Forlong - Rivers of Life

72
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
horse’s head intelligence, as also the Sun-god Baal or Asher. It is more phallic
than Hippo-like, but my sketch both here and in
No. 1 is from nature: Clearly the large hollow inside
denotes the mighty womb of Maiya, Mama, or
Mâmojee, that is mother-jee, the affix signifying
respect, “great,” or “universal.”
The “grove” of our Old Tastament translators
was pure Phallic worship, approaching to
the Sakti, or Left-hand sect, whilst the worship of
Baal, or Asher, was the Sivaite form of the faith:
I hope I shall not offend my Vishnoo-ite friends, if
Fig. 22—MAMOJEE
I say that the “grove” sects of Syria seem to have
come nearer to their phase of the faith than
to the Sivaites; we may grant that both worshipped “the Tree of Life” for
it is male and female. I give here a precise sculpture of the Asyrian and
Jewish Grove from Dr. Inman, I. 161, where full particulars as to
the sistrum-looking object and its thirteen flowers will be found.
The Israelites, as all old nations did, worshipped the “grove” and
lingam seperately or together “under every green tree,” and our
English version, as before said, translates the Hebrew, Asherah,
wrongly into “the grove.” Smith’s Biblical Dictionary says, that
Ashtoreth is the proper name of the Phenician goddess called by
the Greeks Astarte, whilst her worship, or name of her symbol or
image, was Asherah. The general notion, says the learned writer,
here symbolised alike by Jews and Gentiles, is that of productive
powers, as Asher or Baal symbolised generative power; Asherah
Fig. 24—ISH-TAR OR STAR OF LOVE
Fig. 23
THE GROVE OR ASHERAH
was the Asyrian Ishtar or Star of love, very
often represented thus, as an eye, so that we are
left in no doubt as to the purity of the faith of
this “holy Jewish people.”
The male “tree of life” is quite differently
delineated to this “burning bush”—the symbol of
the ark goddess, and is probably most cIearly
represented in this next Asyrian sculpture, where
the man with knife and cone in hand is seen approaching the “door of life,”
embattled, to denote “dominion,” as Isis is very usually shown; the seeding tree
stands in the midst of the picture, and beside it the Bull, or Power with “Passion” as
the serpent round his neck; more will appear on this subject in my chapter on the
Faiths of Kaldia and Asyria.
The tree and serpent, says Fergusson, are symbolised in every religious system