NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
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 Z.ingamYo'n.i 
 
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 Nature Worship 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OP 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN; 
 
 INCLUDING THE 
 
 ADORATION OF THE MALE AND FEMALE 
 POWERS IN VARIOUS NATIONS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 ^(kdi (puja of 3tt^tan (Bnoe^icietn 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " PHALLICISM," 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED, 
 
 MDCCCXCI. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 'V "^ HE exhaustion of the first edition of FhallicisTn, of 
 which only five hundred copies were printed^ and the 
 continued demand for the same led to the consideration of 
 the question whether we should rep7^int our first issue or 
 prepare a new work embodying material not thereuAth in- 
 corporated. It having been resolved to adopt the latter 
 course, with the exception of a few matters of definition, 
 necessary in every edition, this volume will be found to 
 2)resent information not contained in Phallicism or in any 
 of the supjjlementary volumes on the Worship of the 
 Serpent, of Trees, of Fishes, Flowers, Fire, <&;c., afterwards 
 
 The value of the following treatise lies in the fact 
 that the information it imparts has not been derived from 
 speculative or partisan ideas; neither is it the fruit of the 
 inventive genius of the romance writer : it consists rather 
 of matter gathered from an irnmense variety of Eastern 
 writers, and in making it as full and explanatory as 
 possible, the very best authorities have been pressed into the 
 servicd, and the substance of their statements duly quoted. 
 
 Other books of a phallic character, so far as they have 
 been of any use or value, have been made up exclusively 
 of extracts from Indian and other works; their fault has 
 been that they have failed to acknowledge the sources to 
 which they were indebted for their iyiformation. The 
 reader will find in our pages frequent reference to the 
 authors cited, and an honest use of the marks which dis- 
 tinguish a quoted from an original passage. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Origin of Phallicism 1 
 
 Chapter II. — Deities connected with Phallic Worship 8 
 
 Chapter III. — Emblems connected with Phallic Worship 16 
 
 Chapter IV.— Phallic Objects 33 
 
 Chapter V. — Wide Prevalence of Phallic Worship 43 
 
 Chapter VI. — Phallic Worship in the Middle Ages 60 
 
 Chapter YII. — Moral Aspects of Phallicism 70 
 
 Chapter VIII. — Sacta Puja, the Worship of the Female 
 
 Power 82 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER T. 
 
 The Origin of Phallicism. 
 
 BY way of definition of terms, very few words are needed in 
 introducing our present treatise. Phallic worship (the 
 phase of nature worship to which our attention will be directed) 
 is the adoration of the human organs of generation, from (/)aAAo? 
 (membrum virile). Originally it was of a character free from 
 all associations of licentiousness and indecency, — viewed of 
 course in the light of remoter times — it simply represented 
 allegorically, the mysterious union of male and female as the 
 source of the continuation of the existence of animated beings. 
 In course of time, however, it was attended with so much that 
 was detrimental to the morals of the people, especially in the 
 degenerate days of Rome, that the governing authorities had to 
 interfere and in turn modify and suppress it. 
 
 Extraordinary as this worship, in its extensive and varied 
 forms and wide-spread pre valance in almost every nation on the 
 face of the earth, may well be termed, there will be found when 
 it comes to be carefully regarded and studied, very much in it 
 that for want of better information and education is both reason- 
 able and natural. Men have always to some extent been observers 
 of the processes constantly going on under the control of the 
 ordinary laws of nature, and it was not likely that they would 
 fail to be impressed with the profound mysteries connected with 
 the propagation of their own and other species. " Two causes," 
 says a writer on the subject, "must have forcibly struck the 
 minds of men in early periods when observant of the operations 
 of nature, — one the generative power, and the other the pro- 
 ductive, — the active and passive causes. This double mode of 
 production visible in nature, must have given rise to comparisons 
 with the mode proceeding in the generation of animals, in which 
 two causes concur, the one active and the other passive, — the 
 one male, and the other female, the one as father, the other as 
 
 B 
 
2 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 mother. Nature to the early man was not brute matter, but a 
 being invested with his own personality, and endowed with the 
 same feelings and passions, and performing the same actions. 
 Generation, begetting, — production, bringing forth, wei'e thus his 
 ideas of cause and effect. The earth was looked upon as the 
 mould of nature, as the recipient of seeds, the nurse of what was 
 produced in its bosom ; the sky was the fecundating and fer- 
 tilising power. An analogy was suggested in the union of the 
 male and female." 
 
 Of the extensive prevalence of this worship we have ample 
 evidence. It occurs in Egypt with the deity Khem, in India 
 with Siva, in Assyria with Yul, in Greece with Pan and Priapus, 
 in the Scandinavian and Tuetonic nations with Fricco, in Spain 
 with Hortanes. It has been found in different parts of the 
 American continent, in Mexico, Peru, and Hayti ; in both these 
 latter places numerous phalli modelled in clay have been dis- 
 covered ; and in the islands of the Pacific ocean, on festive 
 occasions, a phallus highly ornamented, called by the natives 
 Tinas, is carried in procession. 
 
 " Among the simple and primitive races of men, the act of 
 generation was considered as no more than one of the operations 
 of nature contributing to the reproduction of the species, as in 
 agriculture the sowing of the seed for the production of corn, and 
 was consequently looked upon as a solemn duty consecrated to 
 the Deity ; as Payne Knight remarks, ' it was considered as a 
 solemn sacrament in honour of the Creator.' " 
 
 " The indecent ideas attached to the phallic symbol were, 
 though it seems a paradox to say so, the result of a more advanced 
 civilisation verging towards its decline, as we have evidence at 
 Rome and Pompeii." 
 
 Voltaire says, speaking of the worship of Priapus : — " Our 
 ideas of prosperity lead us to suppose that a ceremony which 
 appears to us so infamous, could only be invented by licentious- 
 ness ; but it is impossible to believe that depravity of manners 
 would ever have led among any people to the establishment of 
 religious ceremonies. It is probable, on the contrary, that this 
 custom was first introduced in times of simplicity, that the first 
 thought was to honour the deity in the symbol of life which it 
 has given us. Such a ceremony may have excited licentiousness 
 among youths, and have appeared ridiculous to men of education 
 in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times." 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 3 
 
 And Mr. Patterson, in the Asiatic Researches^ some ninety 
 years ago, wrote : " It is probable that the idea of obscenity was 
 not originally attached to these symbols : and it is likely that the 
 inventors themselves might not have foreseen the disorders wliich 
 this worship would occasion amongst mankind. Profligacy 
 eagerly embraces what flatters its propensities, and ignorance 
 follows blindly, whenever example excites : it is therefore no 
 wonder, that a general corruption of manners should ensue, in- 
 creasing in proportion as the distance of time involved the original 
 meaning of the symbol in darkness and oblivion. Obscene mirth 
 became the principal feature of the popular superstition, and was, 
 even in after times, extended to, and intermingled with, gloomy 
 rites and bloody sacrifices." 
 
 The origin of Phallicism is involved in so much obscurity 
 that nothing can be said thereon with any degree of certainty or 
 clearness. The Phoenicians traced its introduction to Adonis, 
 the Egyptians to Osiris, the Phrygians to Attys, the Greeks to 
 Dionysus. The Scanda-purana and Visvasara-pracasa, or de- 
 claration of what is most excellent in the world, supplies us with 
 the following legend, which seems to be nothing more or less than 
 an illusion to the sun which in autumn loses its fructifying 
 influence : 
 
 "One day Maha-Deva, the great Hindu god, was rambling 
 over the earth, naked, and with a large club in his hand, he 
 chanced to pass near the post where several Munis were per- 
 forming their devotions. Maha-Deva laughed at them, insulted 
 them in the most provoking and indecent terms, and lest his 
 expressions should not be forcible enough, he accompanied the 
 whole with significant signs and gestures. The offended Munis 
 cursed him, and the linga or phallus fell to the ground. Maha- 
 Deva, in this state of mutilation, travelled over the world, 
 bew^ailing his misfortune. His consort, too, hearing of this 
 accident, gave herself up to grief, and ran after him in a state of 
 distraction, repeating mournful songs. This is w^hat the Greek 
 mythologists called the wanderings of Damater and the lamenta- 
 tions of Bacchus. 
 
 " The world being thus deprived of its vivifying principles, 
 generation and vegetation were at a stand ; gods and men were 
 alarmed, but having discovered the cause of it, they all went in 
 search of the sacred linga, and at last found it grown to an 
 immense size, and endowed with life and motion. 
 
4 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 " Having worshipped the sacred pledge, they cut it with 
 their hatchets into one-and-thirty pieces, which, Polypus like, 
 soon became perfect lingas. The Devatas left one-and-twenty of 
 them upon earth, carried nine to heaven, and removed one into 
 the inferior regions for the benefit of the inhabitants of the 
 three worlds. One of these lingas was erected on the banks of 
 the Camudvati, or Euphrates, under the name of Baleswara- 
 linga, or the linga of Iswara, the infant, who seems to answer to 
 the Jupiter Puer of the western mythologists. 
 
 "To satisfy Devi, and restore all things to their former 
 situation, Maha-Deva was born again in the character of Bales- 
 wara, or Iswara, the infant. Baleswara, who fosters and pre- 
 serves all, though a child, was of uncommon strength ; he had a 
 beautiful countenance ; his manners were most engaging, and 
 his only wish was to please everybody, in which he succeeded 
 eflfectually ; but his subjects waited with impatience till he came 
 to the age of maturity, that lie might bless them with an heir to 
 his virtues. Baleswara, to please them, threw off his child-like 
 appearance and suddenly became a man, under the title of 
 Lileswara, or Iswara, who gives pleasure and delight. He then 
 besfan to reign over gods and men, with the strictest observance 
 of justice and equity ; his subjects were happy, and the women 
 beheld with delight his noble and manly appearance. With the 
 view of doing good to mankind he put himself at the head of a 
 powerful army, and conquered many distant countries, destroying 
 the wicked and all oppressors ; he had the happiness of his sub- 
 jects so much at heart, that he entirely neglected any other 
 pursuit. His indifference for the female sex alarmed his subjects; 
 he endeavoured to please them, but his embraces were fruitless. 
 This is termed Aschalana in Sanscrit, and the place where this 
 happened was in consequence denominated Aschalana-sthan. 
 The Apsaras, or celestial nymphs, tried in vain the effect of their 
 charms. At last Samirama came to Aschalana-sthan, and re- 
 tiring into a solitary place in its vicinity, chanted her own 
 metamorphoses and those of Lileswara, who happening to pass 
 by, was so delighted with the sweetness of her voice, that he 
 went to her and enquired who she was. She related to him how 
 they went together into Utcoladesa in the characters of the 
 Capoteswara and Capotesi, adding, "You appeared then as 
 Mocshewara, and I becauie Anaysa ; you are now Lileswara and 
 I am Samirama, but I shall be soon Lileswari." Lileswara being, 
 under the influence of Maya, or worldly illusion, did not recollect 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 5 
 
 any of these transactions ; but suspecting that the person he was 
 speaking to might be a manifestation of Parvati, he thought it 
 advisable to marry her ; and having obtained her consent, he 
 seized her hand, and led her to the performance of the nuptial 
 ceremony, to the universal satisfaction of his subjects. Gods and 
 men met to solemnise this happy union, and the celestial nymphs 
 and heavenly quiristers graced it with their presence. Thus 
 Samirama and Lileswara commenced their reign to the general 
 satisfaction of mankind, who were happy under their virtuous 
 administration. 
 
 " From that period the three worlds began to know and 
 worship Lileswara, who, after he had conquered the universe 
 returned into Cusha-duipa. Lileswara, having married Sami- 
 rama, lived constantly with her, and followed her wherever she 
 chose to go ; in whatever pursuits and pleasures she delighted in 
 these alone he took pleasure ; thus they travelled over hills and 
 through forests to distant countries; but at last returned to 
 Cusha-duipa, and Samirama seeing a delightful grove near the 
 Hradancita, (or deep water), with a small river of the same 
 name, expressed a wish that he would fix the place of their resi- 
 dence in this beautiful spot, there to spend their days in pleasure." 
 
 The Hindus insist that the black stone in the wall of the 
 Caaba is no other than the linga or phallus of Maha-Deva ; and 
 that, when the Caabs was rebuilt by Mohammed (as they appear 
 to have been), it was placed in the wall out of contempt ; but 
 the new converted pilgrims would not give up the worship of the 
 black stone ; and sinistrous portents forced the ministers of the 
 new religion to connive at it. Arabian authors also inform us 
 that stones were worshipped all over Arabia, particularly at 
 Mecca; and Alshahrestani says that the temple of Mecca was 
 dedicated to Zohal or Kyevun, who is the same with Saturn. 
 
 The author of the Dabistan declares positively that the Hejar- 
 al-aswad^ or black stone, was the image of Kyevun. Though 
 these accounts somewhat differ from those of the Puranas, yet 
 they show that this black stone was the object of an idolatrous 
 worship from the most remote times. * 
 
 Faber says : " It is possible that the phallus received its name 
 from the Palli, Pelasgi, or Palestini, — the Pelasgi being much 
 addicted to phallic worship. Miphlezeph, the idol of Maacha, 
 seems to be Ma-Phallasath, the great phallic goddess. I think 
 
 * See Asiatic Researches, vol. ill. 
 
6 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 that she was rather Venus or Mylitta, than Priapus, as Selden 
 supposes. Perhaps, however, we ought to derive Palli, Pelasgi, 
 Palestini, neither from Peleg nor Felasge ; but to deduce these 
 several appellatims from phallus, rather than what I just 
 observed, vice versa. It certainly is not improbable, that those 
 nations were so called from the worship of the phallus, since the 
 Hindoos assure us, that the lonians or Yonijas received their 
 name from the devotion to the mysteries of the Yoni." 
 
 Mr. Gerald Massey in his " Natural Genesis," speaking of the 
 origin of the phallic cult, says: "According to Theal, the African 
 historian and collector of folk tales, the Kaffirs have no Sabbath, 
 and keep none of the sacred seasons of periodic recurrence, com- 
 monly celebrated by a festival. But from time immemorial, they 
 have preserved the primitive custom of rejoicing at the first 
 appearance of the menstrual period of the female. This they 
 celebrate in what is their sole festival. At that time of a girl's 
 life, all the young women in her neighbourhood meet for rejoicing, 
 at which they celebrate the festival of pubescence. These young 
 women are then distributed among the men who are selected to 
 lie with them, but who are prohibited from sexual intercourse ; 
 and if the trespass be committed the men are fined — a primitive 
 mode of paying a price which was afterwards continued in the 
 compensation enforced at the time of marriage. We still keep 
 the birthday and celebrate the coming of age at a fixed period of 
 life; but the festival of puberty is extant to show that the 
 earliest birthday ever memorialized was not the day on which 
 the child was born into the world, but the time of rebirth into 
 womanhood and manhood. When applied to the male, this 
 period of pubescence suggested the birthday of the boy who was 
 at this time admitted as a young man into the totemic tribe ; — 
 hence the typical ' second birth ' celebrated in the mysteries 
 when the first had also been acknowledged. 
 
 " It is here we have to seek not only the genesis of time itself, 
 but the origin of the so-called phallic cult, or worship of the 
 generative powers, which did not commence as a religion, but 
 with the sexual typology as a mode of expression, and of keeping 
 time as well as other forms of law. At the age of puberty the 
 boy was first counted as one, an individual, or rather one of the 
 totem ; he counted because he was reckoned. Until then the 
 children were not reckoned, and did not count either as indivi- 
 duals or members of the totem, consequently they were of no 
 account. Rekh (Eg.) is to count and reckon. The rekh (Eg.), 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 7 
 
 or ilk^ as a people of a district or totem were those who were 
 reckoned. To be reckoned and numbered was to be of rank, and 
 this constituted the first honour for the male and the female, 
 even from the time they were reckoned separately in the earliest 
 two castes. Up to this period they were mere slaves, and at 
 puberty they became men and women on whom the freedom of 
 the totem was conferred. This rank and honour of being 
 reckoned as one of the body corporate is shown by the Hottentot 
 language, in which the word Goa, to count, also signifies honour 
 and respect ; Goei is one ; Goab, the number, also means regard, 
 respect, and honour, which originated in becoming one of the 
 number at puberty, those who were of account. If the Hottentot 
 is slighted, he will say indignantly, ' I am not counted,' i.e. he is 
 treated as nobody." 
 
 " Three phases," says Westropp, " in the representation of 
 the phallus should be distinguished ; first, when it was the object 
 of reverence and religious worship ; secondly, when it was used 
 as a protecting power against evil influences of various kinds, 
 and as a charm or amulet against envy and the evil eye, as at the 
 postern gate at Alatri and at Pompeii, and as frequently occurs 
 in amulets of porcelain found in Egypt, and of bronze in Italy ; 
 thirdly, when it was the result of mere licentiousness and dissolute 
 morals. Another cause also contributed to its reverence and 
 frequent representation — the natural desire of women among all 
 races, barbarous as well as civilized, to be the fruitful mother 
 of children — especially as, amongst some people, women were 
 esteemed according to the number of children they bore, and as, 
 among the Mahommedans of the present day, it is sinful not to 
 contribute to the population ; as a symbol, therefore, of proli- 
 ficacy, and as the bestower of offspring, the phallus became an 
 object of reverence and especial worship among women." 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Deities connected with Phallic Worship. 
 
 "nnHE Egyptians in their hymns to Osiris, invoked that god 
 I as the being who dwelt concealed in the embraces of the 
 sun ; and several of the ancient Greek writers speak of the great 
 luminary itself as the generator and nourisher of all things, the 
 ruler of the world, the first of the deities, and the supreme Lord 
 of all mutable or perishable beings. Not that they any more 
 than the Egyptians, deified the sun considered merely as a mass 
 of luminous or fervid matter ; but as the centre or body, from 
 which the pervading spirit, the original producer of order, fer- 
 tility and organization, amidst the inert confusion of space and 
 matter, still continue to emanate through the system, to preserve 
 the mighty structure which it had formed. The primitive spirit 
 is said to have made the sun to guard and govern all things, it 
 being thought the instrumental cause through wdiich the powers 
 of reproduction, implanted in matter, continued to exist ; for 
 without a continued emanation from the active or male principle 
 of generation, the passive or female principle which was derived 
 from it, would of itself become exhausted. 
 
 "This continued emanation, the Greeks personified into two 
 distinct personages, the one representing celestial love, or attrac- 
 tion, and the other, animal love or desire, to which the Egyptians 
 added a third, by personifying separately the great fountain of 
 attraction, from wliich both were derived. All the three were, 
 however, but one, the distinctions arising merely out of the 
 metaphysical subtlety of the theologists, and the extravagant 
 allegories of the poets, which have a nearer resemblance to each 
 other than is generally imagined. 
 
 "This productive ethereal spirit being expanded through the 
 whole universe, every part was in some degree impregnated with 
 it, and therefore every part was, in some measure, the seat of the 
 deity, whence local gods and goddesses were everywhere wor- 
 shipped, and consequently multiplied without end. ' Thousands 
 of the immortal progeny of Jupiter,' says Hesiod, 'inhabit the 
 fertile earth, as guardians to mortal men.' An adequate know- 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. » 
 
 ledge, either of the number or attribute of these, the Greeks 
 never presumed to think attainable, but modestly contented 
 themselves with revering and invoking them whenever they felt 
 or wanted their assistance." "^ 
 
 Ceres and Bacchus (or Demeter and Dionysus or lacthus), 
 called in Egypt, Isis and Osiris, and in Syria, Yenus and Adonis 
 (Astarte and Adoni), were the deities in whose names and under 
 whose protection persons were most commonly instructed in the 
 faith. Thus, Herodotus (II. ch. 42), " Such Egyptians as possess 
 a temple of the Theban Jove, or live in the Thebaic canton, oflfer 
 no sheep in sacrifice, but only goats ; for the Egyptians do not 
 all worship the same gods, excepting Isis and Osiris, the latter of 
 whom they say is the Grecian Bacchus." 
 
 And Euripides (Bacchce 7^), "Oh happy, blessed is he that 
 witnesseth the initiation of the deities, for he venerateth the 
 source of life ; not only does he divine the Orgies of Cybele, the 
 Great Mother, but waving the thyrsus, and crowned with ivy, he 
 is also a votary of Dionysus." 
 
 The word Bacchus or lacchus is a title derived from the excla- 
 mations uttered in the festivals of this god, whose other Latin 
 name. Liber, is also a title signifying the same attribute as the 
 Greek epithet, Lusios, or Luson. But whence the more common 
 Greek name, Dionusos, is derived, or what it signifies, is not so 
 easy to determine, or even to conjecture with any reasonable 
 probability. The first part of it appears to be from Deus, Dios, 
 or Dis, the ancient name of the supreme universal god; but 
 whether the remainder is significant of the place from which this 
 deity came into Greece, or of some attribute belonging to him, 
 we cannot pretend to say, and the conjectures of etymologists, 
 both ancient and modern, concerning it, are not worthy of notice. 
 An ingenious writer in the Asiatic Researches derives the whole 
 name "from a Sanscrit title of an oriental demi-god, and as 
 Ausonius says it was Indian, this derivation appears more 
 probable than most others of the kind. 
 
 At Sicyon in the Peloponnesus, he was worshipped under 
 another title, which we shall not venture to explain any further 
 than that it implies his having the peculiar superintendence and 
 direction of the characteristics of the female sex. (Clement, of 
 Alexandria, declares that he was denominated Choiropsale by the 
 Syconians, a low term expressing immodest practices with 
 
 *" Ivnight. Sijinh. Lan. Anc. Art. 
 
10 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 women). At Larapascus, too, on the Hellespont, he was vene- 
 rated under a symbolical form adapted to a similar office, though 
 with a title of a different signification, Priapus. 
 
 According to Herodotus, the name Dionysus, or Bacchus, 
 with the various obscene and extravagant rites that distinguished 
 his worship, was communicated to the Greeks by Melampus, who 
 appears to have flourished about four generations before the 
 Trojan war, and who is said to have received his knowledge of 
 the subject from Cadmus and the Phoenicians, who settled in 
 Boeotia. "He it was," says Herodotus, "who introduced into 
 Greece the name of Bacchus, the ceremonial of his worship, and 
 the procession of the phallus. He did not, however, so completely 
 apprehend the whole doctrine as to be able to communicate it 
 entirely ; but various sages since his time have carried out hi^^ 
 teaching to greater perfection. Still it is certain that Melampus 
 introduced the phallus, and that the Greeks learnt from him the 
 ceremonies which they now practise. I therfore maintain that 
 Melampus, who was a wise man, and had acquired the art of 
 divination, having become acquainted with the worship of 
 Bacchus through knowledge derived from Egypt, introduced it 
 into Greece, with a few slight changes, at the same time that he 
 brought in various practices. For I can by no means allow that 
 it is by mere coincidence that the Bacchic ceremonies in Greece 
 are so nearly the same as the Egyptian — they would then have 
 been more Greek in their character, and less recent in their 
 origin. Much less can I admit that the Egyptians borrowed 
 these customs, or any other, from the Greeks. My belief is that 
 Melampus got his knowledge of them from Cadmus the Tyrian, 
 and the followers whom he brought from Phoenicia into the 
 country which is now called Boeotia." * 
 
 General tradition has attributed the introduction of the mystic 
 religion into Greece, to Orpheus, a Thracian ; who, if he ever 
 lived at all, lived probably about the same time with Melampus, 
 or a little earlier. The traditions concerning him are, however, 
 extremely vague and uncertain , and the most learned and 
 sagacious of the Greeks is said to have denied that such a person 
 had ever existed ; but nevertheless, we learn from the very high 
 authority of Strabo that the Greek music was all Thracian or 
 Asiatic, and, from the unquestionable testimony of the Iliad, that 
 the very ancient poet Thamyris was of that country, to which 
 tradition has also attributed the other old sacerdotal bards, 
 Musseus and Eumolpus. 
 
 * Rawlinson's Herodofu-^, II., ch. 49. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 11 
 
 As there is no mention, however, of any of the mystic deities, 
 nor of any of the rites with which they were worshipped, in any 
 of the genuine parts, either of the Iliad or Odyssey, nor any trace 
 of the symbolical style in any of the works of art described in 
 them, nor of allegory or enigma in the fables which adorn them, 
 we may fairly presume that both the rites of initiation and the 
 worship of Bacchus are of a later period, and were not generally 
 known to the Greeks till after the composition of those poems. 
 The Orphic Hymns, too, which appear to have been invocations 
 or litanies used in the mysteries, are proved, both by the language 
 and the matter, to be of a date long subsequent to the Homeric 
 times, there being in all of them abbreviations and modes of 
 speech not then known, and the form of worshipping or glorifying 
 the deity by repeating adultatory titles, not being then in use, 
 though afterwards common. 
 
 In Egypt, nevertheless, and all over Asia, the mystic and 
 symbolical worship appears to have been of immemorial antiquity. 
 The women of the former country carried images of Osiris in 
 their sacred processions, with a movable phallus of dispropor- 
 tionate magnitude, the reason for which Herodotus does not 
 think proper to relate, because it belonged to the mystic religion. 
 Diodorus Siculus, however, who lived in a more communicative 
 age, informs us that it signified the generative attribute. In 
 Book I., chap. 6, this author says: "They say the goat was 
 accounted amongst the number of the Gods, for the sake of his 
 genitals, as Priapus is honoured among the Grecians, for this 
 creature is exceeding lustful, and therefore they say that member 
 (the instrument of generation) is to be highly honoured as that 
 from which all living creatures derive their original. They say 
 that these privy parts are not only accounted sacred among the 
 Egyptians, but among many others are religiously adored in the 
 time of their solemn rites of religious worship, as those parts that 
 are the causes of generation. And the priests who succeed in 
 the office, descended to them from their fathers in Egypt, are 
 first initiated into the service of this god. For this reason the 
 Panes and Satyrs are greatly adored among them, and therefore 
 they have images of them set up in their temples, with their 
 privy parts erected like to the goat, which they say is the most 
 lustful creature in the world. By this representation they would 
 signify their gratitude to the gods, for the populousness of their 
 country." 
 
12 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Plutarch also says that the Egyptian statues of Osiris had 
 the phallus to signify his procreative and prolific power, the 
 extension of which through the three elements of air, earth and 
 water, they expressed by another kind of statue, which was 
 occasionally carried in procession, having a triple symbol of the 
 same attribute. His words are : " They exhibit the statue in 
 human semblance, holding the sexual part prominent as fecun- 
 dating and nourishing. They display the emblem and carry it 
 around, having the sexual parts threefold." 
 
