THE QUICKENING SUN. Judah and of Israel the rites connected with these emblems assumed their most corrupting form. Even in the Temple itself stood the Ashera, or the upright emblem,' on the circular altar of Baal-Peor, the Priapos of the Jews, thus reproducing the Linga and Yoni of the Hindu. For this symbol the women wove hangings, as the Athenian maidens embroidered the sacred peplos for the ship presented to Athênê at the great Dionysiac festival. Here, at the winter solstice, they wept and mourned for Tammuz, the fair Adonis, done to death by the boar, as Sûryâ Bai is poisoned by the Rakshas' claw, and Rustem slain by the thorn of winter. Here also, on the third day, they rejoiced at the resurrection of the lord of light. Hence, as most intimately connected with the reproduction of life on earth, it became the symbol under which the sun, invoked with a thousand names, has been worshipped throughout the world as the restorer of the powers of nature after the long sleep or death of winter. 2 113 CHAP. II. As such the symbol was from the first venerated as a Rods and protecting power, and the Palladion thus acquired its magic pillars. worship of the Linga by the followers of Siva, and of the Yoni by the followers of Vishnu.'-Works, vol. ii. p. 311. In other words, the origin of the Phallosworship nicht aus der moralischen Verdorbenheit der Völker sondern aus ihrer noch kindlich naiven Denkweise erklärt werden muss, wo man unbekümmert um die Decenz des Ausdrucks oder des Bildes stets dasjenige wählte, welches eine Idee am passendsten bezeichnete. Welches Glied konnte aber bezeichnender an den Schöpfer mahnen als eben das schaffende Organ?' -Nork, Real-Wörterbuch, s. v. Phalluscult, 49. This Ashera, which in the author ised English version of the Old Testament is translated 'grove,' was in fact a pole or stem of a tree; and hence it is that the reforming kings are said to hew it down, while the stone altar, or Yoni, on which it rests is broken up. 2 That Adonis was known also by the name Iaô cannot be doubted. The epithet specially applied to this darling of Aphrodite is aẞpós, tender; and in the oracle of the Klarian Apollon the god of the autumn is called åßpòs 'Iaw. That Adonis was known to the Cyprians by this name is stated by Tzetzes and φράζει τὸν πάντων ὕπατον θεὸν ἔμμεν Ἰαώ, Ηέλιον δὲ θέρους, μετοπώρου δ ̓ ἁβρὸν Hades is thus supreme lord while Per- BOOK II. virtue. So guarded, Jacob is content to lie down to sleep in his weary journey to the house of Laban; and according to later Jewish tradition the stone so set up was carried to Jerusalem, and there reverenced. But the erection of these stone columns or pillars,2 the forms of which in most cases tell their own story, are common throughout the East, some of the most elaborate being found near Ghizni.3 The wooden emblem carries us, however, more directly to the natural mythology of the subject. The rod acquired an inherent vitality, and put forth leaves and branches in the Thyrsoi of the Dionysiac worshippers and the Seistron' of Egyptian priests. It became the tree of life, and reappeared as the rod of wealth and happiness given by Apollôn to Hermes, the mystic spear which Abaris received from the Hyperborean Sun-god, and which came daily to Phoibos in his exile laden with all good things. It was seen as the lituus of the augur, the crooked staff of the shepherd, the sceptre of the king, and the divining rod which pointed out hidden springs or treasure to modern conjurors. In a form 5 The word denotes simply a figure of Pallas, and Pallas is but another form of Phallos. To the same class belong the names of Pales, the Latin god of flocks and shepherds, and of the Sicilian Palikoi. The former is connected with the Roman Palatium, the spot doubtless where the emblem was supposed to have been first set up. The latter are Dioskouroi, twin sons of Zeus and Thaleia, although they have rather the character of demons. 2 They are the columns of Herakles, Dionysos, Osiris and Sesostris. The statements of Herodotos about the pillars set up by this last-named god are singularly significant. They are distinctly connected with virile strength, although he supposes that they were erected to receive inscriptions. The names of those nations, who had won a reputation for bravery, were carved on them without further marks: óréwv dè duaxnτì καὶ εὐπετέως παρέλαβε τὰς πόλις, τούτοισι δὲ ἐνέγραψε ἐν τῇσι στήλῃσι κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ τοῖσι ἀνδρηΐοισι τῶν ἐθνέων γενομένοισι, καὶ δὴ καὶ αἰδοῖα γυναικὸς προσενέγραψε, δῆλα βουλόμενος ποιέειν ὡς εἴησαν ἀνάλκιδες, ii. 102. In short they exhibited, like the representations of Vishnu, the two emblems combined; and they might be combined in many ways. Das Zeichen Schiba's ein Triangel, mit der Spitze nach oben (A), das aufwärts strebende, Feuer versinnlichend, wie umgekehrt, des feuchten Wischnu Symbol das (v), das abwärts fliessende Wasser versinnlichend. Damit die Welt geschaffen werde, musste Wischnu einst dem Schiba die Dienste des Weibes leisten. Der monotheistische Israelit gab beide Zeichen dem Jehovah, wie der Jüdische Talisman ) Scutum Davidis genannt, be weist.'-Nork, s. v. Schiba. We cannot hesitate to connect with these columns the pillared Saints whether of the East or the West. The Stylite did not choose thus to exalt himself without any reason. He found the column or pillar, Phallos, an object of idolatrous reverence, and he wished doubtless to connect the emblem with more spiritual associations. See Appendix C. 3 Fergusson, Hist. of Arch. ii. 642. 