Forlong - Rivers of Life

158
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
manner which no hidden words or language can gainsay or impose upon, that these
poor wanderers worshipped in the crudest and grosses manner the organs of procreation,
symbolised by poles, rods, arks, “groves” and such like. Nevertheless, let us turn
ro other parts of the Bible to see the after-signification of Nissi—the banner or standard.
This word occurs twice amongst other very relevant matter in Solomon’s love song. In ii.
3-4, the “love-sick” one says, “as the apple tree amogst other trees, so is her beloved one
among sons;” that she is in raptures sitting under his shadow, and that when he takes
her to “a house of wine,” in his Banner or Nissi over her is love.” I need not repeat
the rest, here so gross. In the 6th chapterj this “banner” is described as fierce in love.
In Isaiah lix. 19, we learn that “the Jhavh’s” spirit is a Standard against the enemy,
as was the Rod of Moses; and in Is. xi. 10, that a root of Jesse: is to stand for an
Ensign among the people; so that we have here the Toth, obelisk, or Sun-stone, and
that Standard or Banner, as with Serpent, Hand, or Eagle on.summit, (Fig. 53, page
134), such as we know the Roman legions followed and bowed down to. We know
also that the Jews seem to have retained their Serpent and Pole more continuously
than their ark, which is natural; as it was no money value nor use except for
worship, and was an object too universally revered to be injured by any of their many
conquerors and masters. It is reasonable to expect that the tribes had sacred poles
and pillars, for every civilized people had these, which the wide-travelling merchant
princes of Venice imported. into Europe, planting them all about and over that
fine old Venetian shrine, appropriately dedicated to that unknown writer—MARK, but
well-known Lion, a brave and salacious old emblematic deity whom wise Priests
purloined from Sol’s world-wide faith.
It has been said, and not unreasonably, that we are not to assume that the serpent
pole was a great unwieldy flag-staff, but rather a Kaduceus, which priests held up as
an exorciser, as later priests hold up a cross, with or without a man on it. From
the important part which I have shown tree shoots or stems to have played in Phallic
faiths, especialIy in Africa and Asia, and what we know of Phenician Venuses and
wooden idols among many peoples, the expression of Isaiah as to “the Root of Jesse”
standing for an ensign has a real significance. My plates VI. to VIII. give abundant
examples of such “root” and “stump” and tree gods. Mr J. T. Wood also, to
whom we are so much indebted for his searching out “Diana of the Ephesians,” spoke
thus in a late lecture of this “root” deity. “The Goddess Diana was first represented
as a simple tree stump, and afterwards as a motherly fostering goddess of earth,
vegetation, animals, and men, of which many figures are given; all Asia Minor
abounded with these rough and shapeless ideas of this deity, whom the Greeks called
Artemis.” She was old when Herakles founded Ephesus in 1250; although fIourishing
still when it was one of the Ionian confederacy, under Androcles in 1044 B.C.
In the third contury A.C., this famous temple was entirely subverted. If, then, the
temple of Diana had only “a simple tree stump,” we have not a shadow of excuse for