Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
wood, stone, or fire, he sees the Sun-stone, such as the Mudros of Phenicia, the Miudir of
Ireland, and obelisk of Egypt; and in the cist, shell, or Akros, the womb, Yoni, or sunbox;
in all, the column or Palas, and its Caput-oline. In the Phallic-worshipper’s mind
that city alone is complete which has a Palas and Athene, or a Palatine and Capitoline;
regarding all which words much will be said hereafter.
I give in this Plate VI. some of the ideas which these ancient races thus, I believe,
embodied in stone and earth, separate and combined, in the form of animals as in this
Alligator or Scorpion, of the mount in Ohio, No. 11; in the tall or cruciform man of
Wisconsin, No. 1; the undoubted Serpent of Iowa, No. 9, or these two Kentucky
Omphi, Figures 8 and 10; matured by a cultured people into that Omphe of Egypt,
which the Greek called a Fire-tower or Pur-amid (Fig. 5), but which is after all only a
Maha-Deva form. of tomb. In Figures 4, 7, and 12, I believe we see the remains of
those who worshipped the Yoni, for no Sivaites would shape their graves as did the
ancient inhabitants of Denmark in this quaint ship-form. In the so-called “altar” from
the great ruins of Krendi in Malta we see the “Grove” of the Israelites, and “the
Tree of Life of Asyria,” a leafing Palm or Thorn rising from a Phallic foundation, which
constitutes this a most remarkable sculpture of the early Trinity-in-unity as well as
of the “ grove,” or Agni-Mandalam. In Figure 7 we have another and later idea
in a shrine or tomb to “the holy Trinity,” being that of Aruns, near Albano, in
Italy. This is clearly after the plan of the Sardinian “Nur-hage” which sounds very
like a “Serpent or Deity of Light,” if Nur, may be Ur, and Hag, Haig, or Nag, a
Serpent. This tomb is attributed to those great phallic and serpent-worshippers, the
Etruscans, and appears to have been a common form; for Pliny and Varro describe the
monument of Lars Porsenna near Clusium as very like this, and such buildings are usually
classed under the head of Etrurian Sepulchres. 1 Figs. 3 and 5 are from that vervaluable
old temple on the island of GOZA, adjoining Malta, where is a shrine, like to that
of Krendi, which has already, and it is hoped may yet yield to us very valuable
remains. These figures both represent the worship of the Phallus
and Yoni, for Figure 3 stands beside an ark-like shrine adorned
with serpentine sculpturings, and Fig. 5 is the Lingam before the
Yoni, like the diamond in Siva’s hand, holding the Concha Veneris,
in Fig. 46, p. 129; or in that gem of Yoni-cult from Layard’s
“Nineveh,” my Fig. 84, p. 205. The Coins, No. 2, are called
Keltic or Gaulic, and are in the Roman Museum; they were
found in the Adour, and are carefully described by M. Lamber,
Société des Antiquares de la Normandie, 1863, where they are
considered to be rude models of the ordinary Phenician coins such as this No. 131 of
the Tyrian Herakles, or those of the Ambrosia Petra and similar ones which I give
1 See Pl. XXI. and p. 19 of the late Mr. Waring’s valuable volume, “Monuments,” &c., published by
Mr. J. Day, Strand, to whom I am indebted for the subjects of this, and some other plates.
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Fig 131.—TYRIAN HERAKLES,
THE COLUMN OF FIRE, THE STONES
AND CONCHA-VENERIS.