Forlong - Rivers of Life

106
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
“source of all goodness and prosperity,” and is called Dangbue. As the oiled stone,
it was he whom the Christian convert Arnobius confessed he never passed without
bowing to, in the fourth ceutury A.C. The ocean is always inferior to Dangbue, and
the Tree also very generally so, but the want of knowledge of real Phallie faiths on the
part of many writers on Africa., precludes us from as yet being able to judge correctly
of the degrees, or even properties, of African gods. I glean the following from
Skertchley on Dahomey, as to deities there observed by him.
LEGBA is the Dahomey Priapus, and special patron of all who desire large families.
ZOO is the God of Fire, reminding us of Zoe, Life.
DEMEN—He who presides over chastity, if not thought a god, then a demon.
AKWASH—He who presides over childbirth.
GEWEJEH—He or she who presides over hunting (Diana)?
AJARAMA—The tutelary god of foreigners, symbolised by a white-washed stump under a shed,
apparently a Sivaic or white Lingam, no doubt called foreign, because Ashar came from
Asyria, and Esir from the still older Ethiopians. Is it possible that this is the solar
Arjoona of the Indian classics?
HOHO—He who presides over twins.
AFA is the name of the dual God of Wisdom, to whom as to the Jewish God, must be offered a
pigeon or fowl.
AIZAN is the god who presides over roads, and travellers, and bad characters, and can be seen on all
roads as a heap of clay surmounted by a round pot, containing kanki, palm oil, and such like.”
So that we have Legba, the pure and simple Phallus; Ajar-ama, “the whitened
stump, so well known to us in India amidst rude aboriginal tribes; and Ai-zan, the
Hermes or Harmonia, marking the ways of life, and symholized. by a mound and “round
pot,” and considering that this is the univenal form. of tatooing shown “on every
female’s stomach,”—Mr. S. says, “a series of arches,” the meaning is clearly the omphi.
Mr Skertchley says that Afa, our African Androgynous Minerva “is very much respected
by mothers,” and has certain days “sacred to mothers,” when she or he is specially consulted
on their special subjeets, as well as on all matters “relating to marrying, building
a house, sowing corn,” and such like. He of the “stump” seems an Androgyne god,
as Ashar and Parvati, for Ama is her name, and our Eastern generic one for a mother,
whilst Ajar is evidently the widely-known Ashar. We are told that Dansi, the snake,
has a thousand wives, married and single, and that prayers must be offered continually to
him, which if they please the god, he will answer through his priestesses, for he prefers
women to men, just as the Python of Delph did. In Africa, as in India, young
females are dedicated from their birth to the temple, or, perhaps I should say to “the
service of the gods,” and by this dedication, says Skertchley, both mother and child
are considered highly honoured, so that the priests here as in Syria 1 and elsewhere,
have managed well for the gods and themselves, but still better in the following case.
They teach that all women “touched” by the African serpent are “possessed,” “bereft
of reason,” are” unsafe for ordinary persons and “liable to extraordinary hysteria.”
They therefore attach at once, and for as long as they like, all who have been so
1 Jehovah exacted thirty-two females for himself out of the captives of Media.—NUM. xxxi. 40.