The Masculine Cross and Ancient Sex Worship

CONTENTS

Origin of the Cross.
Yoni.
Unity.
Phallic and Sun Worship.
The Phallus in California.
Author's Afterword

Chapter I
ORIGIN OF THE CROSS.

   Far back in the twilight of the pictured history of the past, the cross is found on the borders of the river Nile. A horizontal piece of wood fastened to an upright beam indicated the hight of the water in flood. This formed a cross, the Nileometer. If the stream failed to rise a certain hight in its proper season, no crops and no bread was the result. From famine on the one hand to plenty on the other, the cross came to be worshiped as a symbol of life and regeneration, or feared. as an image. of decay and death. This is one, so called, origin of the Cross.
   The cross was a symbol of life and regeneration in India long before this usage on the Nile, and for another reason. The most learned antiquarians agree in holding it unquestionable that Egypt was colonized from India, and crosses migrated with the inhabitants. "Proofs in adequate confirmation of this point are found," says the learned Dr. G. L. Ditson, "in waifs brought to light in ancient lore. Waif originally signified goods a thief, when pursued, threw away to avoid detection. Many of the facts to be brought forth in our inquiry were doubtless intentionally scattered and put out of sight to prevent apprehension of the proper subject to which they belong."
   The cross bespeaks evolution in religion. It is the product of time, and the relic of the revered past. It begins with one thing and ends with another.
   In seeking for the origin of the cross it becomes necessary to direct attention in some degree to the forms of faith among mankind with whom the cross is found. Retrogressive inquiry enables the religio-philosophical student to follow the subject back, if not to its source, to the proximate neighborhood of its source. Like every item of ecclesiastical ornament, and every badge of devotion, the cross is the embodiment of a symbol. That symbol represents a fact, or facts, of both structure and office. The facts were generation and regeneration. Long before the mind matures the generative structure matures. The cerebellum attains its natural size at three years of age, the cerebrum at seven years, if we accept the measurements as announced by Sir William Hamilton. Throughout the realm of animal life there is no physical impulse so overbearing as the generative, unless we except that for food. Food gives satisfaction. Rest to tired nature gives pleasure. To the power of reproduction is appended the acme of physical bliss. How natural, then, that this last-named impulse should, early in human development, take the lead, give direction and consequence to religious fancies, and lead its votaries captive to a willing bondage,--as it did in India, Egypt, among the Buddhists, Babylonians, Phœnicians, Assyrians, and ancient Hebrews.
   The ancients personified the elements, air, water, fire, the earth, the sea, the celestial orbs; in imagination gave superintending Deities to some and deified others. The Sexual ability of man and Nature was also personified, and likewise supplied with a governing Deity, which was elevated to the niche of the Supreme. Once enthroned as the ruling God over all, dissent therefrom was impious. A king might be obeyed, but God must be worshiped. A monarch could compel obedience to the state, but the ministers of God lured the devotee to the shrines of Isis and Venus on the one hand, and to Bacchus and Priapus or Baal-Peor on the other, by appealing to the most animating and sensuous force of our physical nature. The name of this God bore different appellatives in different languages, among which we find Al, El, Il, Ilos, On, Bel, Jao, Jah, Jak, Josh, Brahma, Eloihim, Jupiter, and Jehovah. Being God of the genital power, he became the reputed sire of numerous children, and numberless children were born under his auspicious rule. The names of his dutiful descendants were composite in signification, and in many, ways characterized the honored Deity. Hence, derived therefrom, we meet with the El God in Michael, Raguel, Raphael, Gabrael, Joel, Phaniel, Uriel, Sarakiel, Bethel, Chapel, Eli, Elijah.
   Al, El, Il, are used interchangeably, one for the other; likewise Jah, Ju, Jao, Yho, Iah, Iao, Iu. On expresses the idea of the male Creator. Am, Om, Um, or Umma, represent the female Deity. From Am we have Amelia and Emma. On is an integrant of many names, as Abdon, Onan, Aijalon, Ashcalon, Ezbon. From Ra, Re, or Ri, arise Rebekah, Regem, Rehoboam, and Reba, which signifies "sexual congress." The cognomens in which Jah enters are almost unlimited, as in Isaiah, Hezekiah, Zedekiah, Padiah, Maniah, Jehu.
   The attributes of this presiding Deity were characteristic of his office. Her was strong, powerful, erect, high, firm, bright, upright, happy, large, splendid, noble, mighty, hard, able. Corresponding to the same idea, he was often, indeed nearly always, associated in pictured relics with animals which denoted the above qualities. These were the bull, elephant, ass, goat, ram, and lion, which were typical of strength and salacious vigor. When a large and strong man appeared, he at once resembled the prevalent idea of God, and was most naturally called the man of God, or the God-man; also large, strong animals were noted as the bulls of God, the rams of God.
   The meaning of a large number of Bible names verifies this view. From Dr. Inman's Vocabulary of Bible Names I set out to copy those the signification of which related to "divine," sexual, generative, or creative power; such as Alah, "the strong one"; Ariel, "the strong Jah is El"; Amasai, "Jah is firm"; Asher "the male" or "the upright organ"; Elijah, "El is Jah"; Eliab, "the strong father"; Elisha, "El is upright"; Ara, "the strong one," "the hero"; Aram, "high," or, "to be uncovered"; Baalshalisha, "my Lord the trinity," or, "my God is three"; Ben-zohett, "son of firmness"; Camon, "the erect On"; Cainan, "he stands upright"; but after copying over one hundred names with their meaning--some of which related to feminine qualities--I found I had advanced only to the letter E of the alphabet, and gave up the undertaking for these limited pages.
   We must look at this curious subject as we find it. Quaint though most of it is, we hope to treat it with all the decorum of philosophic inquiry, and in the chaste language of scientific precision.
   That the cross, or crucifix, has a sexual origin we determine by a similar rule of research as that by which comparative anatomists determine the place and habits of an animal by a single tooth. The cross is a metaphoric tooth which belongs to an antique religious body physical, and that essentially human. A study of some of the earliest forms of faith will lift the vail and explain the mystery.
   India, China, and Egypt have furnished the world with a genus of religion. Time and culture have divided and modified it into many species and countless varieties. However much the imagination was allowed to play upon it, the animus of that religion was sexuality--worship of the generative principle of man and nature, male and female. The cross became the emblem of the male feature, under the term of the triad--three in one. The female was the unit; and, joined to the male triad, constituted a sacred four. Rites and adoration were sometimes paid to the male, sometimes to the female, or to the two in one.
   From motives of improved modesty, or the less commendatory motive to gain prestige through the power of superstition, much truth bearing directly upon our subject has been suppressed by an interested hierarchy. Stripped of euphemisms, we find "the Chaldees believed in a Celestial Virgin, who had purity of body, loveliness of form, and tenderness of person; and to whom the erring sinner could appeal with more chance of success than to a stern father. She was portrayed with a child in her arms. Her full womb was thought to be teeming with blessings, and everything which could remind a votary of a lovely woman was adopted into her worship."
   The worship of the woman by man naturally led to developments which our comparatively sensitive natures shun, as being opposed to all religious feeling. But among a people whose language was without the gloss of modern politeness, whose priests both spoke and wrote without the least disguise, and whose God, through his prophets and lawgivers, promised abundance of offspring and an increase in flocks and herds, as one of the greatest blessings he had to bestow, we can readily believe that what we call "obscenities" might be regarded as sacred homage or divine emblems. What were these emblems? When plainness of speech is restored to its original office, and the meaning of words is defined or traced to their primitives, names of natural objects give us this wonderful answer, and tell us the homely story of these emblems.

EMBLEMS.

   The Phallus and Linga, or Lingham, Stood for the image of the male organ; and the Yoni, or Unit, for the female organ.

PHALLUS.

   Privy member (membrum virile) signifies, "he breaks through, or passes into." This word survives in German pfahl, and pole in English. Phallus is supposed to be of Phœnician origin, the Greek word pallo, or phallo, "to brandish preparatory to throwing a missile," is so near in assonance and meaning to phallus that one is quite likely to be parent of the other. In Sanskrit it can be traced to phal, "to burst," "to produce," "to be fruitful;" then, again, phal is "a plowshare," and is also the name of Siva and Mahadeva, who are Hindu Deities. Phallus, then, was the ancient emblem of creation: a Divinity who was companion to Bacchus. Figure 1. is a copy of a statuette of this Hindu Devi. The figure holds a phallus, or lingham, in the left hand, formed after an imaginary lotus bud. The coarsely carved unit of the feminine figure completes ale dogma of masculine and feminine powers combined in one. The son of Reuben, Phallu (Gen. xlvi, 9), signifies "a distinguished one," "he splits, divides," "he is round and plump," all of which point to a religion of sensual love.
   Phallic emblems abounded at Heliopolis in Syria, and many other places,

Fig. 1.

