Forlong - Rivers of Life

196
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Aulis, in Beotia, under the divination of “Calchas” (Kal-ka?) a priest of the ophite god
or Apollo. 1 Serpents often changed to stones, and occasionally to vases.
We have a recorded case in Milner’s Church History, of Christians turning a
golden serpent into a vase which abo seems to connect the worship of serpents and
vases or arks, with the far older Tree-faith. It appears from this ecclesiastical history
(III. 113) that a Cbristian bishop, Benevento, found the Lombardians in 688 worshipping
a tree on which was a golden serpent and a wild beast’s skin, which thus completely
identified the cult with the Asiatic Maha-Deva and Hercules. The pious bishop at
once cut down the tree and melted the serpent into a sacramental chalice, by no
means, however, thus effacing the old faiths or ideas; for serpents, cups, horns, vases,
arks, and chalices, especially sacrificial ones, have on eastern altars precisely the
same religious signification; and however angry the Lombardians may have been in
the first instance, they had reason here for being content in seeing their serpent in the
cup under a cross, and at an eastern window. An ark or sacred boat or cist, is still
maintained in the Roman Church under the name of the
Pyx, in which they say is the body of the Saviour. Arka,
in Sanskrit, signifies “a ray of light,” and it is also one
of the names of Osiris the sun-god. Argheia was the
name of the celestial mother Juno (IOna) and of many
great persons. Juno was the wife of Argos the builder of
Argos, a capital of great serpent-worshippers. I give
in Fig. 77, adjoining, the ordinary Pyx case, which it will
be seen is highly emblematic, and would equally suit,
in section, the summit of a Christian church spire, or in
plan, the usual Christian altar; see the orthodox church
plan, further on. As a spire, it is a very good
approach to the obelisk which is “the ray of light,” as
this phallic cross is in mythology, and which the little
burning torch at the summit of all obelisks (see Fig. 52,
page 133) is held to symbolise. In the upper centre of this
Fig 77—PYX, MONSTRANCE, ETC.
figure I also show the other Roman-Catholic vessel, the
Monstrance, as this is found depicted in our popular
Webster’s English Dictionary. In this decidedly Phallic-looking article, is the symbolic
“Body of THE LORD” kept; and by “phallic article” throughout this work, my
readers are requested not to understand me as only speaking of a male object.
Thus then we have even here in our own century and in the centre of all civilisation,
the old faiths repeated. True, the symbol of “the Lord” is not now a lingam, as
in all Jewish and ancient arks, because it is now the “Sun of Righteousness;” neither
Flesh, Basar, rcb only Dough, though this also is, we are told “the GOSPEL” or “good
1 Deane, quoting others, 228.