or the Breath-

ing Soul. " Other

similar in

signification to

'

the

emblems deemed sacred by the Hindoos, and wor-

shipped in their temples, have brought upon them the charge of gross indecency. But if it be true at the present time, it probably was not so at the beginning.

When the world was in its

infancy, people spoke and acted with more of the -simplicity and

directness of little children than they do at present.

In the in-

dividual child, and in the childhood of society, whatever is incom-

prehensible produces religious awe.

As the reflective faculties

develop, man is solemnly impressed with the wonders of creation, in the midst of which his soul wakes up, as it were, from a dream.

And what so miraculous as the advent of this conscious soul into the marvellous its

mechanism of a human body?

If Light with

grand revealings, and Heat making the earth

fruitful

with

beauty, excited wonder and worship in the fif st inhabitants of our world, is

it

strange that they likewise

regarded with reverence

the great mystery of human Birth ?

regard it ?

Were they impure thus to Or, are we impure that we do not so regard it ? We

have travelled far, and unclean have been the paths, since those old anchorites first spoke of God and the soul in the solemn Let us not smile at their mode depths of their first sanctuaries. Infinite and Incomprehensible tracing the Cause throughout all of the mysteries of Nature, lest by so doing we cast the

shadow of

our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity. " From time immemorial, an emblem has been worshipped in Hindostan as the type of creation,f or the origin of life. * Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages.

Vol.

I,

pp.

It 15,

16, 17.

\ The first verse of the

Book of Genesis declares creation to have been a

Introduction.

19

is

the most common symbol of Siva [Baal or

is

universally connected with his worship.

original intention

of this

custom,

we

Siva was not merely the reproducer of

Maha Deva], and To understand the

should remember

human forms

;

that

he rep-

resented the Fructifying Principle, the Generating Power that

pervades the universe, producing sun, moon, stars, men, animals,

and plants. his temples.

,

The symbol to which we have alluded is always in It is usually placed in the

inmost recess, or sanc-

tuary, sculptured in granite, marble, or ivory, often crowned with flowers,

and surmounted by a golden

star.

Lamps are kept

burning before it, and on festival occasions it is illuminated by a

lamp with seven branches, supposed to represent the planets. * Small images of this emblem, carved in ivory, gold, or crystal, are often worn as ornaments about the neck. The pious use them in their prayers, and often have them buried with them. Devotees of Siva have it written on their foreheads in the form of a perpendicular mark. The maternal emblem is likewise a religious type and worshippers of Vishnu represent it on their forehead by a horizontal mark, with three short perpendicular ;

lines."

These symbols are found in the temple-excavations of the of Salsette and Elephanta, of unknown antiquity ; in the grotto-temples of EJlora, at the "Seven Pagodas" on the Coromandel coast, in the old temple at Tanjore, and elsewhere, where Siva-worship is in the ascendant. Although these symbols, the lingam and yoni, have been adopted by the Brahmins, there " In is little harmony between the Lingayats and Vishnavites. " the sacrifice of Wisdom," says Daksha, no Brahmin is wanted to officiate." The Rig- Veda denounces the "lascivious wretches " who adore the sexual emblems, in such language as this "Let not the lascivious wretches approach our sacred rites, f "The irresistible [Indra] overcame the lascivious wretches." In her chapter on Egypt, Mrs. Child again remarks " Because plants cannot germinate without water, vases full of it were islands

:

:

series

of Toledoth, or generations.

It is properly translated.'

"God (the

Aleun) engendered (B'RA) the heavens and the earth." * The seven-branched candlestick of the Mosaic tabernacle has here its prototype. f Rig- Veda, vii. 21:5; and x. 99 : phallus-gods.

3.

The term used is Sisna-devas, or

20

Introduction.

carried at the

head of processions in honor of Oseiris, and his

votaries refrained from destroying or polluting any spring.

This

reverence for the production of Life, introduced into his worship

A colossal image

the sexual emblems so common in Hindostan.

of this kind was presented to his temple in Alexandria, by King

Ptolemy Philadelphus. Crowned with gold and surmounted by a star, it was carried in a splendid chariot in the midst of

golden

religious processions.

A serpent, the emblem of Immortality,

always accompanies the image of Oseiris." " Reverence for the mystery of organized life led to the recog.

.

.

nition of a mascuUne and feminine principle in all things spiritual

Every elemental force was divided into two, the The active wind was masculine, the atmosphere, or inert was feminine. Rocks were

or material.

parents of other forces. passive mist,

masculine, the productive earth was feminine. deity of every district \nome\ Trinity.

The presiding

was represented as a Triad or

At Thebes it was Amun, the creative Wisdom

;

Neith,

Mother; and a third, supposed to represent the Universe. At Philae it was Oseiris, the generating Cause ; Isis, the receptive Mould, and Horus, the Result. The sexual emblems everywhere conspicuous in the sculptures of their temples would seem impure in description, but no clean and thoughtful mind could so regard them while witnessing the obvious simplicity and solemnity with which the subject is treated." "All the idolaters of that day," says Colonel Tod,* seem to have, held the grosser tenets of Hinduism. When Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and built them high places and images and groves [mounds, hermaic pillars, and omphalic statues] on every high hill and under every green tree,' the object was Bal ; and the pillar (the lingam, matzebah or phallus) was his symbol, t It was on his altar that they burned incense, and sacrificed unto the Calf on the fifteenth day of the eighth the

spiritual

.

.

'

'

month,' the sacred Amavus of the Hindus. is

The Calf of Israel

the Bull (nanda) of Balc6sar or Iswara, the Apis of the Egyp-

tian Oseiris.

.

.

Mahadeva, or Iswara, is the tutelary divinity of

the Rajpoots in Mewar, and from the early annals of the dynasty

appears to have been, with his consort Isa, the sole object of * Rajasthan^ vol. i. , 76-79. f I Kings xiv. 22.

The introduction of kadeshimy or persons consecrated

and set apart, like nautch-girls, or almas, is first mentioned in this connection.

Introduction Gehlote adoration. linga, and

is

2

Iswara is adored under the epithet of Ek-

either worshipped in his monolithic symbol, or as

Iswara Chaomukhi, the quadriform divinity represented by a bust with four faces."

These spectacles, however, were regarded as sacred, and few "This worship was so general as to have spread itself over a large part of the habitable globe for it flourished for many ages in Egypt and Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy it was and still is in vigor in India and many parts of Africa, and was even found in America on its discovery by the Spaniards." * Being regarded as the most sacred objects of worship, and consecrated by religion, the cultus was associated with every idea and sentiment which was regarded as ennobling to man. The

regarded them as possessing moral turpitude.

;

;

reflecting

men of all the older ages, down to Plato, Plotinus,

lamblichus, and the followers of the Gnosis, all paid like respect

arcanum of life and of Man. We need not look however different our modes of thought, however exaggerated above theirs our fastidiousness, we cannot escape the same problems which they thus labored to solve, nor the necessity to realize the vailing and the apocalypse which the symbols and the mysteries foreshadowed. to the great

superciliously upon their veneration ; for

* Aphrodisiacs and Anti- Aphrodisiacs.

Three Essays on the Powers of

Reproduction, with some Account of the Judicial " Congress," as practised in

By John Davenport. London, i86g.

France during the Seventeenth Century. with eight full-page illustrations.

Small quarto,

PHALLIC WORSHIP.* BY HODDER M. WESTROPP.

Human Nature is the same in all climes and the workings of this same human nature are almost identical in the different stages of its growth. Hence similar and analogous ideas, beliefs, and superstitious practices are frequently evolved independently among different peoples. These are the result of suggestions arising spontaneously in the human mind at certain stages of its development, and which seem almost universal. As a remarkable instance, of this, I have drawn up the following sketch of phallic worship, which was one of those beliefs or superstitious practices which have sprung up independently, and which seem to have extensively ;

prevailed among many nations. It will acquire additional interest when

it

is

considered

that it is the most ancient of the superstitions of the hu-

man race, that it has prevailed more or less among all known people in ancient times, and that it has been handed down even to a very late and Christian period. In the earlier ages the operations of nature made a stronger impression on the minds of men.

Those ideas,

springing from the coristant observation of the modes of acting in nature, were consequently more readily suggested to the minds of all races of

men in the primitive ages.

Two causes must have forcibly struck the minds of men in those early periods when observant of the operations of

nature, one the generative power, and the other the productive, the active and passive causes. *

This double mode

A paper read before the Anthropological Society of London, April 5th,

1870.

Phallic Worship.

24

of production visible in nature must have given rise to comparisons with the mode of proceeding in the generation of animals, in which two causes concur, the one act-

and the other passive, the one male and the other These ideas were doubtless suggested independently and spontaive

female, the one as father, the other as mother.

neously in different countries

;

for the human mind

is

so

constituted that the same objects and the same operations

of nature will suggest like ideas in the minds of men of all races, however widely apart.

Nature to the early man was not brute matter, but a being invested with his own personality, and

endowed with

the same feelings, passions, and performing the same actions.

He could only conceive the course of nature from

the analogy to his own actions.

production, bringing forth

and effect.

Generation, begetting

—were thus his ideas of cause

The earth was looked upon as the mould of

nature, as the recipient of seeds, the nurse of what

was

produced in its bosom the sky was the fecundating and fertilizing power. An analogy was suggested in the union These comparisons are found of the male and female. in ancient writers. " The sky," Plutarch says, "appeared to men to perform the functions of a father, as the earth those of a mother. The sky was the ftither, for it cast seed into the bosom of the earth, which in receiving them became fruitful and brought forth, and was the mother." This union has been sung in the following verses by ;

Virgil

"Turn pater omnipotens fecundis imbribis aether Conjugis in gremium Isetse descendit."

Geor.

ii.

Columella has related, in his treatise on agriculture, the loves of nature, or the marriage of heaven and earth,

which takes place in the spring of the year. These ideas bear a prominent part in the religious creeds of several nations. In Egypt the Deity or principle of generation was Khem, called " the father " the abstract

—

idea of father ; as the goddess Maut was that of mother.

The office of Khem was not confined to the procreation

Phallic

Worship.

25

and continuation of the human species, but extended even over which he presided, when we find his statue accornpanied by trees and plants and kings offering to him herbs of the ground, cutting the corn before him, or employed in his presence tilling the land, and

to the vegetable world,

;

preparing it to receive the generating influence of the deity. In the Saiva Purana of the Hindoos, Siva says

:

"From

the supreme spirit proceed Purusha (the generative or

male principle), Prakriti (the productive or female principle), and Tirue and by them was produced this universe, the manifestation of the one god. Of all organs of sense and intellect, the best is mind, which proceeds from Ahankara, Ahankara from intellect, intellect from the su;

.

.

.

preme being, who is, in fact, Purusha. It is the primeval male, whose form constitutes the universe, and whose breath is the sky

and though incorporeal, that male am

;

is thus addressed by Brahma: "I know that Thou, O Lord, art the eternal

In the Kritya Tatwa, Siva

I."

Brahm, that seed which, being received in the womb of thy Sakti (aptitude to conceive), produced this universe that thou united with thy Sakti dost create the universe from thine own substance like the web from the spider."

;

In the same creed Siva is the personification of the sun (which he is equally with Surya) or fire, the genial heat which pervades, generates and vivifies all and Bhavani, ;

who, as the goddess of nature is also the earth, is the universal mother.

Among the Assyrians, the supreme god, Bel, was styled " the procreator "

and his wife, the goddess Mylitta, represented the productive principle of nature, and received Another deity, the god the title of the queen of fertility. Vul, the god of the atmosphere, is styled the beneficent ;

On chief, the giver of abundance, the lord of fecundity. Assyrian cylinders he is represented as a phalhc deity. With him is associated a goddess Shala, whose ordinary title is " Sarrat," queen, the feminine of the word " Sar," which means

chief.

Sir Henry Rawlinson remarks, with

regard to the Assyrian San, or Shamas, the sun-god, that 2

26

Phallic

Worship.

the idea of the motive influence of the sun-god in

human

affairs

arose

all

from the manifest agency of the

material sun in stimulating the functions of nature.

In

Ghe (the earth), and by her becomes father of Oceanus, HypePhoenician mythology, Ouranos (heaven) weds ron, lapetus, Cronos,

and other gods.

In conformity

with the religious ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Virgil describes the products of the earth as the result of the

conjugal act between Jupiter (the sky)

and Juno (the According to St. Augustin, the sexual organ of man was consecrated in the temple of Liber, that of woman in the sanctuaries of Libera these two divinities were named father and mother. In the month of April, when the fertilizing powers of nature begin to operate and its .productive powers to be visibly developed, a festival in honor of Venus took place at Rome in it the phallus wa,s carried in a cart, and led in procession by the Roman ladies to the temple of Venus outside the Colline gate, and then presented by them to earth).

;

;

the sexual parts of the goddess. the

This is only symbolizing

same idea as expressed by Virgil in the Georgics.

We

America, and of the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean. According to the Indians of Central America, Famagostad and Zipaltonal, the first male and the second female, created heaven, earth, man, and all things. The Tahitians imagined that everything which exists in the universe proceeds from the union of two beings one of them was named Taroataihetounou the other Tepapa they were supposed to produce continually and by connection the days and months. Those islanders supposed that the sun and moon, which are gods, had begotten the stars, and that the eclipses were the time of their copulation. New Zealand myth says we have two primeval ancestors, a father and a mother. They are rangi and papa, heaven and earth. The earth, out of which all things are produced, is our mother the protecting and overruling heaven is our father. find similar ideas in the religious creeds of

:

;

A

;

Phallic

Worship.

It is thus evident that the

27

doctrine of the reciprocal

and passive, male

principles of nature, or nature active

and female, was recognized

in nearly

all

the primitive

religious systems of the old as well as of the new world,

and in none more clearly than in those of Central America thus proving, not only the wide extent of the doctrine, but also its separate and independent origin, springing from those innate principles which are common to human nature in all climes and races. Hence the almost universal reverence paid to the images of the sexual parts, as they were regarded as symbols and types of the generative and productive principles in nature, and of those gods and goddesses who were the representatives of the same principles. The Phallus and the Cteis, the Lingam and the Yoni the special parts contributing to generation and production, becoming thus symbols of those active and passive causes, could not but become objects of reverence and worship. The union of the two symbolfor almost all primized the creative energy of all nature itive religion consisted in the reverence and worship paid to nature and its operations. Evidence that this worship extensively prevailed will be found in many countries, both in ancient and modern It occurs in ancient Egypt, in India, in Syria, in times. ;

—

;

Babylon, among the Assyrians, in Persia, Greece, Italy, In Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, and among the Gauls.

Egypt, the phallus is frequently represented as the symAccording to Ptolemy, the phallus was the object of religious worship among the Assyrians and also among the Persians. In Syria, Baal-Peor was represented with a phallus in his mouth, according to St. Jerome. The Jews did not escape this worship and we see their women manufacturing phalli of gold and of silbol of generation.

;

ver, as we find in Ezekiel xvi. 17.*

Among the Hindoos

a religious reverence was paid to the

Lingam and Yoni,

* "Thou didst take also thy fair jewels of my gold, and didst make to thyself

images of men, and didst commit fornication with them."

Translation of Ezekiel.

Noyes's

28

Phallic Worship.

and among the Greeks and Romans to the Phallus and Cteis. Among the Teutons and Scandinavians, the god Fricco, corresponding to the Priapus of the Romans, was adored under the form of a phallus a similar god under a similar symbol was adored in Spain, whose name was ;

Hortanes.

This worship has been found in different parts of AmerMexico, in Peru, at Hayti it still prevails at the

ica, in

;

present day in a great part of India and Thibet.

Accord-

ing to Mr. Stephens, the upright pillar in front of the

temples of Yucatan is a phallus.

We read in an ancient

document written by one of the companions of Fernando Cortez "In certain countries, and particularly at Panu:

(il membro che portano gli nomini fra le gambe), and it is preserved in the temples." The inhabitants of Tlascala also paid worship to the sexual organs of a man and woman. In Peru, several repre-

00, they adore the phallus

At Hayti, according to Mr. Artaud, phalli have been discovered in

sentations in clay of the phallus are met with.

and are believed to be undoubtedly the manufacture of the original inhabitants of the island. In one of the Marianne islands of the Pacific Ocean, on festive occasions, a phallus, highly ornamented, called by the natives Tinas, is carried in procession. Among the simple and primitive races of men, the act of generation was considered as no more than one of the different

parts of

the island,

operations of nature contributing to the reproduction of the species, as in agriculture the sowing of seed for the

production of corn, and was consequently looked upon as a solemn duty consecrated to the Deity as Payne Knight ;

remarks,

it

was considered

as

a solemn sacrament in

honor of the Creator. In those early ages, all the operations of nature were consecrated to some divinity, from whom they were supposed to emanate ; thus the sowing of seed was presided

over by Ceres. In Egypt, the act of generation was consecrated to Khem ; in Assyria, to Vul ; in India, to Siva ; in Greece,

29

Phallic Worship. in the primitive pastoral age, to Pan ;

and in later times, and in Italy, to Mutinus. Among the Mexicans, the god of generation- was named Triazoltenti. These gods became the representatives of the generative or fructifying powers in man and nature. The following curious passage, fromCook's First Voyage, will show that almost similar views were entertained by a primitive race in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, which must have been suggested independently, from their complete disconnection with the ancient world " On the 14th I directed that divine service should be performed at the fort we were desirous that some of the principal Indians should be present, but when the hour came, most of them returned home. Mr. Banks, however, crossed the river, and brought back Tubourai Tamaide and his wife Tomio, hoping that it would give occasion to some inquiries on their part, and some instruction on having seated them, he placed himself between ours them, and during the whole service, they very attentively observed his behavior, and very exactly imitated it standing, sitting, or kneeling, as they saw him do they were conscious that we were employed about somewhat serious and important, as appeared by their calling to the Indians without the fort to be silent yet when the service was over, neither of them asked any questions, nor would they attend to any attempt that was made to explain what had been done. " Such were our motives; our Indians thought fit to young man, near perform vespers of a different kind. six feet high, performed the rites of Venus with a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people and a great number of the natives, without the but, as apleast sense of being indecent or improper peared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place. Among the spectators were several women of superior rank, particularly Oberea, who may properly be said to have assisted at the ceremony." * to Priapus

;

:

:

:

;

;

A

;

* Hawkesworth's Voyages^ vol. i. ch. 12.

Phallic Worship.