even into modern times. The following unfolds marvelous proof to our point. A brother physician, writing to Dr. Inman, says: "I was in Egypt last winter (1865-66), and there certainly are numerous figures of Gods and kings, on the walls of the temple at Thebes, depicted with the male genital erect. The great temple at Karnak is, in particular, full of such figures, and the temple of Danclesa likewise, though that is of much later date, and built merely in imitation of old Egyptian art. The same inspiring bass-reliefs are pointed out by Ezek. xxiii, 14. I remember one scene of a king (Rameses II.) returning in triumph with captives, many of whom are undergoing the operation of castration, and in the corner of the picture are numerous heaps of the complete genitals which have been cut off--many hundreds in all, I should think." This shows, first, how largely virility was interwoven with religion; second, how completely English Egyptologists have suppressed a portion of the facts in the histories which they have given to the world; third, it tells us of the antiquity of the practice, which still obtains among the negroes of North Africa, of mutilating entirely every male captive and slain enemy. See 2 Kings xx, 18; Isa. xxxix, 7. This vindictive usage was practiced by Saul and David, as may be seen in 1 Sam. xviii, 25, 27, when the king demands a hundred foreskins.
   David, more heartless than Saul, doubled the quantity and brought two hundred of the vulgar trophies. Also Isaiah (xxxix, 7) intimidates the people, and says, "Thy sons that shall issue from the . . . shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." The Apache Indians of California and Arizona delight in perpetrating the same barbarous mutilations upon captives and the slain.
   Dr. Ginsingburg, in "Kitto's Cyclopædia," says: "Another primitive custom which obtained in the patriarchal age was, that the one who took the oath put his hand under the thigh of the adjurer (Gen. xxiv, 2, and xlvii, 29). This practice evidently arose from the fact that the genital member, which is meant by the euphemic expression, thigh, was regarded as the most sacred part of the body, being the symbol of union in the tenderest relation of matrimonial life, and the seat whence all issue proceeds, and the perpetuity so much coveted by the ancients. Compare Gen. xlvi, 26; Exod, i, 5; Judg. viii, 30. Hence the creative organ became the symbol of the Creator and the object of worship among all nations of antiquity. It is for this reason that God claimed it as a sign of the covenant between himself and his chosen people in the rite of circumcision. Nothing therefore could render the oath more solemn in those days than touching the symbol of creation, the sign of the covenant, and the source of that issue who may at any future period avenge the breaking a compact made with their progenitor." From this we learn that Abraham, himself a Chaldee, had reverence for the phallus as an emblem of the Creator. We also learn the rite of circumcision touches phallic or lingasic worship. From Herodotus we are informed the Syrians learned circumcision from the Egyptians, as did the Hebrews. Says Dr. Inman: "I do not know any thing which illustrates the difference between ancient and modern times more than the frequency with which circumcision is spoken of in the sacred books, and the carefulness with which the subject is avoided now. To speak of any man as being worthy or contemptible, as men and women did among the Jews, according to the condition of an organ never named, and very rarely alluded to, in a mixed company of males and females among ourselves, shows us that persons holding such ideas must have thought far more of these matters, and spoken of them more freely, than we have been taught to do. Abundance of offspring is the absorbing promise to the faithful; a promise liable to fail except the parts destined to that purpose were in an appropriate condition."
   We can compass some idea of the esteem in which people in former times cherished the male or phallic emblems of creative power when we note the sway that power exercised over them. If these organs were lost or disabled, the unfortunate one was unfitted to meet in the congregation of the Lord, and disqualified to minister in the holy temples. Excessive was the punishment inflicted upon the person who should have the temerity to injure the sacred structure. If a woman were guilty of inflicting such injury, her hand should be cut off without pity (Deut. xxv, 12). It was an unpardonable offense, a sin not to be forgiven, for it was a calamity that bumbled their God and made him of no esteem. When his ability failed, respect for him failed. Such a man was "an abomination."
   With a people enslaved to such groveling tenets, it was an easy and natural step from the actual to the symbolical; from the crude, and, perhaps, to some, offensive, to the improved, the pictured, the adorned, the less offensive; from the plain and self-evident, to the mixed, disguised and mystified; from the unclothed privy member to the letter T, or the cross; for these became the phallic analogues. The linga is the symbol of the male organ and Creator in Hindostan. It is always represented standing in the yoni, as in Figs. 4 and 23. Obelisks, pillars of any shape, stumps, trees denuded of boughs, upright stones, are some of the means by which the male element was symbolized. Siva is represented as a stone standing alone.

TRIAD.

   To know exactly who is who, and what is what, it will be necessary to explain the Triad, or Trinity, its origin and its changes or metamorphoses: then the tria juncta in uno--the three in one--can be recognized in the cross more readily than most people see the "three persons in one God." The triad generally belongs to the male, although the female Divinities were sometimes of triple constitution. If we turn to the analysis of the subject according to Rawason, we find that the first and most sacred trinity--three persons and one God---consisted of Asshur, or Asher, or Ashur, whose several names were Il, Ilos, and Ra; Anu and Hed, or Hoa. Beltis was the Goddess associated with him. These four, that is, Asher, Anu, Hea, and Beltis, made up Arba, or Arba-il, the four great Gods, the quadrilateral, the perfect Creator. Asher was the phallus, or the linga, the membrum virile--the privy member; the cognomen Anu was given to the right testis, while that of Hea designated the left testis. When Asher was canonized a Deity, it was but right and natural his ever-attendent appendages should be deified with him. The idea thus broached receives confirmation when we examine the opinions which obtained in ancient times respecting the power of the right side of the body compared with the titles given to Ann. It was believed that the right testicle produced masculine seed, and that when males were begotten they were developed in the right side of the womb. Benjamin signifies "son of my right side;" thus the name of a member of a family attests the reigning notion. The name Benoni, given to the same individual by his mother, may mean, literally, either "son of Anu," or "son of my On." The male, or active, principle was typified by the idea of "solidity," and "firmness"; and the female, or passive, principle by "water," "fluidity," or "softness." It is then, a priori, probable that Anu was the name of the testis on the right side. To inspect the perfect man, or a correctly designed statue of Apollo Belvidere, will detect the fact that the right "egg" hangs on a higher level than the left, for which there is an anatomical reason. The metaphors we sometimes hear, such as "king of the lower world," "the original chief," "father of the Gods," "the old Anu," relate to these parts, and are of phallic import. "King of the lower world" cannot refer to the "infernal regions" of modern orthodoxy, since that mythical Hades had not then come into existence,
   How about the gland on the left side, the third divinity of the triad? Rawlinson states, as best he could determine, this was named Hea or Hoa, and he considers this Deity corresponds to Neptune. Neptune was the presiding Deity of the great deep, "Ruler of the Abyss," and "King of Rivers." He also regulates aqueducts, and waters generally. There is a correspondence between this Deity and Bacchus.
   As Darwin and his coadjutors teach, mankind, in common with all animal life, originally sprung from the sea, so physiology teaches that each individual bas origin in a pond of water. The fruit of man is both solid and fluid. It was natural to imagine that the two male appendages had a distinct duty: that one formed the infant, the other the water in which it lived; that one generated the male and the other the female offspring;   [1]   and the inference was then drawn that water must be feminine, the emblem of the passive powers of creation. The use of water would then become the emblem of it new birth--"born of water;" and it would represent the phenomenon which occurs when the being first emerges into day. The night, which favors connubial intercourse, and the dark interior of the womb, in which for many months, the new creature is gradually formed, are represented by the "darkness brooding." It was night when the world was formed out of chaos; likewise it was thought to be obscure when the mingling of the male and female fluids started a new being into existence. Favoring food fed the tiny speck for months, and its emerging as male or female into the world of men was the prototype of the emergence of animal life from the bosom of earth, or the womb of time, into actual existence.
   Having dwelt on stem and branches of the god Asher, it is proper to give his definition as a personality and function; in other words, as a God. Asher (Gen. xxx, 13), "to be straight," "upright," "fortunate," "happy," "happiness," i. e., unus cui membrum erectum est vel fascinum ipsum--the erect virile member charmed with the act of its proper function. Says Dr, Inman: "While attending hospital practice in London, I heard a poor Irishman apostrophize his diseased organ as 'You father of thousands'; and in the same sense Asher is the father of the Gods. I find that a corresponding part of the female (pudenda) is currently called "the mother of all saints." Asher was the supreme God of the Assyrians, the Vedic God Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male structure and creative energy. This idea of the Creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Judea, the East, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean, Europe, Denmark, depicted on stone relics.
   This much for Asher seemed necessary to explain the origin of the Trinity. So we find the male privy member and the adjacent twin testes made the Triad, and constructed into the pictured formula thus:

A
S
H
E
R
ANU    HEA

   With this glossary we can now understand the hidden meaning of Psa. cxxvii, 3, "Children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward." Exactly! Anu is Assyrian. There is a God in Babylon by the name of Anu. Asher is only another name for Al, On, Ra, Il, El, Hos, Helos, Bel, Baal, Allah, Elohim. These are also sometimes given to the run as the representative of the Creator and the phallic emblem. Asher, Anu, and Hea, three persons and one God, or, as modern theologians have been led to speak of the Trinity, "the more three because one, and the more one because three." One, by himself, is of no value, but "all work together for good."

VOCABULARY.

   In all ages and all localities of the world, people conferred names which imply some one or more characteristics of person, feature, faith, place, or event. Among defectively educated people, and those of rough manners, we find "Long John," "Broad Bottom," "Squinting Dick"; and names for helpless children, "Makepeace," "Faithful," "Freelove" and "Praise God Barebones." In this matter the people of antiquity appear to have set the example. The Greeks had "Theodore," "the gift of God"; "Theophilus," "the friend of God." The analysis of the following vocabulary of Bible names throws a flood of light on the subject in hand. It unvails an interesting question, the nudity of which, for the most part, has been clothed with the vesture of words.

Ahumai (I Chron. iv, 2),

   "ach is mi," or "semen"; Baal-Shalisha (2 Kings iv, 42), "my Lord the trinity," "my Lord is three," "the triple male genitals."
   Amorite, "speaking, flowing"; "erecting, or swelling up."

   Ankura, "a sprout, or intumescence," "an erection."
   Aram, "high," "to swell up," "to be uncovered or naked."
   Aras, "to erect," "to build," "a nuptial bed."

   Asahel, "to create," "to beget," "El-created."
   Baal-Peor (Num. xxv, 3), "the maiden's hymen opener," "my Lord the opener."
   Baal-Perazim, "Baal of the fissure."
   Baal-Tamar, "Baal the palm tree," "my Lord who is or causes to be erect."

   Benoni, "son of Anu," or "son of my On," "son of my God."
   Ben-zoheth, "son of firmness," "to set up," "an erection," "a cippus."

   Beren, "the womb," "the round belly," "the female organs."
   Boladan, "my Lord of pleasure and delight."
   Buli, "the vulva," "the belly,"
   Cainan, "he stands upright," "Hermes."

   Camon, "the erect On."
   Chesil, "the loins or flanks." Loins is an euphemism for the male genitals.
   Cyrus, "the bended bow," "the abdomen of a pregnant woman."
   Dimon, "river, place"; "the semen, or viscous discharge of On."

   Dodai, "loving, amatory."
   Ehud, "conjugation, union"; "strong," "powerful," "the one."
   Eliasaph, "El the fascinator."

