Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
the IOni. With the Greeks the q is seen singly, where a sense of death is meant to be
indicated—the initial of qanon” (sic). In regard to letters and mystic signs and sculptures
he remarks: “We may be assured that not one Egyptian or Hindoo hieroglyphic, or
sectarian mark or symbol, be it ever so complicated or monstrous, was without its
meaning or allusion, historical, mythological, or religious, in some bearing or other.
Not even a line or a dot, simple or compound, straight or wavy, was meaningless.
The position was also of import. . . . The meanings, if dead in Egypt, live in India.”
The learned writer then goes on to speak of the Alpha being the plow and ever the
representative of man, as Persephone—the seed-vessel—is of her who resides annually
several months in “Hades.”
The Edinburgh Review of July 1873, insists upon the great mystic importance
of all Hebrew, and I think, if I remember aright, of all ancient alphabetic signs. The
writer says that the Jewish sect of the Misrains “ascribe a divine origin and hidden
teaching to the form of the square Kaldi character—a doctrine which points back
to a period when the phonetic value of the hieroglyphics had not superseded all earlier
ideographic significance. Thus the openmg left between the stem of the Koph q and
its curved part is said to intimate that the door of divine mercy was never closed to
the penitent”—that is, to the good man, or him who had a right to enter in.
If we would understand early rude man aright, we must not spiritualise their
words or proverbs too much; and painful though it be to say so, I must insist that
when rude races thus spoke of “the door,” they commonly meant the Phallic one, and
phallic matters also when using the terms “testimony,” and what our translators call the
“heel,” the “loin,” the “grove,” the “flesh,” which we call the Basar rcb, Logos, Gospel,
&c. Most of us are far too simple and ignorant in regard to these points, and although
I fain would not have been here the instrument of enlightening my fellows, yet the
follies, false doctrines, rites, and great ecclesiastical figments which I have seen, as well
in Asia and Africa, as Europe, buil it upon the grossest, most irrational, and impure
language and practices, though of course in general unwittingly so, has forced me to
come forward and add my humble protest to that of the many learned ones which may
now be found, if men would but search and read, and not confine their attention to one
little book, and their own little isle and sect.
We cannot too narrowly, faithfully and sceptically watch words, symbols, rites,
topography, and all else, when we study faiths or approach “Holy places,” or even ordinary
shrines, old churches and temples; that is, if we would not he led away by mere
feeling, poetry, and specious appearances, or by the romance of Nature and Art. All
priests try to veil their mysteries from the gaze of the vulgar, and especially detest
calm and dispassionate inquiry; as the light becomes strong, they draw down the
blinds and dim the sanctuary; so Rome latterly hid away her Vesta—the Yoni, or
Linga~in-Yoni, or Adytum of Agni-Mandalam—which her priests, when asked, said,
was “Holy Fire,” Swahia, etc. It is easy to attach pleasant names to that which
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