If Ezekiel is to be credited, the triad, T, as Asshur, Anu, and Hea, was made of gold and silver, and was in his day not symbolically used, but actually employed; for he bluntly says “whoredom was committed with the images of men,” or, as the marginal note has it, images of “a male” (Ezek. xvi. 17). It was with this god-mark—a cross in the form of the letter T—that Ezekiel was directed to stamp the foreheads of the men of Judæa who feared the Lord (Ezek. ix. 4).
That the cross, or crucifix, has a sexual origin we determine by a similar rule of research to that by which comparative anatomists determine the place and habits of an animal by a single tooth. The cross is a metaphoric tooth which belongs to an antique religious body physical, and that essentially human. A study of some of the earliest forms of faith will lift the veil and explain the mystery.
India, China, and Egypt have furnished the world with a genus of religion. Time and culture have divided and modified it into many species and countless varieties. However much the imagination was allowed to play upon it, the animus of that religion was sexuality—worship of the generative principle of man and nature, male and female. The cross became the emblem of the male feature, under the term of the triad—three in one. The female was the unit; and, joined to the male triad, constituted a sacred four. Rites and adoration were sometimes paid to the male, sometimes to the female, or to the two in one.
So great was the veneration of the cross among the ancients that it was carried as a Phallic symbol in the religious processions of the Egyptians and Persians. Higgins also describes the cross as used from the earliest times of Paganism by the Egyptians as a banner, above which was carried the device of the Egyptian cities.
The cross was also used by the ancient Druids, who held it as a sacred emblem. In Egypt it stood for the signification of eternal life. Schedeus describes it as customary for the Druids “to seek studiously for an oak tree, large and handsome, growing up with two principal arms in the form of a cross, besides the main stem upright. If the two horizontal arms are not sufficiently adapted to the figure, they fasten a cross-beam to it. This tree they consecrate in this manner: Upon the right branch they cut in the bark, in fair characters, the word ‘Hesus’; upon the middle, or upright stem, the word ‘Taranius’; upon the left branch ‘Belenus’; over this, above the going off of the arms, they cut the name of the god Thau; under all, the same repeated, Thau.”
YONI
There is in Hindostan an emblem of great sanctity, which is known as the “Linga-Yoni.” It consists of a simple pillar in the centre of a figure resembling the outline of a conical ear-ring. It is expressive of the female genital organ both in shape and idea. The Greek letter “Delta” is also expressive of it, signifying the door of a house.
Yoni is of Sanskrit origin. Yanna, or Yoni, means (1) the vulva, (2) the womb, (3) the place of birth, (4) origin, (5) water, (6) a mine, a hole, or pit. As Asshur and Jupiter were the representatives of the male potency, so Juno and Venus were representatives of the female attribute. Moore, in his “Oriental Fragments,” says: “Oriental writers have generally spelled the word, ‘Yoni,’ which I prefer to write ‘IOni.’ As Lingam was the vocalised cognomen of the male organ, or deity, so IOni was that of hers.” Says R. P. Knight: “The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative powers of nature or of matter, as those of the male were of the generative powers of God. They are usually represented emblematically by the shell Concha Veneris, which was therefore worn by devout persons of antiquity, as it still continues to be by the pilgrims of many of the common people of Italy” (“On the worship of Priapus,” p. 28).
If Asshur, the conspicuous feature of the male Creator, is supplied with types and representative figures of himself, so the female feature is furnished with substitutes and typical imagery of herself.
One of these is technically known as the sistrum of Isis. It is the virgin’s symbol. The bars across the fenestrum, or opening, are bent so that they cannot be taken out, and indicate that the door is closed. It signifies that the mother is still virgo intacta—a truly immaculate female—if the truth can be strained to so denominate a mother. The pure virginity of the Celestial Mother was a tenet of faith for 2,000 years before the accepted Virgin Mary now adored was born. We might infer that Solomon was acquainted with the figure of the sistrum, when he said, “A garden enclosed is my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” (Song of Sol. iv. 12). The sistrum, we are told, was only used in the worship of Isis, to drive away Typhon (evil).