   Elisha, "El is," "the erect El."
   Elkana, "El the erect One," "the tall reed," "El burning with desire."
   Elkoshi, "El the hard One."
   En-am, "the eye or fountain of the mother."

   En-an, "the eye of On, or Anu."
   Epaphroditus, "Love was my parent," "given by Venus."
   Epher, "a calf," "a faun," "to join," "be strong."

   Esau, "to make, to press, to dig, to build up, to squeeze immodestly," "the hairy El."
   Eshek (1 Chron. viii, 39), "he presses, squeezes, penetrates into."
   Eshton, "the power of woman."

   Ether, "fullness," a God in the second Assyrian triad, his colleagues being the Sun and Moon. His name may be read as Eva, Iva, Air, Aer, Aur, Er, Ar, also Vul.

   Ethnan, "a harlot's fee," "begotton by harlotry."

   Eve, Chavah, havah, or hauah, "to breathe," "to blow," "eagerness," "lust"; "a cleft, fissure, or gap really, a fissure." (Concha).

   Evi, "desire."
   Ezem, "to fit firmly to one another," "hard."
   Gaal, "the proud or erect Al."
   Galah, "To be," or "to be naked," as in gala days.

   Gath, "A wine press," also "a slit, pit, hole, well," or the euphemism for the vulva.
   Gaza, "strong," "the trunk of a tree," "a phallic emblem."

   Gilboa, "the sun is Baal."
   Gilgal, "a wheel," a "circle, "the sun's heap of stones," "a phallus"; see also Figure 2.

Fig. 2.

   Giloh, "the revealer," "to be or make naked," "to uncover," "to disclose."

   Ginath, "the virgins," "the goddesses."
   Ginnethon, "the power of the virgins."
   Gomorrah, "a fissure, a cleft."
   Habakkuk, "embrace of love."
   Hai, Assyrian ai, "female power of the Sun."

   Hamor, "the swelling up one," or "the red one," to be dark red," "sudden in rising," also "an ass"--which is notorious for salacity. "My beloved is white and ruddy" (Sol. Songs, v, 10).

   Hashupa, "uncovering," "nakedness."
   Hephzibah, "pure delight," "my delight in her."
   Jaaz, "he is hard, firm, stiff," "he rules," "decides."

   Jabal, "he rejoices," "he flows out," "he is strong."
   Jabok, "running, or flowing forth."
   Jabash, "a stout, fat one."
   Jachin, "he strengthens," "to be hot with desire," "to have intercourse." Boaz has the same phallic meaning.

   Jahdo, "he unites."
   Jahaz, "Jah shines," "to be fair," "to be proud," "he is firm."
   Jahdial, "El makes glad."

   Jair, "enlightens," "shines," "blooms," "flows." Jair is united with Eros (erotic desire).
   Jakim, "he set up," "standing erect," "raising seed to."

   Japho, "beauty," "widely extending," "seduce," persuade."
   Jehoaddan, "Jah is lovely," "Yeho is the provider of sexual pleasure."
   Jepthel-el, "El is a begetter."

   Jeroham, "a beloved or favored One."
   Jesher, "he is upright."
   Jesimel, "El creates."
   Jeziah, "He is son of Jah."
   Jonathan, "the gift of Jao" (a God).

   Jhoharaph, "Jah is juicy, vigorous, strong or proud."
   Joshar, "he is straight," "upright."
   Jurah, "he boils up," "to glow, to burn," "to pour out largely."
   Kishon, "the firm or hard On."

   Maon ,"pudenda of On."
   Tamar, the palm, an euphemism for the male organ.

   It "ill be observed, a few of the above name,; refer to the Sun Deity, and solar worship. In some, the solar and phallic tenets are combined in the same, name, and depicted in the same figure. Such an illustration will be found in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, under the name Agnus Dei. The figure--lamb, rain, or goat--is in the impossible attitude of holding a cross with the foot--sometimes a crosier, or shepherd's crook, either of which are phallic emblems. The head of the animal is surrounded by a circle, or with rays, which are always typical of the Sun God. For the Hebrew text of the above names the reader is referred to "Inman's Ancient Faiths."

MARKS AND SIGNS OF THE TRIAD.

   The triad is parent to the idea of Trinity. It is met with in the most distant countries, and is traced to Phoenicia, Egypt, on the west, and Japan on the east, of our hemisphere, and to India. Constituting, as the triad and yoni did, the ever-dominant thought, and actuated by the narrow realm of an absorbing self-personality, they formed the basis and spirit of religious observance. They were referred to openly and broadly, or more generally and in later times by a mark, a metaphor, a motion, or a sign. For this sign the letter T became typical, and still later the figure of the cross became that sign. "It is most remarkable," says Payne Knight, that "the letter T and the cross, symbols of symbols, are made to represent the male procreative powers, which are emblems of generation and regeneration."
   Reverse the position of the triple deities Asher, Anu, Hea and we have the figure of the, ancient "tau" T Of the Christians, Greeks, and ancient, Hebrews--not of the modern Hebrews. It is one of the oldest conventional forms of the cross. It is also met with in Gallic, Oscan, Arcadian, Etruscan, original Egyptian, Phœnician, Ethiopic and Pelasgian. The Ethiopic form of the "tau" is this T the exact prototype and image of the cross; or, rather, to state the fact in order of merit and position in time, the cross is made in the exact image of the Ethopic "tau." The fig-leaf, having three lobes to it, became a symbol of the triad. As the male genital organs were held in early times to exemplify the actual male creative power, various natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic idea, and at the same time point to those parts of the human form. Hence, a similitude was recognized in a pillar, a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied round with two ribbons With the two ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers, the caduceus. Again, the conspicuous part of the sacred triad Asher is symbolized by a single stone placed upright--as in Gilgal in "Vocabulary," Fig 2. -the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar, or palm tree. While eggs, apples, or citrons, plums, grapes, and the like, represented the remaining two portions; altogether called phallic emblems.

Fig.3.

   Portrays a triad found on a medal of Apollo. The triple points at the summit are in multiple of the Trinity, as they but repeat the same idea the structure would express without them. Baal-Shalisha is a name which seems designed to perpetuate the triad, since it signifies "my Lord the Trinity," or "my God is three."
   We must not omit to mention other phallic emblems, such as the bull, the ram, the goat, the serpent, the torch, fire, a knobbed stick, the crozier: and still further personified, as Bacchus, Priapus, Dionysius, Hercules, Hermes, Mahadeva, Siva, Osiris, Jupiter, Molech, Baal, Asher, and others.
   If Ezekiel is to be credited, the triad T, as Asher, Anu, and Hea, was made of gold and silver, and was in his day not symbolically used, but actually employed; for he bluntly says "whoredom was committed with the images of men," or, as the marginal note has it, images of "a male" (Ezek. xvi, 17). It was with this god-mark--a cross in the form of the letter T--that Ezekiel was directed to stamp the foreheads of the men of Judea who feared the Lord (Ezek. ix, 4). In China, Tau is Nature's absolute unity.
   Thus we find the cross is the Ethiopic and ancient Hebrew "tau" ת. The T is the triad, the triad is Asher, Ann, and Hea--the male genitals deified--the genitals are pudenda, pudenda means shame or immodest, and so we arrive at the unavoidable conclusion that the cross is of sexual origin and purely masculine. It is the sign of a man-God.
   This is not all of the cross. In ancient days it had a natural counterpart little suspected by moderns. This essential opposite was denominated the Yoni.

Chapter II
YONI.

   There: is in Hindostan an emblem of great sanctity, which is known as the Linga-Yoni. It consists of a simple pillar in the center of a figure resembling the outline of a conical ear-ring, or an old-fashioned wooden battledore. Dr. Inman says:

Fig. 4.

   "As a Scholar, I had heard that the Greek letter, Delta, Δ , is expressive of the female genital organ both in shape and idea. The selection of name and symbol was judicious, for the words Daleth דּ (Hebrew) and Delta (Greek) signify the door of a house, and the outlet of a river, while the figure reversed, ▼ with the heavy side above, modestly represents the fringe with which the human delta is overshadowed."
   Yoni is of Sanskrit origin. Yauna, or Yoni, means (1) the vulva, (2) the womb, (3) the place of birth, (4) origin, (5) water, (6) a mine, a hole, or pit. As Asher and Jupiter were the representatives of the male potency, so Juno and Venus were representatives of the female attribute. Moore, in his "Oriental Fragments,", says: "Oriental writers have generally spelled the word, 'Yoni,' which I prefer to write 'IOni.' As Lingham was the vocalized cognomen of the male organ, or Deity, so IOni was that of hers." Says R.P. Knight: "The female organs of generation were revered as symbols of the generative powers of Nature or of matter, as those of the male were of the generative powers of God. They are usually represented emblematically by the shell Concha Veneris, which was therefore worn by devout persons of antiquity, as it still continues to be by the pilgrims of many of the common people of Italy" ("On the worship of Priapus," p. 28). If Asher, the conspicuous feature of the male Creator, is supplied with types and representative figures of him self, so the female feature is furnished with substitutes and typical imagery of herself.

Fig. 5.

   Fig. 5 is one of these, and is technically known as the sistrum of Isis. It is the virgin's symbol. The bars across the fenestrum, or opening, are bent so they cannot be taken out, and indicate that the door is closed. It signifies that the mother is still virgo intacta--a truly immaculate female--if the truth can be strained to so denominate a mother. The pure virginity of the Celestial Mother was a tenet of faith for 2,000 years before the accepted Virgin Mary now adored was born. We might infer that Solomon was acquainted with the figure of the sistrum, when he said, "A garden inclosed is my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed" (Song of Sol. iv, 12). The sistrum, we are told, was only used in the worship of Isis, to drive away Typhon (evil).

Fig.6.

   The Argha, Fig 6. is a contrite form, or boat-shaped dish or plate used as a sacrificial cup in the worship of Astarte, Isis, and Venus. Its shape portrays its own significance. The Argha and crux ansata were often seen on Egyptian monuments, and yet more frequently on bass-reliefs.

Fig.7.

