Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
salvation of a nation. This picturet held to represent health. and the healthy actions
of nature, is abunduntly varied in classic statuary
and pictures. In the Napoleonic Museum of
the Louvre used to be a group, of which the
centre was an upright column, on which stood a
man with raised staff—that self-same idea which
caused the Edumean tribes to say when they
warred to the death with the Amalekites, that their
leader must stand with raised rod, as the symbol
of an imperishable people. Round the Louvre staff
was a coiled serpent, and at the base the Boodhist
wheel of life, or probably the Sun. Respectfully
adoring this symbol of life, there stood on one side
a winged female figure, who with one hand was presenting her cup to the Serpent,
who lovingly reaches down its head towards her; in the other hand was a flambeau.
On the opposite side stood a warrior touching the snake in a quaint manner, as if
urging it on to do something.
A Serpent twisted round the stem of a tree—in which case it is “the Tree of Life,”
or “Live-giving Tree”—is very common. In the adjoining Plate IV. he is seen in Fig.
11, as on the stem between symbolic rocks, with the Ark, the feminine emblem below;
and in Fig. 10 he is twisted round what is usually termed “the Yule Log”—that is, the
Sun, Huil or Seul stone, a name for the Lingam; whilst the date-palm symbol of
Adām, stands on the one gide, aud a common form of the konch shell, or Adāmā, on
the other. Figure 3 of the plate is another sort of pictorial pun, which I have
elsewhere alluded to, where man himself forms the Phallic Cross, and the Serpents
the other emblems of this lore.
There are several highly significant forms in my Plates IV. and V., showing how
mankind loved to represent their Serpent king, and we might fill dozens of sheets with
such drawings. In Fig. 1, Plate V., he is seen on an Esculapius rod, of which the meaning
is made more unmistakable than usual by its issuing from a vaginal sheath, such as
that of the Crozier of Cashel which is seen further on. I give here a drawing of what
is called a Tyrean cistopharos coin, in which we observe two
upreared serpents fighting or kissing over what is usually called
a quiver sheath, in which are other serpentinish objects. This
“quiver” is only so in Solomon’s sense of quivers, for it is
precisely what we see beside Apollo as he stands in Fig. 44, page
127, “passing through the door of life,” and is in my opinion
the ark, argo or womb of nature, but here the nest of the
Serpents, for they are male and female. The one on the left
is a large male, and still more clearly indicated as the male
Fig. 33—HYGIA, OR “CURE FOR ALL”
Fig. 34—TYRIAN COIN
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