From a passage of Hecatæus, preserved by Deodorus Siculus, it seems evident that Stonehenge and all the monuments of the same kind found in the north, belong to the same religion which appears at some remote period to have prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere. According to that ancient historian, the Hyperboreans inhabited an island beyond Gaul, as large as Sicily, in which Apollo was worshipped in a circular temple considerable for its size and riches. Apollo, we know, in the language of the Greeks of that age, can mean no other than the sun, which according to Cæsar was worshipped by the Germans, when they knew of no other deities except fire and the moon. The island can evidently be no other than Britain, which at that time was only known to the Greeks by the vague reports of the Phœnician mariners; and so uncertain and obscure that Herodotus, the most inquisitive and credulous of historians, doubts of its existence. The circular temple of the sun being noticed in such slight and imperfect accounts, proves that it must have been something singular and important; for if it had been an inconsiderable structure, it would not have been mentioned at all; and if there had been many such in the country, the historian would not have employed the singular number.
Stonehenge has certainly been a circular temple, nearly the same as that already described of the Bacchus at Puzznoli, except that in the latter the nice execution and beautiful symmetry of the parts are in every respect the reverse of the rude but majestic simplicity of the former. In the original design they differ but in the form of the area. It may therefore be reasonably supposed that we have still the ruins of the identical temple described by Hecatæus, who, being an Asiatic Greek, might have received his information from Phœnician merchants, who had visited the interior parts of Britain when trading there for tin. Anacrobius mentions a temple of the same kind and form, upon Mount Zilmissus, in Thrace, dedicated to the sun under the title of Bacchus Sebrazius. The large obelisks of stone found in many parts of the north, such as those at Rudstone, and near Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, belong to the same religion; obelisks being, as Pliny observes, sacred to the sun, whose rays they represented both by their form and name.—Payne Knight’s Worship of Priapus.
BUNS AND RELIGIOUS CAKES
Says Hyslop:—“The hot cross-buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The buns known, too, by that identical name, were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarte), as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, 1,500 years before the Christian era.” “One species of bread,” says Bryant, “‘which used to be offered to the gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun.’ Diogenes mentioned ‘they were made of flour and honey.’” It appears that Jeremiah the Prophet was familiar with this lecherous worship. He says:—“The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven (Jer. vii., 18)”. Hyslop does not add that the “buns” offered to the Queen of Heaven, and in sacrifices to other deities, were framed in the shape of the sexual organs, but that they were so in ancient times we have abundance of evidence.
Martial distinctly speaks of such things in two epigrams, first, wherein the male organ is spoken of, second, wherein the female part is commemorated; the cakes being made of the finest flour, and kept especially for the palate of the fair one.
Captain Wilford (“Asiatic Researches,” viii., p. 365) says:—“When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses, they offered cakes called mulloi, shaped like the female organ, and in some temples where the priestesses were probably ventriloquists, they so far imposed on the credulous multitude who came to adore the Vulva as to make them believe that it spoke and gave oracles.”
We can understand how such things were allowed in licentious Rome, but we can scarcely comprehend how they were tolerated in Christian Europe, as, to all innocent surprise we find they were, from the second part of the “Remains of the Worship of Priapus”: that in Saintonge, in the neighbourhood of La Rochelle, small cakes baked in the form of the Phallus are made as offerings at Easter, carried and presented from house to house. Dulare states that in his time the festival of Palm Sunday, in the town of Saintes, was called le fete des pinnes—feast of the privy members—and that during its continuance the women and children carried in the procession a Phallus made of bread, which they called a pinne, at the end of their palm branches; these pinnes were subsequently blessed by priests, and carefully preserved by the women during the year. Palm Sunday! Palm, it is to be remembered, is a euphemism of the male organ, and it is curious to see it united with the Phallus in Christendom. Dulare also says that, in some of the earlier inedited French books on cookery, receipts are given for making cakes of the salacious form in question, which are broadly named. He further tells us those cakes symbolized the male, in Lower Limousin, and especially at Brives; while the female emblem was adopted at Clermont, in Auvergne, and other places.
THE ARK AND GOOD FRIDAY
The ark of the covenant was a most sacred symbol in the worship of the Jews, and like the sacred boat, or ark of Osiris, contained the symbol of the principle of life, or creative power. The symbol was preserved with great veneration in a miniature tabernacle, which was considered the special and sanctified abode of the god. In size and manner of construction the ark of the Jews and the sacred chest of Osiris of the Egyptians were exactly alike, and were carried in processions in a similar manner.
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.”