Forlong - Rivers of Life

208
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
more in keeping with that of a Krishna or Solomon than a Toxophilite. The arrows,
wbich are in pairs, remind us that all Temple pillars used to be so too, as also stones
inside arks (like that of Israel), caves or niches; and, that the ancients held that one
side of us produced male, and the other female, and inasmuch as one sex could be of no
use in nature, so neither was one column or stone considered a perfected structure.
In “Montfauçon” 1 we have a very true idea of a Phallus, and, from
the best of all authorities, “du tempe de Minerve d’Athene.” It is an obeliscal
column with the glans very distinct, from which, instead of the usual flame, issues a
child, which all Egyptologists well know was a common symbolism in Egypt.
On the very rounded head, a half-nude female rests her hand and blandly smiles;
whilst another, in a dancing attitude, stands on the other side. In the same volume,
plate cxx., we also get a rather uncommon Phallus, which was the arms or symbol
of the Greek town of Prusa or Brusa, situated on the north side of Mount Olympus,
and which may be Kieros of Solar proclivities. It is a nude female with dishevelled
hair and raised arms, standing by the side of a conical mountain, which embraces her
whole figure: at her foot crouches “a marine monster,” and the whole may, as
Montfauçon suspects, be Andromeda, but none the less Siva and Pārvati.
It has been commonly supposed that Phallic faiths are young in Europe in comparison
with Asia, but we have lately found, in a bone cave near Venice, a Phallus of
baked clay, together with a bone needle under a bed of Stalagmite ten feet thick; 2
and we have yet to find out whether this is 5000 or 50,000 years old.
The Israelitish Yoni was of stone or wood, and that which Gideon cut down was so
large, that it is said he was able to offer a bullock as a burnt sacrifice from the wood
of it. I can recall to mind somewhat similar huge and highly sexual wooden figures
often standing by themselves in groves and sometimes desert places in India, which I
regret to say I have negligently neither sketehed nor inquired into the history of. We
may observe from the Vulgate and LXX translations of 2 Chron. xv. 15, 16 and Jud.
iii. 7, that Asherah, Astarte, and Astaroth are indifferently used as equivalenta for the
“Grove.” They all seem to be femine Ba-als; Oth is the plural affix, so that
hrca, Asherah or Ashtaroth in the plural, become Asherahath and Ashtoroth; ah
or h being the feminine affix as in Ish or Esh, man, and Isha a woman. Asher, the
male, becomes Asherah, the female organ. The Asherah was, as a rule, kept close to
Baal, and in real groves or on “high places;” but in later days, Manasseh erected one
in the temple of Jahveh, 2 Kings xxi. 7. The “Grove” was as popular as Baal,
having four hunder priests, who all ate at the table of Queen Jezebel, daughter of
Eth-Ba-al, King of Sidon. The Asherim are held to be emblems of Baal, or numerous
emblems of Asher, rca, whom the Phenicians called Osir, rca, or Husband, Lord,
Osiris, or Phallus. He was “the prosperous,” “firm,” and “happy one,” over
whom the Pompeians wrote: “Hic habitat felicitas.” Mr. Newton is of opinion that
1 Tom. III., Part 1, plate i.
2 Inman’s Anc. Pagan and Mod. Christ. Symbolism, 2d. Ed. 1874, p. 117. Appen. by Mr. Newton.