Forlong - Rivers of Life

214
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
The Kāma and Fire Gods whom Solomon adored were those of the Hindoo Sakti
(pronounoed Shakti) sect, viz. “Cupid or the attractive power;” which draws the
votary to “the Prakriti—the female embodiment, or Agni-mandalam, the place of fire.”
Solomon’s “Holy Spirit” was also that of the Saktis, viz. “Koolna, or spirit of
enjoyment,” and his whole “song” is as nearly as possible like that of some of the
Hindoo Tantras. “Agni-mandalam” is a euphemism for the muliebre pudendum;
see details in Anthro. Soc. Jour., 1865-66, vol. ii. 269. The fuel of the Sakti’s fire, says
this gross faith, “is collision; because fire is produced by friction, and the Lord-Linga
is the great high priest,” and not only David and Solomon, but other Jewish kings
were their own high priests.
In Milkom, no doubt, Solomon worshipped a dual and androgyne god whom the
seers called, though in far later and wiser days, “the abomination of the children of
Amon.” The temples of this androgyne god were principally on the sacred Mount, and
no doubt if we could get at some of the architectural details, we should find that,
though architecture is called “frozen music,” it was with this very licentious people
no frozen mythology. The builders of the shrines of the Tyrian Hercules were those
whom this prince got in Hiram and his staff; and, seeing Phallic and Sun-gods
enshrined on all the mounts of “the holy city,” Hiram would not forget, in constructing
Solomon’s temple, all the idolatrous forms of his own and Egyptian lands, of which
the best and purest ideas would be those connected with Solar worship, as he may have
seen this on the Sun-temples of Tentyra, viz. the winged globe with serpents, the
early Pythian-Apollo idea, and such like.
It is clear from 1 Kings vi. 32, 35, and vii. 13, 21 and elsewhere, that many of
Hiram’s ornamentations were highly emblematic, and we may be quite sure that none of
these were permitted on the shrine, without grave thought as to their full signification
and symbolic character. On each side of the entrance, under the great phallic spire,
which below formed the portico, see fig. 93, p. 218, were placed two handsome
phallic columns over fifty feet high, capped with Isis’ and Paravati's emblems, lotuses
encircled with pomegranates—the fruit shown to be specially worshipped at Damascus.
It was a representation of the Queen of Heaven and of the gravid uterus, and the
symbol of a happy and fruitful wedded life: with Hebrews the Rimmon “personified
Natura Naturans, or the fertilising principle of nature;” it was “the blooming Venus
Urania,” and in Hedad-Rimmon and many another town, the Sun waa shown as its
accompaniment, became the Sun was its fertiliser. On the robes of the Jewish high
priest it was everywhere prominent, and was there united with bells, that very speaking
oracle of every shrine, as well of ancient Mylita as of modem Mary. In all Mary’s
and many Protestant shrines it was and is a conspicuous and important ornament,
and in mythic story the pomegranate persuaded Persephone “the seed-vessel”
to rejoin her husband Pluto in the realms below, an allusion doubtless to its
significant symbolism—the gravid uterus, which was also the name of mother-