 The Greeks usually represented the phallus alone, as a distinct 
 symbol the meaning of which seems to have been among the last 
 discoveries revealed to the initiated. It was the same in emble- 
 matical writings, as the Orphic epithet, Pan-genetor, universal 
 generator, in which sense it is still employed by the Hindus. It 
 has also been observed among the idols of the native Americans 
 and ancient Scandinavians ; nor do we think the conjecture of 
 an ingenious writer improbable who supposes that the Maypole 
 was a symbol of the same meaning, and the first of May a great 
 phallic festival both among the ancient Britons and Hindus, it 
 being still celebrated with nearly the same rites. The Greeks 
 changed, as usual, the personified attribute into a distinct deity 
 called Priapus, whose universality was, however, acknowledged 
 to the latest period of heathenism. "^ 
 
 Isis, the peculiar goddess of maternity, is often figured in 
 Roman sculpture, holding up in her hand a comical object, pouch- 
 shaped, exhibiting a triangular orifice. This object some have 
 taken for the Persia plum ; much more probably does it represent 
 the female organ, the most natural and expressive symbol of that 
 divinity's peculiar function. In her mystic coflfer were carried 
 the distinctive marks of both sexes, the lingam and yoni of the 
 Hindoos. Their Isis, Parvati, who in this character takes the 
 name of Deva "the goddess" pre-eminently, bears in her hand 
 for distinctive badge the yoni, or bhaga, often a precious stone 
 carved into that shape. Similarly her consort, Siva, carries the 
 lingam or phallus. For example, the Nizam's diamond, the 
 largest stone of its kind known certainly to exist, exhibits evident 
 traces of the native lapidary's clumsy endeavours to reduce the 
 native crystal to the proper shape for the hand of the great 
 goddess. Ugly omen to happen under a female reign, this 
 
 "■ See Knight's Ancient Art and Mythology. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 13 
 
 diamond was accidentally broken in two just before the outbreak 
 of the Sepoy revolt. "^ 
 
 "Priapus," says Smith's mythological dictionary, "a son of 
 Dionysus and Aphrodite. Aphrodite, it is said, had yielded to 
 the embraces of Dionysus, but during his expedition to India, she 
 became faithless to him, and lived with Adonis. On Dionysus' 
 return from India, she indeed went to meet him, but soon left 
 him again, and went to Lampsacus on the Hellespont, to give 
 birth to the child of the god. But Hera, dissatisfied with her 
 conduct, touched her, and, by her magic power, caused Aphrodite 
 to give birth to a child of extreme ugliness, and with unusually 
 large genitals. This child was Priapus. According to others, 
 however, Priapus was a son of Dionysus and a Naiad or Chione, 
 and gave his name to the town of Priapus, while others again 
 describe him as a son of Adonis, by Aphrodite, or as the son of a 
 long-eared father, that is, of Pan or a Satyr. The earliest Greek 
 poets, such as Homer, Hesiod, and others, do not mention this 
 divinity, and Strabo expressly states, that it was only in later 
 times that he was honoured with divine worship, and that he 
 was worshipped more especially at Lampsacus on the Hellespont, 
 whence he is sometimes called Hellespontiacus. We have every 
 reason to believe that he was regarded as the promoter of fertility 
 both of the vegetation and of all animals connected with an 
 agricultural life, and in this capacity he was worshipped as the 
 protector of flocks of sheep and goats, of bees, the vine, all garden 
 produce, and even of fishing. Like other divinities presiding 
 over agricultural pursuits, he was believed to be possessed of 
 prophetic powers, and is sometimes mentioned in the plural. As 
 Priapus had many attributes in common with other gods of 
 fertility, the Orphics identified him with their mystic Dionysus, 
 Hermes, Helios, &c. The Attic legends connect him with such 
 sensual and licentious beings as Conisalus, Orthanes, and Tychon. 
 In like manner he was confounded by the Italians with Mutunus, 
 the personification of the fructifying power in nature. The 
 sacrifices offered to him consisted of the first fruits of gardens, 
 vineyards and fields, of milk, honey, cakes, rams, asses, and fishes. 
 He was represented in carved images, mostly in the form of 
 Hermse with very large genitals, carrying fruit in his garment, 
 and either a sickle or cornucopia in his hand." 
 
 Diodorus says : " The Egyptians tell this story concerning 
 Priapus ; they say that the Titanes in ancient times treacherously 
 
 * King's Gnostics. 
 
14 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 assassinated Osiris, and divided the members of his body into 
 equal parts, and that every one privately carried away a part out 
 of the palace, only his privy members they threw into the river, 
 because none would meddle with them. But Isis, they say, after 
 a diligent inquiry made concerning the murder of her husband, 
 and having revenged his death upon the Titans, by conjoining 
 his dismembered parts, reduced them to a human shape, and 
 delivered the body to the priests to be buried, and counnanded 
 that Osiris should be adored as a god, and appointed the shape of 
 his privy member (which only was wanting and could not be 
 found) to be set up as a sacred relict in the temple, and to be 
 honoured likewise as a deity ; and these are the things which 
 the ancient Egyptians feign concerning the original and divine 
 worship of Priapus. This god is not only honoured in the 
 festivals of Bacchus, but in all other sacred solemnities, where 
 with sport and ridicule his image is presented to the view of all." 
 
 Pan, like other mystic deities, was wholly unknown to the 
 first race of poets ; there being no mention of him in either the 
 Iliad, the Odyssey, or in the genuine poem of Hesiod ; and the 
 mythologists of later times having made him a son of Mercury 
 by Penelope, the wife of Ulysses ; a fiction, perhaps, best 
 accounted for by the conjecture of Herodotus, that the terrestrial 
 genealogies of the mystic deities, Pan, Bacchus, and Hercules, 
 are mere fables bearing date from the supposed time when they 
 became objects of worship. Both in Greece and Egypt, Pan was 
 commonly represented under the symbolical form of the goat half 
 humanised ; from which are derived his subordinate ministers or 
 personified emanations, called Satyrs, Fawns, Tituri, Paniskoi ; 
 who, as well as their parent, were wholly unknown to the ancient 
 poets. 
 
 Pan is sometimes represented ready to execute his charac- 
 teristic ofiice, and sometimes exhibiting the result of it ; in the 
 former of which, all the muscles of his face and body appear 
 strained and contracted ; and in the latter, fallen and dilated ; 
 while in both the phallus is of disproportionate magnitude, to 
 signify that it represented the predominant attribute. In one 
 instance he appears pouring water upon it, but more couimonly 
 standing near water, and accompanied by aquatic fowls ; in which 
 character he is confounded with Priapus, to whom geese were 
 particularly sacred. Swans, too, frequently occur as emblems of 
 the waters upon coins; and sometimes with the head of Apollo 
 on the reverse, when there may be some allusion to the ancient 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 15 
 
 notion of their singing; a notion which seems to have arisen 
 from the noises which they make in the high latitudes of the 
 North, prior to their departure at the approach of winter. 
 
 Though the Greek writers call the deity who was represented 
 by the sacred goat at Mendes, Pan, he more correctly answers to 
 Priapus, or the generative attribute considered abstractedly ; 
 which was usually represented in Egypt as well as in Greece, hj 
 the phallus only. The deity was honoured with a place in most 
 of their temples, as the Lingam is in those of the Hindus ; and 
 all the hereditary priests were initiated or consecrated to him, 
 before they assumed the sacerdotal office : for he was considered 
 as a sort of accessory attribute to all the other divine personifica- 
 tions, the great end and purpose of whose existence was generation 
 or production. A part of the worship offered both to the goat 
 Mendes, and the bull xVpis, consisted in the woman tendering 
 their persons to him, which it seems the former often accepted, 
 though the taste of the latter was too correct. An attempt seems 
 to have been made, in early times, to introduce similar acts of 
 devotion into Italy ; for when the oracle of Juno was consulted 
 upon the long-continued barrenness of the Roman matrons, its 
 answer was " Iliadas matres caper hirtus inito " (Let the rough 
 goat approach the Trojan matrons), but those mystic refinements 
 not being understood by that rude people, they could think of no 
 other way of fulfilling the mandate, than sacrificing a goat, and 
 applying the skin cut into thongs, to the bare backs of the ladies, 
 which however had the desired effect : " Virque pater subito, 
 nuptaque mater erat " (Speedily the man a father, the wife a 
 mother was). 
 
 At Mendes, female goats were also held sacred, as symbols of 
 the passive generative attribute ; and on Grecian monuments of 
 art, we often find capiine satyrs of that sex. The fable of 
 Jupiter having been suckled by a goat, probably arose from some 
 emblematical composition, the true explanation of which was only 
 known to the initiated. Such was Juno Sospita of Lanuvium, 
 near Rome, whose goat-skin dress signified the same as her title ; 
 and who, on a votive car of very ancient Etruscan work found 
 near Perugia, appears exactly in the form described by Cicero, as 
 the associate of Hercules dressed in the lion's skin, or the 
 Destroyer. "^ 
 
 * Knight's Ancient Art. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Einhler)is connected with Phallic Woiship. 
 
 IT was the opinion of the ancients, that all the constituent 
 parts of the great machine of the universe were mutually 
 dependent upon each other ; and the luminaries of heaven, while 
 they contributed to fecundate and organise terrestrial matter, 
 were in their turn nourished and sustained by exhalations drawn 
 from the humidity of the earth and its atmosphere. Hence the 
 Egyptians placed the personifications of the sun and moon in 
 boats (Plutarch: Isis and Osiris), while the Greeks, among 
 whom the horse was a symbol of humidity, placed them in 
 chariots, drawn sometimes by two, sometimes by three, and some- 
 times by four of these animals; which is the reason of the 
 number of Bigse, Trigse, and Quadrigae, which we find upon 
 coins : for they could not have had any reference to the public 
 games, as has been supposed, a great part of them having been 
 struck by states, which not being of Hellenic origin, had never 
 the privilege of entering the lists on those occasions. The vehicle 
 itself appears likewise to have been a symbol of the female 
 generative power, or the means by which the emanations of the 
 sun acted ; whence the Delphians called Venus by the singular 
 title of the Chariot (Plutarch); but the same meaning is more 
 frequently expressed by the figure called a Victory accompanying 
 it ; and by the fish, or some other symbol of the waters, under it. 
 In some instances, have been observed, composite symbols 
 signifying both attributes in this situation ; such as the lion 
 destroying the bull, or the Scylla, which is a continuation of 
 emblems of the same kind, as those which compose the Sphinx 
 and Chimsera, and has no resemblance to the monster described 
 in the Odyssey. "^ 
 
 Ancient writers describing the initiation of votaries into the 
 celebrated mysteries of Greece state that just when the cere- 
 monies were being brought to a close, the symbolic image of the 
 fecundity of nature was then exhibited ; an image that expressed 
 the means by which she renews herself in the class of organised 
 
 * Kiiight. Sy77i. Lan. Anc. Art. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 17 
 
 bodies, and which, having been at first chosen by a simple and 
 rude people, had continued in use after they were civilized and 
 corrupted, because it had been originally consecrated to religious 
 purposes. The Phallus was carried in great pomp ; in the cere- 
 monies of the women, the Kteis was made use of ; and in spite 
 of the remonstrances of the fathers of the church, it would appear 
 that this ceremony still continued to be respected. But it 
 conveyed no impure idea to the imagination, for the initiated 
 addressed this prayer to nature. 
 
 " Hail ! holy and unwearied benefactress of the human race ! 
 thou who, like a tender mother, lavishest on mortals thy precious 
 gifts, and who stretchest forth thy hands to assist the unhappy, 
 all hail ! I invoke thee, thou powerful deity ; thee, whom the 
 gods of heaven adore, and whom the gods of hell dread : thee, 
 who hast impressed motion on the celestial spheres ; who con- 
 tinuest to nourish the tires of the sun; who governest the 
 universe ; and whose empire extends even to Tartarus. Thou 
 speakest and the stars make answer ; the gods rejoice, the seasons 
 succeed each other, and the elements are obedient to thy voice. 
 By thy order the winds rage, and clouds are collected ; plants 
 germinate and issue from the bosom of the earth ; animals people 
 the forests and the mountains; the serpent hides himself in 
 obscure retreats; the inhabitants of air, the monsters of the 
 ocean, the whole universe is subject to thy command. Who can 
 worthily celebrate thy praises, O august divinity ! Engrossed 
 with thy majesty, I shall incessantly behold thee and contemplate 
 thy divine perfections. May the sacred image never cease to 
 dwell in the bottom of my heart." 
 
 The reverence paid to fish of different kinds by the Egyptians 
 and some other ancient nations was very marked. Historians 
 say that all the natives of the river were in some degree esteemed 
 sacred. In many parts the people did not feed upon them. The 
 priests in particular never tasted fish ; and this on account of 
 their imputed sanctity, for they were sometimes looked upon as 
 sacred emblems : at other times worshipped as real deities. ^ One 
 species of fish was styled Oxurunchus ; and there was a city of 
 the name, built in honour of it, and a temple where this fish was 
 publicly Avorshipped. ISTor was the veneration confined to this 
 place, but prevailed in many other parts of Egypt. A fish called 
 Phagrus was worshipped at Syene : as the Mseotis was at 
 Elephantis. The Lepidotus had the like reverence paid to it : as 
 had also the Eel ; being each sacred to the god Nilus. This is 
 
 c 
 
18 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 ridiculed in a passage, which has been often quoted, from the 
 ancient comedian Antiphanes : who mentions, that an eel by the 
 Egyptians was rev^erenced equally with the gods. Another 
 comedian says that they esteemed it as one of their supreme 
 deities : and he at the same time exposes their folly with some 
 humour. A Grecian is made to address himself to an Egyptian : 
 and he accordingly says, — " It is impossible for me to ride in the 
 same troop with you : for our notions and manners are diametri- 
 cally opposite. You pay adoration to an ox : I kill and sacrifice 
 it to the gods. You esteem an eel to be a very great divinity. 
 I only think it the best dish that comes upon the table. You 
 worship a dog. I whip him handsomely ; especially if I find the 
 cur purloining my dinner." "^ 
 
 Here it is proper to take notice, that there was a female deity 
 called Athor in Egypt : but in Syria Atar-Cetus, or Atargatis ; 
 and abbreviated, Dercetus and Derceti. This personage was 
 supposed to have been of old preserved by means of a fish : and 
 was represented one half under that form ; and the other half as 
 a woman. She was esteemed to be the same as the Aphrodite 
 of the Greeks and the Venus of the Romans, whose origin was 
 from the sea. In consequence of this, wherever her worship 
 prevailed, fish were esteemed sacred ; and the inhabitants would 
 not feed upon them. This was the case at Edessa, called Hiera- 
 polis, where Atargatis or Derceto was held in particular venera- 
 tion. Xenophon in his march through these parts observed, in a 
 river called Chains, many large fishes, which appeared tame, and 
 were never taken for food : the natives esteeming them as gods. 
 Lucian tells us, that this worship was of great antiquity ; and 
 was introduced into these parts from Egypt. The same custom 
 seems to have been kept up in Babylonia : but what was of more 
 consequence to the Israelites, it prevailed within their own 
 borders. Dagon of Asdod, or Azotus, was the same deity : 
 and represented under a like figure as Atargatis. The same rites 
 and abstinence were observed also at Ascalon. Diodorus Siculus 
 speaks of this city, which he places in Syria, rather than Pales- 
 tine ; at no great distance from which he says was a large lake, 
 abounding with fishes. Near it w^as a noble temple of the god- 
 dess Derceto, whom they represented witli the face of a woman, 
 but from thence downwards, under the figure of a fish. The 
 history of Derceto in this place was, that she threw herself into this 
 
 * Anaxandrides. 
 
NATUKE WORSHIP. ]9 
 
 lake, and was changed to a fish. On which account the inhabi- 
 tants of Ascalon, and of some parts of Syria, abstained from fish : 
 and held those of the lake as so many deities. However strange 
 this idolatry may appear, yet we see how very far it reached ; 
 and with what a reverence it was attended. It was to be found 
 not only in Syria, which was sufficiently near, but in the borders 
 of Lebanon ; also at Ascalon, Ashdod, and Joppa ; which cities 
 were within the precincts of the tribes of Dan and Judah. "^ 
 
 The Egyptians honoured the Nile with a religious reverence, 
 and valued themselves much upon the excellence of their river. 
 Nor was this blind regard confined to the Egyptians only, but 
 obtained in many parts of the world. Herodotus says of the 
 Persians, that of all things rivers were held in the highest venera- 
 tion. They worshipped them, and offered to them sacrifices : nor 
 would they suff'er anything to be thrown into them that could 
 possibly pollute their waters. The like obtained among the 
 Medes, Parthians, and the Sarmatians. We read in Homer of 
 the sanctity in which rivers were held in Greece. Among these 
 more especially were the Spercheius, Peneus, Achelous, and 
 Alpheus. The last had altars, and sacrifices oflfered to him in 
 common with Diana. The Phrygians made the like offerings to 
 the Marsyas and Mseander. 
 
 But no nation carried their reverence to such an extravagant 
 degree of idolatry as the Egyptians. They looked upon their 
 river not only as consecrated to a deity : but if we may believe 
 some authors, as their chief national god, and worshipped it 
 accordingly. The people above Syene, styled the Nile Siris and 
 Sirius, which was the name of Osiris, and the Sun : and upon 
 solemn occasions made invocations to it as their chief guardian 
 and protector. They supposed that it gave birth to all their 
 deities, who were born upon its banks, and that it was particularly 
 the father of Vulcan. Hence there were temples erected to his 
 honour, and a city called after his name, Nilopolis ; in which he 
 was particularly worshipped : and there were festivals and rites, 
 styled Neiloa Sacra, which were observed all over Egypt. As 
 they received so much benefit from their river, they held water 
 in general sacred, as Julius Firmicus has observed. 
 
 These superstitions, and this veneration for the river pre- 
 vailed, as we may presume, even in the time of Moses. This 
 may be inferred from the like notions being found in the earliest 
 
 * Bryant on the Plagues of Egypt. 
 
20 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 ages among the Syrians and Babylonians. The same prevailed 
 in Greece. They were brought over to the last region by colonies 
 from Egypt, and appear to have been of very early date. The 
 ancient Grecians supposed many of their kings and heroes to have 
 been the offspring of rivers : and the Sea, or Oceanus, was 
 esteemed the father of their gods. This was borrowed from 
 Egypt, for the natives of that country esteemed the Nile to be 
 the ocean. "^ 
 
 "Loss of hair was degrading and humiliating, whether volun- 
 tary or enforced, and shaving is the symbolic act of rendering 
 non-virile, monkish, unsexual, whether applied to the pubes, 
 beard, or crown, as it was in Egypt, and still is in the Cult of 
 the Virgin Mother and her impubescent Bambino in Rome. 
 
 This is recognised by Isaiah, who threatens Israel with a 
 razor that will shave it at both ends, and ' it shall consume the 
 heard' (ch. vii. 20). 
 
 As hair was the emblem of virility and reproduction, baldness 
 was the natural antithesis ; and the loss of the hair was enforced 
 as a later form of penalty, because it had been held so sacred as 
 a voluntary offering. The hair being a symbol of reproducing 
 potency, this will account for the lock of a person's hair being 
 considered the representative of the person's self, when his life is 
 sought to be taken, or blasted by magic, i.e. enacting of the 
 malignant desire in gesture-language according to primitive usage. 
 
 It is believed that the hair and nails ought never to be cut on 
 Sunday, the day of Khem-Horus,t or on Friday, the day of the 
 Genitrix. 
 
 The Lion Paru in the Ritual is called the ' Lord of numerous 
 transformations of skins,' i. e., repeatings of the hair ; and time 
 was, in England, when people would make a point of having 
 their hair cut whilst the moon, the female reproducer, was in the 
 sign of the Lion or the Ram, two chief types of male potency. 
 
 When we know the symbolic value of nail from the origin, we 
 can understand the reason why biting the nail by way of scorn 
 should be considered an insult. The act was equal to plucking 
 the beard or cutting the hair ; it was aimed at the person's 
 
 * Bryant on the Egyptian Plagues. 
 
 t There is a Uke superstition Ungering to the present day in England 
 embodied, in the following couplet :— 
 
 ' ' He that cutteth hair or horn 
 Shall rue the day that he was born." 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 21 
 
 manhood, on the ground of nail being a representative of virility 
 in gesture-language and the primitive typology. 
 
 The nails as an equivalent for the hair, a type of * renetval 
 coming of itself,''^ will account for a custom like this: — 'The 
 ancient Frenchmen had a ceremony that when they would marry, 
 the bridegroom should pare his nails and send them to his new 
 wife ; which done, they lived together afterwards as man and 
 wife.' The act had the same significance as when the pubes or 
 locks of hair were offered to the divine Genitrix, or the foreskins 
 were piled in the circle of the twelve stones at Gilgal. Each was 
 dedicated to reproduction. 
 
 Captain Cook describes the Maori as wearing the nails and 
 teeth of their dead relatives. These were equivalent to the 
 phallus worn by the widows, as a type of reproduction. 
 
 It was an Egyptian custom to gild the nails, teeth, and 
 membrum virile of the embalmed mummy. These were glorified 
 in the gloom of the grave because, as types of production, they 
 served in a second place as emblems of foundation, and visible 
 basis of renewal and resurrection. 
 
 It was a theory that the hair, beard, and nails of the Japanese 
 Mikado were never cut. They had to be trimmed furtively 
 while he was sleeping. This corresponds to the assumption that 
 the king never dies. He was not reproducible. He was only 
 transformed. He was the living one, like the Aukh ; an 
 image of the ever-being, a type of the immortal. 
 
 The male emblem of virility, like the scalp, was a trophy to 
 be cut off in battle. On the monuments there are heaps of these 
 collected as evidence of conquest. In one instance the ' spoils of 
 the Rebu,' consist of donkey-loads of phalluses (Karanatu) and 
 several hands. Twelve thousand, five hundred and thirty-five 
 members and hands were cut off from the dead after the battle 
 of Khesef-Tamahu, and deposited as proofs of victory — an enacted 
 report — before the Pharaoh Rameses. 
 
 By the aid of the hieroglyphic values conferred on the image 
 in life, we can read the significance of the emblem in death. By 
 its excision the enemy were typically annihilated ; the last 
 tribute paid thus was the forfeiture of his personality in a 
 spiritual sense ; for without the member, the deceased, according 
 to Egyptian thought, could not be reconstructed. He would not 
 rise again ; resurrection, as in the case of Osiris, depended on 
 repossessing the member. The type of individuality here was the 
 emblem of existence hereafter. 
 
22 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 We have only to become acquainted with the doctrines of the 
 mummy in the Ritual, and see the fearful anxiety of the deceased 
 to get all his members intact and solid, to avoid dissolution ; see 
 how he rejoices in the firmness of his phallus, the hardness of his 
 heart, the soundness and indissolubility of his vertebrae, to appre- 
 hend what terrible meaning there w^as in the custom of dis- 
 membering the body, swallowing the eyes, eating the heart, or 
 pulverising the bones to drink them in water as an ocular 
 demonstration of dissolution. The New Zealanders are said to 
 think that a man who is eaten is thus destroyed soul and body. 
 
 In the Atharva-Yada it is affirmed that when the dead passed 
 through the sacrificial fire of heaven, Agni (fire) does not consume 
 their generative organ ; whereas in the earlier thought of Kam 
 it would have been held to do so, or to efiface the type, which 
 came to the same thing, symbolically, as the most physical plane 
 of thought. 
 
 Because the custom was typical, it permitted of modification 
 and commutation in the interchange of types. Thus the ' bloody 
 foreskin ' of the slain came to be adopted in place of the total 
 emblem, as with the Abyssinians, described by Bruce, and the 
 hundred Philistine foreskins demanded by Saul of David, and 
 doubled as the dowry of Michal. The foreskin, or prepuce cover 
 had precisely the same symbolical value as the sign of manhood, 
 hence the excision at the age of puberty, for that was the earlier 
 period, and the Jewish custom does not retain the primary 
 significance, except in its being a commutated ofi"ering to the 
 paternal deity. ""^ 
 
 " It was stated in the Paris Moniteur, during the month of 
 January, 1865, that in the province of Venice, Italy, excavations 
 of a bone-cave were made, and bones of animals, chiefly post- 
 tertiary, were found together with flint implements, a needle of 
 bone, having both eye and point, and a plate of an argillaceous 
 compound, on which was scratched a rude figure of the male 
 organ of generation ; and that these things were dug from 
 beneath ten feet of stalagmite. That emblem was a type of 
 resurrection, formed on the most natural grounds. According to 
 the Gnosis, this rude figure had the same significance, denoting 
 a place of burial for those who expected to rise again, and its 
 image in the tomb can be read by the Egyptian 'Litany of 
 Ra ' (34). ' Homage to thee, Ra ! supreme power, the way of 
 light in the sarcophagus ! Its form is that of the progenitor.' 
 
 * Massey's Natural Oenes^is. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 23 
 
 The self-erecting member was the type of resurrection, as the 
 image of Khem-Horus, the re-arising sun, and of Khepr-Ra, the 
 re-erector of the dead. The widows of the aborigines of Australia 
 are in the habit of wearing the dead husband's phallus round 
 their necks, and the significance of the custom is the same as in 
 Egypt and the bone-caves. The emblem was sacred as the type 
 of reproduction. The same type was worn as an ear-drop by 
 the ladies of Latium, and is yet worn in Southern Italy. 
 
 ^Imo.ges of ijollution have, been found at Hissarlik^ exclaims 
 tbe author of Juventus Afundi, and the voice of the primitive 
 consciousness says the phallus typified the earliest ray of light 
 that penetrated the darkness of the grave ; indeed this primitive 
 type is found in a fourfold form in the Christian iconography of 
 the Roman catacombs. 
 
 The branch of palm has now taken its place in the imagery of 
 heaven and the typology of the eternal. In the Book of Revela- 
 tion those who stand before the throne are pourtrayed with 
 palms in their hands. Horus is represented in the monuments 
 as defending himself against his evil enemy, Sut, or Satan, with 
 a palm-branch in his hand. The branch of palm was, and still is 
 an emblem of renewal. But the branch of birch that was buried 
 with the dead in the barrows had the same meaning. A barrow 
 at Kepwick was found to be lined with the bark and branches of 
 the birch. That is the Bedmen of the British, which was also 
 the maypole and the phallus. The Bedmen was typical of the 
 resurrection equally with the palm. 
 
 The beetle type of Kephr, the transformer, was also buried 
 with the British dead as with the Egyptian, likewise also beads, 
 as with the Africans and Egyptian mummies. As these were 
 imperishable it should be noticed that a kind of bead which is 
 made in Africa has been found buried in Britain. Beads denote 
 reproduction, and were worn by the genitrix Isis wlien enceinte, 
 as the beads and berries are worn by the pregnant women in 
 Africa to-day. Beads in the tombs typified re-birth, whether in 
 Africa, America, Australia, or Britain."'^ 
 
 The most celebrated of all the sacred animals worshipped by 
 the Egyptians was Mnevis or Apis, the bull, the Epaphus of the 
 Greeks, whose image is found to an enormous extent marked 
 upon the coins and religious monuments of various nations. 
 Strength was what it was desired to express, and the bull being 
 
 * Massey's Natural Genesis. 
 
