Part 2
Another writer says, “Reverse the position of the triple deities Asshur, Anu, Hea, and we have the figure of the ancient ‘tau’ of the Christians, Greeks, and ancient Hebrews. It is one of the oldest conventional forms of the cross. It is also met with in Gallic, Oscan, Arcadian, Etruscan, original Egyptian, Phœnician, Ethiopic, and Pelasgian forms. The Ethiopic form of the ‘tau’ is the exact prototype and image of the cross, or rather, to state the fact in order of merit and time, the cross is made in the exact image of the Ethiopic ‘tau.’ The fig-leaf, having three lobes to it, became a symbol of the triad. As the male genital organs were held in early times to exemplify the actual male creative power, various natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic idea, and at the same time point to those parts of the human form. Hence, a similitude was recognised in a pillar, a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied round with two ribbons with the two ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers, the caduceus. Again, the conspicuous part of the sacred triad Asshur is symbolised by a single stone placed upright—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar, or palm tree, while eggs, apples, or citrons, plums, grapes, and the like represented the remaining two portions, altogether called Phallic emblems. Baal-Shalisha is a name which seems designed to perpetuate the triad, since it signifies ‘my Lord the Trinity,’ or ‘my God is three.’”
We must not omit to mention other Phallic emblems, such as the bull, the ram, the goat, the serpent, the torch, fire, a knobbed stick, the crozier; and still further personified, as Bacchus, Priapus, Dionysius, Hercules, Hermes, Mahadeva, Siva, Osiris, Jupiter, Moloch, Baal, Asher, and others.
If Ezekiel is to be credited, the triad, T, as Asshur, Anu, and Hea, was made of gold and silver, and was in his day not symbolically used, but actually employed; for he bluntly says “whoredom was committed with the images of men,” or, as the marginal note has it, images of “a male” (Ezek. xvi. 17). It was with this god-mark—a cross in the form of the letter T—that Ezekiel was directed to stamp the foreheads of the men of Judæa who feared the Lord (Ezek. ix. 4).
That the cross, or crucifix, has a sexual origin we determine by a similar rule of research to that by which comparative anatomists determine the place and habits of an animal by a single tooth. The cross is a metaphoric tooth which belongs to an antique religious body physical, and that essentially human. A study of some of the earliest forms of faith will lift the veil and explain the mystery.
India, China, and Egypt have furnished the world with a _genus_ of religion. Time and culture have divided and modified it into many species and countless varieties. However much the imagination was allowed to play upon it, the animus of that religion was sexuality—worship of the generative principle of man and nature, male and female. The cross became the emblem of the male feature, under the term of the _triad_—three in one. The female was the _unit_; and, joined to the male triad, constituted a sacred four. Rites and adoration were sometimes paid to the male, sometimes to the female, or to the two in one.
So great was the veneration of the cross among the ancients that it was carried as a Phallic symbol in the religious processions of the Egyptians and Persians. Higgins also describes the cross as used from the earliest times of Paganism by the Egyptians as a banner, above which was carried the device of the Egyptian cities.
The cross was also used by the ancient Druids, who held it as a sacred emblem. In Egypt it stood for the signification of eternal life. Schedeus describes it as customary for the Druids “to seek studiously for an oak tree, large and handsome, growing up with _two principal arms in the form of a cross_, besides the main stem upright. If the two horizontal arms are not sufficiently adapted to the figure, they fasten a _cross-beam_ to it. This tree they consecrate in this manner: Upon the right branch they cut in the bark, in fair characters, the word ‘Hesus’; upon the middle, or upright stem, the word ‘Taranius’; upon the left branch ‘Belenus’; over this, above the going off of the arms, they cut the name of the god _Thau_; under all, the same repeated, _Thau_.”
YONI
There is in Hindostan an emblem of great sanctity, which is known as the “Linga-Yoni.” It consists of a simple pillar in the centre of a figure resembling the outline of a conical ear-ring. It is expressive of the female genital organ both in shape and idea. The Greek letter “Delta” is also expressive of it, signifying the door of a house.
Yoni is of Sanskrit origin. Yanna, or Yoni, means (1) the vulva, (2) the womb, (3) the place of birth, (4) origin, (5) water, (6) a mine, a hole, or pit. As Asshur and Jupiter were the representatives of the male potency, so Juno and Venus were representatives of the female attribute. Moore, in his “Oriental Fragments,” says: “Oriental writers have generally spelled the word, ‘Yoni,’ which I prefer to write ‘IOni.’ As Lingam was the vocalised cognomen of the male organ, or deity, so IOni was that of hers.” Says R. P. Knight: “The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative powers of nature or of matter, as those of the male were of the generative powers of God. They are usually represented emblematically by the shell _Concha Veneris_, which was therefore worn by devout persons of antiquity, as it still continues to be by the pilgrims of many of the common people of Italy” (“On the worship of Priapus,” p. 28).
