Forlong - Rivers of Life

512
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
This is only another phase of development such as caused the obelisks of Egypt
and the stones of Sinai to be written over, as the mere coarse cone or ovum began to
disgust advancing intelligence. The Hindoo still wears the article pure and simple in
bone or stone: the Boodhist calls it “a tooth,” and perhaps it is a tiger’s tooth or claw,
but the Italian Christian artically disguises it, and neither of the two last, any more
than did Gordian III, know really what the conical or ovate object symbolises.
Lest, however, we should mistake the Gnostic Christian meaning, they hand down
to us a bearded PRIAPEAN man, called ABLANATHABLA, with four arms grasping as
many hooked sceptres, four wings, and a bird’s outspread tail; he stands. sometimes
on the sacred boat and sometimes on a coiled snake—a veritable Siva or Vishnoo,
except that the coiled base may sigoify the virilities. Another form of the deity is
a “three-headed and three-bodied god, who stands in the attitude of Priapus, grasping
in one hand the symbol of fecundity and in the other scorpions and serpents . . .
At each side are two obelisks engraved with letters representing the ‘Pillar of Hermes’
on which that God had engraved the ‘Omne Scibile;’” 1 so that clearly Christianity
had a great struggle to escape from the persistent faiths around her, of which she is after
all but a maturer growth. This last figure is clearly a Siva, such as I disinterred after
its sleep of centuries, and have shown the reader on page 122, but clothed and
decent; he too is is a “three-headed God,” and the whole a Priapus.
One great use of talismans and amulets was to avert evil or “the evil eye,” and
the organs of generation of both saxes were always held to be the most efficacious of
charms; but decency often required disguises, and therefore a tree, a triangle, an eye,
the hand—open as the female, or clenched 2 with a part of the arm, as the male organs;
also an egg or two eggs, &c., and for a whole people, an ark with any of these objects
in it, usually answered the wants of the ancients. Christian converts were promised a
“white stone and in the stone a new name written,” 3 clearly as a talisman.
The Gnostic sects extended into Gaul in the second century, where the superstitious
Ireneus violently opposed them, yet the Christian Bishop Priscillian of Avila in Spain
greatly extended their influence in the fourth century A.C. Jerome complains of them
as “raging throughout Spain.” Gnosticism survived in the Manikeism of the Albigenses
of the twelfth century. 4 Justinian persecuted the sect all over Syria in the 6th C.,
but it still survives about the Lebanon, as in Druses, the Ansayreh, &c.
All Gnostic amulets usually possessed an erect serpent, a hemispherical bowl, two
columns called Solomons, and the old Delphic e, which I take to be the Hebrew c or
Ark-boat and mast, turned on its side; over all were commonly seen sun, moon, and
perhaps planets. St John or ION is the first great patron of the order, for he is fire or
light acting on water; but let us now pass on to the Syrian sister of Serapis.
The very ancient city of Byblus was from the earliest times famous for its devo-
1 King’s Gnostics, p. 106.
3 Revelation ii. 17.
2
Ibid. p. 115.
4
King’s Gnostics, p. 120.