30

The reverence, as well as worship, paid to the phallus had nothing in it which partook of indecency all ideas connected with it were of a reverential and religious kind. When Abraham, as mentioned in Genesis, in asking his servant to take a solemn oath, makes him lay his hand on his parts of generation (in the common version, "under his thigh" *), it was that he required as a token of his sincerity his placing his hand on the most revered part of his body as, at the present day, a man would place his hand on his heart in order to evince his sincerity. Jacob, when dying, makes his son similar custom is still Joseph perform the same act. retained among the Arabs at the present day. An Arab, in taking a solemn oath, will place his hand on his memin the early ages :

;

A

brum virile in attestation of his sincerity, f The indecent ideas attached to the phallic symbol were, though it seems a paradox to say so, the result of a more advanced civilization verging towards its decline, as we have evidence at Rome and Pompeii. % We may here introduce an extremely just and apposite remark of Constant in his work on Roman polytheism " Indecent rites may be practised by a religious people with the greatest purity of heart. But when incredulitj :

has gained a footing

among these peoples, these rites

become then the cause and pretext of the most revolting corruption." A similar remark has been made by Voltaire. Speaking of the worship of Priapus, he says, " Our ideas of propriety lead us to suppose that a ceremony which appears to us so infamous could only be invented by licentiousness but it is impossible to believe that ;

* The thigh had a peculiar sanctity.

It was the part

cial victim as of a sweet savor to the Deity.

was preserved in embryo

burned of the sacrifi-

Bacchus, it will be remembered,

at the thigh of Jupiter ; and Pythagoras, in his in-

itiations, displayed a golden thigh as the last mystery.

f Mimoires sur PEgypte, partie deuxifeme, p. 196. X Secret Museum of Nafles; Being an account of the Erotic Paintings, Bronzes, and Statues contained in that famous "Cabinet Secret." By

Colonel Fanin. tions.

4to,

Now first translated from the French.

London, 1871.

With sixty illustra-

Phallic Worship.

31

depravity of manners would ever have led among any people to the establishment of religious ceremonies. It is probable, on the contrary, that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity, that the first thought was to honor the deity in the symbol of life which it has given us. Such a ceremony may have excited licentiousness among youths, and have appeared ridiculous to men of education in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times." Three phases in the representation of the phallus should be distinguished first, when it was the object of reverence and religious worship secondly, when it was ;

;

used as a protecting power against evil influences of various kinds, and as a charm or amulet against envy and the evil eye, as at the postern gate at Alatri and at Pom-

and as frequently occurs in amulets of porcelain found in Egypt, and of bronze in Italy thirdly, when it was the result of mere licentiousness and dissolute morals. Another cause also contributed to its reverence and frequent representation the natural desire of women among all races, barbarous as well as civilized, to be the fruitful

peii,

;

— mother of children — especially

as, among some people, women were esteemed according to the number of children they bore, and as, among the Mohammedans of the

present day, it is sinful not to contribute to the popula-

and as the bestower of offspring, the phallus became an object of reverence and especial worship among women. At Pompeii was found a gold ring, with the representation of the phallus on its bezel, supposed to have been worn by a barren woman. To propitiate the deity and to obtain offspring, offerings of this symbol were made in Roman temples by women, and this custom has been retained in modern times at Isernia, near Naples. Stone offerings of phalli are also made at the present day in a Buddhist temple in Pekin, and for the same object Mohammedan women kiss with reverence the organ of generation of an In India this worship has found its most idiot or saint. tion

;

as a symbol, therefore, of prolificacy,

Phallic Worship.

32

extensive development. There young girls who are anxious for husbands, and married women who are desirous of progeny, are ardent worshippers of Siva and his symbol, the lingam, is sometimes exhibited in enor;

mous proportions. In the sixteenth century, St. Foutin in the south of France, St. Ters at Antwerp, and in the last century Saints Cosmo and Damiano at Isernia, near Naples, were

worshipped

for the

same purpose by young

and

girls

barren women. Sir

Gardner Wilkinson records

similar

superstitious

practices at the present day at Ekhmim in Egypt.

The

superstitions of the natives here ascribed the same properties to a stone in one of the sheikh's

tombs, and likewise

to that of the temple of Pan, which the statues of the god

of generation, the pati-on deity of Panopolis (Ekhmim),

and the to have possessed modern women of Ekhmim, with similar hopes and equal credulity, offer their vows to these relics for a numerous were formerly believed

;

progeny.

We may conclude with the following passage from Captain Burton, which exhibits similar customs among a rude and barbarous people of the present day " Among :

whose primal want is progeny, we observe a greater or less development of the phallic worship. In Dahome it is uncomfortably prominent. Every street from Whydah to the capital is adorned with the symbol, and the old ones are not removed. The Dahoman Priapus is a clay figure, of any size between a giant and the pigmy, crouched upon the ground, as if contemplating The head is sometimes a wooden its own attributes. block rudely carved, more often dried mud, and the eyes and teeth are supplied by cowries. The tree of life is all barbarians

anointed with palm-oil, which drips into a pot or a shard placed below

it,

and the would-be mother of children

prays that the great god Legba will make her fertile."

INFLUENCE OF THE PHALLIC IDEA

RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY.* BY C. STANILAND WAKE.

It will not be necessary for

me to give details of the

rites by which the phallic superstition is distinguished, as

may be found in the works of Dulaure,t Payne Knight, and other writers. I shall refer to them, therefore, only so far as may be required for the due understanding of the subject to be considered the influence of

they

!j:

the phallic idea in the religions of antiquity.

The first

step in the inquiry is to ascertain the origin of the superstition

in

question.

Faber ingeniously referred to

a

primitive universal belief in a great father, the curious

connection seen to exist between nearly all non- Christian mythologies, and he saw in phallic worship a degradation of this belief.

Such an explanation as this is, however,

since, not only does it require the assumption of a primitive divine revelation, but proof is still wanting that all peoples have, or ever had, any such notion of a great parent of mankind as that supposed to have been revealed. And yet there is a valuable germ of

not satisfactory

*

;

A paper read before the Anthropological Society of London, April 5th,

1870. f Histoire Abrige de Differens Cultes.^ vol. ii. Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and \

A

its

Connection with the

Mystic Theology of the Ancients. By Richard Payne Knight, Esq. New To which is added An Essay on the Worship of the Generative Edition.

Powers during the Middle Ages of Western Europe. Engravings. 410, London, i86g.

Illustrated with 138

Phallism in

34

truth in this hypothesis.

The

phallic superstition

is

founded essentially in the family idea. Captain Richard Burton recognized this truth when he asserted that "amongst all barbarians whose primal want is progeny, we observe a greater or less development of the phallic worship." * This view, however, is imperfect. There must have been something more than a mere desire for progeny to lead primitive man to view the generative process with the peculiar feelings

ions

embodied in this supersti-

We are, in fact, here taken to the root of all relig-

tion.

—awe

at the mysterious and unknown.

the uncultured mind cannot understand

is

That which viewed with

dread or veneration, as it may be, and the object presenting the mysterious phenomenon may itself be worshipped as a fetish, or the residence of a presiding spirit.

But there

nothing more mysterious than the phenomena of generation, and nothing more important than the final result

is

of the generative act.

Reflection on this result would

naturally cause that which led to it to be invested with a

The feeling

certain degree of superstitious significance.

generated would have a double object, as it had a double origin

—wonder at the phenomenon

of the value of its

consequences.

itself and a perception

The former, which is

the most simple, would lead to a veneration for the organs

whose operation conduced to the phenomena

—hence the

superstitious practices connected with the phallus and the

yoni

among primitive peoples.

In

this,

moreover,

we

have the explanation of numerous curious facts observed

among eastern peoples.

Such is the respect shown by

women for the generative organ of dervishes and fakirs. * Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. \ erts,

i, p.

320.

The Vanaprastha were Brahminical anchorites, who inhabited the deslived

on vegetables, devoted themselves to contemplation, macerated

the body, fought with devils and giants (as a natural consequence), and were insensible to heat and cold.

They were caUed later, by the Greeks, Gymnoso-

and although they went perfectly naked, no throb or involuntary movement was ever seen in any part of their bodies. Women who were barphists ;

ren oftentimes came and touched their shrivelled member, hoping thereby to become fruitful.

Not the slightest emotion was noticed at such times.

Ancient Religions.

35

Such also is the Semitic custom referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures as " the putting of the hand under the thigh," which is explained by the Talmudists to be the touching of that part of the body which is sealed and made holy by circumcision a custom which wa.s, up to a recent date, still in use among the Arabs as the most solemn guarantee of :

truthfulness.*

The second phase of the phallic superstition is that which arises from a perception of the value of the consequences of the act of generation. The distinction between this and the preceding phase is that, while the one has relation to the organs engaged, the other refers more particularly to the chief agent.

family

is

Thus, the father of the

venerated as the generator

;

this authority is

founded altogether on the act and consequences of generation. We thus see the fundamental importance, as well as the phallic origin, of the family idea.

From this has

sprung the social organization of all primitive peoples. An instance in point may be derived from Mr. Hunter's account of the Santals of Bengal. He says that the classification of this interesting people among themselves depends, " not upon social rank or occupation, but upon the family basis." This is shown by the character of the " adsix great ceremonies in a Santal's life, which are :

admisunion of his own tribe with another by marriage formal dismission from the living race by incremation lastly, a reunion with the departed fathers. " \ We may judge from this of the character of certain

mission into the family sion into the race

;

admission into the tribe

;

;

;

;

customs which are widespread among primitive peoples, and the phallic origin of which has long been lost sight The value set on the results of the generative act of. The old ascetics would have regarded with contempt the practices of Christian monks, who were indeed children when compared with their Eastern anThe Monks before Christ by John Edgar Johnson; and Descripcestors. tion of the Character, Manners and Customs of the People of India, by Abbe

—

J.

.^

A. Dubois. * See Dulaure, op. +

cit., vol. ii., p.

Rural Bengal, p. 203.

219.

Phallism in

3^

would naturally make the arrival at the age of puberty an event of peculiar significance. Hence, we find various ceremonies performed among primitive, and even among civilized, peoples at this period of life. Often when the youth arrives at manhood other rites are performed to mark the significance of the event.

Marriage, too, derives an importance from its consequences which otherwise it would not possess. Thus, among many peoples it is attended with certain ceremonies denoting its object, or, at least, marking it as an event of peculiar significance in the life of the individual, or even in the history of the tribe. The marriage ceremonial is especially fitted for the use of phallic rites or symbolism the former, among semi-civilized peoples, often being simply the act of consummation itself, which appears to be looked on as part of the ceremony. The symbolism we have ourselves retained to the present day in the wedding-ring, which must have had a phallic origin, if, as appears probable, it originated in the Samothracian mysteries.* Nor does the influence of the phallic idea end with life. The veneration entertained for the father of the family as the " generator," led in time to peculiar and, finally, care being taken of the bodies of the dead to the worship of ancestors, which, under one form or ;

;

another, distinguished all the civilized nations of antiquity, as

it

does even now most of the peoples of the heathen

world.

CIRCUMCISION.

There is one phallic rite which, from its nature and wide range, is of peculiar importance. I refer to circumThe origin of this custom has not yet, so far as I cision. aware, been satisfactorily explained. The idea that, am under certain climatic conditions, circumcision is necessary for cleanliness and comfort, does not appear to be well-founded, as the custom is not universal even within Nor is the reason given by Captain Richard the tropics. * See Ennemoser's History of Magic (Bohn), vol. ii, p. 33.

Ancient Religions.

37

Burton, in his "Notes connected with the Dahoman," for both circumcision and excision, perfectly satisfactory.

The real origin of these customs has been forgotten by all peoples practising them

;

and, therefore, they have ceased

to have their primitive significance. at least, had a superstitious origin

That circumcision,

may be inferred from

the traditional history of the Jews.

The old Hebrew

writers, persistent in their idea that they were a peculiar

by God for a special purpose, asserted by Jehovah as a sign of the covenant between Him and Abraham. Although we cannot doubt that this rite was practised by the Egyptians and Phoenicians long before the birth of Abraham,* yet two points connected with the Hebrew tradition are

people, chosen

that this rite was instituted

noticeable.

These are, the

— —and

act of circumcision

it

God and man

its

nected

the sign of a covenant between performance by the head of the

is

These two things

family. ;

since,

in

religious significance of the

are, indeed, intimately con-

the father was

the patriarchal age,

always the priest of the family and the offerer of the sacrifices. We have it, on the authority of the Veda, that this was the case also among the primitive Aryan people.

Abraham, therefore, as the father and priest of the family, performed the religious ceremony of circumcision on the males of his household. Circumcision, in

its

inception,

a purely phallic

is

rite,

aim the marking of that which from its associations is viewed with peculiar veneration, and it connects the two phases of this superstition which have

having for

its

for their object respectively the instrument of generation

and the agent.

We are thus brought back to the con-

sideration of the simplest form of phallic worship, that * Herodotus, Euterfe,

§ 104.

It

was a

practice at least 2,400 years

before our era, and is even then an ancient custom. to have been found only

the Phoenicians.

Nevertheless

among nations cognate with

appears

The neglect of it by Moses and by the Israelites whom he a strong presumption

conducted to the border of the land of Canaan,

is

against its previous employment by the patriarchs.

Ed.

\

it

the Egyptians and

See Bunsen's God in History, vol.

i, p.

299.

Phallism in

38

which has reference to the generative organs viewed as the mysterious instruments in the realization of that keen desire for children which distinguishes all primitive peoples. This feeling is so nearly universal that it is a matter of surprise to find the act by which it is expressed signalized Yet such is the case, although the incidents in as sinful.

which the their true

fact is embodied are so veiled in figure that meaning has long been forgotten. Clemens

Alexandrinus tells us that " the Bacchanals hold their orgies in honor of the frenzied Bacchus, celebrating their sacred frenzy by the eating of raw flesh, and go through the distribution of the parts of butchered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out the name of that Eve, by whom error came into the world." He adds that " the

symbol of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent," and that according to the strict interpretation of the

Hebrew term,

the

name Hevia,

aspirated,

signifies

a

female serpent* We have here a reference to the supposed fall of man from pristine " innocence," Eve and the serpent being very significantly introduced in close conjunction, and indeed •fied with each other.

becoming in some sense identi-

In fact the Arabic word for serpent,

hayyat, may be said also to mean " life," and in this sense

the legendary first human mother is called Eve or Chevvah, in Arabic Hawwa. In its relations, as an asserted fact, the question of the fall has an important bearing on Quite irrespective of the impossithe subject before us. bility of accepting the Mosaic cosmogony as a divinely inspired account of the origin of the world and man

—

cosmogony which, with those of all other Semitic peoples,

—

has a purely "phallic" basis f the whole transaction said to have taken place in the Garden of Eden is fraught with difficulties on the received interpretation. The very idea on which it is founded the placing by God, in the

—

way of Eve, of a temptation which He knew she could * Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. IV. (Clement of Alexandria), p. 27.

t

The Hebrew word bara^

"begotten."

See Gesenius.

translated "created," has also the sense of

t-^'re.

tyitMiui/er.

f^i.C/i*tiAtd'Q',et/icey

f^y'rcm lie- cJ&rait'ji.

'J'-i'oniyt/ie^JltcMU of eyVa/u

c

.^'rouvi/ie^^ot'ae

t-Jalr//!-

SERPENT-SYMBOLS FOUND IN PERSIA, CHINA, AND EGYPT.

C^mAziC'.

THE

THE SERPENT, THE CONCHA, AND MATERNAL SYMBOL. THE MITHIAIC FIGURE OF AZON,

THE TRIAD REPRESENTED BY A HUMAN FIGURE AND SER-

A HUMAN FIGURE ENCIRCLED WITH A ZONE COMPOUND OF

FIRE ON THE ALTAR AND SER-

PENTS

REPRESENTING

TRIAD.

PENTS.

THE TRIAD REPRESENTED BY A HUMAN FIGURE, A CONCHA AND SERPENT. THE TRIAD REPRESENTED BY

A SERPENT. THE TREE OF WISDOM ENCIRCLED BY THE SERPENT, SYMBOLIZING THE MALE AND FEMALE CREATIVE PRINCIPLES.

Ancient Religions. not resist

—

is

39

sufficient to throw discredit on the ordinary-

reading of the narrative.

The effect, indeed, that was to

follow the eating of the forbidden

fruit, appears to an ordinary mind to furnish the most praiseworthy motive for not obeying the command to abstain. That " eating

fruit " was simply a figurative mode of expressing the performance of the act necessary to the perpetuation of the human race an act which in its ori-

of the forbidden

—

— evident

gin was thought to be the source of all evil

is

from the consequences which followed, and from the curse As to the curse inflicted on Eve, it has always it entailed.* been a stumbling-block in the way of commentators. For, what connection is there between the eating of a fruit and sorrow in bringing forth children ? The meaning is evident, however, when we know that conception and childbearing were the direct consequences of the act forbidden. How far this meaning was intended by the compiler of the Mosaic books we shall see further on.

SERPENT SYMBOLISM ASSOCIATED WITH PHALLIC WORSHIP.

That we have, in the Mosaic account of the " fall," a from other considerations connected with the narrative. The most important relate to the introduction of the serpent on the scene, and the posiphallic legend, is evident

tion

it

takes as the inciting cause of the sinful act.

We

reminded of the passage already quoted from Clemens Alexandrinus, who tells us that the serpent was Now, this the special symbol of the worship of Bacchus. animal holds a very curious place in the religions of the Although, in consequence civilized peoples of antiquity. of the influence of later thought, it came to be treated as the personification of evil, and as such appears in the Hebrew legend of the fall, yet before this the serpent was In the latter capathe symbol of wisdom and healing. appears even in connection with the exodus from city it character as a symbol of Egypt. It is, however, in its are here

* See Jaskar, by Dr. Donaldson, 2d edition (i860), p. 45 et seq.

40

Phallism in

wisdom that it more

especially claims our attention, al-

—

though these ideas are intimately connected the power of healing being merely a phase of wisdom. From the earliest times of which we have any historical notice, the serpent has been connected with the gods of wisdom. This animal was the especial symbol of Thoth or Taaut, a primeval deity of Syro-Egyptian mythology,* and of all those gods, such as Hermes and Seth, who can be connected with him. This is true also of the third mernber of the primitive Chaldean triad, H'ea or Hoa. According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the most important titles of this deity refer

'

'

knowNot only is he "the intelligent fish,"

to his functions as the source of all

ledge and science."

but his name may be read as signifying both "life " and maybe considered as "figured by the great serpent which occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording Babylonian benefactions." f The serpent was also the symbol of the Egyptian Kneph, who resembled This the Sophia of the Gnostics-, the Divine Wisdom. a " serpent," and he

animal, moreover, was the Agathodcemon of the religions of antiquity

—the giver of happiness and good

was in these

fortune.:):

It

having a phallic significance, that the serpent was associated with the sungods, the Chaldean Bel, the Grecian Apollo, and the Semitic Seth. capacities, rather than as

But whence originated the idea' of the wisdom of the serpent which led to its connection with the legend of the

" fall " ? This may, perhaps, be explained by other facts which show also the nature of the wisdom here intended. Thus, in the annals of the Mexicans, the first woman, whose name was translated by the old Spanish writers * Bunsen's Egypt, vol. iv., pp. 225, 255, 288. f History of Herodotus, vol. i. , p. 600. % Wilkinson's ^K«>«^ Egyptians, vol. iv., pp. 412, 413 ; and King's Gnos-

See also Bryant's Ancient Mythology, vol. iv., p. 201. The last 31. named work contains much curious information as to the extension of ser-

tics, p.

pent-worship.

