CHAPTER IV:

CELESTIAL, OR THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE OF THE UNSEXUAL, TRANSCENDENTAL PHALLICISM.
Over the porticoes of all the Egyptian temples, the winged disc of the sun is placed between two hooded snakes (the cobra capello), signifying that luminary placed between its two great attributes of motion and life. The same combination of symbols, to express the same attri- butes, is observable upon the coins of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. (Médailles de Dutens, p. 1; Mus. Hunter, tab. 15, fig. 5, and vii.) These same symbols also appear to have been anciently employed by the Druids of Britain and Gaul, as they still are by the idolaters of China. See Stukeley’s ddury; the original name of which temple, he observes, was the “ Snake’s Head :” and it is remarkable that the remains of a similar circle of stones in Boeotia had the same name in the time of Pausanias. The Scandinavian goddess, Isa or Disa, was sometimes represented between two serpents [Ol. Rudbeck Atlant., pt. iii, c 1, p. 25, and pt. ii, p. 343, fig. A, and p. 510]; and a similar mode of canonisation is employed in the apotheosis of Cleopatra, as expressed on her coins.
Perpetual lamps are kept burning in the inmost recesses of all the great pagodas in India, the Hindoos holding Fire to be the essence of all active power in nature. Numa is said to have consecrated the perpetual Fire, as the first of all things, and the soul of matter; which
42 Phallicism.
without it, is motionless and dead, Fires of the same kind were, for the same reasons, preserved in most of the principal temples, both Greek and Barbarian; there being scarcely a country in the world where some traces of the adoration paid to fire are not to be found. [Huet. De- monst. Evang. Prep. v., c. 5; Lafitau, Maurs, t. 1. p- 153.| The prytanea of the Greek cities are the points where the sacred fires were burned in the Temples.
The characteristic attribute of the passive generative power was expressed in symbolical writing by different enigmatical representations of the most distinctive cha- racteristic of the sex; such as the Shell, called the Concha Veneris | August. de Civ. Dei, lib. vi, c. 9|, the Fig- leaf | Plutarch de Is. et Osir, p. 365], the Barley-corn [ Eustath, in Homer, p. 134], or the letter Delta [Suidas| ; all of which occur very frequently upon coins and other ancient monuments, in this sense. ‘The same attribute, personified as the goddess of love or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous form of a beautiful naked woman, frequently distinguished by one of these symbols, and called Venus, Cypris, or Aphrodité, names of rather uncertain etymology. Other attributes of the goddess of beauty were on some occasions added, whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a beard, and other appearances of virility; which seems to have been the most ancient mode of representing the celestial, as distinguished from the popular, goddess of that name; the one being a personification of a general procreative power, and the other only of animal desire. [Signum et hujus Veneris est Cypri barbatum corpore, sed veste muliebri, cum sceptro et statura viri. Macrob., lib, iii., p.74.| The fig was a still more common symbol ; the statues of Priapus
Transcendental Phallicism. 43
being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with the phallus in the ancient processions in honour of Bacchus. Whence we often see portraits of persons in Italy painted with the fig in one hand, to signify their orthodox devotion to the fair sex. [See portrait of Tassoni prefixed to the 4to edition of the Secchia Rapita, &c.| Hence, also, arose the Italian expression “ far-/a- jfica;” which was done by putting the thumb between the middle and forefingers, as it appears in many Priapic ornaments now extant; or by putting the finger or the thumb into the corner of the mouth, and drawing it down; of which there is a representation ina small Priapic figure of exquisite sculpture engraved among the Antiquities of Herculaneum. (Bronzi., tab. xciv.)
It is to these obscene gestures that the expressions of “figsing,” and “biting the thumb,” which Shakespeare probably took from translations of Italian novels, seem to allude. [See 1 Henry IV., Act V., sc. 3, and Romeo and Juliet, Act 1., sc. 1.] Another old writer, who probably understood Italian, calls the latter “ giving the fico ;” and, according to its ancient meaning, it might very naturally be employed as a silent reproach of effeminacy.
