Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
I allude to those well known ones seen. on the Roman ruins of Nimes, too gross
to depict. In the Art Journal of February 1873, a writer—unacquainted with
phallic lore—tells us that the ordinary ornamentations of holy Bells, is the cross in
various curious forms, fleurs-de-lis, pomegranates, lions rampant, eagles, and dragons;
that the usual crosses are Tor’s hammer, and such as I show in Fig. 20, page 65,
the Pattee, the triple cross, and common Hindoo Fylfot, all seen on page 228. He tells
us that this last word 1 is composed of two words, Su and Aste, signifying “Well it is,”
or Amen, which therefore corresponds to the Hindoo AUM, the ineffable Creator;
he says the Fleur-de-lis when in a circle, as in this Fig. 105,—a common form
for Church windows, signifies
“The Trinity in
Eternity,” which greatly
amused some of my Sivaite
friends, when I explained
to them this roundabout
mode of expressing the
great Arbil. I found Hindoos
quite cognisant of an
old form of bell, which left
the top of the dome open,
and also of the meaning of
bells in temples and in
ecclesiastical architecture,
and of all the various other
symbols in this Fig. 105,
which I shall have occasion hereafter to refer to.
Fig 105.—SACRED HIEROGLYPHS—MALE AND FEMALE EMBLEMS.
In this other highly graphic picture, No. 106, of Isis and Horus fringed with bells,
forming the IOni figure, which Inman gives in Anc. Faiths, I.
53, we see the great appropriateness of the bell as a symbol.
The gem is from a copper vase found at Cairo, and shows us Isis
as the nursing mother, forming together with her boy a “Column
of Life,” inside what we may call “the Asyrian Tree or Door
of Life” or the Jewish “Grove” The bell-flowers around them
are held to be “the Ciborium or Egyptian bean, and to represent
both a bell and a teat;” whilst the matured bean was
thought very like the male organ. No Egyptian priest would look
upon the legume. We know how much Aaron and Jews
valued bells, see Exodus xxviii. 34, and Isaiah refers to
virgins wearing bells at the base of their garments (iii. 16-18)
as also does the Koran. Dr Inman explains very satisfactorily why marrying a virgin
1 [i.e., ‘svastika,’ which figure is also known as a ‘Fylfot cross’ — T.S.]
Fig 106.—ISIS AND HORUS.
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