Ancient Religions.

41

" the woman of our flesh," is always represented as ac-

companied by a great male serpent. This serpent is the Sun-god Tonacatl-coatl, the principal deity of the Mexican pantheon and the goddess-mother of primitive man is called Cihua-Cohuatl, which signifies woman of the serpent.''' According to this legend, which agrees with that of other American tribes, a serpent must have been the This notion can be explained father of the human race. only on the supposition that the serpent was thought to have had at one time a human form. In the Hebrew legend the tempter speaks and " the old serpent having two feet," of Persian mythology, Ts none other than the ;

;

evil spirit Ahriman himself, f

The fact is that the ser-

pent was only a symbol, or at most an embodiment, of the spirit which it represented, as we see from the belief of certain African and American tribes, which probably Serpents preserves the primitive form of this supposition. are looked upon by these peoples as embodiments of their

departed ancestors, % and an analogous notion tained by various

is

enter-

No doubt the noiseless

Hindu tribes.

movement and the activity of the serpent, combined with and marvellous power of fascination, led being viewed as a spirit-embodiment, and hence to In the spirit-character also as the possessor of wisdom. § ascribed to the serpent, we have the explanation of the association of its worship with human sacrifice noted by Mr. Fergusson this sacrifice being really connected with the worship of ancestors. It is evident, moreover, that we may find here the oriits peculiar gaze its

—

* See The Serpent Symbol in America, by E. G. Squier, M.A. (American Archaeological Researches, No.

i,

1851), p.

161 et seq. ; Palenquk, by M.

de Waldeck and M. Brasseur de Bourbourg (1866), p. 48. f Lajard, Mim-oires de CInsiitut Royal de France (Acad, des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres),

t.

xiv., p. 89.

X Wood's Natural History of Man, vol,

i.,

p. 185 ; also Squier's Serpent

Symbol, p. 222 et seq.

§ I have a strong suspicion that,

in its primitive shape, the

Hebrew le-

gend, as that of the Mexicans, gave the serpent -form to both the father and the mother of the human race.

3

Phallism in

42

gin of the idea of evil sometimes associated with the ser-

The Kafir and the Hindu, although he treats

pent-god.

with respect any serpent which may visit his dwelling, yet It may, perhaps, entertains a suspicion of his visitant.

be the embodiment of an evil spirit, or for some reason or Mr. Fergusson states other it may desire to injure him. " that the chief characteristic of the serpents throughout the east in all ages seems to have been their power over the wind and rain," which they gave or withheld accordThis notion ing to their good or ill-will towards man.* is curiously confirmed by the title given by the Egyptians to the Semitic god S'eti {Seth)-Typhon, which was the name of the Phoenician evil principle, and also of a destructive wind, thus having a curious analogy with the " ty-,

phoon " of the Chinese seas.f When the notion of a duality in nature was developed, there would be no difficulty in applying it to the symbols or embodiments by which the idea of wisdom was represented in the animal world. Thus, there came to be, not only good, but also bad, serpents, both of which are referred to in the narrative of the

Hebrew exodus, but still more clearly in the

good and the bad serpents of Perwhich symbolized Ormuzd, or Mithra, sian mythology, and the evil spirit Ahriman.:}: So far as I can discover,

struggle between the

the serpent-symbol has not a direct phallic reference, nor, after all, is its attribute of wisdom the most essential.

The idea most intimately associated with this animal was life,

not present, but future, and ultimately, no doubt, Thus the snake Bai was figured as guardian

eternal. \

* Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 46.

Rudi'a, the Vedic

form of Siva, the

" King of Serpents," is called the father of the maruts (winds).

See infra

as to identification of Siva with Saturn.

\ The idea of circularity appears to be associated with both these names.

See Bryant, " Typhon."

op. cit., vol.

iii.,

\ Lajard, loc. cit., p. 182.

p. 164,

and vol. ii., p. 191, as to derivation of

See also Culte de Mithra, p. 35.

§ In the Bacchanalia the serpent's head is seen at the open lid of the box. See Dom. Martin's '''Explication," etc., pi. II., p. 29. I

" Wise (jipovi/ioc {phronimoi) as serpents, and harmless (or pure) as doves."

Ancient Religions.

43

of the doorways of those chambers of Egyptian tombs

which represented the mansions of heaven.* A sacred serpent appears to have been kept in all the Egyptian temples, and we are told that " many of the subjects, in the tombs of the kings at Thebes in particular, show the

importance it was thought to enjoy in a future state. " f The use of crowns formed of the asp, or sacred Thermuthis, given to sovereigns, and divinities, particularly to Isis,.:j: the goddess of life and healing, was, doubtless, intended to symbolize eternal life. This notion is quite consistent with the ideas entertained

by the Phoenicians as to

the serpent, which they supposed to have the quality " of

putting off its old age, and assuming a second youth." §

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. Another feature of the Mosaic legend of the "fall" which deserves consideration is the reference to fhe tree It is now generally supposed of knowledge, or wisdom. that the forbidden fruit was a kind of citrus, but certain facts connected with arhorolatry seem to me to disprove Among peoples in the most opposite rethis opinion. \

gions various species of the fig-tree are held sacred.

.

Thus

throughout nearly the whole of Africa, with the banyan {Ficus indicus), the sacred tree of the Hindu BrahEven in several of the Polynesian islands, as in mins. various parts of the Indian Archipelago and in Northern it

is,

Australia, the fig-tree

is

highly venerated.

In ancient

Egypt, the banyan, or the Ficus sycamorus, was always considered sacred. f So it was in Greece and Italy. Ac-

—Matthew

x.

16.

By serpents the masculine and by doves the feminme at-

tribute are represented.

* See Mimoires de Vlnstitut (Academie des Inscriptions), torn, xvii., p. 97. f Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians^ vol. v., p. 65. X Do., p. 243.

§ Sanchoniathon (translated by C017), in The PAcenix, p. 197. SmitVs Dictionary of t/ie Bible. Art., " Apple-Tree. II

1[

Wilkinson, op. cit., vol. iv., pp. 260, 313.

Phallism in

44

cording to Plutarch, a basket of figs forrtied one of the chief objects carried in the procession in honor of Bac-

chus

;

and the sacred phallus itself appears to have beeri

made of the wood of the fig-tree, as was also the statue of the phallic god Priapus.*

Judging from these facts, and considering that the sycamore was sacred among the Hebrews themselves its fruit having the significance of the virgin womb f there can be little difficulty in identifying the fig-tree, whether the sycamore or the banyan, with the tree of knowledge planted in the midst of the garden of Eden. The sense intended to be conveyed by this expression would be evident enough without the introduction of the "tree of life." That this is intended to represent the male element is undoubted. The Chaldean god Hea, who was symbolized by the serpent, was also the god of life and knowledge; and Rawlinson states that "there are very strong grounds indeed for connecting him with the serpent of scripture, and with the Paradisiacal traditions of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.":}:

The bo-tree ( Ficus religiosd) of the Buddhists is said to derive greater sacredness from

its

encircling the

palm

the Palmyra palm being the kalpa-X.re.e, or the "tree of life" of the Hindu paradise. §

This connection is termed

by the Buddhists "the bo-tree united in marriage with the palm," and we have in

it

the perfect idea of genera-

tive activity, the combination of the male and female Mr. Fergusson, in accordance with his special elements.

theory as to the origin of serpent-worship, thinks that this superstition characterized the old Turanian (by which

probably he means Hamitic) empire of Chaldea, while * Horace, 8th Satire.

See also Ante-Nicene Library, vol. iv., Clement of

Alexandria^ p. 41. f

See Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 108.

This seems to have been the symbolical signification of the fig throughout the East from the earliest historical period ; as the pomegranate symbolized the full womb.

\ History of Herodotus, Book i.. Appendix, Essay lo, § iv. § Tennent's Ceylon, vol. ii., p. 520.

,

Ancient Religions.

45

tree-worship was more characteristic of the later Assyrian empire.*

means

and it had that form of faith

This opinion is, no doubt, correct

really that the older

race

;

with which the serpent was always indirectly connected adoration of the male principle of generation, the primitive phase of which was probably ancestor-worship ; while

the latter race adored i\\Q female principle, symbolized by the saci-ed tree, the Assyrian " grove."

The "^r^^of hfe," however, undoubtedly had reference to the male element, and we may well suppose that originally the fruit alone was treated as symbolical of the opposite principle. There is still an important point connected with the Hebrew legend which requires consideration the nature of the protecting kerub. That this was merely intended as a symbol of the deity himself, there is every reason to believe, and that the symbol was nothing more than the

—

sacred bull of antiquity, is evident from the description of the kerub given by Ezekiel (chaps, i. and

x.).:j: But what was the religious significance of the bull, an animal which it would be easy to prove was venerated by nearly

the peoples of antiquity ?

all

It is

now well known that

the bull symbolized the productive force in nature, and

hence it was associated with the sun-gods.

The symbolic

figure carried in procession during the festival of Osiris

and

Isis was representative,

probably, of the phallus of

According to the cosmogony of the ZendAvesta, Ormuzd, after he had created the heavens and the earth, formed the first being, called by Zoroaster "the primeval bull." This bull was poisoned by Ahriman but its seed was carried, by the soul of the dying animal, represented as an ized, to the moon, " where it is continually purified and fecundated by the warmth and this animal. §

;

light of the sun, to

become the germ of all creatures."

* op. cit., p. 12. •f

vol. :|:

As to the sacred Indian fig-tree, see Ginguiaut's Religions de I' Aniiqiiite i.,

p. 149, note.

Faber's Pagan Idolatry, vol. i., p. 422; vol. iii., p. 606.

§ See Dulaure, oJ>. cit.

,

vol.

ii.

,

p. 32.

46

Phallism

m

At the same time, the material prototypes of all living things, including man himself, issued from the body of bull.'* This is but a developed form of the ideas which anciently were almost universally associated with this animal among those peoples who were addicted to sun-worship. There is no doubt, however, that the

the

superstitious veneration for the bull existed, as it still exists,

quite independently of the worship of the heavenly

The

like the goat, must have been a Egypt before it was declared to be an embodiment of the sun-god Osiris. In some sense, indeed, the bull and the serpent, although both of them became associated with the solar deities, were antagonistic. The serpent was symbolical of the personal male element, or rather had especial reference to the life of man, X while the bull had relation to nature as a whole, and was symbolical of the general idea of fecundity. This antagonism was brought to an issue in the struggle between Osiris and Seti (Seth), which ended in the triumph of the god of nature, although it was renewed even

bodies. f

bull,

sacred animal in

when the golden calf of Osiris, or Horus, was set up in the Hebrew camp.

during the exodus,

The references made to the serpent, to the tree of wisdom, and to the bull in the legend of the " fall," sufficiently prove its phallic character

;

which was, indeed, recognized This view is confirmed,

in the early Christian church. §

moreover, by analogous legends in other mythologies. The Hindu legend approaches very nearly to that pre-

Hebrew scriptures. Thus, it is said that Supreme Being, desired to tempt Brahma

served in the Siva, as the

,

(who had taken human form), and for this object he dropped from heaven a blossom of the sacred fig-tree. Brah* Lajard, Le Culte de Mithra, p. 50. f This superstition is found among peoples

—the Kafirs, for instance—who

do not appear to possess any trace of planetary worship. \ This is evident from the facts mentioned above, notwithstanding the use of this animal as a symbol of wisdom. § In connection with this subject, see St. Jerome, in his letter on Virginity to Eustochia.

Ancient Religions.

ijj

mi, instigated by his wife, Satarupa, endeavors to obtain render him imbut when he has succeeded in doing so, he is cursed by Siva, and doomed to misery and degradation. Mr. Hardwicke, when commenting on this tradition, adds that the sacred Indian fig is endowed by the Brahmans and Buddhists with mysterious significance, as the tree of knowledge or intelligence.* This legend confirms what I have said as to the nature of the Hebrew tree of knowledge, and also the phallic explanation of the " fall " itself, when we consider the attributes of the tempter of the Hindu story. The Persian legend preserved in the Boun-dehesch is, however, still more conclusive. According to this legend Meschia and Meschiane the first man and woman, were seduced by Ahriman, under the form of a serpent, and they then first committed "in thought, word, and action, the carnal sin, and thus tainted with

this blossom, thinking its possession will

mortal and divine

;

,

original sin all their descendants." f

SOURCE OF THE LEGEND OF THE " FALL OF MAN." Under the circumstances I have detailed, we can hardly doubt that the legend of the " fall " has been derived from a foreign source.

That

it

could not be original to

by several considThe position occupied in the legend by the ser-

the Hebrews may, I think, be proved erations.

pent is quite inconsistent with the use of this animal symby Moses.;]: Like Satan himself even, as the Rev. Dunbar Heath has shown, § the serpent had not, indeed, a wholly evil character among the early Hebre-\YS. In the second place, the condemnation of the act of generation

bol

* Christ and other Masters, vol. i. p. 305. ,

The destruction of purity in the world by Dahaka is stated in the 9th Yajna, v. 27. We have probably here the germ of the fuller legend, which may, however, have been contained \ Lajard, op. eit., pp. 52-60.

the Serpent

in the lost portion of the Zend-Avesta.

\ The turning of Aaron's rod into a serpent had, no doubt, a reference to

the idea of wisdom associated with that animal.

§ The Fallen Angels, 1857.

48

Phallism in

was directly contrary to the central idea of patriarchal history. The promise to Abraham was that he should have seed "numerous as the stars of heaven for multitude and to support this notion, the descent of Abraham is traced up to the first created man, who is commanded to increase and multiply. It is very probable, however, that when the legend was ;

appropriated by the compiler of the Hebrew scriptures

had a moral significance

as well as a

it

merely figurative

—

sense. The legend is divisible into two parts the first of which is a mere statement of the imparting of wisdom by the serpent and by the eating of the fruit of a certain tree, these ideas being synonymous, or, at least, consistent, as appears by the attributes of the Chaldean Hea* The nature of this wisdom may be found in the rites of the Hindu Sacti Puja.\ The second part of the legend, which is probably of much later date, is the condemnation of the act referred to, as being in itself evil, and as leading to misery and even to death itself. The origin of this latter notion must be sought in the esoteric doctrine taught in the mysteries of Mithra, the fundamental ideas of which were the descent of the soul to earth and its re-ascent to the celestial abodes after it had overcome the temptations Lajard and debasing influences of the material life. shows that these mysteries were really taken from the secret worship of the Chaldean Mylitta ; but the reference to " the seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent's :j;

head," is too Mithraic for us to seek for an earlier origin for the special form taken by the Hebrew myth. The object of the

myth evidently was to explain the origin of

death, § from which man was to be delivered by a coming

Saviour, and the whole idea is strictly Mithraic, the Per* See supra. \ Memoirs

of the Anthropological Society of London, vol.

ii.

,

p. 264,

et

and compare with the Gnostic personification of " truth" ; for which see King's Gnosticsand their Remains, p. 39. seq.

;

X Lajard, op.

cit.,

p. 96.

§ Jehovah threatens death, but the Serpent impliedly promises life, the former having relation to the individual, the latter to the race.

Ancient Religions.

49

sian deity himself being a Saviour-God.* The importance attached to virginity by the early Christians sprang

from the same source. The Avesta is full of references to " purity" of life and there is reason to beheve that, in ;

the secret initiations, the followers of Mithra were taught to regard marriage itself as impure, f

The religious ideas which found expression in the legend of the fall were undoubtedly of late development,:]; although derived from still earlier phases of religious thought. The simple worship in symbol of the organs of generation, and of the ancestral head of the family, prompted by the desire for offspring and the veneration for him who produced it, was extended to the generative force in nature. The bull, which, as we have seen, symbolized this force, was not restricted to earth, but was in

course of time transferred to the heavens, and, as one of the zodiacal signs, was thought to have a peculiar relation to certain of the planetary bodies.

This astral phase

of the phallic superstition was not unknown to the Mosaic

A

religion. still earlier form of this superstition was, however, known to the Hebrews, probably forming a link between the worship of the symbol of personal generative power and that of the heavenly phallus as the worship of the bull connected the veneration for the human generator with that for the universal father. ;

HERM^, TERMINI, PILLARS AND " GROVES." One of the primeval gods of antiquity was Hermes, the Syro-Egyptian Thotli, and the Roman Mercury. Kircher identifies him also with the god Termimis. This is doubtless true, as Hermes was a god of boundaries, and appears, as Dulaure has well shown, to have presided over *

Lajard, op. cit., p. 60, note.

f Several of the Essenes, who appear to have had Mithraism, taught this doctrine.

some connection with

\ It is well known to biblical critics that this legend formed earlier Mosaic narrative.

no part of the

so

Phallism in

the national frontiers.

The meaning of the word Thoth, The peculiar primi-

erecting, associates it with this fact.

tive form of Mercury, or Hermes, was " a large stone, fre-

Somequently square, and without either hands or feet. times the triangular shape was preferred, sometimes an upright pillar, and sometimes a heap of rude stones."*

The pillars were called by the Greeks Hermce, and the heaps were known as Hermean heaps the latter being accumulated " by the custom of each passenger throwing

—

a stone to the daily increasing .mass, in honor of the god." Sometimes the pillar was represented with the attributes of Priapus.f

is

The identification of Hermes or Mercury with Priapus confirmed by the offices which the latter deity fulfilled.

One of the most important was that of protector of gardens and orchards, and probably this was the original office performed by Hermes in his character of a " god of the country.":]; Figures set up as charms to protect the produce of the ground would, in course of time, be used not only for this purpose, but also to mark the boundaries of the land protected, and these offices being divided, two deities would finally be formed out of one. The Greek Hermes was connected also with the Egyptian Khem, and no less, if we may judge from the symbols used in his worship, with the Hebrew Eloah. Thus, in

Hebrew patriarchs, we are told that when Jacob entered into a covenant with his father-inthe history of the

law Laban, a pillar was set up, and a heap of stones made, § and Laban 5aid to Jacob, "Behold this heap and behold this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee this heap be witness, and this pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shall not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me for harm." ;

*

Faber's Pagan Idolatry.

f See Dulaure, of. cit., vol. if

i.,

as to the primeval Hermes,

Smith's Diciionary of MytAology.-

Art.

"Hermes."

g Genesis xxxi. 45 to 53. Jacob called the heap or cairn of stones Galeed, a circle, and the statue Mizpeh, or a pillar.

Ancient Religions.

Si

We have here the Hermce and Hermean heap, used by the Greeks as landmarks, and placed

by them on the

public roads.

In the linga of India we have another instance of the

use of the pillar-symbol.

