Forlong - Rivers of Life

252
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Was to be seen in a chariot drawn by horses, and there were winged figures in an arkboat,
having the sacred Henza-head on its prow, whilst in another ark-boat sat representative
man and woman, whom Christians might call Noah and his wife; but as the
man had occasionally three heads with the trident symbol, or a cist or box, I fear we
must confess to the Argha-Nāt in his Argha or Ark. To return to ancient days.
The Serpent is inexplicably mixed up with crosses, crosiers, augurs’ rods, or “the
crook’d Lituus,” which had its origin in the older crooks we find on the Nile (where
it springs from the hat of many gods, kings, and priests), the Euphrate, and the
Tigris.
The Lituus or Crosier is but a variant of the Rod of Moses, which he borrowed
from Egyptian priests, and of the sceptre, staff, or baton of gods or great men; and in
one of its very oldest forms with the double circular bend, as in
I. and V. of this Fig. 121, where a clear circle is formed, we see
the Phallic triune symbolised. No. I. here is the most ancient
Etruscan Lituus (Smith’s Greek and Roman Antiquities), whilst
No. III. is the ordinary Roman one, and No. V. that of early Christianity:
but the Lituus was also framed into a sacerdotal trumpet
Fig 121.—LITUUS, CROZIERS,
AND INDIAN ANGKOOS.
(ƒeratik¾n s£lpigga) and so employed by Romulus when he proclaimed
the title of his city, and continued to be used as the
trumpet for cavalry—the Drakones or Serpent-bearers (Dragoons),
in contradistinction to the Tuba of the Infantry. Now Siva, Python, Jove, and all
male and female Oracles were the instruments through which the Divine power
was proclaimed to men, and hence the lituus very naturnlly was formed into a
trumpet, and especially so by the Phallic-worshipper of Hera-kles—the mythic patriarch,
Romulus. India considered the Ankus or Ang-koos, Fig. 121, II., with the Sool or javeline
head, one large crook, and one small one, its equivalent symboI, which Hindoo and
even Boodhist women, as already shown, wore as a lingam; but India has also crooks
and crosiers, for without a crosier no Tibetan Lama would attempt to perform any important
office, say Huc and others. Hislop, in his Two Babylons, gives us proof positive
as to the connection between the Mitre of Roman Episcopal Prelates and the Augurian
Lituus, saying that one of the Popes of the middle ages is described as “Mitrá lituoque
decorus.” He also derives the augur’s lituus or crosier from those great phallic-worshippers,
the Etruscans, who he thinks got it from the Asyrians. A very improper,
ecclesiastical looking proeession, said to be only of about the times of the Protestant
Reformation (and if so, showing how sadly this was wanted) may be seen in the secret
chamber of the British Museum: it is the procession of a very gross phallus, not unlike
the skeleton form of the crozier-trumpet No. IV. above.
In forming such prominent and important articles, of course some sort of
decency was always observed, except at extraordinary festivites, connected with
great Solar periods of fertility; when great grossness in form was always thought