That “the oldest record of the legend must be that upon which they are all founded,” no one can gainsay, inasmuch as the parent is always senior to the offspring: but it is not quite such a truism that “the most ancient record of the history of the serpent-tempter is the Book of Genesis.” Before a line of it was ever written, or its author even conceived, the allegory of the serpent was propagated all over the world. Temples, constructed thousands of years prior to the birth of Moses, bear the impress of its history. “The extent and permanence of the superstition,” says the erudite ex-secretary of the Asiatic Society, now Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford, “we may learn from Abulfazl, who observes that in seven hundred places there are carved figures of snakes, which they worship. There is, likewise, reason to suppose that this worship was diffused throughout the whole of India, as, besides, the numerous fables and traditions relating to the Nagas, or snake-gods, scattered through the Puranas, vestiges of it still remain in the actual observances of the Hindus.”
To explore the origin, however, of this Ophite veneration, all the efforts of ingenuity have hitherto miscarried: and the combination of solar symbols with it, in some places of its appearance, has, instead of facilitating, augmented the difficulty. “The portals of all the Egyptian temples,” observes the Gentleman’s Magazine, “are decorated with the same hierogram of the circle and the serpent. We find it also upon the temple of Naki Rustan, in Persia; upon the triumphal arch at Pechin, in China; over the gates of the great temple of Chaundi Teeva, in Java; upon the walls of Athens; and in the temple of Minerva, at Tegea—for the Medusa’s head, so common in Grecian sanctuaries, is nothing more than the Ophite hierogram, filled up by a human face. Even Mexico, remote as it was from the ancient world, has preserved, with Ophiolatreia, its universal symbol.”[243]
How would Mr. Deane account for this commixture? “The votaries of the sun,” says he, “having taken possession of an Ophite temple, adopted some of its rites, and thus in process of time arose the compound religion, whose god was named Apollo.”
But, sir, the symbols are coeval, imprinted together upon those edifices at the very moment of their construction; and, therefore, “no process of time” was required to amalgamate a religion whose god (it is true) was Apollo, but which was already inseparable, and, though compound, one.
I have before established the sameness of design which belonged, indifferently, to solar worship and to phallic. I shall, ere long, prove that the same characteristic extends equally to ophiolatreia; and if they all three be identical, as it thus necessarily follows, where is the occasion for surprise at our meeting the sun, phallus, and serpent, the constituent symbols of each, embossed upon the same table, and grouped under the same architrave?
“Here,” says a correspondent in the supplement to the Gentleman’s Magazine of August last, “we have the umbilicated moon in her state of opposition to the sun, and the sign of fruitfulness. She was also, in the doctrines of Sabaism, the northern gate, by which Mercury conducted souls to birth, as mentioned by Homer in his description of the Cave of the Nymphs, and upon which there remains a commentary by Porphyry. Of this cave Homer says—
‘Fountains it had eternal, and two gates,
The northern one to men admittance gives;
That to the south is more divine—a way
Untrod by men, t’ immortals only known.’
“The Cross, in Gentile rites, was the symbol of reproduction and resurrection. It was, as Shaw remarks, ‘the same with the ineffable image of eternity that is taken notice of by Suidas.’ The Crescent was the lunar ship or ark that bore, in Mr. Faber’s language, the Great Father and the Great Mother over the waters of the deluge; and it was also the emblem of the boat or ship which took aspirants over the lakes or arms of the sea to the Sacred Islands, to which they resorted for initiation into the mysteries: and over the river of death to the mansions of Elysium; the Cockatrice was the snake-god. It was also the basilisk or cock-adder. ‘Habet caudem ut coluber, residuum vero corpus ut gallus.’ The Egyptians considered the basilisk as the emblem of eternal ages: ‘esse quia vero videtur ζωῆς κυριεύειν καὶ θανάτον, ex auro conformatum capitibus deorum appingebant Ægyptii.’ What relation had this with the Nehustan or Brazen Serpent, to which the Israelites paid divine honours in the time of Hezekiah? What is the circle with the seasons at the equinoxes and solstices marked upon it?—the signs of the four great pagan festivals celebrated at the commencement of each of these seasons? The corner of the stone which is broken off probably contained some symbol. I am not hierophant enough to unriddle and explain the hidden tale of this combination of hieroglyphics. We know that the sea-goat and the Pegasus on tablets and centeviral stones, found on the walls of Severus and Antoninus, were badges of the second, and the boar of the twentieth legion; but this bas-relief seems to refer, in some dark manner, to matters connected with the ancient heathen mysteries. The form of the border around them is remarkable. The stone which bears them was, I apprehend, brought in its present state from Vindolana, where, as I have observed, an inscription to the Syrian goddess was formerly found. The station of Magna also, a few years since, produced a long inscription to the same goddess in the Iambic verse of the Latin comedians; and a cave, containing altars to Mithras, and a bust of that god, seated between the two hemispheres and surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac, besides other signa and ἄγαλματα of the Persian god, was opened at Borcovicus only about ten years since. These, therefore, and other similar remains, found in the Roman stations in the neighbourhood of Vindolana, induce me to think that the symbols under consideration, and now for the first time taken notice of, were originally placed near the altars of some divinity in the station of the Bowers-in-the-Wood. I know of no establishment that the Knights Templars had in this neighbourhood.”
The modesty of “V. W.” is not less than his diligence; and both, I consider, exemplary and great. But he will excuse me when I tell him that the Cross, the Crescent, and the Cockatrice, are still maiden subjects after his hands. Neither Faber, Shaw, nor Suidas, pretend even to approach those matters, save in their emblematic sense; and, as every emblem must have a substratum, I for one, cannot content myself with that remote and secondary knowledge which is imparted by the exoteric type, but must enter the penetralia, and explore the secrets of the eisoteric temple.