Part 7

Its arcane meaning is undoubtedly phallic. In fact, as Inman has stated, the idea of virility was most closely interwoven with religion, though the English Egyptologists have suppressed a portion of the facts in the history which they have given the world; but the practice which still obtains among certain Negroes of Northern Africa of mutilating every male captive and slain enemy is but a continuance of the practice alluded to in the 2nd Book of Kings, 20:18, Isaiah, 39:17, and 1st Samuel 18:26.

Frequently in sacred Scripture we find allusions to the Pillar as a most sacred emblem, as for example in Isaiah 19:19, "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the border thereof to Jehovah," etc. Moreover God was supposed to have appeared to his chosen people as a pillar of fire. Nevertheless when among idolatrous nations pillars were set up as a part of their rites we find them noticed in Scripture as an abomination, as for example, Deut. 12:3, "Ye shall overthrow their altars and break their pillars;" Levit. 26:1, "Neither rear ye up a standing image."

Among the Jews the pillar had much the same significance as the pyramid among the Egyptians or the triangle or cone among votaries of other worships. The Tower of Babel must have been purely a mythical creation but in the same direction. Although Abraham is regarded as having emigrated from Chaldea in the character of a dissenter from the religion of his country (see Joshua 24:2-3), his immediate descendants apparently had recourse to the symbols to which I have alluded. Thus he erected altars and planted pillars wherever he resided, and conducted his son to the land of Moriah to sacrifice him to the deity, as was done among the Phoenicians. Jeptha in like manner sacrificed his own daughter Mizpeh, and the temple of Solomon was supposed to have been built upon the site of Abraham's ancient altar. Jacob not only set up a pillar at the place which he called Bethel but made libations; Samuel worshipped at the High Places at Ramah, and Solomon at the Great Stone in Gibeon. It remained for Hezekiah to change the entire Hebrew cult. He removed the Dionysiac statues and phallic pillars as well as the conical and omphallic symbols of Venus and Ashtaroth, broke in pieces the brazen serpent of Moses and overthrew the mounds and altars. After him Josiah removed the paraphernalia of sun worship and destroyed the statues and emblems of Venus and Adonis, (2nd Kings, 23:4-20).

The Greek Hermes was identical with the Egyptian Khem, as well as with Mercury and with Priapus, also with the Hebrew Eloah; thus when Jacob entered into a covenant with Laban his father-in-law, a pillar was set up and a heap of stones made and a certain compact entered into; similar land marks were usual with the Greeks and placed by them upon public roads.

As Mrs. Childs has beautifully said, "Other emblems deemed sacred by Hindoos and worshipped in their temples have brought upon them the charge of gross indecencies. * * * If light with its grand revealings, and heat, making the earth fruitful with beauty, excited wonder and worship among the first inhabitants of our world, is it strange that they likewise regarded with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure thus to regard it? Or are we impure that we do not so regard it?"

Constant, in his work on Roman Polytheism says, "Indecent rites may be practiced by religious people with the greatest purity of heart, but when incredulity has gained a footing among these peoples then those rites become the cause and pretext of the most revolting corruption."

The phallic symbol was always found in temples of Siva, who corresponds to Baal, and was usually placed as are the most precious emblems of our Christian temples to-day, in some inmost recess of the sanctuary. Moreover lamps with seven branches were kept burning before it, these seven branched lamps long antedating the golden candlestick of the Mosaic Tabernacle. The Jews by no means escaped the objective evidence of phallic worship; in Ezekiel 16:17, is a very marked allusion to the manufacture by Jewish women of gold and silver phalli.

As a purely phallic symbol and custom mark the significance of certain superstitions and practices even now prevalent in Great Britain. Thus in Boylase's History of Cornwall it is stated that there is a stone in the Parish of Mardon, with a hole in it fourteen inches in diameter, through which many persons creep for the relief of pains in the back and limbs, and through which children are drawn to cure them of rickets, this being a practical application of the doctrine of regeneration. In 1888 there was printed in the London Standard a considerable reference to passing children through clefts in trees as a curative measure for certain physical ailments. The same practice prevails in Brazil and in many other places, and within the present generation it has been customary to split a young ash tree and, opening this, pass through it a child for the purpose of curing rupture or some other bodily ailment.

