Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
lozenge-shaped window with its tinted lights, in which the Virgin and Child stand, is
to be seen pictured as an object of the intensest adoration in every Catholic Church,
Salon, and Gallery throughout the world, and not seldom in the sacred place of all
Faiths. The Earth, as Ge or Terra, as Egyptian Cymbium and Sanskrit Boomi, is the
great primitive Yoni or Argha into which the Sun shines, and so fertilises; in it is the
“Lord-Linga” his emblem, and hence, whether “in Yoni” or not, called the Sun-stone.
Many a day have I stood at early dawn at the door of my tent pitched in a sacred grove,
and gazed at the little groups of females stealthily emerging from the adjoining halfsleeping
village, each with a little garland or bunch of sweet flowers, and perhaps costly
oil, wending their way to that temple in the grove or garden of the God and Goddess
of creation, and when none were thought to see, accompanying their earnest prayer for
Pooli-Palam (child-fruit) with a respectful abrasion of a certain part of their person
on Linga-jee, and a little application of the drippings which are ever trickling from
the orifice of that Argha.
The Sanskrit word Yoni is rendered in Greek cýiroj s£buttoj and mucÒj which curiously
enough are masculine nouns; whilst the Latin words Virga and Mentula, signifying
the Phallus, are feminine. It is note-worthy that Virga also means a “scourge” or “whip”
which urges to duty, and many Phallic deities are therefore shown with whips.
I here give the well-known gem discovered by Layard amidst the ruins of Nineveh,
which is held to be Harpokrates—a form of Dionysus—sitting on a
Lotus, adoring the too mundane organ of creation. This same “silent god”
is really Bacchus, in no inactive capacity, and Cupid often sits thus
with finger on or before the mouth, when most bent on wickedness.
The Yom is everywhere the sign of health, and the driver away of all
evil, as the Churches of Spain and Ireland still depict this object. At
Servats in Spain, “a rude image of a woman shamelessly exhibiting herself stands
over one side of a door, with an equally conspicuous man on the other, and the same
has been found in Mexico, Peru, and North America.. . . . . . . . Baubo cured the
mtense grief of Cerees by exposing herself in a strange fashion to the distressed goddess;"
see p. 66. of Inman’s Symbolism, quoting Arnobius Op. Cit., from which I
quote the above, almost word for word. The exhibition was a Yoni denuded as is
customary in this faith, the sight of which consoled Ceres and enabled her to take
food. Arabia and Africa still commonly put the emblems of mares and cows
over their doors as charms, and in France as late as the 16th century such
Yonis were used. Europe now contents herself with horse-shoes, and the Barmese
Boodhists with a lozenge, which by a strange hallucination or oversight, the
British Government in annexing Barma selected as the form of their official seal;
and hence all British mandates and state papers now go, and have done so for nearly a
quarter of a century, as well to foreign Potentates as to our own subjects, under this
free and easy “health-giving charm.” As I have used it myself in Government offices
205
Fig 84—WORSHIP
OF YONI.