This form of symbolism prevailed in the most distant ages, and has continued in many countries unto the present time. Richard Payne Knight, an honorable English gentleman, in 1865 wrote a quarto book, of which only two hundred copies were printed, entitled A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Theology of the Ancients, in which this whole subject is boldly discussed, and phallicism illustrated by one hundred and thirty-eight engravings, many of them copied from actual emblems now preserved in the British Museum and in the Secret Museum in Naples. Major-General Forlong, of the British army, has also fully presented this subject in his recent quarto in two volumes, entitled Rivers of Life; or, Sources and Streams of the Faiths of Man in all Lands.
It would doubtless astound many modern theologians to be told that even the Jews did not escape the influence of this form of Nature-worship, and that our Bible, especially the Old Testament, contains many evidences of it; and yet it is a fact. Circumcision was no doubt an offshoot of phallicism. It did not originate with Abraham. It was known by the Egyptians, Abyssinians, and African tribes long before the time he is said to have lived. It was practised, according to Herodotus, at least twenty-four hundred years before our era, and was even then an ancient custom. When Jacob entered into a covenant with Laban, a pillar was set up, surrounded by a heap of stones (Gen. 31:45-53), which was a phallic emblem, and frequently used in the Old Testament. Hebrew patriarchs desired numerous descendants, and hence the symbolic pillar was well suited to their religious cult.
The name of the reputed father of Abraham, Terah, signifies “a maker of images.” In Amos 5: 26 it is said that the Hebrews in the wilderness worshipped a deity known by a name signifying “God of the Pillar,” as is shown by the name Baal Tamar, which means the “fructifying god.” The Semitic custom of giving sanction to an oath or sacred pledge by what the Hebrews called the “putting of the hand under the thigh” is explained by the Talmudists to be the touching of that part of the body which is sealed and made holy by circumcision. The translations of the Jewish Scriptures through motives of delicacy are full of these euphemisms. Professor Joseph P. Lesley, in his Man’s Origin and Destiny, suggests that phallicism converted all the older Arkite symbols into illustrations of its own philosophical conceptions of the mystery of generation, and thus gave to the various parts of the human body those names which constitute the special vocabulary of obscenity of the present day. Every scholar knows it to be a fact that certain words and names now never spoken except by the vulgar abound in the original Jewish writings, and are partly concealed by the convenient methods of euphemism. When Abraham called his servant to take a solemn oath, he required him to lay his hands upon his parts of generation as the most sacred and revered parts of his body (Gen. 24:2), and Jacob, when dying, made his son Joseph take the same form of oath (Gen. 47: 29). This was but little more than the equivalent of the modern custom of laying the hand upon the heart as a token of sincerity. The proper translation of what the servant of Abraham was required to do is given in the margin of Bagster’s Comprehensive Bible thus: “In sectione circumcisionis meæ.” We have in this form of phallic oath an important suggestion as to the origin, or at least the use, of the words testimony, testament, testify, and their cognates (testis, a witness), which cannot fail to occur to the learned reader, but which cannot here be fully explained. “Caute lege” (read carefully) was a warning of a secret or concealed meaning which esoteric writers anciently put in the margin of their books when they would call the special attention of the initiated to what is now called “reading between the lines.” Until our readers comprehend this hint they will not be able to understand what is really meant by the “testimony” mentioned in connection with the “ark of the covenant,” as it occurs in Ex. 16: 34, before any laws, or even altars, were known in Sinai or its thunders heard of. In this hint may also be found the true explanation of David’s nude dance before the ark, and of the attending circumstances. Scores and scores of proofs could here be furnished from the Old-Testament Scriptures, showing that the use of phallic emblems was the rule rather than the exception for centuries among the Jews; and the idols stolen by Rachel (teraphim) need no longer be misunderstood, nor the meaning of the wedges upon which she sat and refused to rise when the “custom of women was upon her” (Gen. 31:35). She was engaged in an act of devotion. General Forlong asserts that at this present day Queen Victoria of Christian England rules over more than one hundred millions of phallic worshippers! Indeed, more than half of the population of our globe still worship, as symbols of fertility and fecundity, the genital organs.
A correspondent of the London Times, of April 8, 1875, says: “The Roman Catholic Church still keeps up certain suggestions of phallicism. As the ancient temple or dagoba was the womb or feminine principle of the god Siva or Bod and others, so the new cardinal, Archbishop Manning, was after his elevation conducted to his church, which is here entitled, in its relation to him, bride or spouse, he calling it sponsa mea. The cardinal was called the bridegroom, and the actual building (the shrine of St. Gregory) his spouse, and not the spiritual Church, which is called Chrises.” The Times’ correspondent further writes of this “sacerdos magnus,” as he is termed, going to meet his spouse, the Church: “He stood reverently at the door, when holy water was presented to him and clouds of incense spread around him, to symbolize that, inasmuch as before the bridegroom enters the bride-chamber he washes and is perfumed, so the cardinal, having been espoused to the Church with the putting on of a ring, of his title, holy water and incense were offered to him, when the choir burst forth with the antiphon, ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’—‘Behold the great sacerdotal!’”
