Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
“the millennium will be when all are mutilated!” a doctrine somewhat similar to that
of the ascetic Sivaite, who stands on a leg or an arm, or in one position till he dies, and
preaches that heaven or Meroo will be attained by all, when every bodily feeling is thus
destroyed. It appears that notwithstanding the severity of the initiatory ceremony,
and the rigour with which the Russian Government tries to put down the Skoptsi, yet
scores of converts are “added daily to the faith,” an astonishing fact in the records of
religions. Such a sect as we may suppose, despise parents, whom they even call
fornicators, as well as the saints of the Christian calendar and the civil power; they
have initiatory ceremonies to teach this, say Drs. Kopernicky amd Dennis writing on
them. 1 The Skoptsi “Sacrifice," is made at secret nocturnal meetings, amidst songs.
and great dancing, which is often carried on till they drop from exhaustion. The act
is called the sign and seal of God, which marks, they say, the “Lord’s. pcople,” as
in Rev. vi. The emperor, Peter the Third, as a eunuch, and a sort of mythical “queen
of heaven” called Akoulina, are worshipped by this sect, and by the Shaloputa, a
varient of them. We may, perhaps, look upon these poor people as exhibiting that rebellion
which, at times, springs up in our hearts when we find any acts or worship carried
to excess. As surely as we have seen an abundant crop of Atheism spring up to check
the superstitions of the dark ages, or indeed, of our own (and even Atheism has many
good aspects, and is probably a proof of the love of the race for a purer faith); so in
the Skoptsi, and Ascetics of Egypt, Asyria, India, Greece, and, no doubt, Mexico, do
we but see that revulsion of feeling from a too voluptuous worship of Khem, Vool,
Sivà, Priàpus, or the Mexican generator, Triazoltenti. That which is good in itself, and
which the Polynesians called. their “great sacrifice.”—the sight of which horrified even
the sailors of Cook—is like all the emotional part of our nature, correct in itself, but
most dangerous in excess and ever prone to take the bit in its mouth and run away
with poor weak man and woman, plunging them into every folly and extravagance.
Yet listen to what Mr Wake says, “the Phallic is the only foundation on which an
emotional religion can be based,” which is, I fear, a stern but humbling truth. It
is Phallic faith which taught us to love and honour our father and mother, to revere the
rising orbs of day, and the seasons with their varied properties and fruits, and to
enhance, as a fête or even sacrament, every social feature of our lives, as birth,
puberty, marriage, conception, &c.; it glories in all manly manifestations of “the great
father,” and every womanly office of “the great mother,” and it is undoubtedly the
foundation of every past and present faith.
It was Ahriman or Satan, said Zoroastrians ages before Jews, who introduced
the serpent to make man fall, which he did in the lovely garden of Ahura-mazda, where
the poisonous monster was known as Angromainyus—“father of lies,” deceit, and
every evil passion. Ahriman, says Lajard, was an old serpent, with two feet,
a species of reptile we often see in Egyptian paintings, especially in the region of
1 “Anthrop. Socy’s. Journ., July 1870, p. cxxvi.