CHAPTER XVI.

MYSTIC ANATOMY, AND THE MASTER PASSION OR “ THE ACT.”’
THESE sections of our book are drawn from conside- rations arising out of the mysterious philosophy of the inter-celestial and terrestrial human anatomy of the ex- perts of the ancient classic times and of the middle ages, and particularly from the remote myths and mythologies of the Oriental countries.
The whole system and the view of the act, both theoretic and practical, is considered, whether it be viewed as a rite, a sacrifice, a sacrament, a magic spell or prac- tice, and is developed and commented upon according to the mystic doctrines propounded by Jacob Boehm. The examination of this dificult and evading subject is de- duced according to the mystical ideas outlined in origin and regularity as produced out of the occult influence of the planets in genuine Chaldaic and authoritative astrology, which, totally misunderstood, are blundered and spoiled in modern attempted renderings (which in themselves supply their own proof of insufficiency, and are their own confuta- tion), and in the hints and suggestions gathered from amidst the mazes which are purposely interwoven to blunt and to lead away, to disappoint, and to baffle inquiry, of the Cabala, in which all the learning and knowledge of the old world was shut up, and its power and light laid aside when the Old Primzval World was “Ruined.” The action, inter-action, and cross-action of the stars in the mutual effects and operation upon each other, of the
190 Phallicism.
planets, and more particularly the cross-moving and the amplifying and waning, crescent and decrescent powers (aggressive and defensive) of the Moon—all relatively qualifying and harmonising—all this is the telluric and celestial history, “ set, as it were, to sleep” in the divine “ orchestration,” springing to life, meaning, and vigour in the “music of the spheres” (no false thing, but a real thing), by means of which the ministers of the origi- nating God made the creation of the World possible— Nature, in this super-essentially divine handiwork, finding at once its support and its imperfections in the reluctant, persistently protesting “bass,” without which contrast music would be impossible. Music, in other senses than those of man—who, in reality (as he has become in his lost and depraved state), is “ deaf as an adder”’—is the “air of Paradise.” Sometimes, even now, at magic moments, with those who are gifted to apprehend its effect, there come floating over the soul dim, dreamy recollections of that happy place, mingled with sad reflective consciousness, that, through the treason of his great progenitor, Adam, man has for ever lost his first- intended, celestial home. | The doctrine of the mystics is that the Second Great Luminary, the mighty Moon (ruler and Queen of the Darkness), is all-powerful in certain senses. She takes half-part in the rendering of men’s fate. She labours (in the half-part) to make up the human and every creature’s destiny. The figure of the Man, like a phantom, has to pass through “ Mansions”—or the thirteen lunations—in the year. Man is made “in the moon,” for the mystic passage of the child in the mother’s womb is marked by distinct stages at these nine strange gates (or more
Mystic Anatomy. igl properly ten) through which the child passes to birth, or
to the true moment for the deciding horoscope in astro- logy, when the child, for the first time, confronts the stars. The influences of the moon are feminine influences, and refer to the secondary or responsive principle, pul- sative throughout nature, as constituted now in the material formularies. We can alone find the life and the vigour and the purpose and meaning of music, as detailed in its intertangling effects and dominating play upon the affections and passions in its hieroglyphic musical tele- graphics. ‘These are operating upon the sensitive nerves, and the heart of man—as we witness every day when the administration of the music is prosperous and ade- quate—in the swelling and sinking of this sympathetic communication passing between the soul of man and the divinities.
We may now consider the mystic physiology of the human being (“ Male and Female created He them”) and the rationale (celestial and otherwise) of the methods and the motives and purposes of Generation. This we will recommend and desire as not to be perused except with a raised mind and in a serious spirit—in a word, we would be understood to wish that all who do not feel themselves capable of this philosophical coolness and reticence, and of this abstract mode of study, and of this critical serious- ness, should forego this important section. The whole subject is sought to be raised into high, abstract and spiritual levels, and the topics are reduced into narrow definitions. Lurking principles in the physiology of the ‘‘luman construction” are examined with care. The range of statements springs from out the profound mystic anatomical philosophy of those masters of speculation,
192 Phallicism.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, Plato, and the Idealists; Battista Van Helmont, Guglielmus Pos- tellus, Jerome Cardan, and the Mystics; Robertus de Fluctibus, and the Alchemists; Jacob Boehm, and the Transcendentalists ;—all the greatest minds of antiquity and of the middle ages.
Coition, human, is synthesis—it is the union of “ Half- Sex,” Man (so assumed in this abstract sense), and “ Half- Sex,” Woman (so assuined, also, in this abstract sense). The union of these ‘‘ Two” half-sexes is the establish- ment of a Whole” Sex—hermaphrodite (Hermes- Aphrodite, Venus-Mercury). The mechanical definition of Sex is power of blissful protrusion, human organic shooting, willed, conscious magnetism (for an end), with climax of dissolution and destruction (in the end), perish- ing as in the “flower” of this “stalk.” Thus Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus—thus the mystic anatomists, like Fludd and Van Helmont.
The orders “ increase” and “multiply” are orders to be taken as identical, although, in fact, they are directly contradictory. It is these things which are set against each other which constitute the stupendous and irresistible natural temptation (obtained out of shame, or out of denial and disgrace,) of all this enchanted side of life.
It is from these conjoint reasons that, in its mystery, the universal success and universal power of this side of life springs. It is inseparable from the human being, and yet, strange to say, in the philosophic, and therefore the true, sense, it is only accidental to the human being, This passion is the master passion. ‘This passion is the key- note of everything. All the other passions are made the servants of this dominant one. Ambition is made a fool
Mystic Anatomy. 193
by it. Revenge mainly is caused by it. Love rage is worst rage. Avarice pours out its treasure to obtain it. Pride submits the lowest to it. Luxury is the greatest in it.
Therefore, for these reasons, which are indisputable (as all the world and the experience of all the world witnesses), both in the past time and in the present, there is the greater necessity that out of man’s re- sponsible nature (for ~he has a responsible nature, from fear in regard to himself,) should be derived the natural safeguards against this endowment or the reverse? (as which shall we distinguish it?). As we well know, all the grace, beauty, delight, and glory of life spring from it, as well as the possibility of horror and terror.’ It isa heaven on earth in some senses, and yet, in its very nature, there is a possibility of converting this heaven into a hell. . In any way, it is a heaven which resigns all its flames (bright flames) of joy, and leaves (in the end) in our hands only these natural physical results of com- bustion, dust—the mortal residuum which perpetuates the heirship of degradation and of shame. Man is the heir of the first Adam, and therefore he is born into disgrace and has consequently to face the penalty, for the pure angels avert from him.
“Cursed now is the ground for thy sake’? Who shall save him, this ruin of ruins, this “ Man,” out of the terror of the abyss into which he has fallen through the treason of his first progenitor, yielding in his weakness to the lures of the Great Enemy? Who shall rescue the condemned? Only the pitying Champion whose Immortal Mercy has traversed all the worlds, bad as well as good. We instance this to show
O
194 Phallicism.
that the idea of the Saviour is an inseparable necessity for fallen Man. We think that the world is wrong in its thus childishly ignoring the philosophical and _ critical examination of this all-important range of objects of attention, which we feel soliciting and provocative in our body every day of our lives, and without the regulated indulgence of which, as the chief spur, we should wither, spoil, and consume. ‘These are things which must be thought of, whether we will or no. There is a prudery— which, after all, is only hypocrisy—which is worse than the reasons for shame or the exhibition and the confession of even the shame itself. Nature has no shames. But the human creature, in his humanity, has shames—overpowering, ineradicable shames.
While Man remains Man it is impossible to resist the force of his natural desires, which we do not see why we should not designate by their true, well-understood name, lust. There is an irresistible rush to the Female, beautiful body. ‘There is a certain sort of wild, ungovernable im- pulse, totally beyond reason and sense, exhibited in all these successful cases, which we shall not be far wrong in cha- racterising as a kind of the wreaking of a feeling, similar to “rage,” however absurd the expression may seem, upon this presented personality. Against all the mischiefs, dangers, and inconveniences which would be sure to arise from the mistimed presentment of this irresistibly beautiful shape, man has taken his measures from the beginning of time. Thence dress, ‘Thence (particularly) the female dress, artfully contrived, in all judicious, well-regulated countries, to disappoint, to evade, to mask, to involve, to abnegate, to conceal. Thence “skirts’—the longer the better in the puritanic sense,—the fuller, the wider, in the (neces-
Mystic Anatomy. 195
sary, In society) defrauding sense. ‘Therefore we cover woman’s beautiful body carefully up. Thence the long robe and the hiding of the legs of woman.* Hence the
* It has been a question with the mystic anatomists, and with artists who have made progress in refinement and in occultism, whether the beauty of the outlines of the /egs of women—strangely as such a theory may sound—has not been greatly contributed to, really, by exposure, and that the covering them up (in the long robe) has not conduced to their shapely Janguishment. 'This may partly arise (indeed, we think it does arise) from the natural self-consciousness of women, and from their sensitiveness when disrobed. For nature is most artful in its address to the senses, ‘This mystic, natural heightening of the gracefulness of the shape of the female lower limbs, may also originate in the magnetism springing between woman’s eager response (sanctified by nature) and man’s sexual poetical desires, in the high artistic, mythological sense. This is a strange philosophy ; but it boasts fullest authority in some of the Rosicrucian profundities, even although these latter may not be of earth, but may spring from magic, though they seem to. bear such inti- mate reference to it. From a consideration of the above reasons, it is clearly in the interest of women to wish to inspire intense personal desire for their charms in the minds of men; and, to secure the success of this paramount intention, it must naturally be their aim (if they were allowed) to freely display their legs, the beauty of these latter being still more important—strangely to say—even than their faces as the incitement in the great end of woman. Thus it is the policy of women (and the sharpest-minded among them know it) to show as much as possible of their lower limbs, this disclosure being the chief means of exciting that passion (the most flattering and charming to woman) in which lieth the power to make the greatest fools of men (even of the wisest, as all history, sacred and profane, avoucheth)—certainly of all men. Men, in fact, by nature, have been made the slaves of women, in some respects. From some of these reasons arise the results which prove the power, even the enthusiasm, of their mystic sacredness, of carnivals and masquerades (all “saturnalia’’ of their kind), where the sexes interchange dress and characteristics, and women become as men and men become zs women. ‘Thence mimes, mimics, grotesques, sal- timbanques—those that the French call folles, folletins, débardeurs and débardeuses, and all the infinite variety of that fantastical, natural and unnatural “ pied populace,” with Momus and the mopes, Satan and the
196 Phallicism.
universal anonymity of the lower half of the person of woman, which in reality is an extinguishment biblically “for the fear of her.’ We have Scripture warrant for this fear in the ordinances of the Bible. Women are commanded to “cover their heads” in that obscure text and in that strange deterrent warning, for “fear of the angels.’ There is a vast amount of magic mysticism mingling with these special orders in regard to women in the sacred Scriptures which we do not elect—at all events
satyrs and the sylvans, and the representatives and the caricatures of that playful ‘‘ Father’? and ‘ Mother’? of ‘“ Nature’’—animate and reanimate, natural and supernatural—who presided at (and joined in) that grand carnival and display, and “ gran” Biblical “ f-sta,’? when the multitude of the Children of Israel, finding that Moses delayed his coming down from the Mountain (of Sinai), dissatisfied with their chiefs, rose in rebellion to demand of Aaron a visible trophy, or talisman, or supernatural object, or god, “to go before them.’”?. And when their desire was acceded to, they bowed down before the Golden Calf, and in their crowds they ran riot, in a sort of frantic, sacred defiance, and “Ate and drank, and rose up to flay.” As to this “play”— what it was—and what was its universal character—and that it was, in fact, a grand, indecent orgie—all keen-sighted antiquarians and Bible explorers and explainers (all, of course, except the rigidly orthodox) are now fully agreed. This “god,” to “ go before them,” the grand talisman to incite them to victory, was undoubtedly the Phallus, demanded by the Israelites in their recollection of the mysteries of the Egyptians. For the “sign”? of the phallus (phallos, dhaddos, in the Greek) is in the hand of all the innumerable figures, lavished with an ovelpoweringly majestic, enforcing reiteration on every flat surface, and upon every column and mighty frieze all over the wilderness, as it may be called, of the sand-engulphed structures and myriad monuments of ancient Egypt—unread (or wholly misread) as this wonderful symbol has hitherto been, It has been ignored, or turned away from (perhaps properly and laudably) through all the latter ages. But all the above will prove the universality of this Phallic religion. It will also show the ignorance of the ages in regard to it, and the thickheaded prudery of the moderns in their thinking it a shameful instead of a noble sign.
Mystic Anatomy. 197
in this present place—to refer to, certainly not more explicitly to explain. In certain senses a_ beautiful, perfectly-formed naked woman is—singular and un- expected as the expression may seem until the apprecia- tion realises the reasons—a terrible object, we mean in the sense—the abstract sense—of awe at her as a wonder, as the work of a Maker, and as the presentation of her as a temptation. ‘Thus we see how a naked woman may be terrible because she is an awful object, possibly because of her almost impossibly to be resisted charms, by reason that when she is in this nude condition she constitutes the most dangerous of all temptations. And when not vulgarised by the world’s ways and ideas and contact, by the indignities which are to be found in nature (and which nature yet insists upon)—a woman thus disclosed, we repeat, is perfect, and is a phenome- non, an Ideal, a perilous presentment from “we know not whence,” designed, begotten, or gifted! She is an ideal, contemplated, as it were, under impossible, or, rather, under seemingly treasonable conditions, and the ‘most magnificent phenomenon, or (in this abstract, tran- scendental sense) unintelligible object which the world (not this world only, which is nothing, but the super- sensual world, the world of the angels and devils,) has seen. The lower half of the person of woman, from the waist downwards, is sacred. Beauty—‘“ wreaking” and “‘wrecking” the desiring one upon it—beauty, whether male or female, for it is either, although the beauty that attracts sensually must be of the feminine order, for strength is the characteristic of man, while beauty is the condition of justification in the characteristics of the woman,—beauty, we repeat, in its lure, is a magnet to
198 Phallicism.
the human nature. It is all-subduing—there is no limit to its power. It needs most carefully to be guarded against. The wise person should always continually and carefully watch himself (or herself). For passion—fierce passion—is frequently alike the lot with both sexes. This surmounting fact presses up to recognition in all time and from a thousand histories. It is strange that women should entertain a passion for their own sex, but, nevertheless, it is true, although they have no power to produce direct pleasure with each other. Particularly is it true with those women who, from natural constitution, are most prone to self-indulgence; and still more singu- larly with that luxurious class called ladies of pleasure, who enjoy the most liberal opportunities, from the regular exercise of their profession, in the expected and in the properly conceded way. But a perverted and a pampered imagination is full of tricks. We find this irregularity with all the appetites, which, in truth, require the most careful government and a most despotically-applied disci- pline. It is well known that among courtesans, par- ticularly in France and Italy and in South America, some of the most rapturous engrossments, of this passionate; particular kind, exist between women, mutually in love, in the sensual respect (yes, and in the sentimental respects, too) with each other, and giving way to this love with an abandonment far exceeding their attachment to men. There is much of this referred to in many old French books, notably in the celebrated memoirs of Brantéme. Two women have been known to form a very faithful league for pleasing each other. Some women of a peculiarly sensitive, even highly refined character, as well as others more irregularly and defiantly disposed,
Mystic Anatomy. 199
have been known to disdain, disregard, and even to hate the approach of men, and to lavish all their liking upon women; or, if retaining any preference for men, regarding those most fondly who most closely resembled the alluring external characteristics of their own elegant sex, so far as curving lines and lineaments were concerned. This disdain and dislike even of men likely apparently to please them, is a curious characteristic of the volatile and uncertain sex, in regard of whom nothing can be fixed but instability. No man can in reality know what is passing in a woman’s mind, even when she is looking, with apparently the most serious attention, at him, par- ticularly if she be young and attractive and fortified by the knowledge gained by experience that she is beautiful and that she has charms. Instances have been known— indeed, it is there that they are chiefly prevalent—among the Phrynes and Aspasias, both of old days and of modern times, of the most decided preference of women (by women) over men for infatuation for this fond companionship,* and for intercourse in irregular respects.
