Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
Let us now go into some details of the word “Testimony,” for this is perhaps not
yet put so forcibly as it might be. I mean the word as it occurs in Exodus xvi. 34,
before any laws or even altars were known. or Sinai, its God and thunder heard of.
This is a most important word, both in its roots and derivations, so let us recur
to our text and remember, that the Jewish ark is nothing by itself, but only as “the ark
of the testimony” (Ex. xxx. 26), that is as the Eduth’s dwelling-place or abode, which
was ever and again rendered still more holy by fire from heaven and the voice of the
God speaking on it, “between the cherubim,” which again represented creation, that is the
winds of heaven in the four wings
which each cherub had—two upper
and two lower, and in the four heads
or four seasons. These were, it has
been often demonstrated, the zodiacal
signs, viz., aquarius, a bacchuslooking
head, the vernal lamb or ram,
the solstitial bull; and thirdly the
hawk or eagle-headed one, as swiftness,
wisdom, and omnipresence
soaring over all, and to which, therefore,
no particular place is assigned;
see Ezek. i. 10. This the learned
Calmet, not understanding, mourns
over (Dict. of Bible Frag. p. 123);
but of this more hereafter. I give
here one drawing of these Jewish
idols, and others will be found further
on. From the most elementary
dictionaries we gather food for
Fig. 61.—CHERUBIM OF JEWISH ARK FROM CALMET
grave reflection in regard to “the testimony.” Testum, in Latin, is an earthen vessel, and
testudo is a tortoise; that old, old idea “which sustains the world,” he who goes about
with a covering, to and from that “urn” or “ostrakon.” (Ôstrakon). He not only has a
carapace, which the ancient world loved to mark as a sort of labyrinth leading to the holy
mysteries, but that symbol peculiar to all male organs—the posthe. Our lexicons further
tell us that the testudo was a lyre or lute, as that on which Apollo played, mixing up,
as usual, music and love; it is also “an encysted tumour, resembling a tortoise in
shape.” Testula was the voting tablet of tha Athenians, and Cicero aptly say. in
regard to invoking a. testis or witness, “dii patrici ac penates, testor, me defendere,”
thus bringing the two deities curiously into conjunction. To die testate was to die a
completed man, as intestate meant one who died not having completed a good citizen’s
duties. Tester, English, and testa, Latin, is a covering or canopy over a pulpit, tomb,
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