   Fig 7. is a Buddhist emblem in which the two triangles typifying the male and female principles are united by a serpent, the emblem of desire. It also typifies wisdom.
   Equivalent to Iao, or the Lingham, we find Ab, the Father, the Trinity, Asher, Anu, Hea, Abraham, Adam, Esau, Edom, Ach, Sol, Helios (Greek for Sun), Dionysius, Bacchus, Apollo, Hercules, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Jupiter, Zeus, Aides, Adonis, Baal, Osiris, Thor, Oden, the cross, tower, spire, pillar, minaret, tolmen, and a host of others; while the Yoni was represented by Io, Isis, Astarte, Juno, Venus, Diana, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Rhea, Cybele, Ceres, Eve, Frea, Frigga, the queen of heaven, the oval, the trough, the delta, the door, the ark, the ship, the chasm, a ring, a lozenge, cave, hole, pit, Celestial Virgin, and a number of other names. Lucian, who was an Assyrian, and visited the temple of Dea Syria, near the Euphrates, says there are two phalli standing in the porch with this inscription on them, "Those phalli I, Bacchus, dedicate to my step-mother Juno."

Fig.8.

   Fig 8. is a fearless emblem of the maternal door. Jesus is reported to have said, "I am the door," and some one in a sacred book said, "My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door" (Sol. Song v, 4). But this picture is a Buddhist theological badge, showing the God Siva standing in the ambient yoni, or door; the date of which was long before the birth of Jesus. It is one of the antecedents of the Virgin Mary. Mary is a compound word, as many of the deities are compound deities, composed of male and female principles and pattern. Mare, or Mar, in the Chaldee, signifies "Lord," the lord or master, and ri signifies "the Celestial Mother." Ri was the name of an Assyrian Goddess. When these two words are united in one they form mar-ri, or Mary, a union of father and mother elements and parts, as portrayed in the above crude figure of antiquity. Molly is the name of a married, woman, or of a woman with children. The above diagram comprehends the phallus and unit, under the designation of Linga-Yoni, the mystical four. The aureole about the head of the figure is a solar tenet.
   From time immemorial to our day, it is, to be noticed the man is put first and foremost, the woman next. He is three; she is one. Christians have perpetuated the triune male God as Abba, father, but left out the mother altogether, except among the Catholics. The sacred four "dignitaries"--of which Rev. Cotton Mather said "the Devil is one"--are only made up by adding Satan, the Typhon or Dagon of antiquity.
   Our singular Fig 8. has, in some measure, descended to comparatively modern times. In Ireland, up to almost the last century, there were three Christian churches over whose doors might be seen the coarsely sculptured figure of a nude woman exposing the maar (pudenda) in the most shameless manner, the idea being that the sight thereof brought good luck. The horse shoe is the modern representative of the organ in question, and is often fastened over the main entrance door by the superstitious for the same object.
   The Papal religion is essentially feminine, and built on the ancient Chaldean basis. It clings to the female element in the person of the Virgin Mary. Naphtali (Gen. xxx, 8) was a descendant of such worshipers, if there be any meaning in a concrete name. Bear in mind, names and pictures perpetuate the faith of many peoples. Neptoah is Hebrew for "the vulva," and, Al or El being God, one of the unavoidable renderings of Naphtali is "the Yoni is my God," or "I worship the Celestial Virgin." The Philistine towns generally had names strongly connected with sexual ideas. Ashdod, aish or esh, means "fire, heat," and dod means "love, to love," "boil up," be agitated," the whole signifying "the heat of love," or "the fire which impels to union." Could not those people exclaim, Our "God is love?" (I. John iv, 8). The amatory drift of Solomon's Song is undisguised, though the language is dressed in the habiliments of seeming decency. The burden of thought of most of it bears direct reference to the Linga-Yoni. He makes a woman say, "He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts" (S. of S. i, 13). Again, of the phallus, or linga, she says, "I will go up to the palm-tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof" (vii, 8). Palm-tree and boughs are euphemisms of the male genitals. Solomon, like the ancients before him, worshiped at the high sanctuary of sex.

COLOR OF GODS.

   One would naturally suppose the color of a Deity would be the same as the complexion which belonged to the worshipers of it. Black Gods and Goddesses were met with among the Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks and Romans--yes, in Europe.) In explanation of these facts, Dr. Inman remarks that "the female generative structure in some countries is of a dark or black color; that Buddha and Brahma were as often painted black as white." There was a black Venus at Corinth. Osiris, Isis and her child Horus, were black. A black Virgin and black child are to be seen at St. Stephens, in Genoa; at St. Francisco, in Pisa; at St. Theodore, in Munich; and in other places. These Somber facts seem to explain a passage in the Song of Solomon, where a woman is made to Say, "I am black, but comely" (i, 5).
   The reason for black Deities assigned above is less satisfactory than attends the author's explanations generally; for the same reason may apply among the same people to their male Gods, which are perhaps more often painted white or red, and for the same local reason. Mahadeva in India was often painted red. Some ancient figures of Bacchus, the Greek personification of Mahadeva, have been found painted red. In the Townley Collection a bisexual figure of Bacchus was, like his analogue, Priapus, painted red. Ezekiel says (xxiii, 14), "the images of Chaldean men portrayed upon the wall were with vermilion."
   The experience of those concerned in opening Etruscan tombs shows that whenever the phallus is found therein it is painted red. Adam means red or ruddy.
   "My beloved [he] is white and ruddy (Sol. Song V, 10).

Fig.9.

   Further generous light is thrown upon the subject of male sanctities and female worship by a religio-historic gem unearthed at Nineveh. Fig 9. is a copy of that keepsake. It is an Egyptian seal, copied from Layard ("Nineveh and Babylon," p.156). On it is engraved the Egyptian God Harpocrates seated on the mystic lotus in profound adoration of the Yoni, or havah, the "Divine Mother of all," which is set in the field before him.
   "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death" (Sol. Song viii, 6). Solomon's seal was in outline the shape of the unit in the field of Fig 9. The same lozenge-shaped figure was the symbol of Astarte, the Celestial Virgin, wherefrom Solomon may have obtained it. Layard and others state that such homage as is here depicted in the above seal is actually paid, in some parts of Palestine and India, to the living symbol, the worshiper, on bended knees, offering to it bread before he eats it, with or without silent prayer. A corresponding homage is paid by female devotees to the masculine emblem of the Sheik, or Patriarch, which is devoutly kissed by all the women of the tribe on one solemn occasion during the year, when the old ruler sits in state to receive the homage. The emblem is, for many, of greater sanctity than the crucifix. Such homage is depicted in Picart's "Religious Ceremonies of all the People of the World," plate 71.
   It may easily be understood that few people would be so gross as to use in religious worship true similitudes of these parts, which their owners think it shame to speak of, and a punishment or reproach publicly to show. As there is circumlocution in language, so there is symbolism in sculpture. Words and figures are adopted which are ingeniously vailed so as not to be understood by the multitude, yet significant enough to the initiated. The palm-tree, the wine-press, the pomegranate, the tower, steeple, hand gestures, are quite innocent in common conversation, while in mythoses they have a hidden meaning. The scholar is aware there are occasions on which no such reticence was used, but where an excessive shamelessness prevailed. Of their nature it is unnecessary to speak further than to say that the exposures were made with the impulse of a religious idea, such as that which might have actuated David when he leaped and danced naked before the ark, and in sight of the women of his household (II. Sam. vi, 14-20). Moderns who have not been initiated in the ancient mysteries, and only know the emblems considered sacred, have need of anatomical knowledge and physiological lore ere they can see the meaning of many a sign. Note the Greek Delta inverted ▼, the door of life; likewise the concha shell, which was held to typify the same feminine organ.

FISH AND GOOD FRIDAY.

   The Fish was a sacred being. Fish are found among the venerated pictures and sculptured works of the Buddhists, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phœnicians.

Fig.10.

   Fig 10. is a Buddhist emblem of the quadruple deity. The rudimentary fig-leaf at the summit is the triad or male feature. The fish yield in a fanning bias for the yoni and female person. Imagine an Oriental priest expounding the mystery of the Godhead and unfolding, the holy Trinity. While pointing to the above figure as the visible expression thereof, he might say--leaving out one person, as many Christians do--"There are three that bear witness in earth--the spirit, the water, and the blood--and these three agree in one" (I. John v, 8). That one may be the yoni, though it be not named, neither would he name the fig-leaf triad, or fish, but all would understand that figurative language Bays one thing and means two of more.

Tell me, is itreligion
To say, The Gods are three?
To attain to God, within you
Your search for him must be.

Caldwell's Indian Folk Lore.

   The statue of Isis with her child Horus has a fish on her head; likewise in Fig 12. Ardanari stands with an intrepid dolphin on his or her head--for one head seems to answer for the two persons.
   The modern idea in regard to the physical influence of fish as an article of diet is, that it is specially adapted to repair waste brain tissue, on account of the phosphatic elements it contains. Phosphates are larger constituents of brain than of other portions of the body. But the ancients took to fish repasts wholly for another end, and for the support of a full vein of divine ardor. They believed it benefited the virile powers. Says Dr. Inman: "I have ascertained that eating fish for supper on Friday night is a Jewish custom. It is well known that fecundity among that people is a blessing specially promised by the Omnipotent. So it is thought proper to use human means for securing the desired end on the day set apart to the Almighty"--Almighty Asher of old. "The Hebrew Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday. Three meals are to be taken during the day, which are supposed to have a powerful aphrodisiac operation. The ingredients in their dishes are meat and fish, garlic and pepper. The particular fish selected, as near as I can determine, is the skate that which in the Isle of Man is still supposed to be a powerful satyron?"
   Layard remarks: "In our days, indeed, the Druses of Lebanon, in their secret vespers, offer a true worship to the sexual parts of the female, and pay their devotions every Friday night--that is to say, the day which was consecrated to Venus, likewise the day in which, on his side, the Mussulman finds in the code of Mahomet the double obligation to go to the mosque and to perform the conjugal duty."
   Mythology informs us that the body of Osiris, when killed by Typhon, was carried in a chest to Byblos, there found by Isis and brought back to Egypt; but the malignant demon cut up the body, and threw the places away. All were recovered but the pudenda, which were replaced by a model thereof, and this image, enshrined in an ark, became one of the symbols of the God. The missing parts are said to have been eaten by a fish. Thus we see "the Ark," "the Fish," and "Good Friday," brought into parallelism. We are also told that the holy chest (ark) of Isis was carried once in a year, in November, to the seaside; the priests, during the passage, pouring drink-offerings of water upon it from the river. The signification of this lavement must at once be apparent to those who know that the Hebrew mi in the text signifies not only "water," but "semen virile."
   In the foregoing we have seen how the eroto-religious feeling of antiquity deified the male members of the body under Asher, Ann, and Hea. We here perceive the same genius has divinized the female structure. With a fish diet, the male God was believed to be omnipotent and all-powerful. Joshua was the son of Nun. Nun in Hebrew is the name for fish; it also signifies a woman, or, rather, the sexual part of a woman.