* Tt is curious that men, at least most men, do not feel any jealousy (or, if jealousy, it is remote) for this kind of thing. When they would be excited to the utmost extremities of jealousy at the idea of a male— whether man or boy—being thus situated in regard to a woman for whom they may entertain a passion, there is no special movement in the mind when the rival is a female only—almost to whatever lengths the partiality may be carried. This may partly arise (besides from the man’s knowing that the woman can never fully succeed) from the man’s experiencing—in a sly sense—a feeling of relief from his responsibility, and from his secret satisfaction at the ‘‘ relief guard’”’ being established, in his interest, in the matter of the duties naturally continuously due, and expected of him, notwithstanding the advanced time of life to which he may have (happily) attained. It is quite a mistake to suppose that youth is important in this respect, in the exercise of certain powers. Every-
290 Phallcism.
Desire, in these regards, with women as well as with men,—and more particularly with women on account of the feebleness and the lavish warmth and fantastic impressionability of their nature—is most eccentric. It is never to be estimated, or, indeed, provided against. It baffles reason. It is contrary, sometimes, to common sense. It will fly in the face (as far as it dares) of the most ordinary ideas of decency. Shall we be taken wrongly (admiring women as we do) in asserting that, as a rule and in the fundamental comparison of the real radical natures of the two sexes, men are more modest than women? It sounds very extraordinary. We do not mean otherwise than properly to put this impres- sion forward. We do not imply this as an imputation, but in the sense of nearness to nature, like the instincts of children. The idea of the loveable male is not the rough, hirsute Hercules-like, or Neptune-like (Poseidon), or even Mars like champion-man, but the Hylas, the Hyperion, the Apollo, the Adonis, the Ganymede, the Narcissus, the Hermaphroditus,—the ideal being, or demi- divinity, truly the something resembling a god, but not quite like it, the creature whose charms and seductive, slender graces more closely resemble the insinuating attractions of woman’s own magical sex. The proofs of this assertion are sufficiently abundant. The most master- ful passion ever entertained, notably in the instance of a thing depends upon the mind, and upon the firm state and the elasticity of the nervous system. It is our decidedly firm opinion—formed from observations of a large range—that continual smoking, particularly in the early part of the day, and the too habitual use of intoxicating fluids and similar methods of excitement, beyond being generally and per-
manently injurious to men, are compromising and enfeebling in the foregoing very important private respect.
M ystic Anatom Ye 201
woman possessed of so much and such unbounded power, when everything real and physical, in this respect, lay at her feet, was that fiery and yet most tender love—the most persistent and permanent of all her passions, it is said—entertained by the Imperial sovereign of Russia, the Empress Catherine the Second, to whom was applied the rarest and yet certainly the most distinguished pos- sible title in this very grand, in one sense, and yet very irregular and disturbing in another sense—we mean the degradation or the dignity—which shall we call it? or, rather, may we not call it “both in one,” and “one in both,’ being distinguished as “La piu futatrice nel mondo?’ And this is the fierce, and yet the softest love —which is said to have been entertained by this tre- mendous woman—as merciless in her cruelties as in her lusts, for a little slip of a man (much more like a woman than a man), with flowing ringlets, the whitest of skins, and the smallest and most delicate of features,—* the fair-faced Lanskoi,” as Byron calls him. Catherine is said to have grieved terribly for him after his death, and to have shut herself up for a week after being apprised of it, giving way to a passion of tears, refusing to see any- body, and forgetful altogether of the cares of State—nay, of everything which would distract her attention for one moment from the regret and affliction which possessed her for the loss of her (at once) toy and favourite. This is the effeminate style of man which some say—and we are inclined to believe that they have reason for what they say—exercises the greatest power, though it is never acknowledged and is always denied, over female fancies. Lord Byron asserts, in his ** Don Juan,” that this is the kind of “male-female” semblance which is very dange-
2028 Phallicism.
rous in its rivalries to the more manly type, and he speaks of it with an affirmative sort of poetic nonchalance as “That fond, Parisian aspect which upset old Troy, And founded Doctors’ Commons.”
Beauty, we repeat, in its lure is a magnet to the human nature. Man must cease to be man or be turned into a stock to withstand it. Love’s very torment, and writh- ing of forceful impatience at it, in the act of generation, has been converted by Nature into all-conquering, but mad and unintelligible joy, wreaking a “ heaven of sense,” as it seems. The pudenda, both in the male and the female, are magnets, and their natural, deliriously delightful pre- sentment to each other is magic-magnetism, superadded and “ incidental” only (let it be remarked) to man’s first nature. ‘These phenomenal organs—superb and mi- raculous in their special address or use—are “ Positive- Negative” in Man, “ Negative-Positive’ in Woman, Woman is “ Man,” halfway forward. Man is “ Woman,” halfway backward. Both are corporeally and sexually One, in complete coition, or double-tie, or identification of “two singles,” into temporary, absolute “one single.” Man—sharp, acute, and piercing forward: woman— blunt and receptive in a passionately eager abyss, gaping (to use an ugly word, we admit, concerning it) into magic joy, backward. But that which meets and conflicts is the same passionate battle with each against each, seeking selfish victory, and finding victory in defeat and disgrace, defeat in which all joy falls to the earth again in its accomplishment and shame. Hence the sacredness, mystery, and miracle of the “act? (which is worship of its kind, and the greatest worship of its kind), and hence the horrible sin of misacting, or misreading, or reversing
Mystic Anatomy. 2.03
the purposes of Nature in the indulgence of this act through unnatural means and with unnatural objects, which implies the ‘supernatural cancer,” branded with the curse of God in all physiology, in all re- ligions, in all beliefs, in all natural facts and results. Hence are these implied sins more than sins—they are guilt, and treason, and horror against the “ universal” nature, corporeal and spiritual. ‘They are treasons ab- horrent against spirit. ‘Thus this—rightly looked at— awful act secures and perpetuates disease. And its with- holding also secures and perpetuates disease, in grand contradiction to life. This is the contradictory balance that holds Nature at bay.
Love’s very torment and writhing in the act of gene- ration is—in the mystic and abstract sense—a_ penitential sacrifice (it is, as one class of the Gnostics say, an offer- ing to and acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the Sinister, or Evil Genius, who holds, mystically and mythi- cally, the one half of the balance of the post-diluvian “Zodiac’—at once the seat of the Olympus of the gods, in the one half, and the Tartarus, or the nether end of the immortal spiritual cosmography and cosmo- gony, in the other—when the original “ Ecliptic,” or cross band, or long-protracted, in man’s measures (or instan- taneously effected, in God’s measures), path of conflict, or traverse of the angelic combative “ Battle-Field,” changed, or expanded, or opened out (or widened) from the original “Ten Signs,” or ten stages of “ Creation,” to the latter “’Twelve Signs,” or “ ‘Twelve Processes” of reconciled, or (conditionally) pardoned, “Creation.” All this is necessarily very obscure ; indeed, to ordinary senses and ordinary means of interpretation it is unintelligible,
204 Phallicism.
but it is so only according to the ordinary world’s method, or to the scholastic methods of acceptance, which the cabalistic experts wholly reject as mistaken, and hold in utter scorn. ‘The cabalistic philosophers contend that they alone hold the keys—necessarily in the most secret and jealous (and of course effectual) guardianship—which unlock all the mysteries of time, space, and eternity, and of Heaven and Hell, and all the wonders of the inex- haustible physical universe. Hence the importance of the Phallic doctrines and of the magic validity of the Phallic religion, since these only can be esteemed decla- rative of the purposes of God and of the meaning of the production of all things—mortal and spiritual both—into this prodigious and portentous universe—truly pro- digious, as all men know; truly portentous, as the chosen ones, or the enlightened ones, are convinced.
But to return to our Phallic theme. The act of gene- ration has been converted, even in its frenzied pain and in its painful frenzy, into an all-conquering but mad and unintelligible joy,—a wreaking as into a “heaven of sense,” as it seems, of which, metaphorically and ideally,— for’ figures and metaphors express real things after all, and things real in the world, as prophecies, and as a sort of prophetical adumbration, so to call the sort of thing not yet acted in the world, or not yet come to pass (although, in all certainty, coming to pass), things—that is, events and incidents—sometimes trivial, sometimes important, that rest or linger in the limbo or mists of possibility, or that may be either hurried or retarded, or even effaced or changed, as may accord with the super- human and supernatural counsels of the invisible Rulers and Guides, filling that unknown and unimagined world
Mystic Anatomy. 205
of which these mysterious visionary disyecta membra are the objects. Thus prophecies and prefigurings may be true in the sense that now it is not yet time that has arrived to us, although it be the time that is past, to the intelligencies which “at once can look both backward and forward.” Now, to God there can be no such thing as time, because the future is as much past to him as the past is already past to us. And we know that if we project the farthest from our view the “abysses of time” all becomes as unknown, as untrue, and as much mist and vapour as the very future, as the very morrow, as the nearest, even as the very next hour, to any given moment.
Thus prophecies of things not yet acted are yet true of the things to be acted, as the future is already the past in the Mind of the Divine. Because God is the “ whole that is.”
The mistake of those who wiil refuse to raise their minds to understand mysterious subjects connected with religion would be provoking were it not pitiable. For the want of the power of imaginative self-raising, which is pro- duced only out of enthusiasm—which, of course, is set against common sense—the whole story of the “ Holy Grael,” which means the mystic body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the mysteries of the “Round Table,” of the “ Holy Eucharist,” as understood in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, the life and career of King Arthur, and the achievements—romantic and traditionary as they were—of the Knights of that wondrous Court which dis- played its chivalric and majestic shows at Caerleon, at Camelot, and in cities as gloriously romantic and poeti- cally defunct as cities in clouds, the adventures of the
206 Phallicism.
Knights Errant and the Twelve Paladins of the great Emperor Charlemagne; nay, the deeply touching and magnanimous account of the foundation of the “ Most Noble Order of the Garter,” with its glorious warlike meanings—abstruse and mystical as they are—all these go for nothing in these days. ‘They are reckoned out- worn, superseded, merely fanciful, regarded as nothing— that is, reckoned nothing of importance—in the general mind—even the highest educated—we mean academically instructed—general mind, All these great matters of thought, all such stories and ideas, the Sagas of the Nibelungen—the Scandinavian Pantheon, filled as it is with gods and heroes,—legends, history—all that can instruct, delight, and elevate, if it cannot be reconciled to the hardest, most commonplace, even vulgar common sense, or cannot be found to be of real literal, pro- ducible use in some way or other, is undervalued and passed over with contemptuous neglect, if not actually derided.
In the grand supernatural contention of which we have the tradition only, the mythic “Red Dragon,” which means the one half of the whole circle of things, is a Master against whom, and with whom, the never-ending (until the “‘ New Jerusalem”) war is waged, the “angelic war.” It is the “Child Chivalry,” otherwise the “ Inno- cence and the Power,” which is to conquer. Child- chivalry is a word little likely to be understood by a reader fortified only in the knowledge of the colleges and schools; and yet that word and the idea of the “Innocence” and the “ Power,” lie at the foundation of all the Christian theosophy. Childhood of valour (mean- ing its simplicity), Maidhood of valour (meaning its
Mystic Anatomy. 207
purity),* are the characteristics of the beau-idéal of the» Champion—of the Knights Errant—of the Brothers of the Holy Graél. The sword in the right hand of this mythic Champion, the “sworn one” of the Red Cross of the Crucifixion, the “ sworn one”’ of the “ Crucified” (of course feminine in this regard), “Rose,” Saint Michael in heaven—the generalissimo and commander-in-chief of the armies of God, known as the Patron Saint of England, in his innocently white field, as depicted and emblazoned by the augurs or heralds, the natural high priests and hierophants of the myths and mysteries,
* ‘This passage is significant in the sense of the champion, strong in his weakness, strong in the strength of his humility, that is, weakness in his dependency, or vacuity, as the fit receptacle for the pouring in of the Spirit of God, or possession by the Celestial Spirit, or by the Holy Ghost; which, of course, only expresses a purely spiritual idea, Such was David, the shepherd boy, the favourite of the Lord, the chosen of the Lord, Such were all the powerful “ child champions,” or ‘ virgin champions’’—strong in the might of the Lord, in their incapacity for pollution, in their invincible purity as saints. Such was Joan of Arc among the women. Judith and Jael were champion women of, perhaps, another stamp; but they became holy women in the offering up and in the sacrifice of their bodies, which, perhaps, both did gloriously, the one in the instance of Sisera, the other in the instance of Holofernes, for the magnificent object of the saving of their people—which was the acceptance by God of their saintship—the lesser reasons giving way to, and emerging in, the greater, and the “ end” sanctifying and justifying the ‘* means.”
Another exemplification of this idea of the “ Child-Champion,” or the spotless and sinless and unconscious “ Child of God,” or « Cherub,” in the youthful and mature sense, not in the childish sense (child-/ihe, not childish), may be found in the lines—referring to the “ model soldier,” as incapable of vaunt or self-value as he is incapable of fear, even in the roar of battle and in presence of a thousand deaths—
‘Of boasting, more than of a bomb afraid, A soldier should be modest as a maid.’
208 Phallicism.
and the proper interpreters of all such—that sword of Saint Michael, or of the Champion of Heaven, or sword of Solomon,* the King of Israel and the Enchanter, who
* «The Sword of ‘Solomon, the King of Israel,’ or ‘The En- chanter.’”’ It is exceedingly curious how these mysterious ideas have found their exemplification in the forms of heraldry, which, in its origin, - was a sacred science. Through heraldry and its powers of range over symbolism—which are perfect of their kind—the mysteries of religion were promulgated. ‘The scientific details of heraldry, besides being eminently picturesque, are full of purpose and of symbolical richness. From this myth of the “ sword” of Solomon, the King of Israel, and the Wizard; or the ‘‘ Gladius” of the Archangel Saint Michael (the ‘¢ Tyler’ and the “Sentinel” of ‘‘ Heaven’”—taken as the ‘ Lodge,” in the Masonic sense), and the piercing spear, or the gladius or sword of Saint George, and its miraculous operation and prophetic effect in the striking through of the “‘ throat”’ of the ‘“‘ Dragon,’’—through these strangely abstruse, metaphysical notions, arises the Gnostic idea of the “second interference of God’? with his creation, through his chief declarant, as combatant minister,—Saint Michael, ‘‘ armed with his thunder,’ who is represented (refer to the Apocalypse) as traversing the “worlds visible and invisible.’’ In regard of this great mystery arises to recognition the “ cleft” of the Imperial diadem of the sove- reigns of Russia. Over the “cleft” rises the magnificently jewelled signal of redemption—the “ Cross.” ‘The Emperor of Russia is the Czar, Csar, or Caesar—that is, the Cesar, or Kaiser, or Kesar (the letters C and K are convertible),—the Emperor (the successor of Constantine) of the East, when the Imperial Eagle of Rome became “‘ double-headed.”? ~The Cesar or Emperor, both of the East and of the West, is also, in the senses derived from the Orientals, in the Ishmaelitish, or ‘‘ Left-Handed” acceptation—for an explanation of which refer to other parts of this book, or to “The Rosicrucians,” Second Edition, London, 187g—the ‘‘ Houssa,” “ Uzza,” “ Huzza,” “© Uss,” or “ Huss” (with a sexless meaning), or the Magical Son, or “Child” of the Woman, he who, in guise (or disguise) of the ‘“‘ Prince,” sitteth at the ‘right hand” of Supreme Regality, “until his enemies are made his footstool,”’ or until the left-handed side of Crea- tion is vanquished or re-arranged. ‘The Emperor of Germany is, at this period, the second Cesar or Emperor—that is, the Emperor of the West—the legitimate successor of Charlemagne, though it is a dis-
Mystic Anatomy. 209
has fastened the Devil down in the abyss, and placed his seal upon him (the pentagon, in magic) that tremendous sign, known in magic story by the name of the “ Wizard’s Foot”—that triumphant glaive has passed sheer through the “ Wilds of Hell” and has cloven it (metaphorically) in half. All this is rhapsodical, of course, but it is the informing spirit of the Apocalypse and of the prophecies, It vivifies and insinuates, like a thread of fire, through all
puted point who is, or ought to be, this Emperor properly, among the heralds, whether it should be rightly the Emperor of Germany, sprung from the Bo-Russi,’”’ or “ Po-Russi,” or the “ Prussian’ (B and P also, let it be remarked, are convertible letters in the dialects). The syllable “ Bo,” or “ Po,” is originally T’aurine—the same is to be remarked of the pre-syllable ‘‘ Bo”—in the name of the country, Bo- hemia, all this intimating the early Bovine or Taurine, mythic, magic descent of these Northern Bovine (or Taurine) barbarous herdes. The supporters of the Royal Prussian arms, now the supporters of the arms of the ‘Imperial German Empire,’ are Barbarians, Salvage or Savage men, Sylvans, Orsons (or Ursines, or “‘ of the bears,” therefore rough enough), men of the woods, or bovines, bulls, boasting the ‘« horns,”’—frequent in German heraldry, notably in the crests, The crest comes from cresta, chresta, criss, chriss, or *‘ Curist.”? If the reader makes reference to the Imperial German crown he will again recognise the mythic “cleft,” and also see its indications in the armorial ensign of the Austrian Empire, which is QOsst-risch, changed into Austerisch or Austrian, and which possesses claims, indeed, to the Eastern, or the Byzantine Empire, which claims yet stand in dispute between the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Germany, and the Emperor of Austria, The King (not the Emperor, mark, for the Pope is the supreme “‘ crowned one”’ in this dignified respect) of Rome —a title now non-existent—is properly the Cesar, or the suzerain of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire ; and as such the Emperor Napoleon the First, and also the Emperor Napoleon the Third (his uncle’s imitator, or, as the French doubtless think now, his parody), sought to make each his son—the King of the Romans. ‘The title of Prince of the Galles, or Walles, or Wales, and that of the Dolphin, or Dauphin, the title of the eldest son of the King of France, is similar to this, E
