Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
to carry the divining rods, wands, almost springs, “stocks” and staffs, Teraphims and
Seraphim, Urim and Thumim, 1 and Ephods, and, in short, all the paraphernalia of
wild superstitious races, who were just emerging from the grossest fetish-worship.
Mr Rawlinson in his 3d Vol. of “Ancient Monarchies” (p. 130 et seq.) shows us
that the rods of Aaron and Moses had their exact counterparts in those of Egypt,
in the magic-working willow-wand of the Skyths, and in the Tamarisk rods of the
Magi and present Tatars. Hosea tells us of the stocks and staffs of Jhaveh’s “holy
people,” and Ezekiel of “the branch” which they put to their nose (viii. 17). Joshua
was chosen “according to the judgement” of such articles as were contained in the
holy chest, and this was called coming
“before Jehovah.”
Samuel and Saul greatly revered
conical hills and stone circles, and Saul
was careful to seek his Deity near to
stones, the conical Carmel, or gilgals.
David was more partial to the Ephod
or Sakti emblem, as arks and such like;
see 1 Sam. xxiii. and xxx. Stone circles
like these, however, which Dr. Inman
gives from India and Ireland 2 under
the word Beth-gader or “Enclosed
Temple, or circle of stones, so familiar
to us all over the world, were the
undoubted holy shrines of all these
tribes down to a very modern date.
The severely orthodox and pious
annotators of “Bagster’s Compre-
Fig. 74.—TWIZEL MOOR, IRELAND
Fig 75—DEKAN—W. INDIA.
hensive Bible,” confess that the grand ark, tabernacle, and tent, so magnificently described
in various chapters from xxv. to end of Exodus, had an exact counterpart in the Phenecian
temples to Herakles, which is as we should expect; the rude highlanders would, of course,
copy as they best could, the structures of the lowland and more advanced commercial seaboard
people. Bagster’s marginal reading against Ex. xl, is that the Phenecian temple to
Herakles at Cadiz (Gedes) was a complete imitation of the Jewish tempIe and its services.
Plan, structure, rites, and customs were all here just as the wandering Edume-
ans had afterwards heard and no doubt copied; the contrary is the orthodox inversion
of history, and oversight of the fact that no such tabernacle or ark of gold, &c., was
constructed as related in Exodus, but possibly a simple ark-box as the Deuteronomist
tells us in x. 1 to 5, and as Bishop Colenso thoroughly establishes in his lecture No.
XVII on “Pentateuch and Moabite stone.”
1 Ur or Or is light, and in Sanskrit Tumas is darkness, but see page 29 ante.
2 [Inman (Symbolism p. 60, ed. 1874) states that the circle in fig. 74 is in Yorkshire, England. — T.S.]
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