The phallic element most certainly cannot be denied in Christianity itself, since in it are many references which to the initiated are unmistakable. From the fall of man with its serpent myth and its phallic foundation to the peculiar position assigned to the Virgin Mary as a mother, phallic references abound. However, it should not be forgotten that whatever were the primitive ideas on which these dogmas were based, they had been lost sight of or had been received in a fresh aspect by the founders of Christianity. The fish and the cross originally typified the idea of generation and later that of life, in which sense they were applied to Christ. The most plainly phallic representation used in early Christian Iconography, is undoubtedly the Aureole or elliptical frame work, containing usually the figure of Christ, sometimes that of Mary. The Nimbus also, generally circular but sometimes triangular, is of positive phallic significance, even though it contain within it the name of Jehovah. The sun flowers which sometimes are made to surround the figure of St. John the Evangelist are the lotus flowers of the Egyptians. The divine hand with the thumb and two fingers outstretched, even though it rests on a cruciform nimbus, is a phallic emblem, and is used by the Neapolitans of to-day to avert the Evil Eye, although it was originally a symbol of Isis. Indeed the Virgin Mary is the ancient Isis, as can be most easily established, since the virgin "Succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites and ceremonies." (King). The great image still moves in procession as when Juvenal laughed at it, and her proper title is the exact translation of the Sanskrit and the equivalent of the modern Madonna, the Lotus of Isis, and the Lily of the modern Mary. Indeed, as King has written, "It is astonishing how much of the Egyptian symbolism passed over into usages of the following times." The high cap and hooked staff of the god became the bishop's mitre and crozier. The term Nun is purely Egyptian and bore its present meaning. The Crux Ansata, testifying the union of the male and female principle in the most obvious manner, and denoting fecundity and abundance, is transformed by a simple inversion into an orb surmounted by a cross, the ensign of royalty.

The teaching of the Church of Rome regarding the Virgin Mary shows a remarkable resemblance to the teachings of the ancients concerning the female associate of the triune deity. In ancient times she has passed under many and diverse names; she was the Virgin, conceiving and bringing forth from her own inherent power; she was the wife of Nimrod; she has been known as Athor, Artemis, Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, Cybele, etc.

As Anaitis she is Mother and Child, appearing again as Isis and Horus; even in ancient Mexico Mother and Child were worshipped. In modern times she reappears as the Virgin Mary and her Son; she was queen of fecundity, queen of the gods, goddess of war, Virgin of the Zodiac, the mysterious Virgin "Time" from whose womb all things were born. Although variously represented she has been usually pictured as a more or less nude figure carrying an infant in her arms. (Inman, "Ancient Faiths").

Inman declares without hesitation that the trinity of the ancients is unquestionably of phallic origin, and others have strenuously contended and apparently proven that the male emblem of generation in divine creation was three in one, and that the female emblem has always been the triangle or accepted symbol of trinity. Sometimes two triangles have been combined forming a six-rayed star, the two together being emblematical of the union of the male and female principles producing a new figure; the triangle by itself with the point down typifies the delta or yoni through which all things come into the world.

Another symbol of deity among the Indians was the Trident, and this marks the belief in the Trinity which very generally prevailed in India among the Hindoos. As Maurice says, "It was indeed highly proper and strictly characteristic that a three-fold deity should wield a triple scepter." Upon the top of the immense pyramids of Deoghur, which were truncated, and upon whose upper surface rested the circular cone--that ancient emblem of the Phallus and of the Sun, was found the trident scepter of the Greek Neptune. It is said that in India is to be found the most ancient form of Trinitarian worship. In Egypt it later prevailed widely, but scarcely any two states worshipped the same triad, though all triads had this in common at least that they were father, mother and son, or male and female with their progeny. In the course of time, however, the worship of the first person was lost or absorbed in the second and the same thing is prevalent among the Christians of today, for many churches and institutions are dedicated to the second or third persons of the Trinity but none to the first.

