Part 5

The following is an account given of it by Payne Knight, in his curious dissertation on Phallic Worship:—“The Lotus is the Nelumbo of Linnæus. This plant grows in the water, among its broad leaves puts forth a flower, in the centre of which is formed the seed vessel, shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and perforated on the top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds grow. The orifices of these cells being too small to let the seeds drop out when ripe, they shoot forth into new plants in the places where they are formed: the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish them, until they acquire such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open and release themselves, after which, like other aquatic weeds, they take root wherever the current deposits them. This plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the productive power of the waters, upon which the active spirit of the Creator operated in giving life and vegetation, to matter. We accordingly find it employed in every part of the northern hemisphere, where the symbolical religion, _improperly called idolatry_, does or ever did prevail. The sacred images of the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians are almost placed upon it, of which numerous instances occur in the publications of Kœmpfer, Sonnerat, etc. The Brahma of India is represented as sitting upon his Lotus throne, and the figure upon the Isaaic table holds the stem of this plant surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the Cross representing the male organs of generation in the other; thus signifying the universal power, both active and passive, attributed to that goddess.”

Nimrod says:—“The Lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expansive calyx represents the ship of the gods floating on the surface of the water; and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof. The one was the galley or cockboat, and the other the mast of cockayne; but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of the flower came to have certain other significations, which seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at Benares. This plant was also used in the sacred offices of the Jewish religion. In the ornaments of the temple of Solomon, the Lotus or lily is often seen.”

The figure of Isis is frequently represented holding the stem of the plant in one hand, and the cross and circle in the other. Columns and capitals resembling the plant are still existing among the ruins of Thebes, in Egypt, and the island of Philœ. The Chinese goddess, Pussa, is represented sitting upon the Lotus, called in that country Lin, with many arms, having symbols signifying the various operations of nature, while similar attributes are expressed in the Scandinavian goddess Isa or Disa.

The Lotus is also a prominent symbol in Hindu and Egyptian cosmogony. This plant appears to have the same tendency with the Sphinx, of marking the connection between that which produces and that which is produced. The Egyptian Ceres (Virgo) bears in her hand the blue Lotus, which plant is acknowledged to be the emblem of celestial love so frequently seen mounted on the back of Leo in the ancient remains. The following is a translation of the Purana relating to the cosmogony of the Hindus, and will be found interesting as showing the importance attached to the Lotus in the worship of the ancients:—“We find Brahma emerging from the Lotus. The whole universe was dark and covered with water. On this primeval water did Bhagavat (God), in a masculine form, repose for the space of one Calpho (a thousand years); after which period the intention of creating other beings for his own wise purposes became predominant in the mind of the _Great Creator_. In the first place, by his sovereign will was produced the flower of the Lotus, afterwards, by the same will, was brought to light the form of Brahma from the said flower; Brahma, emerging from the cup of the Lotus, looked round on all the four sides, and beheld from the eyes of his four heads an immeasurable expanse of water. Observing the whole world thus involved in darkness and submerged in water, he was stricken with prodigious amazement, and began to consider with himself, ‘Who is it that produced me?’ ‘whence came I?’ ‘and where am I?’

“Brahma, thus kept two hundred years in contemplation, prayers, and devotions, and having pondered in his mind that without connection of male and female an abundant generation could not be effected—again entered into profound meditation on the power of the Supreme, when, on a sudden by the omnipotence of God, was produced from his right side _Swayambhuvah Menu_, a man of perfect beauty; and from the Brahma’s left side a woman named _Satarupa_. The prayer of Brahma runs thus:—‘O Bhagavat! since thou broughtest me from nonentity into existence for a

## particular purpose, accomplish by thy benevolence that purpose.’ In a

short time a small white boar appeared, which soon grew to the size of an elephant. He now felt God in all, and that all is from Him, and all in Him. At length the power of the Omnipotent had assumed the body of _Vara_. He began to use the instinct of that animal. Having divided the water, he saw the earth a mighty barren stratum. He then took up the mighty ponderous globe (freed from the water) and spread the earth like a carpet on the face of the water; Brahma, contemplating the whole earth, performed due reverence, and rejoicing exceedingly, began to consider the means of peopling the renovated world.” _Pyag_, now Allahabad, was the first land said to have appeared, but with the Brahmins it is a disputed point, for many affirm that _Casi_ or Benares was the sacred ground.

MERU

The learned Higgins, an English judge, who for some years spent ten hours a day in antiquarian studies, says that Moriah, of Isaiah and Abraham, is the Meru of the Hindus, and the Olympus of the Greeks. Solomon built high places for Ashtoreth, Astarte, or Venus, which because mounts of Venus, _mons veneris_—Meru and Mount Calvary—each a slightly skull-shaped mount, that might be represented by a bare head. The Bible translators perpetuate the same idea in the word “calvaria.” Prof. Stanley denies that “Mount Calvary” took its name from its being the place of the crucifixion of Jesus. Looking elsewhere and in earlier times for the bare calvaria, we find among Oriental women, the Mount of Venus, _mons veneris_, through motives of neatness or religious sentiment, deprived of all hirsute appendage. We see Mount Calvary imitated in the shaved poll of the head of a priest. The priests of China, says Mr. J. M. Peebles, continue to shave the head. To make a place holy, among the Hindus, Tartars, and people of Thibet, it was necessary to have a mount Meru, also a Linga-Yoni, or Arba.

