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

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 a 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. These monolisks abound in the Highlands, they are stones set up on end, some twenty-four or thirty feet high, others higher or lower and this sometimes where no such stones are to be quarried.

We learn that the Bacchus of the Thebans was a pillar. The Assyrian Nebo was represented by a plain pillar, consecrated by anointing with oil. Arnobius gives an account of this practice, as also does Theophrastus, who speaks of it as a custom for a superstitious man, when he passed by these anointed stones in the streets to take out a phial of oil and pour it upon them and having fallen on his knees to make his adorations, and so depart.

In various parts of the Bible the Pillar is referred to as of a sacred character, as in Isaiah xix. 19, 20, “In that day shall there be an altar to Jehovah in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to Jehovah, and it should be for a sign and a witness to the Lord.”

The Orphic Temples were doubtless emblems of the same principle of the mystic faiths of the ancients, the same as the Round Towers of Ireland, a history of which was collected by O’Brien, who describes the Towers as “Temples constructed by the early Indian colonists of the country in honour of the Fructifying principle of nature, emanating as was supposed from the Sun, or the deity of desire instrumental in that principle of universal generativeness diffused throughout all nature.”

According to the same author these towers were very ancient, and of Phœnician origin, as similar towers have been found in Phœnicia. “The Irish themselves,” says O’Brien, “designated them ‘Bail-toir,’ that is the tower of Baal. Baal was the name of the Phallic deity, and the priest who attended them ‘Aoi Bail-toir’ or superintendent of Baal tower.” This Baal was worshipped wherever the Phœnicians went, and was represented by a pillar or stone or similar objects. The stone that Jacob set up, and anointed as a rallying place for worship, became afterwards an object of worship to the Phœnicians.

The earliest navigators of the world were the Phœnicians, they founded colonies and extended their commerce first to the isles of the Mediterranean, from thence to Spain, and then to the British Isles. Historians have accorded to them the settlements of the most remote localities. They formed settlements in Cyprus, and Atticum, according to Josephus, was the principal settlement of the Tyrians upon this island. Strabo’s testimony is, that the Phœnicians, even before Homer, had possessed themselves of the best part of Spain.

Where the Phœnicians settled, there they introduced their religion, and it is in these countries we find the remains of ancient stone and pillar worship.