The form of this symbol is

—

embodies an idea which is more explicitly shown when the Linga and the Yoni are, as is usually the case among the worshippers of the Hindu Siva, combined to form the Lingam. The stone 'figure is not, however, itself a god, but only representative of a spirit * who is thought to be able to sufficiently expressive of the idea which

it

satisfy the yearning for children so characteristic of many

primitive peoples

;

this

probably having been its original

object, and the source of its use as an amulet for the pro-

tection of children against the influence of the evil eye.

In course of time, however, when other property came to

be coveted equally with offspring, the power to give this property would naturally be referred to the primitive phallic spirit, and hence he became, not merely the protector, as we have seen, of the produce of the fields and the guardian of boundaries, but also the god of wealth and traffic, and even the patron of thieves, as was the case with the Mercury of the Romans.

The Hebrew patriarchs desired large flocks as well as numerous descendants, and hence the symbolical pillar was peculiarly fitted for their religious rites. It is related even of Abraham, the traditional founder of the Hebrew people, that he " planted a grove {eshetj^ in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting Elohim."

:j:

From the phallic character of the "grove"

{ashera) said to have been in the House of Jehovah, and

from the evident connection between the two words, we must suppose that the eskel of Abraham also had a phallic *.

Linga means a "sign" or "token."

The truth of the statement in the

text would seem to follow, moreover, from the fact, that the figure

is

sacred

only after it has undergone certain ceremonies at the hands of a priest. j-

Said also to mean a tamarisk tree.

in subsequent times.

\ Genesis xxi. 33.

It is asserted to have been worshipped

Phallism in

52

Most probably the so-called " grove " of the earlier patriarch, though it may have been of wood, and the stone "bethel" of Jacob, had the same form, and were simply the betylus,\ the primitive symbol of deity reference.*

among all Semitic and many Hamitic peoples. The participation of the Hebrew patriarchs in the rites connected with the " pillar- worship " of the ancient world, it extremely probable that they were not stran-

renders

gers to the later planetary worship.

Many of the old

phaUic symbols were associated with the new supersti-

and Abraham being a Chaldean, it is natural to suppose that he was one of its adherents. Tradition, tion

;

indeed, affirms that Abraham was a great astronomer, and, at one time at least, a worshipper of the heavenly

and that he and the other patriarchs continued to be affected by this superstition is shown by various incidents related in the Pentateuch. Thus, in the description given of the sacrificial covenant between Abraham and Jehovah, it is said that, after Abraham had divided the sacrificial animals, a deep sleep fell upon him as the sun was going down, and Jehovah spoke with him. " Then, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces." The happening of this event at the moment of the sun's setting reminds us of the Sabsean custom of praying to the setting sun, still practiced, according to bodies

;

Palgrave, among the nomads of Central Arabia.

THE GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT OF ARCHAIC TIME. That some great religious movement, ascribed by tradition to

Abraham, did take place among the Semites at

an early date

is

undoubted.

What the object

of this

* Even if the statement of this event be an interpolation, the argument in the text is not affected.

The statement sufficiently shows what was the form

of worship traditionally assigned to Abraham.

—f

" The deity Uranus devised Bsetylia, stones having souls " (\Woiis e^'I'i'Xo"'

lithous empsuchous).

Ancient Religions.

S3

movement was it is difficult to decide.* It should be remembered that the Chaldeans worshipped a plurality of gods, supposed to have been symbolized by the seven planets.

Among these deities the sun-god held a com-

paratively inferior position, the moon-god, Hicrki, coming

before him in the second triad. f

It was at Ur, the special

seat of the worship of the moon-god,:]: that Abraham is said to have lived before he quitted it for Haran fact,

;

and this

considered in the light of the traditions relating to

the great patriarch, may, perhaps, justify us in inferring that the reformation .he endeavored to introduce was the substitution

of a simple sun-worship for the planetary

cult of the Chaldeans, in which the worship of the

moon

must to him have appeared to occupy a prominent place.

The new faith was, indeed, a return to the old phallic idea of a god of personal generation, worshipped through the

symbolical betylus, but associated also with the adoration of the sun as the especial representative of the deity.

That Abraham had higher notions of the relation of man to the divine being than his forerunners is very probable,

but his sojourn in Haran proves that there was nothing fundamentally different between his religious faith and that of his Syrian neighbors. I am inclined, indeed, to believe that to the traditional

Abraham must be ascribed

the establishment of sun-worship throughout Phoenicia and

Lower Egypt, in connection with the symbols of an earlier and more simple phallic deity. Tradition, in fact, declares that he taught the Egyptians astronomy § and we shall ;

see that the religion of the Phoenicians, as, indeed, that of

the

Hebrews themselves, was the worship of Saturn, the

* May it aot have been the " Religious War " which is recorded as having talien place in the different countries of the archaic period,

remoter West ?

from India to the

Ed.

f 'S.2m\inson's Five Ancient Monarchies, vol. i., p. 617; ii., p. 247. The later Hebrews affected the Persian religion, in which the "Sun was :]:

Abraham evidently had a like preference, being a The lunar religionists employed images in their worship.

the emblem of worship.

reputed iconoclast.

—£d. § Josephus, Antiquities of the yews, Book i., chap, viii., § 2.

54

,

Phallism in

erect pillar-god, who, under different names, appears to have been at the head of the pantheons of most of the

peoples of antiquity.

The reference in Hebrew history to

the teraphim of Jacob's family recalls the fact that the

name assigned to Abraham's father was Terah, a " maker The teraphim were, doubtless, the same as

of images."

the seraphim, which were serpent-images,* and the house-

hold charms, or idols, of the Semitic worshippers of the sun-god, to whom the serpent was sacred. Little is known of the religious habits of the Hebrews during their abode in Egypt. Probably they scarcely

differed from those of the Egyptians themselves and, even with the religion of Moses, so-called, which we may presume to have been a reformed faith, there are many ;

points of contact with the earlier cult.

The use of the ark

of Osiris and Isis shows the influence of Egyptian ideas

;

and the introduction of the new name for God, Jahve, is evidence of contact with late Phoenician thought, f

The

ark was, doubtless, used to symbolize nature, + as distin-

guished from the serpent- and pillar-symbols which had The latter, however, relation more particularly to man. were by far the most important, as they were most intimately connected with the worship of the national deity,

who was the divine father, as Abraham was the human That this deity, notprogenitor, of the Hebrew people. withstanding his change of name, retained his character

shown by the fact that he is repeatedly have appeared to Moses under the figure of a The pillar of fire which guided the Hebrews by flame. night in the wilderness, the appearance of the cloudy pilof a sun-god, is said to

* The serpent-symbol of the exodus [Numbers xxi.] is called a "seraph."

Moses is set forth as the son-in-law of Jethro or Hobab, the Kenite, a and probably became his disciple. At Horeb he learned, by a sacred As the Kenites were scribes or hierovision, or initiation, the sacred name. phants (i Chronicles ii. 55), it is very probable that they had the knowledge of this name, in common with the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and the sacerdotal Ed. orders of otlier Asiatic nations. X The ark was the deposilum of divine or generative power for the preser)-

priest ;

vation of the human race.

The dove always accompanies it.

Ancient Religions.

55

and probably of a flame over the mercy-seat to betoken the presence of Jehovah,

lar at the door of the tabernacle,

and the perpetual fire on the altar, all point to the same conclusion. The notion entertained by Ewald, that the idea connected with the Hebrew Jahve was that of a " Deliverer "

or

"Healer" (Saviour),* is quite consistent Not only was the primeval

with the fact I have stated.

Phoenician deity, El, or Cronus, the preserver of the world, for the benefit of which

he offered a mystical sacrifice, " but Saviour" was a common title of the sun-gods of antiquity.

THE HEBREW IDENTIFIED WITH ETHNIC RELIGIONS. There is one remarkable incident which is said to have happened during the wanderings of the Hebrews in the Sinaitic wilderness, which appears to throw much light on the character of the Mosaic cult, and to connect it with other religions.

I refer to the use of

the brazen serpent

as a symbol for the healing of the people.

The worship

:j:

of the golden calf may, perhaps, be described as an idolatrous act, in imitation of the rites of Egyptian Osiris-worship, although probably suggested by the use of the ark. The other case, however, is far different and it is worth ;

while repeating the exact words in which the use of the

serpent-symbol is described.

When the people were bit-

by the "fiery" serpents, § Moses prayed for them, and we read that, thereupon, " Jehovah said unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent [literally, a serapli\ and set it ten

,

*

The History of Israel. (English translation), vol. i.

,

p. 532.

f See Sanchoniathon (Cory, op. cit.'). " But for the foolish devices of their wickedness, wherevi'ith being deX ceived, they worshipped serpents void of reason,

and vile beasts, thou didst

send a multitude of irrational beasts upon them for vengeance, that they

might know that wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also shall he be

Wisdom of Solomon.^ xi. 16. § Much discussion has taken place as to the nature of these animals. For " an explanation of the epithet "fiery," see Sanchoniathon " Of the Serpent condemned."

.,

(Cory, op. cit.).

Phallism in

56

and it shall come to pass, that every one he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that, if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived."* It would seem, from this account, that the Hebrew seraph was, as before suggested, in the form of a serpent but what was the especial significance of this healing figure ? f

upon a pole that

is

;

bitten, when

;

At an earlier stage of our inquiry, I referred to the fact of the serpent being, indirectly, through

its

attribute of

wisdom, a phallic symbol, but also directly an emblem of life, and to the peculiar position it held in nearly all the religions of antiquity. In later Egyptian mythology, the contest between Osiris and the Evil Being, and afterwards that between Horus and Typhon, occupy an important place. Typhon, the adversary of Horus, was figured under the symbol of a serpent, called Aphdphis, or the Giant,:]: and it cannot be doubted that he was only a later form of the god Seth. Professor Reuvens refers to an invocation of Typhon-S'eth § and Bunsen quotes the statement of Epiphanius that " the Egyptians celebrate the festivals of Typhon under the form of an ass, which they call Seth."| Whatever maybe the explanation of the fact, it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the hatred with which he was afterwards regarded, this god Seth, or Bunsen Set, was at one time highly venerated in Egypt. says that, up to the thirteenth century before Christ, Set " was a great god universally adored throughout Egypt, who confers on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nine;

* Numbers xxi.

8, g.

,

\ "Having come to the interior of the desert, the people were exposed to the attacks oi Burning Serpents, as the original text reads, the bite of which

caused great pain ; and not a few of the sufferers died, which again produced

Moses was ordered to resort to the an immense excitement in the camp. means of the Phoenician Ksculapius, whose symbol, the brass serpent, was erected in the camp, which produced the desired effect." History of the Israelitish Nation, by Isaac M. Wise, p. I02. \ Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. iy., p. 435. II

^gypt> vol. iii., p. 426.

§ Ditto, p. 434.

Ancient Religions. teenth

57

dynasties the symbols of life and power.

most glorious monarch of the

latter

derives his name from this deity."

The

dynasty, Sethos,

He adds

:

''

But sub-

sequently, in the course of the twentieth dynasty, he

is

suddenly treated as an evil demon, inasmuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached." Moreover, according to this distinguished writer, Seth " appears gradually among the Semites as the background of their religious consciousness " and not merely was he " the primi;

God

of Northern Egypt and Palestine," but his genealogy as " the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch

tive

(the man), must be considered as originally running paral-

from the Elohim, Adam's father."* That Seth had some special connection with the Hebrews

lel with that derived

proved, among other things, by the peculiar position occupied in their religious system by the ass the firstborn of which alone of all animals was allowed to be redeemed^ and the red heifer whose ashes were to be reserved as a " water of separation" for purification from Both of these animals were in Egypt sacred to Seth sin. I (Typhon), the ass being his symbol, and red oxen being at one time sacrificed to him, although at a later date objects of a red color were disliked, owing to their association with the dreaded Typhon. § That we have a reference to this deity in the name of the Hebrew lawgiver is very probable. No satisfactory derivation of this name, Moses, Mosheh (Heb.), has yet been given. Its original form was probably Am-a-ses or Am-ses, which in course of time would become to the Hebrews Om-ses or Mo-ses, meaning only the .(god) Ses, i.e., Set or Seth.^ On this

is

—

—

—

||

* God in History^ vol. i., pp. 233-4. f

Exodus xxxiv. 20.

%

Numbers xix. i-io.

§ As to the God Seth, see Pleyte, La Religion des Pre-Israelites (1862). II

ogy.

The Sanscrit, Maha vuse, a great sage, seems to be a plausible etymolMusa as it is pronounced, is the Arabic name and it may have an ;

affinity with the Muses of

Thessaly and the ancient sage MusEeus.-

Ed.

1 According to Pleyte, the Cabalists thought that the soul of Seth had passed into Moses {op. cit., p. 124).

4

It

is

strange that the

name of the

Phallism in

58

hypothesis, there

may have been preserved in the first

book of Moses (so-called) some of the traditional wisdom said to have been contained in the sacred books of the Egyptian Thoth, and of the records engraved on the pillars of Seth. It is somewhat remarkable that, according to a statement of Diodorus, when Antiochus

Epiphanes

entered the temple at Jerusalem, he found in the Holy of Holies a stone figure of Moses, represented as a man with a long beard, mounted on an ass, and having a book in his

hand.*

The Egyptian mythus of Typhon actually Egypt riding on a gray ass.f It

said that Seth fled from

strange, to say the least, that Moses should not have been allowed to enter the promised land, and that he should be so seldom referred to by later writers until long after the reign of David,:}: and above all, that the name given to his successor was Joshua, i.e., Saviour. It is wprthy of notice that Nun, the name of the father of is

Joshua, is the Semitic word for fish, the phallic character of the fish in Chaldean mythology being undoubted. Nin, the planet Saturn, was the fish- god of Berosus, and, as

I

think can be shown, he is really the same as the Assyrian national deity Asshur,

curious

whose name and

resemblance to those of the

office

bear a

Hebrew

leader,

jfoshua.

But what was the character of the primitive Semitic Bunsen seems to think that Plutarch, in one passage, alludes to the identity of Typhon (Seth) and Osiris. This is a remarkable idea, and yet curiously enough Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that Typhon-Seth may have been deity ?

Egyptian princess who

is

said to

have brought up Moses is given by Jose-

phus as Thermuthis, this being the name of the sacred asp of Egypt (see suWe appear, also, to have a reference to the serpent in the name Levi, pra). one of the sons of Jacob, from whom the descent of Moses was traced. * Fragments, Book xxxiv. See, also, in connection with this subject, King's Gnostics, p. 91. \

Bunsen's God in History, vol. i., p. 234.

%

Ewald notices this fact.

See op. cit., p. 454.

See, also, Inman's .<4«-

cient Faiths Embodied in Anciint Names, vol. ii., p. 338.

§ Egypt, vol. iii., p. 433.

Ancient Religions.

59

derived from the pigmy Pthah-Sokari-Osiris,*

who was However this may be, the phallic origin of Seth can be shown from other data. Thus, it appears that the word Set means, clearly only another form of Osiris himself.

in

Hebrew, as well as in Egyptian, pillar, and in a gen-

Moreover, in a passage of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Set is called Tet, a fact which, according to Bunsen, intimates that eral sense, the erect, elevated, high.f

Thoth inherited many of the attributes of Set.:}: They were, however, in reality the same deities. Set, by change of the initial letter, becomes Tet, one of the names of Thoth, or rather the same name as Set agrees with Seth.§ We have in this an explanation of the statement that Tet, the Phoenician Taaut, was the snake-god Esmun-Esculapius the serpent being the symbol of Tet, as we have seen it to have been that of Seth also. In this we have a means of identifying the Semitic deity Seth, with the Saturn and related deities of other peoples. Ewald says that " the common name for God, Eloah, among the Hebrews, as among all the Semites, goes back Bryant goes further, and deinto the earliest times." f clares that El was originally the name of the supreme ;

;

|

deity among all the nations of the East.**

confirmed, so far as Chaldea

is

This idea is

concerned, by later re-

searches, which show that

II or El was at the head of the With this deity must be identified the II or Ilus of the Phoenicians, who was the same as Cronus, who again was none other than the primeval Saturn, whose worship appears to have been at one period almost universal among European and Asiatic

Babylonian pantheon.

* op. cit., vol. iv., p. 434. \ Bunsen' s Egypt, vol. iv., p. 208. % Ditto, vol. iii., p. 427.

§ As Tet becomes Thoth, so Mo-j«j- becomes in the Hebrew "illo-shesh. \ The Brazen Serpent made by Moses, it wiU be remembered, was the- symbol of this divinity ; and it was worshipped till the time of King Hezekiah, by whom it was broken in pieces. Ed.

t Op. cit., p. 319.

** Op. cit., vol. vi., p. 328.

6o

Phallism in

Saturn and El were thus the same deity, the the Semitic Seth, being, as is well known, symbolized by the serpent.* direct point of con-

peoples.

latter, like

A

between Seth and Saturn is found in the Hebrew idol Kiyim, mentioned by Amos, the planet Saturn tact

still called Kivan by Eastern peoples. This idol was represented in the form of a pillar, the primeval symbol of deity, which was common undoubtedly to all the gods here meirtioned.f These symbolical pillars were called Betyli, or Betulia. Sometimes also the column was called Abaddir, which, strangely enough, Bryant identifies with the serpent-god. f There can be no doubt that both the pillar and the serpent were associated with many of the Sun-Gods of antiquity. Notwithstanding what has been said, it is undoubtedly

being

true that

all

these deities, including the Semitic Seth,

became at an early date recognized as Sun-Gods, although in so doing they lost nothing of their primitive character.

What this was is sufficiently shown by the significant names and titles they bore. Thus, as we have seen, Set (Seth) itself meant the erect, elevated, high, and his name on the Egyptian monuments was nearly always accompanied by the representation of a stone. § Kiyun, or Kivan, the name of the deity said by Amos] to have been worshipped in the wilderness by the Hebrews, signifies God of the Pillar. The idea embodied in this title is shown by the name Baal Tamar, which means " Baal as a Pillar," or " Phallus," consequently " the fructifying

God." IF The title " erect," when given to a deity, seems always to imply a phallic notion, and hence we have the explanation of the * f

name S. inou, used frequently in the

As to the use of this symbol generally, see Pleyte, op. cit., pp. 109, 157. On these points, see M. Raoul-Rochette's memoir on the Assyrian and

Phoenician Hercules, in the MSmoires de Plnstitut National de France {Aca-

dkmie des Inscriptions), torn, xvii., p. 47 et seq. \ Op. cit., vol. i., p. 60; vol. ii., p. 201.

§

Pleyte, op. cit., p. 172.

I

Chap. V. 26.

Tf

Bunsen's ^^jC//, vol. iv., p. 249.

'/U(>7n/.

