Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
as well as piscine, and well the Mahomedan knows that in a hundred favorite tales
his young crescent moon is a serpent; so that Islāmi, though this twining fish-Queen
here be, we really see in her only a continuation of that old old faith which. 40 centuries
ago flourished on the Ganges, Euphrates, and the Nile. Dr Inman shows us
the fish in the frontispiece of his Anc. Faiths., as on the head of Isis, of which I here
give a side view, from page 68 of his volume on Pagan and Christian Symbolism.
This Mahomedan Fish-Queen may be called the female Dagon, he of piscine extremities
who was a king, and is probably seen in this other figure, supported by two fish gods,
which I also get from Dr. Inman’s Anct. Faiths II. 398, and he from a Cornelian cylinder of
the Ousley collection. The central god-man in Fig. 102 is clearly
Oanes or Bel, worshipped or attended by two gods of Fecundity,
on whom the Creator or great Sun-god, also with fish-like tail,
Fig 101—ISIS AND BABE.
Fig 102—OANNES, THE BABYLONIAN DEMIGOD OR DEMON.
is clearly intended to be gazing down benignly. This
picture reminds us of the scene enacted on the summit of the
hill of Rephidim, which I have likened to Sun and Moon upholding the procreative
energies of Jhavh—symbolised by a Rod or Standard, and afterwards worshipped below
the hill as a “Nissi” on an Altar or Ark. The Greeks incorporate Jah or Y’ho and
Oannes in the sacred name John, or Ioannes.
Some countries preferred pourtraying this fish-idea under the form of a lovely
woman, supported or befriended by Dolphins; but this required a good deal
more labour and art, than merely giving one figure with fish extremities;
this last also enabled the cognate or homogeneous idea of the woman and
Serpent to be depicted in a facile manner, by merely twisting about the long
snake-like extremities, as in the Lucknow fish. Egypt showed her “good
goddesses,” says Mr S. Sharpe, in this ophite form, Fig. 103, where we see
one represented by the Royal Asp with circular, and therefore solar head—
which here forms her bust; whilst two Cones or Columns—which it has
always been customary to call feathers, crown her Royal head.
The Serpent may be generally seen encircling the neck of him with the three eyes
and the crescent on his forehead—the symbolic trident in one hand and the hour glass
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Fig 103.
WOMAN AS THE
SNAKE GODDESS.