24 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 the most powerful animal known in climates too cold for the 
 propagation of the elephant, was the creature adopted. It was 
 under this form that the mystic Bacchus, or generative power 
 was represented, not only upon the coins, but in the temples of 
 the Greeks. It was sometimes nothing but a bull ; at others, a 
 bull with a human face ; and at others entirely human with the 
 exception of the horns and ears ; in some instances also the head 
 was adorned with a beard. 
 
 According to Plutarch and Herodotus, the Mnevis of the 
 Egyptians was held by some to be the mystic father of Apis ; and 
 as the one has the disk upon the head, and was kept in the city 
 of the sun, while the other is distinguished by the crescent, it is 
 probable that the one was the emblem of the divine power acting 
 through the sun ; and the other, of it acting through the moon, 
 or (^what was the same) through the sun by night. Apis, how- 
 ever, held the highest rank, lie being exalted by the superstition 
 of that superstitious people into something more than a mere 
 symbol, and supposed to be a sort of incarnation of the deity in 
 a particular animal, revealed to them at his birth by certain 
 external marks, which announced his having been miraculously 
 conceived by means of a ray from heaven. Hence, when found, 
 he was received by the whole nation with every possible testimony, 
 of joy and gratulation, and treated in a manner worthy of the 
 exalted character bestowed on him ; which was that of tlie terres- 
 trial image or representative of Osiris, in whose statues the 
 remains of the animal symbol may be traced. 
 
 Their neighbours the Arabs appear to have worshipped their 
 god under the same image, though their religion was more simple 
 and pure than that of any heathen nation of antiquity, except 
 the Persians, and perhaps the Scythians. They acknowledge only 
 the male and female, or active and passive powers of creation, 
 the former of wiiom they called Urotalt, a name which evidently 
 alludes to TJrus. Herodotus calls him Bacchus, as he does the 
 female deity. Celestial Venus, by which he means no more than 
 than they were personifications of the attributes which the Greeks 
 worshipped under those titles. 
 
 In most Greek and Roman statues of the bull, whether in the 
 character of Mnevis or Apis, of both of which many are extant of 
 a small size in bronze, there is a hole upon the top of the head 
 between the horns where the disk or crescent, probably of some 
 other material, was fixed : for as the mystical or symbolical was 
 engrafted upon the old elementary worship, there is always a link 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 25 
 
 of connection remaining between them. The Bacchus of the 
 Greeks, as well as the Osiris of the Egyptians, comprehended the 
 whole creative or generative power, and is therefore represented 
 in a great variety of forms, and under a great variety of symbols, 
 signifying his subordinate attributes. * 
 
 Priapus was celebrated by the Greek poets, under the title of 
 Eros, Love or Attraction, the first principle of animation, the 
 father of gods and men, and the regulator and disposer of all 
 things. He is said to pervade the universe with the motion of 
 his wings, bringing pure light : and thence to be called the 
 splendid, the self-illumined, the ruling Priapus— light being con- 
 sidered in this primitive philosophy as the great nutritive 
 principle of all things. Wings are attributed to him as the 
 emblems of spontaneous motion ; and he is said to have sprung 
 from the egg of night, because the egg was the ancient symbol of 
 organic matter in its inert state, or, as Plutarch calls it, the 
 material of generation, containing the seeds and germs of life and 
 motion without being actually possessed of either. It was there- 
 fore carried in procession at the celebration of the Mysteries ; for 
 which reason Plutarch declines entering into a more particular 
 disquisition concerning its nature, the Platonic interlocutor in 
 the Dialogue observing, that, though a small question, it com- 
 prehended a very great one, concerning the generation of the 
 world itself, known to those who understood the Orphic and 
 sacred language, the egg being consecrated, in the Bacchic 
 mysteries, as the iaiage of that which generated and contained 
 all things in itself. His words are :— " They suspected that I 
 held the Orphic and Pythagorean dogmas, and refused to eat the 
 egg (as some do the heart and brain) because it is sacred; 
 imagining it to be tlie first principle of generated existence."^ "^ * 
 Soon after Alexander proposed the problem concerning the egg 
 and the bird, which was the first. My friend Sylla saying that 
 with this little question, as with an engine, was invoked the great 
 and weighty one concerning the genesis of the world, declaring 
 his dislike of such problems. ^ ^ ^ I speak to those who under- 
 stand the sacred legend of Orpheus, which shows not only that 
 the egg is before the bird, but makes it before all things. The 
 other matter we will not speak about, being as Herodotus says, 
 of a mystic character. "^ ^ * Therefore in the Orgies of Dionysus 
 it is usual to consecrate an egg as representing that which 
 o-enerates and contains all things in itself." 
 
 See Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Art. 
 
26 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Yenus-TJrania, the Mother-Goddess. The characteristic attri- 
 bute of the passive generative power was expressed in symbolical 
 writing, by different enigmatical representatives of the most 
 distinctive characteristic of the female sex ; such as the shell, or 
 concha veneris, the fig-leaf, barley corn, or the letter delta; all which 
 occur very frequently upon coins and other ancient monuments 
 in this sense. The same attribute, personified as the goddess of 
 love or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous form 
 of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of these 
 symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names of rather 
 uncertain etymology. She is said to be the daughter of Jupiter 
 and Dione ; that is, of the male and female personifications of 
 the all-pervading spirit of the universe ; Dione being, as before 
 explained, the female Dis or Zeus, and therefore associated with 
 him in the most ancient oracular temple of Greece at Dodona. 
 
 Mr. R. P. Knight in his " Symbolical Language of Ancient 
 Art " quotes the following authorities relating to the foregoing. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria: Exhortations. "The Kteis guna- 
 keios (woman's comb), which is, to speak with a euphemism, and 
 in mystic language, the female sexual parts." 
 
 Plutarch: Isis and Osiris. "They make a figure of a fig- 
 leaf both for the king and soutnern climate, which fig-leaf is 
 interpreted to mean the generating and fecundating of the 
 universe, for it seems to have some resemblance to the sexual 
 parts of a man." 
 
 Eustathius : on Homer. " The barley-corn, denoting the 
 vulva among the writers upon the Bacchic Komuses." 
 
 Suidas : " Delta, the fourth letter ; it also signifies the vulva." 
 
 The Genetullides or Genaidai, were the original and appro- 
 priate ministers and companions of Venus, who was, however, 
 afterwards attended by the Graces, the proper and original atten- 
 dants of Juno ; but as both these goddesses, were occasionally 
 united and represented in one image, the personifications of their 
 respective subordinate attributes might naturally be changed. 
 Other attributes were on other occasions added, whence the 
 symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a beard, and other 
 appearances of virility, which seems to have been the most 
 ancient mode of representing the celestial as distinguished from 
 the popular goddess of that name ; the one being a personification 
 of a general procreative power, and the other only of animal 
 desire or concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, 
 when advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant modes of 
 
NATURK WORSHIP. 27 
 
 distinguishing them ; and in a celebrated work of Phidias, we 
 find the former represented with her foot upon a tortoise, and in 
 a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter sitting upon a goat. 
 The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was aptly chosen as 
 a symbol of the double power, and the goat was equally appro- 
 priate to what was meant to be expressed in the other. 
 
 The same attribute was on other occasions signified by the 
 dove or pigeon, by the sparrow, and perhaps by the polypus, 
 which often appears upon coins with the head of the goddess, and 
 which was accounted an aphrodisiac, though it is likewise of the 
 androgynous class. The fig was a still more common symbol, the 
 statues of Priapus being made of the tree, and the fruit beino^ 
 carried with the phallus in the ancient processions in honour of 
 Bacchus, and still continuing among the common people of Italy 
 to be an emblem of what it anciently meant : whence we often 
 see portraits of persons of that country painted with it in one 
 hand, to signify their orthodox devotion to the fair sex. Hence, 
 also, arose the Italian expression, far la fica, which was done by 
 putting the thumb between the middle and fore fingers, as it 
 appears in many Priapic ornaments now extant ; or putting the 
 finger or the thumb into the corner of the mouth, and drawing it 
 down, of which there is a representation in a small Priapic figure 
 of exquisite sculpture engraved, among the antiquities of Her- 
 culaneum. 
 
 The myrtle was a symbol both of Venus and Neptune, the 
 male and female personifications of the productive powers of the 
 waters, which appears to have been occasionally employed in the 
 same sense as the fig and fig-leaf, but upon what account it is not 
 easy to guess. Grains of barley may have been adopted from the 
 stimulating and intoxicating quality of the liquor extracted from 
 them, or, more probably, from a fancied resemblance to the 
 object, which is much heightened in the representations of them 
 upon some coins where they are employed as accessory symbols 
 in the same manner as fig-leaves are upon others. Barley was 
 also thrown upon the altar, with salt, the symbol of the pre- 
 serving power, at the beginning of every sacrifice, and thence 
 denominated oulochutai. The thighs of the victim, too, were 
 sacrificed in preference to every other part, on account of the 
 generative attribute, of which they were supposed to be the seat, 
 whence, probably, arose the fable of Bacchus being nourished 
 and matured in the thigh of Jupiter."*^ 
 
 * Symbolical language of Ancient Art. 
 
28 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Humidity in general, and particularly the Nile, was called by 
 the Egyptians the outflowing of Osiris ; (Plutarch) who was with 
 them the God of the Waters, in the same sense as Bacchus was 
 among the Greeks ; whence all rivers, when personified, were 
 represented under the form of the bull ; or at least with some of 
 the characteristic features of that animal. Plutarch says : — "The 
 more learned in arcane matters among the priests, not only term 
 the Nile Osiris, and the sea Typhon, but they also regard Osiris 
 to signify every principle and potency of moisture, venerating it 
 as the cause of generation and the substance of the semen. But 
 by Typhon they mean everything dried, tire-like, and withered, 
 as being opposed to moisture." And again : — " The Greeks 
 consider Dionysus not alone as the patron of wine, but also of 
 the entire moist or generative principle in nature." 
 
 In the religion of the Hindus this article of ancient faith, like 
 most others, is still retained ; as it appears from the title. Daugh- 
 ter of the Sun, given to the sacred river Yamuna or Jumna. The 
 God of Destruction is also mounted on a white bull, the sacred 
 symbol of the opposite attribute, to show the union and co-opera- 
 tion of both. The same meaning is more distinctly represented 
 in an ancient (xreek fragment of bronze, by a lion trampling upon 
 the head of a bull, while a double phallus appears behind them, 
 and shows the result. The title ^WT-qp Koo-/xoi', upon the com- 
 posite Priapic figure, published by La Chausse, is w^ell known ; 
 and it is probable that the ithy-phallic ceremonies, which the 
 gross flattery of the degenerate Greeks sometimes employed to 
 honour the Macedonian princes, had the same meaning as this 
 title of Saviour, which was frequently conferred upon, or assumed 
 by them. It was also occasionally applied to most of the deities 
 who had double attributes, or were personifications of both powers ; 
 as to Hercules, Bacchus, Diana, &c. 
 
 The head of Proserpina, appears in numberless instances, 
 surrounded by dolphins ; and upon the very ancient medals of 
 Side in Pamphylia, the pomegranate, the fruit peculiarly con- 
 secrated to her, is borne upon the back of one. By prevailing 
 upon her to eat of it, Pluto is said to have procured her stay 
 during half the year in the infernal regions ; and a part of the 
 Greek ceremony of marriage consists, in many places, in the 
 bride treading upon a pomegranate. The flower of it is occa- 
 sionally employed as an ornament upon the diadem of both 
 Hercules and Bacchus, and likewise forms the device of the 
 Rhodian medals ; on some of which may be seen distinctly 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 29 
 
 represented an ear of barley springing from one side of it, and 
 the bulb of the lotus, or Nymjohcea nelumbo, from the other. It 
 therefore holds the place of the male, or active generative attri- 
 bute ; and accordingly we find it on a bronze fragment, published 
 by Caylus, as the result of the union of the bull and the lion, 
 exactly as the more distinct symbol of the phallus is in a similar 
 fragment above cited. The pomegranate, therefore, in the hand 
 of Proserpina or Juno, signifies the same as the circle and cross 
 in the hand of Isis ; which is the reason why Pausanias declines 
 giving any explanation of it, lest it should lead him to divulge 
 any of the mystic secrets of his religion. 
 
 Inman in his Vocabulary (Ancient Faiths) Article Rimmon, 
 says : — " A pomegranate." The shape of this fruit resembles 
 that of the gravid uterus in the female, and the abundance of 
 seed which it contains makes it a fitting emblem of the prolific 
 womb of the celestial mother. Its use was adopted largely in 
 various forms of worship. It was united with bells, in the 
 adornment of the robes of the Jewish high priest. It was intro- 
 duced as an ornament into Solomon's temple, where it was united 
 with lilies, and probably with the lotus. In one part of Syria, 
 it was deified, and a temple errected in its honour." 
 
 " The arcane meaning of the pomegranate is evidently sexual. 
 The goddess Nana ate of one, and became pregnant. Women 
 celebrating the Thesmorphic, abstained from the fruit rigidly. 
 The Greek name of this fruit, rhoia, is a pun for Rhea, the 
 Mother-Goddess. In the phallic symbolism, generation is a part 
 of the mystery of death, and therefore its symbol, the pome- 
 granate, belongs very appropriately to the Queen of the Under- 
 world, who is after all but Isis, Rhea, and Cybele." 
 
 Likewise Pausanias : (Corinth, xvii., 4). " The agalma of 
 Hera is sitting upon a throne, and is of gold and ivory, the work 
 of Polycleitus ; her crown has inwrought upon it the Graces and 
 the Hours; in one hand she holds a pomegranate, and in the 
 other, a sceptre ; concerning the pomegranate, I will not speak, 
 for it is a matter pertaining to the arcane learning of the 
 mysteries." 
 
 Hippocrates says : " All living creatures, not only the animals, 
 but likewise man, originate from the two principles, diflfering in 
 potency, but agreeing in purpose : I mean fire and water. Fire 
 is able to give life to all things, but water can nourish them." 
 " The soul moveth itself in man, being tiie commixture of fire and 
 water, necessary to the human body." 
 
30 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 The elements — so called, years ago — were supposed to be 
 those in which the active and passive productive powers of the 
 universe respectively existed ; since nothing appeared to be pro- 
 duced without them ; and whenever they were joined there was 
 production of some sort, either vegetable or animal. Hence they 
 were employed as the primary symbols of these powers on num- 
 berless occasions. Among the Romans, a part of the ceremony 
 of marriage consisted in the bride's touching them as a form of 
 consecration to the duties of that state of life upon which she 
 was entering. 
 
 "Why do they direct the bride to touch fire and water?" 
 asks Plutarch, " Is it not because, as among the elements and 
 principles, the one is male and the other is female : the one 
 constitutes the principle of motion, and the other the potency 
 existing in matter !" 
 
 The Roman sentence of banishment, was an interdiction from 
 fire and water, which implied an exclusion from any participation 
 in those elements, to which all organised and animated beings 
 owed their existence. 
 
 According to Plutarch, Numa consecrated the perpetual 
 fire, as the first of all things, and the soul of matter, which, 
 without it, is motionless and dead. Fires of the same kind 
 were, for the same reasons, preserved in most of the principal 
 temples both Greek and Barbarian ; there being scarcely a 
 country in the world, where some traces of the adoration paid to 
 it are not to be found. The Prytania of the Greek cities, in 
 which the Supreme Councils were usually held, and the public 
 treasures kept, were so called from the sacred fires always pre- 
 served in them. Even common fires were reputed holy by them ; 
 and therefore carefully preserved from all contagion of impiety. 
 After the battle of Plataea, they extinguished all that remained 
 in the countries which had becm occupied by the Persians, and 
 rekindled them, according to the direction of the Oracle, with 
 ^consecrated fire from the altar at Delphi. A similar prejudice 
 still prevails, or did till lately, among the native Irish, who anually 
 extinguish their fires, and rekindle them from a sacred bonfire. 
 Perpetual lamps are kept burning in the inmost recesses of all 
 the great pagodas in India ; the Hindus holding fire to be the 
 essence of all active power in nature. At Sais in Egypt, there 
 was an annual religious festival called the Burning of Lamps ; 
 and lamps were frequently employed as symbols upon coins by 
 the Greeks, who also kept them burning in tombs, and sometimes 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 31 
 
 swore by them, as by known emblems of the deity. The torch 
 held erect, as it was by the statue of Bacchus at Eleusis, and as 
 it is by other figures of him still extant, means life ; while being 
 reversed, as it frequently is upon sepulchral urns and other 
 monuments of the kind, invariably signifies death or extinction. 
 
 Though water was thought to be the principle of the passive, 
 as fire was of the active power ; yet both being esteemed unpro- 
 ductive when separate, both were occasionally considered as 
 united in each. Hence Vesta, whose symbol was fire, was held 
 to be equally with Ceres a personification of the Earth, or rather 
 of the genial heat which pervades it, to which its productive 
 powers were supposed to be owing, "^ 
 
 At Mendes a living goat was kept as the image of the 
 generative fower^ to whom the women presented themselves.* "^ * 
 Herodotus saw this act openly performed, and called it a prodigy. 
 But the Egyptians had no such horror of it ; for it was to them 
 a representation of the incarnation of the Deity, and the com- 
 munication of his creative spirit to man. It was one of the 
 sacraments of that ancient church, and was, without doubt, 
 beheld with that pious awe and reverence with which devout 
 persons always contemplate the mysteries of their faith, whatever 
 they happen to be, for, as the learned and orthodox Bishop 
 Warburton says, from the nature of any action morality cannot 
 arise, nor from its effects ; therefore, for aught we can tell, this 
 ceremony, however shocking it may appear to modern manners 
 and opinions, might have been intrinsically meritorious at the 
 time of its celebration, and afforded a truly edifying spectacle to 
 the saints of ancient Egypt. Indeed, the Greeks do not seem to 
 have felt much horror or disgust at the imitative representation 
 of it, whatever the historian might have thought proper to 
 express at the real celebration. Several specimens of their 
 sculpture in this way have escaped the fury of the reformers, and 
 remained for the instruction of later times. One of those found 
 among the ruins of Herculaneum, and kept concealed in the 
 Royal Museum of Portici, is well known ; another exists in the 
 collection of Mr. Townley. It may be remarked, that in these 
 monuments the goat is passive instead of active ; and that the 
 human symbol is represented as incarnate with the divine, instead 
 of the divine with the human : but this is in fact no difference ; 
 for the Creator being of both sexes, is represented indifferently 
 
 * Knight. Symh. Lang. Anc. Art. 
 
32 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 of either. In the other symbol of the bull, the sex is equally 
 varied ; the Greek medals having sometimes a bull, and some- 
 times a cow, which Strabo tells us was employed as the symbol of 
 Venus, the passive generative power, at Momemphis, in Egypt. 
 Both the bull and the cow are also worshipped at present by the 
 Hindoos, as symbols of the male and female, or generative and 
 nutritive powers of the Deity. The cow is in almost all their 
 pagodas ; but the bull is revered with superior solemnity and 
 devotion. 
 
 In the gallery at Florence is a colossal image of the organ of 
 generation, mounted on the back parts of a lion, and hung round 
 with various animals. By this is represented the co-operation of 
 the creative and destroying powers, which are both blended and 
 united in one figure, because both are derived from one cause. 
 The animals hung round show likewise that both act to the same 
 purpose, that of replenishing the earth, and peopling it with still 
 rising generations of sensitive beings. The Chimaera of Homer, of 
 which the commentators have given so many whimsical interpre- 
 tations, was a symbol of the same kind, which the poet probably 
 having seen in Asia, and not knowing its meaning (which was 
 only revealed to the initiated) supposed to be a monster that had 
 once infested the country. He describes it as composed of the 
 forms of the goat, the lion, and the serpent, and breathing fire 
 from its mouth. These are the symbols of the creator, the 
 destroyer, and the preserver, united and animated by fire, the 
 divine essence of all three. On a gem, published in the Memoirs 
 of the Academy of Cortona, this union of the destroying and 
 preserving attributes is represented by the united forms of the 
 lion and serpent crowned with rays, the emblems of the cause 
 from which both proceed. This composition forms the Chnoubis 
 of the Egyptians. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Phallic Objects. 
 
 ri^HE subjects dealt with in our volume on "Archaic Cup 
 i and Ring Marks " have in the minds of many competent 
 antiquarians an important connection with the topics now under 
 discussion. Some of those markings — particularly those occuring 
 in certain parts of India, though it must be admitted that their 
 almost exact counterparts are found elsewhere as well — appear 
 to have a most striking resemblance to some of the monuments 
 and objects which are undoubtedly connected with the ancient 
 worship of the phallus. Speaking of the possible significance 
 of some of the markings, Mr. H. Rivett-Carnac says in his 
 "Archaeological Notes on Ancient Sculpturings :" — "It will 
 hardly be contested that some of them bear a striking resemblance 
 to the Mahadeo and yoni marks on the Chandeshwar shrines. 
 The centre mark would appear to do duty for the lings, the circle 
 for the yoni — and the 'gutter' is the depression to be found 
 on most stone yonis, by means of which the votive libations 
 are drained off from the symbols." (The allusion here is chiefly 
 to those sculpturings which consist of a central cup, with a ring 
 outside circular at one part, but running ofi' in a kind of channel 
 at another — pear shaped in fact.) "And here it may be noticed," 
 continues Mr. Carnac, "that in Mahadeo worship the off"ering of 
 flowers and the pouring of a libation, generally of Ganges water, 
 over the symbols is, so far as I have seen, very general. Those 
 who have visited Benares will remember the little spoons 
 resembling somewhat our Apostles' spoons, some of them beau- 
 tifully chased with a figure or cobra at the upper end of the 
 handle, used by pilgrims and worshippers at that city in sprinkling 
 the holy water over the Mahadeos there. In Kamam little 
 niches are to be noticed in Mahadeo temples with stone receptacles 
 for holy water, not unlike what are seen in churches abroad. 
 And the temple at Baijnath boasts of a large well-carved figure 
 holding a bowl, which the priest informed me, held Ganges water, 
 and from which pilgrims sprinkle the Mahadeo placed close by. 
 
 "Then again, in connection with the monolith Mahadoes found 
 at Chandeshwar, Pandukoli and Lodh, it may be worth noticing 
 
34 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 that circles, and what I will call the 'conventional symbols' of 
 the Mahadeo are yoni, and found on exactly similar monoliths in 
 Europe. 
 
 "In India these monoliths are found in the centre and in 
 proximity to shrines bearing these markings. Sometimes a circle 
 is found cut on them, and again the shape of the place of worship 
 at Pandukoli, with its double circle of stones in the centre, of the 
 inner of which are the Mahadeos, is as nearly as possible exactly 
 that of these conventional markings. 
 
 "I am aware that the view of these markings having reference 
 to lingam worship is not now advanced for the first time. The 
 subject is alluded to at page 93 of Sir J. Simpson's work (on 
 Rock Markings), but only to be summarily dismissed with the 
 following brief remark : — ' Two archaeological friends of mine, 
 dignitaries in the Episcopal Church, have separately formed the 
 idea that the lapidary cups and circles are emblems of old female 
 lingam worship, a supposition which appears to me to be totally 
 without any anatomical or other foundation, and one altogether 
 opposed by all we know of the specific class of symbols used 
 in that worship, either in ancient or modern times.' " 
 
 " I am sanguine, however," continues Mr. Carnac, " that if 
 Sir J. Simpson had seen the sketches of what I have called the 
 * conventional symbols ' on the shrines at Chandeshwar, and had 
 been able to compare them with some of the types figured in his 
 work, he might have been inclined to modify the opinion above 
 extracted. The treatment of these symbols is purely conven- 
 tional ; they bear no anatomical resemblance to anything ; they 
 are unlike many of the large, well-known and acknowledged re- 
 presentations of the Mahadeo and yoni. Still, they nevertheless 
 represent the same idea. And here it may be noticed that the 
 same argument of anatomical non-resemblance might be advanced 
 in regard to the well-known representations, common throughout 
 India, of the meaning of which to the initiated there is no doubt 
 at all. To the uninitiated, however, the shapes convey nothing, 
 and I have known cases of Europeans who have been many years 
 in the country, who were quite unsuspicious of what ' that jew's- 
 harp idol,' as they called it, was intended to represent. As the 
 old priest at Chandeshwar said, ' Those who can afiford it, put up 
 a big Mahadeo ; those who can't, put up these slabs.' 
 
 " In the view that these markings are nothing but a conven- 
 tional rendering of the Mahadeo and yoni, I am further confirmed 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 35 
 
 by what has recently been brought to my remembrance of the 
 manner in which an Amin, or native surveyor, will indicate a 
 Mahacleo temple on his plotting. I remember that the sign used 
 to mark the position of such temples by the Amins in the Field 
 Survey of the Chanda Revenue Settlement, in which district I 
 was Settlement Officer, and where this form of worship is very 
 common, almost exactly resembled the rock-sculpturings in Ka- 
 mam. They are not unlike the form of the vestal lamp. Indeed, 
 on the summit of a hill near Ranikhet, on the top of a pile of 
 stones which did duty for a Mahadeo shrine, I found a small slab, 
 bearing an almost exact resemblance to the well-known form of 
 the classic lamp. In the hole into which oil is poured, a small 
 upright Mahadeo is placed." 
 
 Some years ago, Mr. J. H. Rivett-Carnac, of the Bengal Civil 
 Service, in communicating his views respecting the cup and ring 
 markings in the rocks of India, expressed himself rather strongly 
 to the effect that the concentric circles and certain curious mark- 
 ings of what some have called the "Jew's-harp type," so common 
 in Europe, are traces of phallic worship, carried there by tribes 
 whose hosts descended into India, pushed forward into the re- 
 motest corners of Europe, and, as their traces now seem to 
 suggest, found their way on to the American continent also. 
 
 " Whether these markings really ever were intended to repre- 
 sent the phallus and the yoni, must always remain a matter of 
 opinion, but," says Mr. R. Carnac, " I have no reason to be dis- 
 satisfied with the reception with which this, to many somewhat 
 unpleasant, theory has been met in some of the antiquarian 
 societies of Europe. 
 
 "No one who compares the stone yonis of Benares with the 
 rock markings of Northumberland and Argyleshire will deny that 
 there is an extraordinary resemblance between the conventional 
 symbol of Siva worship of to-day and the ancient markings on 
 the rocks, menhirs, and cromlechs of Northumberland, of Scot- 
 land, of Ireland, of Brittany, of Scandinavia, and other parts of 
 Europe. 
 
