Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
have in any way studied sloar, phallic, and serpent cults aright, in the temples of the
East, and the literature of Europe. Nor did Hercules, when fabled as having raped
Apollo’s Tripod, steal or rape a table; but rather are we to understand that he stole Passion
from the Sun, or ran away with solar nymphs or the passive energies of creation.
Fig 126.—SECTION OF SYMBOLS OF MOST MODERN AND MOST ANCIENT FAITHS, AS SEEN AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
In the story of the Rape we are told that Apollo recovered his tripod—that is the
Sun regained his power, when he is pictured as a bright and joyous son of Song, with his
lyre and Serpents—love and passion—ushering in the vernal year, and this is exactly
the Ter-ambus or Egyptian Omphe idea. The base of the Tripod was, we are told,
emblematical of the God; and as the Tripod was the Pytho-phallic cone or conicla
column, so we may be quite sure that the base was the Argha or Yoni.
Pausanias tells us there was a more ancient tripod than the one Herodotus describes,
but adds that it was earned off by the Tyrinthian Hercules, and restored by the
son of Amphitryon, so mayhap this was it. 1 The word Am-phi-tryon bespeaks the
triple sun-god. It is improbable that the golden portion of the tripod carried off by
the Phokians was ever restored. The tripod was called the image of truth, 2 by which I
would understand Light, or Ur, as the Urian Jove, which is true of the sun-column; but
it might be also Themis and the Mirror, or Māya. To show how close was the intimacy
between the Serpentine columns or Serpents and “emblematical bases,” Priestesses,
Arghas, Vases, &c., we have a story related by the learned Montfauçon, that there was
another Serpentine column, supposed to have belonged to Delphi, in which three brazen
legs support a Vase, and round one of the legs is coiled a serpent; and Bulenger tells
us that live serpents were kept in the adytum. I believe that we see the idea of the
Priestess sitting on the tripod in that vase over the Mahu-Deva, in Fig. 40, page 121,
for woman is the vase; and in Delphi, where the oracle spoke with power and far-seeing
wisdom, doubtless a throne was erected over the emblem of Life and Salvation, of which
1 Paus. x. 830—Herod. ix. 81.
2 Montfauçon II. 86.
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