Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
there are two other clefts and one or two Serpents, though the old Serpent has, the
Shek told the Bishop, been there ever since the days of Mahomed. The custodians denied
that sacrifice was made to it, but the Bishop writes that he “saw much blood and entrails
of beasts lately killed before the door,” and the Shek confessed that they “brought sheep,
lambs, and money, to buy oil for the lamps;” he said the serpent can “cure the diseases
of all who go to it;” that “when a number of women go there once a year, he passes
by and looks at them, and twines around the neck of the most beautiful;” the italics
are the Bishop’s, and show that our old got has not lost the weaknesses of his
younger days. “Some Christians really believe that it (the Serpent) works miracles” 1
says the Bishop of his fellow Christians, and says Mr. Deane, “the annual visit of tl1e
women is similar to the customs observed in Epirus and at Lanuvium,” except that
the Bishop does not, if so, tell us of the necessity for the absence there of all garments.
Serpent-worship of the old severe kind died out of southern Europe, Egypt, and Western
Asia, about that period which led to the iconoclastic uprising, culminating in
Mahomedanism; but for long after that we had a kind of Serpent-worship, which still
even flickers among the inveterate, ophite-loving peopIes, Christians though they have
long been in name, on the banks of the Baltic, and in and about Poland. Let us now
consider an important matter held, but erroneously so, to pertain to only the grosser
Phallic faiths, viz., the prevalence of libidinous sculptures on temples to the gods, aye,
and to good gods, and even to the Almighty himself, and where worahipped by
really pious men, and this among all sects, Christians not excepted. 2
All faiths have more or less shown to us their love of, or perhaps I should say their
toleration of the indecent in sculptures, paintings, and mouldings, as well as in songs
or hymns, prose and poetry. India and the East, as working commonly in imperish-
able stone, has perhaps handed down to us most of what we must designate as indecent.
This has long puzzled pious Indians, and, where occurring on their temples or other holy
places, has been variously but unsatisfactorily explained to us as placed there in fulfilment
of vows, or as punishments for sins of a sexual nature committed by those who
executed or paid for them. My own opinion is that they are simply connected with
the old idea of the union of the sexes bemg a real and godly “sacrifice,” that which the
Creator himself first mystically performed and sanctioned in all his children. Baboo
Ragendralala Mitra, in his late excellent and learned work on the Antiquities of Orissa,
speaks of the indecent sculptures of the Orissa temples, in a way which leads me to
suppose he also sees a mystical sacrificial idea in the abundance of these there. He is
one of the most learned of our now strong Hindoo Phalanx, and writes thus:—
“A vitiated taste aided by general prevalance of immorality might at first sight appear to be the
most likely one; but I cannot believe that libidinousness, however depraved, would ever think of select-
ing fanes dedicated to the worship of God, as the most appropriate for its manifestation; for it is worthy
of remark that they occur almost exclusively on temples and their attached porches, and never on
enclosing walls, gateways, and other non-religious structures. ‘Our ideas of propriety,’ according to
1 Pococke, “Desc. of East,” vol. I.; Deane, p. 159.
2 See illustrations, King’s Gnostics.
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