Hargrave Jennings

“ Asher was the supreme god of the Assyrians, 20the Vedic Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male structure and creative energy. The same idea of the creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Denmark, depicted on stone relics.
To a rude and ignorant people, enslaved with such a religion, it was an easy step from the crude to the more refined sign, from the offensive to a more pictured and less obnoxious symbol, from the plain and self-evident to the mixed, disguised, and mystified, from the unclothed privy member to the cross. ”

“ Thus we find a close relationship between the various mythologies of the ancient nations, and by a comparison of the creeds, ideas, and symbols, can see that they spring from the same source, namely, the worship of the forces and operations of nature, the original of which was doubtless Sun worship. It is not necessary to prove that in primitive times the Sun must have been worshipped under various names, and venerated as the Creator, Light, Source of Life, and the Giver of Food. ”

“ NATURE AND SEX WORSHIP Sex Worship has prevailed among all peoples of ancient times, sometimes contemporaneous and often mixed with Star, Serpent, and Tree Worship. The powers of nature were sexualised and endowed with the same feelings, passions, and performing the same functions as human beings.
Among the ancients, whether the Sun, the Serpent, or the Phallic Emblem was worshipped, the idea was the same—the veneration of the generative principle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Darwin and his coadjutors teach, mankind, in common with all animal life, originally sprung from the sea; so physiology teaches that each individual had origin in a pond of water. The fruit of man is both solid and fluid. It was natural to imagine that the two male appendages had a distinct duty, that one formed the infant, the other water in which it lived, that one generated the male, the other the female offspring; and the inference was then drawn that water must be feminine, the emblem of all possible powers of creation. ”

“ The festival of Venus was celebrated towards the beginning of April, and the Phallus was again drawn in a car, followed by a procession of Roman women to the temple of Venus. Says a writer, “The loose women of the town and its neighbourhood, called together by the sounding of horns, mixed with the multitude in perfect nakedness, and excited their passions with obscene motions and language until the festival ended in a scene of mad revelry, in which all restraint was laid aside.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ TRIADS The Triune idea is to be found in the system of almost every nation. All have their Trinity in Unity, three in one, which can be distinctly recognised in the cross. The Triad is the male or triple, the constitution of the three persons of most sacred Trinity forming the Triune system. In the analysis of the subject by Rawlinson, we find the Trinity consisted of Asshur or Asher, associated with Anu and Hea or Hoa. Asshur, the supreme god of the Assyrians, represents the Phallus or central organ or the Linga, the membrum virile. ”

“ 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 ark or chest of Osiris was attended by the priests, and was borne on the shoulders of men by means of staves. The ark when taken from the temple was placed upon a table, or stand, made expressly for the purpose, and was attended by a procession similar to that which followed the Jewish ark. According to Faber, the ark was a symbol of the earth or female principle, containing the germ of all animated nature, and regarded as the great mother whence all things sprung. Thus the ark, earth, and goddess, were represented by common symbols, and spoken of in the old Testament as the “ashera.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ All antiquaries of any experience know the great number of obscene subjects which are met with among the fine red pottery which is termed Samian ware, found so abundantly in all Roman sites in our island. “They represent erotic scenes, in every sense of the word, with figures of Priapus and Phallic emblems.”
PHALLUS The Phallus, or Lingam, which stood for the image of the male organ, or emblem of creation, has been worshipped from time immemorial. Payne Knight describes it as of the greatest antiquity, and as having prevailed in Egypt and all over Asia. ”

“ The devotees returned about the same time from their wanderings after Prakeety. The days that followed were days of embarrassment and shame. If the women had failed in their modesty, the devotees had broken their vows. They were vexed at their weakness, they were sorry for what they had done; yet the tender sigh sometimes broke forth, and the eyes often turned to where the men first saw the maid—the women, the Pandaram. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perforated beads are also frequently found in tombs, both in the northern and southern parts of Europe and Asia, whence are fragments of the chaplets of consecration buried with the deceased. The simple diadem, or fillet, worn round the head as a mark of sovereignty, had a similar meaning, and was originally confined to the statues of deities and deified personages, as we find it upon the most ancient coins. Chryses, the priest of Apollo, in the “Iliad,” brings the diadem, or sacred fillet, of the god upon his sceptre, as the most imposing and invocable emblem of sanctity ”

“ 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 32or 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. ”

“ Maurice says that among the different plants which ornament our globe, there is not one which has received so much honour from man as the Lotus or Lily, in whose consecrated bosom Brahma was born, and Osiris delighted to float. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The fig was a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with the 69Phallus 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. ”

“ This mark of the Christians, Greeks, and Hebrews became the sign or type of the deities representing the Phallic trinity, and in time became the figure of the cross. It is remarked by Payne Knight that “The male organs of generation are sometimes found represented by signs of the same sort, which properly should be called the symbol of symbols. One of the most remarkable of these is a cross, in the form of the letter (T) , which thus served as the emblem of creation and generation before the Church adopted it as a sign of salvation.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sheevah, incensed at this attempt, turned the fire with indignation against the human race; and mankind would soon have been destroyed, had not Vishnu, alarmed at the danger, implored him to suspend his wrath. ”

“ PILLARS Another type of emblem was the stone pillar, remains of which still exist in the British Isles. These pillars or so called crosses generally consist of a shaft of granite with 15a carved head. In the West of England crosses are very common, standing in the market and receiving the name of “The Cross.”
These stone pillars were first erected in honour of the Phallic deity, and on the introduction of Christianity were not destroyed, but consecrated to the new faith, doubtless to honour the prejudices of the people. ”

“ The Hindu women, according to Payne Knight, still carry the lingam, or consecrated symbol of the generative attribute of the deity, in solemn procession between two serpents; and in a sacred casket, which held the Egg and the Phallus in the mystic processions of the Greeks, was also a Serpent. ”

“ 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 24was 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. ”

“ As they worshipped the ethereal fire without any medium of personification or allegory, they thought it unworthy of the dignity of the god to be represented by any definite form, or circumscribed to any particular place. ”

“ HINDU PHALLICISM The following curious fable is given by Sir William Jones, as one of the stories of the Hindus for the origin of Phallic devotion:—“Certain devotees in a remote time had acquired great renown and respect, but the purity of the art was wanting, nor did their motives and secret thoughts correspond with their professions and exterior conduct. They affected poverty, but were attached to the things of this world, and the princes and nobles were constantly sending their offerings. ”

“ An American writer says:—“There is sufficient evidence that the religious customs of the Mexicans, Peruvians and other American races, are nearly identical with those of the ancient Phœnicians.... We moreover discover that many of their religious terms have, etymologically, the same origin.” Payne Knight, in his Worship of Priapus, devotes much of his work to 41show that the temples erected at Stonehenge and other places, were of a Phœnician origin, which was simply a temple of the god Bacchus. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Homer frequently speaks of places of worship consisting of an area and altar only, which were probably enclosures like those of the Persians, with an 42altar in the centre. The temples dedicated to the creator Bacchus, which the Greek architects called hypœthral, seem to have been anciently of this kind, whence probably came the title (“surround with columns”) attributed to that god in the Orphic litanies. The remains of one of these are still extant at Puzznoli, near Naples, which the inhabitants call the temple of Serapis ”