TORTOISE.

   The Tortoise, like the elephant, ox, ram, goat, ass, serpent, fish, was an object of pious veneration. In the Hindu mythos, the tortoise was the form taken by Vishnu in his second Avatar-Incarnation. The statue of the celestial Venus stands with one foot on the tortoise. Resemblances in form, similitudes in type, constituting as they did in the Hindu mind the highest power of expression, logic was found in comparisons. A glance at

Fig.11.

   Fig 11. enables us to understand how the tortoise came to be regarded as sacred to Venus. It represents, by the extended head and neck, the acting linga--virile member, a sustainer of creation, a symbol of regeneration, a renewer of life, a supporter of the world, a type of omnipotence, and pointing to immortal felicity.

EARTH MOTHER.

   "MOTHER Earth" is a legitimate expression, only of the most general type. Religious genius gave the female quality to earth with a special meaning. When once the idea obtained that our world was feminine, it was easy to induce the faithful to believe that natural chasms were typical of that part which characterizes 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 veneration for apertures in stones, as being equally symbolical, was a natural transition. Holes, such as we refer to, are still to be seen in those structures which are called Druidical, both in the British Islands and in India. It is impossible to say when these first arose; it is certain that they survive in India to this day. We recognize the existence of the emblem among the Jews in Isaiah li, 1, in the charge to look "to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged." We have also an indication that chasms were symbolical among the same people in Isaiah lvii, 5, where the wicked among the Jews were described as "inflaming themselves with idols under every green tree, and slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks." It is possible that the "hole in the wall" (Ezek. viii, 7) had a similar signification. In modern Rome, in the vestibule of the church close to the Temple of Vesta, I have seen a large perforated stone, in the hole of which the ancient Romans are said to have placed their hands when they swore a solemn oath, in imitation, or, rather, a counterpart, of Abraham swearing his servant upon his thigh--that is, the male organ. Higgins dwells upon these holes and says: "These stones are so placed as to have a hole under them, through which devotees passed for religious purposes. There is one of the same kind in Ireland, called St. Declau's stone. In the mass of rock at Bramham Crags there is a place made for the devotees to pass through. We read in the accounts of Hindostan that there is a very celebrated place in Upper India, to which immense numbers of pilgrims go, to pass through a place in the mountains called the Cow's Belly." In the Island of Bombay, at Malabar Hill, there is a rock upon the surface of which there is a natural crevice which communicates with a cavity opening below. This place is used by, the Gentoos as a purification of their sins, which they say is effected by their going in at the opening below and emerging at the cavity above--"born again." The ceremony is in such high repute in the neighboring countries that the famous Conajee Angria ventured by stealth, one night, upon the Island, on purpose to perform the ceremony, and got off undiscovered. The early Christians gave them a bad name, as if from envy: they called these holes "Cunni Diaboli" ("Anacalypsis," p. 346).

Chapter III
UNITY.

Fig. 12. Ardanari Iswari

   Many are the efforts made to set forth to the eye the conception of Deity in one person. The idea has evidently been one of growth from the crude to the more acceptable; and the result attained denotes composite labor.
    Fig 12. is a figure of this kind. It is a copy of an original drawing made by a learned Hindu pundit, for Win. Simpson, Esq., of London. It represents Brahma Supreme, who, in the act of creation, made himself double, i.e., male and female, as indicated by the crux ansata in the central part of the figure, which occupies the place of the conjoined triad and yoni of the original; the original being far too grossly shown for the public eye. The reader will notice the triad formed by the thumb and two fingers and serpent in the male hand, while in the female hand is to be seen a germinating seed, indicative of reproduction of father and mother. The whole stands upon a lotus flower, the symbol of androgenity.
   This figure is of interest as a study; not as a work of art, but to measure the outcropping of primitive ideas. The extremities of the right Bide are less masculine than those of men, though the broad right shoulder and chest are conspicuous compared with the feminine left. The dolphin fish on the head is a supplemental female symbol, as was mentioned before, on the subject of "Fish and Good Friday." The yoni and the crescent on the forehead are not distinctly shown in Mr. Simpson's figure. We have added them in this, in imitation of the same personage in Moore's "Hindu Pantheon." They denote the preponderance, of the Yonigic bias of faith over the Lingasic. When the two personalities-male and female--are thus combined in one, the mystic number counts as a

FOURFOLD GOD.

   Among church paraphernalia and ecclesiastical ornament we find many mystic figures. A very ancient and prominent one is been in his form,

Fig. 13.

   Fig 13. an oval or egg-shaped ring added to the T. This is known as the crux ansata. What does it mean? It is another step in the augmentation of the idea of sexual theism. It means the triad is joined to the unit, which make four. In other words, it signifies the linga, or phallus, the male God, embraces the yoni, or female God. "Male and female created he them." We can only select a few from among a large number of curious, and, many times, complicated, devices, all of which, with greater or less conspicuity, portray the prevailing thought of divine lustfulness, as four in one, and three in one, two in one, or, all as a whole.

Fig. 14.

   Fig 14. is a device denoting the triad or cross connected with the angular yoni. It is a favorite figure placed upon steeples and prominent parts of church edifices; the lower part is often formed in a circle or ring.

Fig. 15.

   Fig15. is still another. The T, or cross proper, is dropped, but the unit and triad condensed in the three balls are unmistakable. There metaphoric figures are so infinitely varied that only the learned in them will be apt to recognize their hidden meaning. What more rational explanation is there for the three gilded balls over the door of the pawnbrokers' shops than that they originally represented the triad, and gave color of orthodoxy to their trade. Fig 16. is another. It is the

Fig. 16.

   Egyptian crux ansata and the Christian cross. We see in it the picture of the same conjugal tenets of four deities in one, as above stated. But it and Fig 15. indicate the tendency to depart from the plain T and become more conventional. The more conventional, the more is its origin concealed. Fig 16. is seen repeatedly figured on Egyptian bass-reliefs as held in the hand. But Fig 17. puts it to another use.

Fig. 17.

   Worn as a part of the dress it is called the priest's pallium. It combines the cross and yoni--the triad and unit--with the prelate's head passed through the latter. The robe or surplice is a telltale portion of phallic and yonijic worship. It is common at the present time in all but the most democratic churches in this country. The surplice is a figment of woman's dress; it can be traced back to the Egyptians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, and others, who worshiped Isis, Astarte, Venus, Iswari and others in that garb. The priests put on female habiliments in which to perform their sacred rites, as the most pleasing, characteristic, and to make themselves like their Creator. On the other hand, women put on male attire. When religious rule instigates to sex consideration in dress, it is but a short step to a more overruling consideration of devout sex intercommunion and behavior, of which see sequel.

Fig. 18.

   Another of the quadruple symbols is Fig 18. the hand, which is both a sign and gesture. it is copied from the statuette of Isis and child. The three fingers denote the trinity, the unit is self-evident.

Fig.19.

   The Serpent, Fig 19. with his tail in his mouth, is as significant as if is forbidding. It indicates the conjunction of male and female, also the ring or unit; it was at the same time a sign of eternity.

Fig.20.

   Fig 20. is a picture of two Egyptian deities al worship before the sacred triad, each holding, in faithful homage, the crux ansata.
   These visible emblems may have been needful for an uncultured people, but Paul discarded them in visible form, though he seems to have clung to them in idea, or by the "eye of faith." His definition of faith--i.e., "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"--points to the Linga-Yoni mysteries, and those mysteries explain his otherwise hidden meaning of faith.
   It is curious to be able to notice, in the present year of the world, how the fourfold conception of the unseen powers of the universe exists among ourselves. Throughout our churches a Trinity is worshiped, and a fourth power deprecated: the beneficent is portrayed as three, the malignant one--Typhon of antiquity, or the Devil of modern orthodoxy--is depicted as single. In Roman Catholic countries, on the other hand, the Godhead is painted as it was in Babylon: i. e., the male triad with the female unit. In Gen. xxiii, 2, we find Arba, which signifies "giant Baal," or "Baal-Hercules;" the correct etymons appear to be Arba-el, "God is fourfold," or

Fig.21.

simply the Armaic Arba "four." And--strange to say, if it were not so common--the worshipful four is allied with erva, the pudenda of both sexes. Fig 21. is a quadruple God planted in the centre of an elaborately carved yoni with a urethra or conduit, the elephant, the emblem of strength and Almighty power, Standing near, and a devotee below. It is to be borne in mind, there were in India different sects, as in our time. One, the Lingacitas, who worshiped the Trinity, or male Deity, whose emblem is Fig. 22, and the sect of Yonijas, or worshipers of woman, as figured above.
   There is, indeed, no single Papal church, whether chapel or cathedral, to which the name Beth-Arbel, "Fourfold God," would not apply; for all are types in which adoration is paid to the undivided trinity in unity, and the Celestial Virgin, the mother of God and man. The name has also been traced to the Hebrew ar and bel: i.e., "a hero is Bel," or, "Bel is powerful."

MERU.

