Forlong - Rivers of Life

398
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
the gods of their enemies, though they mostly considered their own greater. Macrobius
gives us a prayer (iii. 9) used by the Romans to induce the opposing gods to leave the
enemy: “O thou Mighty One who protectest this city, I worship and earnestly beseech
thee to abandon it . . . . to come to Rome and me and mine . . . . and take us into
thy keeping;” after which this pious enemy winds up by offering the god a bribe as
Jacob did when he prayed to Elohim: “If Elohim will go with me, in this way that I
go, and will give me bread,” &c. . . . “then shall the Jhavh be my Elohim, and this
Lingam image which I have set up shall be (considered by me to be) Elohim’s abode
or symbol, and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth to
thee.” 1 More potent means than prayers however were adopted by these ancient
men to get possession of each other’s gods. Love and solicitation, whether to gods or
women, were good in their way, but stratagem and cunning were thought better, and
freely adopted. Chivalry ruled that “all was fair in love and war,” so the gods were
fastened down with chains 2 in the innermost shrines, as the women were hid away and
barred with bolts and fetters in the recesses of the household, fort, or sanctuary.
Secrecy, as to the names, numbers, and abodes of the gods, early became imper-
ative, and hence much of the too apparent darkness and misnnderstandings in the
writings of historians who have not seen phallic faiths in active operation.
Kitto, in his Pictorial Bible, labours heavily and ineffectually to explain such
verses as I have quoted concerning Lingam pillars and the anointing of Stones. He
writes in a distrustful and tremulous manner in regard to Gen. xxviii. 18: “The
writer of this note on Lingams or Hermi, has himself often observed such Stones,
usually seen in Persia on a conspicuous rock. Sometimes there are two, one upon
the other.” But, he adds, I was not “aware of their object until happening one
day to overturn one that had been set upon another, a man hastened to replace it, at
the same time informing me, that to displace such stones was an act unfortnuate for
the person so displacing it, and unpleasant to others.” 3 This explanation, though
not very enlightening to Europeans, nor to the person addressed, yet very decidedly confirms
the statements I have already made regarding the immovability of the Lingam
deity. The writer in Kitto here goes on to inform us that the stone such as I show in
Fig. 93-III., page 218, as “placed in the sanctuary of the second Temple” was “the stone
which Jacob set up at Bethel.” The Jews aver also, says this orthodox English clergyman
(in confirmation of what I urge at page 162, on the authority of another clergyman),
“that the ark of the covenant rested upon it,” and “that after the destruction of
the temple, and the desolation of Judea, their fathers the Jews were accustomed to
lament the calamities which had befallen them over the stone on which Jacob’s head
rested at Bethel;” which means, that they grieved, like good Sivaites, over the loss of
the original Lingam of Yokob, for he, bqoy, was a female demi-god, as elsewhere shown.
It is a mere fancy of the Jews that they ever recovered their ark-box, either for the
1
Gen. xxviii. 20-22.—A free and good translation.
3
See Kitto and Bagster’s Comprehensive Bible, freely rendered.
2
Aryan Civil., 95.
4
The italics are mine.