Carru^noiuwU

THE MUNDANE EGG OVERSHADOWED BY THE SACRED SERPENT OF ETERNITY. COINS 'COMMEMORATXVE OF THE MOON-GOp,

Ancient Religions. *<b

6l

" Book of the Dead," in relation to Thoth, or to Set. There is doubtless a reference of the same kind in the Phoenician myth that " Melekh taught men the special art of erecting solid walls and buildings ; " although Bun-

sen finds in this myth " the symbolical mode of expressing the value of the use of fire in building houses."* these myths

That

embody a phallic notion may be confirmed

by reference to the Phoenician Kabiri.

According to Bunsen, " the Kabiri and the divinities identified with him are explained by the Greeks, and Romans as 'the strong,'

'

the great

; '

" while in the

book of Job, kabbir,

the strong, is used as an epithet of God.

Again, Sydyk,

the father of the Kabiri, is " the Just, or in a more original sense, the Upright," and this deity^ with his sons, corre-

spond to the Phoenician Pataikoi, and to Ptah, their father. Ptah, however, appears to be derived from a root, rtns, which signifies in Hebrew, " to open," and Sydyk himself, therefore, may, says Bunsen, be described as " the opener" of the Cosmic Egg.f The phallic meaning of this title is evident from its- application to EsmunEsculapius (the son of Sydyk) who, as the Snake-God, was identical with Tet, the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes. The peculiar titles given to these pillar-deities, and their association with the sun, led to their original phallic char-

somewhat overlooked, and, instead of being the Father-Gods of human kind, they became Powerful Gods, Lords of Heaven. This was not the special attribute taken by other sun-gods. I have already stated that Hermes, and his related deities, were " gods of the counacter being

try," personifying the idea of general natural fecundity.

Among the chief gods of this description were the Phoenician Sabazius, the Greek Bacchus-Dionysos, the

Priapus, and the Egyptian Khem.

Roman

All these deities agree

also in being sun-gods, and as such they

were symbol-

by animals which were noted either for their fecunThe chief animals thus dity or for their salaciousness. ized

* Egypt, p. 217. f See ditto, pp. 226-99.

62

Phallism in

chosen were the bull and the goat (with which the ram was afterward confounded*), and this doubtless because they were already sacred. The sun appears to have been preceded by the moon, as an object of worship, but the Moon-God was probably only representative of the primeval Saturn, f who finally became the Suh-God El or // of the Syrians and the Semites, and the Ra of the Baby-

The latter was also the title of the Sun-God of Egypt, who was symbolized by the obelisk, and who, although his name was added to that of other Egyptian Gods, appears to have been the tutelary deity of the stranger-kings of the 1 8th dynasty, whom Pleyte,f however, declares to have been Set (Sutech).§ We are reminded here of the opposition of Seth and Osiris, which I have already explained as arising from the fact that these deities originally represented two different ideas human fecundity and ^& fruitfulness of nature. When, however, both of these principles became associated with the solar body, they were expressed by the same symbols, and the distinction between them was in great measure lost sight of. A certain lonians.

difference was, nevertheless, still observable in the attri-

butes of the deities, depending on the peculiar properties

and associations of their solar representatives.

Thus the

powerful deity of Phoenicia was naturally associated with the strong, scorching summer-sun, whose heat was the

most prominent attribute. In countries such as Egypt, where the sun, acting on the moist soil left by inundations, 'caused the earth to spring into renewed life, the mild but energetic early sun was the chief deity. * It has been suggested that the ram was introduced as an astrological

By the precession of the equinoxes, the sign Aries became the emas the genitor of the new year, and so a proper effigy The appearance of the lamb or ram would, of course, create of the Deity. confusion and misapprehension, as well as controversy among those who did symbol.

blem of the Sun,

not understand astronomy.

Ed,

\ Rawlinson's History of Herodotus, Book i. ; appendix, essay x. % Ditto, ii. ; appendix, viii. 23.

§ Op. cit., p. 89 et seq.

Ancient Religions.

63

THE SUN-GODS OF ANTIQUITY.

When considering the sacred bull of antiquity, the symbol of the fecundating force in nature, I referred to Osiris, the national sun-god of the Egyptians, as distinguished

from the Semitic Seth (Set), who was identified with the The association of Osiris with detested Shepherd race. Khem shows his phallic character,* and, in fact, Plutarch asserts that he was everywhere represented with the phallus exposed, f The phallic idea enters, moreover, into the character of all the chief Egyptian deities. Bunsen says: "The mythological system obviously proceeded from the concealed god,' Ammon, to the creating '

god.

The

latter

appears

of

first

all

as

the generative

power of nature in the phallic god Khem, who is afterwards merged in Ammon-ra. Then sprung up the idea He forms the divine of the creative power in Kneph. limbs of Osiris (the primeval Soul) in contradiction to Ptah, who, as the strictly demiurgic principle, forms the visible world.

Neith is the creative principle, as nature Finally, her son Ra,

represented under a feminine form.

Helios, appears as the last of the series, in the character of father and nourisher of terrestrial things.

It is he

whom an

ancient monument represents as the demiurgic principle,

The name of Ammon has

creating the mundane egg." %

led to the notion that he was the embodiment of the idea

of wisdom.

He certainly was distinguished by having the

human form, but his hieroglyphical symbol of the obelisk, and his connection with Khem, show his true nature.

He undoubtedly represented the primitive idea of a generative god, probably at a time when this notion of fecun-

dity had not yet been extended to nature as distinguished from man, and thus he would form a point of contact between the later Egyptian sun-gods and the pillar-gods of the * Wilkinson, op. cit., vol. iv., pp. 342, 260. \ Bunsen's Egypt, vol. i. p. 423. ,

X op. cit., vol. i., p. 388.

6$

Ancient Religions.

Brahmans were the possessors of the highest wisdom, as children of the sun, and whose Apollo and Athene were noble embodiments of this attribute. The Chaldean gods Hea and Nelio were undoubtedly symbolized by the wedge or arrow-head, which had especial reference to learning. In reality, however, this symbol merely shows that they were the patrons of letters or writing, and not of " wisdom," in

its

If the

purely intellectual aspect.

form of the Assyrian alphabetical character was of phallic origin,* we have here the source of the idea of a connection between physical and mental knowledge embodied in

the legend of the " fall."

In the Persian

Ahurd-Mazdao

(the Wise Spirit) we have the purest representation of intellectual wisdom. literally the "

The book of Zoroaster, the Avesta, is

Word " — the word or wisdom which was re-

vealed in creation, and embodied in the divine Mithra,

who was himself the luminous sun-god. LESLEY'S "ARKITE SYMBOLISM." I have already referred to the similarity between the symbols of the sun-gods of antiquity and the natural oband it jects introduced into the Mosaic myth of the fall is necessary now to consider shortly what influence the phallic principle there embodied had over other portions of Hebraic theology. The inquiries of Dr. Faber have thrown great light on this question, although the explanation given by him of the myth of Osiris and of the kindred myths of antiquity is by no means the correct .one. Finding an universal prevalence of phallic ideas and symbolism, Dr. Faber refers it to the degradation of a primiThe tive revelation of the Great Father of the Universe. by replaced truth thus taught was lost sight of, and was mother the dual notion of a great father and a great "the transmigrating Noah and the mundane Ark" of ;

* The importance ascribed to the mechanical arts may, perhaps, lead us to look for the formal origin of this character in the "wedge," which was the chief mechanical power the ancients possessed.

66

Phallism in

Noah was, however, only a re-appearance of Adam, and the Ark floating on the waters of the universal deluge.

the deluge was an analogue of the earth swimming in the

ocean of space.* There is undoubtedly a parallelism between the Adam and Noah of the Hebrew legends, as there is between the analogous personages of the other phases of these legends

;

yet it is evident that, if the de-

luge never happened, a totally different origin from the

one supposed by Dr. Faber must be assigned to the great phallic

myth

of antiquity.

It

is

absolutely necessary,

therefore, to any explanation (other than the phallic one)

of the origin of this myth, to establish the truth of the

Noachic deluge. f

Accordingly, a late American writer

has formed an elaborate system of " Arkite Symbolism,"

founded on the supposed influence of the great deluge over the minds of the posterity of those who survived its horrors. Mr. Lesley sees in this catastrophe the explanation of "phallism," which, "converting all the older Arkite symbols into illustrations of its own philosophical conceptions of the mystery of generation, gave to the various parts and members of the human body those names which constitute the special vocabulary of obscenity of the present day.":}:

But the priority of these symbols or conceptions is the Did the development of " arkism "

question at issue.

precede or follow the superstitions referred to by Mr. Lesley as Ophism, Mithraism, and Phallism, all of which I have shown to embody analogous ideas ? If the question of priority is to be determined by reference to the written tradition

which furnishes the

real

ground of belief in a

great deluge, it must clearly be given to the phallic superstition ; for I

almost the

have shown, conclusively as I think, that

first

event in the life of man there narrated is

* Faber, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 20.

f Bryant, in his Ancient Mythilogy, has brought together a great mass of The facts, however, are capable of quite materials bearing on this question.

a different interpretation from that which he has given to them. X Man's Origin and Destiny, p. 339.

Ancient Religions. purely phallic in its symbolism.

6j

Nor is the account of

the fall the only portion of the Mosaic history of primitive

man which belongs to this category.

The Garden of and the river which divided into four streams, although it may have had a secondary .

Eden, with

its

tree of life,

reference to the traditional place of Semitic origin to

which the Hebrews looked back with regretful longing, It must be so if the explanation I have given of the myth of the fall be correct, since the two are intimately connected, and the garden * is essential to the succeeding catastro-

has undoubtedly a recondite phallic meaning.

phe, f

The priority of the phallic superstition over " arkism," proved, moreover, by the undoubted fact that, even in the traditions of the race to whom we are indebted for the is

precise details of the incidents

accompanying the deluge,

the phallic deities of the Hamitico-Semites are genealogically placed long before the occurrence

of this event.

The Semitic deity Seth is, according to one table, the semi-divine first ancestor of the Semites. Bunsen has shown clearly, also, that several of the antediluvian descen-

Adam were among the Phoenician Thus, the Carthaginians had a god Yubal, Jubal, who would appear to have been the sun-god ^sculapius, called " the fairest of the gods " and so also " we read in a Phoenician inscription Ju-Baal, i.e., beauty of Baal, which Movers ingeniously interprets .(EsculapiusAsmun-Jubal." Here, then, adds Bunsen, " is another dants of the Semitic deities.

;

old Semitic

name attached to a descendant of Lamekh,

together with Adah, Zillah, and Naamah.";];

Hadah,

the wife of Lamekh as well as of Esau, the Phoenician

Usov, is identified with the goddess worshipped at Baby* Compare this -with the figurative description of the garden of delights of

" The Song of Songs." f The Hebrew term p GN, or garden, appears to be closely related to the Greek word 71/1/7), gune, or woman. Indeed, in the ancient languages the former is used as a metaphor for the latter. See Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 52; vol. ii., p. 553. % Egypt, vol. iv., p. 257.

PhalUsm in

68 Ion as

Hera (Juno), and, notwithstanding Sir Gardner

Wilkinson's dictum to the contrary, her names, Hera;,

Hadah, point to the connection with the Egyptian Her Her, or Hathor, who was the daughter of Seb and Netpe, The as Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. name of the god Kiyun, or Kivan, who was worshipped by the Hebrews, and who in Syria was said to devour children, is connected with the root kun, to erect, and therefore doubtless with the antediluvian Kain or Kevan. Kon, derived from the same root, was, according to Bunsen,

a Phoenician designation of

great Carthaginian god Melekh,

Saturn.*

Even the

who was also held in

universal honor throughout all Phoenicia, appears, although Bunsen does not thus identify him, to be no other than Lamekh, the father of Noah, f Ewald, indeed, says that both Lamekh and Enoch were gods or demi-gods, and that Methuselah was a sort of Mars, while Mahahal-el was a god of light, and Jareda a god of the lowland or of

the water. I

The priority of the phallic superstition over Arkism, or rather the existence of that superstition before the for-

mation of the deluge-legend,

is

proved, moreover, by

the agreement of this legend with the myth of Osiris and Isis in its primitive form, while Typhon (Seth) was hon-

ored by the Egyptians as a great god.§

Bunsen

fixes

the origin of this myth in its amended form so late as the thirteenth or fourteenth

century

B.c.||

In the face of

agreement we can only suppose the myth and the deluge-legend to have had the same basis a basis which, from the very circumstances of the case, must be purely "phallic." This explanation is the only one which is this

—

* Egypt, p. 209.

\ This notion furnishes an easy explanation, founded on the human sacrifices to the Phoenician deity, of the curious verse in Genesis as to the avenging of Lamekh.

[Tlie Lamekh here referred to was not father of Noah.

Com-

pare Genesis iv. 18-24, with v. 25-29.] X Op. cit., vol. i., pp. 266-7. § For explanation of this myth, see Bunsen's Egypt, vol. iii., p. i

Ditto, p. 413.

437.

69

Ancient Religions.

consistent with a peculiarity in the Hebrew legend, which is

an insurmountable objection to

expression of a literal

fact.

its

reception as the

We are told by the Mosaic

narrative that Jehovah directed

Noah to take with him

into the Ark " of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their .kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his

Now, according to the ordinary acceptation of the legend, this passage expresses a

kind, two of every sort."

simple absurdity, even on the hypothesis of a partial deluge. If, however, we read the narrative in a phallic

by the Ark understand the sacred argha of Hindu mythology, the Yoni of Parvati, which, like the

sense, and

moon in Zoroastrian teaching, carries in itself the germs of all things, we see the full propriety of what otherwise is incomprehensible. As ev apyjr), \en arche\ the Elohim created the heavens and the earth, so in the Ark were the seeds of all things preserved that they might again

cover the earth. Taken in this 'sense, we see the reason of the curious analogy which exists in various points be-

tween the Hebrew legends of the creation and of the deluge this analogy being one of the grounds on which ;

the hypothesis of the Great Father as the central idea of all mythologies has been based.

the navigation of which

is

Thus, the primeval ship,

ascribed to the mythological

being, is not the ark of

Noah or Osiris, or the vessel of

the Phoenician Kabiri.

It was the moon,

sun, in which his seed

the ship of the

supposed to be hidden until it bursts forth in new life and power. The fact that the moon was in early mythologies a male deity almost necessitates, however, that there should have been another origin for the sacred vessel of Osiris. This we have in the Yis.storQth-karnaim, the cow-goddess, whose horns represent the lunar ark, and who, without doubt, was a more primitive deity than the moon-goddess herself.* The most primitive type of all, however, is that of the *

is

Want of space prevents me from tracing the developments vifhich the

primeval goddess of fecundity underwent j but to the idea embodied in her

may be traced nearly all the female deities of antiquity.

Phallism in

"JO

argha ox yoni of the Indian Iswara, which, from its name, was supposed to have been turned into a dove.* Thus, in Noah and the Ark, as in Osiris and the Moon, we see simply the combination of the male and female elements, as they are still represented in the Hindu lingam. The introduction of the dove into the myth is a curious confirmation of this view. For, this bird, which, as " the

emblem of love and fruitfulness," was "consecrated to Venus under all her different names at Babylon, in Syria, and Greecef which was the national banner-

Palestine,

sign of the Assyrians, as of the earlier Scythic empire,

whose founders, according to Hindu tradition, took the name of lonim or Yoniyas, and which attended on Janus, a diluvian " God of opening and shutting," was simply a type of " the Yoni or Jonah,:]: or navicular feminine principle," which was said to have assumed the form of a ship and a dove.§

PHALLISM IN THE MODERN RELIGIONS. In bringing this paper to a close, I would refer shortly

—Brahminism, —seeing that these exist

to what may be called the modern religions

Buddhism, and Christianity

as the faiths of great peoples.

still

As to the first of these, it,

may be thought that its real character cannot be ascertained from the present condition of Hindu belief. said that the religion of the Vedas

It is

very different from that of the Puranas, which have taken their place. It should be remembered, however, that these books profess to reproduce old doctrine, the word " Purana" itself meaning old, and that Puranas are referred to in one of is

* Faber, oJ> cit., vol. ii., p. 246. \ Kenrick's Ph(enicia, p. 307. \ The story of Jonah, the ,1^1% dove or symbol of femininity, going to

Joppa, a seaport v?here Dag-on the fish-god was worshipped, and having entered n. ship is swallowed by a Ceto or great fish, betrays a suspicious relationship to the at Nineveh.

same cultus.

The fish was revered at Joppa as the dove was

Was there an esoteric meaning?

Ed.

§ Faber's of. cit., and Bryant's Ancient Mythology, ii., pp. 317 et seq.

Ancient Religions, the Upanishads, while the

Jl

Tantras, which contain the

principles of the Sacti Puja, and which are, as yet, almost

unknown to Europeans, are considered by the Brahmans to be more ancient than the Puranas themselves.* The origin of the ideas contained in these books is a difficult question. The germs of both Vishnu-worship and Siva-worship appear to be found in the Vedas,-}- and are undoubtedly referred to by the Mahabharata.:];

I

am inclined to think

with Mr. Fergusson and other late writers that they are only indirectly sprung from the primitive Hinduism.

The

similarity between Sivaism and the Santal worship of the

Great Mountain, pointed out by Mr. Hunter, is very remarkable, and this analogy is strengthened by intermixture in both cases with river- worship, § There is no doubt that the Great Mountain is simply a name for the phallic emblem, which is the chief form under which Siva is represented in the numerous temples at Benares dedicated to his honor.

SERPENT-WORSHIP A VISHNAVIC CUSTOM. Considering the position occupied by the serpent as a indirectly, of the male power, we should expect to find its worship connected to some ex-

symbol of life, and,

tent with that of Siva.

that

it

is

not so

;

Mr. Fergusson, however, declares

and, although this statement requires

some qualification,! yet it is certain that the serpent is * On this question, see the Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. ii., p. 265 ; also " Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus," in the Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. (1832), 216 et seq.

f This question is fully considered by Dr. Muir, in his Sanskrit Texts, part iv., p.

54 et seq.

% Ditto, pp. 161, 343.

§ Rural Bengal, pp. 152, 187 et seq. This association of the mountain and the river is found also in the Persian Khordah-Avesta. See (5) AbunYasht, V. 1-3. II

See Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 70 ; also Sherring's Benares, pp. 75,

Here the serpent is evidently symbolical of life. In the Mahabharata, Mahadeva is described as having " a girdle of serpents, ear-rings of serpents,

89.

a sacrificial cord of serpents, and an outer garment of serpent's skin."

Muir, op. cit., part iv., p. 160.)

(Dr.

Phallism in

73

also intimately associated with Vishnu.

In explanation

" The Vaishnava Mr. Fergusson remarks religion is derived from a group of faiths in which the serpent always played an important part. The eldest branch of the family was the Naga worship, pure and simple out of that arose Buddhism, and on its decline two faiths at first very similar to one another rose from its ashes, the Jaina and the Vaishnava." The serpent is almost always found in Jaina temples as an object of worship, while it appears everywhere in Vaishnava tradition.* But elsewhere Mr. Fergusson tells us that, although Buddhism owed its establishment to Naga tribes, yet its supporters repressed the worship of the serpent, elevating of this

fact,

:

;

.