210 Phallicism.
the visionary mazes of the woven fabric of the writings of that sublime arch-mystic, Jacob Behmen, to whom, if he desires farther light and higher light, we refer the studious and inquisitive reader. None other than a studious (who must, therefore, be an inquisitive) reader ought to deal with these subjects, abstract and trans- cendental, and of course elevated and scriptural, and therefore undoubtedly Christian (though, in the philo- sophical sense, Christian) as they are. Here, in these histories, or in these accepted accounts of Saint Michael, the Archangel, and, in his impersonated soldierly shadow, or “ double,” conquering the Dragon in Egypt, and in his slaughtering of the Dragon, saving the Princess Sabra, or Seba, or Sheba (some examiners of the myths call her the “ Queen Sheba,” or Theba, or Teba, or the “ Ark,” — epitomised or impersonated, in the feminine form—even King Solomon’s “ Queen of Sheba”)—this Saint Michael and this Saint George may be safely allotted, also, to, and assigned important places in, the religious mysteries (certainly the Christian religious mysteries), gathered around, and constituting the meanings of the Holy Graél. The Holy Graeél is the parent and producer of, and in its development grows into, and becomes the same thing as the “Round Table” of King Arthur, the British king. The Round Table was the consulting, astronomical, and astrological (clearly magic) disc, endowed with super- natural gifts, gained from Heaven through the prayers and the ministration of the enchanters, or sages, or magi. The Round Table was also a spiritual planetarium, a mirror emblematic of the whole circle of the terrestrial and angelic rounds, or circuits, or courses, or dominions of the “seen” and the “ unseen” universe,—both the body
Mystic Anatomy. 211
and the spirit of all that is, and the depository of all prophecy, and of all magic, or the power of moving Nature, or compelling Nature (under the will of God), up to the exhaustion of this world’s business, and the passing up to the final consummation. Round this magic table, or this stupendous round table, King Arthur and his knights (each a champion and a saint, in the double character derived from earth and from heaven,) sat, at certain periods, to consult in solemn conclave, holding thus a sort of inexpressible sacrament, “ breaking bread” and “ drinking wine,” and rendering the solemnity a sort of imi- tation “ Holy Supper.” This was imitated afterwards, in all devotion and holiness, by that magnificent monarch of Fngland, King Edward the Third, who took the Round Table as his model, and the knights of King Arthur’s court for the originals of his knight-companions, and restored and amplified the “ Round Table” in the “ Most Noble Order of the Garter,” being himself the first president and sovereign of it, elevating his son, the Prince of Wales, to be the next to himself, and in the humblest imitation of the divine gradations of majesty, seating his “first-born” at the “right hand” of his father, and gathering around him as peers, or as sages, champions, angels, and saints, his chosen sacred “twenty-four,” double the number of the apostles, and double the number of the patriarchs or “ children of Israel,” because this “twenty-four,” or this number of twelve repeated twice over, was supposed to be endowed with power in a double capacity, and to stand representative of the night and the day, or of the dark and the light (magic), sides of a “true day,” which, of course, consists of twenty- four hours. In the last place, raising to the highest this
212 Phallicism.
theory of greatness and power, Edward III. dedicates the entire Order, with all its rites, forms, sentiments, and meanings, consecrating the whole, to the Virgin Mary as the Patroness of the Sacred Order of the Garter, “ Keeper,” or “ Garder,” she being the Queen of Heaven and the Immaculate Mother of Jesus Christ, * Lord” and “Saviour” before. whom “every knee shall bow.” In- cluded in this universal obeisance are the rebellious inhabitants—now mastered by Saint Michael—imprisoned in the vast abysses of the nethermost “ Hold”—namely, Darkness and Matter—which is yet, transcendentally, the rearmost side of Light. Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind ; for, as the sophists contend, Darkness is but the reversed side of Light, and, according to Robert Fludd, Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible. Light, as the scientific philosophers know very well, is material enough, although we lack such exquisitely delicate balances as would be required to weigh it.
Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosised. ‘They are each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied—distinguished by different names— in all the mythologies. But the idea regarding each is a general one. ‘This idea and representative notion is that of the all-powerful champion—childlike in his “ virgin innocence”—so powerful that this God-filled innocence (the Seraphim “ know most,” the Cherubim “love most”) can shatter the world (articulated—so to use the word— in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned), in opposition to the artful constructions, won out of the permission of the
Mystic Anatomy. 213
Supreme—artful constructions (“this side life”)—of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet, at the same time, the “ Light-bringer,” the Lucifer—the “ Morn- ing Star,” the “Son of the Morning”—the very highest title “out of heaven,” for in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an apparently incredible side of his character—for let the reader carefully remark that qualities are of no sex—this Archangel Saint Michael is the invincible sexless, celestial “ Energy”—to dignify him by his grand characteristic—the invincible “ Virgin- Combatant” clothed—(and yet suddenly interposes a stupendous mystery, a mystery which lies at the very root of true Buddhism and Gnosticism, for both, in their radical metaphysical bases, are the same)—clothed, and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic “refusal to create.”* This is another myth, a “myth within myths,” at the same time that it is a stupendous “mystery of mysteries,” because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse. Unrevealable as the “ Revelation.”
The writings of Jacob Behmen abound with these strange contradictory theosophic speculations. This is truly the mysticism of the Gnostics, the Manichees, and Buddhists. It is also, in certain of its phases, the mysticism of the Platonists. It is precisely the reverse of those doctrines usually attributed among the learned to the Buddhists and to the reasoning philosophers among the professors of the forms of belief enumerated above. Facts may be right in philosophy, and yet the interpre- tation of some of the facts, or of most of them, may be
* The metaphysical foundations of Buddhism and Gnosticism are the same.
214 Phallicism.
all wrong, because the inquirer’s means of examination may be incommensurate or faulty in some principal respects, which may spoil all his deductions and con- clusions, even in the instance of, otherwise, very clever men. Ambition and self-occupation and self-conceit are great deterrents in these respects. Even absolute igno- rance has a great deal to do with such mistakes. For academic distinctions, in themselves, are not worth much.
But to resume with our ultra-metaphysical distinctions in the region of this (save for that leading mystic, Jacob Behmen, and for one or two others of a similar pro- foundly thoughtful character) unknown, and hitherto very superficially explored, “mystic anatomy.” Women may be said to be “ Men-Forward.” Men may be said to be “ absolutely necessary to possess an intimate acquaintance with the details of human anatomy, particularly in its most extraordinary and evasive forms. At the same time, nothing can be made of this reluctant and mys- terious subject except by those gifted with powers of the keenest acuteness of observation and the most. cautious judgment. Man and Woman are the same, in reverse of each other. ‘The junction is the “shock.” It is not seen, except by the mystic anatomists, that in the umbilicus and its extension instant and contemporaneous man, and every man, is (and must be) in continuous and corporeal direct descent from the prototype, and must consecutively, in an eternal chain of a line, until inter- rupted, propagate as a single being forward, while man is man, and the strange foreign race—to speak thus of man as an abstraction, from an altogether different standpoint
M ystic Anatomy. Us
from that usual—this strange foreign race, out of Nature, designated as Man, projected from the outside of Nature, as it were—ab extra of everything—like a human meteo- rolite (to put the case poetically) out of “ unknown other worlds.” . Soul is nothing, body everything, in “ This World.” Body nothing, soul everything, “ Out of This World.” Woman (in pregnancy) is in a “magical” and, in one sense, unnatural state. This is, of course, apart from her being the means of perpetuating the race, which would almost seem the only object, as vouched in her peculiarities and by her personal configuration, of her being introduced into the world at all. It is certainly not for the pleasure of man, except in his state of mistake ‘and of degradation.* A woman, about to give birth to a child, has ceased to be a real woman—in the exalted and intensifying sense—because she is not a woman properly— that is, a virgin. Fora true, perfect woman—as a tho- roughly independent entity—must be a virgin, because she has nothing to do with the opposite sex, having never been conjoined with the opposite sex, and having thus lost her perfectly independent singleness. A woman that is not a virgin is a spoiled woman. She is thus, in the admission or the supposition of all the peoples—highly so, in the ideas of all the most imaginative and refined nations. Woman forfeits her supernatural privileges and powers when she is despoiled—this in certain senses—of her virginity. She is said to be capable of clairvoyance— of prophecy—of divination—of supernatural insight ;— said to be sacred and holy—to have powers over the spirits—in her condition of unconsciousness, or of maid-
* This is in the abstracted sense, of course, for we have elsewhere spoken of this pleasure as the very highest pleasure for man.
>
216 | Phallicism.
hood, ‘These are great, wondrous endowments.* She inspires all Nature with the fear of her. The poets have
* The prescription to King David, the ‘favourite of Heaven,” be it remembered, by his most skilful physicians, when the King was “old and stricken in years,” was the attendance and ministration of a maid.
“1, Now King David was old, and stricken in years, and they covered him with clothes, but. he gat no heat. 2. Wherefore his servants said unto him, ‘ Let there be sought for my Lord the King a young virgin, and let her stand before the King, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my Lord the King may get heat.’ 3. So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the King. 4. And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the King, and ministered to him; but the King knew her not.’”>—1 Kings, i. 1—4.
‘Our uuthor has given Abishag, the very fair damsel’s adumbration, most curiously,
‘“‘ This danger of incontinence, King David being a very old man, is another convincing argument that our author’s cataplasm and remedy and relief for the infirmities of old age is a virgin, For virgins are the greatest temptations, very naturally, to the fault of incontinence.
“ Now if the Sin of eating the fruit of the ‘ Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’ were the Scriptural Knowledge of a Woman (as is the opinion of some learned men), a spotless Virginity may likely be the very thing in pro- tracting that Evil Day of Man, whichthe beguiling of Woman bythe Devil, and her seduction by the Evil One, first brought upon the unhappy Man.
“‘Or admit, if our First. Parents had not eat the ‘ Apple’ (as most Divines allow they really did), Man might have been conceived without sin, and Woman might have brought forth without sorrow ; this and all other Acts being naturally performed, according to the Will of his Creator, as the Sun goes round without sin, but that, by the Fall, Will and Pleasure, and particularly this form of delight, has become sinful and atrocious ; and Lust has grown exorbitant and dominating over everything in the world, When perhaps this natural instinct—before the ¢ Fall’—was a pure, innocent, natural propensity, as for the Stars to keep their courses. Even in Nature, every way corrupted by these means, the Remedy is highly rational. For, in this case, the Virgin heat and uncontrollable desires, irritated and exalted by the juxta- position and contact of Man, however thus old and physically incapable, exerts itself magnetically and sympathetically, spurred by the abounding
Mystic Anatomy. | OM iy
feigned that a naked woman, if a maid, can walk through the world, and that all Nature will thrill and tremble at
fancies of inventive and imaginative Woman, luxuriating im the feeble object thus only accidentally, grudgingly, and enviously afforded, exerts itself by its magic invisible expansion, radiation, and incubation (woman becoming the ‘ man’ in force here, Jet it be carefully remarked) ; and then she so acts, with that vigour sent forth outwardly in her instinct of delight (contrived by Nature), in seeking to reproduce and to multiply, notwithstanding the useless, old, expended form presented to her, so that her own excitement at disappointment reinforces her power by implying to it the air of fury. Now the remedy and the restoration to health and strength of the aged Man im this vivifying, singular adminis- tration of the matchless physician (woman), who prescribes the remedy, is found in the fact that the Virgin expands that vigour outwardly, in her instinct mechanical (the gift of cunning Nature) for preserving her decaying species, her ‘ longing,’ as it is called, which springs from her intense desire to produce of herself, and to give her likeness to the world. Here springs all the end of humanity. Thus the woman’s powers and incitements find their escape and safety outwardly, which she would otherwise consume and use up, according to her nature, inwardly in procreation, the natural intention of her by her Divine Author. And on the other, this ‘Old Dust and Ashes,’ this ‘Old Man,’ this ancient ‘stump with not a green leaf upon it,’ may, by his concubine, full of spirits and vitality, have sparks of reanimation kindled in him (a new elixir vite), so as to keep the embers alive, that, for want of the fuel of life, are not able to break out into the grand magical flame of Lust, however eager and willing in intention, although insufficient to take green wood or powder (the wrong sort of powder) of wood. But if the Old Man’s Vital Flame, thus trembling and lambent, flickering, so to say, over himself, should proceed to try to animate posterity in over-stimulus—tempted to destruction by the Devil—he must only expect his own speedy Extinction, and instead of re-acquiring new life, he must die outright. Thus the woman, however beautiful and tempt- ing, must be sacred to him, and (aided by the angels, who will help him in his refusal and continence) he will forswear her.” ——“ The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth. By that great Mathematician and Physician, Roger Bacon. Edited by Richard Browne, M.L. Coll. Med. Lond. ‘London, Printed by Thomas Flesher, St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1683.”
218 Phallicism.
her, and bow before her and worship her; that the devils will fly from her face, and the wild animals crouch at her feet ; the angry thunders of Heaven be stilled, and the bright sun—and, still more, the moon, because the moon is the genius, and (mysteriously and mythically) the maker of woman—beam forth. «Tis said that the lion will turn and flee From a maid in the pride of her purity.”
And yet—to set against this—perpetual maidhood, or even prolonged maidhood, is impossible to woman, except as attended with unutterable mischiefs, amongst which, as certainly not the least; will be reckoned, even in the best regulated female mind, that of the almost certain ruin of her beauty. These facts and theories—and more facts and theories that lie behind and press upon one in their number—furnish problems and wonderings as to what should really be, as Nature intended, or as con- ducive to the general vital policy, or of the preternatural intentions in regard of her; whether the lines of pro- bability in regard to woman’s life in the world—beautiful and ruinously seductive as woman is to man—lead up to distrust if she be, or to the conclusion that she is not, intended for personal rigid holiness, for the putting aside and denial, with the terrors, both to woman and man, which correspond with this uncomfortable fixedness of her fate; or whether the instinctive desires and _pre- possessions should be allowed (and enjoined), with full scope accorded; and whether, in a new order of things, free licence and absolute cosmopolitism should become mode and manners, introducing to as equally great, or worse, dangers and to spiritual demoralisation, with no reference to any responsibility of man, and to his
Mystic Anatom Ye 249
absolute ruin in other ways. We hope no time lke this will arrive—even in America, where there is most danger.