 " A further examination of the forms of the cromlechs and 
 tumuli and menhirs will suggest that the tumuli themselves were 
 intended to indicate the symbols of the Mahadeo and yoni, con- 
 ceived in no obscene sense, but as representing regeneration, the 
 new life, ' life out of death, life everlasting,' whicli those buried 
 in the tumuli, facing towards the sun in its meridian, were ex- 
 
36 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 pected to enjoy in the hereafter. Professor Stephens, the well- 
 known Scandinavian antiquary, speaks of these symbols as 
 follows : — ' There can be no doubt that it is to India we are to 
 look for the solution of many of our difficult archa3ological 
 questions.' 
 
 ' But especially interesting is your paper on the Ancient Rock 
 Sculpturings. I believe that you are quite right in your views. 
 Nay, I go further. I think that the northern bulb-stones are 
 explained by the same combination. I therefore send you by this 
 post a copy of the part for 1874 of the Swedish Archaeological 
 Journal, containing Baron Herculius' excellent dissertation on 
 these objects You can examine the many excellent wood- 
 cuts. I look upon these things as late conventionalised abridg- 
 ments of the linga and yoni, life out of death, life everlasting, — 
 thus a fitting ornament for the graves of the departed. 
 
 ' In the same way, the hitherto not understood small stones 
 with one or two or three or four, etc., distinct cups cut in them 
 (vulgarly called chipping-stones, whicli they never were or could 
 be), I regard as the same thing for domestic worship, house altars, 
 the family Penates.' " 
 
 Mr. Carnac remarks that many who indignantly repudiate the 
 idea of the prevalence of phallic worship among our remote 
 ancestors, hold that these symbols represent the snake or the sun. 
 But admitting this, may not the snake, after all, have been but a 
 symbol of the phallus ? And the sun, the invigorating power of 
 nature, has ever, I believe, been considered to represent the same 
 idea, not necessarily obscene, but the great mystery of nature, 
 the life transmitted from generation to generation, or as Professor 
 Stephen puts it, " life out of death, life everlasting." The same 
 idea, in fact, which, apart from any obscene conception, causes 
 the rude Mahadeo and yoni to be worshipped daily by hundreds 
 of thousands of Hindus. 
 
 Mr. Carnac afterwards came across the following by Tod in 
 the Asiatic Researches : — " The Suroi were in fact the Sauras, 
 inhabiting the peninsula of Saurashtra, the Saurastrene and 
 Syrastrene already quoted from the Periplus, and the kingdom 
 immediately adjoining that of Tessarioustus, to the eastward. 
 That the '^vpot of Saurashtra and the Syrians of Asia Minor had 
 the same origin appears from the worship of Surya, or the Sun. 
 I have little doubt we have more than one ' city of the sun ' in 
 this tract ; indeed, the only temples of the sun I have met with 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 37 
 
 in India are in Saurashtra. The temple raised to Bal, in Tadmor 
 in the Desert, by Solomon, where he worshipped 'Bal and Ash- 
 toreth, the strange gods of the Sidonians,' was the Bal-nat'h, or 
 Great God of the Hindus, the Vivifier, the Sun : and the Pillar 
 erected to him, ' in every grove, and on every high hill ; ' the 
 Lingam or Phallus, the emblem of Bal ; Bal-nath, Bal-cesari, or 
 as Bal-Tswara, the Osiris of the Egyptians ; and as Nand-Iswara, 
 their Serapis, or Lord of the Sacred Bull ; Nanda, or Apis, ' the 
 Calf of Egypt,' which the chosen people bowed to ' when their 
 hearts were tui-ned away from the Lord." 
 
 After the supreme Triad, which occupied the adytum of the 
 temple at Hierapolis, came the personification of their various 
 attributes and emanations, which are called after the names of 
 the corresponding Grecian deities, and among which was an 
 ancient statue of Apollo clothed and bearded, contrary to the 
 usual mode of representing him. Lucian, De Dea Syria, says, 
 " There is a statue of Apollo, not as was usual to make such, for 
 all others represent Apollo young and in the attitude of running, 
 but they have given him in this statue a beard. In another par- 
 ticular they have made an innovation in their Apollo : they have 
 covered him with garments." 
 
 In the vestibule were two phalli of enormous magnitude, upon 
 one of which a person resided during seven days twice in each 
 year to communicate with the gods, and pray for the prosperity 
 of Syria ; and in the court were kept the sacred or symbolical 
 animals, such as bulls, horses, lions, bears, eagles, etc. Lucian 
 remarks upon this as follows : — " The two great phalli standing 
 in the porch with the inscription on them : These phalli I, 
 Bacchus, dedicated to my stepmother, Juno ! The Greeks erect 
 phalli to Bacchus, which are little men made out of wood, bene 
 nasatos, and these are called neurospasta [moving by artificial 
 muscles]. There is also on the right hand of the temple a little 
 brazen man, whose symbol is enormously disproportionate. There 
 is also in the temple the figure of a female, who is dressed in 
 man's clothes. The priests are self-mutilated men, and they wear 
 women's garments. The temple itself stands upon a hill, in the 
 middle of a city (Hierapolis, the holy city, near Aleppo), and it 
 is surrounded by a double wall. The porch of the temple fronteth 
 the north, and it is two hundred yards in circumference ; within 
 it are the two phalli before mentioned, each about a hundred and 
 fifty yards high. To the top of one of these phallic pillars a man 
 
38 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 ascends twice during the year, and be there remains seven days 
 at a time. The vulgar imagine that he converseth with the gods 
 above and prayeth for the prosperity of all Syria, which prayers 
 the gods hear, near at hand. He never sleeps during the seven 
 days." 
 
 In the year 1845, Dr. Troost, of the University of Nashville, 
 brought under the notice of the American Ethnological Society a 
 number of ancient Indian remains in the shape of certain idols 
 which had been discovered at various times in Tennessee. One 
 was found when some new ground was ploughed, i. e., ground 
 which had never before been under cultivation, and was for the 
 first time reclaimed from its primitive forest state. This idol was 
 yet in its sanctuary, namely, in a large shell, the interior whorls 
 and columella were all removed so that nothing but the external 
 shell remained, which w^as opened in the front sufficiently to per- 
 mit the image to enter. 
 
 Dr. Troost says : — " The utensils which I have found were all 
 made of different kinds of stone, most of which may be found 
 amongst the primitive rocks of North Carolina or Missouri States, 
 and some even in Tennessee ; one, however, namely, an obsidian, 
 must have been brought from South America. We know that 
 this volcanic substance is found in several parts of the Andes, 
 particularly in Quito, Popayan, at the volcanoes of Parace and 
 Sotora, the mountains Las Nobayas, and Mexico. 
 
 " These facts seem to place it beyond doubt that they came 
 from southern regions. I have already observed that they were 
 idolaters, and probably worshipped the phallus, as did some an- 
 cient nations — Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks. I had the 
 good fortune to obtain, during my rambles, several images which, 
 no doubt, must have served for religious purposes ; they have all, 
 at least such as were not too much mutilated, some similarity in 
 their position, — they are all in a kneeling position and sitting 
 on their heels, all without clothing. Some of them have their 
 hands around their abdomen ; others have their hands on their 
 knees. Two of these images, a male and a female, are the largest 
 I have seen, being sixteen inches high; they were found in Smith 
 county, and are made of a kind of sandstone, and are of a rude 
 sculpture. The male seems to be a rude imitation of an ancient 
 Priapus ; he is more or less injured by the plough by which he 
 was brought up, and which has broken a large memhi^um genera- 
 tionis virile in erectione : the marks of the ploughshare are yet 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 39 
 
 visible, passing from that part over the face, breaking part of the 
 chin and nose. The person who ploughed it up mentioned that 
 it possessed this member, but he considered it too indecent to be 
 preserv^ed. It is not the only instance where this pars genitalis 
 has been found. Doctor Ramsey, who has a fine collection of 
 these antiquities, has two simulacra of this member : the one is 
 carved out of stone similar to that of my images, and is of a rude 
 construction, but he has one which is made of a kind of amphi- 
 bolic rock, and perfectly resembling the natural object. The 
 latter, if I remember right, is about twelve inches in length, the 
 other four inches longer. The one made of amphibolic rock must 
 have taken a long while to make, it being a very hard and 
 tough rock on which steel can make no impression ; it must have 
 been ground down with a substance of the hardness of emery, 
 nevertheless it is perfectly smooth, having the fat or greasy lustre 
 characterising these rocks. It is not probable that they would 
 have spent so long a time on an object merely to satisfy some 
 voluptuous propensities or whims ; they must have served some 
 more serious purposes, and it is very probable that they held them 
 in the same veneration as the Greeks, who consecrated the organ 
 of generation in their mysteries. The phallus and steis were ex- 
 posed in the sanctuaries of Eleusis. The Egyptians had conse- 
 crated the phallus in the mysteries of Osiris and Isis ; and, if I 
 am not mistaken, Father Kircher mentions, on the authority of 
 Cortes, that this worship was established in America. 
 
 " I have another image made of stone similar to that of the 
 two above mentioned, but it is only nine inches high : it much 
 resembles the first. It was found in the Sequat-chy valley. 
 
 " A Hfth, which was found in Sumner county, differs much in 
 figure and in the materials of which it is made from the above 
 mentioned images. It is made of clay mixed with pounded shells, 
 and, judging from its red colour, it must have undergone a certain 
 amount of heating ; it is entirely hollow, and has a hole on the 
 back of the head through which the finger was introduced to 
 mould the clay in its present form. It is a female. 
 
 " The image in its sanctuary, mentioned above, is made of the 
 same materials as the preceding, which it resembles except in its 
 features. It was found in the Sequat-chy valley by ploughing. 
 It was in its chapel as observed above." 
 
 During his investigation, Professor Joseph Jones obtained 
 from the tumuli and valleys of Tennessee several interesting 
 
40 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 idols, both of stone and of clay mixed with pounded shells. It 
 may be stated that images of this archaic type hai^e been found 
 also in Kentuck}', Virginia, South and North Carolina, Louisiana, 
 Alabama, and Florida. The worship of the Priapus probably 
 obtained among some of the southern Indian nations. In the 
 collection of Dr. Troost w^ere many carefully-carved representa- 
 tions in stone of the male organ of generation. They were found 
 principally within the present limits of the State of Tennessee. 
 But two objects of this sort appear to have been noted among 
 the relics of the Georgia tribes, and they were about twelve inches 
 long, made of slate. In some parts of Alabama, and in Missis- 
 sippi, similar objects have been exhumed from grave mounds."^ 
 
 " Phallic emblems abounded at Heliopolis, in Syria, Not 
 having any knowledge of their existence at Heliopolis, in Egypt, 
 I took means to ascertain it from a brother physician who had 
 recently visited the country. The following is his reply to my 
 query: — 'I am very sorry that I am not enough of an antiquarian 
 to give you much information on the subject you are interested 
 in. I was in Egypt last winter (1865-6), and there certainly are 
 numerous figures of gods and kings on the walls of the temple at 
 Thebes, depicted with the penis erect. The great temple at Kar- 
 nak is, in particular, full of such figures, and the temple of Dan- 
 clesa likewise, though that is of a much later date, and built 
 merely in imitation of the old Egyptian art. I remember the 
 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 scene are numerous heaps of the couiplete 
 genitals which have been cut off, many hundreds in all, I should 
 think. This is on the walls of Medinet Haboo, at Thebes.' 
 
 "This letter," says Dr. Inman, "is very interesting, for it 
 shows (1) how largely the idea of virility was interwoven with 
 religion ; (2) how completely English Egyptologists have sup- 
 pressed a portion of the facts in the histories which they have 
 given to the world ; (3) because it tells us of the antiquity of the 
 practice which still obtains among the negroes of Northern 
 Africa, of mutilating entirely every male captive and slain enemy 
 (compare 2 Kings xx. 18, and Isa. xxxix. 7, also 1 Sam. xviii. 
 25-27). In Assyria and Palestine conquerors counted the heads 
 of the slain, which were piled in heaps before them. The learned 
 
 * Jones. Antiquities of Southern Indians. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 41 
 
 Egyptians were content with a less bulky emblem. A man when 
 beheaded is useless ; if only emasculated he is of value as a slave. 
 The Asiatic gratified a temporary revenge ; the African had an 
 enduring triumph." 
 
 M. Rivett-Carnac says: — "No one who has been in this 
 country (India), and who has noticed the monolith Mahadeos of 
 the Western Ghats of the Himalayas and other parts of India, 
 can fail to be struck with the resemblance that the menhirs of 
 Carnac in Brittany and its neighbourhood bear to the Siva em- 
 blems of India. I visited these remarkable remains when at home 
 last year, and was quite taken aback by their resemblance to well- 
 known Indian types. The monoliths of Scotland, covered with 
 what I believe to be Mahadeo symbols, are of the same class. 
 Added to this, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, the people whose 
 language suggests tlieir descent from the tribes who erected the 
 tumuli and menhirs, not only in this neighbourhood but also in 
 other parts of Europe, still preserve traditions connected with 
 these monoliths, and have actually retained some traces of what I 
 call Siva worship." 
 
 MM. Edouard Piette and Julien Sacaze prepared a paper 
 some twelve years ago, which was read at the Society of Anti- 
 quaries of France in wliich they shewed that they had actually 
 discovered the remains of phallic worship still existing among the 
 people of the Pyrenees, the existence of which, in Scandinavia, 
 in days gone by, had already been brought to the notice of the 
 Society by Dr. Rajendralala Mitra. These archaeologists have 
 established the fact that to this day the menhir is still reverenced 
 in the Pyrenees as the phallus. 
 
 Captain Richard J. Burton, late Commissioner to Dahome, 
 says, in his "Notes connected with the Dahoman :" — "Amongst 
 all barbarians whose primal want is progeny, we observe a greater 
 or less development of the phallic worship. In Dahome it is un- 
 comfortably prominent ; every street from Whydah to the capital 
 is adorned with the symbol, and the old ones are not removed. 
 The Dahoman Priapus is a clay figure of any size between a 
 giant and the pigmy, crouched upon the ground as if contem- 
 plating its own attributes. The head is sometimes a wooden 
 block rudely carved, more often dried mud, and the eyes and teeth 
 are supplied by cowries. A huge penis, rudely carved as the 
 Japanese articles which I have lately been permitted to inspect, 
 projects horizontally from the middle. I could have carried off a 
 
42 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 donkey's load had I been aware of the rapidly rising value of 
 phallic specimens amongst the collectors of Europe. The Tree of 
 Life is anointed with palm oil, which drips into a pot or a shard 
 placed below it, and the would-be mother of children prays that 
 the great god Legba will make her fertile. Female Legbas are 
 rare — about one to a dozen males. They are, if possible, more 
 hideous and gorilla-like than those of the other sex ; their breasts 
 resemble the halves of German sausages, and the external labia, 
 which are adored by being anointed with oil, are painfully de- 
 veloped. There is another phallic god, named ' Bo,' the guardian 
 of warriors and the protector of markets." 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 Wide Prevalence of Phallic Woi'shi]?. 
 
 THE Rev. J, Roberts, in a paper read before the Royal 
 Asiatic Society in 1832, said : — "That the gods adored by 
 the Israelites, taken from the Assyrian and other nations, are 
 still served by the Hindus (though generally under other names) 
 I cannot doubt, and the object of the following observation is to 
 identify some of the leading deities. It has been well observed : — 
 ' Whoever were the first planters of India, it could not have been 
 planted till long after Persia and Elam had been sufficiently 
 cultivated, and a considerable number of ages after Assyria and 
 the countries adjoining Ararat had been planted. This is so 
 apparent, both froai Scripture and the nature of things, that it 
 will not admit of a dispute.' Is it not reasonable to suppose that 
 Noah and his family would remain for many years at no very 
 great distance from the spot where they first settled 1 Who 
 built the splendid cities of Babel and Nineveh? did not Ashur, 
 and probably the other sons of Noah ? Who were the first to 
 study astrology as a guide to find out the good or evil supposed 
 to be produced by the heavenly bodies? Who were the first 
 to propitiate them in reference to their salutary or malignant 
 influences on the destinies of men? Does not the mind 
 immediately revert to the builders and occupiers of Babylon ; 
 to their dispersion over the earth ; and the consequent carrying 
 away of their superstitions, though then veiled in different 
 languages ? If then, ' India was peopled after Persia and Elam, 
 and many years after Assyria,' from whom did she receive her 
 leading deities and theological institutes? Is it not natural to 
 suppose from one of the above ? And from whom so likely as 
 the Assyrians? 
 
 " The Jews worshipped the Assyrian deity Succoth-Benoth, 
 under the name of Ashtoreth or Astarte ; and it is said that 
 this god or goddess was both masculine and feminine. The 
 Siva of India is both male and female ; his right side being 
 of the former and his left of the latter sex ; and his wife assumed 
 both appearances as circumstances might require. 
 
44 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 "The Babylonians called Succoth-Benoth, Mylitta, signifying 
 mother. The wife of Siva, and she only as far as I know, is 
 called Mata or Mother. 
 
 "Amongst the Assyrians, the daughters or women once in 
 their lives had to make a sacrifice of virtue to that goddess 
 Succoth-Benoth. And Lempriere says of her : — " A surname 
 of Yenus among the Assyrians, in whose temples all the women 
 were obliged to prostitute themselves to strangers. The wife 
 of Siva, amongst many other names, is called Vali or Bali, under 
 which appellation she assumed the form of a girl of twelve years 
 of age. And in Madura, Balane, and other places, beautiful 
 virgins used to go to the temple once in their lives to offer 
 themselves in honour of the goddess. The story was that a god 
 had converse with them. In all the temples of Siva and his 
 consort (where it could be afforded) women w^ere kept to dance 
 and sing before the idols. 
 
 " Amongst the Assyrians and others, the votaries of the 
 above-named goddess worshipped sometimes in the dress of men, 
 and at other times in that of women. The dancino; ojirls of 
 many of the temples on the continent of India, at the feast called 
 Manampu, do the same thing. When the god and goddess go 
 out to hunt, they are equipped and mounted as men ; and at the 
 conclusion of the great feast of Siva they assume the dress of 
 Pandarams, and thus go forth from house to house to ask alms. 
 
 " The Babylonian or Assyrian goddess was drawn or supported 
 by lions. The wife of Siva, under the name of Bhadra-Kali, has 
 the same animal appropriated to her use. 
 
 " Succoth-Benoth, the same with the Syrian goddess, the same 
 as Astarte of the Phcenicians and the Decerts of Ascalon. The 
 worship paid to this goddess came originally from Assyria and 
 Babylonia. Astarte is always joined with Baal ; and is called a 
 god in Scripture, having no particular word for expressing a 
 goddess. Lucian thinks Astarte to be the moon. 
 
 " The wife of Siva, under the name of Sacti, placed a 
 representation of the cresent moon on the head of her husband 
 under the following circumstances. When once engaged in 
 armorous sports he by accident broke her arm-ring, which she 
 immediately tied on his dishevelled lock of hair as the crescent 
 moon. He, however, having laughed at her, she turned away 
 her face and changed the crescent into full moon. The crescent 
 is common to both, and is assumed as circumstances may require. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 45 
 
 " Shach, or Saca, another god or goddess, partly the same 
 with Mylitta, the Syrian goddess. 
 
 " The wife of Siva is also known under the name of Satti ; 
 but in Sanscrit, Sakti. 
 
 "The festival of Saca was held for five days every year; 
 during which time servants commanded their masters, and wore 
 a kind of royal garment called Zogani. * 
 
 "The festival of the wife of Siva continued nine days, or 
 rather nights, and was called Nava Rattiri, i.e., nine nights : 
 three of these, however, were for Sarasvati, and the other six for 
 Sakti. On this occasion, those who had not been accustomed to 
 eat flesh, or drink intoxicating liquors, did so freely. All 
 restraints were now thrown off, and scenes of the most sickening 
 kind wound up the ceremonies. No young female of respectable 
 character dared shew herself in public. Servants assumed the 
 airs and practices of their masters ; school-boys dressed in gay 
 apparel, went from house to house to dance and sing songs 
 in honour of Sakti : gambling, fighting of cocks and of rams, 
 with other rude and ludicrous performances, filled up this 
 indecent festival. 
 
 " Salambo, a goddess ; the same as Astarte ; eternally roaming 
 up and down a mountain. It is rather striking that the wife of 
 Siva is also known by the name of Silambu, and that this name 
 also signifies a mountain. Another of her names is Parvati, 
 meaning she who was born on a mountain. She is also called 
 daughter of the mountain ; and sometimes the mountain nymph, 
 who captivated Siva from a course of ascetic austerities. 
 
 "The Babylonians and Assyrians worshipped what by the 
 Greeks and Romans was termed phallus or Priapus. The priaps 
 were three hundred fathoms, or three hundred cubits high ; and 
 by whom the priaps were executed there is much dispute. 
 
 "The Egyptians most probably meant the sun and moon. 
 Some suppose Osiris to signify the efficient cause of things ; and 
 Isis, matter. Osiris was represented in a human form, in a 
 posture not very decent, signifying his generative and nutritive 
 faculty. This living image was the bull. The image of Isis, 
 usually in the form of a woman with a cow's horns on her head. 
 
 " Calmet regards Astarte, or Astaroth, as the Isis of Egypt. 
 The word is often plural, Astaroth. Sometimes aserah, the 
 grove ; aseroth, or aserim, woods ; groves were her temples : in 
 
 * Universal History. 
 
4G NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 groves consecrated to her, such lasciviousness was committed as 
 rendered her worship infamous. She was also called the queen 
 of heaven, and sometimes her worship is described by that of the 
 liost of heaven. She is almost always joined with Baal, and is 
 called gods. 
 
 " Temples of the moon generally accompanied those of the 
 sun ; and while bloody sacrifices, or human victims were offered 
 to Baal, bread, liquors and perfumes were presented to Astarte ; 
 tables were prepared for her on the flat terrace roofs of houses, 
 near gates, in porches, and at cross-ways, on the first day of every 
 month, which the Greeks called Hecate's supper. 
 
 " St. Jerome, in several places, translates the name Astarte 
 by Priapus, as if to denote the licentiousness committed in her 
 groves. The eastern people in many places worshipped the moon 
 as a god : represented its figure with a beard, and in armour. 
 The statue in the temple of Heliopolis, in Syria, was that of a 
 woman, clothed like a man, says Pliny. Solomon, seduced by his 
 foreign wives, introduced the worship of Astarte into Israel, but 
 Jezebel, daughter of the king of Tyre, and wife of Ahab, princi- 
 pally established her worship. 
 
 " St. Austin assures us that the Africans maintained Astarte 
 to be Juno. Herodian says the Carthaginians call the heavenly 
 goddess the moon, Astroarche. The Phoenicians asserted con- 
 fidently, says Cicero, that their Astarte was the Syrian Venus, 
 born at Tyre, and wife to Adonis ; very different from the Venus 
 of Cyprus. Lucian, who wrote particularly concerning the god- 
 dess of Syria (Astarte), says expressly that she is the moon, and 
 no other, and it is indubitable that this luminary was worshipped 
 under diflferent names in the East. 
 
 "The manner of representing Astarte on medals is not always 
 the same. Sometimes she is in a long habit, at other times in a 
 short habit ; sometimes holding a long stick, with a cross on its 
 top ; sometimes she has a crown of rays ; sometimes she is 
 crowned with battlements, or by a victory. 
 
 " In regard to the indecent object," wrote Mr. Roberts, 
 " alluded to as being worshipped by the Assyrians, it is well 
 known that the Hindus do the same thing. The lingam (priapus) 
 in the Hindu temple of Sedambarem is supposed to have sprung 
 from the earth of itself, and its foundation is believed to be in 
 the lower world. 
 
 "Buckingham says, in his Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. II., 
 page 406, of some antiquities he saw taken from the ruins of 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 47 
 
 Babylon : — 'The larger antiques comprehended a figure in brass, 
 embracing a large lingham between its knees, precisely in the 
 style of the Hindu representation of that emblem.' He mentions 
 also in another place, 'the Indian figure of a man, with a painted 
 bonnet and beai-d, embracing the lingham.' 
 
 " In regard to Osiris, it is more than probable that he in his 
 posture, generative and nutritive faculties, was the same as the 
 Siva of the Hindus. The bull was sa,cred to the foruier, and also 
 to the latter. Isis being represented with cow's horns, finds a 
 parallel in Siva or his wife, with the crescent moon fixed on her 
 head. 
 
 " Whether we look at the corresponding traits of character in 
 Moloch and Kali ; in Baal-Peor and the Chiun of Anos ; at the 
 mutual assumption of either sex by Siva and his partner ; at the 
 term mother being applied to the latter, and also to the Succoth- 
 Benoth of the Assyrian, Phoenician, and other nations ; at the 
 cow's horn (so called) of Assyria, and the crescent of India ; at 
 the young virgins who made a sacrifice of chastity to the Succoth- 
 Benoth of antiquity, and to the consort of the oriental Siva ; at 
 the use made of the regular female votaries of both systems ; at 
 their mutual assumption, on certain occasions, of the male attire; 
 at the lion, as belonging to the goddess of Assyria, and also to 
 her of India ; to the festival of Shach or Saca, and that of Satti 
 or Sakti, in regard to the lascivious way in which it was con- 
 ducted, and the peculiar garments worn on that occasion ; at the 
 term Salambo being the name of the one goddess, and also of the 
 other ; at its true meaning in reference to a mountain where they 
 mutually dwelt; at the Baal-Peor of Assyria, the Osiris of Egypt, 
 the Phallus of the Greeks, the Priapus of the Romans, and the 
 Lingam of the Hindus (worshipped now in the temples of the 
 East), Ave see some of the most striking coincidences, which never 
 could have been the result of anything but the identity of their 
 origin," 
 
 "The Chaldees believed in a celestial virgin, v/ho had purity 
 of body, loveliness of person, and tenderness of affection, and 
 who was one to whom the erring sinner could appeal with more 
 chance of success than to a stern father. She was pourtrayed as 
 a mother with a child in her arms, and every attribute ascribed 
 to her showed that she was supposed to be as fond as any eartlily 
 female ever was. 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. 
 
48 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 " The worship of the woman by man naturally led to develop- 
 ments which our comparatively sensitive natures shun, as being 
 opposed to all religious feeling. But amongst a people whose 
 language was without the gloss of mo !ern politeness — whose 
 priests both spoke and wrote without the least disguise, and 
 whose God, through His prophets and law-givers, promised abun- 
 dance of offspring and 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. 
 
 " In India, at the present time, both the thoughts and conver- 
 sation of the lords of the soil turn, unpleasantly to us, upon the 
 power possessed by each to propagate his race, and European 
 doctors are more frequently consulted for the increase or restora- 
 tion of this power than for any other cause. 
 
