Phallic Worship / A description of the mysteries of the sex worship of the ancients, with the history of the masculine cross. An account of primitive symbolism, Hebrew phallicism, bacchic festivals, sexual rites, and the mysteries of the ancient faiths.

by Hargrave Jennings

BEADS

Beads were anciently used to reckon time, and a circle, being a line without termination, was the natural emblem of its perpetual continuity; whence we often find circles of beads upon the heads of deities, and enclosing the sacred symbols upon coins and other monuments. 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; but no mention is made of its being worn by kings in either of the Homeric poems, nor of any other ensign of temporal power and command, except the royal staff or sceptre.