Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
rod, which was at one time a Serpent. They carried about with this ark, the real and bonâ
fide form of a Serpent on a pole, 1 which is a highly Phallic object, and which in India
signifies Serpent and Lingam. The first God—Elohim, who preceded the God Jhavh
or Yachveh of Phenicia, and whom the Greeks properly called ΙΑΩ (IAO), was clearly
the Eduth who was sometimes put into, and sometimes on the top of his ark—the
latter, of course, being the proper place when the people halted, as I shew in Fig.
76, page 194, where I put it between the pot of manna and the sprig of almond
tree. This Eduth, we see from the Bible narration, was not made by the hands of
artificers, like all arks and temples. Only after a long and very careful study of this
and all similar faiths have I arrived at my eondusion as to the Eduth of Ex. xvi. 34;
and so important is it, and so perplexing, perhaps, to those who have long looked upon
the Jews and their faith as something highly monotheistic, and surpassingly better
than the faiths of all other people, that I must here try and make clear the grounds on
which I have come to this conclusion, for it is one which can scarcely be heard of by
Christians without horror—viz., that the Jews had a Phallus or Phallic symbol in their
“Ark of the Testimony,” or ark of the Eduth, twdu, a word which I hold tries to veil
the real object.
This view is, I confess, not well supported by Hebraists or by the leamed; indeed,
I do not know that it has ever presented itself to any one but that Father in this occult
research—Dr Inman—whom I am sorry to say I have never met; and he has not given
any one much encouragement here, though he has thrown out many clues towards the
solution of the problem in his article Ark, Vol. I. of Ancient Faiths.
It is not likely that any Hebraists, especially of orthodox habits of mind, oould
here assist us, for the whole subject is quite foreign to those who have never studied
this class of Oriental faiths, especially out of Europe. The Hebraist, like the judge on
the bench, must follow his recordst and not make words or laws, but interpret these;
so we must here look to men who practically know Sivaik faiths, and cannot be
decieved by a blind in a word or words, but can gather up the meaning by analysing
the old ideas, and who know by abundant experience that priests often veil, in language
which defies philological research, what afterwards turn out to be degrading ideas
of their god. It is here quite clear to us that if this Eduth was a lingam or “grove,”
it would be very obnoxious; and I have already stated in my Introductory Chapter,
pages 14 and 15, that the most orthodox Christians have acknowledged, that the tribes
were ashamed of their personal God in the third century B.C., when all their writings
and oral sayings began to be collected.
In the translations of that period, wc are assured that they softened down the
strong expressions where human parts were ascribed to God; 2 so we may be quite
certain that in this word eduth twdu, or gehduth, we have an emasculated or mutilated
word such as good Hebraists tell we have in the word translated as “emerods” in
1 As it existed in Hezekiah’s days, I conclude it always accompanied the Ark. 2 Art. Sept., S. Bible Dict.
149