The transition from the old to the new could not be effected in a short time and must have been an exceedingly slow process, therefore we need not be surprised to be told of the ancient worship that after its exclusion from larger places it was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants of humbler localities; hence its subsequent designation, since from being kept up in the villages, the pagi, its votaries, were designated pagani, or pagans.

Even now some of these ancient superstitions remain in recognizable form. The moon is supposed to exert a baneful or lucky influence according as it is first viewed; the mystic horse-shoe, which is a purely uterine symbol, is still widely employed; lucky and unlucky days are still regarded; our playing cards are indicated by phallic symbols, the spade, the triadic club, the omphallic distaff and eminence disguised as the heart and the diamonds. Dionysius reappears as St. Denys, or in France as St. Bacchus; Satan is revered as St. Satur or St. Swithin; the Holy Virgin, Astraea, whose return was heralded by Virgil as introducing the Golden Age, is now designated as the Blessed Virgin, Queen of Heaven. The Mother and Child are to-day in Catholic countries adored as much as were Ceres and Bacchus, or Isis and the infant Horus, centuries ago. The nuns of Christian to-day are the nuns of the Buddhists or of the Egyptian worshippers of Isis, and the phallic import is not lost even in their case since they are the "Brides of the Savior." The libations of human blood which were formerly offered to Bacchus found most tragic imitation in the sacrifices of later days. The screechings of the ancient prophets of Baal, and of the Egyptian worshippers, preceded the flagellations of the penitentes. Even recently, during Holy Week in Rome, devotees lash themselves until the blood runs, as did the young men in ancient Rome during the Lupercalia. And even yet in New Mexico the Indian penitentes repeat the cruel flagellations and cross-bearing taught by the Spanish priest, to the extent--sometimes--of an actual crucifixion. In the ancient Roman catacombs are found portraits of the utensils and furniture of the ancient mysteries, and one drawing shows a woman standing before an altar offering buns to a certain god. In fact we may say there is no Christian fast nor festival, procession nor sacrament, custom nor example, that do not come quite naturally from previous paganism.

The Creation is in fact a human rather than a divine product, in this sense that it was suggested to the mind of man by the existence of things, while its method was, at least at first, suggested by the operations of nature; thus man saw the living bird emerge from the egg, after a certain period of incubation, a phenomenon equivalent to actual creation as apprehended by his simple mind. Incubation obviously then associated itself with Creation, and this fact will explain the universality with which the egg was received as a symbol in the earlier systems of cosmogony. By a similar process creation came to be symbolized in the form of a phallus, and so the Egyptians, in their refinement of these ideas, adopted as their symbol of the first great cause, a Scarabaeus, indicating the great hermaphroditic unity since they believed this insect to be both male and female.

Further exemplification of the same underlying principle is seen in the fact that most all of the ancient deities were paired, thus we have heaven and earth, sun and moon, fire and earth, father and mother, etc. Faber says,--"The Ancient Pagans of almost every part of the globe were wont to symbolize the world by an egg; hence this symbol is introduced into the cosmogonies of nearly all nations, and there are few persons even among those who have made mythology their study to whom the mundane egg is not perfectly familiar; it is the emblem not only of earth and life but also of the universe in its largest extent."

I began this essay with the intention of demonstrating the recondite but positive connection between the symbolism of the Church of to-day and the phallic and iatric cults of pre-christian centuries. (Much of the subject matter contained in the previous essay (III) may be profitably read in this connection). As a humble disciple of that Aesculapius who was the reputed founder of our craft, I have felt that every genuine scholar in medicine should be familiar with these relations between the past and the present.