   The learned Higgins, an English judge, who for some years spent ten hours a day in antiquarian studies, Says that Moriah, of Isaiah and Abraham, is the Meru of the Hindus, and the Olympus of the Greeks. Solomon built high places for Ashtoreth, Astarte, or Venus, which became mounts of Venus, mons veneris--Meru and Mount Calvary--each a slightly elevated skull-shaped mount that might be represented by a bare head. The Bible translators perpetuate the same idea in the word "calvaria." Prof. Stanley denies that "Mount Calvary" took its name from its being the place of the crucifixion of Jesus. Looking elsewhere and in earlier times for the bare calvaria, we find among Oriental women, the Mount of Venus, mons veneris, through motives of neatness or religious sentiment, deprived of all hirsute appendage.

Fig. 22.

   See a Mount Calvary, in imitation, in the shaved poll of the head of the priest, Fig. 17. The priests of China, says, Mr. J. M. Peebles, continue to shave the head. To make a place holy, among the Hindus, Tartars, and people of Thibet, it was necessary to have a Mount Meru. also a Linga-Yoni, or Arba, Fig 22.

RELIGIOUS PROSTITUTION.

   Passing from figures, paintings, statuary, ornaments and symbols, it is requisite to notice the religious observances, the actual practice of the faith held by the world's primal worshipers.
   It would appear, or rather it does appear, that phallic worship, or religion, was, first, an instinct or passion; second, it was a privilege and luxury; third, it was a pastime or calling; fourth, it became dominating and imperative; fifth, by euphemistic transformation, it was merged into the Hebrew cultus; and seventh, the Hebrew cultus was further modified into the Christian religion. In support of the first proposition that it was instinctive, or passion, and sexual passion at that, we have the law which ruled out those male devotees whose damaged sexual structure disqualified them for actuating their rites (Deut. xxiii, 1): "He that is wounded in the testicles, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." The above quotation also offers a shoulder of support to our second proposition, namely, that their religious rites were a privileged luxury. As men were inspected in regard to fitness, women were provided in view of that fitness.
   In Num. xxxi, 18 and 35, we are assured, without a lisp or a twinge of horror, that thirty-two thousand Midianitish virgins were consecrated to this end. We need not go into details about the manner in which the sacrifice was made; but we must call attention to the fact that a Christian church still promulgates the same idea, in an alleged spiritual form, and that the nunneries of Christendom are vailed, perhaps decent, counterparts of those Oriental establishments where women consecrated their bodies and. themselves to fulfil the special duties of their sex, so they were taught in the name and for the glorification of their Deity.
   There was a temple in Babylonia where every female had to perform once in her life a (to us) strange act of religion: namely, prostitution with a stranger. The name of it was Bit-Shagatha, or, "The Temple," the "Place of Union."
   Words and history corroborate each other, or are apt to do so if cotemporaneous. Thus kadesh, or kaesh, designate in Hebrew "a consecrated one," and history tells the unworthy tale in descriptive plainness, as will be shown in the sequel.
   That the religion was dominating and imperative is determined by Deut. xvii, 12, where presumptuous refusal to listen to the priest was death to the offender. To us it is inconceivable that the indulgence of passion could be associated with religion, but so it was. Much as it is covered over by altered words and substituted expressions in the Bible--an example of which see men for male organ, Ezek. xvi, 17--it yet stands out offensively bold. The words expressive of "sanctuary," "consecrated," and "Sodomite," are in the Hebrew essentially the same. They indicate the passion of amatory devotion. It is among the Hindus of to-day as it was in Greece and Italy of classic times; and we find that "holy women" is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire, the price of which hire goes to the service of the temple.
   As a general rule, we may assume that priests who make or expound the laws, which they declare to be from God, are men, and, consequently, through all time, have .thought, and do think, of the gratification of the masculine half of humanity. The ancient and modern Orientals are not exceptions. They lay it down as a momentous fact that virginity is the most precious of all the possessions of a woman, and, being so, it ought, in some way or other, to be devoted to God.
   Throughout India, and also through the densely inhabited parts of Asia, and modern Turkey, there is a class of females who dedicate themselves to the service of the Deity whom they adore; and the rewards accruing from their prostitution are devoted to the service of the temple and the priests officiating therein. With an eye to piety and pelf, the clerical officials at the Hindu shrines take effectual means for procuring none but the most fascinating women for the use of their worshipers. The same practice prevailed at Athens, Corinth, and elsewhere, where the temples of Venus were supported by troops of women, who consecrated themselves, or were dedicated by their parents, to the use of the male worshipers. In modern times, reform and improvements have been effected; but it is certain that intercourse between the sexes in sacred places is common in India at the present day. The Hebrew word zanah, which signifies "semen emittere," was the name of a woman who lived and practiced the same rite outside of the temple, from motives other than those esteemed pious. Feasts and holy days were devoted to this passion, and generally concluded with excess.

SHAGA.

   In the Assyrian language, Shaga signifies "a feast." The nature of this feast is explained by Diodorus Siculus. He says: "Our Gala or Solar days begin with fasting as a prelude to another form of sensual enjoyment." A detailed description of one of them conveys only a proximate idea of them. The most disgraceful of the Babylonian customs is the following: "Every native woman is obliged once in her life to sit in the temple of Venus and have intercourse with a stranger. And many, disdaining to mix with the rest, being proud on account of their wealth, dome in covered carriages, and take up their station at the temple with a numerous train of servants attending them. But the far greater do thus: Many sit down in the temple of Venus wearing a crown of cord around their heads; some are continually coming in, others are going out; passages marked out in a straight line lead in every direction through the women, along which strangers pass and make their choice. When a woman has once seated herself, she must not return home until some stranger has thrown a piece of silver into her lap, and lain with her outside of the temple. He who throws the silver must say thus: 'I beseech the Goddess Mylitta to favor thee,' Mylitta being the Assyrian name for Venus. The silver may be ever so small, for she will not reject it, inasmuch as it is unlawful for her to do so, for such silver is accounted sacred. The woman follows the first man that throws, and refuses none. When she has had intercourse, and has absolved herself from her goddess, she returns home. Those that are endowed with beauty and symmetry of shape are so-on set free, but the deformed are detained a long time from inability to satisfy the law: some wait for the space of three or four years."
   A similar custom exists in some parts of Cyprus. This custom is referred to in I. Sam. ii, 22, where "the sons of Eli lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." It is needless to say for the benefit of the captious that the temple of the Assyrians was the tabernacle of the Hebrews. In both were congregations of the Lord. In both the holy presence of their God was made manifest.

COMMUNION

   Has long been a custom in Christendom. Without explaining the origin of this custom, it will here suffice to give an example of it in early times, as an index of its character. Says S. B. Gould ("Origin of Religious Belief"): "The idea involved in communion is the reception of something from God. By prayer, man asks something; by purification, he makes himself meet to approach God; by communion, he receives what he desires. of Deity by union with him."
   The methods adopted by different religions for accomplishing the desired union are numerous. The grossest and most repulsive is by sexual intercourse. The numerous legends and myths representing the union of Gods and women (as in Gen. vi, 2), or men and Goddesses, are reminiscences of ancient mysteries, the object of which was to effect such a union. At the summit of the temple of Belus was a chamber in which was a bed beside a figure of gold; the same was to be seen in Egyptian Thebes, says Herodotus, and every night a woman was laid in this bed, to which the God was supposed to descend. The same took place at Patara in Lycia, where a priestess was locked into the temple every night. Diodorus alludes to the tombs of the concubines of Jupiter Ammon, and Strabo says the fairest and noblest ladies were vowed to share his couch. It is easy to see how the obscene orgies celebrated during some of the festivals of the Gods rose out of this superstition. "The prince, head of Agapemone, as the impersonation of Deity, performed the sexual act with a young girl in the presence of the whole community, professedly in order to make her thereby a partaker of the divine nature."
   In Casgrain's "Vie de Marie de l'Incarnation" is a frank confession of the bearing of erotic sanctimony, nearer home than the above. This Marie, a woman of intense piety and heroism, says of herself in her journal: "Going to prayer, I trembled in myself and exclaimed, 'Let us go into a solitary place, my dear love, that I may embrace you, a mon aise (at my ease), and that, breathing my soul into you, it may be but yourself only, in the union of love. Oh, my love, when shall I embrace you? Have you no pity on me in the torments that I suffer? Alas, alas I my love, my beauty, my life! instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms!' . . . Then, as I was spent with fatigue, I was forced to say, 'My divine love, since you wish me to live, I pray you let me rest a little, that I may better serve you'; and I promised him that afterward I would suffer myself to consume in his chaste and divine embraces." From a similar source, we find it stated that St Christina, a virgin and abbess, believed herself to have received favors which left her no longer a virgin.
   The state of society and that of the public mind evinced by such social habits may not be considered depraved: they were undeveloped. Society had not risen above the crude; the moral mind had not reached the status of chaste refinement. With so prodigal a use of virtue, immodesty was without a contrast and without a name. Therefore these customs were inspired by the same artful and self-involving spirit which inspired the Assyrian and Hindu priests to invent a special hell for childless women. A relic of the same spirit continues in modern times among Christians, where masses have been said, saints invoked, offerings presented, for the cure of physical impotence.
   The above is further testimony in proof of our first proposition: that the primitive religion in this early day of adolescent manhood was purely passion consecrated and sanctified--a religion of feeling. It was a physical heaven counterpoised by a physical hell. Promises were sensuous bliss, and punishments were bodily woe. A religion of intellect or reason, apart from corporeal touch, seems unknown to them. It was based on the dynamics of nerve.
   We must notice how this sexual faith has come down to recent times, and how it constitutes the framework of certain modern observances.

BUNS AND RELIGIOUS CAKES.