—

.

.

—

tree-worship in its place, f

understand how the Vaishnavas, who and who hate t;he lingam, can yet so highly esteem the serpent, which has, indirectly at least, reference to the male principle. Perhaps, however, we may find an explanation in Mr. Fergusson's own remarks as to the character and development According to him. Buddhism was chiefly of Buddhism. It is difficult to

are worshippers of the female power,

influential among Naga tribes, and

:];

"was little more than

a revival of the coarser superstitions of the aboriginal races, § purified and refined by the application of Aryan morality, and elevated by doctrines borrowed from the intellectual superiority of the Aryan races."

||

As to its de-

* op. cit., p. 70. f Ditto, p. 62. X Mr. Sellon, in the vol.

ii.,

Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London,

p. 273.

§ It should not be forgotten that the Vedic religion was not that of all the Aryan tribes of India. (See Muir, op. cit., part ii., p. 377, 368-383) ; and it is by no means improbable that some of them retained a more primitive faith, Buddhism or Rudraism ; i.e., Sivaism. See also Baldvnn's Prehistoric Nations. II

Op. cit., p. 62.

it is necessary to

Brahminism. definition

To come to a proper conclusion on this important point,

consider the real position occupied by Gautama in relation to

Burnouf says that he differed from his adversaries only in the

he gives of Salvation (du salut).

Buddhisme Indien, p. 155.)

{Introduction d rHistoire du

riS'i'

THE SACRED LOTdS-I'LOWliR. NYMPHj(eA NELUMBO.

THE FEMALE SVMBOI, IN EGYPT, INDIA, AND EASTERN ASIA.

Ancient Religions.

73

velopment, the sculptures on the Sanchi Topes show that at about the beginning of the Christian era, ahhough the dagoba, the chakra, or wheel, the tree, and other emblems,

were worshipped, the serpent hardly appears while, at Amravati, three centuries later, this animal had become equal in importance to Buddha himself.* Moreover, there can be no doubt that the lingam was an emblem of Buddha, as was also the lotus, which represents the same idea ^the conjunction of the male and female elements, although in a higher sense perfect wisdom. f The association of the same ideas is seen in the noted prayer, Om mani padmi hum (" Om, the Jewel in the Lotus "), which refers to the birth of Padmipani from the sacred lotusflower,:]; but also, there can be little doubt, to the phallus and the yoni. We may suppose, therefore, that, whatever the moral doctrine taught by Gautama, he used the old ;

—

phallic symbols, § although, it may be, with a peculiar apIf the opinion expressed

plication.

by Mr. Fergusson,

as to the introduction into India of the Vaishnava faith

by an early immigrant race, be correct, it must have existed in the time of Gautama and, indeed, the lonism ;

of Western Asia is traditionally connected with India it-

very early

self at a

date,||

although probably the early

centre of Ion-ism, the worship of the Dove, or Yoni, was, as Bryant supposes, in Chaldea.^

We see no trace, how-

ever, in Buddhism proper of Sacti Puja, and I would sug-

gest that, instead of abolishing either,

Gautama substi-

tuted for the separate symbols of the linga and the yoni, the association of the two in the lingam.

If this were so, we

can well understand how, on the fall of Buddhism, Siva-

worship** may have retained this compound symbol, with * Fergusson, op. cit., pp. 67, 222, 223.

f See Guigniaut, op. cit., vol. i., pp. 293, 160 note. X Schlagenweit, Buddhism in Thibet, p. 120. § These are figured in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii. II

TT

Higgins's.(4«a(ro/j/^m, vol. i., p. 332 et seq.

See also p. 342 et seq.

Op. cit., vol. iii., p. i et seq., 25.

** Mr. Hunter points out a connection between Sivaism and Buddhism. Op. cit., p. 194.

5

Phallism in

74

many of the old Naga ideas, although with little actual reference to the serpent itself other than as a symbol of

and power while, on the other hand, the Vaishnavas may have reverted to the primitive worship of the female principle, retaining a remembrance of the early serpent

life

;

associations in the use of the sesha, the heavenly Naga

with seven heads,* figured on the Amravati sculptures. It is possible, however, that there

may be another ground

of opposition between the followers of .Yishnu.and Siva.

Mr. Fergusson points out that, notwithstanding the pecu" the worship of Siva is too severe, too stern, for the softer emotions of love, and all his temples are quite free from any allusion liarly phallic symbolism of the latter deity,

It is far different with the Vaishnavas, whose temples " are full of sexual feelings, generally expressed in the grossest terms." \

to it."

Siva, in fact, is especially a god of intellect, typified by his being three-eyed, and, although terrible as the resistless destroyer, yet the re-creator of all things in perfect wis-

dom

;

% while Vishnu has relation rather to the lower type

of wisdom which was distinctive of the Assyrians among ancient peoples, and which has so curious a connection

with the female principle.

Hence the shell, or conch, is

peculiar to Vishnu, while the linga belongs to Siva.§

Gau-

tama combined the simpler feminine phase of religion with the more masculine intellectual type, symbolizing this union by the lingam and other analogous emblems. The followers of Siva have, however, adopted the combined symbol in the place of the linga alone, thus ap* See Mr. Fergusson, op. cit., p. 70.

The serpent is connected with Vish-

nuism as a symbol of wisdom rather than of life. f Op. cit., p. 71. X Hence Siva, as Sambhu, is the patron deity of the Brahmanic order ; and the most intellectual Hindus of the present day are to be found among (See Wilson, »/. «V. , p. 171. his followers. ShoTrm^s Sacred City of the Hindus, p. 146 et seq. § The biell of Siva has reference to strength and speed rather than to fecundity ; while the Rig- Veda refers to Vishnu as the framer of the womb, al-

though elsewhere he is described as ihs fecundator. iv., pp. 244, 292, also pp. 64, 83.)

(See Muir, op. cit., part

Ancient Religions.

75

preaching more nearly than the Vaishnavas to the idea of the founder of modern Buddhism. Gautama himself, nevertheless, was most probably only the restorer of an older faith, according to which perfect wisdom was to be found only in the typical combination of the male and fe-

male principles in nature. The real explanation of the connection between Buddhism and Sivaism has perhaps, however, yet to be given.* The worship of the serpentgod is not unknown, even at the present day, in the very stronghold of Sivaism, f reminding us of the early spread In the " crescent surof Buddhism among Naga tribes.

mounted by a pinnacle, similar to the pointed end of a spear," which decorates the roofs of the Tibetan monasteries,:];

we, undoubtedly, have a reproduction of the soThis instrument is given also to

called trident of Siva.

Sani, the Hindu Saturn, who is represented as encompas-

sed by two serpents, § and hence we may well suppose the pillar-symbol of this primeval deity to be reproduced in

the linga of the Indian phaUic god.||

But the pillar-symbol is not wanting to Buddhism itThe columns said to have been raised by Asoka have

self

a reference to the inscribed pillars of Seth.

The remains

of an ancient pillar, supposed to be a Buddhist Lat, is still to be seen at Benares ;'^ the word Z«^ being merely another

form of the name

Tet, Set, or Sat, given to the Phoenician

or Semitic deity.

In the central pillar of the so-called Dru-

idical circles, we have, doubtless, a reference to the same

primitive superstition, the idea intended to be represented

being the combination of the male and female principles.** * This question has been considered

by Bumouf,

op.

cit.,

p.

547 et

seq.

But see also Hodgson' s Buddhism in Nepaul, and Paper in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 18 (i86o), p. 395 et seq. f See Sherring, op. cit. p. 89. X Schlagenweit, op. cit., p. 181. ,

§ Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. vii. p. 566. As to the identity of Siva and Saturn, see Guigniaut, op. cit. ,

II

167 note.

,

vol.

i.

,

p.

Kivan, a name of Saturn, is really the same word as Siva.

1 Sherring, op. cit. p. 305 et seq. ,

*""

It should be noted that many af the so-called

elliptical.

"circles" are in reality

Phallism in

76

PHALLISM IN THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. In conclusion, it must be said that Christianity itself is

Reference may be made to the important place taken in Christian dogma by the " fall " which I have shown to have had a purely "phallic" foundation and to the peculiar position assigned to Mary, as the Virgin Mother of God.* It must not be forgotten, however, that, whatever may have been the primitive idea on which these dogmas are based, it had received a totally fresh aspect, at the hands of those from whom the founders of Christianity received it. f As to symbols, too, these were employed by the Christians in the later certainly not without the phallic element.

—

—

signification given to them by the followers of the ancient

Thus, the fish- and the cross-symbols originally embodied the idea of generation, but afterwards that of life, and it was in this sense that they were applied to The most evidently phallic representation used Christ.:]: faiths.

by the Christian iconographers is undoubtedly the aureole or vessica.

This was generally elliptical in form, and con-

Mary herself, however, being sometimes represented in the aureole, glorified as Jesus Probably the nimbus, also, is of phallic signifiChrist. § altho'ugh generally circular, it was sometimes for, cance square, etc.|| The name of Jehovah is intriangular, pidron gives a scribed within a radiating triangle.^ representation of St. John the Evangelist with a circular nimbus, surmounted by two sunflowers, emblems of the sun, an idea which, says Didron, " reminds us of the Egyptian figures, from the heads of which two lotus* On this subject, see IXig'^^^ Ancualypsis, vol. i., p. 315 et seq.

tained the figure of Christ

;

;

We

must look to the esoteric teaching of Mithraism for the origin and f explanation of much of primitive Christian dogma. \ The serpent elevated in the Wilderness is said to be typical of Christ. Gnostic sect taught that Christ was Seth.

(John iii. 14, 15).

A

§ Didron's Christian Iconography (Bohn), pp. 272, 286. tliat

Buddhist deities are often represented in the

Vtssica and with the nimbus.'

(See Hodgson's figures, plates v. and vi. in the

11

It is

a curious fact

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 18.) 1[ Didron, pp. 27, 231.

Ancient Religions. flowers rise in a similar manner."*

77

There is. also a curi-

ous representation, in this work, of the divine hand, with the thumb and two forefingers outstretched, resting on a

cruciform nimbus

(p. 215).

In Egypt, the hand having

the fingers thus placed was a symbol of Isis, and from its

accompaniments, there can be little doubt, notwithstanding the mesmeric character ascribed to it by Ennemoser,-}that it had an essentially phallic origin, although it may ultimately have been used to signify life. There can be no question, however, that, whatever may be thought of its symbols,:]: the fundamental basis of Chris* Didron, p. 29. f History of Magic (Bohn), vol. i., p. 253etseq. \ The "Black Virgins" of the French cathedrals prove, when exammed critically, to be basalt figures of

The Virgin Mary succeeded

the goddess Isis.

Thus the devotees of Isis

to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies.

carried into the new priesthood the former badges of their profession, the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice. The sacred image still moves in procession as when Juvenal laughed at it vi. 530 " grcge linigero

—

circumdatus etgrege calvo"

—^escorted by the tonsured, surpliced train.

Her

proper title, Domina, the exact translation of the Sanscrit Isi, survives, with a slight change in the modern Madonna. flower borne

By a singular permutation, the

by each, the lotus, ancient emblem of fecundity, now renamed

the lily, is interpreted as significant of the opposite quality.

The tinkling sis-

trum, a sound so well pleasing to the Egyptian goddess, is replaced by that

The latter instrument, however, most hideous of noises, the clattering bell. came directly from the Buddhist religious usages, where it forms as essential an element as of yore in early Celtic Christianity, when the holy bell was the actual type of the Godhead to the new converts.

was unknown

to the ancients ;

The bell in its present form

its normal shape is Indian,

bell-founders were the Buddhist Chinese.

and the first real

Again, relic-worship seems from the

third century to have been virtually the present form of Christianity in the

East.

A fragment of the bone of a Buddha is indispensable in the founding

of a temple of that faith. It is astonishing

how much of the Egyptian and the second-hand Indian

The high cap symbolism passed over into the usages of the follovring times. and hooked staff of the god became the bishop's mitre and crosier ; the term nan is purely Egyptian, and bore its present meaning ; the erect oval, symbol of the Female Principle of Nature, became the Vesica Piscis, and a frame for divine things ; the Crux Ansata, testifying the union of the

Male and Female

Principle in the most obvious manner, and denoting fecundity and abundance,

by a simple inversion, into the Orb surmounted by the Cross, and the ensign of royalty. ( Gnostics and their Remains, by C. W. King, is transformed,

pp. 71, 72.)

Phallism in Ancient Religions.

78 tianity is

more purely " phallic" than that of any other

religion now existing.

I have referred to the presence in Hebraic theology of an idea of God that of a Father antagonistic to the Phoenician notion of the " Lord of

Heaven."

—

We have the same idea repeated in Christ's

teaching, its distinctive characteristic being the recognition

of God as the Universal Father, the Great Parent of Mankind, who had sent His son into the vVorld that he might reconcile it unto Himself

It is in the character of a for-

giving parent that Christians are taught to view God, when

He is not lost sight of in the presence of Christ. emotional nature of Christian

faith,

indeed, shows

The how

intimately it was related to the older faiths which had a phallic basis.

In Christianity, we see the final expression

of the primitive worship of the father as the head of the family, the generator, as the result of an instinctive rea-

soning process leading up from the particular to the universal, with which, however, the dogma of the " fall " and

—

consequences deduced so strangely from a phallic lehave been incorporated. The " phallic " is, indeed, the only foundation on which an emotional religion can be As a religion of the emotions, therefore, the pobased. its

gend

—

sition of Christianity is perfectly unassailable.

tem of rational faith, however, it is far different

As a sys-

and the tendency of the present age is just the reverse of that which took place among the Hebrews—the substitution of In fact, modern a Heavenly King for a Divine Father. science is doing its best to effect for primitive fetishism, or demon-worship, what Christianity has done for phallic worship generalize the powers of nature and make of God a Great Unknowable Being, who, like the Elohim of the Mosaic cosmogony, in some mysterious manner, causes all things to appear at a word. This cannot be, however, the real religion of the future. If God is to be worshipped at all, the Heavenly King and Divine Father njust be combined in a single term and he must be viewed, not as the unknowable cause of being, but as the Great Source of all being, who may be known in nature the expression of his life and energy.

—

;

—

;

APPENDIX. of

To many persons, doubtless, the foregoing- statements Messrs. Wake and Westropp appear to be grosslyIt seems to

exaggerated if not absolutely preposterous.

them almost incredible that such ideas and customs should obtain ascendancy

among any people, and especially in

the

religious

character

of

Even classical They are unwilling

mysteries.

readers participate in this skepticism.

to believe that, except in places notoriously immoral, like

Pompeii or Lampsacus, the use of sexual representations Nevertheless, a in common life would be countenanced. careful review of the evidence will assure us of their mis-

We must not always expect shameless manners to

take.

Prudery and pruriency are frequently and in all companions, equally impure and cowardly scientific investigation they should be disregarded rather attend immorality.

;

than conciliated. The careful student of the Old Testament is amazed at the antagonism apparent between the examples of the

Hebrew patriarchs and the -teachings of the prophets, in regard to the erection of monolithic pillars and other structures, for votive

memorials and other religious pur-

It is likewise hard to distinguish a difference

poses.

be-

tween the customs of the early Israelites and those of the The similarity is observable in nations around them. their religious as well as their political institutions. rulers

were

Arabs

;

at first patriarchs

or sheiks, as

Their

among the

then they had princes of tribes, like the lords of

the Philistines; and after that suffetes, or judges, like the

Carthaginians nations."

;

concluding finally with kings, " like all the

They had the same language and alphabet as

the Phoenicians from the days of Moses.

As, despite the

8o

Appendix.

tenth chapter of Genesis, the ethnographers persist in classing the latter in the Semitic group, there is

little rea-

son given for not including both peoples under one ethnic head.

The Phoenicians and Pelasgians or lonians of Asia Minor were the most adventurous nations of the time. They colonized Greece, Italy, Spain, and Africa, and the former

extended their enterprises to the countries on the Atlantic Ocean. Their gods Baal or Hercules, and Astarte or Venus, were worshipped wherever they went. So uniform were the religious emblems and customs, that a description of the usages of one people very nearly describes

them all.

The Pelasgians of Ionia had different deity-

names, like Dionysus or Bacchus, Hermes, Aphrodite but they had like customs, and the Cabeirian Mysteries, which fixed the institutions of religion, were common to ;

both.

The Hermaic statue, consisting of a human head placed upon an inverted obelisk, with a phallus, was the recognized simulacrum of Baal in the Bible.

Associated with

Venus or Aphrodite, a female draped figure terminating below in the same square form. This was it was the

generally of wood, the palm being preferred.

The name

Aspasia is often inscribed upon these female images. The Hermaic and Aphroditic statue were sometimes included in one, like the Hindoo Siva and Bhavani, giving rise to the androgynous representations.

The mode of constructing

the Hermaic statues was

derived by the Greeks from the Pelasgians of Asia Minor.

Herodotus says: "Whoever has been initiated into the Mysteries of the Cabeiri will understand what I mean. The Samothracians received these Mysteries from the Pelasgi, who, before they went to live in Attica, were dwellers in Samothrace, and imparted their religious ceremonies to the inhabitants. The Athenians, then, who were the first of all the Greeks to make their statues of Mercury in this way, learnt the practice from the Pelasgians and by this people a religious account of the ;

Appendix.

8i

matter is given, which is explained in the Samothracian

Mysteries."*

The Cabeiri, we presume, represented the divinities of the planets

;

Esmun or the Phoenician Esculapius being The serpent was his symbol. Kadmiel or Cad-

the eighth.

mus was the same as Taut or Thoth, the god of the steles or pillar-emblems, and was the reputed founder of the It was to the worship of these divinities

city of Thebes.

that reference was made by the author of

The Wisdom of Solomon : " They slew their children in sacrifices, or used secret Mysteries, or celebrated frantic komuses of strange rites,

"t institution of the Orphic rites

and the EleusiHerodotus by to Egyptian innian Mysteries is " The rites called Orphic and Bacchic are in fluences. and no one initiated reality Egyptian and Pythagorean in these Mysteries can be buried in a woollen shroud, a religious reason being assigned for the observance.";]: Melampus introduced into Greece the name of Dionysus or Bacchus, the ceremonial of his worship, and the pro" I can by no means admit," says cession of the phallus. " that it is by mere coincidence that the Herodotus, Bacchic ceremonies in Greece are so nearly the same as the Egyptian they would have been more Greek in their Much less can character and less recent in their origin. I admit that the Egyptians borrowed these customs, or any other, from the Greeks. My behef is that Melampus got his knowledge of them from Cadmus the Tyrian, and the followers whom he brought from Phoenicia into the country which is now called Boeotia." " The Egyptians were also the first to introduce solemn assemblies, processions, and litanies to the gods ; of all which the Greeks

But the

ascribed

;

—

* Rawlinson's Herodotus, book ii. 51.