THE RELATION OF THE GRECIAN MYSTERIES TO THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY

Ever since mentality has been an attribute of mankind, man has appreciated that he is surrounded by a vast incomprehensible mystery which ever closes in upon him, and from whose environment he may never free himself. The endeavor to solve this mystery has on one hand stimulated his reasoning power, and on the other nearly paralyzed it. Having no better guidance he has in all time attributed to a Great First Cause powers and faculties, even shape and form, more or less human; thus from time immemorial God or the Gods have been given a kingdom, a throne, some definite form, and even offspring. To him or them have been given purely human attributes, and they have been supposed to possess human passions and to be capable of love, wrath, strength, etc. In nearly all ages lightning, for instance, has been regarded as an expression of divine fury. As intelligence advanced the number of Gods was reduced and their manifestations classified and studied more or less imaginatively; and so while men have always acknowledged the impossibility of explaining the great mysteries of creation and of space, they have seemed to find it necessary to create other equally inscrutable mysteries of purely human invention, such as the incarnation, the trinity, the resurrection, vicarious salvation, metempsychosis, and the like.

History shows the love of mystery to be contagious as well as productive of its kind, and the origin of mystic teachings as well as of most secret societies bears out these statements. Secrets, guarded by fearful oaths, personified by meaningless emblems, concealed either in language unintelligible to others, or else hidden in terms whose special meaning is known only to the initiated, made attractive by special signs, symbols, innocent rites, or barbarous observances,--all of these means were designed solely to keep men banded together for the purpose of forming a propaganda intended to perpetuate yet other mysteries in which the initiates were especially interested. Since history began such associations of men have existed for most diverse ends, all having this in common, that only by this means could they secure and maintain influence and power.

And so the series of pictures which represent man in this role may be regarded as a panorama, led by garlanded priests carrying images of Isis or droning hymns to Demeter of Eleusis, or Druids preparing for their human sacrifices; followed by gay and voluptuous Bacchantes, succeeded by white-robed Pythagoreans; next may come the suffering Essenes bearing crosses, then the Latin Brotherhoods, followed by the German and English Guilds, the Stone Masons with their implements, the Crusader Knights, those coming first having an appearance of actual humility and devotion, while those who follow are haughty and contemptuous to a degree. Then would follow the black-robed Penitentes and the members of the Society of Jesus, sanctimonious, with eyes cast down, human machines, mere tools in the hands of their superiors; the panorama continuing with a widely assorted lot of scholars, artisans and men of all conditions in various regalia, and terminated with an indistinguishable multitude of variously adorned men, some sleek and fat, others ill-conditioned, some devout and sincere, others mere jesters and knaves from every walk of life.

It was most natural and to be expected that primitive man should be most profoundly impressed with the forces of nature, often terrifying and frightful, often winsome and attractive, and that he should bow himself down to the unknown cause of these manifestations. With his extremely finite mind he necessarily personified them; after having done this he proceeded to propitiate them by worship with certain forms of ritual. Perhaps fire first and most of all attracted him in this way, and drew from him the earliest acts of worship, for in spite of the general views to the contrary fire is often of natural origin, and must have been known to men before they became able to produce it by their own efforts. From practical to generalized concepts was a natural step, and thus mythology had its beginnings; the earliest distinctions were as between that which is overhead, i. e. Heaven, and that which is beneath, namely, the earth; these are the beginnings of all cosmogonies. Next the Gods were given the attributes of sex; Heaven was represented as masculine, fructifying, powerful; Earth as conceptive, female and gentle. By the union of these two were produced sun, moon and their progeny--the stars. Later the sun became Poseidon or Neptune, because he appeared from and disappeared into the sea. Then the imagination began to run riot, and gave rise to many individual divinities, gods and goddesses, all with human passions and attributes, mingling and propagating after human fashion, and begetting dynasties and half human races, whose doings were the subject of countless epics, dramas, myths and romances.