LINGAM IN THE TEMPLE OF ELORA

This marvellous work of excavation by the slow process of the chisel, was visited by Capt. Seeley, who afterwards published a volume describing the temple and its vast statues. The beauty of its architectural ornaments, the innumerable statues or emblems, all hewn out of solid rock, dispute with the Pyramids for the first place among the works undertaken to display power and embody feeling. The stupendous temple is detached from the neighbouring mountain by a spacious area all round, and is nearly 250 feet deep and 150 feet broad, reaching to the height of 100 feet and in length about 145 feet. It has well-formed doorways, windows, staircases, upper floors, containing fine large rooms of a smooth and polished surface, regularly divided by rows of pillars; the whole bulk of this immense block of isolated excavation being upwards of 500 feet in circumference, and having beyond its areas three handsome figure galleries or verandas supported by regular pillars. Outside the temple are two large obelisks or phalli standing, “of quadrangular form, eleven feet square, prettily and variously carved, and are estimated at forty-one feet high; the shaft above the pedestal is seven feet two inches, being larger at the base than Cleopatra’s Needle.”

In one of the smaller temples was an image of Lingam, “covered with oil and red ochre, and flowers were daily strewed on its circular top. This Lingam is larger than usual, occupying with the altar, a great part of the room. In most Ling rooms a sufficient space is left for the votaries to walk round whilst making the usual invocations to the deity (Maha Deo). This deity is much frequented by female votaries, who take especial care to keep it clean, washed, and often perfume it with oderiferous oils and flowers, whilst the attendant Brahmins sweep the apartment and attend the five oil lights and bell ringing.” This oil vessel resembled the Yoni (circular frame), into which the light itself was placed. No symbol was more venerated or more frequently met with than the altar and Ling, Siva, or Maha Deo. “Barren women constantly resort to it to supplicate for children,” says Seeley. The mysteries attended upon them is not described, but doubtless they were of a very similar character to those described by the author of the “Worship of the Generative Powers of the Western Nations,” showing again the similarity of the custom with those practised by the Catholics in France. The writer says:—“Women sought a remedy for barrenness by kissing the end of the Phallus; sometimes they appear to have placed a part of their body, naked, against the image of the saint, or to have sat upon it. This latter trait was perhaps too bold an adoption of the indecencies of Pagan worship to last long, or to be practised openly; but it appears to have been innocently represented by lying upon the body of the saint, or sitting upon a stone, understood to represent him without the presence of the energetic member. In a corner in the church of the village of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there is a stone called the chair of St. Fiacre, which confers fecundity upon women who sit upon it; but it is necessary nothing should intervene between their bare skin and the stone. In the church of Orcival in Auvergne, there was a pillar which barren women kissed for the same purpose and which had perhaps replaced some less equivocal object.”

The principal object of worship at Elora is the stone, so frequently spoken of; “the Lingam,” says Seeley, and he apologises for using the word so often, but asks to be excused, “is an emblem not generally known, but as frequently met with as the Cross in Catholic worship.” It is the god Siva, a symbol of his generative character, the base of which is usually inserted in the Yoni. The stone is of a conical shape, often black stone, covered with flowers (the _Belia_ and _Asuca_ shrubs). The flowers hang pendant from the crown of the Ling stone to the spout of the _Argha_ or _Yoni_ (mystical matrix); the same as the Phallus of the Greeks. Five lamps are commonly used in the worship at the symbol, or one lamp with five wicks. The Lotus is often seen on the top of the Ling.

VENUS-URANIA.—THE MOTHER GODDESS

The characteristic attribute of the passive generative power was expressed in symbolical writing, by different enigmatical representations of the most distinguished characteristic of the female sex: such as the shell or _Concha Veneris_, the fig-leaf, barley corn, and the letter Delta, all of which occur very frequently upon coins and other ancient monuments in this sense. The same attribute personified as the goddess of Love, or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous form of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of these symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names of rather uncertain mythology. She is said to be the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, that is of the male and female personifications of the all-pervading Spirit of the Universe; Dione being the female Dis or Zeus, and therefore associated with him in the most ancient oracular temple of Greece at Dodona. No other genealogy appears to have been known in the Homeric times; though a different one is employed to account for the name of Aphrodite in the “Theogony” attributed to Hesiod.

The _Genelullides_ or _Genoidai_ were the original and appropriate ministers or companions of Venus, who was however, afterwards attended by the Graces, the proper and original attendants of Juno; but as both these goddesses were occasionally united and represented in one image, the personifications of their respective subordinate attributes were on other occasions added: whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a beard, and other appearances of virility, which seems to have been the most ancient mode of representing the celestial as distinguished from the popular goddess of that name—the one being a personification of a general procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, when advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant modes of distinguishing them; and, in a celebrated work of Phidias, we find the former represented with her foot upon a tortoise; and in a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter sitting upon a goat. The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was aptly chosen as a symbol of the double power; and the goat was equally appropriate to what was meant to be expressed in the other.