" The phallus formed an essential

part of the symbol, probably because the divinity represented by it was in the earliest times, before the

worship of Dionysus was imported firom the East,

the personification of the reproductive powers of nature."

ary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Hermai. f Wisdom, xiv. 23. X Book ii. 81.

Smith's Diction-

82

Appendix.

were taught the use by them." * In the Dionysiac festival of Egypt, instead of phalli they used images a cubit high, pulled by strings, which the women carried round to the villages. piper headed the company, and the women followed, singing hymns in honor of the god. As in the Cabeirian Mysteries of Phoenicia and Samothrace, a "re-

A

accounted for the peculiarities of the

ligious

reason "

image.

The identity of Bacchus with the Moloch or Her-

cules of the Phoenicians, and with the Dionysus of Arabia

and the Mysteries, is apparent. Both the Greeks and Romans, however, for a long time had no images. Numa, who is said to have been a Pythagorean, allowed only the " eternal fire " of Vesta as a symbol of the Deity. The earlier temples were temenoi, or consecrated areas, marked out by erect pillars of stone. In them were altars, " great stones," or conical statues.

Mounds, or artificial eminences, were also common, as representative of the " holy hill," or mount of assembly where the Deity dwelt. These were denominated, by both Greeks and Phoenicians, bemas, or " high places. "f The stele or pillar came early to be used as the emblem and, in like manner, a conical stone, signifyof the god ing the omphalos, navel, or rounded abdomen, became The service the symbol of the great Mother-Goddess. queen or goddess of Lydia, of Hercules, with Omphale, he receiving from her the distaff, and she taking his club and lion-skin, expresses the association of the two in the Mysteries. At the temple of Aihun, in Libya, the emblem of the 'god is described as an umbriculum of immense size, which was borne in a boat or ark, requiring eighty '

;

The boat is a feminine symbol. men for the purpose. At the temple of Delphi, the omphalos, or navel-stone, is :{:

described as obtuse in form, ahd having nothing obscene in

appearance.

It was of white marble,

and was kept in the The nab hi,

sanctuary, carefully wrapped in a white cloth. § * Book ii. 49, 58.

% Quintus Curtius.

f Ezekiel xx. 29.

§ Stralio, book ix. 420,

Appendix.

83

or navel of Vishnu, the Brahmin god, explained in like

manner as expressive of the female organs, is similarly re-

M; Creuzer found among the ruins of Carthage

presented.

a large conical stone, which he immediately recognized as the representation of Astart^. Lajard also mentions many smaller cones in Greece, some of them bearing the name

" In all Cyprian coins," he remarks," may be seen, in the place where we would anticipate to find a The statue of the goddess, the form of a conical stone. under the is found placed between cypresses same two ^iia portico of the temple of Astart6, in a temple of In Capitolina but in this instance the cone is crowned. of Aphrodite.

;

another medal, struck by the elder Philip, Venus is represented between two genii, each of whom stands upon a

cone or pillar with a rounded top.

There

is

reason to

believe that at Paphos images of the conical stone * were

made and sold as largely as were effigies of Diana of the Ephesians." f %

The ancient Arabians, in ,lik'e manner, venerated certain conical stones as symbols of the goddess Al Uza, or

The famous Caaba, or black stone of Mecca, now The crescent, also the emblem of the goddess, is the Mohammedan monogram, contrasting with the cross, or masculine emblem of the Christians, and almost implies that the Mussulmans are votaries of the female divinity. The Scandinavians also represented the goddess Disa or Isa by a conical stone, surmounted by a head, analogous to the Alitta.

revered by the Moslems, was of this character.

busts of Astarte.

The erect pillar was common over all the East.

It

stood at the intersection of roads as a sign of consecra*

" The statue of the goddess bears no resemblance to the human form.

It

one end, and gradually tapering to a narrow span The reason is stated by Philostratus to be symboli-

is round throughout, broad at

at the other, like a goal. cal."

— TacztoJ, book

\ Acts xix. 24, 25.

ii. ,

ch. 3.

Venus and Diana, instead of representing the oppos-

ing ideas of virginity and sexual love, vifere deities of like mould, and personified the great maternal principle.

\ Recherches sur la Culte de Venus, page 36.

84

Appendix.

on the boundaries of estates, in and before temples, over graves, and wherever the deities were venerated. tion,

At Athens was a " pillar of the Amazon " or androgynous Venus

;

and Apollonius mentions a lithos hieros or sacred

stone in the temple of Arez in Pontus, where the Amazons worshipped. Like columns were common in Thes-

and Mauritania and, indeed, in all countries washed by the sea. The Round Towers of Ireland, the great stones found in the principal point of cities in Engsaly, Ionia,

;

land, the stones of memorial in

all

parts of the British

"Jacob's pillar" transported from Scotland by Edward I., and now preserved in the seat of the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, pertain to the same cultus. The Maypoles, common alike to Britons and Hindus, are of one pattern. The Buddhists of Ceylon, the Sivaists and Lingayats of Hindustan, and the Zoroastrians of Persia, have these emblems like their fellow-religionists of the West. NoV was ancient America any exception to these customs. plain cylindrical stone was to be found by every Mexican temple. At Copan are monoliths, some of them in a rough state and others sculptured. At Honduras is an "idol of round stone" with two faces, representing the Lord of Life, which the Indians adore, offering blood procured from the prepuce. In Panuco was found in the temples a phallus, and on bas-reliefs in public places were depicted the sacred membra conjimcta in coitu. There were also similar symbols in Tlascala. On one of the phallic pillars at Copan were also the emblems relative to uterine existence, parturition, etc. Juan de Batanzos, in his History of the Incas, an unpublished manuscript in the Library of the Escurial, says that " in the centre of the Isles, including

A

great square or court of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco,

was a column or pillar of stone, of the shape of a loaf of sugar, pointed at the top and covered with gold-leaf." * It is probable that the mound-builders of North America were votaries of the same worship. Professor Troost has • Squiet's Serpent Symbol, p. 50.

Appendix.

85

procured several images in Smith county, Tennessee, one of which was endowed disproportionately, hke a Pan or Hermes, or the idol at Lampsacus. The phallus had been broken off, while in the ground, by a plough. Dr. Ramsay, of Knoxville, also describes two phalHc similacra in his possession, twelve and fifteen inches in length. The shorter one was of amphibolic rock, and so very hard that steel could make no impression upon it. The Abb6 de Bourbourg, who made careful explorations in Mexico and Central America, confirms the statements in regard to the phallic symbolism, and apparently supposes that it was introduced from America into Europe. The Cross was also found among the ruins of the AmeriIn Mexico it was the Egyptian symbol, can temples. the crux ansata, and was denominated " the tree of life." Its frequency over the Eastern continent, pertaining alike to the worship of Osiris, Baal-Adonis, Mithra, and MahaThe Buddhists of Tibet employ it deva, is well known. in worship, and place it, like the

corners of the street.

Hermaic pillars, at the

It was sculptured beside the lingam

or phallus, in the cave of Elephanta.

The Hindoo cross

the " hammer of Thor."

In the tombs of

resembles

Etruria were found crosses composed of four phalli.

Simi-

lar to this was the cross of Malta; till it was changed to its

present shape.

The use of votive amulets in that phallic form was also common. They were found in the tombs and houses. Similar articles are now manufactured in India. The Hindoo women carry the lingam in procession between two serpents and it will be remembered that in the ;

sacred ark or coffer which held the egg and phallus in the

mystic processions of the Greeks, was also a serpent. In Greece and Western Asia the favorite wood for the " stocks" and phallic pillars, according to St. Clement of Alexandria, was the fig. The leaves of this tree, it will be remembered, were used in the garden of Eden and the fruit has had a peculiar symbolical meaning for thou;

sands of years.

86

Appendix.

That the ancient

patriarchs,

like

chiefs of other nations, erected pillars

the patriarchs and and altars, and wor-

shipped in mountains and high places, is matter of record.

The pillars at Bethel and Mizpeh, set up by Jacob, were revered by his descendants. Mizpeh was a holy place, during the days of the Judges Jephthah made it his seat ;

of government, and after him Samuel was inaugurated

The Israelites met there to put away Baalim and there. Ashtaroth, as enjoined by the prophet who, after that, ;

made a yearly circuit to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and had his residence at Ramah, where was a " high place." The dances, or komuses, were also celebrated, as in the King David himself, in his joy at festivals of Bacchus.* the bringing of the ark to 'Jerusalem, " danced before the

Lord," and being rebuked by his wife, Michal, for his wanton deportment, declared that was in the presence of Jehovah, adding that he would "play" and be yet " more vile." Whether phalli were carried by the Hebrew women at their dances and festivals, as among the Greeks and Asiatics, is not stated, but it is not improbThe prophets denounce the festivals and solemn able. assemblies as attended with idolatrous and obscene rites.

The worship of the Phoenician deities continued among the Israelites throughout the whole period of the rule of

The Philistines also had the same divini-

the Judges, t ties.

When the body of King Saul fell into their hands,

they dedicated his armor as a trophy in the temple of Astarte and according to one author, placed his head in the temple of Dagon the Fish-god, and according ;

body on the wall of the temple of San.:]: After the establishment of the monarchy, the idolatrous rites took a more objectionable form. King Solomon is

to another, his

recorded to have built mounds or high places for Chemosh, the god of generation, and for Hercules or Moloch, the

god of

fire,

and to

have worshipped Venus-Astart^.

* Judges xxi. 19-23. t Judges ii. 10-19 J

"'• 6,

7 ;

v.

8 ;

vi.

10, 25,

30 ; viii. 33 ; x. 6.

X I Samuel xxxi. g, 10, and i Chronicles x. 9, lo.

Appendix.

87

These shrines remained throughout the Hebrew monarchy, till Josiah profaned them, broke down the pillars, and took away the omphalic symbols, filling their places with the bones of men. So general had been the prevalence of idolatry, and especially of the Tyrian worship, that these "high places" existed all over the country, with the phallic statues and omphalic emblems, " on every high hill, and under every green tree." * That they became places of prostitution, if they were not such at the first, seems to be the concurrent testimony of the prophets and profane writers. Whether the sacrifice of virginity was made at these places, as at the temples of Mylitta, and other divinities, is not expressly affirmed but the presence of the kadeshim is suspicious, f

The Hebrew prophets are outspoken in associating Baalworship with lewdness. Hosea, using the customary parallelism of expression, identifies the priapic cultus with

that of Peor.

" They went to Baal-Peor, and consecrated

* I Kings xiv. 23.

See also xv. 14 ; xxii. 43 ; 2 Kings xii. 3 ; xiv. 4 ; 4 and 35 ; xvi. 4 ; xvii. 9, 10. f See I Kings xiv. 23, 24; xv. 12 and xxii. 46 ; 2 Kings xxxiii. 7 ; HoThe Kings Asa and Jelioshaphat drove these persea iv. 10-19 ^""^ '^- 4,

XV.

sons from the country.

They appear to have been of foreign blood

of Deuteronomy prescribing that they should not be Israelites.

;

the book

" There shall

be no kadeshah of the daughters of Israel, nor a kadesh of the sons of Israel," xxiii. 17. It is evident, however, that the Israelites imputed no merit, but When Jephthah announced to his rather opprobrium, to the virgin state.

—

daughter that he had made an irrevocable vovif to offer her in sacrifice, she only pleaded for a respite of two months to "go up and dovra upon the mountains,

and bewail her virginity. ''

This is apparently in accord with the statement

of Mindes-Pinto, that the young Indian maids believe it impossible for a virgin to enter Paradise.

The readiness of the Israelites to adopt the rites of

Venus and Baal-Peor (Exodus xxxii. 6,25, and Numbers xxv. ) would seem to te thus explained. The worship of the goddess Diana or Venus- Anaitis in Armenia was attended by the defloration of nubile women. The Babylonian colonists of Samaria brought with them the worship of the Succoth-Benoth, or the Venuses of the tents ; and it is certain that almas or consecrated women, as in Egypt, and nautch-girls or women of the temple, were a peculiarity of Phoenician, as they are of Hindoo sanctuaries. Justin relates that Dido or Elissa transported twenty-four of these females to Carthage. The name Elissa or Alitta being a title of the goddess, shows that her expedition is but an allegory to

explain the introduction of her worship into the countries

88

Appendix.

themselves to Bosketh." *

Jeremiah also is unmistakable.'

"According to the number of thy cities were thy gods, Oh Judah and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem [as in Tyre and Athens] have ye set up altars to Bosheth, even altars to burn incense to Baal." f These were " the iniquities of their forefathers." The worship of the Queen of Heaven, Mylitta or the Syrian goddess, " the children gathering wood, the fathers kindling the fire, and the women kneading the dough to !

make cakes,"

is

instanced several times

by Jeremiah

;

and was an old custom, observed alike by kings, nobles, and the common people.:}: The cake was made of flour and honey, and was shaped like a lozenge or phallus. The cunim or bouns were offered to Astarte and Aphrodite wherever they were worshipped, at the opening of spring.

The sacrifice of children, common among the Phoeniand their colonies, was also a practice of the Jews. Sometimes it was only a passing through the fire, as at the Bal-tines of Scotland and Ireland at others, it wasi cians

;

of the West.

The island of Melita was named from this divinity.

Ovid

describes her festival

" On the Ides is the genial feast of Anna perenna,

Not far, traveller Tiber, from thy banks. The people come, and scattered everywhere among the green stallcs. Imbibe, and each reclines with his female consort. Part remain in the open air, a few set up tents ;

Some out of branches have made a leafy hut."

Fasti, iv.

The Indian Anna-puma, and the Babylonian Daughter of the Tent, are In Virgil's .iEneid, Anna is made the sister of Elissa. * Hoseaix. lo. The "high place" ofBaal where Balak and Balaam met to invoke curses upon Israel (Numbers xxii. 41). The term nti'3, bosheth, here easily recognized.

used as the synonyme for Baal, signifies the phallus.

—Jeremiah

—

It is also translated

Micah i. 11 but doubtless means Baal- worThe two words were compounded interchangeably in ship in both instances. proper names. Jerub-baal or Gideon was also styled Jerub-besheth ; IshBosheth, the son of Saul, and Mephi-Bosheth, the son of Jonathan, were transcribed by the synonymes Esh-Baal and Merib-Baal in the first Book of

shame

iii.

24, and

Chronicles.

f Jeremiah xi. 13. X Jeremiah vii. 17-31 and xliv. 8, 15-23.

Appendix.

89

"the shedding of innocent blood."* The sacrifices were made to the fire-god Moloch, or Baal-Hercules. In Isaiah, however, we find mention made of " slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks, "f This must have been an offering to Astart^. These were the cunni diaboli,

or

emblems of maternity, closely re-

The one at Delphi emitted the priestess inhaled which before delivering her a gas oracles. They are abundant in India at the present day, and were formerly in England before the introduction of Christianity. Miss EUwood, in her Journey to the East, mentions one which she saw " There is a sacred perforated stone at Malabar, through which penitents squeezed lated to the omphalic stones.

:

themselves in order to obtain a remission of their sins.:];

The custom of burning the thigh in sacrifices, which universal, is of the same character. The golden

was

thigh of Pythagoras was doubtless the thing last revealed It was the meros in which the foetal Bacchus was preserved and, like the phallus shown to the epopt at Eleusis, prefigured the great mystery of life.

to the initiate.

;

It is

noticeable that all these sensual peculiarities per-

tained to the worship of the female divinities.

The priests The

of Hercules, as of the lingam in India, were monks.

Hellenic Jew explains it like the more orthodox prophets, that

" the devising of images was the beginning of lewd-

ness, and the invention of them the corruption of life." §

Nevertheless we also are not prepared to accept unqualifiedly the sentiment that all

" Human nature is the same in

climes, and the workings of this

same human nature

are almost identical in their different stages of growth." If Mr. Westropp means from this that we should infer that

the

employment of the sexual symbolism in worship is mankind at a peculiar stage of devel-

characteristic of all

* 2 Kings xvi. 3 ; xxi. 6, i6 and xxiv. 4 ; 2 Chronicks xxviii. 3 ; Jeremiah ii. 34, 35 and xix. 4 ; Psalm cvi. 34-39. \ Isaiah Ivii.

5.

% Our British Ancestors, p. 160.

§ Wisdom of Solomon, xiv. 12.

6

Appendix.

90

opment, we dissent. Besides, there are tribes that we must acknowledge as human beings, having no customs entitled to be regarded as a cultus. Races of men are matelually diverse in structure, type, and psychical character, and probably had their origins in climates and periods of " Human nature is time widely apart from each other. manifestly very unlike, as exhibited respectively

by the

European populations, the Chinese, the African negroes, and the Australians."

Our evidence as to the antiquity of this peculiar symbolism is necessarily very incomplete. There have been endeavors to solve the question by an ingenious calculation.

The Maypole festival, common to all ancient countries east and west, and well known to have a phallic origin, should be dated from the vernal equinox, when that was the period of the entering of the sun into the zodiacal sign Taurus.

Counting seventy-two years

for the pre-

cession of the sun a single degree, the precise period of

that occurrence was about four thousand years before the Christian era.*

The Maypole celebration, if we adopt the

popular chronology, must have therefore taken its inception from sorne event connected with the occurrences recorded as happening in the Garden of Eden. The principal Aryan nations appear to have displayed a determined hostility to the entire phallic symbolism. In the Rig-Veda, the sisna-devas or priests of the lingam are debarred from access to the sacred *

rites,:]:

and con-

The Round Towers of Ireland, pp. 233, 234 ; also Maurice's Indian

Antiquities. \ Nevertheless, there may be reason, instead, to assign a date some time in

the pre- Adamite period.

In the Moniteur of January, 1865, it is stated that

in the province of Venetia, in Italy, excavations in light,

a,

bone-cave brought to

beneath ten feet of stalagmite, bones of animals, mostly post-tertiary,

of the usual description found in such places, flint implements, with a needle

of bone having an eye and point, and a plate of an argillaceous compound, on vfhich was scratched a rude drawing of a phallus. %

A similar prohibition appears also in the last stages of the Hebrew mon-

archy.

When Josiah abolished the worship at the " high places," he refused

to admit the priests that had officiated at them, to the service of the Temple.

The prophet Ezekiel also promulgated the following ordinance against them

Appendix.

91

signed to destruction at the hands of Indra.

The invaders

of India could find no milder language for the lascivious religionists

whom they encountered than demons, devil-

who observe no sacred rites. The Brahmin system was adopted afterward, unwillingly, worshippers, and persons as a compromise.

The ancient Persians exhibited a like detestation of the " They had no images of the gods, no temples, nor altars, and considered the use of them a sign of folly," * The Achsemenian kings were worshippers icon- worshippers.

of Ormazd, and displayed a similar antagonism to that of their Vedic brethren to the current idolatrous practices

Eventually the magian system of Media and Babylonia was engrafted upon the popular worship of Persia, although the kings and nobler classes adhered to

of their time.

the Zoroastrian doctrines.