‘The key, which is still worn, with the Priapic hand, as an amulet, by the women of Italy, appears to have been an emblem of similar meaning, as the equivocal use of the name of it, in the language of that country, implies. Of the same kind, too, appears to have been the cross in the form of the letter JT, attached to a circle, which all, or most, of the figures of Egyptian deities, both male and female, carry in the left hand, and by which the Syrians, Phoenicians, and other inhabitants of Asia, represented the planet Venus—worshipped by them as the natural
44 Phallicism.
emblem or image of that goddess. [Procli. Paraphr., lib. li, p. 97. See also Mich. Ang. “ De la chausse,” part ii, No. xxxvi., fol. 62, and Yablonski Panth., Egypt., lib. ii., c. vii, s. 6.] The cross in this form is sometimes observable on coins; and several of them were found in a temple of Serapis, demolished at the general destruction of those edifices by the emperor Theodosius; and were said, by the Christian antiquaries of that time, to signify the future life. [Swidas in v., ravpos.] In solemn sacrifices all the Lapland idols were marked with it from the blood of the victims [Scheffer, Lappanic, c. x. p. 112]; and it occurs on many Runic monuments found in Sweden and Denmark, which are of an age long anterior to the approach of Christianity to those countries ; and, probably, to its appearance in the world. [O/. Rud- beck, Atlant., p. i, c. xi... p. 662, and p. 111, C. 1gieeeee Ol. Varelli Scandagr. Runic; Borlase, Hist. of Cornwall, p. 106.] On some of the early coins of the Phoenicians, we find it attached to a chaplet of beads placed in a circle, so as to form a complete rosary. From the very name of “rosary, in connexion with these ultra-remote matters, we can perceive the replication—if we may make use of such a word—of the Rosicrucian adepts to these far-off and figurative views of the mysterious relationship of the Cross and Rose: and, moreover, of the meanings con- veyed through the apocalyptic symbol of the ‘ Crucified- Rose ;” which, to ordinary understandings, is unintelligible, and a masquerade—although a signally grand, significant “ masquerade”—only to be played before and presented to the apprehension of the true Rosicrucian Initiates. The “Rosary,” as a form, is precisely the same symbol, although the devotees are mainly, if not wholly, in a state of igno-
Transcendental Phallicism. 45
rance as to the real meanings conveyed in all the ideas which go with it; the same in the hands, and in the use, of the Lamas of Thibet and China, the Hindoos, the more profound sects among the Buddhists, and the Roman Catholics—at least among the most deeply-thinking and penetrating of them. [ Pellerin, Villes., t. i1., pl. cxxii., fig. 43; Archeol., vol. xiv., p. 2; Nichoff:, s. ix.; Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. v.|
The Scandinavian goddess, Freya, had (like the Paphian Venus) the characteristics of both sexes. [Mallet Hist. de Danemarc, Introd., c. vii., p. 116. |
Considering the general state of reserve and restraint in which the Grecian women lived, it is astonishing to what an excess of extravagance their religious enthusiasm was carried on certain occasions; particularly in cele- brating the orgies of Bacchus. The gravest matrons and proudest princesses suddenly laid aside their decency and their dignity, and ran screaming among the woods and mountains, fantastically dressed or half naked, with hair dishevelled and interwoven with ivy or vine, and some- times with living serpents. [Plutarch in Alexandr.| In this manner they frequently worked themselves up to such a pitch of savage ferocity, as not only to feed upon raw flesh (Apollon. Rhod., lib. i., 636, and Schol.), but even to tear living animals to pieces with their teeth, and eat them warm and palpitating. [| Ful. Firmic., c« 14; Clement, Alex. Cohort., p. ii.; Arnob., lib. v.] The en- thusiasm of the Greeks was, however, generally of the gay and festive kind; which almost all their religious rites tended to promote. Music and wine always accompanied devotion, as tending to exhilarate men’s minds, and assimi- late them with the deity ; to imitate whom was to feast and
46 Phallicism.
rejoice, to cultivate the elegant and useful arts ; and there- by to give and receive happiness (Strabo, lib. x., p. 476).
