Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
solely through divination or the so-called interpretation of dreams. The cup or Egyptian
vase—that same Ismian idea which we see on the Ark in page 190, Fig. 72, and very
often in the sky over Christ—the rising “Son” (Sun), and surrounded by the Thorny or
Tri-sool god (page 202), was, said Joseph’s servants who pursued the brothers (Gen.
xliv.), “My Lord’s divining cup.” All Shemites divine by cups, and later legend says,
that this cup which the ancient Persians called Jami Jamsheed, or the cup of Jamsheed
(a phallic term), was found afterwards filled with the elixir of immortality, when
digging to lay the foundations of Persepolis; the margin of Bagster’s Comprehensive
Bible, from which I take the above, adds, that the Mahommedan patriarchs practise
divination by cups. Most of us have heard. of the Poculum Boni Demonis of the Bacchanalian
orgies, which was contained in the Bacchic Ark or Basket, just as a similarly
holy and highly ornamented cup is kept adjoining, or on the Christian altar. The Bacchic
cup was passed round to the votaries and called “the cup of the good demon,” and was
adorned on rim and cover with serpents and the Bacchic head, or, as used to be
thought, Medusa’s head, because it was encircled with serpents. This cup is held to
have been dedicated to the Tria Numina, one of whom was Agatho-daimon. It was
one of those mysteries, sÚmbolon mšga kaˆ must»rion, which all ancient peoples kept in
their holy of holies or sacred ark, and for which, says the Rev. J. Bathurst Deane,
“Every nation upon earth had some holy receptacle” (p. 193), and made as symbolic
as possible of their meaning, viz., of the dread mysteries of creation and gestation.
Did not the wise Minerva hide the great Erektnonius, fourth king of Athens, in
an ark, and warn Kekrops never to open the box? And where could be have
found a more appropriate place for such a man-god? for we are told “his extremities
(?) were all serpents.” The Greek tales remind us of similar and probably much
older ones, which we may safely say came from the east; Greeks taught Romans, and
Romans and Greeks taught Europe and later Christians, and so Europe learned to
cling fondly to such fables, and to arkite, phallic and solar mysteries.
That there should be no mistake as to Joseph divining by serpents, the two
orthodox savants, Faber and Deane, accurately consider the literal meaning of the Old
Testament words “divining” and “divination,” and show us that cjn Nachash, is properly
translated as o„wnÕj and really signifies divination by serpents. Mr Faber adds, “Gen.
xliv. 15, implies the worship of Nachash,” and “therefore,” justly says the Rev. J. B.
Deane (p. 153), “I argue that the serpent was an object of veneration in Egypt before
the Exodus,” meaning the fifteenth century, when the reverend gentleman imagined that
some three millions or more of Jews came out of Goshen. Such divination, which we
may call Ophiomancy was a very important matter in early days. Hebrews, Arabs,
and Greeks, alike denoted this by a word signifying serpents, as Nachash, Alilat, and
o„won…zesqai from o„wnÕj a snake; this shows us that the Arab goddes Alilat was of
Serpent root. We may remember the case of the serpent which climbed a tree and ate
up the sparrows, and was turned into a stone before the confederate chiefs of Troy at
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