Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
often shaped snake-like in graceful curves, and surmounted with a. bunch of grapes or
seed. See a figure in the valuable German drawings entitled Denkmaler der Alten
Kunst, by C. O. Müller. The fellow to this Apollo would be the beautiful Venus de
Medici, who leans (see figure 224 of same work) against her representative, the fish,
here a dolphin, on and about which. young cupids are seen riding and gambolling.
The same idea, but softer and more matronly, is portrayed in the Ephesian Artemis,
with arms open, displaying her multitude of full breasts,whiht clothed in an armour
of passion, see figure further on.
The Bilder Atlas (Leipzic 1860) is full of fine illustrations showing similar and
other strange ideas of Phallo-Solar Faiths. The Dolphin may be often often heading
the phallic pole, as in plate viii., where stands beside it a representative man as
Neptune, who holds the fish by the tail, probably to restrain its energies.
One sculpture (fig. 15) shows Man flying over the earth, bearing aloft the Concha
Veneris, and a figure representing Woman is seen pouring from her vase all that
earth counts blessings. Elsewhere we see Satyrs kneeling before a woman, and filling
the vase she holds out in her hand—the meaning being the same. Seeing I have already
had so often to mention the Concha or Shank of the East, I think I had better pause to
give my European readers a sketch of this most important symbol, for we shall never
get on well unless we thoroughly comprehend these objects; and the details to which
Orientalists attach so much importance.
I give here from among the omaments of the highest deities, and from the most
learned of bygone Orientalists, at least in these details, the Concha, as seen in
the hands of Vishnoo and his consort. (Plate vi. of Moore’s
Hindoo Pantheon). The god holds the larger shell in one hand,
and in the other, opposite to it (not shewn here), the great orb
of day. In Moore’s picture, also, Vishnoo is seen to be standing
in the very symbolic arched doorway, like Apollo in my fig.
44, and adorned with a gorgeous head-dress of serpents, whilst
overhead is a Baldakeno of hooded snakes;l the down left hand
is reversed, betokening that he here holds virginity on this side
Fig. 46.—SHELLS.
as well has his goddess, whilst the down right hand is turned boldly to the front. The
reader will not fail to mark the prominence of the diamond form in the centre of the
god’s hand, which, when open, is always the symbol of the Creator, Siva, and that
the finger points markedly to the centre of the diamond. See also that the shell
emblem is oval, and winded like the Osirian hat, and has a conical or phallic top,
such as most women in Egpyt have one their heads when engaged in worship, or fully
dressed.—See Wilkinson’s Anc. Egyp. I., 318. Of course the god has four hands in
Moore’s illustration, as all solar deities have.
The smaller shell is in the goddess’s hand., for she presides over the wombs of all
females as the mother of all mothers. It is possible that the Osirian head-dress sprang
from this very old Eastern Shell-idea, for this shell was the first Priestly Bell, or
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