The Babylonian women of every rank and condition held it to be an indispensable duty of religion to prostitute themselves, once in their lives, in the temple of Mylitta, who was the same goddess as the Venus of the Greeks, to any stranger who came and offered money; which, whether little or much, was accepted, and applied to sacred purposes. Numbers of these devout ladies were always in waiting, and the stranger had the liberty, regu- lated by a certain determining form of lot, of choosing in whatever direction his liking should prevail, as the women reclined in rows in the walks about the temple, guarded by the sacred usages, but exposed otherwise freely enough ; no refusal being allowed (Herodotus, lib. i.). A similar custom prevailed in Cyprus (Herod., c. 199), and pro- bably in many other countries, it being, as Herodotus observes, the practice of all mankind, except the Greeks and Egyptians, to take such liberties with their temples, which, they concluded, must be pleasing to the Deity, since birds and animals, acting under the guidance of instinct, or by the immediate impulse of Heaven, did the same. The exceptions he might safely have omitted, at least so far as relates to the Greeks; for there were a thousand sacred prostitutes kept in each of the celebrated temples of Venus, at Eryx and Corinth; who, according to all accounts, were extremely expert and assiduous in attending to the duties of their profession. (Strabo, lib. viii. ; Diodor. Sic., lib. iv.; Philodemi Epigr. in Brunck. Analect., vol. ii., p- 85.) It is not likely that the temple which they served should be the only place exempt from being the scene of these freedoms. Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims the
Transcendental Phallicism, 47
same exception in favour of the Romans, but, as we suspect, equally without reason; for Juvenal, who lived only a century later, when the same religion and nearly the same manners prevailed, seems to consider every temple in Rome as a kind of licensed brothel :— “‘ Nuper enim, ut repeto, fanum Isidis et Ganymeden, Pacis, et advecte secreta palatia matris,
Et Cererem, (nam quo non prostat femina templo ?) Notior Aufidis mechas celebrare solebas.’’—Sat, 1x., 22.
While the temples of the Hindoos possessed their establishments, most of them had bands of consecrated prostitutes, called the Women of the Idol, selected in their infancy by the Brahmins for the beauty of their persons, and trained up with every elegant accomplishment that could render them attractive, and insure success in thie profession which they exercised at once for the pleasure and profit of the priesthood, They were never allowed to desert the temple; and the offspring of their pro- miscuous embraces were, if males, consecrated to the service of the deity in the ceremonies of his worship ; and, if females, educated in the profession of their mothers, (Maurice Antiq. Ind., vol. i., part i., p. 341-)
Night, being the appropriate season for these mysteries, and being also supposed to have some genial and nutritive influence in itself (Orph. Hymn. ii. 2), was personified as the source of all things, the passive productive principle of the universe (Diodor. Sic., I., 1., ¢. vil.), which the Egyptians called by a name that signified “ night”?— Advp Or Adwp, called Athorh still in the Coptic. (Ffablonski, Panth. Egypt., lib. i., c.1.,8. 7.) Hesiod says that “the nights belong to the blessed gods; as it is then that dreams descend from Heaven to forewarn and instruct
48 ~— Phallicism.
men.” (Hesiod. Epy. 730.) . Hence Night is called evppom, good, or benevolent, by the ancient poets; and to perform any unseemly act or gesture in the face of night, (though still more in the face of the sun) was accounted a heinous offence. (Hesiod. Epy. 727.) ‘This may seem, indeed, a contradiction to their practice: but it must be remembered that a free communication between the sexes was never reckoned criminal by the ancients, unless when injurious to the peace or pride of families ; and as to the foul and unnatural debaucheries imputed to the Baccha- nalian societies suppressed by the Romans, they were either mere calumnies, or abuses introduced by private persons, and never countenanced by public authority in any part of the world. Had the Christian societies sunk under the first storms of persecution, posterity might have believed them guilty of similar crimes; of which they were equally accused by witnesses as numerous, (Liv. Hist., |. xxxix., c. 9, &c. Mosheim, &c.) We do, indeed, sometimes find indications of unnatural lusts in ancient sculptures: but “ they were undoubtedly the works of private caprice; or similar compositions would have been found upon coins; which they never are, except upon the ‘Spintriz’ of Tiberius, which are supposed to have been merely tickets of admission to the scenes of his private amusement. Such preposterous appetites, though but too observable in all the later ages of Greece, appear to have been wholly unknown to the simplicity of the early times; they never being once noticed either in the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the genuine poem of Hesiod ; for as to the lines in the former poem alluding to the rape of Ganymede, they are manifestly spurious.” (J/. TOS BOK NY 2.30, occa) |
Transcendental Phallicism. 49
This may be very true to a certain extent. But un- fortunately, from the testimony of all antiquity—and certainly modern readers endeavour to think the best of the ancient times—we are compelled to believe that the sins and enormities of the early generations were awful indeed. We encounter enough of all this “ruinous side of human life” in the Scriptures, and gather accounts of it from the earliest historians, who, in their general taste, perhaps, also, from fear, seem desirous of not saying too much. ‘There is reason to believe that the world before the Deluge—of which “Deluge,” even in its total character, there is more than enough proof in the accounts of all the nations, in the penetrative critical mind—was filled with monstrous sins and wickedness, and crimes against nature itself—even scientific man being degraded worse than the brutes.
