Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
phallic Hercules, that is, they were Phalli. “The Pillars of Hercules” were, says
Strabo, at the noted passage of the Mediterranean; “one in Iberia called Kalpe” (Kali
or Kal-pi, mouth of Kal or Kali) now called Gibel-Tar or Gibraltar, and the other
Abyla or Ab-el—Parens Sol. Ca-Alpe, writes Bryant (I. 328) “signifies the house
or cavern of the oracular god, for it was built near a cave” on the hill of Gibraltar.
Mere “mounds of earth sacred to the sun, were called Col-on; and hence Kolènh
(Colona) was any sacred hill or foreland” and pillar on it; the pillars continued to be
called columns, whether sacred or not.
The rudest and most ungainly-looking rock or stump, was sufficient to denote a
Hercules or Pallas; and a lump, a Ceres, or Juno; so Hercules at Hyettus in Beotia
was, says Pausanias, a mere rude stone, and “Tertullian gives a like description of
Ceres and Pallas; “Pallas Attica et Ceres Phrygia—quæ sine effigie rudi phallo, et
informi specie prostant” (Bryant I. 337); see my plates, Nos. IX. and X., for many
such. The Vine, as sacred to Bacchus and Dionysus, was called Ampel or ”Ampeloj,
because the Sun and the two gods were called Baalim, ignorantly so, says Bryant,
which I doubt. He agrees that “Ampelus and Omphalus were originally the same
term, and that Ampelus at My-Kale (Maya-Kali?) in IOnia, was so denominated from
its being a sacred place and abounding with waters.” (Bryant I. 344.) Sacred fountains—or
Ain-Omphe—the Greek contracted to NÚmfa, or Nympha; and more especially
were all hot springs nymphs, as Pindar says Qerm¦ Numf© loutr¦ (Olymp. Ode. 12).
“Thetis was styled Nympha merely because she was supposed to be water.” Another
name for hot springs was Ain-Ades, or “Fonts of the Sun,” which. the Greeks con-
tracted to Nai£dej, Naiades. In Babylonia, fire or bituminous founts or wells were
called Ain-Aptha, and by Greeks Naptha—the matter coming from the font being
Apthas, Apha, Aphtha, Pthas or Thas, Ptha, Tha—Fire; so we get Apha-Astus, the
god of fire, or Heph-Astus. In the same way we arrive at the fact that the Kor-
ykian nymphs were sun-nymphs. Now the place where dwelt the Numphs, that is
Ain-Omphe, was called the NÚmfaion—Nymphæum, which I will show in the “Palace
of the Cesars,” with its dominant phallic god, in the next chapter. En passant, our
term Lunatic, say some writers, comes from the term Al-Ompha, shortened to Lympha,
and not Luna; because mad persons, and those on the Ompi, were thought to be able to
prophesy and divine, and hence called Lymphati; but enough, we have wandered
perhaps too far.
Delphi was the most sacred Omphe, Ompe, Nympha, Naias, or Phallic oracle
in the western world for at least 1500 years, and few great undertakings of any
kind—public or private—were begun without consulting it. A few words as to the
benefits which this wondrous shrine—the organ of one of the greatest faiths of man—
may be held to have conferred upon the human race; for we may not contemn it
more than any other. It has now sunk to rise no more, and we look upon it as a
strange superstition; but shall we not also do this of present, aye, and of future faiths
which must yet arise, although all may be better than those which preceded them?