 "Not only does the man think thus, but the female has her 
 thoughts directed to the same channel, and there has been a 
 special hell invented by Hindoo priests for childless females. It is 
 curious to see at India's antipodes a similar idea started amongst 
 the offshoots of a Christian community, but so it is, and Mormon 
 women join themselves in numbers to the man from the belief 
 that without union with him they cannot attain to celestial glory. 
 
 "The Bible student will remember the plaintive entreaty of 
 Rachel, 'Give me children, or else I die' (Gen. xxx. 1); the 
 earnest prayer of Hannah, and the spiteful persecution of Penin- 
 nah (1 Sam. 1); and he will recall the longing for offspring which 
 induced Abraham to consort himself with a black (Egyptian) 
 slave girl, and how complaisant his wife was in delegating for a 
 time her rights (Gen. 14). 
 
 "In Deuteronomy xxviii., we find 'the fruit of the body' 
 promised as one of the special blessings for obedience to the law, 
 and in Psalm cxxvii. 3, we are distinctly told that ' children are 
 an heritaoe of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.' 
 
 " If abundance of offspring was promised as a blessing, it is 
 clear to the physiologist that the pledge implies abundance of 
 viofour in the man as well as in the woman. With a husband in- 
 competent, no wife could be fruitful. The condition, therefore, 
 of the necessary organs was intimately associated with the divine 
 blessing or curse, and the impotent man then would as naturally 
 go to the priest to be cured of his infirmity as we of to-day go to 
 the physician. We have evidence that masses have been said, 
 saints invoked, and offerings presented, for curing the debility we 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 49 
 
 refer to, in a church in Christianised Italy during the last hun- 
 dred years, and in France so late as the sixteenth century, — 
 evident relics of more ancient times." * 
 
 In further elucidation of the above as set forth by R. P. 
 Knight in his "Worship of Priapus," Dr. Inman says: — "When- 
 ever a votary applied to the oracle for help to enable him to per- 
 form his duties as a prospective father, or to remove that frigidity 
 which he had been taught to believe was a proof of Divine dis- 
 pleasure, or an evidence of his being bewitched by a malignant 
 demon, it is natural to believe that the priest would act partly as 
 a man of sense, though chiefly as a minister of God. He would 
 go through, or enjoin attendance on, certain religious ceremonies — 
 would sell a charmed image, or use some holy oil, invented and 
 blessed by a god or saint, as was done at Isernia — or he would do 
 something else, 
 
 " We can readily see, then, how some sacred rites might be in- 
 tentionally provocative of sexual ideas ; how desirable it might 
 have been for hierarchs to compose love philtres or satyrion, and 
 to understand the influence over the sexual powers possessed by 
 various kinds of aliment ; and we can also understand how cer- 
 tain gods would be invented whose images should act as amulets, 
 and who, like special Roman saints, would take charge of this 
 particular part of the body. 
 
 " Even after ' the Reformation,' France introduced Saint 
 Foutin into the Christian calendar, to whom offerings were made 
 by the faithful who found themselves unable to procure the 
 blessing of fertility ; — they are thus described : — 
 
 " ' Temoin Saint Foutin de Yarailles, en Provence, auquel 
 sont dediees les parties honteuses de I'un et de I'autre sexe, 
 formees en cire ; le plancher de la chapelle en est fort garni, et 
 quand le vent les fait entrebattre, cela debauche un peu les 
 devotions a I'honneur de ce saint." (La Confession de Sancy, vol. 
 v.. Journal de Henri III., by Pierre de FEtoile, ed. Duchat, pp. 
 383, 391). 
 
 " This and other saints were worshipped for similar purposes, 
 as St. Guerlichon, or Greluchon, and St. Entropius, at Orange, 
 Porigny, Yendre, Auxerre, Puy en Yelay, in the convent in 
 Girouet, and at Bourg Dieu ; St. Gilles in Brittany ; St. Rene' 
 in Anjou ; St. Regnaud in Burgundy ; St. Arnaud and St. Guig- 
 
 * R. P. Kjiight on Priapus cited by Inman. 
 
50 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 nole, near Brest and in Berri. The worship of many of these 
 was in full practice in the last century." (Two Essays on the 
 Worship of Priapus ; London, 1865: privately printed.) 
 
 "If," says Dr. Inman, "with all the vaunted enlightenment of 
 Christian Europe, there are several canonised mortals whose 
 special care, in the heaven to which they have been promoted by 
 men on earth, is to help unfortunates who require their aid ' pour 
 les parties honteuses,' we cannot wonder that sexual saints should 
 be found amongst the heathen races of Asia ; nor can we refuse 
 credence to the idea that the act of propagation was sometimes 
 the end of certain forms of worship, which were specially adapted 
 to bring about that act. 
 
 "As a physician, I know how much intense misery is felt by 
 those men who, from any cause, are unable to do their part in 
 multiplying their race. I can readily understand that a cure of 
 impuissance would raise to the highest pitch, in the mind of an 
 enquiring devotee, his estimate of the saint who wrought it, and 
 I do not see why masses should not be said to St. Greluchon, for 
 raising the courage of the living, as much as to >St. Denis (or 
 Dionysius), for the consolation of the dead. At any rate, the 
 Chaldees used some of their gods, or divinities, for comparatively 
 a holy worship, and for a cult as peculiar as that paid to the 
 modern Priapus, St. Foutin." 
 
 The Universal History tells us that " At Hierapolis, or the 
 Holy City, or Magog, as the Syrians themselves are said to have 
 called it, in the province of Cyrrhestica, stood the temple of the 
 great Syrian goddess. It is impossible to say whom they meant by 
 this Syrian goddess, but we find a story in Justin, which we sup- 
 pose to be borrowed from Nicolas of Damascus, that a king from 
 whom Damascus derived its name had a queen called Arathis, 
 whose sepulchre was religiously frequented by the Syrians, who 
 esteemed her as their principal deity, and this queen, according 
 to our author's account, was older than Abraham, whom he 
 reckons among the kings of Damascus. 
 
 " The temple was upon an eminence in the midst of the city, 
 surrounded by a double enclosure or two walls, the one old, the 
 other new. At the north side it had a court, or porch, before it 
 of about five or six hundred feet in circumference, where stood the 
 priaps of three hundred fathoms, or three hundred cubits high ; 
 for we find both these measures, but both exceedingly too large, 
 to our apprehension. These obscene images, or rather columns, 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 51 
 
 were but slender, as we shall shew hereafter, but by whom, or to 
 whom, they were erected was the subject of much fable. The 
 front of the temple itself stood last, and before it was a tower 
 raised upon a terrace about twelve feet high, which was no sooner 
 mounted than the temple appeared. It was built after the 
 manner of the Ionian temples ; the porch of it was adorned with 
 golden doors, nay, the whole temple glittered with gold, and par- 
 ticularly the roof ; the air about it was enchanting, nothing 
 inferior to the sweetest of Arabia, and so strongly perfumed the 
 garments of all that visited it that they were scented for a con- 
 siderable time." 
 
 A considerable number of festivals were observed by the 
 people of this place, and many singular customs indulged in. Of 
 priests there were several sorts, each assigned to particular tasks. 
 Some killed the sacrifices, some bore the drink offerings, some 
 carried fire, and some waited at the altar, and of these above 
 three hundred, in white habits and with caps or bonnets on their 
 heads, attended the sacrifices. And besides them, there were 
 other consecrated orders : as minstrels, skilful in the touch of 
 several instruments ; Galli, or eunuch priests, and mad and 
 frantic women. The office of high priest was annual ; he wore 
 purple, and a golden mitre. There were other sorts of holy 
 persons of various nations who held the Syrian goddess in venera- 
 tion, whose business it was to instruct their countrymen, who 
 from time to time resorted thither in pilgrimage, in the rules and 
 customs of the holy city. They were called masters or instructors. 
 
 It is remarkable of their eunuch priests that they were emas- 
 culated by the voluntary operation of their own hands. How 
 this unnatural custom came to prevail is accounted for by the 
 following story. Stratonice, who built this temple, having been 
 admonished by the goddess to undertake the work, took no heed to 
 her purpose till she forcibly brought her to obedience by a violent 
 procedure against her, and the king, her husband, consented to let 
 her go and take in hand the building, but committed the care of 
 her to a beautiful youth named Combabus. This Combabus, no 
 way fond of his commission, but dreading the consequences of being 
 so much alone with the beauteous queen, destroyed his sex, and left 
 the ruins of it, carefully embalmed and sealed up, with the king. 
 He departed with the queen Stratonice, was after some time 
 solicited by her, and convinced her of his inability. But, never- 
 theless, it came to pass, either through malice or envy, that 
 
52 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Combabus was clearly convicted of adultery, infidelity, and im- 
 piety to the goddess. As he was being led to execution he called 
 out for the treasure he had left with the king, which being pro- 
 duced, his intended punishment was converted into the most 
 tender embraces in the arms of his prince. The king now raised 
 him to the highest degree of riches and honour, and lie was famed 
 for the wisest and happiest man living. Combabus desired leave 
 to finish the temple, which being granted, he passed the remainder 
 of his life there. And there stood his statue in brass, the work 
 of Hermolaus the Rhodian. And because it was reported that 
 some of his dearest companions resolved to undergo his calamity 
 for his sake, or that Juno inspired several with a rage of un- 
 manning themselves, that he might not be single in his misfor- 
 tune, many mad zealots, either in honour of Combabus or to 
 please Juno, performed the hated operation on themselves every 
 year in the temple. Furthermore, these Galli, or devoted 
 eunuchs, took on them the habit and offices of women, because 
 Combabus liad been fallen in love with by a strange woman, who 
 knew not the violence he had done to his sex, which to prevent 
 for the future, he put on the outward appearance of a woman. 
 
 Of all the holy days of this people the Great Burriing, as it 
 may be called, was the principal. Upon this occasion there came 
 people from all parts to assist at the great sacrifice, and all the 
 other religious duties of the season. This festival was of some 
 days' continuance, and at particular times, while it lasted, the 
 whole multitude was drawn into the temple, while the priests 
 stood without, some of them mangling their bodies, some thump- 
 in(^ violently against each other, while others beat upon tabrets 
 or drums, and sounded musical instruments, and sang and 
 prophesied. And now it was that, amidst all this uproar, the 
 frenzy of castrating themselves seized on many in the temple, 
 who, crying out with a loud voice and drawing their swords, per- 
 formed the operation and devoted themselves to the goddess. 
 
 The religious customs, and laws, and traditions of this place 
 were as extraordinary as any to be found in any part of the 
 world. Twice a year a man went up to the top of one of the 
 priaps, and there remained seven days. He got up in this 
 
 manner : He surrounded the priap and himself with a chain, 
 
 and ascended by the help of that and certain pegs or pins, which 
 stuck out of the sides of. the priap for that purpose, lifting the 
 chain up after him at every step he mounted. It has been said that 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 53 
 
 those who had seen men climb up the palm-trees in Egypt and 
 Arabia might readily understand him, from which it has been 
 gathered that these phalli or priaps, so monstrously high, were so 
 slender that a man might grasp them. In whatever way we 
 reckon the heights as given by different authorities, they would 
 be about the height of the monument erected to commemorate 
 the Fire of London at the foot of London Bridge. " How so 
 slender a body could be reared to such a height," remarks an old 
 writer, " we leave to those who are better skilled in such matters 
 than ourselves." 
 
 When the man had got up, he let down a chain, wherewith he 
 drew up all such things as he required and therewith made a seat 
 or kind of nest for himself. It was given out that during the 
 seven days he had a more intimate acquaintance with the great 
 goddess, and also that this was done in memory of Deucalion's 
 flood, when the men climbed up the mountains and trees to save 
 themselves from perishing. During the seven days it is reported 
 that the man never slept, and that if at any time he happened to 
 doze, a sacred scorpion went up and awakened him ; it is said 
 that the fear of falling kept him awake. 
 
 More than half-a-century ago, a writer on Freemasonry in 
 discussing the question of the cause of the original dispersion 
 of primitive nations, promulgated a number of ideas respecting 
 towers and pyramids which had a very close connection with the 
 subject now under our consideration. He asked what was really 
 intended, mystically figured and represented under the colossal 
 and other monuments and sacred edifices of antiquity, specially 
 designating as the head and type of all succeeding edifices of like 
 character the Tower of Chaldea and the Great Pyramids of 
 Egypt. The first of these was erected not long after the founda- 
 tion of the Chaldean monarchy by Nimrod, the son of Cush, 
 2221 B.C. The second were erected probably not long after the 
 foundation of the Egyptian monarchy by Misraim, the son of 
 Ham, 2188 B.C., Babylon and Memphis being among the first 
 cities built after the Flood. And when the totally diff'erent 
 forms of these immense national edifices are considered, the 
 enquiring mind can scarcely fail to seek for the causes which 
 decided their ancient architects to employ so gigantic a mass 
 of materials, in one or the other of these definite forms, above 
 that of every other which might have been selected, and "It will 
 scarcely be denied," said the writer in question, "that the forms 
 
54 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 respectively of these stupendous monuments (which were only 
 the original archetypes of innumerable others which have been 
 subsequently constructed) must unavoidably be considered as 
 having been adopted as the carrying out of some paramount idea 
 or intention on the part of their primaeval founders. 
 
 " There is cause to believe," this gentleman thinks, " that in 
 the erection of the Chaldean tower, the principles of true 
 Masonry were at first abided by, but subsequently, the corruption 
 of human nature urging men to overthrow a spiritual worship 
 which absolutely required purity and holiness, they sought to 
 establish a system which virtually inculcated the worship of the 
 creature more than the Creator, and furnished a pretext for the 
 practice of unrestrained licentiousness as part and parcel of 
 religious rites. Such was the ancient worship of the Lingam — 
 a worship which we read of as recognised and established 
 throughout all antiquity." "Such," he says, "was the object 
 really worshipped under its colossal representative in the 
 Chaldean Tower, of whose notorious existence traditions even 
 in the most remote nations, almost universally exist, and of 
 whose actual signification many weighty proofs have been collected 
 by the late Mr. O'Brien, to which I might certainly add others 
 equally numerous and irrefragable." 
 
 The worship of the Lingam, then, of which the pillar tower 
 was a gigantic figure, involved and signified the worship of the 
 male principle of the universe ; this worship, though afterwards 
 perverted, originally intended the worship of the true and only 
 God, in accordance with which assertion we find that one inter- 
 pretation of the word Jehovah undoubtedly signifies the Universal 
 Male. In India, where undeniable proofs have been found of 
 the existence at one period of true Masonry, this signification is 
 found to be involved in the names of the principal deities. Thus, 
 according to Sir W. Jones, Bhasavat sicfnifies the first male, and 
 Naravan, or moving on the waters. The Spirit of God is often 
 likewise denominated the primaeval male. The deity described 
 in the fourth Yeda as Mahapurusha also signifies the Great 
 Male. Accordingly, we find that temples in honour of this Uni- 
 versal Male Power took definite form, and were always erected, in 
 the figure of its representative, the Lingam ; that is to say, in the 
 form of a tower or column. Almost innumerable examples of 
 such-like edifices abound in ancient countries, where this worship 
 was either primitive or introduced at later periods, and fully 
 illustrate these facts. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 55 
 
 Wilford remarks that the phallus was publicly worshipped by 
 the name of Baleswara Linga on the banks of the Euphrates. 
 The cubic room in the cave of Elephanta likewise contains the 
 Lingam, as does also the pagoda of stone at Miherbaliporam, or 
 City of the Great Baal. Sir W. Jones observes, " Columns were 
 erected, perhaps as gnomons, others probably to represent the 
 phallus of Iswara." Enough has here been cited, without doubt, 
 to dispose both the learned and the unlearned to consider that 
 the true signification of the pillar and tower was in reality such 
 as has here been stated. 
 
 In many parts of the Bible we find the pillar to have been 
 undoubtedly a sacred emblem; as in Isaiah xix. 19, "In that 
 day shall there be an altar to Jehovah, in the midst of the land 
 of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof, to Jehovah, and 
 it shall be for a sign, and a witness to the Lord." And this was 
 the especial form in which God Himself is described as appearing, 
 when He dwelt in the pillar that went before His chosen people, 
 as recorded by Moses. 
 
 When, however, pillars were set up to receive the profane 
 rites of idolatrous worship, we find them noticed in Scripture 
 as an abomination, in like manner as their great Babylonian 
 archetype ; which, being obnoxious to the wrath of God, as such, 
 was destroyed by fire from heaven, as its blasted and vitrified 
 ruins still remain incontrovertibly to attest. To this peculiar 
 idolatry Scripture refers in the following passages : Deut. xii. 3, 
 *'Ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their 'pillars^'' &c.; 
 Leuit. xxvi. 1, "Ye shall make ye no idols, nor graven image, 
 neither rear ye up a standing image" (Heb. pillar) ; 1 Kings xiv. 
 23, " For they also built them high places and images (Heb. 
 standing images)^ on every high hill"; Ezek. xvi. 17, 24, 25, 
 "Thou madest to thyself images of men (Heb. of a male), and 
 didst commit," &c. Also Jer, xi 13, "According to the number 
 of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful 
 thing," &c. The same is also alluded to in the striking history 
 recorded in Judges vi. 32, "Therefore he called the idol Jerubbaal 
 (or Jerubbesheth, Heb.), i.e., let the shameful thing plead." 
 And a final warning was given to the Israelites by Moses as 
 recorded in Deut. iv. 15, 16, "Take ye therefore good heed unto 
 yourselves, for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that 
 Jehovah spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire : 
 lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the 
 similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female." 
 
56 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 As the tower was sacred to the male power of the universe, 
 so likewise was the pyramid, triangle, or cone adopted by the 
 votaries of an opposite worship as the real and consecrated 
 emblem and representation of that procreative female energy in 
 which (considering it as the true and vital conceptive power of 
 nature), according to them, resided absolutely and solely, the 
 underived principle of life ; which female power they chose alone 
 to deify, and, like their opponents, consecrated their unhallowed 
 worship by the most profane and licentious rites. 
 
 Thus, the great pyramids were at Memphis the colossal monu- 
 ments of a separate worship, with all its concomitant mysteries, 
 and, like the Tower of Babel, in both symbolical editices the 
 threefold objects of astronomy, astrology, and religion were indis- 
 solubly involved and united. 
 
 Baron Humboldt observes, in his Researches (in total ignor- 
 ance, however, of this theory), "In every part of the globe, on 
 the ridge of the Cordilleras as well as in the Isle of Samothrace, 
 in the ^gean Sea, fragments of primitive languages are preserved 
 in religious rites." 
 
 Let us, in accordance with this observation, examine the 
 ancient Sanscrit word YU, or YONI, which we shall recognise 
 in the religious vocabulary of every nation where pyramidal 
 edifices prove them to have been addicted to the schismatic wor- 
 ship of the Pish-de-Danaan sect. In the third volume of the 
 Asiatic Researches Wilford says: — " Yavana is a regular par- 
 ticipial form of the root yu, to mix ; so that yavana, like misra^ 
 might have signified no more than a mingled people : but since 
 yoni, or the female nature, is also derived from the same root, 
 many Pandits insist that the Yavanas were so named from their 
 obstinate assertion of a superior influence in the female over the 
 linga, or male nature, in producing a perfect offspring." Sir 
 William Jones expressly states that the meaning of yoni, or 
 bhaga, is undoubtedly the female womb, and in his plate of the 
 Hindu lunar mansions (in the article on the antiquity of the 
 Indian Zodiac) this constellation of the yoni is figured as three 
 stars, inclosed by the Hindu draughtsman in a representation of 
 that object; which in his figure is made to resemble an inverted 
 pyramid, or truncated cone. Venus Genetrix is sometimes re- 
 presented in the form of a conical marble, " for the reason of 
 which figure," says Tacitus, " we are left in the dark," " but," 
 adds Sir William Jones, " the reason appears too clearly in the 
 
NATURE AVORSHIP. 57 
 
 temples and paintings of Hindustan, where it never seems to 
 have entered the heads of the legislators or people that anything 
 natural could be offensively indecent." Wilford mentions that, 
 according to Theodoret, Arnobius, and Clemens Alexandria, the 
 YONI of the Hindus was the sole object of veneration in the 
 mysteries of Eleusis. 
 
 For proofs of the high antiquity of this worship in China, 
 the discerning mind need only consult the following passage from 
 Lord Macartney's Travels, vol. i., Hager, Monument of Yu : 
 " In both Americas, it is a matter of inquiry what was the in- 
 tention of the natives when they raised so many artificial pyra- 
 midal hills, several of which appear to have served neither as 
 tombs, nor watch towers, nor the base of a temple : a custom 
 established in Eastern Asia may throw some light on this 
 important question. About 2,000 years before our era, sacrifices 
 were offered in China to the Supreme Being, on four great moun- 
 tains, called Four Yo. The sovereigns, finding it incovenient to 
 go thither in person, caused eminences representing these moun- 
 tains to be created by the hands of men, near their habitations." 
 Thus we find that the pyrimidal hills on which sacrifice was 
 offered were designated by the very name of the object typified, 
 thus aflfording an invaluable clue to our present inquiries. (See 
 also Asiatic Researches, vol. iii.") And the names of many of 
 their most considerable cities and provinces still bear witness to 
 religious or sacred etymology of their titles, and Yo-tcheon, Ya- 
 ogan, in the province of Yunan, Yuengang, &c., are assuredly 
 derived from a primitively religious meaning, as the four sacred 
 Yo (or natural pyramids) themselves, alluded to by Lord Ma- 
 cartney. 
 
 The whole country of Mexico abounded in pyramids, and 
 Humboldt declares the basis of the Greek Cholula to have been 
 twice as broad as that of the Egyptian Cheops, though its height 
 is little more than that of Mycerinus. He states, also, that in 
 the American languages 137 roots have been recognised in the 
 languages of Asia and Europe, and in perfect accordance with 
 this theory of their religious ideas we find a Mexican province 
 named Yucatan ; the Mexican Isis (Ish Ish, or female nature) ; 
 the wife of the sun is called Yu-becaygua-ya ; and a chapel 
 called Yo-pico was built over the cavern that contained the skins 
 of the human sacrifices. 
 
 "It is extremely remarkable," says Humboldt, "that we 
 discover among the Mexican hieroglyphics absolutely nothing 
 
58 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 which announces the symbol of the Generative Force, or the 
 Lingam. M. Zoega has observed that the emblem of the phallus 
 is likewise never found in Ecjyptian works of great antiquity. 
 M. Larytes observes expressly that in India some sectarians have 
 held this emblem in horror, " might we not suppose," adds he, 
 " that there exists some exiled sect in the north-west of Asia 
 who reject the worship of the Lingam, and of which one finds 
 some traces amongst the American races 1 " 
 
 Thus did these great writers, intuitively as it were, discern 
 the existence of a separate object of worship in those countries 
 which they allude to, although, as they never advert to the real 
 nature of it, we may conclude their inferences to have been only 
 obscurely conjectural. 
 
 The fact is that wherever this peculiar worship has ever 
 flourished, traces are left behind, and relics remain which have 
 always been found to have puzzled the learned antiquarian no 
 less than the unlettered conjecturer. 
 
 "In a tumulus on Salisbury Plain," says Sir R. Hoare in his 
 Tumuli Wiltunenses, " we found a cone of jet, likewise an amber 
 cone. In another, we found an earthen cup of singular pattern, 
 a cone of gold, &c. 
 
 That the mitre of Osiris, which, in fact, represented a trun- 
 cated cone, had relation to this mysterious type, we imagine few 
 will be inclined to controvert, and probably these remarks will 
 receive corroboration from a close inspection of the extraordinary 
 groups in the caves of Ellora (which are engraved in the sixth 
 volume of the Asiatic Researches), where the mitre, placed on 
 the head of Indra as well as on the head of Indranee, no less 
 than the peculiar situation of the human skull and cross-bones, 
 placed conspicuously on this last female personage, and occupying 
 the natural position of the yoni itself, sufficiently evince what 
 were the notions of those ancient architects concerning religious 
 mysteries, and of the particular agency by which death, in the 
 first instance, " passed upon all men." 
 
 A writer has said : — " In commenting on this particular 
 branch of idolatry under discussion, we cannot but remark that 
 there appears just reason to believe that this was the peculiar 
 abomination into which the ten tribes of Israel lapsed, at their 
 separation from Judah under Jeroboam ; of which opinion strong 
 presumptive proof is offered, inasmuch as, from the account given 
 by Herodotus (and cited by Josephus) of the invasion of the 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 59 
 
 Egyptian Shishak, under Rehoboara, it appears that, having con- 
 quered Jerusalem, and defiled the public buildings by carving in 
 thein the distinctive symbols of his own peculiar and national 
 creed, that is to say (according to the same author), by defacing 
 them with representations of that very symbol, the mysterious 
 yoni, he returned to his own country without in any way moles- 
 ting Samaria, the residence of the ten tribes, who, it needs not 
 any great measure of sagacity to perceive, had doubtless embraced 
 his religious views." * 
 
 * See Freemason's Quarterly Review for 18-40. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Phallic Worshi]:) in the Middle Ages. 
 
 THE author of the treatise on the " Worship of the Generative 
 Powers during the Middle Ages," in continuation of Payne 
 Knight's book, says : — " Richard Payne Knight has written with 
 great learning on the origin and history of the worship of Priapus 
 among the ancients. This worship, which was but a part of that 
 of the generative powers, appears to have been the most ancient 
 of the superstitions of the human race, has prevailed more or 
 less among all known peoples before the introduction of Chris- 
 tianity, and singularly enough, so deeply it seems to have been 
 implanted in human nature that even the promulgation of the 
 Gospel did not abolish it, for it continued to exist, accepted and 
 often encouraged by the mediaeval clergy. The occasion of Payne 
 Knight's work was the discovery that this worship continued to 
 prevail in his time in a very remarkable form, at Isernia, in the 
 kingdom of Naples. The town of Isernia was destroyed, with a 
 great portion of its inhabitants, in the terrible earthquake which 
 so fearfully devastated the kingdom of Naples on the 26th of 
 July, 1805, nineteen years after the appearance of the book 
 alluded to. Perhaps with it perished the last trace of the wor- 
 ship of Priapus in this particular form, but Payne Knight was 
 not acquainted with the fact that this superstition, in a variety 
 of forms, prevailed throughout Southern and Western Europe 
 largely during the Middle Ages, and that in some parts it is 
 hardly extinct at the present day. 
 