If Asshur, the conspicuous feature of the male Creator, is supplied with types and representative figures of himself, so the female feature is furnished with substitutes and typical imagery of herself.
One of these is technically known as the _sistrum_ of Isis. It is the virgin’s symbol. The bars across the _fenestrum_, or opening, are bent so that they cannot be taken out, and indicate that the door is closed. It signifies that the mother is still _virgo intacta_—a truly immaculate female—if the truth can be strained to so denominate a _mother_. The pure virginity of the Celestial Mother was a tenet of faith for 2,000 years before the accepted Virgin Mary now adored was born. We might infer that Solomon was acquainted with the figure of the _sistrum_, when he said, “A garden enclosed is my spouse, a spring shut up, a _fountain sealed_” (Song of Sol. iv. 12). The _sistrum_, we are told, was only used in the worship of Isis, to drive away Typhon (evil).
The Argha is a contrite form, or boat-shaped dish or plate used as a sacrificial cup in the worship of Astarte, Isis, and Venus. Its shape portrays its own significance. The Argha and _crux ansata_ were often seen on Egyptian monuments, and yet more frequently on bas-reliefs.
Equivalent to Iao, or the Lingam, we find Ab, the Father, the Trinity; Asshur, Anu, Hea, Abraham, Adam, Esau, Edom, Ach, Sol, Helios (Greek for Sun), Dionysius, Bacchus, Apollo, Hercules, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Jupiter, Zeus, Aides, Adonis, Baal, Osiris, Thor, Oden; the cross, tower, spire, pillar, minaret, tolmen, and a host of others; while the Yoni was represented by IO, Isis, Astarte, Juno, Venus, Diana, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Rhea, Cybele, Ceres, Eve, Frea, Frigga; the queen of Heaven, the oval, the trough, the delta, the door, the ark, the ship, the chasm, a ring, a lozenge, cave, hole, pit, Celestial Virgin, and a number of other names. Lucian, who was an Assyrian, and visited the temple of Dea Syria, near the Euphrates, says there are two Phalli standing in the porch with this inscription on them, “These Phalli I, Bacchus, dedicate to my step-mother Juno.”
The Papal religion is essentially the feminine, and built on the ancient Chaldean basis. It clings to the female element in the person of the Virgin Mary. Naphtali (Gen. xxx. 8) was a descendant of such worshippers, if there be any meaning in a concrete name. Bear in mind, names and pictures perpetuate the faith of many peoples. Neptoah is Hebrew for “the vulva,” and, Al or El being God, one of the unavoidable renderings of Naphtali is “the Yoni is my God,” or “I worship the Celestial Virgin.” The Philistine towns generally had names strongly connected with sexual ideas. Ashdod, _aish_ or _esh_, means “fire, heat,” and _dod_ means “love, to love,” “boiled up,” “be agitated,” the whole signifying “the heat of love,” or “the fire which impels to union.” Could not those people exclaim, Our “God is love”? (1 John iv. 8).
The amatory drift of Solomon’s song is undisguised, though the language is dressed in the habiliments of seeming decency. The burden of thought of most of it bears direct reference to the Linga-Yoni. He makes a woman say, “He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts” (S. of S. i. 13). Again, of the Phallus, or Linga, she says, “I will go up the palm-tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof” (vii. 8). Palm-tree and boughs are euphemisms of the male genitals.
HEBREW PHALLICISM
The nations surrounding the Jews practising the Phallic rites and worshipping the Phallic deities, it is not to be supposed that the Jews escaped their influence. It is indeed certain that the worship of the Phallics was a great and important part of the Hebrew worship.
