“We find Phœnicians, Kelts and Syrians specially mentioned as holding the fish in the greatest reverence, and at different periods of their history not eating it. The hill-tribes towards the sources of the Indus have the same ideas. The Phœnicians picture Dagon and Dorketa the gods of Gaza and As-Kal-on, as Fish Gods, or perhaps we should say a fish god and goddess, for we know they were also Astartian Deities. Kuthera and Kupros (Cypress) as shrines of Aphrodite, vied in the worship of this fruitful Kubele, and Syria held the great northern shrine of Hieropolis most holy to Venus as the Fish Goddess. Cadiz, Kodes, or Gadir-Gades, had Herkales on one side of her coins, and a fish or Lunette on the other; whilst Syracuse, or rather Soora-Koos, and Soosa alike held their finny multitudes sacred to Fertility. In these days we can imagine what a curse these faiths here were to the poor, and, indeed, to humanity.”[14]
“The high round hill of Tabor, known to Christians as the ‘Mount of Transfiguration,’ is called by the Fălâhin the umbilicus of their great earth mother Terra—that womb of nature in which we are transfigured. To her also they had sacred temples at Askalon and Akcho with suitable holy waters; and still at Tripolis, her very ancient city, do we find her pond of holy fish, which are said to ‘fight against infidels,’ and to which multitudes still make long pilgrimages, and worship with offerings and sacrifices. We have often come across similar holy ponds and lakes in India, and been warned off with our unholy rod and line. The Venus of Tripolis was Kadishah or Atergatis; indeed the city is called Kadishah, a name expressive of coarse phallic vices.”[14]
“Dion Cassius says the Caledonians never taste fish, although their lakes and rivers furnish an inexhaustible supply. Two ‘holie fishes’ in the seventeenth century occupied a well near the church of Kilmore in Argyleshire. They were black—never changed colour—neither increased in number nor in size in the memory of the most aged. The people believed that no others existed anywhere. Mr. Martin, in his ‘Western Isles,’ describes the ceremonies practised by invalids who came to be cured by the waters of a well at Loch Saint, in the Isle of Skye. They drank the water and then moved round the well deasil (sunwise), and before departing left an offering on the stone. Martin adds that no one would venture to kill any of the fish in Loch Saint, or to cut as much as a twig from an adjacent copse. These customs practised in the end of the seventeenth century, have apparently reference to the worship of the sun, the fountain, the fish, and the oak.
“The absence of any allusion to the art of catching fish has been used as an argument in support of the authenticity of the poem of Ossian, as well as being corroborative of the statement of Dion Cassius. Fish-eaters was one of the contemptuous epithets which the Scottish Celt applied to the Saxon and other races that settled in the Lowlands of Scotland, and the remains of the superstitious veneration of fish, or rather abstaining from fish as an article of food, is registered by the author of ‘Caledonia’ as influencing the more purely Celtic portions of the British population in the early part of the present century.