 "The mediseval worship of the generative powers, represented 
 by the generative organs, was derived from two distinct sources. 
 In the first place, Rome invariably carried into the provinces she 
 had conquered her own institutions and forms of worship, and 
 established them permanently. In exploring the antiquities of 
 these provinces, we are astonished at the abundant monuments 
 of the worship of Priapus, in all the shapes and with all the 
 attributes and accompaniments, with which we are already so 
 well acquainted in Rome and Italy. Among the remains of 
 Roman civilization in Gaul, we find statues or statuettes of 
 Priapus, altars dedicated to him, the gardens and fields entrusted 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 61 
 
 to his care, and the phallus, or male member, figured in a variety 
 of shapes as a protecting power against evil influences of various 
 kinds. With this idea the well-known figure was sculptured on 
 the walls of public buildings, placed in conspicuous places in the 
 interior of the house, worn as an ornament by women, and sus- 
 pended as an amulet to the necks of children. Erotic scenes of 
 the most extravagant description covered vessels of metal, 
 earthenware, and glass, intended, no doubt, for festivals and 
 usages more or less connected with the worship of the principle 
 of fecundity." 
 
 At Aix, in Provence, there was found, on or near the site of 
 the ancient baths, to which it had no doubt some relation, an 
 enormous phallus, encircled with garlands, sculptured in white 
 marble. At Le Chatelet, in Champagne, on the site of a Roman 
 town, a colossal phallus was found. Similar objects in bronze, 
 and of smaller dimensions, are so common, that explorations are 
 seldom carried on upon a Roman site in which they are not 
 found, and examples of such objects abound in the museums, 
 public or private, of Roman antiquities. 
 
 At Nismes, in the south of France (formerly Nemansus), 
 phallic worship appears to have prevailed to an unusual extent, 
 and the walls of many of its buildings are adorned with sculptures 
 of a most remarkable character, many of which can scarcely be 
 regarded as other than fanciful caricatures. Some of them are 
 thus described. One is the figure of a double phallus. It is 
 sculptured on the lintel of one of the vomitories, or issues, of the 
 second range of seats of the Roman amphitheatre, near the 
 entrance gate which looks to the south. The double and the 
 triple phallus are very common among the small Roman bronzes, 
 which appear to have served as amulets, and for other similar 
 purposes. In the latter, one phallus usually serves as the body, 
 and is furnished with legs, generally those of the goat ; a second 
 occupies the usual place of this organ ; and a third appears in 
 that of a tail. On a pilaster of the amphitheatre of Nismes, we 
 see a triple phallus of this description with goat's legs and feet. 
 A bell is suspended to the smaller phallus in front ; and the larger 
 organ which forms the body is furnished with wings. The picture 
 is completed by the introduction of three birds, two of which are 
 pecking at the unveiled head of the principal phallus, while the 
 third is holding down the tail-with its foot. 
 
 On the top of another pilaster of the amphitheatre at Nismes, 
 to the right of the principal western entrance, was a bas-relief. 
 
62 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 also representing a triple phallus, with legs of a goat, and winged, 
 but with a further accompaniment. A female, dressed in the 
 Roman stola, stands upon the phallus forming the tail, and holds 
 both it and the one forming the body with a bridle. This bas- 
 relief was taken down in 1829, and is now preserved in the 
 museum of Nismes. 
 
 A still more remarkable monument of this class was found in 
 the course of excavations made at Nismes in 1825. It represents 
 a bird, apparently intended for a vulture, with spread wings 
 and phallic tail, sitting on four eggs, each of which is designed, 
 no doubt, to represent the female organ. The local antiquaries 
 give to this, as to the other similar objects, an emblematical 
 signification ; but it may be more rightly regarded, perhaps, as a 
 playful conception of the imagination. A similar design, with 
 some modifications, occurs not frequently among Gallo-Roman 
 antiquities. 
 
 As Nismes was evidently a centre of this Priapic worship in 
 the south of Gaul, so there appears to have been, perphaps lesser, 
 centres in other parts, and we may trace it to the northern 
 extremities of the Roman province, even to the other side of the 
 Rhine. On the site of Roman settlements near Xanten, in Lower 
 Hesse, a large quantity of pottery and other objects have been 
 found, of a character to leave no doubt as to the prevalence of 
 this worship in that quarter. But the Roman settlement which 
 occupied the site of the modern city of Antwerp appears to have 
 been one of the most remarkable seats of the worship of Priapus 
 in the north of Gaul, and it continued to exist there till a com- 
 paratively modern period. * 
 
 So far as Britain is concerned, there is no doubt whatever that 
 the worship of Priapus was established here as in other countries. 
 Whenever there are any Roman remains of any particular extent, 
 statuettes of Priapus, phallic bronzes, and pottery covered with 
 obscene pictures are found. The bronzes found in England, are 
 perfectly identical in character with those which occur in France 
 and Italy. In illustration of this fact^ we may mention two 
 examples of the triple phallus, which appears to have been, 
 perhaps in accordance with the explanation given by Plutarch, 
 an amulet in great favour. One was found in London in 1842. 
 As in examples found on the continent, a principal phallus formed 
 the body, having the hinder parts of apparently a dog, with 
 
 * See Payne Knight's Work. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 63 
 
 wings of a peculiar form, perhaps intended for those of a dragon. 
 Several small rings are attached, probably for the purpose of 
 suspending bells Another example was found at York in 1866, 
 which displays a peculiarity of action, which leaves no doubt that 
 the hinder parts were intended to be those of a dog. 
 
 Numerous examples of lamps of a phallic character have also 
 been found in London and other parts connected with ancient 
 Roman settlements. They are chiefly of earthenware, and some 
 of them are of the most obscene description. One, found in 
 London — in Cannon Street — in 1838, said to be typical of this 
 class of objects, represents a natural act which will be readily 
 understood. 
 
 One remarkable example of phallic monuments in Britain, 
 demands, from its peculiarity, special notice. The author of the 
 addition to Payne Knight's work says: — "All this obscence 
 pottery must be regarded, no doubt, as a proof of a great amount 
 of dissoluteness in the morals of Roman society in Britain, but it 
 is evidence of something more. It is hardly likely that such 
 objects could be in common use at the family table (this of course 
 is in allusion to the lamps); and we are led to suppose that they 
 were employed on special occasions, festivals perhaps, connected 
 with the licentious worship of which we are speaking, and such 
 as those described in the satires of Juvenal. But monuments are 
 found in this island which bear still more direct evidence to the 
 existence of the worship of Priapus during the Roman period. 
 
 " In the parish of Adel, in Yorkshire, are considerable traces 
 of a Roman station which appears to have been a place of some 
 importance, and which certainly possessed templets. On the site 
 of these were found altars and other stones with inscriptions, 
 which, after being long preserved in an outhouse of the rectory 
 at Adel, are now deposited in the museum of the Philosophical 
 Society at Leeds. One of the most curious of tliese appears to be 
 a votive offering to Priapus, who seems to be addressed under the 
 name of Mentula. It is a rough, unsquared stone, which has 
 been selected for possessing a tolerably flat and smooth surface ; 
 and the figures and letters were made with a rude implement, 
 and by an unskilful workman, who was evidently unable to cut 
 a continuous smooth line. The middle of the stone is occupied 
 by the figure of a phallus, and round it we read very distinctly 
 the words: — PRIMINVS MENTLA. The author of the in- 
 scription may have been an ignorant Latinist as well as an 
 
64 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 unskilful sculptor, and perhaps mistook the ligulatecl letters, 
 overlooking the limb which would make the L stand for VL? and 
 giving A for /E. It would then read Friminus Mentukt, Primi- 
 nus to Mentula (the object personified), and it may have been a 
 votive offering from some individual named Prirainus, who was 
 in want of a heir or laboured under some sexual infirmity, to 
 Priapus, whose assistance he sought. Another interpretation 
 has been suggested, on the supposition that Mentla, or perhaps 
 (the L being designed for |L ligulated) INIentila or Mentilla, 
 might be the name of a female joined with her husband in this 
 offering for their common good. The former of these interpreta- 
 tions seems, however, to be the most probable. This monument 
 belongs probably to rather a late date in the Roman period. 
 Another ex voto of the same class was found at Westerwood Fort, 
 in Scotland, one of the Roman fortresses on the Wall of Anto- 
 ninus. This monument consisted of a square slab of stone, in 
 the middle of which was a phallus, and under it the words EX 
 VOTO. Above were the letters XAN, meaning, perhaps, that 
 tlie offerer had laboured ten years under the grievance of which 
 he sought redress from Priapus. We may point also to a phallic 
 monument of another kind, which reminds us in some degree of 
 the finer sculptures at Nismes. At Housesteads, in Northumber- 
 land, are seen the extensive and imposing remains of one of the 
 Roman stations on the Wall of Hadrian, named Borconicus. 
 The walls of the entrance gateways are exceedingly well pre- 
 served, and on that of the guard-house attached to one of them 
 is a slab of stone presenting a rude delineation of a phallus with 
 the legs of a fowl, reminding us of some of the monuments of 
 France and Italy. These phallic images were, no doubt, exposed 
 in such situations because they were supposed to exercise a pro- 
 tective influence over the locality, or over the building, and the 
 individual who looked upon the figure believ^ed himself safe, 
 during that day at least, from evil influences of various descrip- 
 tions." 
 
 The Chronicle of Lanercost supplies us with some curious 
 information relative to Phallic practices in Britain some five or 
 six hundred years ago. A pestilence we are told prevailed in the 
 Scottish district of Lothian, which was very fatal to the cattle, 
 and to counteract which some of the clergy taught the peasantry 
 to make a fire by the rubbing together of wood (this was the 
 need-tire), and to raise up the image of Priapus as a means of 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 65 
 
 saving their cattle. When a lay member of the Cistercian order, 
 at Fenton, had done this before the door of the hall, and had 
 sprinkled the cattle with a dog's testicles dipped in holy water, 
 and complaint had been made of this crime of idolatry against 
 the lord of the manor, the latter pleaded in his defence tliat all 
 this was done without his knowledge and in his absence, but 
 added, " while until the present month of June, other people's 
 cattle fell ill and died, mine were always sound, but now every 
 day two or three of mine die, so that I have few left for the 
 labours of the field." 
 
 In 1282, a similar case occurred at Inverkeithing, in the 
 county of Fife, Scotland. In the Easter week of this year, a 
 parish priest, named John, performed the rites of Priapus, by 
 collecting the young girls of the town, and making them dance 
 round the figure of this god ; without any regard for the sex of 
 these worshippers, he carried a wooden image of the male members 
 of generation before them in the dance, and himself dancing with 
 them, he accompanied their songs with monuments in accordance, 
 and urged them to licentious actions by his licentious language. 
 The more modest part of those who were present felt scandalized 
 by the proceedings, and expostulated with the priest, but he 
 treated their words with contempt, and only gave utterance to 
 coarser obscenities. He was cited before his bishop, defended 
 himself upon the common usage of the country, and was allowed 
 to retain his benefice. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, the buildings which were specially placed 
 under the supposed protective power of the phallus sculptured on 
 the walls, were generally churches. In Ireland, singularly 
 enough, it was the female organ which was regarded as the pro- 
 tection against enchantments of various kinds, and which to an 
 ignorant and superstitious people were a source of so much terror. 
 These images were, as pictures of them show, of an extremely 
 rude, though elaborate description, and indecent in the highest 
 degree ; they were placed generally over the doorway of the 
 church, and represented women exposing themselves in the most 
 outrageous manner by uncovering those parts which, as a rule, 
 are concealed even by the most savage of people. It seems 
 tolerably clear that we have here the origin of the custom, which 
 has descended to our times, of nailing up a horse-shoe as a pro- 
 tection against the evil influence of witches. It has been ob- 
 served that this female organ was " far more liable to degradation 
 
66 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 in form than that of the male, because it was much less easy, in 
 the hands of rude draughtsmen, to delineate an intelligible form, 
 and hence it soon assumed shapes which, though intended to 
 represent it, we might rather call symbolical of it, though no 
 symbolism was intended. Thus the figure of the female organ 
 easily assumed the rude form of a horse-shoe, and, as the original 
 meaning was forgotten, would be readily taken for that object, 
 and a real horse-shoe nailed up for the same purpose." 
 
 A curious aspect of this matter is presented in the middle 
 ages by the conversion of the god Priapus into a saint of several 
 names. In the south of France, Provence, Languedoc, and some 
 other places, he was worshipped as St. Foutin, a name said to be 
 a corruption of Fotinus, the first bishop of Lyons. The object 
 of adoration was a large phallus of wood, this was greatly 
 venerated by the women, who scraped it with knives and 
 swallowed the fragments in water as a cure for barrenness on 
 their own part, and gave them to their husbands as a remedy for 
 any incapacity or weakness in fulfilling the obligations of the 
 married state. Volume five of the Journal d'Henri III., con- 
 taining " La Confession de Sancy," gives an account of the 
 worship of this saint in France at the commencement of the 
 seventeenth century. That work states that at Varailles, in 
 Provence, waxen images of the members of both sexes were 
 offered to St. Foutin, and suspended from the ceiling of his 
 chapel. At Ermbrun, in the department of the Upper Alps, the 
 phallus of St. Foutin was worshipped in a different form. The 
 women poured a libation of wine upon its head, which was col- 
 lected in a vessel, in which it was left till it became sour ; it was 
 then called the " sainte vinaigre," and was used for a purpose 
 not quite clearly comprehended. In 1585, when Erubrum was 
 taken by the Protestants, this phallus was found carefully laid 
 up among the relics of the principal church, its head red with the 
 wine that had been poured upon it. At Orange, in the church 
 of St. Eutropius, a very large phullus of wood, covered with 
 leather, was taken possession of by the Protestants in 1562, and 
 burnt. The same name (St. Foutin) is found in connection with 
 worship in a number of other places, such as Porigny, Cives, 
 Vendre in the Bourbonnais, Auxerre, Puy-en-Velay, &c. A 
 number of other phallic saints were also worshipped in the middle 
 ages, such as St. Guerlichon at. Bourg-Dieu, St. Gilles in the 
 Cotentin in Brittany, St. Rene in Anjou, St. Regnaud in Bur- 
 
NATURE WOKSHIP. 0/ 
 
 gundy, and St. Guignole, near Brest, and at the village of La 
 Chatelette in Berri. 
 
 " It appears that it was also the practice to worship these 
 saints in another manner, which was also derived from the forms 
 of the worship of Priapus among the ancients, with whom it was 
 the custom, in the nuptial ceremonies, for the bride to offer up 
 her virginity to Priapus, and this was done by placing her sexual 
 parts against the end of the phallus, and sometimes introducing 
 the latter, and even completing the sacrifice. This ceremony is 
 represented in a bas-relief in marble, an engraving of which is 
 given in the Musee Secret of the antiquities of Herculaneum 
 and Pompeii ; its object was to conciliate the favour of the god, 
 and to avert sterility. It is described by the early Christian 
 writers, such as Lactantius and Arnobius, as a very common 
 practice among the Romans, and it still prevails to a great extent 
 over most part of the East, from India to Japan, and the islands 
 of the Pacific. In a public square in Batavia, there is a cannon 
 taken from the natives, and placed there as a trophy by the 
 Dutch Government. It presents the peculiarity that the touch- 
 hole is made on a phallic hand, the thumb placed in the position 
 which is called the " fig." At night, the sterile Malay women go 
 to this cannon and sit upon the thumb, and rub their parts with 
 it to produce fruitfulness. When leaving, they make an off'ering 
 of a bouquet of flowers to the " fig." It is always the same idea 
 of reverence to the fertilizing powers of nature, of which the 
 garland or the bunch of flowers was an appropriate emblem. 
 There are traces of the existence of this practice in the middle 
 ages. In the case of some of the priapic saints mentioned above, 
 women sought a remedy for barrenness by kissing the end of the 
 phallus ; sometimes they appear to have placed a part of their 
 body naked against the image of the saint, or to have sat upon 
 it. The latter trait was perhaps too bold an adoption of the in- 
 decencies of pagan worship to last long, or to be practised openly; 
 but it appears to have been more innocently represented by lying 
 upon the body of the saint, or sitting upon a stone, understood 
 to represent him without the presence of the energetic member. 
 In a corner in the church of the village of St. Fiacre, near 
 Monceaux, in France, there is a chair called the chair of St. 
 Fiacre, which confers (so it is said) fecundity upon women who 
 sit upon it, but it is necessary that nothing should intervene 
 between their bare skin and the stone." ^ 
 
 * Worship of Priapus. 
 
68 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Antwerp has been described as the Lampsacus of Belgium, 
 and Priapus was, down to a comparatively modern period, its 
 patron saint, under the name of Ters, a word, the derivation of 
 which appears to be unknown, but which w^as identical in meaning 
 with the Greek "phallus^ and the Latin fascinum. Johannis 
 Goropii Becani Origines Antwerpiana", 1569, lib. i., pp. 26, 101, 
 informs us how much this Ters was reverenced in his time by 
 the Antwerpians, especially by the women, who invoked it on 
 every occasion when they were taken by surprise or sudden fear. 
 He states that if they let fall by accident a vessel of earthenware, 
 or stumbled, or if any unexpected accident caused them vexation, 
 even the most respectable woman called aloud for protection of 
 Priapus under this obscene name. Goropius Becanus adds that 
 there was in his time, over the door of a house adjoining the 
 prison, a statue which had been furnished with a large phallus, 
 then worn away or broken off. Among other writers who mention 
 this statue is Abraham Golnitz, who published an account of his 
 travels in France and Belgium, in 1631, and he informs us that 
 it was a carving in stone, about a foot high, with its arms raised 
 up, and its legs spread out, and that the phallus had been entirely 
 worn out by the women, who had been in the habit of scraping 
 it and making a potion of the dust, which they drank as a pre- 
 servative against barrenness. Golnitz further tells us that a 
 figure of Priapus was placed over the entrance-gate to the 
 enclosure of the temple of St. Walburgis, at Antwerp, which some 
 antiquaries imagined to have been built on the site of a teniple 
 dedicated to that deity. It appears from these writers that, at 
 certain times, the women of Antwerp decorated the phalli of these 
 figures with garlands. 
 
 We have seen, says the author of " The Worship of the 
 Generative Powers," how the women of Antwerp, who, though 
 perhaps they did not speak a Roman dialect, appear to have been 
 much influenced by Roman sentiments, made their appeal to their 
 genius Ters. When a Spaniard is irritated, or suddenly excited, 
 he exclaims, Carajo I (the virile member), or Conjones I (the 
 testicles). An Italian, under similar circumstances, uses the 
 exclamation Cazzo I (the virile luember). The Frenchman apos- 
 trophizes the act, Foutre I The female member, cono with the 
 Spaniard, conno with the Italian, and con with the Frenchmen, 
 was and is used more generally as an expression of contempt, 
 which is also the case with the testicles, couillons, in French — 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 69 
 
 those who have had experience in the old days of " diligence " 
 travelling will remember how usual it was for the driver, when 
 his horses would not go quick enough, to address the leader in 
 such terms as, " Ya, done, vieux con !" We have no such words 
 used in this manner in the Germanic languages, with the excep- 
 tion, perhaps, of the German. Potz I and Potztavsend I and the 
 English equivalent, Pox I which last is quite out of use. There 
 was an attempt among the fashionables of our Elizabethan age of 
 literature, to introduce the Italian cazzo under the form of catsOy 
 and French foutre under that of foutra^ but these were mere 
 affectations of a moment, and soon disappeared. 
 
CHAPTER YIL 
 
 Moral Aspects of Phallicism. 
 
 OF all the profane rites which belonged to the ancient poly- 
 theism, none were more furiously inveighed against by the 
 zealous propagators of the Christian faith, than the obscene 
 ceremonies performed in the worship of Priapus, which appeared 
 not only contrary to the gravity and sanctity of religion, but 
 subversive of the first principles of decency and good order in 
 society. Even the form itself, under which the god was 
 represented, appeared to them a mockery of all piety and devo- 
 tion, and more fit to be placed in a brothel than a temple. But 
 the forms and ceremonials of a religion are not always to be 
 understood in their direct and obvious sense ; but are to be con- 
 sidered as symbolical representations of some hidden meaning, 
 which may be extremely wise and just, though the symbols 
 themselves, to those who know not their true signification, may 
 appear in the highest degree absurd and extravagant. It has 
 often happened, that avarice and superstition have continued 
 these symbolical representations for ages after their original 
 meaning has been lost and forgotten ; when they must of course 
 appear nonsensical and ridiculous, if not impious and extravagant. 
 
 Such is the case with the rite now under consideration, than 
 which nothing can be more monstrous and indecent, if considered 
 in its plain and obvious meaning, or as a part of the Christian 
 worship, but which will be found to be a very natural symbol of 
 a very natural and philosophical system of religion, if considered 
 according to its original use and intention. 
 
 Whatever the Greeks and Egyptians meant by the symbol in 
 question, it was certainly nothing ludicrous or licentious ; of 
 which we need no other proof than its having been carried in 
 solemn procession at the celebration of those mysteries in which 
 the first principles of their religion, the knowledge of the God of 
 Nature, the First, the Supreme, the Intellectual, were preserved 
 free from the vulgar superstitions, and communicated, under the 
 strictest oaths of secrecy, to the initiated, who were obliged to 
 purify themselves, prior to their initiation, by abstaining from 
 venery and all impure food. We may therefore be assured that 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 71 
 
 no impure meaning could be conveyed by this symbol, but that it 
 represented some fundamental principle of their faith. What 
 this was, it is difficult to obtain any direct information, on account 
 of the secrecy under which this part of their religion was guarded. 
 Plutarch tells us that the Egyptians represented^ Osiris with the 
 organ of generation erect, to show his generative and prolific 
 power ; he also tells us that Osiris was the same deity as the 
 Bacchus of the Greek mythology, who was also the same as the 
 first-begotten Love of Orpheus and Hesiod. This deity is cele- 
 brated by the ancient poets as the creator of all things, the father 
 of gods and men, and it appears by the passage above referred 
 to that the organ of generation was the symbol of his great 
 characteristic attribute. This is perfectly consistent with the 
 general practice of the Greek artists, who uniformly represented 
 the attributes of the deity by the corresponding properties ob- 
 served in the objects of sight. They thus personified the epithets 
 and titles applied to him in the hymns and litanies, and conveyed 
 their ideas of him by forms, only intelligible to the initiated, 
 instead of sounds which were intelligible to all. The organ of 
 generation represented the generative or creative attribute, and 
 in the language of painting and sculpture, signified the same as 
 the epithet TrayyeveToj^, in the Orphic litanies. 
 
 This interpretation will perhaps surprise those who have not 
 been accustomed to divest their minds of the prejudices of edu- 
 cation and fashion ; but I doubt not but it will appear just and 
 reasonable to those who consider manners and customs as relative 
 to the natural causes which produced them rather than to the 
 artificial opinions and prejudices of any particular age or country. 
 There is naturally no impurity or licentiousness in the moderate 
 and regular gratification of any natural appetite ; the turpitude 
 consisting wholly in the excess or perversion. Neither are organs 
 of one species of enjoyment to be considered as subjects of shame 
 and concealment more than those of another, every refinement on 
 this head being derived from acquired habit, not from nature ; 
 habit indeed long established, for it seems to have been as general 
 in Homer's days as at present, but which certainly did not exist 
 when the mystic symbols of the ancient worship were first adopted. 
 As these symbols were intended to express abstract ideas by 
 objects of sight, the contrivers of them naturally selected those 
 objects whose characteristic properties seemed to have the greatest 
 analogy with the divine attributes which they wished to represent. 
 
72 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 In an age, therefore, when no prejudices of artificial decency 
 existed, what more just and natural image could they find by 
 which to express their idea of the beneficial power of the great 
 Creator than that organ which endowed them with the power of 
 procreation, and made them partakers not only of the felicity of 
 the Deity, but of his great characteristic attribute, that of multi- 
 plying his own image, communicating his blessings, and extending 
 them to generations yet unborn. 
 
 Mr. d'Hancarville attributes the origin of all these symbols to 
 the antiquity of words ; the same term being employed in the 
 primitive language to signify God and a Bull, the Universe and 
 a Goat, Life and a Serpent. But words are only types and sym- 
 bols of ideas, and therefore must be posterior to them, in the 
 same manner as ideas are to the objects. The words of a primi- 
 tive language, being imitative of the ideas from which they 
 spring, and of the objects they meant to express, as far as the 
 imperfections of the organs of speech will admit, there must 
 necessarily be the same kind of analogy between them as between 
 the ideas and objects themselves. It is impossible, therefore, that 
 in such a language any ambiguity of this sort could exist, as it 
 does in secondary language ; the words of which, being collected 
 from vaiious sources, and blended together without having any 
 natural connection, become arbitrary signs of convention, instead 
 of imitative representatives of ideas. In this case it often 
 happens, that words, similar in form, but different in meaning, 
 have been adopted from different sources, which, being blended 
 together, lose their little difference of form, and retain their entire 
 difference of meaning. Hence ambiguities arise, such as those 
 above mentioned, which could not possibly exist in an original 
 language. 
 
 Considering the general state of reserve and restraint in which 
 the Grecian women lived, it is astonishing to what an excess of 
 extravagance thoir religious enthusiasm was carried on certain 
 occasions ; particularly in celebrating the Orgies of Bacchus. 
 The gravest matrons and proudest princesses suddenly laid aside 
 their decency and dignity, and ran screaming among the woods 
 and mountains, fantastically dressed or half-naked, with their 
 hair dishevelled and interwoven with ivy or vine, and sometimes 
 with living serpents. In this manner they frequently worked 
 themselves up to such a pitch of savage ferocity, as not only to 
 feed upon raw flesh, but even to tear living animals with their 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 73 
 
 teeth, and eat them warm and palpitating. Mr. Payne Knight 
 ^ays : — " The intelligent reader perceives the superficiality of the 
 popular notion that Bacchus or Dionysus was but the god of wine 
 and drunkenness, and that the orgies or secret religious rites 
 were all occasions of revelling and debauchery. His worshippers 
 in Thrace, the Orpheans, were ascetics and devotees, like the 
 Gymnosophists of India. The Bacchus of ancient worship was 
 an Asiatic divinity, identical with Atys, Adonis, Osiris, and 
 probably with Maha Deva of India ; and in the Grecian Pantheon 
 he appears to be a foreigner like Hercules. As Zagreus, the son 
 of Zeus by the Virgin Kore-Persephoneia or Demeter, afterwards 
 born anew as the son of Semele, he seems to illustrate the 
 metempsychosis. He was probably identical with Baal-Peor, the 
 Moabite divinity, and the deity commemorated by the Israelites 
 in the ' Baalim ' or Priapic statnes, often of wood, which were set 
 up with the groves or symbols of Venus-Astarte, on every high 
 hill and under every green tree. Maachah, the queen-mother, 
 wlio presided over the orgies, was deposed from regal rank by 
 King Asa for making a mephallitzeth, or phallic mannikin for an 
 ashera, or oraphale. (I. Kings, xv. 13, and Herodotus, ii. 48). 
 Tiie orgies, works, or nocturnal rites, consisted of dances, mystical 
 processions, and searches after the mutilated body of the divine 
 youth." 
 