   Says Hyslop: "The hot cross-buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The buns known, too, by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the Goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarte), as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, 1,500 years before the Christian era." "One species of bread," says Bryant, "'which used to be offered to the gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun.' Diogenes mentioned 'they were made of flour and honey.'" It appears that Jeremiah the Prophet was familiar with this lecherous worship. He says: "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven (Jer. vii, 18). Hyslop does not add that the "buns" offered to the Queen of Heaven, and in sacrifices to other deities, were framed in the shape of the sexual organs, but that they were so in ancient times we have abundance of evidence.
   Martial distinctly speaks of such things in two epigrams, first wherein the male organ is spoken of, second wherein the female part is commemorated,. the cakes being made of the finest flour, and kept especially for the palate of the fair one.
   Captain Wilford ("Asiatic Researches," viii, p 365) says: "When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to Goddesses, they offered cakes called mulloi, shaped like the female organ, and in some temples where the priestesses were probably ventriloquists they so far imposed on the credulous multitude who came to adore the Vulva as to make them believe that it spoke and gave oracles."
   We can understand how such things were allowed in licentious Rome, but we can scarcely comprehend bow they were tolerated in Christian Europe, as, to all innocent surprise, we find they were, from the second part of the "Remains of the Worship of Priapus": that in Saintonge, in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, small cakes baked in the form of the phallus are made as offerings at Easter, carried and presented from house to house. Dulare states that in his time the festival of Palm Sunday, in the town of Saintes, was called le fete des pinnes--feast of the privy members--and that during its continuance the women and children carried in the procession a phallus made of bread, which they called a pinne, at the end of their palm branches; these pinnes were subsequently blessed by the priests, and carefully preserved by the women during the year. Palm Sunday! Palm, it is to be remembered, is an euphemism of the male organ, and it is curious to see it united with the phallus in Christendom. Dulare also says that, in some of the earlier inedited French books on cookery, receipts are given for making cakes of the salacious form in question, which are broadly named. He further tells us those cakes Symbolized the male, in Lower Limousin, and especially at Brives, while the female emblem was adopted at Clermont, in Auvergne, and other places.

ANTIQUITY OF THE CROSS.

   In a work entitled "The Celtic Druids," by Godfrey Higgins, occurs this strong statement "Few causes have been more powerful in producing mistakes in ancient history than the idea, hastily formed by all ages, that every monument of antiquity marked with a cross, or with any of those symbols which they conceived to be monograms of Christ, were of Christian origin. The cross is as common in India as in Egypt or Europe." The Rev. Mr. Maurice says ("Indian Antiquities"): "Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian be offended at the assertion that the cross was one of the most usual symbols of Egypt and India. The emblem of universal nature is equally honored in the Gentile and Christian world. In the cave of Elephanta in India, over the heal of the principal figure, may be seen the cross, and a little in front a huge lingham (male organ)." The last-named author describes a statue in Egypt as bearing a kind of a cross in his hand--that is to say, a lingham--which. among the Egyptians was the symbol of fertility. Upon the breast of one of the Egyptian mummies in the museum of the London University is a cross exactly in the shape of

Fig.23.

   Fig 23. namely, a cross upon a Calvary, a Meru, or Mount of Venus. People in the above-named countries marked their sacred water jars, dedicated to Canopus, with T or this . Sometimes they were marked thus From the erudite Dr. G. L. Ditson, on this subject, we learn: "The rabbins say that when Aaron was made high priest he was marked in the forehead by Moses with the figure X. And whenever proselytes were admitted into the religious mysteries of Eleusis they were marked with a cross." Tertullian says: "The Devil signed his soldiers with the cross in the forehead in imitation of the Christians."

CRUCIFIXION.

   From the cross we are naturally led to the topic of crucifixion. Many Deities have been crucified. Christ was preceded by Christna, Prometheus, Esculapius, Wittoba, and Buddha. They were all crucified Redeemers long before Jesus of Nazareth was born. They were all sons of virgins: So say mythological accounts.
   In view of the prevalent ideas in relation to the cross, it is singular and more than strange that the cross is not to be seen on any ancient sculpture as an instrument of punishment. In none of the ancient gems pictured by Layard is any form of the cross except the crux ansata to be found. In the Ninevite remains, the punishment which is depicted of the vanquished is impalement. We are told by Herodotus (Book III, 159) that, after the taking of Babylon, Darius impaled about three thousand of its principal citizens, and his plan, Seneca tells us, was one carried out among the Romans. When the cross was made of two pieces of wood, there seems to have been no orthodox shape, and the victims were sometimes, tied and sometimes nailed, being usually left to perish of thirst and hunger. We learn from Juvenal that crucifixion was a punishment for slaves.
   Whether the story of the crucifixion of Jesus has any better foundation than the myths of antiquity, like those relating to Christna, Wittoba, and Prometheus, we will not discuss: but it is pertinent to our subject to speak of the idea which possessed the minds of Christian bishops that met in the third century at Nicca, and determined that the cross should be the characteristic emblem of the Catholic faith. We may admit that they regarded the emblem as a sign of the death of the Redeemer by a painful method; but we must believe that the astute bishops of Africa and the East recognized in it the emblem of fertility. Their doctrine was that all men were dead in sins, but that through Christ they received life. Shorn of palpable phallic immodesty, and of all its offensive indications, there was nothing in the symbol of the cross to offend the eye, while they were able to attach to it much that suggested certain doctrines. From it alone, as from a text, one hierarch might expatiate on the sufferings of the Savior, while another might dwell on the glories of the resurrection; one might paint the horrors of eternal death, another the glories or eternal life; one might view it as a man with arms outstretched so as to secure the whole world under his care, another as an emblem pointing two ways--one to heaven, the other to hell.
   Whatever may have been its precedents, one thing seems to be perfectly certain, that its form was extremely simple, and that every modern addition, namely, the addition of the circle and the triple ornaments, is a return to ancient heathenism, a commingling of ancient tenets with modern dogmas.
   Higgins (p. 70) gives an account of the crucifixion of Salivahana, Wittoba, and Buddha, who were Hindu divinities, and figured in a drawing (Ball, ii) from the famous temple of the crucified Wittoba at Tripetty. These differ in no respect from the crucified Jesus with which we are familiar. A halo of glory shiner upon his head, on which there is a crown, serrated with sharp angler, on its upper margin. The hands are extended, the feet are slightly separated, and all are marked with stigmata--the notable nail prints. These are pictures of the imagination, instead of pictures of reality.
   The resemblance between Christna and Christ is too striking not to append a short sketch of the Hindu God, and compare their likenesses.

CHRISTNA

   Was mouldy with years ere Jesus was born. He is one of the most popular of all the Hindu Deities. An immense number of legends are told of him which are not worth recording, but the following, condensed from the "Anacalypsis," of Godfrey Higgins, will repay perusal. It appears to be the legitimate fountain from which that of Christ springs.
   He is represented as the son of Brahma and Maria, or as some say of Devaci, and is usually called "the Savior," or the preserver. He, being God, became incarnate in the flesh. As soon as he was born, he was saluted by a chorus of devatars, or angels. His birthplace was Mathura. He was cradled among shepherds. Soon after his birth he was carried away by night to a remote place, for fear of a tyrant, Cansa, whose destroyer it was foretold he would become) and who ordered all male children to be slain. (An episode marked in the sculptures at Elephanta; and over the head of this slaughtering figure, surrounded by supplicating mothers and murdered male infants, are the mitre, a crosier, and a cross.) By the male line he was of royal descent, though born in a dungeon, which on his arrival he illuminated, while the face of his parents shone. He was believed to be born of the left intercostal rib of the Virgin Davaci. Christna spoke as soon as he was born and comforted his mother. He was persecuted by his brother Ram, who helped him to purify the world of monsters and demons. Christna descended into Hades and returned to Viacontha. One of his names is the Good Shepherd. An Indian prophet, Nared-Saphos, or Wisdom, visited him, consulted the stars, and pronounced him a celestial being. Christna cured a leper; a woman poured a box of ointment on his head, and he cured her of disease. He was chosen king among his fellow cowherds. He washed the feet of Brahmins. Christna had a dreadful fight with the serpent Caluga. He was sent to a tutor, whom be astonished with his learning. Christna was crucified between two thieves, went to hell, and afterward to heaven.
   The story of Jesus of Nazareth is so identical with that of Christna in name, origin, office, history, incidents, and death, as to make it manifest that the latter was copied from the earlier almost entire. Some whose reverent sympathy feels hurt at the thought that the story of Christ may not be original try to maintain that Christna's is subsequent to Christ. But the following points of historic fact afford a burden of proof that puts a bar to controversy thereon. "It has been satisfactorily proved, on the authority of a passage in Adrian, that the worship of Christna was practiced in the time of Alexander the Great (330 years before Christ), at what still remains one of the most famous temples of India, the temple of Mathura, on Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy. Further, the statue of the God Christna is to be found in the very oldest caves and temples, the inscriptions on which are in a language used previously to the Sanskrit, and now totally unknown to all mankind. This may be seen any day among the places in the city of Seringham and at the temple at Malvalipurram."
   Why were these twins, Christna and Christ, born in eras so divergent, with incidents so identical?

Chapter IV
PHALLIC AND SUN WORSHIP.