But to return, and, in a certain measure, to repeat. A woman that is not a virgin is a “ spoiled woman.” She is a “victim :”’—hence (in visible forms) her investment in white from time immemorial at her bridal or be- trothal; for white was the colour of the victims among the Greeks and Romans, even among the Christians. She is not man, of course, because man is by Nature barren, though, if the “First Woman” was achieved out of the body of “ Man,” as we are told in Scripture, the first man could not have been barren, but must have been capable, in some incomprehensible manner, of reproducing his own kind. Man must, therefore, originally have been fertile, even in this very important and extraordinary respect, at least in this first instance, and even in this especial exclusively feminine charac- teristic. We must accept this as the true reading of the story of the Garden of Eden, unless we construe these portentous particulars as allegory, conveyed in the terms, and by the means, only possible. ‘The imagination of man is always baffled in his conception of a miracle. But the whole of this singular side of life, through whatever interpretation we may place upon it, or however we may seek to justify to ordinary reason even the natural phe- nomena wherewith we are all so familiar, which show has become so continual, and is so inseparable to us, that we pay it no attention, and never recur with a “ side glance’ to it (“wondering at the wonder,” as we may say); the whole of this side of life, as we safely declare, is magical, therefore miracle: therefore, being miracle, certainly not
220 Phallicism.
Nature, because it is unnatural, as common sense under- stands Nature. |
In regard to Woman—all her peculiarities and sym- pathies, her weakness and her unworthiness, her magic inferior nature, and her magic sinister, and yet heavenly (as the assuasive to the inherent brutality of man) superior nature, arise out of this fact—of her being under man, of her being the subject and not the object of creation.
“« Mrs. Quickly, Say—what thing ?—what thing ?
“ Falstaff. What thing >—Why—
“A ‘Thing’ to thank God on!”
This, as thus put forward, is a jeer of Shakespeare, but it contains profound philosophical truth as to the real cha- racter of woman, apart from her magic excellence, from the magical point of view,—apart from her sex altogether.
Again, the act of generation, the most resistless morsel in the Devil’s “armoury of temptations,” as it has ever been found in all ages all over the world, and which has seized to itself the highest idea of beauty which the mind and the eager sympathies of man have been ever able to achieve (blind, and mad, and a delusion as, in reality, it is), this first idea, in the earliest age, and grasp at the “ ynattainable,” is, at the same time, man’s last snatch,-in age, at the ultimate departed joy (when power has gone, even in remembrance), and it is the last cling for felicity that flashes up out of vitality in the expiring embers of surrendering age! In the old days—in the ancient Pagan times—in the highest cultured, in the most poetic classic periods, this link between earth and heaven—as it may most truly be called—was sacred—was an act of worship, —it is so intimated in all the myths and mythologies, It was a sublime religious “ rite” in the old classic times, as
Mystic Anatomy. 221
also among the Jews. The Jews were always a very lustful people. There are certain natural reasons which render this tendency peculiar and remarkable in them. It is very generally admitted that, also, the Mahometans, among all the tribes and races, are very prone to libidinous indulgence. The act was sacred, as a rite, to the gods, in the ancient times. It was always looked upon as a sacred rite among the Christians. These ideas are strictly valid—although never taken notice of—even in these latter times, supposed to be exceedingly chaste, and accepted as scrupulously religious—abounding, nevertheless, in a vast amount of hypocrisy, as they undoubtedly do. At least, this in all men’s private judgments and convictions about these sensual matters.
According to the Mahommedans all a woman’s form is “ magical,” while the man’s form is mechanical. All the Orientals, as is well known, hold the idea of woman very lightly. The woman’s body the Mahommedan covers up and hides (as if Nature was ashamed of it) in public, and always at those times when circumstance or necessity compels her appearing in public. But for his own private gratification the Oriental reduces woman’s form to its earliest nakedness, therefore to its magic, therefore to its primitive provocation in the beauty of its magic sym- metrical bareness, when no eyes see but his own, offering her body as the means of his most exquisite enjoyment. The reader will probably perceive by this how ex- quisitely fine and delicate the tastes of some of the most refined of the Orientals must be, and will at once further apprehend the causes and reasons—and realise the justification—for the extreme, implacable, and relent- less jealousy of the Turks and those other stubbornly
222 Phallicism,
sensual peoples. This universal passion affects nations and countries—as we know it does individuals—very differently. But amongst the Orientals, where “love rage” is very often the greatest of “rages,” the cool inquirer and the correctly comparing and weighing philo- sopher will soon perceive how the greatest of danger must the most speedily spring up there in regard to that point where all the passions of men concentrate the most forcibly into fierceness. Oriental man, at this wholly- disclosed naked beauty of woman, when permitted to concentre all his uninterrupted, ravished attention on it, without distraction from outside things, is wholly occupied in his gaze, which sight of the glorious object—being complete—aintensifies his pleasure and intoxication. The man of the East treats his lust for this beauty,—for all these enjoyments are not forbidden to him; for his heaven is composed of houris, and these enjoyed under the most delicious of circumstances, with ever-springing renewal of power and pleasure,—the Oriental—let it be remarked—indulges his vagaries of idea in these luxurious respects—his whims and his fancies, notably in the dis- play of the limbs of the women in his seraglios, either freely displayed or temptingly and artfully semi-invested,— either for temptation to, or in rest from, or in solicitation in the future for, the exercise of his desires—in dia- phanous or opaque drawers or trousers in the Harems. The Moslem, in fact—to put the case very roughly, but very truly, and very beneficially, in the right interests of this very delicate but extremely important subject (espe- cially considering the tendency—doubtless lax and irre- gular—of the present times)—the Oriental—to use a coarse image—‘“ devours” women in this way— eating
Mystic Anatomy. 223
of his own flesh’—committing continually the first sin, and the capital sin—perpetuating the first abomination, making his women, in appearance (we will do him the justice to imagine that he stops short here), like men, yet remaining women,—in truth, the acme of lust. A lust “bred out of hell,” and all the more hideous and Satanic _ because hinting of the dark Eblis (or the “bright Lucifer”) by presenting itself in the lures of the beauty, snatched at in its magic, out of the splendours of heaven. - The Moslem does not stop at women in the gratifying of his lewd, not amorous, propensities, but he extends his lust to all fit forms, and all forms that may present to him, in the masquerade of this feminine class. We have seen something of these strange aberrations from nature in the history of those debased masters of the world—as they esteemed themselves—the ultra-luxurious Emperors of Rome, in the high-class devotees among the Chinese, even amidst the common people, in the classic times, amongst the early races, in by-corners and in certain directions in the old world, as well as in the new, both in old and new times. These Orientals, of this irregular class, this debased brood, have recourse to either sex, or to neither sex, or to both sexes (ac- cepted) in one. His own form, to make the indign side of it mysterious in character, the Moslem invests in long, dignified, concealing, muffling robes. He covers as much as he can of woman’s form in public, as people hide away jewels and valuables which they wish to keep all to themselves, in accordance with the selfish, grudging sug- gestions of his avaricious sensuality, insisting on keeping, in his tyrannical, austere jealousy, all her beauty to him- self, purposely to overwhelm himself, at the right times
224 Phallicism.
for his self-gratifying purposes, with fleshly seduction. He strips her, as much as is possible to him, in private, to give edge and point and spur to his domineering lust, which will know no check from magnanimity or forbear- ance, and is stimulated by resistance. He covers as much as he can of his own form, in his morbid and yet highly-sensitive pride and dark, personal reserve, except for war, when, of course, he astutely clothes and arms himself fitly. The Turks are perhaps the most formally decent and proud, in all the dignified, serious walks of life, of all peoples. Mahomet had supernatural genius and princely pride. The Turk bowstrings his enemies, giving them thus the masculine accolade, and according them the dignity of the honourably condemned. He accords to his male criminals the privileges due to them as men, and inflicts execution, implied under the terms of respect, under pronounced and distinct and accepted methods of execution, or of removal out of this world. He confers the observances of execution, such as the honour of be- heading, or by the methods of getting rid of his victim, or the “ devoted to death,” put in practice by the Thugs, who made a consecrative rite or sacrifice of the strang- ling of their victims, or were even supposed to assist them religiously in freemg them from the “animal rings and purgatories,” hindering them in their forward progress of exaltation out of the condemnation which to these specu- lative Asiatics this earthly life. meant. This sort of honourable method of putting to death is practised in the instance of males. But in the instance of females, in the inspiration of the disdain of them, in Eastern countries, the woman is removed out of the world as not properly of it, and is therefore submitted to indign
Mystic Anatomy. py
methods of putting to death, if criminal,—such as are applied to the lower orders of creatures—not that the cruelty is greater, but that the carelessness and disregard are greater and more contemptuous.
The bowstring, or hanging, or execution by the sword or axe or poison, are the means employed to execute justice upon males among the Turks. ‘There is con- sideration and a certain kind of honour in all these forms of death. Something of the same view of the inferiority of woman generally prevailed amongst the Romans, even in their most highly civilised times, under the Emperors. ‘Thus it was against the Roman law to put a virgin to death, because a virgin (while such) was sacred, and not to be exposed to this last penalty, which was a degradation in a certain occult sense—that is, as a dese- cration from the sacredness of the idea of virginity, which was a matter for the gods, and a characteristic of the gods.
Farther than this—in regard of our own country. By the old constitutional, unwritten law of England women condemned to death were never hanged (like the canine creatures, for instance), but burned, which was the nobler penalty, applied to martyrs (to those who rebelled against the gods) and to those not guilty of any crimes of a low depth of enormity. For to this, execu- tion by fire, and also to that, in many minds, the bitterer portion of the sentence, the previous outrage of them by the executioners, the first female Christian martyrs were subjected, many of whom are now reckoned among that glorious company of saints in heaven who laid down their lives in all the constancy of adhesion to their belief.
But the nobler and the more manly (that is, in the
226 “SP hallicism.
sense worthy) punishments, the Turks inflict when their enemies are males, when they condemn their criminals. But another form of retribution is meted out to the women. Their last punishment and penalty varies. The master of his slaves must evolve fine distinctions out of the compassion of kis own bosom, if he feels them. But he possesses the power to dispose of his property as he pleases; and, in the instances where he disdains, he destroys with cold-blooded indifference. He submits his delinquent women to the last punishment and penalty in his own contemptuous fashions. The Turk ties up his unfortunately lapsed women—women lapsed from the tyrannical bodily allegiance and serfdom to him, alone, in the relentless greediness of his inexorably selfish lusts— in the dark jealousy, and the slinking disdain of his own disappointed, particular desire to grasp all to himself— in the sack, and dismisses them into that—“ outside of life,” as we may, in our ignorance of it, in this, our real, genuine, sensible life, designate it :—-whatever it be, in his carelessness of regard to it in the case of the female ; in respect of whom he will not even admit the idea of a soul:—thus he gets rid of the removed woman as a thing—as a thing to be delivered over into the void, Woman, in truth, owes her position in the social scale solely to the ideas of the Christians in these respects. Women owe everything to Christianity—both their honour and their place. And their allegiance and worship is due to the magnificent idea, occurring solely in the Christian gospel, of the immaculate birth of the Redeemer of Mankind through (of course, the “ Virgin”) Mary, the “Mother.” It is a strange thing, that none of our acutest theologians (at all events, the modern
Mystic A natomy. 227
ones) will see—or, at least will not admit—that the one half of the Christian Gnostic group are perfectly right in assigning this assumed truth of the Miraculous Birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, by the Immaculate Virgin (incapable of sin,.in this capacity) into this “ metaphysical show” of the world (as the Buddhists contend that it is), in the only manner (that is, as the super-excellent, first and best of Men) that can be enter- tained at all. God’s knowledge is not man’s “ignorance.” Where would the world have been, and where should we men have been, had this been so? Except through hopes, springing solely from and arising from the mys- teries connected with the Virgin Mother—woman is a lost creature. Western women—that is, Christian women—rest thereon their hopes, and the excelling dignity (more than that of men, according to Cor- nelius Agrippa) which the world ascribes to them, more - especially the privileges and advantages of marriage, which, denying to them a succession of a partnership of men—and of course the pleasures of boundless variety— gives them one wherewith to grow old, and wherewith, in their own indispensable interests, to be content ;—all women of the Christian persuasion owe their position to this elevation of the idea of “woman” in the person of the Virgin Mary—first and holiest of her sex, in the inexpressible greatness of her magic state. We advance but a few steps in the examination of religious matters before coming up, face to face, with a mystery—which is soon found—before our eyes, and against our common sense (which, in these matters, is nothing)—to convert, and to metamorphose, into a miracle. Not all the logic ~of the schools—not all the elaborate wisdom of the
228 Phallicism.
dialectics, nor of the talking, disputative philosophers or scientific men, can move against this CERTAINTY. And the irresistible moral is caution and self-doubt—wherein we feel disposed to accept everything and deny nothing. The idea of a realised God—apart from the exaltation of man’s attributes and of the human form (we use the word ‘human’ advisedly—omitting the distinction of male and female), reflection assures us is utterly impossible. If we begin to think otherwise we fall into the trap set by the devil, and veer about, perceiving that God—if we begin with our definitions—may be anything or nothing. We again distinctly assert, beyond fear of contradic- tion, that women owe their rescue, in men’s ideas, entirely to the operation of the Christian ideas, and especially to the influence of chivalry in the old days. The.persua- sions of the Christians in regard to the true character of women, and their place in the scheme of things, are quite different to those of the Asiatics. ‘The Christians base their views upon the impulses and the heroic notions, emphasising action, as seen in chivalry and knight- errantry, which are especially instincts of the Cross. It is very similarly the case with the Israelites. It was the bringing of the Virgin Mary and the “ Magdalen” to the front that raised woman, that elevated her out of .the degradations customary in the East, and out of the humiliating and contemptuous idea entertained of the sex by the Jews. ‘There is no limit to the repugnance felt to the feminine idea generally among the Jewish people: the exception is to the heroines, who passed out of the disabilities of women into the splendours of championship proper to man, saving their nation in the devotion of their self-sacrifice—proving triumphant, such
Mystic Anatomy. 229
as Judith, Jael, Deborah, and others similar to these, who, in this respect, from the greatness of their achieve- ments, became, as it were, sovereigns, for sovereigns are of no sex, and in every instance may well be classed as of the nobler sex, or as “good as men.” At least, these grand Hebrew heroines became of almost as much dignity and repute as the Jewish champions to the Jews.
These sexual notions constitute the groundwork and form the difference between the ideas among the Turks and those prevailing among Christians in regard to women. These fixed persuasions, derived from their religions, are the source and reason of the contrary character of the treat- ment of women and the opposite views in regard of them, by the people of the two religions, Mahometan and Christian—indeed, by the professors of all the Asiatic forms of belief. In respectful and in truly reverential consideration of these sexual facts (continually becoming occult) lies the foundation of all faiths and of all philo- sophies starting from the views of the trwe character of that creature much puffed up in his civilisation, man; which true character is, in reality, sufficiently low. We believe that in the progress of the ages man has strayed away from the original enlightenment, and that, ceasing to be the heaven-seeing and heaven-receptive child, nearest to the truth in the child’s instincts, impressionable to heavenly or angelic influences, man has become devil-endowed in knowing ; eating, as it were, the second Apple.
The whole magic, real side of human nature, and the supernatural origin of that strange universal feeling, which, from want of a better knowledge of what, in reality, it is, we call shame, in regard to particular parts of our persons, prove to the more profoundly thoughtful, and to those
2.30 Phallicism. -
who can abstract themselves from the usages of life suf- ficiently to take independent views, “from the outside,” of their form and “ make-up” (as it were), and wonder at the uses, and the disgrace, in the exercise of certain of their members—seized and adapted to answer extra- ordinary objects, having nothing to do with the person’s individual well-being—all these strange matters startle and confuse, and supply the deepest problem in life.
The idea of the shame of the Act is the foundation of not only all celibacy or monasticism, both sacred and profane, and penance, or self-immolation—in other words, of * sacrifice’—but at once explains and justifies—even enjoins and orders it ;—at all events, in all instances of special self-devotion to the service of God-Almighty— for Priests, and those to whom are committed the guar- dianship, and, at the same time, the exercise of the mys- teries. For this reason, in the Romish Church, the cup of the “Sacrament,” the Cup of the “Holy Spirit of God,” or of the ‘* Holy Ghost,” is denied*to the Laity—- very properly and obviously. For this sacred, mystic reason—also very properly and obviously—the “ Blessed Cup,” the “Sang Real,’ or “Blood Royal” mystically in the elaborate and splendidly-magnificent “ parade of solemnities” of the High Christian Church—however, not acknowledged, and considered an illegitimate, or bastard, daughter of the Established Church, or Parliamentary Protestant Church (an impossible Church)—contains “mixed potation,” or “ water,” mixed with and diluting
or tempering the “wine,” the power, and the meaning of the full mystery conveyed in the Wine being veiled, even to the celebrants.
