Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
I must not anticipate all my chapter on Judean Faiths; I only wish to establish the
facts of the so-called Israelites being like all the tribes and nations of ancient times,
and indeed more than three-fourths of all on earth even at the present time, ad-
dicted to the practice of Phallic or of highly senusal solar faiths. The Jews are indeed
one of the very last western peoples who had a temple built over an unhewn natural
rock or “Parvati” as we in India
would call this. I give here an
outline sketch of the shrine over
the holy rock, which Mr. W.
Simpson, the well-known artist,
has kindly sketched for me. I neglected
to do this,or even consider
the subject, when I visited Jerusalem
now many years ago, being
unaware then of the ancient faith
it pourtrayed, and its extreme
importance.
From this sketch which shows
all in relative proportions, it is
difficult to realise the effect of a
great, rough, ugly and unhewn rock,
rising up in the midst of a
beautiful temple; so will my readers
try to imagine for themselves the
Fig. 64.—THE SO-CALLED MOSK OF OMAR, OVER THE SACRED ROCK
AND CAVE, JERUSALEM.
effect of seeing such a primeval production several feet high, with a well and dark cave
below it, in the very centre of St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s; or still better, exaggerate the
idea, and suppose it a score of feet high and they will then perhaps appreciate more clearly
and forcibly the real faith meant to be pourtrayed, and here still asserting its intense
endnrance and obstinacy. It is of course the same faith as tha; which for many long
centuries has preyailed all over the parent land of the Syrian tribes, and which still
sits in the Mekan Shrine; but the male or right hand phase, the Siva is theere, and the
Sivi here; for the place of the ark was, say some, over the top of the sacred rock of the
temple, now still covered by a noble dome.
Both Jews and Mahomedans thought their own shrine the centre or “navel of
the earth;” and for a long time Mahomed could not make up his mind which to select,
the Argha or Akros of Hierosolma, or “the black stone” of Abrabam in the Al-ka-
ba; he abhorred the idolatry of the land of Syria however, and this with his native
Arabian love for the free desert of his youth determined him to choose the latter.
We see in this holy Jewish shrine one of the oldest features of the Phallic Faith
—viz., that of the Cave and holy covered well, which no one may see into; and it is
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