   The Sun was a majestic Deity, revered among many peoples. Volumes would be required to give the history of the Sun God and his worshipers. We here advert to him and speak of a act or two in order to show he has not been neglected, also to indicate his good standing among the other Gods in general, as well as among inhabitants of earth.
   It is a moot-point whether the worship of sexual appointments as Sovereign Creator and the foundation of the great thought of creation had priority, or whether solar worship had precedence. Looking at the fact that physical development moves in a free advance of the rational and philosophical, that impulse outstrips inquiring thoughtfulness, that phallic religion is purely one of feeling and passion, while solar faith involves more of the mental structure--a slower and later outgrowth of man--would, in the nature of things indicate sex worship to be long anterior to that of the sun. The one is practical and matter-of-fact. The other is inferential and imaginary. Youth would swell the eager votaries in one; maturity and age would cultivate the other: for there are infancy, youth, and maturity, in nations, and society, as well at; in individuals.
   Without deciding which may be the older, we find them mixed. The phallic or linga-yoni worship and that of the sun were not merely cotemporaneous with each other: they were tenets which mingled together under the same faith. All had the same or similar significance; both embody sex divinity. The sun was male and the moon and earth were females; the moon, an attendant emblem of the feminine Deities, and the earth, with the aid of concurring deities, gave birth to man. Fig 24. represents certain articles of

Fig.24.

this complex faith, sculptured on agate, which is copied by Lajara from the original. in Calvert's Museum at Avignon. It proves the existence of solar and phallic worship at an early period of the world. It is worthy of study. We see the sun and moon in proximity, and the priest in female habiliments--like those of the Catholic and Episcopalian priests of to-day--adoring the male trinity in the form of the triangle near the hand of the hierarch; while on the right side of the sacred chair, or "throne," is the mystic palm-tree of male significance, and on the left and front of the devotee is the never-to-be-forgotten lozenge, unit, or yoni. Altogether they form the great four, the male and female Creators, Preservers, and Regenerators of the world. This is really one of the most comprehensive revelations of ancient faiths, in a small compass, yet brought to light. It deserves more than a passing notice. The male and female counterparts of the human form are viewed as palpable Creators and Regenerators in the most immediate as well as the most continuous sense. The idea that the imperial Sun is the only other all-powerful, omnipresent Creator known to man agrees with modern science. The scientific high priests of to-day, like Mayers and Tyndall, inform us that all forces manifest to man on this planet, except those of earthquakes, tides and gravitation, proceed from the sun. Every plant and every animal is each a product of the sun. Every steam engine moves by means of force derived from the sun: force shot in beams of heat and light from his beneficent breast millions of years ago; here condensed in teeming vegetation, and re-condensed in silent, sleeping beds of coal in the womb of mother earth. The shrill whistle of every steam engine in the startled air may be interpreted as an appropriate pean sounded in honor of the everlasting God Sol. Though he has reared a majestic living world like ours, and maintains the continuity of life upon it from year to year, and from age to age, yet only a small portion of his rays are spent upon the theater of our grand old globe. Grand to us, but a speck in the universe of worlds.
   As we quoted Bible names in proof of the faith of the ancient fathers who gave to their children certain good names of phallic import, so we refer to a few in illustration of the faith in the sun men cherished, the proud ruler of, earth and heaven. In the Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus, the sun has twenty different names, not pure equivalents, but appelatives descriptive of it, such as Brilliant, Beneficent, Beautiful, Creator, Master, Preserver. The Sanskrit Deva, "Splendor," is one of them.

   Aaron, "the Heavenly On," "the God of Air."
   Abigal, "the Father of the Circle," i. e., "the Sun."
   Abram, "the Father is high."
   Ahasbai, "Jah is shining," "God is blooming."

   Ammiel, "the Maternal Sun."
   Amalek, "Mother King," or "Mother Sun."

   Elijah. This innocent is weighted with the names of two Gods at once, the El of the Chaldees, and Jah of the Hebrews, which signifies "El is Jah."

   El and Ilos were Babylonian names of the "Sun God."

   Esthon, "the Uxorious On."

   Ether, "fullness," A God in the Assyrian triad, his colleagues being the Sun and Moon. His name may be read Eva, Iva, Air, Aer, Aur, Er, Ar, also Vul.

   Hai, "female power of the Sun."
   Helon, "God Sun," "El is On."
   Jahmai, "Jah is hot."

   Malcham, "the Queen of Heaven," wife of Asher.
   Mishael, "El is firmness," or, "El is powerful," or, "El is Mish," the Sun.
   Naashon, "Shining On."

   Potiphar (Coptic), "belonging to the Sun."
   Punon, "the Setting On."
   Samson or Shimshon, "Shemesh is On," or "On is the Sun."

   Like many others, the Sun was it crucified God. "It is certainly proved as completely as it is possible in the nature of things for a fact of this kind to be proved that the Romans had a crucified object of adoration of the God Sol (Sun)--represented in some way to have been crucified. The cross was ail emblem of the sun, though rarely. met with in Assyrian and Babylonian sculptures. Besides the crux ansata, the most remarkable which I have heard of is a votive offering found near Numidia in 1833, on which was a man surrounded with a wreath of beams, with both arms stretched out and holding a branch in each hand, thus representing a perfect cross. Below him was this surprising inscription, which reads as translated by Gesenius, 'To the Lord Baal, the Solar King eternal, who has heard prayers.' Kindred to this it must be noticed that, in many ancient pictures of our Saviour in Italy, the words Deo Soli are inscribed, which signify, alike, 'to the only God,' and 'to the God Sol.' Solomon built temples to the Sun God Chemosh (II. Kings xxiii, 13)," ("Inman's Ancient Faiths").

Chapter V
THE PHALLUS IN CALIFORNIA.

   Sex worship being the most natural, the most personal or self-relating, and ever associated with physical maturity, we may safely conclude it to have had spontaneous origin in widely separated localities. As it arose in India it may have likewise arisen elsewhere. At all events, we believe India and the East are not the only places where the vestiges of it are found. There is reason to think the aboriginal people of California had phallic and yonigic usages, if those usages did not amount to a religious faith. In support of this view several stone relics of antiquity give evidence, if it be proper to base a conclusion upon the study of a few specimens.
   The first of the kind it was my fortune to

Fig 25.

inspect was a stone phallus I obtained on the Big Solado Creek in the foot-hills of Stanislaus County, California. It is cylindrical in shape, nearly sixteen inches long, and two and a quarter inches in diameter. The second one is represented in the cut, Fig 25. It is formed of basaltic rock, is eighteen inches in length, and two and one fourth inches in diameter at the largest part. These are commonly called "Indian pestles." But this appears to be a swift and too easy conclusion. To be so carefully wrought out of obdurate rock for the object of pestles implies a poor adaptation to the supposed use. It elevates the autochthon's constructive above his applied skill. These phalli show no marks of wear, the larger ends having the same appearance of disuse as the smaller. A specific feature denoting weighty proof that our specimens are sexual emblems of the male organ cannot be overlooked. Near the summit of the lesser end of Fig 25. is a well-defined depressed line which typifies the adult uncircumcised prepuce, in semi-recession upon the glands.
   C. C. Jones ("Antiquities of Southern Indians") says: "The worship of Priapus probably obtained among some of the Southern Indian nations. In the collection of Dr. Troost were many carefully carved representations in stone of the male organ of generation."
   Another point worthy of note is the fact that the length of the so-called pestles exceeds that of nearly every other celt, as figured by Lubbock, Evans, or Jones.
   The latter depicts a stone ax and handle in one piece, fifteen and three fourths inches long; a spade and handle, cut from solid rock, seventeen and a quarter inches long. Only one specimen has a length greater then the phalli; that is a flint sword which measures a little over twenty-one inches long.
   Like all Gods, the parts which make the person are human or mundane; the divinity, thereof consists in office and proportion. To be godlike, those proportions must be exorbitant, as we not only here, witness, but as may be seen in most of the virile members figured on the bass-reliefs exhumed from the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. All present the same excess in the divine gift of magnitude--a never-failing attribute of the Almighty.

Fig. 26.

    Fig 26. is a unique specimen, the original of which accompanied Fig 25. They are both in the collection of the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Cal., but without history except such as may be read from each as an individual fact. This oval-shaped relic has been denominated a "mortar." But that term seems a misnomer. The object departs from the type of the mortar. Other vessels in the collection that are unquestioned mortars have a less elaborate finish, and all strictly conform to the one idea of rough utility. This specimen Fig 26. is fourteen inches long, nine inches broad, and six inches high. It is not polished, but it has all even smoothness on the outer surface. The oblong cavity, which is nearly three inches deep, allows quite sharp pits of hammer or delving tool marks, which in the mortars proper these marks are very much effaced, as if by attrition of use. The base of the mortars have each a consistent flat bottom to rest on, while the underside of the celt in question is oval, making it unstable as an egg.
   I find no diagram or description of a stone relic of this kind in Sir John Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," Evans' "Stone Relies of England," or C. C. Jones, Jr.'s "Antiquities of Southern Indiana."
   Though the direct evidence is small, the foregoing indirect evidence leads us to regard the relic purely a sacred emblem of the female type, answering to the yoni of India, and a companion to the phallus.

---

AUTHOR'S AFTERWORD

   Speaking to an educated woman of the ancient meaning and remarkable origin of the cross, she inquired, "What, the cross of Christ?" Her unconsciousness that it had any other relation than that pertaining to the crucifixion of Jesus illustrates a prevailing lack of historical knowledge in most people throughout Christendom. The hope to bring within the reach of the average man of letters a chapter of mythological lore which has heretofore been confined to the few is one motive for offering these pages to the public.
   There is no truth but is productive of good. The dynamics of knowledge are impatient of rest and mental inertia. Science and historical criticism are opening many fields long hid in myth and conjecture.
   It is hoped the line of discussion here adopted will explain some portions of Bible literature which have always stood in the attitude of offensive enigma to cultured thought. Improved taste of modern time must question the crudities of former days, and ask the reason why. Natural forces give direction to usage, and type to habits. The same agencies modify and polish them. The hallowed powers of one era become. detritus of a later one; and in still later eons of time those decayed objects reappear as relies, and show, to our surprise, how much that is held to be original in our age is really the unconscious inheritance of a bygone ancestry. They also show early religious ideas were cast in a mold denoting a childlike apprehension, in conformity with things palpable, and roundly pronounced, with the child's direct bluntness of expression.
   Ancient religious literature is conspicuous for the number of Gods held in veneration. We find in Christendom but three, or, at most, four. Explanation of the "Trinity" and the natural origin of those four great creative, all-absorbing Gods are here elucidated upon historic and well-nigh scientific bases. As all science demands illustrations addressed to the eye, as well as argument to the mental perception, so, in the treatment of our theo-scientific theme, over twenty-five illustrations are introduced to aid the text.
   The Phallic and Yonijic remains found in California, are in these pages, for the first time, so fur as known to the author, introduced to public attention as ancient religious relies belonging to the prehistoric stone age.
   Those who have perused Inman's "Ancient Faiths," Higgins' "Anacalypsis" and his "Celtic Druids," Payne Knight's "Worship of Priapus," Layard's "Nineveh," papers of Dr. G. L. Ditson and others relating to kindred subjects, know the authentic sources of much of the information here briefly uttered.

SHA ROCOO.
   January 1, 1874.

END

End Notes

[1]  So much for Victorian science. Aren't we lucky to live in such an age of enlightenment where safe sex is now taught in the schools.

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