“Ancient nations that did not eat but worshipped the fish were the Syrians, Phœnicians, and Celts. But in Caufiristaun, in the remote parts of the Hindu-Cosh, the Caufirs will not eat fish, although it is not said that they worship it. They believe in one great god, but have numerous idols that represent those who were once men and women. A plain stone, about four feet high, represents God, whose shape they say they do not know. One of their tribes call God Dagon. The fish-god and goddess of the Phœnicians were called Dago and Derceto; the worship of Dagon being more particularly celebrated at Gaza and Ashdod; that of Derceto at Ascalon.”[15]
“The old sculptures and gems of Babylon and Assyria furnish sufficient proof of the worship of Fertility, but writers and readers have alike lost the key, or purposely skipped the subject, and this we have a prominent example of in the case of the beautiful Assyrian cylinder, exhibiting the worship of the Fish God, which Mr. Rawlinson gives us without a comment. There we see the mitred man-god with rod and basket adoring the solar Fructifier, hovering over the fruitful tree from which spring thirteen full buds, whilst behind him stands another adoring winged deity backed by a star, a dove, and a yoni. On the opposite side of the Tree of Life is fire, and another man in the act of adoration, probably the Priest of God, pleading with both hands open, that the requests of the other two figures may be granted.”[16]
“I may state that all that the author of Anc. Mons. writes in regard to these old faiths thoroughly supports what I urge, though he is far from looking at their features as I do, for he clearly knows very little of Eastern Phallic faiths and their interpretation. Ashtoreth is Ishtar or woman, the Star in more senses than one; the Phœnicians call her Astarte, but the ‘present Mendean form is Ashtar,’ and the plural Ashtaroth. Bunsen derives this representative name from the very coarse, but I fear perfectly correct source, ‘the seat of the cow—Has and toreth;’ for this is true to the idea of all Hindoos, and shows us that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ originally meant the organs pur et simple, which indeed the writer of Gen. i. 27 expresses in the words Zakar and Nekabah. In all African and Arabian dialects, Nana and not Ishtar is the commonest term for Mother, the usual initial being Ma, Ya, Ye, Ni, and rarely Om and On; see the long list of over one hundred names given by Sir John Lubbock as those of the ‘non-Aryan nations of Europe and Asia’ and of ‘East Africa.’ There we see Ma and even Ama occasionally used for Father, perhaps because among some tribes the strange custom existed of his going to bed to protect and warm the infant as soon as born. The almost universal initial sounds for the male ancestor are Pa, Fa, Ba, and in a few instances Da and Ad, and once Od and Ta. In Asia Baba, Aba, Apa, and sometimes Ama occur; now what we want to know is the origin of these sounds, but here philology is silent with seemingly no power to advance. This is not the case, however, in regard to the objective roots of religion; here we work with reasoning creatures, and can see that the child continues, and that all mankind have ever continued to mate, whether in their own kind, or in their gods, the same A’s, P’s, F’s, D’s, to males, and M’s, N’s, Om’s, Y’s to females, and we therefore conclude that those were man’s earliest symbols and names for the organs of sex, the Omphe or Mamma of the mother, which man had first cognisance of, and the A, Ab or Pa which he noticed as the characteristic of the opposite sex. The Assyrian often represented Ishtar as the upright fish, probably because of the fecundative powers of the fish, and as the creature par excellence of water. The great mythic queen Semiramis, wife of Ninus, the founder of Nineveh or Ninus, was said to have sprung from a fish some twenty-three centuries B.C., and to be representative woman, Eva or Mary.
“The mythic genealogy of Semiramis begins with a fish and ends with Ninyas. Her mother was Dorketo the Fish Goddess of Askalon, in Syria, where she was worshipped as Astarte or Aphrodite. She was famed down to the days of Augustus for her beauty, voluptuousness, virtues and vices. There seems no doubt but that there was some ruler called Semiramis, who conquered most of Western Asia, Egypt and part of Ethiopia, and who attempted India. Her fish origin is simply due to her being a woman and to her marrying On or Ones, or probably Oanes or Ho-Anes, the Serpent Fish, or recognised God of Passion, both on the lower Euphrates and the lower Nile. Her conquests may merely signify that the race who had faith in her conquered, or that certain conquerors embraced the worship of the Sun Goddess. When Kaldia fell to Assyria, she was very naturally made to marry Ninus, or the strong Bull-Uan which this name signifies; she was preserved by doves, for these birds were sacred to Aphrodite. Mr. Rawlinson believes that the origin of the myth lies in Ivaloosh’s Queen of the eighth century B.C., who was possibly a Babylonian, and shared in the Government with her Lord, but there is little doubt that there was such a queen or goddess. Her name, if embracing Sun and fertilizing energies, would naturally be Sivāmy or Sami (God), Rames, Rami, or Ramesi—the Goddess of the Sun, in fact Ishtar, which Wilford calls her, saying these names mean Isis. The Assyrian story is, that she sprang from a dove or Yoni, which Capotesi would signify, and this is the Indian manifestation.”[17]