4 This instrument exhibits both the symbols in combination. Hymn to Hermes, 529. In a picture of St. Zeno of Verona the two emblems are combined, the fish THE STAUROS AND THE RING. which adhered still more strictly to the first idea the emblem became the stauros or cross of Osiris, and a new source of mythology was thus laid open. To the Egyptian the cross thus became the symbol of immortality, and the god himself was crucified to the tree which denoted his fructifying power. Rising from a crescent, the modified form of the Yoni, the cross set forth the marriage of Ouranos and Gaia, of Vishnu and Sacti, of heaven and earth. But this cross was itself a new symbol of the sun, and in the so-called Assyrian representations of the moon-goddess the sun is exhibited in human form standing on the crescent. More commonly the plain stauros was joined with an oval ring, was worn as an amulet, and was reproduced by the Christians of Egypt as a sacred mark inserted in their inscriptions. In this form, or in that of a ring inclosing a cross of four spokes, this emblem is found everywhere. It is peculiar neither to Egyptians nor Assyrians, neither to Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Germans, or Hindus; and no attempt to explain its original employment by any one of these nations is admissible, unless it explains or seeks to explain them for all. We recognise the male symbol in the trident of Poseidôn or Proteus, and in the fylfot or hammer of Thor, which assumes the form of a cross pattée in the various legends which turn on the rings of Freya, Holda, Venus, or Aphroditê. In each of these stories the ring is distinctly connected with the goddess who represents the female power in nature, or tells its own tale of sensuous passion. In one of the latest of these stories a newly married youth at Rome places his wedding ring on a statue of Venus, and finds to his dismay not only that he cannot dislodge it from her stony finger, but that the goddess herself claims to stand to him in the relation of Aphroditê to Adonis.2 As we might (vesica piscis) being seen pendant from the pastoral or shepherd's staff.-Jamieson, Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 417. See Appendix C. This story is given by Fordun, Matthew of Westminster, Roger of Wendover, and Vincent of Beauvais. Mr. Gould cites from Cæsarius Heisterbachensis a tale, in which a necromancer warns some youths placed within a magic ring to be on their guard against 115 CHAP. II. BOOK II. Tree and serpent worship. expect, this myth was transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the knight whose ring she refuses to surrender looks upon himself as betrothed to the mother of God, and dedicates himself to her by taking the monastic vows. In the older Saga of the Faroese this ring appears as that of Thorgerda, who allows Earl Hakon to draw it from her statue after he had besought her for it with many tears. This ring Hakon gives to Sigmund Brestesson, bidding him never to part with it. When Sigmund afterwards refused to yield it to Olaf, the Norwegian warned him that it should be his bane, and the prediction was fulfilled when, for the sake of this ring, Sigmund was murdered in his sleep. Finally, the symbol of the Phallos in its physical characteristics suggested the form of the serpent, which thus became the emblem of life and healing, and as such appears by the side of the Hellenic Asklepios, and in the brazen crucified serpent venerated by the Jewish people until it was destroyed by Hezekiah.2 Here then we have the key to that tree and serpent worship which has given rise to much ingenious and not alto This ring is the teterrima causa' of the war of Troy (Horace, Sat. i. 3, 107), and carries with it the same doom which the marriage of Brynhild brought to Sigurd the Volsung. With these legends may be compared the story of the crown of the hero Astrabakos (Herodotos, vi. 69), the counterpart of the Scottish myth of Tamlane. Sir W. Scott (Border Minstrelsy, ii. 266) cites from Gervase of Tilbury an account of the Dracæ, a sort of water spirits, who inveigled women and children into the recesses which they inhabit, beneath lakes and rivers, by floating past them on the surface of the water, in the shape of gold rings or cups; and remarks that this story in almost all its parts is current in both the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, with no other variation than the substitution of Fairies for Draca, and the cavern of a hill [the Horselberg] for that of a river.' 2 This symbol of the serpent reappears in the narrative of the temptation and fall of Eve, the only difference being that the writer, far from sharing the feelings of the devotees of Baalpeor, regarded their notions and their practices with the utmost horror; and thus his narrative exhibits the animal indulgence inseparable from those idolatrous rites, as destructive alike to the body and the mind of man. The serpent is therefore doomed to perpetual contempt, and invested with some of the characteristics of Vritra, the snakeenemy of Indra. But Vritra is strictly the biting snake of darkness; and it is scarcely necessary to say, that the Egyptian serpent is the result of the same kind of metaphor which has given to the elephant the epithet of anguimanus. The phallic tree is also introduced into the narrative of the book of Genesis: but it is here called a tree not of life but of the knowledge of good and evil. that knowledge which dawns in the mind with the first consciousness of difference between man and woman. In contrast with this tree of carnal indulgence tending to death is the tree of life, denoting the higher existence for which man was designed, and which would bring with it the happiness and the freedom of the children of God. In the brazen serpent of the Pentateuch the two emblems of the cross and serpent, the quiescent and energising Phallos, are united. THE SERPENT AND THE CROSS. gether profitable speculation. The analysis of language and 117 CHAP. II. connected But the cultus with visible emblems would, whether with Sacrifices Semitic or with Aryan tribes, be but imperfectly developed with this without sacrifice; and although the blood of slain victims worship. might be poured out to appease the power which could restore as well as destroy life, still there remained obviously another sacrifice more in accordance with the origin of the symbols employed to denote that power. It was possible to invest with a religious character either the sensuality to which the Jewish or Phenician idolatry appealed, or the impulse which finds its complete developement in a rigorous asceticism. In the former shape the idea was realised in the rites of the Babylonian Mylitta, and in the vocation of the Hierodouloi of Greek and Hindu temples.2 In the latter the sacrifice was consummated by a vow of virginity, and the Gerairai and Vestal Virgins of the Athenians and the Romans became the type of the Catholic and Orthodox nun. 3 had this origin, will probably be Manichean philosophy. Latin and |