This will be the more plainly seen when we bear in mind the importance given to circumcision as a covenant between God and man. Another equally suggestive custom among the Patriarchs was the act of taking the oath, or making a sacred promise, which is commented upon by Dr. Ginsingburg in Kitto’s _Cyclopædia_. He says: “Another primitive custom which obtained in the patriarchal age was, that the one who took the oath put his hand under the thigh of the adjurer (Gen. xxiv. 2, and xlvii. 29). This practice evidently arose from the fact that the genital member, which is meant by the euphemistic expression _thigh_, was regarded as the most sacred part of the body, being the symbol of union in the tenderest relation of matrimonial life, and the seat whence all issue proceeds and the perpetuity so much coveted by the ancients. Compare Gen. xlvi. 26; Exod. i. 5; Judges vii. 30. Hence the creative organ became the symbol of the _Creator_, and the object of worship among all nations of antiquity. It is for this reason that God claimed it as a sign of the covenant between himself and his chosen people in the rite of circumcision. Nothing therefore could render the oath more solemn in those days than touching the symbol of creation, the sign of the covenant, and the source of that issue who may at any future period avenge the breaking a compact made with their progenitor.” From this we learn that Abraham, himself a Chaldee, had reverence for the Phallus as an emblem of the Creator. We also learn that the rite of circumcision touches Phallic or Lingasic worship. From Herodotus we are informed that the Syrians learned circumcision from the Egyptians, as did the Hebrews. Says Dr. Inman: “I do not know anything which illustrates the difference between ancient and modern times more than the frequency with which circumcision is spoken of in the sacred books, and the carefulness with which the subject is avoided now.”
The mutilation of male captives, as practised by Saul and David, was another custom among the worshippers of Baal, Asshur, and other Phallic deities. The practice was to debase the victims and render them unfit to take part in the worship and mysteries. Some idea can be formed of the esteem in which people in former times cherished the male or Phallic emblems of creative power when we note the sway that power exercised over them. If these organs were lost or disabled, the unfortunate one was unfitted to meet in the congregation of the Lord, and disqualified to minister in the holy temples. Excessive punishment was inflicted upon the person who had the temerity to injure the sacred structure. If a woman were guilty of inflicting injury, her hand was cut off without pity (Deut. xxv. 12). The great object of veneration in the Ark of the Covenant was doubtless a Phallic emblem, a symbol of the preservation of the germ of life.
In the historical and prophetic books of the Old Testament we have repeated evidence that the Hebrew worship was a mixture of Paganism and Judaism, and that Jehovah was worshipped in connection with other deities. Hezekiah is recorded in 2 Kings xviii. 3, to have “removed the high places, and broken the images, and cut down the groves (Ashera), and broken in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it.” The Ashera, or sacred groves here alluded to are named from the goddess Ashtaroth, which Dr. Smith describes as the proper name of the goddess; while Ashera is the name of the image of the goddess. Rawlinson, in his _Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World_, describes Ashera to imply something that stood straight up, and probably its essential element was the stem of a tree, an analogy suggestive of the Assyrian emblem of the Tree of Life of the Scriptures. This stem, which stood for the emblem of life, was probably a pillar, or Phallus, like the Lingi of the Hindus, sometimes erected in a grove or sacred hollow, signifying the Yoni and Lingi. We read in 2 Kings xxi. 7, that Manasseh “set up a graven image in the grove,” and, according to Dr. Oort, the older reading is in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 7, 15, where it is an image or pillar. During the reigns of the Jewish kings, the worship of Baal, the Priapus of the Greeks and Romans, was extensively practised by the Jews. Pillars and groves were reared in his name.
In front of the Temple of Baal, in Samaria, was erected an Ashera (1 Kings xvi. 31, 32) which even survived the temple itself, for although Jehu destroyed the Temple of Baal, he allowed the Ashera to remain (2 Kings x. 18, 19; xiii. 6). Bernstein, in an important work on the origin of the legends of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, undoubtedly proves that during the monarchial period of Israel, the sanguinary wars and violent conflicts between the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel were between the Elohistic and Jehovahic faiths, kept alive by the priesthood at the chief places of worship, concerning the true patriarch, and each party manufacturing and inserting legends to give a more ancient and important part to its own faith.
It is not at all improbable that the conflict was between the two portions of the Phallic faith, the Lingam and Yoni parties. The cause of this conflict was the erection of the consecrated stones or pillars which were put up by the Hebrews as objects of Divine worship. The altar erected by Jacob at Bethel was a pillar, for according to Bernstein the word altar can only be used for the erection of a pillar. Jacob likewise set up a Matzebah, or pillar of stone, in Gilead, and finally he set one up upon the tomb of Rachel.
A great portion of the facts have been suppressed by the translators, who have given to the world histories which have glossed over the ancient rites and practices of the Jews.