The Brothers of the “R. C.” sought resolutely to
Mystic Anatomy. 231
stand aloof from all mankind in these respects—of mas- tering their passions in regard to women. They laboured —and laboured successfully in their own way—to trample upon the base parts of their nature—to avert from the temptation and to refuse the embraces of women. ‘The histories of all the saints supply abundant proof of this ; the foundations of the principle of monasticism rest, all over the world, on this abnegation.
Curiously enough, in the observances of all peoples, especially in the instance of the older peoples, and those of the most highly refined and cultivated disposition, this hermit-like life, though contrary to nature [| even contrary to orders], was esteemed the holiest. There has always been a certain sort of apology offered to nature—as if nature were offended at, and only permitted in a certain coy and reluctant way, the kind of indecent thing; as if nature were frowning and deprecating, assenting in one sense, and refusing in another; disapproving, even denouncing. There has always been a sort of amiably apologetic idea about marriage. There has been implied (upwards) the plea, or the plaint of necessity :—certainly of necessity, but, just as certainly, of necessity seeking indulgence. Marriage, and the other tender relationship—so accen- tuated, but so signally snatched, and so transitory (happily so transitory, for otherwise it would make “ short work” with man—and woman, too !—and would soon kill) ; these pleasures are begged for with downcast eyes, and with hesitation and shamefacedness, as a boon—as a boon and
indeed !—in regard of which, every fibre of man of woman, too—particularly of the youth of either sex—passionately clamours. ‘To the body of man—and of woman also—that very fine work (the handiwork ?—
232 Phallicism.
yes, doubtless, the handiwork !)—of Nature, this -so very intimate halving or coincident magic junction, or fellowship “out of” nature, and “in” nature—and this at the “same time”) is the only heaven—at all events, is the best heaven. ‘The Bride has always been ashamed of herself. She has always needed consolation and simulated retrieval, as if to condone penalties. Some of the quaint forms of marriage, also, speak of the need of (and of the possible proffer of ) instant rescue—even at the instance of, and as by the ordainment proceeding from, Nature herself, or from the authors of nature. However, from the strictly phallic, and from the Priapean view—which is an universal one—the Bride has elected (hence come the prodigious responsibilities of the man) to forego the rights of pleased exercise which her mother, Nature, has conferred upon her—rights extending to an infinitely wider privilege than those assigned to the one man chosen (and, perhaps, the man soon to prove traitorous to his undertakings—which may, perhaps, be beyond him). She, herself, has, perhaps, in her fond and foolish, over-hasty trust, and ignorant and inconsiderate self- abnegation resigned her rights to a community general in regard to husbands, or efficients equivalent. This will depend upon the view taken of the natural rights of women in regard to the very proper, and very natural, and incontestably inalienable privileges, of her claims, as a woman, on man.* All women—of course all the girls,
* Mr. Long’s “ Babylonian Marriage Market’ (sold in 1882 to the Holloway Institution for 6,3co guineas) was absurdly named, | seeing that the subject had nothing whatever to do with marriage. Probably the aristocratic and other crowds who filled the Royal
Academy and gazed with curiosity upon this picture would have been shocked had it been descrited under its right name. When
Mystic Anatomy. 239
and the young women—may be, in some senses, con-
will England—and educated England, in the greater degree—become less hypocritical and more candid? The scene represented in the picture related to the historical, legalised indulgence of the ‘merest accidental lust (an awful tyranny), in fulfilment of a sacred obligatory law in Babylonia. We only wonder whether the crowds of ladies, old and young—most diligent in the avail of glasses to realise particulars—these mostly fashionable ladies, who crowded round and admired this picture (which fell far short indeed of its object), were aware of its real meaning.
The following is the authentic account of this slavish (but in its intention sublime). solemnity, as practised by the Babylonians, It is strictly true in all the particulars as given by Herodotus,
“Les Babyloniens,’ says Dulaure, ‘‘ont une loi bien honteuse ; toute femme, née dans le pays, est obligée, une fois. dans sa vie, de se rendre au temple de Vénus, pour s’y livrer a un étranger. Plusieurs d’entr’ elles, dédaignant de se voir confondues avec les autres, a cause de l’orgueil que leur inspirent leurs richesses, se font porter devant le temple dans des chars couverts. La, elles se tiennent assises, ayant derriére elles un grand nombre de domestiques qui les ont accompagnées; mais le plupart des autres s’ass¢yent dans la piéce de terre dépendante du temple de Vénus, avec une couronne de ficelle autour de la téte. Les unes arrivent, les autres se retirent. On voit en tout temps des allées séparées par des cordages tendus. Les étrangers se proménent dans ces allées, et choisissent les femmes qui leur plaisent le plus. Quand une femme a pris place en ce lieu, elle ne peut retourner chez elle que quelque étranger ne lui ait jeté de l’argent sur les genoux, et n’ait eu commerce avec elle hors du lieu sacré. I] faut que |’étranger, en lui jetant de argent, lui dise: ‘J’invoque la déese Mylitta.” Or les Assyriens donnent a Vénus le nom de Mylitta, Quelque modique que soit la somme, il n’éprouvera point de refus: la lot le défend; car cet argent devient sacré. Elle suit le premier qui lui jéte de l’argent; et il ne lui est permis de repousser personne. Enfin, quand elle s’est acquittée de ce quelle devait a la deese, en s’abandonnant a un étranger, elle retourne chez elle. Aprés cela, quelque somme qu’on lui donne, il n’est pas possible de la séduire. Celles qui ont en partage une taille élégante et de la beauté ne font pas un long séjour dans le temple; mais les laides y restent davantage, parce qu’elles ne peuvent satisfaire ala loi. Il y en a méme qui y demeurent trois ou quatre ans,”’—Herodote, Clio, chap, cxcix.
234 Phallicism.
sidered as the universal children of Venus—in this way ; the great Mother, the grand, sublime Isis; she whose “ veil’’—in magic awe—is never to be removed—be- cause, according to the mythologists, the consequences would be only too fatal. Venus is the “flower of heaven.” This is the Venus-Pandemos;—for the god- dess, Venus, has many names. In truth, Venus, in some of her phases, is double-sexed. There is the “ Venus barbata,” or “bearded Venus,” in the same double way, and with the same double meaning, as, in the mytho- logical sense, there is not only a Luma, but a Lunus. The name Venus, in itself, is masculine in its termination, and the goddess becomes the god, and the god the goddess, sometimes. The chief or leading Venus is, however, in the most beautiful and glorious relationship to man—the “Venus Victrix,” the Venus-Pandemos—that is, the patroness of all free women; or, to sum up in one super- lative word, Venus is the Grand “‘ Hussey” of the World. Now, in regard to the loftiest rights born with every female, and the talismanic tokens of which she bears, and parades (secretly) throughout the worlds, both visible and invisible—both natural and supernatural, both human and divine—she puts in evidence, in the establishment of which she can appeal to her personal proofs—unless (which happens, sometimes) she be defrauded by nature as “spoilt work”—which marshalling of proofs (as we repeat) is irresistible and triumphant in any court of the world, and has always so been—in any court, and before any judgment-seat, Human or Divine.
There is a large amount of hypocrisy in thus seeking to deal, in the selfish, apologetic, bargaining way, about the matters which are referred, coarsely, to the promptings
Mystic Anatomy. pe
of the “flesh.” In fact, they are simply promptings to signal honour and glory, and delight—but this, let it be remarked, in the natural sense. Now, the natural and the supernatural are utterly opposed, except where they stand as one, in magic and miracle—in regard to which, it is contended, throughout our book—and as the text of our book—that both are rea/ things. We—that is, the human race—as it were, protests to the superintending Providence in regard to this desire of the body—found So supreme a temptation that. the assault of it will even, in the instance of the most faithful man of God, endanger, or rather shake heartily, even down to the wholly “toppling down” thereof—his faith and his allegiance. Awful thought! We are prepared to swear a thousand oaths that we only wish it “ this once ;” and we pray, as - we pretend, for the withdrawal of the attention meanwhile, -and for the averting of the eyes. of the Deity—whatever this unknown Deity may seem, or show, or disclose, or “vouchsafe,” or be to us—even for a short moment; otherwise we feel that we cannot “command ourselves,” and we shall, in that unfortunate case, lay all the blame upon “nature,” or upon the God himself. We, as it were, put the case to the superintending Providence—we call ** Him,” or ‘It”—“ Nature,” because it then be- comes clearer to our senses, and is more reconcilable to our infirmities, which seek kinship and repose in nature, and by nature. We call all this “ outside”—-which, distrust and fear about it disturb; we seek to enter this court of the Mighty Judge by side entrances, and to essay the “private access,” in order to slink from the terrors, and to escape, in our fear and self-inclining, the challenge of those “ Awful Sentinels” which stand armed
236 Phallicism.
on either side of the legitimate, and only properly- authorised, entrance to the Tribunal. We call all of this “Nature,” being reluctant to acknowledge the vivid vitality of the “ Personality” of the Ruling and Governing God. Therefore we manufacture to ourselves all sorts of apologies and protestations about these certain ques- tionable incidents of “ marriage” (as they seem in human fear), and so forth; as if to’ask so many sanctions of the Church to make it holy, never being satisfied, or feeling quite easy, until blessing after blessing is sought over it—the trespass of the desire to live, and to enjoy, as then the only limit—to ask but once; and then to beg the privilege, in the interest of humanity, to the obtaining of a representative of ourselves and the continuing of man, securing the privilege, out of the mercy and forgive- ness of Providence, for forming such libidinous wishes, sprung as weeds only, fit for the fire, out of the “ devil- sown” mortal field, left as the legacy of the “Enemy of Mankind” for the fated inheritors of that fearful field, of and for the children of Adam to inherit—the heirs of the “ Curse.”
There is nothing in the lower and sensible world that is not produced and hath its image in the superior world. Since the form of the body, as well as the soul, is made after the image of the Heavenly Man, a figure of the forthcoming body which is to close the newly-descending soul is sent down from the celestial regions to hover over the couch of the husband and wife when they copulate, . in order that the conception may be formed according to this model. We have before declared, in this chapter on the mystic anatomy, enlarged upon by Cornelius Agrippa, that the human “ act,” by which the power of perpetua- tion has been placed in the exercise by man, and has been
Mystic Anatomy. Me dy
elevated into the irresistible natural temptation, is rightly a solemnity, or magic endowment, or celebration to which all nature not assents simply, but concurs, as the master- key, however blindly or ignorantly, or brutally often practised. The Sohar, iii., 104, a, b, declares that “ At connubial intercourse on earth, the Holy One (blessed be He!) sends a human form which bears the impress of the divine stamp. This form ‘is present at intercourse, and, if we were permitted to see it, we should perceive over our heads an image resembling a human face. And it is in this image that we are formed. As long as this image is not sent by God, and does not descend and hover over our heads, there can be no conception; for it is written, «¢ And God created man in his own image” (Gen. i. 27). This image receives us when we enter the world, it develops itself with us when we grow, and accompanies us when we depart this life, as it is written, “Surely man walked in an image.”
The followers of this secret doctrine of the Kabbalah claim for it a pre-Adamite existence. It is also called the secret wisdom, because it was only handed down by tradition through the initiated, and its whole story is indicated in the Hebrew Scriptures by signs which are hidden and unintelligible to those who have not been instructed in its mysteries. All human countenances are divisible into the four primordial types of face which appeared at the mysterious chariot-throne in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel—viz., the face of man, of the lion, the ox, and the eagle. Our faces resemble these more or less accord- ing to the rank which our souls occupy in the intellectual or moral dominion; and physiognomy does not consist in the external lineaments, but in the features: which are mysteriously drawn in us,
APPENDIX.
THE WORSHIP OF THE LINGAM (PHALLUS) OR MALE PRINCIPLE IN INDIA.
One day as Mahadeva (Siva) was rambling over the earth, naked and with a large club in his hand, he chanced to pass near the spot where several Munis were perform- ing their devotions. Mahadeva laughed at them, insulted them in the most provoking and indecent terms, and, lest his expressions should not be forcible enough, he accom- panied the whole with significant signs and gestures. The offended Munis cursed him, and his Linga or Phallus fell to the ground. Mahadeva in this state of mutilation travelled over the world bewailing his misfortune.
The world being thus deprived of its vivifying aac generation and vegetation were at a stand. Gods and men were alarmed, but, having discovered the cause of it, they all went in search of the sacred Linga, and at last found it grown to an immense size and endowed with life and motion. Having worshipped the sacred pledge, they cut it with hatchets into one-and-thirty pieces, which, polypus-like, soon became perfect Lingas. ‘The Devatas left one-and-twenty of them on earth, carried nine into heaven, and removed one into the inferior regions for the benefit of the inhabitants of the three worlds. .. . . To the event related is ascribed the origin of the Linga or Phallus and its worship. It is said to have happened on the banks of the Cumud-vati or-Euphrates,
240 Appendix.
and the first Phallus was erected on its banks (under the name of BaLeswara Linca). This is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus, who says that Semiramis brought an obelisk from the mountains of Armenia and erected | it in the most conspicuous part of Babylon. It was 150 feet high, and is reckoned by the same author one of the seven wonders of the world. The Jews, in their Talmud, allude to something of this kind; speaking of the different kinds of earth of which the body of Adam was formed, they say that the earth which composed his generative parts was brought from Baby- lon.—(Wilford, 4A Dissertation on Semiramis. Asiatic Researches, vol. iv., pp. 367—378.)
Henry O’Brien quotes from Sir William Jones an account of attempts made against Sheevah (Siva) by a sect of hypocritical devotees whose practices he had exposed. It concludes as follows:—“ Not yet disheartened by all these disappointments they collected all their prayers, their penances, their charities and other good works, the most acceptable of all sacrifices, and, demanding in return only vengeance against Sheevah, they sent a consuming fire to destroy his genital parts. Sheevah, incensed at this attempt, turned the fire with indignation against the human race, and mankind would have soon been destroyed had not Vishnou, alarmed at the danger, implored him to suspend his wrath. At his entreaties Sheevah relented. But it was ordained that in his temples those parts should be worshipped which the false devotees had impiously attempted to destroy.” And accordingly the Eastern votaries, suiting the action to the idea, and that their vivid imagination might be still more enlivened by the very form of the temple in which they addressed their
Appendix. 241
vows, actually constructed its architecture after the model of the membrum virile, which, obscenity apart, is the divinely-formed and indispensable medium selected by God himself for human propagation and sexual prolificacy. This was the Phallus of which we read in Lucian, in his treatise ‘De Dea Syria,’ as existing in Syria of such extraordinary height, the counterpart of our Round Towers, and both prototypes of the two ‘pillars’ which Hiram wrought before the temple of Solo- mon.” (O’Brien, Round Towers of Ireland, 100- 101.)
A Frenchman recently returned from India, and who furnishes me with these details, assures me of his having furtively penetrated into the most secret sanctuary of the pagoda of Treviscare, consecrated to the worship of Siva, and having seen there a kind of granite pedestal consisting of a large base and a column supporting a basin, from the centre of which runs vertically a colossal Lingam about three feet high. Below, in the stone forming the base, is a large cleft representing the female sex. In this sanc- tuary, which is only lit from above, and on this stone, the priests of Siva initiate into the mysteries of love the young devidanis or dancing girls of the temple.— (Dulaure, Histoire Abrégée de differens Cultes.)
