Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
height, from a base of only 40 × 20. The writer of Kings wisely does not venture
on a statement of the height; but that of Chronicles is here explicit, though he avoids
any statement of the breadth of the base! Assording to the Arabic, Syrian and
Alexandrian Bible, the Porch should be only 20 cubits high; but let us stand to the
orthodox bible. The facts as related lead me to suppose that the temple was very
like the hundreds we everywhere see in the East, except perhaos that its walls were a
little higher than usual, and the phallic spire out of proportion. I give in this Fig. 93,
the whole structure, drawn strictly to scale at 2 feet to the cubit. The ark-box, or
temple—like an ark, with its phallic tower, is quite in accordance with all I have before
asserted, as to every part, and the whole of a Sivaik shrine being like its holiest parts.
The Jewish porch, 20 feet long, 40 broad, and 240 high, is but the obelisk which the
Egyptian placed beside his temple; the Boodhist pillars which stood all around their
Dagobas; the pillars of Hercules, which stood near the Phenician temple; and the spire
which stands beside the Christian Church. The little ark, 120 feet long, 60 broad, and
40 high, stands under the shadow of the great spire, and beside the real little ark
within, we have the idea repeated by the presence of Jakin and Boaz. Even Isaiah
says that Egypt shall in her extremity again return to the Pillar, and Altar, or Ark-
God; that five of her cities will be seized by the speakers of “the language of Canaan,”
and “swear to the Lord of Hosts” (the Sun-Yahveh), and put “an altar to the Jhavh
in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Jhavh”
(xix. 18-19); so that we see here again the ark and its pillar; for an altar was an ark
with a “mercy seat,” or place of fire and sacrifice, and an ark was woman, and “the
great sacrifice” was the conjunction of the male and female—Sun and Moon. Amongst
old peoples the conception and liberation of new life was “the great sacrifice” which it is
still called among many Phallic-worshippers to the present hour.
To try and make clear to my readers the ideas which guided the builders of Solomon’s
Temple, I give here a small bird’s-eye view of Mount Moriah—its circumambient
walls and cliffs, divested of all accessories in the way of the buildings, priestly and
other, which thronged its precincts even before Solomon is supposed to have finished
it, showing merely the Sacred trees, Palms, Olives, and Cypresses, which were, and still
are there so sacred. It is, we see, but the ark-box and tall stem, such as Tyrian coins
show us, as the Tree-stem, or an upright man with feminine emblem adjoining; see
Figs. 1, 3, and 11, plate IV. A careful study of the figures and details, which we find
principally in Kings and Chronicles, aided by tradition, not altogether refusing even
orthodox bible dictionaries, and allowing only to myself that amount of licence which
the engineer and architect must have from his unprofessional and inexact client,
I have found pretty ready to my hand matter enabling me to frame a “specification,”
and to execute drawings as follows.
No. I is a Ground Plan of Temple. This has a total length of 120 feet, of which
the Sanctum is 40 feet, and beyond this, but separate, is the Spire and Porth, 20 by 40
feet. The Molten Sea (2 Chron. iv. 10) and a staircase, appear to be on each site at
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