Forlong - Rivers of Life

84
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
The English “May pole,” decked with coloured rags, tinsel, and serpentine
streamers, and “the merry morrice dancers,” of whom I shall speak by-and-by, with
the mysterious and now nearly defunct personage “Jack in the Green,” are all but the
worn-out remnants of Tree, Phallic, and Serpent worship. These faiths, history tells us,
were prevalent both in France and England until forbidden in the middle ages by
the ecclesiastical councils in France, and by Laws of Canute—1020 A.C. in England;
but they are by no means yet extinct.
From an article in Fraser of November 1871, by M. D. C., describing his
pilgrimage to the Ammer in Bavaria on St John’s Day, and the theatrical performances
called Passion-Spiel at Ober-Ammer-gau, I gather various traces of the old faiths of
Tree, Phallic, and Isis worship; and we see how deftly Christianity has welded itself
on to these, without too rudely breaking down the dear old ties of an ignorant but
very human and affectionate people. M. D. C. finds, he says, strange drawings over
the Tyrolese churches and house doors—figures of women, circles, and inscriptions
much less suggestive of Christian subjects, than of those Charms and Runes which
Maunhardt shows to have been placed on the gables of German houses. before the
introduction of Christianity as a protection from demons.
There is no mistake as to our old Tree and Serpent faiths. Each hamlet, says
this writer, has its Maienbaum—a long pole
100 feet or more in height (this is surely
exaggerated) with alternate blue and white
stripes coiling round it, and mark the details
of what rests upon this Tyrolese-phallic
pole; to make it clearer I give a drawing
from this and other narrators’ descriptions.
The May-pole is intersected by seven, or
somctimes nine bars, beginning at about
ten feet from the ground, and running to
the top, which is adorned with streamers.
On these bars are various emblematic
figures. The one at Murau had on lower
Fig. 29—MAYPOLE COVERED WITH RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS
limb, a small tree and a nail with circular
nob; on next, a small houses, a horse shoe
and wheel on one side; a hammer crossed by a pair of pincers on
the other—(as I here for clearness separately depict, for without
drawings we lose the force of these occult symbols)—a broom,
perhaps Ceres, as a sheaf of corn; below this was seen the
Lingam, with Maya’s symbols, the cup and cock or the bird of
desire sacred to her. Elsewhere we see a heart, fire, pyramid,
Fig. 28—TOR AND PINCEES
and inverted pyramid, anchor and water as in Egypt and a circle pierced by a