 One great means of corrupting the ancient theology, and 
 establishing the poetical mythology, was the practice of the artists 
 in representing the various attributes of the Creator under human 
 forms of various character and expression. These figures, being 
 distinguished by the titles of the deity which they were meant to 
 lepresent, became in time to be considered as distinct personages, 
 and worshipped as separate subordinate deities. Hence the 
 many-shaped god, the TroXvfiopcj^os and fivpiofxoeos of the ancient 
 theologists, became divided into many gods and goddesses, often 
 described by the poets as at variance with each other, and 
 wrangling about the little intrigues and passions of men. Hence 
 too, as the symbols were multiplied, particular ones lost their 
 dignity ; and that venerable one which is the subject of our con- 
 sideration, became degraded from the representative of the god of 
 nature to a subordinate rural deity, a supposed son of the Asiatic 
 conqueror Bacchus, standing among the nymphs by a fountain, 
 and expressing the fertility of a garden, instead of the general 
 creative power of the great active principle of the universe. His 
 
A 
 
 /4 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 degradation did not stop even here ; for we find hira, in times still 
 more profane and corrupt, made a subject of raillery and insult, 
 as answering no better purpose than holding up his rubicund nose 
 to frighten birds and thieves."^ His talents were also perverted 
 from their natural ends, and employed in base and abortive efforts 
 in conformity to the taste of the times ; for men naturally attri- 
 bute their own passions and inclinations to the objects of their 
 adoration. 
 
 "The Babylonians," says Herodotus (Book I. c 199), "have 
 a most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country 
 must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus, 
 and there consort with a stranger. Many of the wealthier sort, 
 who are too proud to mix with the othei-s, drive in covered 
 carriages to the precinct, followed by a goodly train of attendants, 
 and there take their station. But the larger number seat them- 
 selves within the holy enclosure with wreaths of string about their 
 heads, — and here there is always a great crowd, some coming and 
 others going ; lines of cord mark out paths in all directions among 
 the women, and the strangers pass along them to make their choice. 
 A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return 
 home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, 
 and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he 
 throws the coin he says these words — ' the goddess Mylitta prosper 
 thee.' (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians). The silver 
 coin may be of any size ; it cannot be refused, for that is for- 
 bidden by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The woman 
 goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no 
 one. When she has gone with hira, and so satisfied the goddess, 
 she returns home, and from that time forth no gift, however 
 great, will prevail with her. Such of the women, as are tall and 
 beautiful are soon released, but others who are ugly have to stay 
 a long time before they can fulfil the law. Some have waited 
 three or four years in the precinct." 
 
 There is an allusion to this in the Book of Baruch (vi. 43). 
 " The women also with cords about them, sitting in the ways, 
 burn bran for perfume : but if any of them, drawn by some that 
 passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was 
 not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken." 
 
 A similiar custom prevailed in Cyprus, Armenia, and probably 
 in many other countries ; it being, as Herodotus observes, the 
 
 * Horat. lib. i. Sat. viii. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 75 
 
 practice of all mankind, except the Greeks and Egyptians, to take 
 such liberties with their temples, which, they concluded, must be 
 pleasing to the Deity, as birds and animals, acting under the 
 guidance of instinct, or by the immediate impulse of Heaven, did 
 the same. 
 
 Thus Herodotus ii. 64:— "The Egyptians first made it a 
 point of religion to have no converse with women in the sacred 
 places, and not to enter them without washing, after such con- 
 verse. Almost all other nations, except the Greeks and Egyptians, 
 act differently, regarding man as in this matter undei- no other 
 law than the brutes. Many aninjals, they say, and various kinds 
 of birds may be seen to couple in the temples and the sacred 
 precincts, which would certainly not happen if the gods were 
 displeased at it." 
 
 Payne Knight says : — " The exceptions he might safely have 
 omitted, at least as far as relates to the Greeks : for there were 
 a thousand sacred prostitutes kept in each of the celebrated 
 temples of Yenus, at Eryx and Corinth ; who, according to all 
 accounts, were extremely expert and assiduous in attending to 
 the duties of their profession ; and it is not likely that the 
 temple, which they served, should be the only place exempted 
 from being the scene of them. Dionysius of Halicarnasus claims 
 the same exception in favour of the Romans, but, as we suspect, 
 equally without reason : for Juvenal, who lived only a century 
 later, when the same religion and nearly the same manners pre- 
 vailed, seems to consider every temple in Rome as a kind of 
 licensed brothel." 
 
 The temples of the Hindus, in the Dekkan, possessed their 
 establishments ; they had bands of consecrated dancing-girls called 
 the Women of the Idol, selected in their infancy by the priests 
 for the beauty of their persons, and trained up with every elegant 
 accomplishment that could render them attractive, and assure 
 success in the profession ; which they exercised at once for the 
 pleasure and profit of the priesthood. They were nev^er allowed 
 to desert the temple; and the offspring of their promiscuous 
 embraces were, if males, consecrated to the service of the Deity 
 in the ceremonies of his worship ; and if females, educated in the 
 profession of their mothers. 
 
 " The compulsory prostitution of Babylonia was connected 
 with the worship of Mylitta, and wherever this worship spread it 
 was accompanied by the sexual sacrifice. Strabo relates that in 
 
76 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 Armenia the sons and daughters of the leading families were 
 consecrated to the service of Anaitis for a longer or shorter period. 
 Their duty was to entertain strangers, and those females who had 
 received the greatest number, were, on their return home, the 
 most sought after in marriage. The Phoenician worship of 
 Astarte was no less distinguished by sacred prostitution, to which 
 was added a promiscuous intercourse between the sexes during 
 certain religious fetes, at which the men and women exchanged 
 their garments. The Phoenicians carried the customs to the Isle 
 of Cyprus, where the worship of their great goddess, under the 
 name of Venus became supreme. 
 
 " According to a popular legend the women of Amathonte, 
 afterwards noted for its temple, were originally known for their 
 chastity. When, therefore, Venus was cast by the waves naked 
 on their shores, they treated her with disdain, and, as a punish- 
 ment, they were commanded to prostitute themselves to all 
 comers, a command which they obeyed with so much reluctance 
 that the goddess changed them into stone. With their worship 
 of Astart^ or Venus, the Phoenicians introduced sacred prosti- 
 tution into all their colonies. St. Augustine says that, at 
 Carthage, there were three Venuses rather than one : one of the 
 virgins, another of married women, and a third of the courtesans, 
 to the last of whom it was that the Phoenicians sacrificed the 
 chastity of their daughters before they were married. It was 
 the same in Syria. At By bios, during the fetes of Adonis, after 
 the ceremony which announced the resurrection of the god, every 
 female worshipper had to sacrifice to Venus either her hair or her 
 person. Those who preferred to preserve the former adjourned 
 to the sacred enclosures, where they remained for a whole day for 
 the purpose of prostituting themselves." 
 
 A similar state of things prevailed in many other countries, 
 and, according to Herodotus, particularly amongst the Lydians. 
 He says in his first book, Lydia has one structure of enormous 
 size, only inferior to the monuments of Egypt and Babylon.* 
 This is the tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, the base of 
 which is formed of immense blocks of stone, the rest being a vast 
 mound of earth. It was raised, he says, by the joint labour of 
 the tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and courtesans of Sardis, and 
 had at the top fine stone pillars, which remained to his day, with 
 inscriptions cut on them, shewing how much of the work was 
 
 * C. S. Wake's Essays. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 77 
 
 done by each class of workpeople. It appeared on measurement 
 that the portion of the courtesans was the largest. He then 
 remarks that the daughters of the common people in Lydia, one 
 and all, pursued this traffic in order to collect money for their 
 portions, and that they continued the practice till they married. 
 
 A note in Rawlinson's translation says the statement about 
 the Lydian women is one of those for which Herodotus cannot 
 escape censure, and other writers have denied the practice of 
 sacred prostitution by the Egyptians ; " the great similarity, 
 however, between the worship of Osiris and Isis and that of 
 Venus and Adonis," remarks Wake, " renders the contrary 
 opinion highly probable." Dufour declares that the females on 
 their way to the fetes of Isis at Bubastis, executed indecent 
 dances when the vessels passed the villages on the banks of the 
 river, and that these obscenities were only such as were about to 
 happen at the temple, which was visited each year by seven hun- 
 dred thousand pilgrims, who gave themslves up to incredible 
 excesses, and Strabo affirms that a class of persons called pellices 
 (harlots) were dedicated to the service of the patron saint of 
 Thebes, and that they were permitted to cohabit with anyone 
 they chose. 
 
 Numerous references to similar practices are found in other 
 writers, bearing more or less directly upon our subject. Xeno- 
 phon consecrated fifty courtesans to the Corinthian Venus in 
 pursuance of the vow which he had made when he besou^^ht the 
 goddess to give him the victory in the Olympian games, and he 
 thus addresses them : — " Oh, young damsels, who receive all 
 strangers and give them hospitality, priestesses of the goddess 
 Pitho in the rich Corinth, it is you who, in causing the incense to 
 burn before the images of Venus, and in invoking the mother of 
 Love, often merit for us her celestial aid, and procure for us the 
 sweet moments which we taste on the luxurious couches where is 
 gathered the delicate fruit of beauty." 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, in his "Exhortation to the Heathen," 
 has some very striking allusions to the phallic mysteries as prac- 
 tised in his time, chiefly in the countries of Egypt and Greece. 
 He is writing respecting the absurdity of those mysteries, and 
 amongst his many denunciations says: — "There is then the foam- 
 born and Cyprus-born, the darling of Cinyras, — I mean Aphro- 
 dite, lover of the virilia, because sprung from them, even from 
 those of Uranus, that were cut off, — those lustful members that 
 
78 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 after being cut off, offered violence to the waves. Of members 
 so lewd a worthy fruit — Aphrodite — is born. In the rites which 
 celebrate this enjoyment of the sea, as a symbol of her birth a 
 lump of salt and the phallus are handed to those who are initiated 
 into the art of uncleanness. And those initiated bring a piece 
 of money, as a courtesan's paramours do to her. 
 
 " Then there are the mysteries of Demeter, and Zeus's wanton 
 embraces of his mother, and the wrath of Demeter ; I know not 
 what for the future I shall call her, wife or mother, on which 
 account it is that she is called Brimo, as is said ; also the en- 
 treaties of Zeus, and the drink of gall, the plucking out of the 
 hearts of sacrifices, and deeds that we dare not name. Such rites 
 the Phrygians perform in honour of Attis and Cybele and the 
 Corybantes. And the story goes, that Zeus, having torn away 
 the testicles of a ram, brought them out and cast them at the 
 breasts of Demeter, paying thus a fraudalent penalty for his 
 violent embrace, pretending to have cut out his own. The 
 symbols of initiation into these rites, when set before you in a 
 vacant hour, I know will excite your laughter, although on ac- 
 count of the exposure by no means inclined to laugh. I have 
 eaten out of the drum, I have drunk out of the cymbal, I have 
 carried the Cernos, I have slipped into the bedroom. Are not 
 these signs a disgrace ? Are not the mysteries absurdity ? 
 
 " What if I add the rest 1 Demeter becomes a mother, Kore 
 is reared up to womanhood. And, in course of time, he who 
 begot her — this same Zeus — has intercourse with his own daugh- 
 ter Pherephatta, — after Ceres, the mother — sforgetting his former 
 abominable wickedness. Zeus is both the father and the seducer 
 of Kore, and has intercourse with her in the shape of a dragon ; 
 his identity, however, was discovered. The token of the Sabazian 
 mysteries to the initiated is "the deity gliding over the breast" — 
 the deity being this serpent crawling over the breasts of the 
 initiated. Proof surely this of the unbridled lust of Zeus. 
 Pherephatta has a child, though, to be sure, in the form of a bull, 
 as an idolatrous poet says : 
 
 ' The bull 
 
 The dragon's father, and father of the bull the dragon, 
 
 On a hill the herdsman's hidden ox-goad,' — 
 
 alluding, as I believe, under the name of the herdsman's ox-goad, 
 to the reed wielded by the bacchanals. Do you wish me to go 
 into the story of Pherephatta's gathering of flowers, her basket, 
 and her seizure by Pluto (Aidoneus), and the rent in the earth, 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 79 
 
 and the swine of Eubouleus that were swallowed up with the two 
 aoddesses ; for whicli reason, in the Thesmophoria, speaking the 
 Meaaric tongue, they thrust out swine ! This mythological story 
 the women celebrate variously in different cities in the festivals 
 called Thesmophoria and Scirophoria, dramatizing in many forms 
 the rape of Pherephatta (Proserpine). 
 
 " The mysteries of Dionysus are wholly inhuman: tor while 
 still a child, and the Curetes danced around [his cradle] clashing 
 their weapons, and the Titans having come upon them by stealth 
 and having beguiled him with childish toys, these very Titans 
 tore him limb from limb when but a child, as the bard of this 
 mystery, the Thracian Orpheus, says : 
 
 " Cone, and spmning-top, and limb-moving rattles, ^^ 
 
 And fair golden apples from the clear- toned Hesperides. 
 "And the useless symbols of this mystic rite it will not be use- 
 less to exhibit for condemnation. These are dice, ball, hoop, 
 apples, top, looking-glas, tuft of wool. u . ^ ^ 
 
 " Athene (Minerva), to resume our account, having abstracted 
 the heart of Dionysus, was called Pallas, froui the vibrating of 
 the heart, and the Titans who had torn him limb from limb, 
 settin- a cauldron on a tripod, and throwing into it the members 
 of Dionysus, first boiled them, and then, fixing them on spits, 
 held them over the fire. But Zeus having appeared, since he was 
 a god, having speedily perceived the savour of the pieces of flesh 
 that were being cooked, -that savour which your gods agree to 
 have assigned to them as their perquisite— assails the Titans witU 
 bis thunderbolt, and consigns the members of Dionysus to his son 
 Apollo to be interred. And he-for he did not disobey Zeus- 
 bore the dismembered corpse to Parnassus, and there deposited it. 
 " If you wish to inspect the orgies of the Corybantes, then 
 know that, having killed their third brother, they covered the 
 head of the dead body with a purple cloth, cmwned it, and 
 carrying it on the point of a spear, buried it under the roots ot 
 Olympus. These mysteries are, in short, murders and funerals 
 \nd the priests of these rites, who are called kings of the sacred 
 rites by those whose business it is to name them, give additional 
 strangeness to the tragic occurrence, by forbidding parsley with 
 the roots from being placed on the table, for they think that 
 parsley grew from the Corybantic blood that flowed forth ; just 
 as the women, in celebrating the Thesmophoria, abstain from 
 eating the seeds of the pomegranate which have fallen on the 
 ground, from the idea that pomegranates sprang from the drops 
 
80 NATURE WORvSHIP. 
 
 of the blood of Dionysus. Those Corybantes also thev call 
 Cabiri; and the ceremony itself they announce as the Cabiric 
 mystery. 
 
 "For those two identical fratricides, having abstracted the 
 box in which the member of Bacchus was deposited, took it to 
 Etruria — dealers in honourable wares truly. They lived there as 
 exiles, employing themselves in communicating the precious 
 teaching of their superstition, and presenting the genitals and 
 the box for the Tyrrhenians to worship. And some will have it, 
 not improbably, that for this reason Dionysus was called Attis, 
 because he was castrated. ^nd what is surprising, at the 
 Tyrrhenians, who were barbarous, being thus initiated into these 
 foul indignities, when among the Athenians, and in the whole of 
 Greece — I blush to say it — the shameful legend about Demeter 
 holds its ground? For Demeter, wandering in quest of her 
 daughter Core, broke down with fatigue near Eleusis, a place in 
 Attica, and sat down on a well, overwhelmed with grief. This 
 is even now prohibited to those who are initiated, lest they should 
 appear to mimic the weeping goddess. The indigenous inhabi- 
 tants then occupied Eleusis: their names were Baubo, and 
 Dusaules, and Triptolemus ; and besides, Eumolpus and Eubou- 
 leus, Triptolemus was a herdsman, Eumolpus a shepherd, and 
 Eubouleus a swineherd ; from whom came the race of the Eumol- 
 pidae and that of the Heralds — a race of Hierophants — who 
 flourished at Athens. 
 
 '* Well, then (for I shall not refrain from the recital), Baubo 
 having received Demeter hospitably, reaches to her a refreshing 
 draught, and on her refusing it, not having any inclination to 
 drink (for she was very sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, 
 thinking herself slighted, uncovered, and exhibited herself to the 
 goddess. Demeter is delighted at the sight, and takes, though 
 with difficulty, the draught — pleased, I repeat, at the spectacle. 
 These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians ; these Orpheus 
 records. I shall produce the very words of Orpheus, that you 
 may have the great authority on the mysteries himself, as evidence 
 for this piece of turpitude : 
 
 " Having thus spoken, she drew aside her garments, 
 And showed all that shape of tlie body which it is inijii'oper to name, the 
 
 growth of pnberty ; 
 And with her own hand Banbo stripped herself under the breasts. 
 Blandly then the goddess laughed and laughed in her mind, 
 And received the glancing cup in which was the draught." 
 
 & 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 81 
 
 And the following is the token of the Eleusiuian mysteries : / 
 have fasted^ I have drunk the cup ; I have received from the box ; 
 having done, I put it into the basket, and out of the basket into the 
 chest. Fine sights truly, and becoming a goddess ; mysteries 
 worthy of the night, and flame, and the magnanimous or rather 
 silly people of the Erechthidje, and the other Greeks besides, 
 'whom a fate they hope not for awaits after death.' And in 
 truth against these Heraclitus the Egyptian prophesies, as ' the 
 nightwalkers, the magi, the bacchanals, the Lensean revellers, the 
 initiated.' These he threatens with what will follow death, and 
 predicts for them fire. For what are regarded among men as 
 mysteries, they celebrate sacrilegiously. Law, then, and opinion, 
 are nugatory. And the mysteries of the dragon are an imposture, 
 which celebrates, religiously, mysteries that are no mysteries at 
 all ; and observes with a spurious piety profane rites. What are 
 these mystic chests? — for I must expose their sacred things, and 
 divulge things not fit for speech. Are they not sesame cakes, 
 and pyramidal cakes, and globular and flat cakes, embossed all 
 over, and lumps of salt, and a serpent the symbol of Dionysus 
 Bassareus ? And besides these, are there not pomegranates, and 
 branches, and rods, and ivy leaves 1 and besides round cakes and 
 poppy seeds ? And further, there are the unmentionable symbols 
 of Themis, marjoram, a lamp, a sword, a woman's comb, which is 
 a euphemism and mystic expression for a woman's secret parts." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Sacti Puga^ the Worshij) of the Female Power. 
 
 THE two influences, Male and Female, are conspicuous in cer- 
 tain differences in the Phallic monuments, which unitedly, 
 however, signify the same thing. The disputes of the comparative 
 superiority of the Male over the Female principle, or of the 
 Female over the Male, were the origin amongst the earliest 
 nations of vast desolatory wars of which no history, scarcely 
 even legend, has descended to modern periods. Therefore no 
 accounts remain of these primeval wars, which brought about the 
 building of the famous Tower of Babel, and were ultimately the 
 cause of the confusion of languages, and the original dispersion 
 of the nations. Obelisks, towers, and steeples represent and 
 figure forth the Male principle. Pyramids, circular magnified 
 forms, and rhomboidal or undulating serpentine shapes, denote 
 the Female natural power. The one set of forms are masculine : 
 therefore, aggressive and compelling. The other set of forms are 
 feminine : therefore, submissive and ennobling. But all are alike 
 phallic, and mean the same thing, that is, the natural motived 
 power which causes and directs the world, that power which is 
 the world, in fact. 
 
 Phallic objects, innumerable, are always pecular in their form, 
 and are of all sizes. If these sometimes prodigious structures are 
 Obelisks, Columns, or Pillars, or as occasionally happens, simple, 
 rough hewn, or partly fashioned uprights, they represent and 
 figure forth the male principle. Subsequent to the very early, 
 devotional ages, these pins, or uprights, assumed the forms of 
 solid or slender towers, tors, or springing, rising, pointed fabrics. 
 Amongst the Muslemmins these were minarets, with egg-shaped 
 summits ; in the architectural practice among the Christians, the 
 tower attenuated into the spire or steeple. But the memorial 
 structures with the larger base, and with that broader incidence 
 which might be denominated, with a certain aptness, the Satur- 
 nian angle, indicates the opposite influence, that of the female, 
 in mystic type or apotheosis. These symbol-structures, involving 
 the idea of the feminine power, are the more broadly vaulting in 
 shape. Chief, and most majestic of all these monuments, are the 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 83 
 
 Pyramids. All the mystic monuments of this form and fashion 
 are in the general sense, equally Phalli — that is, devoted to, and 
 in witness of the worship of the distinctive sexual peculiarities. 
 We accept the whole as meaning the one thing, Phallicism, all 
 interpreted under the general, rising, forceful form, aspiring to- 
 wards the stars. Stately beyond idea, and gloomily majestic, as 
 is the aspect of these lunar or w^omanly monumental structures, 
 they can be soon distinguished. This group of the Feminine- 
 Phallic forms comprises the Pyramids in the first rank. The 
 Obleisk is a shrunken, vertically thin, concentrated pyramid : tlie 
 Pyramid is a widely squared 'out obelisk, both express the same 
 idea. In the conveyance of certain ideas to those who comtein- 
 plate them, the pyramid boasts of prouder significance, and 
 impresses with a hint of still more impenetrable and more removed 
 mystery. We seem to gather dim, supernatural ideas of the 
 mighty mother of nature, the dusk divinity crowned with towers, 
 the ancientest among the ancients, the Isis, or mysterious consort 
 of the dethroned, and ruined, that almost two-sexed entity with- 
 out a name. She of the Veil which is never to be lifted, perhaps 
 not even by the angels, for their knowledge is limited. In short, 
 this tremendous abstruction, Cybele, Idem Mater, Isiac controller 
 of the Zodiacs, whatever she be, has her representative figure in 
 the half-buried Sphynx even to our own day, watching the stars, 
 although nearly swallowed up in the engulfing sands. This is the 
 Gorgon survival of the period of the Ark, eldest daughter of the 
 mythologies, whose other face (for Janus-like she looks two ways), 
 turned away from the world, is beautiful as the fairest one of 
 Paradise. That other face of the Gorgon, or Sphynx, resembles, 
 in one respect, that side of the lunar disc ; the side of the moon 
 turned away from observers on the earth, that face which no 
 mortal eye ever saw, or will see, and which, for this reason, is 
 one of the greatest mysteries in all the sky. 
 
 The foregoing remarks furnish the clue to this double history 
 of the phallus, in the divided character of its worship, whether 
 the obelisk or pillar, or whether the pyramid be the idol. It is 
 too plain to be misunderstood. As the Greeks wrote Palai for 
 Pali, they rendered the word Paliputra by Palaigonos, which also 
 means the offspring of Pali, literally signifying the offspring of 
 the phallus. It was notoriously the yoni, and not the phallus, 
 which alone received the veneration of the Hindus, though now 
 divided into innumerable sects and an inextricable mass of poly- 
 
84 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 theism. Wilford observes that the Yavanas were the ancestors 
 of the Greeks, and that the Pandits insist that the words Yavana 
 and Y6ni are derived from the root, Yu, and that the Yavanas 
 were so named from their obstinate assertion of a superior 
 influence in the female over the male nature. An ancient book 
 on astronomy, in Sanscrit, bears the title of Yavana Jatici, which 
 may be interpreted, " the Ionic sect." There is an ancient pro- 
 verb amongst the Pandits, that " no base creature can be lower 
 than a Yavana," truly showing the fluctuating nature of human 
 opinions and theories, which, nevertheless, have torn the bosom 
 of society, and shaken nations to their centre. This creed caused 
 the new people in Greece to name their new country itself Ionia, 
 from that consecrated Yoni which they revered, and to distinguish 
 themselves as the Ionic, or Yonic sect, in indubitable reference to 
 their peculiar opinions. These and such-like researches furnish 
 us with the real meaning of proper names, and amongst others 
 that of the great goddess Juno, which Wilford asserts to be 
 derived from the Yoni of the Hindus ; also, if we analyse the 
 name of Diana, or Di-Yana, the great goddess of the Ephesians, 
 we shall at once perceive an identical etymology ; and when we 
 remember that Juno was fabled to have been born at Argos, and 
 that she was peculiarly worshipped there, we shall fully coincide 
 in that opinion, for it is to be observed that the name of Argha 
 is derived from the Bhaga of the Hindus^ and both signified the 
 Yoni, and likewise an ark or boat, which was used throughout 
 antiquity as a type of the Yoni itself. The Hindu goddess, Bagis, 
 was indifi'erently called Yagis, from which, no doubt, is derived 
 the Latin vagina; and when we remember that Plutarch makes 
 the otherwise inexplicable assertion that Osiris (or the incarnation 
 of the male principle) was commander of the Argo ; and when 
 we learn that the true meaning of the name Argha-natha, or, as 
 we mostly render it (speaking of the great idol), Jagernath, is no 
 other than " lord of the boat," we shall perceive at once the drift 
 of these dark sentences, when truly and intelligibly expounded. 
 
 The discussion of this word Argha naturally induces us to 
 remark concerning an intermediate or middle sect, which, says 
 Wilford, "is now prevalent in India, and which was generally 
 diff'used over ancient Europe." It was introduced by the Pelargi, 
 who, Herodotus says, were the same as the Pelasgi. Many 
 ancient writers affirm that they were one of the most ancient 
 peoples in the world. It is asserted that they first inhabited 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 85 
 
 Argolis, and about 1883, b.c„ passed into -<^monia, or Yomonia, 
 and were afterwards dispersed, or emigrated into several parts of 
 Greece. Some of the Pelasgians that had been driven from 
 Attica, settled at Lemnos, whither, some time after, they carried 
 some Athenian women, whom they had seized on the coast of 
 Africa. They raised children by these captive females, but 
 afterwards destroyed them together with their mothers, through 
 jealousy, because they differed in manners from themselves, which 
 horrid murder was attended by a dreadfnl pestilence. Such is 
 the account given by the classic writers (Pausanias, Strabo, Hero- 
 dotus, Plato, Virgil, Ovid, Flaccus, Seneca, &c.) But, when we 
 weigh the foregoing arguments, can we doubt that the women 
 were destroyed through jealousy of their religion, and not because 
 they differed merely in manners, in accordance with the peculiar 
 characteristics of fanaticism, which brooks no opposition to its 
 devouring nature? 
 