We are thus assured, as far as this is possible, that the phallic idea and a phallic faith lie at the base of this creed; and we are reminded of Apis of the Nile entering his palace for his works of sacrifice and mercy—terms applied to the Great Generator or Great Creator. The ancients all taught that their Great One, Manu, Man, or Noh, was in the great ark which floats in the midst of the waters, and that the whole was a mystery incomprehensible to the uninitiated. He who is lord of the Christian ark is the lord of all nations, which the great sacerdos or pope claims to be. He was till very lately a temporal as well as a spiritual head of kings and nations. So no wonder that the holder of the rod, baton, or banner, who occupies the place also of Moses to lead his flocks through this wilderness, is always examined as to his phallic completeness before being confirmed in the pontificate. This, we read in the life of Leo X. by Roscoe, is required in the case of popes, just as the laws of Moses required that all who came to worship their very phallic JHVH should first prove their completeness as men. From this we may conclude that eunuchs or incompetent men were children of the devil, or at least, not of this phallic god—a fact which the writer of Matt. 19:12, and the Fathers Origen and Valentine, and a host of other saints who acted on this text, must have overlooked. Wm. Roscoe, the historian, thus writes: “On the 11th of August, 1492, after old Roderigo (Borgia) had assumed the name of Alexander VI., and made his entrance as supreme pontiff into the church of St. Peter, after the procession and pageants had all been gone through, Alexander was taken aside to undergo the final test of his qualifications, which in his particular case might have been dispensed with.” The historian of course alludes to his numerous progeny.
The author expects to be criticised, and perhaps charged with obscenity, for introducing this subject. But it has been well said: “Prudery and pruriency are frequently companions, equally impure and cowardly; and in all scientific investigations they should be disregarded rather than conciliated.” The ancients saw no impurity in the symbolism of parentage to indicate the work of creation. What is divine and natural to be and to do cannot be immodest and obscene. No person can with decency and propriety impugn the operation of Nature’s laws to which he owes his existence; and he is degraded and corrupt above all others who regards that law as essentially sensual. Phallicism meant no wrong until sensuality and impurity of life suggested that to mention it was indecorous. No clean and chaste mind can be shocked by the most obvious laws of nature. Lydia Maria Child and other grand women have written brave words on this subject which silly prudes would do well to study, if, indeed, they ever read anything beyond a lascivious French novel. Women only expose their ignorance when they are reddened with blushes at the mention of phallic worship, and at the same time wear the mystic horse-shoe or the crescent upon their immaculate bosoms, eat hot cross-buns, dance around the Maypole, and worship beneath the church steeple. Even the vestments of priests are ornamented with phallic emblems; and one can hardly go abroad without beholding things which show how innocently and unconsciously “the records of the past” are preserved in church architecture, ecclesiastical rites, and many other things daily before our eyes—well understood by really learned men, but to the true origin and significance of which the masses are totally blind. There are churches in Philadelphia, and elsewhere, even among those who call themselves liberal, which are ornamented with all the emblems of the ancient Nature-worship, especially sun-worship and phallus-worship. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union held a great meeting recently at Ocean Grove, N. J., and innocently used a programme decorated with the horseshoe and many other phallic emblems. They had the cat seated on the crescent, which, according to Egyptian mythology, said, “We are virgins, but nevertheless desire that commerce which eventuates in offspring.” They had the emblematic hare also, which always denotes fecundity, and many other emblems not to be mentioned in polite society. Even our ordinary playing-cards, over which so much precious time is wasted, are distinguished by phallic symbols!
Passing by the symbolism of fire-worship prevalent in nearly all ancient lands, and omitting to notice ancestor-worship, the worship of the sun, which embraces nearly all the forms of Nature-worship, now claims our attention. It should be kept in mind what has already been intimated, that the use of natural objects in worship is not necessarily idolatrous.
The priests of Chaldea, Babylonia, Hindostan, and Egypt disclaimed the actual worship of the material objects prominent in their rituals, and held that these visible signs were necessary for the vulgar to contemplate, while intelligent worshippers fixed their spiritual eyes upon the thing or principle signified by the sign. The Roman Catholic Church well understands this principle, and by its appeal to the ear and eye of uneducated people attracts them to its gorgeous temples and holds them in loyal subjection to the priests. Take the following as an illustration of the ancient customs referred to:
“Mr. F. Buckland tells us, in Land and Water, that on the first of May all the choristers of Magdalen College, Oxford, still meet on the summit of their tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, and sing a Latin hymn as the sun rises, whilst the final peal of ten bells simultaneously welcomes the gracious Apollo. In former days high mass was held here, and the rector of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, it appears, still has to pay ten pounds yearly for the one performance of sundry pieces of choir-music at 5 A. M. on the top of this tower. This May music, Christian priests explain, is for the repose of the souls of kings and others, which, of course, is quite an after-thought. Early mass for Sol used also to be held in the college chapel, but it is now explained that, owing to this having been forbidden at the Reformation, it has since been performed at the top of the tower. After the present hymn is sung by the choristers—boys dressed in womanly raiment—the lads throw down eggs upon the crowd beneath, and blow long loud blasts to Sol through bright new tin horns—showing us that the Bacchic and Jewish trumpet fêtes are not yet forgotten by Christians. Long before daybreak the youths of both sexes used to rise and go to a great distance to gather boughs and flowers, and reach home at sunrise to deck all doors, windows, and loved spots.... Long before man was able to appreciate ploughing and harvesting, he keenly felt the force of the winter and of the vernal equinox, and was ready to appreciate the joyous warmth of the sun and its energizing power on himself, as well as on fruits and flowers.”
While the Jewish and Christian Bibles contain traces of all forms of the ancient Nature-worship, there is one form that is specially conspicuous from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelation—to wit, the worship of the sun.