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.
LOGGIN STONES, ETC.
Loggin stones are by Payne Knight considered as Phallic emblems. “Their remains,” he says, “are still extant, and appear to have been composed of a crone set into the ground, and another placed upon the point of it and so nicely balanced that the wind could move it, though so ponderous that no human force, unaided by machinery, can displace it; whence they are called ‘logging rocks’ and ‘pendre stones,’ as they were anciently ‘living stones’ and ‘stones of God,’ titles which differ very little in meaning from that on the Tyrian coins. Damascius saw several of them in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis or Baalbeck, in Syria, particularly one which was then moved by the wind; and they are equally found in the Western extremities of Europe and the Eastern extremities of Asia, in Britain, and in China.”
Bryant mentions it as very usual among the Egyptians to place with much labour one vast stone upon another for a religious memorial.
Such immense masses, being moved by causes seeming so inadequate, must naturally have conveyed the idea of spontaneous motion to ignorant observers, and persuaded them that they were animated by an emanation of the vital spirit, whence they were consulted as oracles, the responses of which could always be easily obtained by interpreting the different oscillatory movements into nods of approbation or dissent.
Phallic emblems abounded at Heliopolis in Syria, and many other places, even in modern times. A physician, writing to Dr. Inman, says: “I was in Egypt last winter (1865-66), and there certainly are numerous figures of gods and kings, on the walls of the temple at Thebes, depicted with the male genital erect. The great temple at Karnak is, in particular, full of such figures, and the temple of Danclesa likewise, though that is of much later date, and built merely in imitation of old Egyptian art. The same inspiring bas-reliefs are pointed out by Ezek. xxiii. 14. I remember one scene of a king (Rameses II) returning in triumph with captives, many of whom were undergoing the process of castration.”
Obelisks were also representative of the same emblem. Payne Knight mentions several terminating in a cross, which had exactly the appearance of one of those crosses erected in churchyards and at cross roads for the adoration of devout persons, when devotions were more prevalent than at present. Stones, pillars, obelisks, stumps of trees, upright stones have all the same signification, and are means by which the male element was symbolised.