Forlong - Rivers of Life

348
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
ciples in nature, in no gross sense, gross as its practice may have become, or as it
would appear ot the notions of modern conventionalism. For no religion is founded
upon intuitional depravity. Searching back for the origin of life, men stopped at the
earliest point to which they could trace it, and exalted the reproductive organs into
symbols of the Creator.” 1 Were they not so? Surely the organs of Creation or Procreation
are the symbols or means by which the Proercator manifests himself, or makes
his incomprehensible acts known to us by the result. This author, though clearly showing
how man came to see Duality as soon as he had projected one Being on his Canvass,
yet fails to show how he evolved a Trinity; and I do not think the origin of this can
be explained, except from the Phallic stand-point.
To Solo-phallic ideas we owe all the worship which early men have so lavishly
bestowed on mountains, caves, wells, and symbolic natural forms, as in Trees, Fish, and
Shells—especially the Concha Veneris of very sexual shape, which was the first of
Church Bells—those symbols so essential in all forms of Solo-phallic worship, and
regarding which a few words.
Bells, it is said, when first used merely for sound, were only pieces of metal,
usually flat, as we still see in the common Eastern gong; but when used for religious
purposes, the bell would of course, like every other article of the shrine, have a symbolic
shape; and so we are assured that amongst IOni-worshippers the Bell was named from
Pel-vis, 2 a basin, or that long, open, and suggestive bony structure at the lower
extremity of the body enclosing the genital organs, and connecting these with the spine
and caput of the human body. With Jews the Basin was the Laver of the Jewish
temple, perhaps also “the Sea,” and stood near the altar; it had a “foot” 3 which was
carefully anointed with the sacred oil. Solomon. constructed five Lavers for the north
and five for the south side of the temple court, but the writers are contradictory as to
their dimensions; 4 they were made from the Mirrors of the Temple women. Of Bells
proper we only hear mention twice in the Bible; once when used on the margin of the
High Priest’s Ephod, 5 for tinkling purposes, as women still wear little tinkling bells on
their ankles, and as Romans used the Tintinnabula, and again in the very doubtful
rendering of Zech. xiv. 20.
Rome had gongs in her Ancilia, of which I shall yet have a good deal to say; but
long before even these, we read of “brass kettles” used—like the tinkling Sistrum of
Egypt—to give sweet sounds amidst the rustling of the Dodonian oaks, and which
were latterly hung on pillars in the sacred grove. The Egis of the Iliad—when worn
or rather carried occasionally by Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo—was not the goat-skin
breast-plate of the early Minerva (implying productive power, and adorned with all
suitable symbolism), but a brazen instrument “used to excite courage, or inspire
fear,” fringed like the priestly Jewish robe with golden tassels or knobs, which by
1
Keys, Letter IV.
2
Sir H. Seplman; Brand’s Ants., Lon. 1810, p. 12. In Keltic lands from Cloch a stone or well.
3 4 5
Lev. viii. 11. Smith’s Bible Dict.
Exod. xxviii. 33.