50 P hallicism.
CHAPTERS:
THE MYSTERIES OF THE PHALLUS, ITS IDEALISED GNOSTIC, ROSICRUCIAN, OR CHRISTIAN RENDERINGS.
TuHoucH the Greek writers call the deity who was represented by the sacred goat at Mendes, Pan, he more exactly answers to Priapus, or the generative attribute considered abstractedly (Diodor. Sic., lib. i., p. 78); which was usually represented in Egypt, as well as in Greece, by the Phallus only. (/did., p. 16.) This deity was honoured with a place in most of their temples (/did.), as the Lingam, or Lingham, is in those of the Hindoos; and all the hereditary priests were initiated or consecrated to him, before they assumed the sacerdotal office (lbid., p- 78): he was considered as a sort of accessory attribute to all the other divine personifications; and truly so, for without this, or some similar means or machinery, they themselves obviously could not be. The very root and foundation of the Buddhistic theosophical ideas is the impossibility of any phases or forms of being, or recogni- tion, existing otherwise than as evil. All the mistakes of theologians are derived from their reluctance to admit the idea that Nirwan, or Nirwana, of the Buddhists means annihilation, or absorption into nothing, which, in truth, the real Buddhism teaches. But this substratum, or ground principle of Buddhism, “annihilation,” is not to be taken in the way which these erroneous construers of Buddhism suppose. The broad outline of the Budd- hist philosophy is a proposition, that all comprehensible
Mysteries of the Phallus. 51
existence, that all forms, phases, or formularies of existence, all emotion of any kind, stir, or sense of indi- viduality—the cogito, ergo sum, of Descartes; that every- thing, in fact, is only good or bad relatively; that in - reality, apart from manifestation or acceptance of the thing, there is nothing either good or evil; being only good or evil in man’s necessitated self-delusion: that all life, particularly human life, is a parade of phenomena, of whatever character the movement operating may be. It will follow, conclusively, that extrication, rescue, or permanent and perfect deliverance out of this Masquerade of Being, totally different to what it seems, is Heaven; and that this state of bliss is attainable by the perfect Bhuddists, in withdrawing out of being by repeated puri- fications, assisted by the multitudinous spirits, into that Nirvana which these abstruse fantastic religionists deem the blessed state of ultimate, never-ending rhapsody of perfect quiet, clear of all stimulus of consciousness. This is an ecstatic state, impossible of deviation, or change. It is the last Light, the Pleroma, or fulness of everything. It may, doubtless, be true, that the philosophy of Budd- hism is a shadowy philosophy; but this is the true intent and purpose of it; and, we think, just as clearly stated.
Amidst the Phallic ideas, the prevailing persuasion is that all the divine personifications imply that their great end and purpose—and the very explanation and justifica- tion of their existence—is generation, production, or renovation ; general replacement, in fact. A part of the worship offered to the goat, Mendes, and the bull, Apis, consisted in the women tendering to him their persons, which it seems the former often accepted, though the
LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
eye Phallictsm,
taste of the latter was too correct. (Pindar. apud Strabon., xvii., p. 802; Herodot., lib. t1., s. 46; Diodor. Sic., lib. i.) An attempt seems to have been made, in early times, to introduce similar acts of devotion into Italy ; for when the oracle of Juno was consulted upon the long-continued barrenness of the Roman matrons, its answer was, “ Iliadas matres caper hirtus inito ;” but these mystic refinements not being understood by this wnintelli- gent people, they could think of no other interpretation, and truly of no other way of fulfilling the mandate, than sacrificing a goat, and applying the skin, cut into thongs, to the bare backs of the ladies—whipping them, in fact. This is the origin of a certain kind of flagellation. “‘ Jussze sua terga maritz pellibus exsectis percutienda dabant ;” which, however, had the desired effect, “ Virque pater subito, nuptaque mater erat.” (Ovid. Fast., ii., 448.)