The same attribute was on other occasions signified by a dove or pigeon, by the sparrow, and perhaps by the polypus, which often appears upon coins with the head of the goddess, and which was accounted an aphrodisiac, though it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig was a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with the Phallus in the ancient processions in honour of Bacchus, and still continuing among the common people of Italy to be an emblem of what it anciently meant: whence we often see portraits of persons of that country painted with it in one hand, to signify their orthodox elevation to the fair sex. Hence, also arose the Italian expression _far la fica_, which was done by putting the thumb between the middle and fore-fingers, as it appears in many Priapic ornaments extant; or by putting the finger or thumb into the corner of the mouth and drawing it down, of which there is a representation in a small Priapic figure of exquisite sculpture, engraved among the _Antiquities of Herculaneum_.

LIBERALITY AND SAMENESS OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS

The same liberal and humane spirit still prevails among those nations whose religion is founded on the same principles. “The Siamese,” says a traveller of the seventeenth century, “shun disputes and believe that almost all religions are good” (“Journal du Voyage de Siam”). When the ambassador of Louis XIV asked their king, in his master’s name, to embrace Christianity, he replied, “that it was strange that the king of France should interest himself so much in an affair which concerns only God, whilst He, whom it did concern, seemed to leave it wholly to our discretion. Had it been agreeable to the Creator that all nations should have had the same form of worship, would it not have been as easy to His omnipotence to have created all men with the same sentiments and dispositions, and to have inspired them with the same notions of the True Religion, as to endow them with such different tempers and inclinations? Ought they not rather to believe that the true God has as much pleasure in being honoured by a variety of forms and ceremonies, as in being praised and glorified by a number of different creatures? Or why should that beauty and variety, so admirable in the natural order of things, be less admirable or less worthy of the wisdom of God in the supernatural?”

The Hindus profess exactly the same opinion. “They would readily admit the truth of the Gospel,” says a very learned writer long resident among them, “but they contend that it is perfectly consistent with their Shastras. The Deity, they say, has appeared innumerable times in many parts of this world and in all worlds, for the salvation of his creatures; and we adore, they say, the same God, to whom our several worships, though different in form, are equally acceptable if they be sincere in substance.”

The Chinese sacrifice to the spirits of the air, the mountains and the rivers; while the Emperor himself sacrifices to the sovereign Lord of Heaven, to whom all these spirits are subordinate, and from whom they are derived. The sectaries of Fohi have, indeed, surcharged this primitive elementary worship with some of the allegorical fables of their neighbours; but still as their creed—like that of the Greeks and Romans—remains undefined, it admits of no dogmatical theology, and of course no persecution for opinion. Obscure and sanguinary rites have, indeed, been wisely prescribed on many occasions; but still _as actions and not as opinions_. Atheism is said to have been punished with death at Athens; but nevertheless it may be reasonably doubted whether the atheism, against which the citizens of that republic expressed such fury, consisted in a denial of the existence of the gods; for Diagoras, who was obliged to fly for this crime, was accused of revealing and calumniating the doctrines taught in the Mysteries; and from the opinions ascribed to Socrates, there is reason to believe that his offence was of the same kind, though he had not been initiated.

These were the only two martyrs to religion among the ancient Greeks, such as were punished for actively violating or insulting the Mysteries, the only part of their worship which seems to have possessed any vitality; for as to the popular deities, they were publicly ridiculed and censured with impunity by those who dared not utter a word against the populace that worshipped them; and as to the forms and ceremonies of devotion, they were held to be no otherwise important, then as they were constituted a part of civil government of the state; the Pythian priestess having pronounced from the tripod, that _whoever performed the rites of his religion according to the laws of his country, performed them in a manner pleasing to the Deity_. Hence the Romans made no alterations in the religious institutions of any of the conquered countries; but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and extravagant as they pleased, and to enforce their absurdities and extravagances wherever they had any pre-existing laws in their favour. An Egyptian magistrate would put one of his fellow-subjects to death for killing a cat or a monkey; and though the religious fanaticism of the Jews was too sanguinary and too violent to be left entirely free from restraint, a chief of the synagogue could order anyone of his congregation to be whipped for neglecting or violating any part of the Mosaic Ritual.

The principle underlying the system of emanations was, that all things were of one substance, from which they were fashioned and into which they were again dissolved, by the operation of one plastic spirit universally diffused and expanded. The polytheist of ancient Greece and Rome candidly thought, like the modern Hindu, that all rites of worship and forms of devotion were directed to the same end, though in different modes and through different channels. “_Even they who worship other gods_,” says Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem (_Bhagavat-Gita_), “_worship me although they know it not_.”—_Payne Knight._

THE END.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.