Forlong - Rivers of Life

238
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
phallus with a ring, as we see this in the hands of Isis, there it means the Phania, and
the mundane egg. The Romans mistook, it has been said, the word Evan for a woman,
and wrote it Euan, a name of Bacchus, which as he was the Serpent-god, is very like an
intentional mistake. We are told a curious story about a “Bulla” of the days of Theodosius—fourth
century A.C., which seems to speak of the vis inertia with which the old
opposed the new faith. One Marcellus, a so-called Christian, bequeathed an Abrasax
or sacred amulet to his children, which is said to be the original of the papal seal of
lead, called THE BULL, as well as of the magical Agnus Dei with cross, see Cardinal
Baronius on Idolatry, p. 41. Marcellus directed it to be made as follows, and applied
to the stomach in case of pains. On a jasper was to be engraved a serpent with seven
rays, which was to be enclosed in a golden Bulla shaped like a heart, a globe, or an egg,
and having the sexual parts engraved on it, probably as I show in the last figure. Such
articles were often used, especially by the Gnostics—the Ritualists of those days, else this
Christian would not have ordered this one in his will; possibly the deities he thus decreed
posthumous honour to were his favourites in life, and to appease them he so honoured
them in his death. I am certain that if at the present moment such a relic were
disinterred in the East, and said to have belonged to a god, millions could be frantically
excited, and a great “religious revival” take place! And although we may smile at
the idea, the East could very well retort on the West, by asking if it would not also be so
in Europe, were such a remarkable objeet found, and said to have been worn by
Jesus or Mary. Of course they at one time did wear Bullæ during boyhood and girlhood
as all decent children do, more especially in the hot season, when clothes are
dispensed with. In regard to the alphabetic signs, the Hebrew slopings shaft and
serpent, or the more common male symboI, the ploughshare, or “Adām” of the East
(see Fig. l05. II. 4), and the other alphas of the Syrian dialects, I should perhaps state that
in Egypt and many of these lands the Lingam Bovis, rather than Lingam Hominis, was
affected by the people. The Delta ∆ was usually the door, and some particularised it
as “the third stage of life.” Dunbar’s Greek Dictionary says that in Aristoph. Lyc.
151, it is the muliebre pudendum; whilst Delphus, DELFUS, or Belphus, belfÝj, is
“the womb.” Elsewhere we read that “the house of the first stage” became to the
ancients “the door of the third stage;” for Pallas’ creation was held to end with the
ceremonies of the Om-phallos, regarding which the Talmud has a great deal of curious
and confirmatory matter.
Moore, in his Hindoo Pantheon and Oriental Fragments, directed our attention
forty years ago to the great importance of all words, nay, to every letter and symbol
used in ancient religions. At page 299 of the latter volume, he writes: “In thinking
over DIOS, DIVUS, Qeoj, Deus, Devi, &c., I suspect that a scholar might discover
mysteries in the form of Q and q as well as in the F and Y and W among the wildnesses
of Hindoo fable. The q is the conjunction of two cones or Linga; separately,
an emblem of Siva, the deity of death; joined, it is the hieroglyph of his consort O,