This explains the flogging of the women at the cere- monies of the Lupercal at Rome, and the directions of Cesar to his wife Calphurnia, ‘‘ Stand you directly in Antonius’ way when he doth run his course.” See Shakespeare’s ‘Fulius Caesar, in the scene where the Roman games—which, in their mysteries, were all Phallic and astronomical——are referred to. At Mendes, female goats were also held sacred, as symbols of the passive genera- tive attribute (Stradon., lib. xvii., 812) ; and on Grecian monuments of art we often find caprine satyrs of the female sex. A female Pantheic figure in silver, of which an engraving was published by Count Caylus (tome vii., pl. Ixxi.), represents Cybele, the universal mother, as mixing the productive elements of heat and moisture— Fire and Water, the two grand components (indicating halves) of the visible world, according to the Rosi-
Mysteries of the Phallus. s2
crucians—by making a libation upon the flames of an altar from a golden patera, with the usual knob in the centre of it, representing, probably, the lingam, and very similar, indeed, to the Indian forms of the same super- lative object.
The Disa or Isa of the north was represented by a conic figure. ‘This goddess is delineated on the sacred drums of the Laplanders as accompanied by a child, similar to the Horus of the Egyptians, who so often appears in the lap.of Isis, on the religious monuments of that people. (Isiac Table, and Ol. Rudbeck. Atlant., pp. 209 and 210; Dap. 280.)
The ancient Muscovites also worshipped a similar sacred group, probably representing Isis and her offspring. They had likewise another idol, called the golden heifer, which seems to have been the animal symbol of the same personage.
The conic form unquestionably means the egg; the top, or culminating part of the Phallus. Thus it stands in all minarets, or circular towers, The piercing point of the g/adius is also indubitably marked out in the summit part of all the obelisks. The origin of which word, Obelisc, we may here notice, has been demonstrated as coming from two Hebrew or Chaldaic terms, 04, meaning “ snake,” “serpent,” “ magic,” and /is, or lisc, signifying, in certain mythic inflections, “Fire.” Obelos, in the Greek, is also a “spit, brand, or dart” as the rays of the sun, the active, motived “ fire,” are darted.
The ancient nations of the north consecrated each day of the week to some principal personage of their mytho- logy, and called it after his name, beginning with Lok or Saturn, and ending with Freia or Freya, the Scandi-
54 Phallicism.
navian Venus, or the Genius of the “Fateful Friday,” a day of days in the “left-handed” superstitions of all countries.
Of monumental stones of a conical form, the Phallic or Priapic type has especially at all periods been human, from the crown of the head to the line of the ventral region, or the line of the double division, taking start at the centre point between: the thighs. This significant, mathematical, also mystical form is represented upon the colonial medals of Tyre by monuments of conic shape called “ ambrosial” stones ; from which, probably, came the amberics, so frequent all over the northern hemisphere. These, from the remains still extant, appear to have been composed of one of these cones let into the ground, with another stone placed upon the point of it (Bowing-Stones), and so nicely balanced that the wind could move it, though so ponderous that no human force, unaided by machinery, can displace it. Whence they are also called “ Logging-Rocks,” and Pender or Pendre-Stones (Nor- den’s Cornwall, p. 79), as they were anciently “ Living- Stones,” and “Stones of God” (Pseudo-Sanchon. Fragm, apud Euseb, ‘“ Barvda.”). The last title seems to be a corruption of the scriptural name, “ Bethel.”” In truth, it is the same thing.
Damascius saw several of these stones in the neigh- bourhood of Heliopolis or Baalbeck, in Syria; and mentions one which was then moved by the wind (/n vitd Isidori apud Phot. Biblioth, Cod. 242). These oracular stones, or speaking Idols (for such all these monuments are), are equally found in the western extre- mities of Europe and the eastern extremities of Asia; in Britain, notably at Stonehenge, which is a temple of these
Mysteries of the Phallus. 55
idols, and at Abury, or Avebury, which is a temple of mystical stones dedicated to the worship of the Serpent. From the westernmost limit of Europe (at the margin of the Atlantic, at Carnac, in Brittany,) to the easternmost frontier of China, these supposed ‘enchanted stones’’ are to be found—stone letters (or “ tabulates” inscribed), scattered broadcast, of the original faith—the signals and hieroglyphics of which seem to. have been dropped at the beginning of historical time from heaven, each stone stored, it may be said, invisibly with the original Pro-
methean fire. 2
56 Phallicism.