Unlike the abominable realities of Egypt and Greece, we see the phallic emblem in the Hindu Pantheon without offence, and know hot, until the information be extorted, that we are contemplating a symbol whose prototype is indelicate. Obelisks and pillars, of whatever shape, are symbols of Siva or Mahadeva. He is Fire, the destroyer, the generator, and the conical or pyramidal shape being the natural form of fire, is applied to its representative and
R
242 Appendix.
symbolised by a triangle apex upward. As the deity pre- siding over generation his type is the Linga, almost the only form under which he is reverenced. It is also, perhaps, the most ancient object of homage adopted in India subsequently to the ritual of the Vedas, which was chiefly, if not wholly, addressed to the elements, and par- ticularly to fire. There can be no doubt that at the period of the Mahommedan invasion the worship of the Linga was common all over India. ‘T'welve great Lingas, which were objects of especial veneration, were at that time standing at widely distant places, one being at Rameriseram in the extreme south. Of these several were destroyed by the early Mahommedan conquerors, the most notable being that at Somnath, in Guzerat, demo- lished by Mahmud of Ghizni, concerning which Mirk- hond, a contemporary of that conqueror, writes as fol- lows :——“ The temple in which the idol of Somnath stood was of considerable extent both in length and breadth. The idol was of polished stone. Its height was about five cubits, and its thickness in proportion ; two cubits were below ground, Mahmud, having entered the temple, broke the stone Somnath with a heavy mace. Some of the fragments he ordered to be conveyed to Ghizni, and they were placed at the threshold of the great mosque.” The story of the idol being hollow and having a number of jewels hidden within it is a modern European embel- lishment, for which no foundation is discoverable. ‘The Hindus insist that the blackstone in the walls of the Caaba at Mecca is a Linga or Phallus of Mahadeva, and that it was placed in the wall, out of contempt, on the establishment of Islamism, but that the newly-converted pilgrims would not give up its worship, and that the
Appendix. 243
ministers of the new religion were consequently forced to connive at it. At present the principal seats of the Linga worship are in the north-east and the south of India, parts furthest removed from the early Brahmanical settlements, a circumstance serving to confirm the theory that this worship is a remnant of the ante-Brahmanical religion. The temples dedicated to it are square buildings, the roofs of which are round and tapering to a point. In many parts of Hindustan, and notably along the banks of the Ganges, they are more numerous than those dedi- cated to the worship of any other of the Hindu idols. Each of the temples in Bengal consists of a single chamber of a square form, surmounted by a pyramidal centre; the area of each is very small. The Linga, of black and white marble, occupies the centre; the offerings are pre- sented at the threshold. Benares is the peculiar seat of this form of worship, the principal deity there, Viswes- wara, “the Lord of All,” being a Linga, and most of the chief objects of pilgrimage being similar objects of stone. Some of these emblems, usually of basalt, are of enormous size, one at Benares requiring six men to encircle it. Lingas of the sort called partha linga are made for daily or temporary purposes by Brahmans or by women them- selves, of earth or of the clay of the Ganges, and offered in Siva’s temples, being thrown into the river after wor- ship. ‘The Linga is never carried in procession. Devi, Siva’s consort, is often represented with a Linga on her head. One of the forms in which the Linga worship appears is that of the Lingayets, Lingawants or Jangamas, the essential characteristic of which is wearing the emblem on some part of the dress or person, ‘The type is of small size, made of copper or silver, and is commonly worn
244. Appendix.
suspended in a case round the neck, or sometimes tied in the turban. They are numerous in the Deccan, especially in Mysore, and also in’ Tehngana.—Moor, Hindu Pantheon. Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus. Wilson, Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus. Wilford, Dissertation on Semiramis, &c.
The strictest chastity it prescribed to the priests of Siva, and when they exercise their ministry they are bound to abstain from all desires that the image they worship might suggest. As they are obliged to officiate in a state of nudity it follows that should they fail to control their thoughts, and should excited imagination transmit its influence to their external organs, the people, who could not fail at once to become cognizant of such prickings of the flesh, would stone them.—(Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, 1, 311.)
PHYSIOLOGICAL CONTESTS—THE PELASGI—THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND—ADORATION OF THE VULVA.
There is a legend in the Servasaru of which the figu- rative meaning is obvious. When Parvati (Devi) was united in marriage to Mahadeva (Siva), the divine pair had once a dispute on the comparative influence of the sexes in producing animated beings, and each resolved by mutual agreement to create a new race of men. The race produced by Mahadeva were very numerous, and devoted themselves exclusively to the worship of the male deity, but their intellects were dull, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted, and their complexion of many different hues. Parvati had at the same time created a multitude of human beings who adored the female power only, and were all well-shaped, with sweet
Appendix. 245
aspects and fine complexions. A furious contest ensued between the two nations, and the Lingajas were defeated in battle; but Mahadeva, enraged against the Yonijas, would have destroyed them with the fire of his eye, if Parvati had not interposed and appeased him; but he would spare them only on condition that they should instantly leave the country, with a promise to see it no more, and from the Yoni, which they adored as the sole cause of their existence, they were named Yavanas, .. . There is a sect of Hindus who, attempting to reconcile the two systems, tell us, in their allegorical style, that Parvati and Mahadeva found their concurrence essential to the perfection of their offspring, and that Vishnu, at the request of the goddess, effected a reconciliation between them ; hence the navel of Vishnu, by which they mean the os tince, is worshipped as one and the same with the sacred Yoni.—Wilford, On Egypt and the Nile. Asiatic Researches, vol. iil., pp. 361 —363.)
The modern Hindu phallic worship is mainly of this type. “The Argha, with the Linga of stone, is found all over India as an object of worship ; it is strewed with flowers, and water is poured on the Linga. The rim represents the Yoni” (Wilford, On the Sacred Isles in the West. Asiatic Researches, vol, viil., p. 274). ‘ The Linga, the immediate type of the regenerator Siva, is generally represented in mystical conjunction with the Yoni and Argha. ... . If he dig a pond, the Hindu, if a Saiva, imagines it a type of the Yoni or Devi, and cannot fully enjoy the comfort it offers him until it be reunited to the other types of elemental nature. After numerous cere- monies, a mast is, on a lucky and sacred day, inserted into the centre of the mysterious Yoni or tank. The
246 Appendix.
mast represents the Linga or Siva, and now the typical reunion of the original powers of nature is complete. The last ceremony of placing the Linga or mast is com- monly called the marriage of the Linga and Yoni, Strictly speaking, the brim of the tank is the Yoni, its area the Argha. In front of most temples of eminence is seen a tank, some of them exceedingly beautiful, and in the centre of the tank a mast, generally with wooden steps nailed up its sides, to facilitate ascent to its cross-trees, for the purpose of hoisting a flag or decorating the Linga or mast with garlands of flowers, or sprinkling it with water, or placing lights on it. In some temples Devi is exclusively worshipped by her votaries, the Sactis, and the tanks attached to such temples have no mast or Linga.”—(Moor, Hindu Pantheon, 385—390.)
The Phallic, and at the stme time Persian, origin of those remarkable monuments, the Irish Round Towers, has been most exhaustively demonstrated by Henry O’Brien. According to him they were erected by a colony of the ‘Tuath-de-Danaans, or Lingam-God- Almoners, who, fleeing from Iran, the ancient name of Persia, in consequence of the victories achieved by their rivals, the Pish-de-Danaans, or Yoni-God-Almoners, settled in Ireland. The names Fiadh-Nemeadh, or Fidh-Ne- mead, given to them in early Irish annals, he translates as Consecrated Lingams, Fidh being the plural of Budh, which signifies not only the sun as the source of genera- tion, but also the male organ. He continues :—‘ The Round Towers of Ireland were specifically constructed for the twofold purpose of worshipping the Sun and Moon —as the authors of generation and vegetative heat—and from the nearer converse which their elevation afforded of
Appendix. — 247
studying the revolutions and properties of the planetary orbs. . . . . Having been all erected in honour of the Budh or Linga, they all partook of the phallic form; but as several enthusiasts personified this abstract, which, in consequence of the mysteries involved in the thought and the impenetrable veil which shrouded it from the vulgar, became synonymous with wisdom or wise man, it was necessary, of course, that the Towers constructed in honour of each should portray the distinctive attributes of the individuals specified. Hence the difference of apertures towards the preeputial apex, the crucifixions over the doors, and the absence or presence of internal compartments. Those venerable piles vary in their eleva- tion from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet. At some distance from the summit there springs out a sort of covering, which, accompanied as it sometimes is with a cornice, richly sculptured in foliage, in imitation preputii humani, terminates above in a sort of sugar-loaf crown. Their diameter at the base is generally about fourteen feet through, that inside measuring about eight, which de- creases gradually but imperceptibly to the top, where it may be considered as about six feet in the interior. The distance of the door from the level of the ground varies from four to twenty-four feet, The higher the door, the more irrefragable is the evidence of the appropriation of the structure. The object was twofold: at once to keep off profane curiosity and allow the votaries the undis- turbed exercise of their devotions, and to save the relics deposited underneath from the irreverent gaze of the casual itinerant. In their masonic construction there is nothing in the Irish Towers appertaining to any of the four orders of architecture prescribed by the moderns.
2.48 | Appendix.
Prepared stone is the material of which they are generally composed, and evidently, in some instances, brought from afar. Sometimes also they appear constructed of an artificial substance, resembling a reddish brick, squared, and corresponding to the composition of the Round Towers.of Mazunderan. With three exceptions all have a row of apertures towards the top, just under the pro- Jecting roof, In general the number is four, and then they correspond to the cardinal points. In three instances there is one aperture towards the summit, in one instance there occur five, in one six, in one seven, in one eight apertures, Inside they are perfectly empty from the door upwards, but most of them are divided, either by rests or projecting stones, into lofts or stories, varying in number from three to eight. A striking perfection observable in their construction is the imimitable perpendicular imvari- ably maintained.”? (O’Brien, Round Towers of Ireland, 61, 5tI—S15.)
“When once the idea obtained that our world was female, it was easy to induce the faithful to believe that natural chasms were typical of that part which charac- terises woman, As at birth the new being emerges from the mother, so it was supposed that emergence from a terrestrial cleft was equivalent to a new birth. In direct proportion to the resemblance between the sign and the thing signified, was the sacredness of the chink, and the amount of virtue which was imparted by passing through it. From natural chasms being considered holy the vene- ration for apertures in stones, as being equally symbolical,. was a natural transition.” (Inman, Ancient Faiths em- bodied in Ancient Names, i., 415.)
The most ancient oracle and place of worship at Delphos
Appendix. 249
was that of the earth in a cave which was called Delphi, an obsolete Greek word synonymous with Yoni in Sanscrit; for it is the opinion of devout Hindus that caves are symbols of the sacred Yoni. This opinion prevailed also in the West, for perforations and clefts in stones and rocks were called Cavim Diaboli by the first Christians, who always bestowed the appellation of devils on the deities of the heathen. Perforated stones are not un- common in India, and devout people pass through them, when the opening will admit it, in order to be regene- rated.—(Wilford, On Mount Caucasus. Asiatic Re- searches, vol, Vi. p. 502.)
Those prophetic women of Etruria designated Sibyls were, says O’Brien, “named from the same cause, being priestesses of the serpent—i.e., the Sabh or Yoni. . ... Pythia is exactly synonymous with Sibyl, meaning the priestess who presided over the Pith, which, like Sabhus, means as well serpent as Yoni, and the oracle which she attended was called Delphi, from De, divine, and phith, Yoni—it being but a cave in the shape of that symbol, over the orifice of which the priestess used to take her seat upon a sacred tripod or the religiously-emblematic pyramid.” Dr. Inman says that in some places it was positively believed that “oracles of a peculiarly sacred nature were uttered by or through the vulva—i.e., /a bocca inferiore of sibyls, pythonesses, or statues, or through clefts in the earth, as at Delphi.” So, according to Major- General Forlong, the image of gold set up by Nebu- chadnezzar on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, was nothing but a phallic obelisk, as is shown by its height being sixty cubits and its diameter but six.— (Rivers of Life, 1.5 304.)
250 Appendix.
LINGAM GODS IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Of the worship of the lingam General Forlong writes : — of the overruling prevalence of this faith and of the _ number of its lingam gods throughout our islands. We have been hoodwinked by the unjustifiable term ‘ crosses’ applied to the ancient symbols, which were always in the form of obelisks or columns, and erected on prominent places, as on knolls or open woodland sites, at cross roads and centres of marts or villages. These emblems were usually on a platform, raised one to five or even seven steps. The only plausible reason for calling these objects ‘crosses’ is that, being the Terminus or pillar-god, he is usually found where fields, paths or highways meet or cross, and. because the new faith, as it triumphed over the old, laboured to adapt, remodel and rename the old columns and pedestals, to suit the new ideas, and in its ignorance lost sight of the old deity, both in the Lingam and Cross. The Fire-god might still have his niches on these shafts, but with Virgins and babies, having circles or haloes round them, and in company with rayed suns, roses, triangles and horse-shoe forms, sufficiently appro- priate to please the most fantastic Yonik or Ionian worshippers ; whilst arrows, or spear-heads and daggers, were transformed into fleur-de-lis charms, grateful to the vision of every Lingam devotee. The mutilation and transformation were probably thought complete when the columns were surmounted by a cross in the old Tau or circle forms; which, however, only rendered the whole more replete with Sivaik symbolism. As education, or rather power to follow preachers, was attained, these
Appendix. 251
‘Bethels, or ‘ Village Crosses,’ had roofs erected over them, or the roof was sprung from a point about three- quarters up the shaft, and carried on pillars and buttresses ; the base was in some cases cut away to give more room and shelter for gatherings. Elsewhere the lingam was thickened or wholly encased, and so veiled by the ornate architecture of the time, that none but an awakened or practised and educated eye could detect the old symbolism. - . + . There is no mistaking the consistent conclusion of Britton’s researches that ‘the original form of all market crosses was simply a stem like Chester, or a tall shaft on steps.’ It suits precisely this Innis Mura of Ireland, the god of the Roman nympheum, and. all the unadorned Lingams of the East, as distinguished from the Sri-Lin- gams, or Linga-in-Argha, It was natural for the new priest to resort to the old and sacred places of meeting, at the foot of the old god’s pedestal, and in time to erect there a canopy or shelter for himself and congregation. .... Lhe shires of Glocester, Wilts, and Somerset, still claim over two hundred ‘crosses and remains of crosses,’ erected not only as the centres round which towns grew, but on hill-tops, islands, headlands, by sacred wells and on dangerous defiles. That these objects were a power in the land—recognised faith-emblems—we see from the fierce and persistent manner in which so many earnest Christian sects warred against them and all their ephemeral substitutes, such as maypoles, holy trees, and real crosses. The iconoclasts knew, what others in later times forgot, that these were no modern symbols, but emblems of their great enemy, that powerful faith which had struck its roots deep and widely into every sensuous and emotional feeling of man’s nature.” (Rivers of Life,
252 Appendix. ii, 381—383.) The author proceeds to give a brief
account of a number of so-called crosses, the phallic origin of which may be visibly recognised. ‘To quote a few of these descriptions may be interesting. “ Glendower shaft at Corwen, Merioneth, a blunted column with a Yoni or Omega form at head, and a ‘curious dagger’ or spear, the conventional phallic device.” “The Bisley shaft, Glocestershire, is a perfect Lingam, or the glans of one, such as we see on Assyrian altar sculpturings, and it is said to be built over a sacred well.” ‘ Tottenham, or Tothamshire, is a covering to the old Toth or Linga, and is now a Solid spire, risiny straight from the ground, the favourite form throughout the Eastern world.” The Nevern shaft, Pembroke, would pass for a good Maha- deva in any part of India.” ‘Cheddar shaft, on the Mendip Hills, and Chipping Column, North Glocester- shire, are or were the most perfect Mahadevas possible, both as to column and pediment, being raised on three steps, like so many Eastern lingams.” “Glastonbury shaft was clearly a lingam or glans, such as Assyrians worshipped, but much more tapered, and ending in a nude figure. Britton wrote that it had fallen with the building surrounding it—the Yoni or cell—into complete decay in his time.” (Jdid., ii., 385-6.)
O’Brien points out the Phallic origin of the may- pole. The garland traversed by the pole was typical of the Yoni, the pole of the Lingam.
“In Southern England two names occur in later days, which seem to have somewhat replaced Taut,—Idris the Giant, and Michael the Archangel. The latter has been worshipped as a god at various times, and in widely different countries, but usually in or near to waters, as in
Appendix. 258
Armorika, Apulia, and on the sacred islet cone of St. Michael, where Romans, as well as Phoenicians, seem to have thickly congregated ; and upon his mount St. Michael had also a chair, the Celtish euphemism for ark or womb.
