The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

by Roswell Park

Among the Jews the pillar had much the same significance as the pyramid among the Egyptians or the triangle or cone among votaries of other worships. The Tower of Babel must have been purely a mythical creation but in the same direction. Although Abraham is regarded as having emigrated from Chaldea in the character of a dissenter from the religion of his country (see Joshua 24:2-3), his immediate descendants apparently had recourse to the symbols to which I have alluded. Thus he erected altars and planted pillars wherever he resided, and conducted his son to the land of Moriah to sacrifice him to the deity, as was done among the Phoenicians. Jeptha in like manner sacrificed his own daughter Mizpeh, and the temple of Solomon was supposed to have been built upon the site of Abraham's ancient altar. Jacob not only set up a pillar at the place which he called Bethel but made libations; Samuel worshipped at the High Places at Ramah, and Solomon at the Great Stone in Gibeon. It remained for Hezekiah to change the entire Hebrew cult. He removed the Dionysiac statues and phallic pillars as well as the conical and omphallic symbols of Venus and Ashtaroth, broke in pieces the brazen serpent of Moses and overthrew the mounds and altars. After him Josiah removed the paraphernalia of sun worship and destroyed the statues and emblems of Venus and Adonis, (2nd Kings, 23:4-20).

The Greek Hermes was identical with the Egyptian Khem, as well as with Mercury and with Priapus, also with the Hebrew Eloah; thus when Jacob entered into a covenant with Laban his father-in-law, a pillar was set up and a heap of stones made and a certain compact entered into; similar land marks were usual with the Greeks and placed by them upon public roads.

As Mrs. Childs has beautifully said, "Other emblems deemed sacred by Hindoos and worshipped in their temples have brought upon them the charge of gross indecencies. * * * If light with its grand revealings, and heat, making the earth fruitful with beauty, excited wonder and worship among the first inhabitants of our world, is it strange that they likewise regarded with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure thus to regard it? Or are we impure that we do not so regard it?"

Constant, in his work on Roman Polytheism says, "Indecent rites may be practiced by religious people with the greatest purity of heart, but when incredulity has gained a footing among these peoples then those rites become the cause and pretext of the most revolting corruption."

The phallic symbol was always found in temples of Siva, who corresponds to Baal, and was usually placed as are the most precious emblems of our Christian temples to-day, in some inmost recess of the sanctuary. Moreover lamps with seven branches were kept burning before it, these seven branched lamps long antedating the golden candlestick of the Mosaic Tabernacle. The Jews by no means escaped the objective evidence of phallic worship; in Ezekiel 16:17, is a very marked allusion to the manufacture by Jewish women of gold and silver phalli.

As a purely phallic symbol and custom mark the significance of certain superstitions and practices even now prevalent in Great Britain. Thus in Boylase's History of Cornwall it is stated that there is a stone in the Parish of Mardon, with a hole in it fourteen inches in diameter, through which many persons creep for the relief of pains in the back and limbs, and through which children are drawn to cure them of rickets, this being a practical application of the doctrine of regeneration. In 1888 there was printed in the London Standard a considerable reference to passing children through clefts in trees as a curative measure for certain physical ailments. The same practice prevails in Brazil and in many other places, and within the present generation it has been customary to split a young ash tree and, opening this, pass through it a child for the purpose of curing rupture or some other bodily ailment.

The phallic element most certainly cannot be denied in Christianity itself, since in it are many references which to the initiated are unmistakable. From the fall of man with its serpent myth and its phallic foundation to the peculiar position assigned to the Virgin Mary as a mother, phallic references abound. However, it should not be forgotten that whatever were the primitive ideas on which these dogmas were based, they had been lost sight of or had been received in a fresh aspect by the founders of Christianity. The fish and the cross originally typified the idea of generation and later that of life, in which sense they were applied to Christ. The most plainly phallic representation used in early Christian Iconography, is undoubtedly the Aureole or elliptical frame work, containing usually the figure of Christ, sometimes that of Mary. The Nimbus also, generally circular but sometimes triangular, is of positive phallic significance, even though it contain within it the name of Jehovah. The sun flowers which sometimes are made to surround the figure of St. John the Evangelist are the lotus flowers of the Egyptians. The divine hand with the thumb and two fingers outstretched, even though it rests on a cruciform nimbus, is a phallic emblem, and is used by the Neapolitans of to-day to avert the Evil Eye, although it was originally a symbol of Isis. Indeed the Virgin Mary is the ancient Isis, as can be most easily established, since the virgin "Succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites and ceremonies." (King). The great image still moves in procession as when Juvenal laughed at it, and her proper title is the exact translation of the Sanskrit and the equivalent of the modern Madonna, the Lotus of Isis, and the Lily of the modern Mary. Indeed, as King has written, "It is astonishing how much of the Egyptian symbolism passed over into usages of the following times." The high cap and hooked staff of the god became the bishop's mitre and crozier. The term Nun is purely Egyptian and bore its present meaning. The Crux Ansata, testifying the union of the male and female principle in the most obvious manner, and denoting fecundity and abundance, is transformed by a simple inversion into an orb surmounted by a cross, the ensign of royalty.

The teaching of the Church of Rome regarding the Virgin Mary shows a remarkable resemblance to the teachings of the ancients concerning the female associate of the triune deity. In ancient times she has passed under many and diverse names; she was the Virgin, conceiving and bringing forth from her own inherent power; she was the wife of Nimrod; she has been known as Athor, Artemis, Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, Cybele, etc.