Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
symbols), stuck upon a little altar of mud under any tree or shade near to their works; it
would be decorated by the women with rags from their coloured garments and smeared
with any oils or pigments which they could get hold of, red or yellow being preferred.
We know that such humble Sivaik altars abounded and were adored from time immemorial
all over Africa; as indeed they are still. Chrisitian converts stated, as cited in
page 106, that they worsbipped such up to their conversion. 1
It is in vain to ask for light on the subject from Jews or even Enropean-Jewish
students; they, like Chriatians, are, I have found, for the most part quite ignorant
of the ancient symbols and gods of their faith; the first idea of the ark and its
mysteries has as completely passed away from the Jews of Britain, and even of Asia
Minor, as have the Serpent and Solar faiths; which were once those of our ancestors,
faded from our ken. We must go to the so-called general history of the facts, or
acts of a faith, and study what other peoples did to know what Jews did, what was
then and now going on under the smne circumstances on similar altars; doing this,
and taking for the present their own statements, as facts, and the occurrences in their
order of time, what do we find?
Exodus xii. 37, 38—A “mixed multitude” of Jews, Egyptians, and hybrids, nurnbering,
they shew, some 3,000,000, left Egypt by Rameses and Succoth in the month of
Abib, or the vernal equinox, “Eostre.” xiii. 18-21.—Their god Elohim led them a
round-about way from fear of the Philestines frightening them back again, 2 and guided
them by smoke in the day time, and by fire at night. Ex. xvi.—The tribes had in one
and a-half month reached the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai. Their gods
Elohim and Jhavh, or “Jhavh their Elohim,” have all along been spoken of by them,
though this is, I think, an interpolation; but no altar, tent, tabernacle, or ark is
spoken of in this chapter, nor up to this date in the Bible do we know of the tribes
having such, when we suddenly hear (verse 33) Moses say to Aaron, “TAKE A POT OF
MANNA AND LAY IT UP BEFORE THE JHAVAH;” and verse 34, “AS THE JHAVH COMMANDED
MOSES, SO AARON LAID IT UP BEFORE THE TESTIMONY,” or EDUTH! What then, was
this Eduth which stands for Jhavh? for no “law” or “testimony,” not even fixed
place in which to lay such, then existed! Clearly this was their Beth-el or “Rock”
which we find in so many instances is the principle god of the Old Testament;
see some details of this in page 103. Exodus xvii.—In this chapter we come to
the FIRST ALTAR OF THE TRIBES, and it was evidently not built in the manner which
their deity liked, for he afterwards gives out from Sinai, which they do not reach till
the xix. chapter, or after three months marching, the way in which his altars
are to be erected (xx. 24-26) viz., of mud, or unhewn stone without a step, in case
1 Arnobius, of the 4th cenutry A.C., wrote thus, see Ar. Adversus Gentes, trans. by Bryon and Campbell,
T. & T. Clark, Edin.:—“I worshipped images produced from the furnace, gods made on anvils and by
hammers, the bones of elephants, paintings, wreaths on aged trees: whenever I espied an anointed
stone, or one bedaubed with olive oil, as if some person resided in it, I worshipped it, I addressed my-
self to it, and begged blessings from a senseless stock.” 2 “600,000 fighting-men” need not have feared.
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