. . - There are four great archangels which the world has, at different times and under various forms, accepted as Maha Kals or Great Sivas. The Michael or archangel of Jahveh corresponds to the Gabriel of Ala, and is a god of ‘ Tumbas,’ caves or arks, wielding a rod or Tri-Sool. . . . . Without Mahakal the labourer laboureth in vain, the fig-tree cannot blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls... . . The Corn- wall and Normandy mounts of St. Michael are com- paratively close to each other, and the latter is also called a Mons Tumba. The faith ideas of these St. Michaels are ever the same. .. . . At Penzance, on Midsummer- eve, which good Christians prefer to call the eve of St. John the Baptist, the young and old of both sexes assemble with lighted torches; three tar-barrels erected on tall poles in the market-place, on the pier and in other conspicuous spots, are then urged into a state of vivid combustion. No sooner are the torches burned out (there is evident significance here) than the imhabitants pour forth from the quay and its neighbourhood, form a long string, and run furiously through every street, vocife- rating ‘An eye! an eye!’ (‘Ishtar! Ishtar !”), and at length suddenly stop, when the two last of the string (a mighty serpent), elevating their clasped hands, form an eye to this enormous needle (Siva), through which the thread of populace runs, and thus they continue to repeat the game
254 Appendix. till weariness dissolves the union,”—(Kivers of Life, ii. 244-249, 1. 456.)
“In the churchyard of the village of Rudstone, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, there stands fixed in the ground a single upright stone. It stands about four yards from the north-east corner of Rudstone Church, which is situated on a high hill. Its depth underground is equal to its height above—a fact which was ascertained by Sir William Strickland in the year 1776. All the four sides are a little convex, and the whole covered with moss. It is of a very hard kind of stone. It is twenty- four feet long above ground, and it is five feet ten broad and two feet thick. The weight of it has been computed at upwards of forty tons. The village probably took its name from the stone. The word Rud in Yorkshire means red. It is spelt Rudstan, and often Ruddestan. Imme- diately adjoining to the town of Boroughbridge, inthe North Riding of Yorkshire, and within about a mile of the ancient capital of Britain, Iseur, may be seen three similar stones, almost equally large.” (Godfrey Higgins, Celtic Druids, \xxiv.) Here is a perfect Linga, and the asso- ciation with the word red is very significant, this colour being used in anointing such stones. Higgins himself elsewhere says, “ Throughout all the world the first object of idolatry seems to have been a plain unwrought stone, placed in the ground as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of Nature.”—(Celtic Druids, 209.)
“No one who has studied phallic and solar worship in the East could,” says the author of Rivers of Life, “make any mistake as to the purport of the shrine at Stone- henge; although I confess the many accounts of it I had read had not awakened my attention to the real facts, so
Append:x. 255
misleading are many European writers on this, to them, unknown lore. Here stand upright stones, forming, as it were, a circular shaft within a perfect argha, or spoon- like inclosure, and there to the eastward the holy ‘Pointer’ in the Os Yoni, over whose apex the first ray of the rising god of the midsummer solstice shines right into the centre of the sacred circle. . . . . In May, 1874, I made some very careful drawings of the Stonehenge shrine, and in the ‘ Pointer’ at once distinguished ‘the ever-anointed one.? He faces towards the circle, and in spite of every allowance for the accidents of weather- wear, &c., no one who has at all looked into Sivaik lore will hesitate for a moment in pronouncing him a veritable Maha-Deva; the prepucial lines have worn stronger than they probably first were, so that decency forbids our drawing the object larger..... Those persons who have studied such monoliths all over the world in the market crosses and Hermai at cross-roads in Scythic and Celtish lands, and in the shrines of Greek and Latin races, will have no hesitation in agreeing with me.”—
aces of Life, vol. i1., p..233.)
PHALLIC WORSHIP AMONG THE GAULS.
A curious survival of the Phallic worship thus inaugu- rated in France subsisted down to a comparatively recent period, ‘The first Bishop of Lyons, Potin or Photin, was honoured in Provence, Languedoc and the Lyonnais, as St. Foutin. Under this name, the connexion of which with “foutre” is obviously the reason for his being thus selected, he replaced Priapus, whose attributes were conferred upon him, and whose outward semblance he usurped, To him was ascribed the power of rendering
256 Appendix.
barren women fertile, of restoring exhausted manhood, and of curing secret diseases, and it was consequently the custom to offer to him, as to his predecessor Priapus, ex voto in wax, representing the weak or afflicted members. At Varages, in Provence, the floor of his chapel was covered with them, and when the wind happened to clash them together the thoughts of those paying their devotions to the saint were apt to be suggestively interrupted. At Embrun amongst the relics in the principal church was included the phallus of St. Foutin, and the worshippers of this, in imitation of pagan rites, offered libations to their idol by pouring wine on its extremity, which is described as being reddened by the practice. The wine was caught in a jar and allowed to turn sour, when, under the name’ of “holy vinegar,” it was employed by women for a singular purpose. At Orange, in the church of St. Eutropius, was another phallus made of wood, covered with leather, and furnished with its natural appendages, which was highly venerated by the inhabitants of the - town, but which was burnt by the Protestants in the market-place in 1562, when it emitted a very evil odour. At Puy en Velay barren women prayed to a St. Foutin, and scraped away an enormous phallic branch presented by the saint, believing that these scrapings infused in drink would render them fertile. Other Priapic statues were similarly converted into saints. At Bourg Dieu, near Bourges, the inhabitants continued to worship one existing, no doubt, from the time of the Romans. The monks not daring to put an end to such religious practices, converted it into St. Guerlichon, or Greluchon. Barren women flocked to the abbey to implore the saint’s prolific aid and to celebrate a novena in his honour, and on
Appendix. 257
each of the nine days stretched themselves at full length on his figure placed horizontally, and then scraped away some particles from a part of his person as prominent as the corresponding member in his prototype Priapus. These particles in water constituted a miraculous beverage, and the continued belief in their efficacy resulted in a diminution of the member in question. At the commence- ment of the present century a statue of St. Greluchon was to be seen, in the wall of a house at Bourges, with its member almost entirely scraped away by female devotees. St. Gilles in Brittany, St. Réné in Anjou, St. Regnaud, and St. Arnaud, were similarly adored, though in the case of the latter a mystic apron usually shrouded the symbol of fecundity, and was only raised in favour of sterile devotees ; its mere inspection was, how- ever, sufficient, with faith, to effect miracles. Near Brest stood the chapel of St. Guignolé, or Guingalais, evidently derived from gignere, to beget. The phallic symbol of this saint consisted of a long wooden peg traversing his statue, and showing itself in front in a very salient fashion. The local votaries scraped off the end of this miraculous and never-failing peg, and these scrapings, mixed with water, formed a powerful antidote to sterility, though scandal credits the monks of the abbey with affording a certain amount of aid in this matter. When by oft- repeated scrapings the peg got worn away, a blow from behind with a mallet brought it to its pristine prominence, and thus another miracle was presented to the faithful, whose devotion continued unabated till the middle of the eighteenth century. Guignolet was also honoured at Puy in the same way, the scrapings being infused in this case in wine, and the curé taking care that the phallus was
S
238 ; Appendix,
always in a state of prominence befitting the saint’s peculiar reputation, and although an archbishop in this instance tried to put a stop to the cult, it subsisted till the Revolution.— (Dulaure, Histoire Abrégée de differens Cultes,ii., 267, 5€99.)
The enormous phallus of white marble found at Aix, in Provence, was an ex-voto offered to the deity presiding over the thermal waters, by a grateful or expectant patient. The bas-reliefs of the Pont du Gard and the amphitheatre at Nimes show singular varieties of phalli, simple, double, and triple, with branches, pecked by birds, furnished with wings, claws, bells, &c. One is bridled and ridden by a woman hojding the reins, At Chatelet, in Champagne, a triple phallus in bronze, with the central member in repose, and the other two in the fullest vigour, was discovered. One of the most singular monuments of this worship was found in an ancient tomb discovered near Amiens. It is in bronze, and represents a human figure in a walking attitude, half covered with the kind of hood called Bardocuculus. It is in two parts, and on removing the upper portion, consisting of the head, arms, and body, a Phallus hidden in its hollow is revéaled, and appears standing on the two human legs. The chapter of the cathedral of Amiens preserved this in its treasury till the Revolution (Dulaure, 11., 240—243). Drinking-glasses ‘made in the form of Phalli, such as were used in the mysteries of Colyth, have been discovered. In the museum at Portici, on the cover of an ancient vase, which seems to have been used for sacred purposes, is an enormous phallus, which a woman is embracing with her arms and legs; whilst another shows a dealer in phalli, offering a basketful of his wares to a woman, who exhibits evident delight at their extraordinary proportions,
Appendix. 259 PHALLIC IDOLATRY OF THE JEWS.
“No one can study their history, liberated from the blind which our Christian associations cast over us, with- out seeing that the Jews were probably the grossest worshippers amongst all those Ophi-Phallo-Solar devotees who then covered every land. ‘These impure faiths seem to have been very strictly maintained up to Hezekiah’s days, and by none more so than by dissolute Solomon, This king devoted his energies and some little wealth to rear- ing Phallic or Solo-Phallic and Fire shrines over all the high places around him, and especially in front of Jerusalem, and on and around the Mount of Olives..... The builders of the shrines of the Tyrian Hercules were those whom this prince got in Hiram and his staff; and seeing Phallic and Sun-gods enshrined on all the mounts of ‘the holy city,’ Hiram would not forget, in constructing Solomon’s temple, all the idolatrous forms of his own land. On each side of the entrance, under the great phallic spire which formed the portico, were placed two handsome phallic columns over fifty feet high, capped with lotuses encircled with pomegranates, a representation of the Queen of Heaven and of the gravid uterus, and the symbol of a happy and fruitful wedded life... .. The phallic columns were hung about with wreaths of chains, which always denote serpents. ... . These columns were called, that on the right Jakin, or ‘he that shall establish,’ and that on the left Boaz, or ‘in it is strength.’ Syrian temples had two huge phallic columns in the vestibule, so that Jakin and Boaz in Solomon’s shrine were strictly in keeping. ‘The constant recurrence of two stones, whenever stones are required, is a strange but consistent idiosyncrasy of all phallic-worshipping races,
260 Appendix.
The temple was only 120 feet long, 40 broad, and 60 high, in two stories, while the porch was a large tower, 40 feet long, 20 broad, and 240 high! The Holy of Holies was cut off with golden chains from the rest of the inner temple, shrouded and bedecked with two hooded serpents, called Cherubim, and with serpent symbols. The carvings on the walls were symbolic palm-trees, open flowers and cherubim, &c. The temple was very like hundreds we see in the East, except that its walls were a little higher than usual and the phallic spire out of pro- portion. The Jewish porch is but the obelisk which the Egyptian placed beside his temple, the Boodhist pillars which stood all around their Dagobas, the pillars of Hercules, which stood near the Phoenician temple, and the spire which stands beside the Christian church. The little ark stands under the shadow of the great spire, and beside the real little ark within we have the idea repeated by the presence of Jakin and Boaz.”—(Forlong, Rivers of Life, 1.5 213—219.)
HEBREW BAAL-PEGOR.
The ceremonies observed in the worship of Baal Phegor, or Baal Peor, have exercised the pens of several commentators. According to Philo worshippers pre- sented all the outward orifices of the body. Rabbi Solomon Jarchi, in his Commentary on Numbers xxv., ascribes to them a still more indecent and disgusting practice. According to him the worshipper, presenting his bare posteriors to the altar, relieved his bowels, and offered the result to the idol, “Eo quod distendebant coram illo foramen podicis et stercus offerebant.” Beyer concludes that the Moabitish women first prostituted
Appendix. 261
themselves to the idol and then to the Israelites, and this view is held by St. Jerome, who, in his commentary on Hosea ix., represents the idol as having in its mouth the characteristic of Priapus, “ Denique interpretatur Beel Phegor idolum tentiginis habens in ore, id est in summi- tate pellem, ut turpitudinem membri virili ostenderet.” Inman, translating peor as “the opening of the maiden’s hymen,” and Baal Peor as “My Lord the opener,” holds him to have been a Priapus, and adds: “From time immemorial the virginity of woman has been spoken of as her greatest treasure. Hence it has been claimed for the deity. In ancient times the claim was made by the god as personated by or inhabiting the body of his priest on earth. Sometimes the demand was made for the god as represented by his image, which was specially formed for the purpose.”
HEBREW PHALLICISM.
Brugsch Bey, in his address regarding the Jewish Exodus, delivered at the Oriental Congress in 1874, said that “the serpent of brass called Kereh, or the polished, was regarded as the living symbol of God.” A serpent and a pole for a perpetually recurring phallic emblem. It may generally be taken to represent the membrum virile, accompanied by the quickening or exciting passion. The Israelites had certainly no monopoly of it,
The exact shape and make of the image set up by Aaron to be worshipped in the wilderness has been greatly squabbled over by orthodox and unorthodox. The best Hebraists hold the translation ‘calf’ untenable, and even if it were probable that the Israelites, as has been alleged, had a recrudescence towards the.faith of their loathed taskmasters the Egyptians, there remains
262 Appendix.
the fact that the image of a calf holds no part in the mythological pantheon of these latter, whose adoration was paid to living bulls and cows. ‘The most tenable view philologically is that something round or orbicular, possibly a cone like that symbolising Venus, is intended by the original word employed.
The ancient Jews had small Lares and Penates, or Yonis and Lingams. We have two instances of such in the idols of Rebeccah and the Queen Mother Maachah (1 Kings xv. 13)—that of the Queen is called a Miphlit- zeth, or in the language of the Vulgate, a “ Simulacrum Priapi.” In those oscillations into idolatry, of which they were culpable from the very outset, they appear some- times to have leaned to the masculine and sometimes to the feminine cult, though it may be said that generally the tribes preferred the worship of the female energies or of the Grove. The Ephod, like the Ark, is a feminine symbol, and Gideon’s attack on the altar of Baal was an attempt to upset the worship of the Sun-god. Micah, having both Ephod and Teraphim, the latter being Lin- gams or penates, seems to have worshipped both organs. In latter times we find the dwellers on Mounts Moriah and Zion, Ebal and Gerizim, at constantly recurrent enmity, and different cults prevailing alternately or exist- ing coevally. “Our inspection of and _ investigations regarding the sacred shrines in and about Jerusalem—and of many similar sacred hills in the East, where the votaries of the Right and Left Hand sects, Sivais and Vishnuvas, or Ion-im, have similarly determined upon a joint worship —has long convinced us that the Holy Sepulchre was the Lingam and Solar Fire shrine of the ‘Secret God,’ ‘ The Most High,’ and ‘Lord of all Holy Fires, and that the
Appendix. 263
great Omphik or Wombal Mount of Muré or Moriah was the Vishnuite shrine of Terra or Parvati, mother of all rounded mounts, especially those with caves and wells” (Forlong, Rivers of Life, ii., 583). The writer proceeds to point out very clearly the existing traces of such worship in either instance,
It is clearly established that the word “ thigh,”’ used in Genesis xxiv. 2 and xlvii. 29, is a euphemism for that member the przputial curtailment of which was a covenant between the children of Israel and the Al- mighty. ‘The hand of ‘the eldest servant of the house’ and that of Joseph were placed respectively on the phallus of Abraham and of Jacob when the oaths referred to in the verses noted were taken. The practice still prevails, “When the Mamlouks appeared for the first time at Rahmanyah our pickets arrested a native of the district who was crossing the plain. ‘The volunteers who took him asserted that they had seen him leave the enemies’ lines, and treated him harshly, looking on him as a spy. Meeting them, I ordered him to be taken to headquarters. Reassured by the way in which he per- ceived I was speaking, he sought to prove that he was not a follower of the Mamlouks. Seeing that I could not understand him he lifted up his blue shirt, and taking his phallus in his hand, remained for a moment in the theatrical attitude of a god swearing by the Styx. His face seemed to say, ¢ After the terrible oath I am taking © to prove my innocence, can you doubt it? His action reminded me that in the times of Abraham the.truth was sworn to by placing the hand on the organ of genera- tion.’ —(Mémoire sur ? Egypte, part il., p. 195.)
“There is a striking resemblance eae the Hindoo
264 Appendix.
and the Hebrew myths. The first tells us that Maha- deva was the primary being, and that from him arose the Sacti, The second makes Adam the original and Eve the product of his right side. After the creation the Egyptian, Vedic, and Jewish stories all place the woman beside a citron or pomegranate tree, or else one bearing both fruits; near this is a cobra or asp, the emblem of male desire, because these serpents can inflate and erect themselves at will. The unopened flowers of the citron and its fruit resemble a testicle in shape; the flower of the pomegranate is shaped like a bell, which closely resembles the female breast, and when arranged in bunches of three, recalls to mind the phallic triad. The fruit of the pomegranate typifies the full womb. The eating of the apple is equivalent to receiving that which is at this day, to many a young and fair daughter of Eve, ‘the direful spring of woes unnumbered.’ ”—(Inman, Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names, i., 498-9.)
GNOSTIC RITES.