An instance is given by Forlong on the important word “Rock or Stone,” a Phallic emblem to which the Jews addressed their devotions. He says, “It should not be, but I fear it is, necessary to explain to mere English readers of the Old Testament that the _Stone_ or _Rock Tsur_ was _the real old god of all Arabs, Jews, and Phœnicians_, that this would be clear to Christians were the Jewish writings translated according to the first ideas of the people and _Rock_ used as it ought to be, instead of ‘God,’ ‘Theos,’ ‘Lord,’ etc., being written where Tsur occurs.” Numerous instances of this are given in Dr. Ort’s worship of Baal in Israel, where praises, addresses, and adorations are addressed to the _Rock_, instance, Deut. xxxii. 4, 18. Stone pillars were also used by the Hebrews as a memorial of a sacred covenant, for we find Jacob setting up a pillar as a witness, that he would not pass over it. Connected with this pillar worship is the ceremony of anointing by pouring oil upon the pillar, as practised by Jacob at Bethel. According to Sir W. Forbes, in his _Oriental Memoirs_, the “pouring of oil upon a stone is practised at this day upon many a shapeless stone throughout Hindostan.”
Toland gives a similar account of the Druids as practising the same rite, and describes many of the stones found in England as having a cavity at the top made to receive the offering. The worship of Baal like the worship of Priapus was attended with prostitution, and we find the Jews having a similar custom to the Babylonians.
Payne Knight gives the following account of it in his work: “The women of every rank and condition held it to be an indispensable duty of religion to prostitute themselves once in their lives in her temple to any stranger who came and offered money, which, whether little or much, was accepted, and applied to a sacred purpose. Women sat in the temple of Venus awaiting the selection of the stranger, who had the liberty of choosing whom he liked. A woman once seated must remain until she has been selected by a piece of silver being cast into her lap, and the rite performed outside the temple.”
Similar customs existed in Armenia, Phrygia, and even in Palestine, and were a feature of the worship of Baal Peor. The Hebrew prophets described and denounced these excesses which had the same characteristics as the rites of the Babylonian priesthood. The identical custom is referred to in 1 Sam. ii. 22, where “the sons of Eli lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.”
Words and history corroborate each other, or are apt to do so if contemporaneous. Thus _kadesh_, or _kaesh_, designate in Hebrew “a consecrated one,” and history tells the unworthy tale in descriptive plainness, as will be shown in the sequel.
That the religion was dominating and imperative is determined by Deut. xvii. 12, where presumptuous refusal to listen to the priest was death to the offender. To us it is inconceivable that the indulgence of passion could be associated with religion, but so it was. Much as it is covered over by altered words and substituted expressions in the Bible—an example of which see _men_ for male organ, Ezek. xvi. 17—it yet stands out offensively bold. The words expressive of “sanctuary,” “consecrated,” and “Sodomite,” are in the Hebrew essentially the same. They indicate the passion of amatory devotion. It is among the Hindus of to-day as it was in Greece and Italy of classic times; and we find that “holy women” is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire, the price of which hire goes to the service of the temple.
As a general rule, we may assume that priests who make or expound the laws, which they declare to be from God, are men, and, consequently, through all time, have thought, and do think, of the gratification of the masculine half of humanity. The ancient and modern Orientals are not exceptions. They lay it down as a momentous fact that virginity is the most precious of all the possessions of a woman, and, being so, it ought, in some way or other, to be devoted to God.
Throughout India, and also through the densely inhabited parts of Asia, and modern Turkey there is a class of females who dedicate themselves to the service of the deity whom they adore; and the rewards accruing from their prostitution are devoted to the service of the temple and the priests officiating therein.
The temples of the Hindus in the Dekkan possessed their establishments. They had bands of consecrated dancing-girls called the _Women of the Idol_, selected in their infancy by the priests for the beauty of their persons, and trained up with every elegant accomplishment that could render them attractive.
We also find David and the daughters of Shiloh performing a wild and enticing dance; likewise we have the leaping of the prophets of Baal.
It is again significant that a great proportion of Bible names relate to “divine,” sexual, generative, or creative power; such as Alah, “the strong one”; Ariel, “the strong Jas is El”; Amasai, “Jah is firm”; Asher, “the male” or “the upright organ”; Elijah, “El is Jah”; Eliab, “the strong father”; Elisha, “El is upright”; Ara, “the strong one,” “the hero”; Aram, “high,” or, “to be uncovered”; Baal Shalisha, “my Lord the trinity,” or “my God is three”; Ben-zohett, “son of firmness”; Camon, “the erect One”; Cainan, “he stands upright”; these are only a few of the many names of a similar signification.
It will be seen, from what has been given, that the Jews, like the Phœnicians (if they were not the same), had the same ceremonies, rites, and gods as the surrounding nations, but enough has been said to show that Phallic worship was much practised by the Jews. It was very doubtful whether the Jehovah-worship was not of a monotheistic character, but those who desire to have a further insight into the mysteries of the wars between the tribes should consult Bernstein’s valuable work.
EARTH MOTHER
The following interesting chapter is taken from a valuable book issued a few years ago anonymously: