Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
In like manner Virgil makes his hero choose a similar situation for the Temple which
he erected to Venus, and for the grove which he dedicated to the Manes of his
father. India, China, and Japan do the same to this day. A great height
was chosen beeause silent aud lonely; and well adapted to lift the mind, like the
body, above the affairs of the lower world; but the chief excellence, says Bryant
(p. 295), “for which they (mountain-omphi), were frequented, was the OMPHE, Ñmfš,
interpreted qe…a klÇdèn, vox divina; being esteemed a particular revelation from heaven.”
After investigating thus correctly, Bryant loses himself, for he adds: “I know not for
what reason Hermæus in Plutarch (lsis et Osiris II. 368) called this Omphis by the name
of an Egyptian deity; and interprets it EÙergšthj, EURGETES—THE BENEFACTOR, as in Luke
xxii. 25.” It has long been clear to me that the god worshipped on the tops of hills,
was THE LORD GOD OUR BENEFACTOR, but principally here I think “the Benefactress;”
as the omphis was usually the large round top, as it were; of the place—the womb or
navel. The word omphe “was sometimes expressed without the aspirate,” viz. OM-PE,
also AM-BE, and “the oracle was styled AM-BON” (Hesych, quoted by Bryant). “It
(the ompe) was the oracle of Ham . . . . . the Sun, or Osiris, and likewise revered as
the chief Deity by Kaldians and most nations in the East. He was Ham and Cham,
and his oracles were styled both omphi and ompi, . . . and the mountains where they
were delivered, were called Har-Al-Ompi; . . . by Greeks 'Olumpos Olympus, and the
mountain Ôroj ”Olumpoj;” the Oros here being the equivalent of the Hebrew Har rh.
Brynnt says that “the most celebrated Ompi of early historic times was Delphi, which
was called the Omphi-El or Oracle of the Sun. The Moon was Olympias; Lybia was
Olympia.” The EARTH itself, though covered with Ompi, was called Olympia by Plutarch,
who speaks of “tÁs GÁs 'Olump…aj ƒerÒn in Theseus 27; by which is meant temple of
the prophetic Earth” (Bryant I. 297). But the Greek looked, like all Easterns, upon
Ompi as being the Omphalos or umbilicus—the navel of the Earth—that which linked
the old and new life; the beginning of that life created by Pallas or Siva, which had
till then lain hid in the womb. Delphi, and the hills of Maha-Deva all over the East,
were navels or omphali. Sophocles called Delphi, mesÒmfala GÁk mante‹a (O.R. 580) and so
spoke all early writers. “Livy called it the Umbilicus orbis terrarum;” but Strabo
spoke less strongly, and Varro declined to endorse the statement altogether, showing
us that man was progressing. At the temple of Jupiter Am-On, one whose antiquity “was
esteemed of the very highest, there was an Omphalos; and that deity was worshipped
under the form of a navel” (Bryant I. 304). The supposed preceptor of Jupiter was
called Olympus (Diodorus III. 206), and no doubt his wet nurse was Olympia. “An
oracle was given to Pelias (of whose significant name more hereafter), in Thessaly.
Whence did it proceed?” asks Bryant; and he answers—as if he meant more than he
says, which I do not think he does, “from the well-wooded Omphalos of his Mother
Earth; . . . in other words, from the stately grove of Hestia, where stood an oracular
temple!” Now Hestia is the Agni Mandalam of Sanskrit Saktis; the female place of
fire which indeed the pious and modest Bryant acknowledges, when he confesses “an
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