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

TRIADS

The Triune idea is to be found in the system of almost every nation. All have their Trinity in Unity, three in one, which can be distinctly recognised in the cross. The Triad is the male or triple, the constitution of the three persons of most sacred Trinity forming the Triune system. In the analysis of the subject by Rawlinson, we find the Trinity consisted of Asshur or Asher, associated with Anu and Hea or Hoa. Asshur, the supreme god of the Assyrians, represents the Phallus or central organ or the Linga, the membrum virile. The cognomen Anu was given to the right testis, while that of Hea designated the left.

It was only natural that Asshur being deified, his appendages should be deified also. “Beltus,” says Inman, “was the goddess associated with them, the four together made up Arba or Arba-il, the four great gods,” the Trinity in Unity. The idea thus broached receives great confirmation when we examine the particular stress laid in ancient times respecting the right and left side of the body in connection with the Triad names given to offspring mentioned in the scriptures with the titles given to Anu and Hea. The male or active principle was typified by the idea of “solidity” and “firmness,” and the females or passive by the principles of “water,” “softness,” and other feminine principles. Thus the goddess Hea was associated with water, and according to Forlong, the Serpent, the ruler of the Abyss, was sometimes represented to be the great Hea, without whom there was no creation or life, and whose godhead embraced also the female element water.

Rawlinson also gives a similar conclusion, and states as far as he could determine the third divinity or left side was named Hea, and he considered this deity to correspond to Neptune. Neptune was the presiding deity of the deep, ruler of the abyss, and king of the rivers. As Darwin and his coadjutors teach, mankind, in common with all animal life, originally sprung from the sea; so physiology teaches that each individual had origin in a pond of water. The fruit of man is both solid and fluid. It was natural to imagine that the two male appendages had a distinct duty, that one formed the infant, the other water in which it lived, that one generated the male, the other the female offspring; and the inference was then drawn that water must be feminine, the emblem of all possible powers of creation.

It will be seen that the names and signification of the gods and their attributes had no ideal meaning. Thus in Genesis xxx. 13, we find Asher given as a personality, which signifies “to be straight,” “upright,” “fortunate,” “happy.” Asher was the supreme god of the Assyrians, the Vedic Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male structure and creative energy. The same idea of the creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Denmark, depicted on stone relics.

To a rude and ignorant people, enslaved with such a religion, it was an easy step from the crude to the more refined sign, from the offensive to a more pictured and less obnoxious symbol, from the plain and self-evident to the mixed, disguised, and mystified, from the unclothed privy member to the cross.

THE CROSS

The Triad, or Trinity, has been traced to Phœnicia, Egypt, Japan, and India; the triple deities Asshur, Anu, and Hea forming the “tau.” This mark of the Christians, Greeks, and Hebrews became the sign or type of the deities representing the Phallic trinity, and in time became the figure of the cross. It is remarked by Payne Knight that “The male organs of generation are sometimes found represented by signs of the same sort, which properly should be called the symbol of symbols. One of the most remarkable of these is a cross, in the form of the letter (T), which thus served as the emblem of creation and generation before the Church adopted it as a sign of salvation.”

Another writer says, “Reverse the position of the triple deities Asshur, Anu, Hea, and we have the figure of the ancient ‘tau’ of the Christians, Greeks, and ancient Hebrews. It is one of the oldest conventional forms of the cross. It is also met with in Gallic, Oscan, Arcadian, Etruscan, original Egyptian, Phœnician, Ethiopic, and Pelasgian forms. The Ethiopic form of the ‘tau’ is the exact prototype and image of the cross, or rather, to state the fact in order of merit and time, the cross is made in the exact image of the Ethiopic ‘tau.’ The fig-leaf, having three lobes to it, became a symbol of the triad. As the male genital organs were held in early times to exemplify the actual male creative power, various natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic idea, and at the same time point to those parts of the human form. Hence, a similitude was recognised in a pillar, a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied round with two ribbons with the two ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers, the caduceus. Again, the conspicuous part of the sacred triad Asshur is symbolised by a single stone placed upright—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar, or palm tree, while eggs, apples, or citrons, plums, grapes, and the like represented the remaining two portions, altogether called Phallic emblems. Baal-Shalisha is a name which seems designed to perpetuate the triad, since it signifies ‘my Lord the Trinity,’ or ‘my God is three.’”

We must not omit to mention other Phallic emblems, such as the bull, the ram, the goat, the serpent, the torch, fire, a knobbed stick, the crozier; and still further personified, as Bacchus, Priapus, Dionysius, Hercules, Hermes, Mahadeva, Siva, Osiris, Jupiter, Moloch, Baal, Asher, and others.