These doctrines appear to be so closely allied to those imputed to Moses, that it is not difficult to imagine that they had once been identical. The exiles who returned from beyond the Euphrates are described very differently from those who were transported by Nebuchadnezzar. " They shall not come near unto me to do the ofBce of a priest unto me, nor come near to any of my holy things in the most holy place but they shall ;

bear their shame, and their abominations which they have committed." 6-14. * Herodotus, i. 131.

xliv.

\ The colonization of the Jews in Palestine under Cyrus and his successors It is evident that appears very like a new occupation, rather than a return. there were more of them beyond the Euphrates than ever made their

Persian

homes

Their leading class bore the title of Pharisees, perhaps from their

in Judea.

affiliations.

They, according to Spinoza, made the selection of the

books which are now accepted as the Sacred Scriptures, adopting only those which had been composed in the Hebrew language. revised and pruned, and occasionally changed.

It

The text of this was

seems to have been their

purpose to keep the knowledge of it in the limits of their own order.

Never-

theless, it betrays the indications of an Ionian influence,and also of a Hindoo

The patriarchal names are very similar to those of the Brahmin Brahma and his consort Sara-Iswati, his son Ikshwaka, and greatgrandson Yadu. The ruins of the temple of Peace, or Tukht Solumi, have been found in Cashmere, and many names of the Bible and Western Asia, antecedent.

divinities

:

like Yudia,

the Indus.

Dawid, Arabi, Cush, Yavan, are also indigenous to the region of

Appendix.

92

They no more filled their land with idolatry and phallic emblems, but simply placed the sacred fire in the temple The at Jerusalem and watched against its extinction. precept of the law of Moses forbidding the fabricating and adoration of pesels or graven images, was rigidly kept. Synagogues for religious instruction took the place! of high places, pillars, and enclosures of a circular form. Whatever may have been the characteristics of their ancestors before the captivity, they were true afterward to the lessons learned in exile. In the reign of Antiochus they resisted the introduction of the mysteries of Dionysus, and underwent tortures and crucifixion rather than taste the flesh of swine and participate in the foreign worship.

The transition from the old Roman and ethnic religions to

Christianity could not possibly be effected sO

pletely as to change

com-

entirely the real sentiments of the

We must not be surprised, therefore, when we

people.

are told that the ancient worship, after

it

had been ex-

cluded from its former temples and from the metropolitan towns, was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants Indeed, from this very fact it obof humbler localities. tained

its

subsequent designation.

From being kept up

in the villages (or pagi), its votaries

were denominated

pagans, pagani, or villagers.

The prevalence of Mithraic or magian ideas and practices led also to

the confounding of the proscribed wor-

ship with the practice of witchcraft and sorcery

;

and to

this fact we are indebted for the numerous legends and ac-

counts of secret colleges of magicians, as well as of assemblies of witches in remote places, decorated with the sym-

bols of the old religion, of kings or devils having the goat-

form of the ancient Pan or Bacchus with the priapic appendages, of distinguished persons in attendance in the habit of satyrs, of sham sacraments like those of the Persian

god Mithras, and especially of the orgies or enthu-

siastic furors, together is

little

There

with general debauchery.

reason to doubt that these "witches' sabbaths"

were formerly celebrated, and that they were,

in

some

Appendix.

93

modified form, a continuation of the outlawed worship of the Roman Empire.*

Whether the alarm experienced in this country two centuries ago, of an invasion of Satan and his associated powers,

was a delusion, f or had some relation to the possible

Roman religion into

introduction of the old Asiatic and

America, is a question admitting of ingenious discussion. In Europe, however, its maintenance, after many centuries had elapsed of proscription and persecution, finally became impossible. The ignorance of the common people rendered them ill-adapted to continue a worship so full of recondite mystery, and the orgies or " sabbaths " fell into neglect. But in certain practices and superstitions not yet outgrown, the old phallism and pagan ideas still crop out. Good and ill fortune are supposed to result from the wholesome or obnoxious influence of the moon. Goethe has commemorated the potency of the pentacle as a protector against evil spirits. uterine symbol,

is

still

The mystic horse-shoe, a Lucky and unlucky

employed.

:j:

Even at the gaming-table, the cards

days are regarded.

are indicated by the phallic symbols, the spade and triadic club, and the omphalic distaff" and

the heart and diamond.

eminence disguised as

Certain peculiarities of architec-

ture and decoration are inspired from the same source, and

whoever is intelligent is not slow to recognize the fact. * The heretical sects,

as they sprung up, were denounced in the same Even to this day, Vauderie, or Vaudois worship, is the French designation for witchcraft and the name of Bulgarians \Bulgres\, who were

manner.

;

once Albigenses or Paulicians, is

now applied to men practising unnatural

vice.

North f The apprehension of this invasion was entertained in all the British American Colonies, and the severest penal laws were enacted in consequence.

The executions in Massachusetts, in 1692, operated to overthrow the prevailNew York and the other provinces, 'the

ing sentiment in that region ; but in

laws were enforced till the Revolution.

Indeed, in South Carolina witchcraft

was a capital offence in the Code till the reorganization of the State government after the recent civil war ; and less than a century ago offenders were executed. :]:

In a church in Paris is said to be a relic of special virtue, the pudenda

muliebria Sancta Virginis. cient Names, vol. i, , p. 144.

See Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in An-

Appendix.

94

In popular customs, and even in religious institutions, these things are as plainly to be perceived to-day as when

Adonis and Astart^ were the gods of the former world. The sanctities, the powers, the symbols, and even the utensils of the ancient Faith, have been assumed, if not usurped or legitimately inherited, by its successors. The two holies of the Gnostics and Neo-Platonists, Sophia and Eirene, wisdom and peace, were adopted as saints into the calendarof Constantinople. Dionysus, the god of the Mysteries,

reappears as St. Denys in France, St. Liberius, St.

Eleutherius, and St. Bacchus

there is also a St. Mithra and even Satan, prince of shadows, is revered as St. Satur and St. Swithin. Their relics are in keeping. The Holy Virgin Astraea or Astarte, whose return was announced ;

by Virgil in the days of Augustus, as introducing a new Golden Age, now under her old designation of Blessed Virgin and Queen of Heaven, receives homage as " the one whose sole divinity the whole orb of the earth veneThe Mother and Child, the latter adorned with rates." the nimbus or aureole of the ancient sun-gods, are now the object qf veneration as much as were Ceres and Bacchus, or Isis and Horus in the Mysteries. Nuns abound alike in Christian and in Buddhist countries, as they did formerly in Isis- worshipping Egypt and if their maidenhood is not sacrificed at the shrine of Baal-Peor, or any of his cognate divinities, yet it is done in a figure ;

:

they are

all

"brides of the Saviour."

Galli sing in the

churches, and consecrated women are as numerous as of old.

The priestly vestments are like those formerly used in

the Phrygian cap, the the worship of Saturn and Cybele The whole pantheon has pallium, the stole, and the alb. ;

been exhausted from the Indus, Euphrates, and the Nile, to supply symbolic adornment for the apostles' successors. Hercules holds the distaff of Omphale. The Lily has superseded the Lotus, and celibacy is exalted above the first recorded mandate of God to mankind. In ancient times the Carians and other votaries used to wound themselves and offer their blood to Bacchus in

Appendix.

95

commemoration of his dismemberment by the Titans. The former worshippers in Yucatan and Central America had an analogous custom. The prophets of Baal in Syria and Phoenicia also inflicted wounds on themselves.* The Jews were prohibited from this by their law,t but at the period of mourning for the dead one, Adonis, slain by the boar, they flogged themselves and wept.

This animal,

which was sacred to Mars or Ares, the god of destruction, became their abomination. The Egyptians had a like custom. At the assemblies of Isis, composed of many thousands of pilgrims, those who participated in the solemnities scourged themselves in memory of the slaughSailors were whipped around the altar of

tered Oseiris.it

Apollo

at Delos,

and children

at the

temple of Diana

Rome, at the Lupercalia, about the 14th of February, young men used to lay aside their gar-

in Sparta.

In

ments, and taking whips, run through the streets, flogging

everybody whdm they met. § Even now, during Holy Week in Rome, many devotees lash themselves till the blood gushes in streams other places.

;

and the same practice exists in

The Flagellants of the Middle Ages appear

to have been actuated by a similar enthusiasm.

The

pretension

to

universal

supremacy by leading

Bishops of the earlier centuries is familiar to all who are conversant with church history. The Grand Lama of the Buddhists, and the Zeus or Archiej'eus of old Hellas, fur-

nished antetypes which were speedily imitated at the * I Kings xviii. 28. \ Leviticus xix. 28 and xxi. 5.

\ Herodotus, ii. 61.

§ There seems to be a voluptuous sense excited in

this

way.

Women,

especially those who were married, eagerly placed themselves in the

way of

these flagellators, partly on account of the exquisite delight received from the infliction,

and partly because of the idea that it promoted the aptitude to con-

The late Henry Buckle, author of the History of Civilization, printed privately a series of curious tracts on this subject, illustrating how a practice beginning in religious zeal can be made a source of sensuous delight. Rare Tracts on Flagellation. Reprinted from the original editions collected by the late Henry Thomas Buckle. 7 vols, post 8vo. London. Printed by ceive.

G. Peacock, 1777.

Appendix.

g6 focal points of the

Empire.

The Bishop of Rome, how-

ever, was the most successful.

In his person the Pontifex

MaxiMus exists- as in the days of the Republic and the Caesars..

Asia and Italy alike minister to his elevation.

He has "the power of the keys," the key of Janus of archaic Rome, and the key of Cybele, the Virgin-Mother

of Asia. '

The former was patulciiis and clusius, the opener

and shutter

;

and with the authority of Cybel^ he was

empowered also, as the vesica piscis indicates, to superintend the gateway of physical existence.

no sneer at this.

But let there be

In the Catacombs of Rome, where the

early Christians used to congregate, are numerous pictures and carvings indicating close resemblances to the pagan Enough exists to show that the pontiff does not usages. The utensils and other furniture take all by assumption. of the Mysteries appear to have been there and one drawing shows a woman standing before an altar offering bunns to the Serpent-divinity. It is true, doubtless, that ;

there

is

not a fast or

festival,

procession or sacrament,

custom or religious symbol, that did not come " bodily " from the previous paganism. But the Pope did not import them on his own account they had already been transferred into the ecclesiastical structure, and he only accepted and perhaps took advantage of the fact. social

;

Many of those who protest because of these "corruptions," are prone to imitate them, more or less, displaying an engrafting from the same stock.

Much dispute has been had in regard to the presence of The statue of the apostle, it has been great plausibility, was originally the bust of asserted with St. Peter at Rome.

the Jupiter of the Capitol.

We presume that the " apostle

of the circumcision," as Paul, his great rival, styles him, was never at the Imperial City, nor had a successor there,

not even in the Ghetto.

The " Chair of Peter," * therefore,

* There appear to have been two chairs of the titular apostle. In the year 1^62 the workmen engaged in cleaning one of them for exhibition to the people, on the i8th of January, "the Twelve Labors of Hercules unluckily appeared

Appendix.

97

is sacred rather than apostolical. Its sanctity proceeded, however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of Rome. The hierophant of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of initiations, when exhibiting to the

candidates the petroma*

"In the Church of St. Godfrey Higgins asserts, f " is kept in secret a large stone emblem of the creative power, of a very peculiar shape, on which are the words, Zev<i Scorrjp, Zeus Soter (or Jove the Saviour) only persons who have great The end crowned the work.

Peter's at Rome,"

;

interest can get a sight of it."

Thus the

cycle seems to return

upon itself.

Archaic

Rome seems to live again in the Rome Mediaeval, old Egypt and Babylonia to be resuscitated in our modern Europe. Yet this is not altogether true. Let us take heed how we hear. Those capable of understanding, will recognize in this symbolism the revelation of the first creation and the reengraved on it. " (Bower's History of the Popes, vol. ii. , p. 7 ) This chair was removed and another substituted. In 1795 the French under Bonaparte occuThis time tliere was found pied Rome, and again the chair was investigated. " There is no deity the Mohammedan Confession of Faith, in Arabic letters .

:

but Allah, and Mohammed is his Apostle.''

Zodiacs, or Labors of Hercules,

evidently of an astrological character, have been found in the churches of York

and Lyons, and a wine-cask at the shrine of St. Denys. On the hypothesis of having been heir-looms from the pagan religion, these facts are duly accounted for, except the French discovery. It may have been that Islam and the Papacy once contemplated an alliance, o\ some crusader brought the chair from the East. * If this supposition is correct, the ecclesiastical legends of Peter's sojourn at Rome are easily comprehended.

The fetroma, or stone tablet, contained

or constituted the last revelation made by the hierophant to the candidate for initiation.

What it was might never be divulged on pain of death.

All the

work of the Creator was now unfolded, and the profane might not know the solemn secret. As the Mysteries came to Rome from the East, it is easy to perceive that the hierophant or revelator would have an oriental title.

Peter,

from the Phoenician word ")ns> peter, is applied in the Book of Genesis (xl. 8) to an expounder of dreams, and was probably the designation of the interpreter The Roman Bishop succeeding to his chair, would be, it is of the petroma. apparent, pontiff over the whole world, f Celtic Druids, pp. 195-196.

98

Appendix.

naissance, as refined in sentiment or as gross in sense as is

the mind of the person witnessing the vision.

Whether

he has learned supernal mysteries is to be ascertained certainly he is revealed to himself, humbled if not humble. ;

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$20.00.

London, 1870.

Before the Aryan and the Semitic races had made a record in history, ahoriginal peoples occupied India, Arabia, and the countries of the Mediterranean. They were not barbarous, for their monumental remains show that their knowledge of architecture, the mechanic arts and astronomy, has not been exceeded in subsequent time. Their civilization, however, was peculiar for the religious comprehended the political system, and worship made science and Unconscious of harm or immodesty, they adored the Supreme Being as the art its ministers. Essential Principle of Life; and expressed their veneration by symbols which, in their simple ai^prehension, best expressed the Divine Functions. The Sun, possessing and diffusing the triune potencies of Heat, Light, and Actinism, was a universal emblem of God as was the Bull, the zodiacal sign which indicated the vernal equinox and the resuscitation of Time. With equal aptness and propriety the human organs of sex, as representing Divine Love and the Perpetuation of Animated Existence, were also adopted as symbols of the Deity, and models of them employed at all religious festivals. Those symbols were adopted by the Aryan conquerors of India, and incorporated into the Brahmin worship and we find remains of the prehistorical religion in modern creeds, superstitions, and architecture. The Monumental Shaft, the Cross, the Church-Spire, appear to have been derived from the archaic worship just noted, and mean alike the virile symbol and the life everlasting. Mr. Davenport has given these matters a due explanation, and his work is a rare as well as a valuable contribution to literature. ;

;

;

THE DABISTAN, OR SCHOOL OF MANNERS. Translated from the Original Persian, with Notes and Illustrations by

David Shea and Anthony Troyer.

3 vols. 8vo, new cloth.

$7.50.

Oriental Society, London, 1843.

An interesting account of the Religions of the world, written by an unknown writer, of the greatest interest to Oriental scholars and comparative mythologists.

PETRIE'S

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE

OF IRELAND,

Anterior to the Anglo-Norman Invasion.

Round Towers and other Architecture.

Numerous engravings of the 4to, cloth.

$20.00.

London, 1845. Large paper, scarce. This work comprises the Prize Essay on tiie Origin and Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, greatly enlarged ; and distinct Essays on ancient Stone Churches, Stc, of contemporaneous ages.

WILKINSON'S ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, The Manners and Customs of. ings, many of

which are colored.

edges uncut, scarce.

A Beautiful Copy.

$90.00.

Both Series, with numerous engrav6 vols. 8vo, tree calf extra, gilt top, London, 1837-41.

Best Edition.

ZEND-AVESTA, Ouvrage de Zoro.\STRE, contenant ses ideas theologiques, physiques, at morales, le culte religieux qu'il a etabli, et plusieurs trait^s sur I'ancienne histoire des Perses; traduit en Franfais, avec des remarques, &c., par

Anquetil du Perron. $35.00.

2 vols, in 3, 4to, plates, old French calf gilt. Paris, 1771.

Rare and Valuable Books.

UPHAM'S BUDDHISM, History and Doctrine of, popularly illustrated with Notices of THE Kappooism OF Demon-Worship, and of the Bali or Planetary Incantations of Ceylon. half calf neat.

$19.00.

Folio, 43 plates from Singalese Designs. London, 1829.

Scarce.

SECRET MUSEUM OF NAPLES. Being an account of the Erotic Paintings, Bronzes, and Statues contained in that famous "Cabinet Secret." By Colonel Fanin. Now first

With sixty full-page illustrations, medium 4to, half polished morocco, gilt top,

translated from the French.

mostly colored.

i

vol.,

London, 1872.

$40.00.

These relics, in which science takes so lively an interest, have survived the lapse of cen-

They have been preserved in the womb of the earth to transmit to future generations the lessons of history. Those which we have chosen to form the subject of this book were discovered in some of those towns situated on the side of Vesuvius which had been buried under its volcanic ashes we allude to Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabia. During more than sixteen hundred years even the sites of these destroyed cities were unknown ; learned men were still at controversy on the subject at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when chance led to the discovery in a country-seat of the Duke of Lorraine, at Portici, of a fruitful mine of objects of Art and Antiquities of all kinds. The King of the Two Sicilies caused excavations to be made, and in the month of pecember, 1^738, the Theatre of Herculaneum was found. The excavations made at this fieriod, and continued down to our days, have furnished the Neapolitan government with the richest^ most instructive, and most interesting collection of antiquities. This work was originally published by the Italian government, and given to men of science and learned institutions only. It is now for the first time priesented in an English translation, with all of the illustrations of the original edition. turies.

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ASIATIC RESEARCHES

;

or, Transactions of the Society for inquiring into the History, Antiquities,

Arts, Literature, etc. of Asia, by the most eminent Oriental Scholars.

12 vols. 8vo, russia gilt.

London, 1801-6.

$20.00.

Contains the learned Essays by Colebrooke, Sir WiUiam Jones, Carey, Strachey, Dr. Wallich, Roxburgh, &c.

KING (C. W.) THE GNOSTICS. And their Remains, Ancient and Medieval. 8vo, new cloth gilt.

Profusely illustrated.

London, 1864.

$6.00.

#*# The only English work on the subject.

Out ofprint and scarce,

VISHNU PURANA, A system of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, translated from the original Sanscrit, and illustrated by Notes derived chiefly from other Puranas,

by H. H. Wilson.

Thick 4to, cloth.

$25. ob.

London, 1840.

The "Vishnu Purana" embodies'the real doctrine of the Indian Scripture, the "Unity of the Deity.'* This edition was published by the Oriental Translation Society, but is quite out of

print, and rare.

f-

.

*^