The belief and practices of some of the Gnostic sects were most revolting. ‘The soul, according to the Ophites, on its departure from the body, has to pass through the regions of the Seven Powers, which it cannot do unless fully impregnated with knowledge (gnosis), otherwise it is seized and swallowed by. the dragon- formed ruler of the world (Satan Ophiomorphos), and voided through his tail back upon earth, where it animates a swine or other brute, and repeats its career once more. But if filled with knowledge it escapes the Seven Powers, tramples upon the head of Sabaoth, and ascends to the eighth heaven, the abode of Barbelo, the Universal
Appendix. 265
Mother. But if convicted of having left any offspring - upon earth, it is detained below until it has collected all of them and attracted them within itself. This ¢ collec- tion of itself? was obtained by the observance of perpetual chastity, or rather (by the usual compensation) of all the unnatural vices that invariably spring from such an article of faith. If, however, a female of the congregation should allow herself to become pregnant, the elders caused abor- tion, and taking the foetus pounded it in a mortar, together with honey, pepper, and other spices and per- fumes. Then this ‘congregation of swine and dogs’ assembled, and each dipping his finger into the mess, tasted of it. This they termed the Perfect Passion, saying, ‘We have not been deceived by the Ruler of Concupiscence, but we have gathered up again the back- sliding of our brother.’ ... . In illustration of the punishment for leaving offspring behind, and so doing the work of the Demiurgus, they told a wild legend that Elias himself had been rejected from the gates of Heaven, though to his own conscience a pure virgin, because a female demon had gathered up his seed and formed infants therewith, which to his confusion she there produced in testimony. Hence the origin of the Succube in later times, although they were supposed to do the work of their father the devil in a different way, connected with his supposed relations to the witches whose lover he was ex officio.” —(King, The Gnostics and their Remains, 128.)
“The Nezaires or Nazarains form a special sect in Syria, and live scattered amongst Mahometans, Druses, and Christians. They adore God and believe in Jesus Christ as a prophet chosen to instruct mankind and give them law. They pray indifferently to the apostles, the Virgin,
266 | Appendix.
and the ancient prophets. They practise baptism by immersion, celebrate the Nativity, the Ascension, and some other of the festivals instituted amongst us. They have a singular one which they call by the name of the Womb. In this solemnity they salute women with a holy respect, and affectionately embrace their knees, whence comes their title Worshippers or Adorers of the Womb. Libertinage is elevated into a maxim by the Nezaires. Amongst other depravities they allow a plu- rality of wives. The day of the Circumcision, when their year commences, all the women are gathered together in the hall of sacrifice, the windows are closed, and the lights put out. The men then enter, and each takes by chance the first woman who comes to hand. This abomi- nation is renewed several times during the year, and particularly at the festival of the Womb, in memory of the creation of man and woman. It is customary for the chief of the law to take part in it with his wife, obliged like any other woman to mingle with the crowd,.”—
(Mariti, Voyage, vol. i, p. 62.)
SYMBOL WORSHIP.
We come now to speak of what we may designate female emblems. It may easily be understood that few people, if any, would be so gross as to use in religious worship true simulacra of those parts which their owners think it shameful to speak of and a punishment or reproach publicly to show... . . “As a scholar,” says Dr. In- man, “I had learned that the Greek letter DELTA is expressive of the female organ, both in shape and idea. The selection of name and symbol was judicious, for the
word Daleth and Delta signify the door of a house and
Appendix. 267
the outlet of a river, while the figure reversed represents the fringe with which the human Delta is overshadowed
. and typifies what is known to anatomists as the Mons Veneris, or the door through which all come into the world.”—(Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names, ieetino, 107, 146.)
“The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative powers of Nature or matter, as the male were of the generative power of God. They are usually represented emblematically by the sHELL, or Concha Veneris, which was therefore worn by devout persons of antiquity, as it still continues to be by pilgrims and many of the common women of Italy. The union of both was expressed by the HAND . . . . which, being a less explicit symbol, has escaped the attention of the reformers, and is still worn as well as the shell by the women of Italy, though without being understood. It represented the act of generation, which was considered as a solemn sacrament in honour of the Creator.”— (R. P. Knight, On the Worship of Priapus, 28.)
“ The TRIANGLE, in the Old World, was a sacred form, representing the properties—capacity and dilatation—of the female symbol. When we speak of the symbolical marks of the Hindus we shall find the triangle, with the apex downwards, to be the appropriate symbol of Vishnu considered as the principle of humidity. To descend is the property of water, and it naturally assumes that figure. . Nor is the triangle with the apex pointing upwards a less appropriate symbol of Siva as fire, it being the unvaried form of the igneous element, whose property is ascen- sion.” —(Moor, Hindu Pantheon, 23.)
“As regards the conicaL CAPs worn by priests and the
268 Appendix.
mystery implied thereby it may be pointed out that the helmet of Pluto was the emblem of the generative prin- ciples hidden or undeveloped in the bosom of the earth.” —(Rolle, Religions de la Gréce, 1., 68.) .
“In studying the meaning of the Fish as an emblem sacred to Ishtar and Venus, we first notice its extraordinary fecundity, We next note that the fish selected is one which, when looked at from above, is almond-shaped. A gold carp may stand as the type of the sacred fish. To the surgeon or anatomist, to whom every part of the body is familiar, the side view of a carp is suggestive; the fork in the tail reminds him of what he knows as /a fourchette. The accoucheur will remember how frequently he has heard of the os tince, and may recollect how anxious he was to catch a tench, that he might see the reason why the opening into the womb was called the tench’s mouth. : Putting these things together, we conclude that the fish was sacred because the form of its body represents one door, and the form of its mouth the other door, through which all the animal creation passes into life. The figure of a priest is given in one of the works on Nineveh, where part of the clothing consists of a big fish. The bead of the minister is surmounted by its head, which, having its mouth open, indicates the origin of the BISHOP'S MITRE. As it would, of course, be inconvenient to wear the whole animal, the head was used to typify the body generally, and the mitre was formed to represent the head.”—-(Inman, Ancient Faiths, i., 111-112, 166.)
“The shape of the PomMEGRANATE resembles that of the gravid uterus in the female, and the abundance of seeds which it contains makes it a fitting emblem of the prolific womb of the celestial mother. Its use was
Appendix. 269
adopted largely in various forms of worship. In one part of Syria it was deified, and a temple erected in its honour.”—(Inman, Ancient Faiths, ii., 611—12.
The Lotus was the most sacred plant of the ancients, and typified the two principles of the earth’s fecundation combined, the germ standing for the Lingam, the fila- ments and petals for the Yoni. “ Nympha signifies a young nubile woman, a certain part of the yoni and the calyx of roses; the lotus is a nymphzea. Hence a maiden is symbolised as being and having a Ross, and the lotus typifies Isis and Sacti.”,—(Inman, Ancient Faiths, ii., 396.)
‘The FIG-TREE is repeatedly joined with the vine by the sacred writers. Its Hebrew name is fenabh, derived from a root which signifies ‘to be crookened or bent ;’ also ‘to copulate.’ —The word expressive of the fig-tree is the same as that used for coitus, It was of the leaves of this tree that aprons were made to cover our naked parents, and none can see the leaf without understanding the reason of the selection; it resembles the trefoil, the fleur-de-lys, and sundry other emblems suggestive of the triad. .... The fruit of the tree resembles in shape the virgin uterus. Its form led tothe idea that it would promote fertility. To this day, in Oriental countries, the hidden meaning of the fig is almost as well known as its commercial value. . . . . We can- not doubt, when we put these considerations together, that ‘to sit under the vine and fig-tree? was an expression equivalent to enjoying all the luxuries of life, as an old prayer-book expresses it, ‘at bed and at board.’ ”— (Inman, Ancient Faiths, i.. 526—8.)
“When speaking of the so-called Assyrian grove, I stated that the pine cone offered by priests to the deity,
270 Appendix.
represented by that emblem, was typical of the “testes,” the analogue of the mundane egg. In an ancient gem depicted by Maffei we notice the peculiar shape of the altar, the triple pillar arising from it, the ass’s head and fictile offerings, the lad offering a pine cone surrounded with leaves, and carrying on his head a basket, in which two phalli are distinctly to be recognised. The deity to whom the sacrifice is offered is Bacchus, as figured by the people of Lampsacus. On his shoulder he bears a thyrsus, a wand or virga terminating in a pine cone, and having two ribbons dangling from it. We see, then, that amongst certain of the ancients the PINE CONE, the BASKET, and the THYRsUS were associated with Bacchus, or the solar deity under the male emblem. Out of twenty-seven gems figured by Raponi, in which the thyrsus occurs, in all it either indicates Bacchus or else is associated with such surrounding circumstances as to suggest an idea of licentious enjoyment. It is one of the emblems introduced into a representation of a female offering sacrifice to the god of Lampsacus. In two pictures, where the actors are drunk, the thyrsus has fallen down abattu. In Bacchic scenes the thyrsus is occasionally associated with the r1nc, the emblem of the female, and in one very significant scene, wherein Bacchus and Ariadne are seated upon a lioness, the pine cone and fillet are being caressed by the female.”—(Inman, Ancient Faiths, ti., 490—493.)
«¢ Mandrakes are like our plant the Orchis mascula, and their roots closely resemble the scrotum or the two testicles; consequently they were supposed to have potency in love affairs and were offered to Venus. There is a picture at Pompeii, inwhich a loving couple are presenting offerings
Appendix, 271
to the God of the Gardens, and amongst them the mMan- DRAKE may be recognised. ... . They are chiefly interesting to us as an illustration of the close attention paid by the ancients to those edibles which had, or were supposed to have, an influence upon the organs which are concerned in the creation of a new being. Dudaim are only twice mentioned in the Bible (Genesis xxx. 14, 16, and Song of Solomon vii. 13), and in both instances they are connected with scenes of love. We may indeed con- sider that their name is derived from dud, ‘love, that which unites together.’ I find from Royle that the ‘atropa mandragora’ is generally identified with love apples. He says:—‘ The root is generally forked, and closely resembles the lower part of the body of a man, including the legs. The fruit is about the size of an apple, very ruddy, of an agreeable odour, and is still often eaten as exhilarating to the spirits and provocative Peeenery |... Reuben finds mandrakes and brings them to Leah, the neglected wife of Jacob. With the tempting fruit the patriarch becomes exhilarated, and, as we conclude, unusually tender to his ugly spouse. Under the influence of the charm we must also imagine that the husband was prodigal in payment of the duties of marriage, and to such a degree that the delighted wife named the son who resulted from the union Issachar, not because she had received her hire, sachar, but because “she had had her fill,” shacar. So far as we can learn there was, in ancient times, an idea that any plant or animal whose colour, appearance, and sometimes even whose name, resembled that of any part of the body, was sure to be useful in affections of that part. The Orchis mas- cula, whose roots are very remarkable for their shape,
Phys: Appendix.
was used whenever there was maleficia or impotentia, and the mandrake was employed for a similar purpose.”— (Ancient Faiths, i. 338, \5 250-251).
“ According to the ‘Doctrine of Signatures,’ that the appearance of an object indicates the malady for which Nature has designed it for a remedy, the locust was employed as a medicine for certain affections of the genitals. A singular amulet illustrating this is figured by Caylus, a locust of the natural size, cut in agate, engraved on the base with the explanatory address to its influence, ‘Locusta serva penem Tisicratis.? ‘To explain the selec- tion of this insect for such a purpose, it must be mentioned that the Greeks saw in its cylindrical, cam- bered, annulated body an analogy to the phallus; and hence its virtue as a fascinum, as its figure implied what the latter form actually represented. Hence Ecclesiastes’ simile, ‘the GRASSHOPPER shall be a burden,’ alluding to the loss of virile power consequent on old age.”—-(King, The Gnostics and their Remains, 212-213.)
“The GoaT, on account of its genital member, was amongst the Egyptians placed in the ranks of the gods, for the same reason that the Greeks paid divine honours to Priapus. ... . This animal being strongly inclined to the act of Venus, it was held that the member of his body which is the instrument of generation merited to be adored, because it is by this that Nature gives birth to all beings.” —(Diodorus Siculus, lib. i., sec. 88.)
Dulaure says that the Greeks adored, under the names of Pan, Fauns, Satyrs, &c., rural deities whose figures at the same time represented the shape of the goat and the characteristic attribute of Priapus. ‘They had the horns, sometimes the ears, and always the thighs, legs, and feet
Appendix. 273
%
‘ of the animal, and also the phallus in a state of vigour. “Temples have been raised to them; they are represented in a state of energy, arrectis ita membra ut hirci naturam imitentui.”—(Diodorus Sic., lib, i., sec. 2.)
The FLAGELLuM in the hands of Osiris had its mean- ing, it being long known that flagellation served as a means for the restoration of virile power. According to Dr. Inman the crook, usually borne in his other hand, had also a connective hidden meaning difficult to indicate. He further traces a curious relation between the scourge and animals whose hides are marked with spots, and in con- nexion with whom it is frequently depicted. General For- long points out, too, that Khem, an Egyptian phallic deity, is also furnished with a whip, “the quickener or exciter.” Quoting’ from Mr. M‘Clatchey’s China Revealed, that “the old phallic gods, represented under two evident symbols, the Kheen or Yang, which is the membrum virile, and. the Khw-an or Yin, the pudendum muliebre, or Yoni,” he adds that “ Yang, the agitator or whip, is seen acting on Yin, as representing receptive female vis inertia.” |
Porphyrus says that the BuLt chosen to fill the part of a god at Heliopolis had genital organs of extraordinary size, the better to denote the generative power that the sun exercises upon nature by its heat. Ammianus Marcel- linus also says that the bull adored at Memphis had evident tokens of generative faculty.
Dulaure, in speaking of the most remarkable isolated phallus which Vivant Denon found at Thebes, in Upper Egypt, in a woman’s tomb, says that this phallus (which had been a living organ) was embalmed and wrapped in ban- dages, and was found placed on the corresponding organ of
a8
A Appendix.
the female mummy. The engraving he gives of the mummy and the phallus proves that the latter was of more than natural size, and did not belong to the human species. ‘I am inclined to believe,” he adds, “ that the mummy was that of a woman of rank, and the em- balmed phallus that of one of the sacred bulls, extracted after the animal’s death, and placed in the tomb as a preservative against the evil spirits which the ancients believed tormented the souls of the dead. ‘The Greeks and Romans sometimes placed figures of the phallus in sepulchres from a similar motive.’—(Dulaure, Histoire Abrégée des Cultes, &c., ii., 56-57.)
Another animal was similarly honoured. There is a place in Egypt called Chusea. The Aphrodite is wor- — shipped in it, under the name of Urania. ‘The people also worship a cow, and state, as a reason for their faith, that the cow belongs to this divinity. For the cow has an intense burning for copulation, and longs for it more than the male, so that when she hears the bellowing of the bull she becomes exceedingly excited and inflamed... . . The Isis herself, however, the Egyptians depict with horns like a cow.” —(Athian, De Natur. Animal., x. 27.)
THE SYMBOL OF THE SERPENT.
“Fora long period | was unable to see any significance in the adoption of the serpent as an emblem; nor did I recognise it until I conversed with a gentleman who was familiar with the cobra in India. He told me that this snake and the Egyptian cerastes are both able to inflate the skin around the head, and to make themselves large and erect. In this they resemble the characteristic part of man; consequently the serpent became a covert name
Appendix, . . as
and a mystic emblem. To this conclusion any one will readily assent who knows that in France the eel is used as a word embodying the same idea. . . . . When once we recognise the real signification of the symbol, we readily understand how it is that the serpent inserting a tail into a mouth symbolises eternity. A man perishes, yet man persists; the genus continues, through the constant re- production of new scions from older branches. Yet there are no branches from the old stock, except by the union of father and mother. ‘The symbol of union, therefore, becomes the sign of eternity, or rather of perpetuity; in other words, the emblem which we all regard without a qualm is nothing more than the mystic Adam and Eve, the ¢zachar’ (digger) and the ‘nekebah’ (hole), ‘la queue et Pabricot fendu.’ ”—(Inman, Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names, ii., 710, 712.)
‘‘’The connexion between life and that which is typified by the serpent is seen more conspicuously in the French language than in any other modern tongue which I am acquainted with. In it the phallus and existence have the same sound, the former [/e vit] being, however, masculine, while the latter [/a vie] is feminine” (Ibid, 1., 497-498). The same author describes a gem belonging to