Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
one in regard to him, who in all these lands was a king, and whose figure on banner
shield, helmet, or forehead, denoted royalty or the bluest of “blue blood.” Blue was his
colour, and perhaps we owe to Phallic royalty this very term of purity in lineage; for
Siv’a name was Neel-Kanta, or the blue-throated one, as well as Esh-Wāra, the Lord
of Love and King of the Gods; for in Esh, we have Es, Hessus, or Esus, near relatives
of Ash and Ashur, Eshar and Ish-tar, where Ur, may be Light, and Ar, the Sun.
The Emperor Aurelian mentions capturing from Zenobia the Persici Dracones 1
who were allies of the Persians of those days; and Eusebius says that Persians “all
worshipped First principles under the form of Serpents, having dedicated to them
temples in which they performed sacrifices, and held festivals and orgies, esteeming
them THE GREATEST OF GODS and the governers of the universe.” 2 The “first principles”
were typified by two upreared Serpents on each side of an egg, as in my Fig. 34, and
Plate IV., 3 and 9, which afterwards became spiritualised into “good and evil striving
for mastery” over the world—which spiritualisation, however, seems rather too
advanced for the primitive artists. It is more likely that the symbolism in figure 34
was the very natural one of the male and female guarding their joint result, and that
any “contention” over the egg is no more than that we so commonly see in nature of
the mother’s anxiety for her young, and doubt on her part as to the male’s doings in
regard to them; for males are not always to be trusted in rearing their offspring.
Mithras is often seen with a human body, a lion’s head, and round him a large
coiled snake, and with such inscriptions as “Deo Invicto Mithri, secundinus dat;” his
usual sign is a youthful countenance with “Invictus” written below; he is Azon, or
the god Zon with the zone or belt; and from his winged forms, no doubt, the Hebrew
seer Malachi got his idea of “the Sun of Righteousness.” The Greeks, although calling
the Serpent Daimon or Demon, yet for the sake of brevity in writing, says Seldon,
they made the hieroglyphic I give on page 228, Fig. 99, VI. 2, and of which VI. 3-4, and
VIII. 1, are but variants, thereby shewing that they considered the Serpent as the active
power of the Sun, the male in that ring through which man is usually seen appearing.
Curiously enough, as the reverend writer of Serpcnt Worship—who reminds me of
some of the above—says, this is almost exactly the plan of the Abury remains; and
if Britons will still persist in cutting out huge men and animals on the turf of their
hill-sides, there is nothing strange that in ancient days they would have indelibly, as
they thought, marked out with sacred upright stones, which no ancient peoples would
on any consideration remove, this sacred Solo-Serpent-sign of D£imon. The Serpent coil,
in most old Asyrio-Kaldiac and Persian figures, runs through the circle, as in the two
figures, 99 IV. 3-4, in the first of which we see our heir-apparent’s symbol or its origin.
Wings or feathers denote, as elsewhere shown, virile power and ubiquity; also swiftness.
In the days of universal Serpent-worship, Ops, who is also Rhea, was by Greeks
called Op-Is, and by the Egyptians Apis—always a very Ophitish name, and one
1 Deane, 47, quoting Vopiscus Hist. Aug. Script., 218.
2 Præp. Evang. I. 42.
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