Thus time passed on and the original sense or meaning of these myths, descending slowly by oral tradition, became lost, while the myths themselves were for a long time accepted as historical facts. Nevertheless in all ages there have been men who, like Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch, have questioned the accuracy of these statements and shown themselves intelligent and active sceptics. During all these times, however, a wily priest-craft had lived and thrived on the superstitions of the common people and the practices in which they have indulged; by these men, thus conditioned, any active doubt was regarded as subversive of the system by which they were supported, and as one not to be tolerated;--this condition pertaining not only to antiquity, since it is too significant a feature even of the early years of this twentieth century. A more or less honest though misinformed priesthood has, in all times, been in favor of the purification of the theology in vogue in their times and among their inner circles, and has in the main given the most rationalistic interpretation to the obscure things which they taught, and practised what their education and environment would permit. But in order to preserve the mysteries, to maintain them as such, and save themselves from becoming superfluous, not to say intolerable, these same mysteries have been tricked out with mysticism, symbolism of the most fantastic character, and allegory of the most bewildering kind; moreover this has often been accomplished by dramatic representations and by moralizing or demoralizing ceremonies. The countries in which these "mysteries," as they have since been known, were most commonly practised and most widely believed were Egypt, Chaldea and Greece.

The sources of the Egyptian mysteries, like those of Egyptian civilization, are the most difficult to discover. The Nile is necessarily the basis of Egyptian history, geography, activity and habits, and consequently must be also of the Egyptian cult. The people who were known as Egyptians invaded the land of the Nile from the direction of Asia, and found there a race of negro type whom they subdued and with whom they later mingled. The Semites called the land Misraim; the Greeks finally changed the name of its great river to Neilos. The country is a land of enigmas. Who built those pyramids, and why? Who originated the system of pictorial writing which we call the hieroglyphic? Who planned those wonderful temples now either in ruins, as in upper Egypt, or buried beneath the desert sands, as in lower Egypt? Who brought and erected those mighty blocks of stone or massive slabs from enormous distances, and handled them as we could scarcely do to-day with the best of modern machinery?

In course of time two hereditary classes were formed, the priests who dominated the minds, and the warriors who controlled the bodies of the conquered people and the lower classes. The latter kept the throne of Egypt occupied, while the former, having a monopoly of the knowledge of the time, prescribed for the people what they must believe, yet were very far from accepting these precepts for themselves, and in their inner circles made light of that which they preached to the despised classes without.

The Egyptians named their Sun God RE, but assigned the various attributes of the sun to different personalities; they had moreover not only Gods for the whole land, but Ptah was God of Memphis, Ammon God of Thebes, etc. Local deities were often constructed out of inspiring objects or from animals inhabited by spirits, and thus the fetichism of the original negro race exerted no little influence upon the higher cult of their lighter colored conquerors. Worship was paid to animals not for their own sake but because of the Gods who were supposed to reside within them; thus their prominent Gods were represented with the head of some animal. This honor belonged not to any individual animal but of necessity to the entire species, certain representatives of which were maintained at public expense in the temples, where they were carefully guarded and waited upon by the faithful. To harm one of these animals was to be severely punished, to kill one of them was to die. Conversely when a God failed in responding to the prayers of the faithful his fetich had to suffer, and the priests first threatened the animal, and if menaces were unavailing they killed the sacred beast, albeit in secret, lest the people should learn of it.

As time went on there was less of zoölatry, and the Sun-Gods and their associates figured more largely among the cult of the people. The sun's course was not represented as that of a chariot, as among the Persians and Greeks, but rather as the voyage of a Nile boat, upon which the God Re navigated the heavens; from which it will appear that the priestly religion was making slow progress to monotheism by means of oligotheism. The secret teaching of the priests was now more and more to the effect that the Gods stood not so much for themselves as for something else. During the fourth dynasty the lower Egyptian city Anu was known as the City of the Sun, hence the Greek name for the place, Heliopolis. Still more characteristic was the giving of the name of Osiris, who figured as God of Abdu, which the Greeks called Abydos, in upper Egypt, to the God of the Sunset, who was king of the lower domains and of death, brother and at the same time husband of Isis, brother also of Set, who slew him, and father of Horus, i. e. God of the new sun, who figures after each sunset. Horus fought with Set, but being unable to completely destroy him left him the desert as his kingdom, while himself holding to the Nile valley. This story of the Gods was publicly represented in various scenes on certain holidays, but only the priests, i. e., the initiated, knew the real meaning of the representations. Even the name of Osiris and his abode were kept secret, and outsiders heard only of the "great God" dwelling somewhere in "the West."