Here we have "the gate of heaven," mentioned by Origen in describing the Metempsychosis.
According to the ancients, the top of this ladder was supposed to reach the throne of the most high God. This corresponds exactly with the vision of Jacob. The ladder which he is made to see reached unto heaven, and the Lord stood above it.[46:1]
"And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it."[46:2]
This concluding portion to the story has evidently an allusion to Phallic[46:3] worship. There is scarcely a nation of antiquity which did not set up these stones (as emblems of the reproductive power of nature) and worship them. Dr. Oort, speaking of this, says:
Few forms of worship were so universal in ancient times as the homage paid to sacred stones. In the history of the religion of even the most civilized peoples, such as the Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, Arabs and Germans, we find traces of this form of worship.[46:4] The ancient Druids of Britain also worshiped sacred stones, which were set up on end.[46:5]
Pausanias, an eminent Greek historian, says:
"The Hermiac statue, which they venerate in Cyllenê above other symbols, is an erect Phallus on a pedestal."[46:6]
This was nothing more than a smooth, oblong stone, set erect on a flat one.[46:7]
The learned Dr. Ginsburg, in his "Life of Levita," alludes to the ancient mode of worship offered to the heathen deity Hermes, or Mercury. A "Hermes" (i. e., a stone) was frequently set up on the road-side, and each traveller, as he passed by, paid his homage to the deity by either throwing a stone on the heap (which was thus collected), or by anointing it. This "Hermes" was the symbol of Phallus.[46:8]