 The word Pelargos was derived, says Wilford, from Phala, 
 and Argha, (Phallus, and Argha from Bhaga, or Yoni), those 
 mysterious types which the later mythologists distinguished under 
 the names of Pallas and Argo. 
 
 The Pelargi venerated both male and female principles in 
 union,, as their compound appellation indicates, and represented 
 them conjointly, when their powers were supposed to be combined, 
 by the intersection of two equilateral triangles, thus, x, that 
 peculiar symbol 
 
 the emblem of Lux, and to which innumerable perfections and 
 virtues, including those of the Cross, have been attributed, from 
 time immemorial. The union of these two symbols, devoting the 
 male nature, and the female nature, or the phallus, the mark of 
 which is the upright line, and the Yoni, the recognitive mark of 
 which is the horizontal line, are best rendered, or depicted, in the 
 double, or conjoined equilateral triangle in intersection. The 
 pyramidal, aspiring, equilateral triangle is male, and signities fire, 
 and the rushing force of fire, mounting upwards in its own im- 
 pulse, contradicting nature, inasmuch as it shoots up against 
 gravity. The pyramid in reverse, or pointing down, is the indi- 
 cating symbol of Wata, or of tlie lunar, female influence. 
 
 Sacti Puja, the worship of the female powers, presents us 
 with a very singular phase of the extraordinary subject we are 
 examining, and ^e now proceed to lay before our readers certain 
 
 " Form'd all mysteries to bear." 
 
86 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 facts which will enable them to form some clear idea of its 
 character. In England perhaps, save in learned circles, but little 
 is known of this matter. India however has long been familiar 
 with it, and, owing to certain revelations in the law courts in 
 connection with an action for libel, has become notorious for the 
 gravest scandals in connection therewith. 
 
 The creed Sacteya (Sharkt-ya) is said to be one of the most 
 curious of the results of, or emanations from, the "austere prin- 
 ciples inculcated by the Saiva and Vaishnava Codes of the Hiudu 
 faith." 
 
 Sacti is power, and to this great goddess the Secteya creed, 
 though acknowledging Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and others, declares 
 all to be subject. The doctrines of this particular sect are to be 
 found in the sacred books called Tautras, which until a compara- 
 tii^ely late period were virtually unknown to most Europeans. 
 By the aid of extracts from these books and the testimony of 
 witnesses in the trial just alluded to, we shall be able to present 
 a tolerably comprehensive view of this outrageously immoral and 
 fanatical phase of a sexual worship which at one time was almost 
 perfectly free from reproach. 
 
 This sect is known in India as the Maharajas, Rudra Sam- 
 pradaya, or Pushti Marga. Yallabhacharya, the progenitor, was 
 born about 400 years ago. Laxman Bhat, his father, was a 
 Telinga Brahmin, from the country called Talingra, situated in 
 Southern India. In a book of the Maharajas called " Sarapra- 
 daya-pradipa " (the illuminator of customs), it is stated that 
 Luxman Bhat was promised by God, that he should have three 
 sons, whereof the second would be his own (that is God's) incar- 
 nation. Accordingly after the birth of Ramkarshna, the first 
 son, Laxman Bhat started on a pilgrimage to the Holy Places. 
 Ere he reached Kasee (Benares), a serious quarrel had arisen 
 between the Hindus and Mussulmans of that city ; and Laxman 
 Bhat, therefore, left that spot and arrived in a jungle called 
 Champa. There his wife gave birth to a child on Sunday, the 
 11th of Vaisakh Yadya, Sam vat 1535. As he and his family 
 had to fly for their lives, the infant was left among the leaves of 
 the trees, and they stopped in the town of Chanda. After a 
 few weeks, when quietness was restored in Benares, they set out 
 for that place by way of Champa Forest. When they came to 
 the latter place, they saw a boy playing in the midst of a pit 
 containing sacrificial fire, and taking that child to be their own, 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 87 
 
 they took him along with them to Benares, and gave him the 
 name of Vallabha. When he grew older and founded a new 
 creed, he came to be known by the name of Yallabhacharya. 
 A temple has been built on the spot where he was born. 
 
 From the time Yallabhacharya began to inculcate his own 
 new creed called " Pushti Marga," up to the day he died, 84 
 Vaishnavas had agreed to follow his doctrines. Yallabhacharya 
 had two sons, whereof Yithal Nathji is reckoned the principal 
 incarnation of God. He brought 252 Yaishnavas into the new 
 creed. Yithal Nathji had seven sons, who established themselves 
 at seven different localities. They gave themselves out to be in- 
 carnations of God, and that Yallabhacharya came out playing 
 from a pit of sacrificial fire, and by these means increased the 
 number of their followers, who began to come over by thousands. 
 
 As the progeny of these seven increased, so the number of 
 Maharajas also was augmented. Soon as a child was born in the 
 family of a Maharaj, he was called a Maharaj, and the Yaish- 
 navas considered him to be an incarnation of the divinity, and 
 fell at his feet. If a Maharaj died, the Yaishnavas could not say 
 that he died, because he was a divine being ; he was said, there- 
 fore, to have extended his career to the other world. 
 
 Amongst other articles of the new creed, Yallabha introduced 
 one, which is rather singular for a Hindu religious innovator or 
 reformer : he taught that privation formed no part of sanctity, 
 and that it was the duty of the teachers and his disciples to wor- 
 ship their deity, not in nudity and hunger, but in costly apparel 
 and choice food : not in solitude and mortification, but in the 
 pleasures of society and the enjoyment of the world. The 
 Gosains, or teachers, were almost always family men, as was the 
 founder, for after he had taken off* the restrictions of the monastic 
 order to which he originally belonged, he married, by the parti- 
 cular order it is said, of his new god. 
 
 The Gosains were always clothed with the best raiment and 
 fed with the daintiest viands by their followers, over whom they 
 had unlimited influence ; part of the connection between the 
 Guru and teacher being the three-fold Samarpan, or consign- 
 ment of Jan, Man, and Dhan, body, mind, and wealth, to the 
 spiritual guide. The followers of the order were specially 
 numerous amongst the mercantile community, and the Gosains 
 themselves were often largely engaged, also, in maintaining con- 
 nections among the commercial establishments of remote parts of 
 
88 
 
 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 the country, as they were constantly travelling over India, under 
 pretence of pilgrimage, to the sacred shrines of the sect, and 
 notoriously reconciled upon these occasions the profits of trade 
 with the benefits of devotion ; as religious travellers, however, 
 this union of objects rendered them more respectable than the 
 vagrants of any other sect. 
 
 The practices of the sect were of a similar character with 
 those of other regular worshippers : their temples and houses had 
 images of Gopal, of Krishna, and Radha, and other divine forms 
 connected with this incarnation, of metal chiefly, and not un- 
 frequently of gold, the image of Krishna represented a chubby 
 boy, of the dark hue of which Vishnu is always represented : it 
 was richly decorated and sedulously attended, receiving eight 
 times a day the homage of the votaries. These occasions took 
 place at fixed periods and for certain purposes, and at all other 
 seasons and for any other object, except at stated and periodical 
 festivals, the temples are closed and the deity invisible. The 
 eight ceremonials are the following : — 
 
 1. — Mangld, the morning levee : the image, being washed and 
 dressed, is taken from the couch, where it is supposed to have 
 slept during the night, and placed upon a seat, about half-an-hour 
 after sunrise ; slight refreshments are then presented to it, with 
 betel and pan ; lamps are generally kept burning during this 
 ceremony, 
 
 2. — Sringdra: the image having been anointed and perfumed 
 with oil, camphor and sandal, and splendidly attired, now holds 
 his public courts : this takes place about an hour-and-a-half after 
 the preceding, or when four Gheries of the day have elapsed. 
 
 3. — Givdla : the image is now visited, preparatory to his going 
 out to attend the cattle along with the cow-herd ; this ceremony 
 is held about forty-eight minutes after the last, or when six 
 Gheries have passed. 
 
 4. — Rdja-Bhoga : held at mid-day, when Krishna is supposed 
 to come in from the pastures and dine ; all sorts of delicacies are 
 placed before the image, and both these and other articles of food 
 dressed by the ministers of the temple are distributed to the 
 numerous votaries present, and not unfrequently sent to the 
 dwellings of worshippers of some rank and consequence. 
 
 5. — TJthdpan : the calling up; the summoning of the god 
 from his siesta ; this takes place at six Gheries, or between two 
 and three hours before sunset. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 89 
 
 6. — Bhoga : the afternoon meal, about half-an-hour after the 
 preceding. 
 
 7. — Sandhyci : about sunset, the evening toilet of the image, 
 when the ornaments of the day are taken off, and fresh unguent 
 and perfume applied. 
 
 8. — Sayan : retiring to repose ; the image, about eight or 
 nine in the evening, is placed upon a bed, refreshments and water 
 in proper vases, together with the betel box and its appurten- 
 ances, are left near it, when the votaries retire, and the temple 
 is shut till the ensuing morning. "^ 
 
 Besides their public demonstrations of resj)ect, pictures and 
 images of Gopala are kept in the houses of the members of the 
 sect, who, before they sit down to any of their meals, take care 
 to offer a portion to the idol. Those of the disciples who have 
 performed the triple Samar-pana, eat only from the hands of each 
 other, and the wife or child that has not exhibited the same mark 
 of devotion to the Guru can neither cook for such a disciple nor 
 eat in his society. 
 
 The mark on the forehead consists of two red perpendicular 
 lines, meeting in a semi-circle at the root of the nose, and having 
 a round spot of red between them. The salutations amongst 
 them are Krishna and Jaya Gopal. 
 
 Vallabha was succeeded by his son, Vitalla Nath, known 
 amongst the sect by the appellation of Sri Gosain Ji; Vallabha's 
 designation being Sj'i Acharji. Yitalla Nath, again, had seven 
 sons — Girdhari Rai, Gouind Rai, Bal Krishna, Gokul Nath, 
 Eaghu Nath, Yadunath, and Ghanssyama ; these were all 
 teachers, and their followers, although in all essential points the 
 same, form as many different communities. Those of Gokulnath, 
 indeed, are peculiarly separate from the rest, looking upon their 
 own Gosains as the only legitimate teachers of the faith, and 
 withholding all sort of reverence from the persons and Maths 
 of the successors of his brethren : an exclusive preference that 
 does not prevail amongst the other divisions of the faith, who do 
 homage to all the descendants of all Vitalla Nath's sons. 
 
 The worshippers of this sect are very numerous and opulent, 
 the merchants and bankers, especially those from Guzrat and 
 Malwa, belonging to it. Their temples and establishments are 
 numerous all over India, but particularly at Mathura and Bin- 
 draban, the latter of which alone is said to contain many hun- 
 
 * See H. H. Wilson's Works. 
 
90 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 dreds, some of great opulence. In Benares were two temples of 
 great repute and wealth, one sacred to Lai Ji, and the other to 
 Purushotama Ji. Jaganath and Dwarka are also particularly 
 venerated by this sect, but the most celebrated of all the Gosain 
 establishments, was at Sri Natli Dwdr in Ajmer. The image at 
 this shrine is said to have transported itself thither from Mathura, 
 when Aurangzeb ordered the temple it was there placed in to be 
 destroyed. It is a matter of obligation with the members of this 
 sect to visit Sri Nath Dwdr, at least once in their lives ; they 
 receive there a certificate to that effect, issued by the head Gosain, 
 and, in return, contribute according to their means to the en- 
 riching of the establishment. It is a curious feature in the 
 notions of this sect, that all the veneration paid to their Gosains 
 is paid solely to their descent, and unconnected with any idea of 
 their sanctity or learning ; they are not unfrequently destitute of 
 all pretensions to individual respectability, but they not the less 
 enjoy the homage of their followers. 
 
 The Maharajas have contrived various schemes to throw their 
 followers in the trap and temptation of licentiousness. They 
 have laid open to their followers the doings and examples of 
 Krishna, and explained that their female worshippers will obtain 
 salvation in the same way as the Gopis have obtained it by making 
 Rds-lila (wanton or amorous sport with many women) with 
 Krishna. They (the Maharajas) sit in their temples with the 
 hairs of their heads fashionably dressed and in costly apparel, 
 and rub over their bodies the essence of rose and aromatic frag- 
 rance. The female followeis, who go to touch their feet, fall in 
 temptation by their costly ornaments and odoriferous fragrance. 
 They (the Maharajas) worship Thakurji (the image) for name's 
 sake. This business is entrusted to their servants, and they 
 merely go and stand near Thakurji, when everything is prepared. 
 Instead of casting their look on Thakurji, they intently look at 
 the female worshippers. They send sweetmeats and spiced milk 
 to some of their sevkees (female devotees), and by such several 
 contrivances they throw them in the trap of licentiousness. 
 
 The Maharajas have written in their books a great deal to 
 support the cause of licentiousness. Their most orthodox fol- 
 lowers meet together in the evening, to hear stories from books 
 called the " tales of eighty-four and two hundred and fifty-two 
 Vaishnavas." The males and females assemble to listen to these 
 narratives. Some of the stories produce bad effects on the minds 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 91 
 
 of the hearers, who are thus inclined to licentiousness. At last, 
 so great is the effect that they become prepared to form a Ras 
 Mandali. 
 
 This term has two meanings : the one is a society of love, 
 affection, and fondness ; and the other is from Rdslild. In Rds- 
 lild, the Gopis used to mix, dance, and fall in love with Krishna. 
 With this object the Ras Jfandali is formed. These Mandalis 
 (societies) do not meet publicly, but are convened privately at 
 the residence of some orthodox and rich Vaishnava. In this 
 Mandali, some of the Vaishnavas and their wives meet together 
 and discuss matters of love and affection. They then bring before 
 them the sweetmeats which have been consecrated to Thdkurji. 
 They then put a morsel in each other's mouth, and feed each 
 other's wife. 
 
 The wife of one Vaishnava, puts a morsel in the mouth of 
 another Vaishnava, who in turn does the same to her with ardent 
 love. After they have done eating, they fall in so much love 
 with each other that they join in promiscuous intercourse. One 
 Damodar Swami of the Maharaja has written a verse regarding 
 the Has Mandali, which says: — "We must eat and drink with 
 mutual love and take delight in sexual intercourse. This is a 
 praise-worthy act of those, who have consigned their minds to 
 Gokulnathjee, and know that females are intended for men." 
 
 In this Ras Mandali, if a male Vaishnava wish to enjoy the 
 wife of another Vaishnava, the latter should give that liberty 
 with great delight and pleasure ; not the slightest hesitation is to 
 be made. This is a chief condition with a Vaishnava, who wishes 
 to be a member of this Mandali, and though he is without a wife, 
 he can take liberties with the wives of other Vaishnavas. Captain 
 MacMoode, resident in Kutch, has observed about the Ras Man- 
 dalis : — " The well-known Ras Mandalis are very frequent among 
 them (Bhattias), as among other followers of Vishnoo. At these, 
 persons of both sexes and all descriptions, high and low, meet to- 
 gether ; and under the name and sanction of religion practice 
 every kind of licentiousness." 
 
 In this way the Maharajahs have spread a net of licentious- 
 ness among their followers. 
 
 "The word Tantram," says Mr. Edward Sellon, "signifies 
 literally — art, system, craft, or contrivance ; prescribing the 
 abolition of all caste, the use of wine, flesh, and fish (which the 
 Brahminical code considers unlawful for Brahmins), with magical 
 
92 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 arts, diagrams, and the express adoration of the female sex. The 
 Sacti sect is, in fact, what the Greeks called Telestica or Dyna- 
 mica, and like gnosticism inculcates great contempt of the 
 acknowledged religion, the peculiarities of which are only alluded 
 to as matter for ridicule. Like gnosticism, it teaches magic, and 
 looks upon the causes and agents of evil as the gods of the world. 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that the creed of the Sacteyas is 
 a religion of a modern date ; the Brahmins look upon the books 
 describing it as undoubtedly ancient, — more ancient, indeed, than 
 the Purans. The most popular of these books are comprised in 
 the following, to which are here given equivalent titles : — 
 
 1. Sarada Tilacam. — The Masterpiece. 
 
 2. Jyan Arnavani. — A System of Wisdom. 
 
 3. Culanarvam. — The Noble Craft of Thought. 
 
 4. Gudha Culanarvam. — The Hidden Part of the Noble Art. 
 
 5. Bagala Tantram. — The Litany of the Vulva. 
 
 6. Ananda Tantram. — The System of Joy. 
 
 7. Rudra Yamalam. — Conversations of Siva and his Spouse. 
 
 8. Yogini Hriolayam. — The Heart of the Angel — this is also 
 
 called Yoni Tantram. 
 
 9. Siv' Archana Chandrica. — Rules for the worship of 
 
 Girls in the bloom of youth. — [In the Calpam, cc. iii. 
 and iv., is a description of every limb of a woman, with 
 the Madaii a^layam, and how they should be adored. 
 
 10. Lyam' Archana Tarangini. — The System of Worshipping 
 
 a Girl. 
 
 11. Anand Calpa Valli. — The Rites of Delight. 
 
 12. Tantra Saram. — Summary of the Craft. 
 
 13. Tantra Rajam. — Illustrations of the Sublime Art. 
 
 " The system advocated in these books is termed Panchama- 
 caram. In other words, the five mystical M's, in allusion to the 
 five words beginning with M, viz.: Madya, Mamsa, Matsya, 
 Mantra, Mithuna, i.e., wine, flesh, fish, magic, and lewdness ; 
 which have reference to the following as a proposed means for 
 the attainment of beatitude in the next world : — 
 
 1. A total freedom from cast and distinctions of every kind. 
 
 2. A liberty of eating flesh and fish, and drinking wine. 
 
 3. Promiscuous enjoyment. 
 
 4. The practice of magic, and the adoration of women. 
 
 5. The worship of demons and Yogini -i.e.. Powers. 
 
 The Sacteyas are divided into two sects : the Daxin^ dchdram (or 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 93 
 
 right hand), and Yamacharam (or left hand). Each sect re- 
 nounces the established religion, and declares the worship of 
 women supreme, every woman (according to them) being a Sacti, 
 or image of the great goddess. There rules for fasting, bathing, 
 and prayer, are to the full as irksome as with the Brahmins 
 themselves. The person worshipped is a woman or girl of the 
 Brahminical caste (among the Daxin dchdram), who is elegantly 
 dressed, and adorned with jewels and garlands. One, three, or 
 nine females are to be thus adored by one or more men ; but in 
 the left hand mode, there is only one girl and one worshipper. 
 
 " The Vumdcharum sect veil in deep mystery the rites which 
 they practise. They commence by fasting and bathing like the 
 Daximdchdrum ; but many of their observances are of a less 
 innocent nature. The great feast, called Siva Ratri^ is the period 
 of the year when the Hindu worship of Venus is to be performed : 
 other days are also named in their code besides the Siva Ratr% or 
 Dussera. The person who wishes to perform the sacrifice is to 
 select a beautiful young girl of any caste, a pariah, a slave, a 
 courtesan, or nautch girl, would be preferred. She is called 
 Duti, or ' angel messenger,' or conciliatrix, being the medium of 
 intercourse between the worshipper and the goddess. She is also 
 called Yogini, or nun, — literally, 'one who is joined.' The 
 Yogini Hridayam, or ' Heart of the Nun,' is a book well known 
 to these sectaries ; it is usually known by the name Yoyii Tan- 
 trum, or, 'Ritual of Yulva Worship,' Yogini being used as an 
 occult name of Yoni (pudendum muliebre). It is a peculiarity 
 that no widow, however young and lovely, is ever selected. 
 After fasting and bathing, she is elegantly dressed and seated on 
 a carpet. The tine acts — already mentioned in alluding to the 
 letter M — are then performed in order, and the votary erects a 
 magical diagram and repeats a spell. These diagrams are diverse. 
 The spell called Agni Puram has for a diagram a ' volcano,' i.e., 
 a double circle, and therein a triangle, doubtless the same with 
 the atish kadr, or ' house of fire.' Spells are always used. The 
 devotee next meditates on her as Pracriti (Nature), and on him- 
 self as a deity. He offers prayer to her, and then proceeds to 
 inspire her in each particular limb with some one goddess, of the 
 host of goddesses. He adores, in imagination, every individual 
 part of her person, and, by incantation, lodges a fairy in every 
 limb and member, and one in the Yoni, as the centre of delight. 
 The names of the female sylphs addressed to her are not very 
 
94 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 delicate, and need not be here further alluded to. Then follow 
 the second, third, and fourth M, i.e., he presents her with flesh, 
 fish, and wine. He makes her eat and drink of each, and what 
 she leaves, he eats and drinks himself. He now divests her 
 entirely of all clothing, and himself also. He recommences to 
 adore her body anew in every limb ; from this the rite is often 
 termed Chacra Puja, or worship of the members. He finally 
 adores the Agni Mandalam with reverent language, but lewd 
 gesticulations. Special rites are used, says the Ananda Tantra, 
 to divest her of all shame, and shame can only be annihilated 
 by the use of wine." 
 
 In the Sri Yidya, which enjoins secrecy, occurs the 
 following : — 
 
 " Such was the rule, sung by the inspired prophets. For those 
 who adore the young and lovely Sacti, revealed to none but the 
 few. Keep it concealed, like the rosy lips that pout between the 
 recess of thy thighs, O Goddess. Hide this creed, so pure so 
 excellent, as closely as you hide your vulva cleft. O hide this 
 code of bliss, lady, from vulgar eyes." 
 
 Again, in the Agni Mandalam [volcano]. 
 
 " Let the fuel of sacrifice be her decorations ; let the altar of 
 sacrifice be her middle ; the pit of her navel is the hearth, and 
 her mouth the ceaseless fire ; the south point her chin ; her rosy 
 hand the spoon ; let tlie Sabhya and Avasadlya be the two sides 
 of the same. The holy flame is the moist vulva. The fuel is 
 collision (because fire is produced by friction), and the Lord 
 Linga is the great high priest." 
 
 Again in the Cam a Cala, — 
 
 \. ''Let us land the god and goddess ^ac^a (Parvati) and 
 Sucla (Siva), ever glorious ! Primary, noblest of fanciful blisses, 
 without compare ! highest in glory, which is comprehended by the 
 wise alone. 
 
 2. " To the great and holy one, accomplished in voluptuous 
 movements, elevated in enjoying ! The tejas compounded of blood 
 
 and , to him I bow ! Praise him, the supreme Lord of 
 
 delight ! noblest in faith, the only bliss of my soul (Madia 
 paraarri), the most secret Vedha, veneration. 
 
 4. " The bliss of all men, exalted on his throne. To Siva, 
 my Lord, soul viewed, the form of bliss, the glorious ! may he 
 with his slant glance, remove the foulness of mistrust. By the 
 holy act of enjoyment was the blessed science called amorous, 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 95 
 
 aroma invented. How can it be denominated? The unmen- 
 tioned," &c. 
 
 [Then begins the book called the Spirit of Sexual Joy]. 
 
 Mr. Sellon then supplies us with some further extracts from 
 these books from which we call the following. Passing over 
 certain introductory matters we proceed thus : — 
 
 3. " Unspeakable, incomparable in form, inexpressible by 
 writing, by figure, or by image. 
 
 4. '^That sun, the supreme Siva (i.e., SuclaJ, whose rays are 
 reflected in the heart, that in reflecting the glorious beauty, 
 receives the great seed. 
 
 5. "That sense of individuality which is inherent in the 
 mind, clearly expressed in the term A' HARNAM [A denotes 
 Siva, i.e., semen ; and HA denotes Sacti, i.e.. Power, typified by 
 blood, the two are united by the mystic word.] 
 
 6. " Whiteness and redness (blood) when their respective 
 fluids are united, a word and its import ; so are united creation 
 and its cause, mutually collocated and indivisible. 
 
 7. " The fluid is the source of individuality, and the (portion) 
 abode of the sun is therein; and Cama (or Cupid) being the 
 attractive power, is the Cula (spirit), and is the enjoyment, 
 
 8. "This is the discrimination of Cula (male and female 
 joined in coitu), and is equivalent with Sri Chacra. He who 
 knows to distinguish them is the freed, and shall assume the form 
 of the great Trijjuri. 
 
 9. " There is distilled from the red Sacti the mystical sound 
 CLIM, which is denominated Nada Brahma, and the sound is 
 audible; from it originates the ether, wind, and flre, and the 
 terrestrial decade. 
 
 10. "Next, from the fluid thus made known, spring wind, 
 fire, water, and earth, all the universe, from an atom up to a 
 sphere. 
 
 13. " The three great powers are those of Desire, of Know- 
 ledge, of Loving, and of performing the act. 
 
 14. "And in the same order are three Lingas, of tangible 
 (Sthula) spiritual bodies, and visionary, and this is Tripura, 
 triple ; and the forth is the Art. 
 
 15 "Sound, touch, form, taste, and smell, and the essential 
 qualities of each multiplied by the three gunas (qualities) of 
 Friihoi. 
 
96 NATURK WORSHIP. 
 
 16. "Hence the Spell of fifteen syllables. 
 
 17. "And there are fifteen Tithis. 
 
 18. " On the letters, consonants, and vowels. 
 
 19. "The Art is magic ; the object is the goddess. 
 
 20. " From letter Y to letter S there are three forms. 
 
 21. Between the cliacra (members) and the goddess it is 
 impossible to draw any distinction before the spiritual body is 
 evolved. 
 
 22. " In the centre of the chacra let the mystic fluid be ; this 
 is the essential fluid. 
 
 23. "The three that are formed from the triple root," &c. 
 From the passages here cited, it will be seen how closely the 
 
 Sacteya rites resemble those practised by ancient Pagan peoples ; 
 they are expressly forbidden in the Mosaic law. " Ye shall not 
 eat anything with tlie blood, neither shall ye use enchantment, 
 nor observe times " — Lev. xix. 26. " Giving his seed unto 
 Moloch;" "Who go a-whoring after idols;" "Turning after 
 familiar spirits, to go a-whoring after them " — Lev. xx. 2, 6. 
 
 Mr. Sellon further says :— " The diagram, also, discovered by 
 Cicero, on the tomb of Archimedes, appears identical with one of 
 those spells used in the Sacti Puja, — the apex of the triangle is 
 downwards, with a point in the centre. 
 
 "In India, the adorers of the goddess regard the mystical ring, 
 or circle, as the orifice of the vagina, while the triangle represents 
 the nymphse, the dot represents the fairy lodged in this member. 
 When the imagination of the Sacti is sufficiently excited by wine, 
 divine homage, and libidinous excess, she is supposed to be in a 
 guyana nidra, or mystic sleep, wherein, like the sibyls among the 
 ancients and the modern clairvoyants, she answers questions 
 in a delirious manner, and is supposed to be, for the time, the 
 mouthpiece of the deity. 
 
 "Such is the Sacti Puja, or worship of power, power here 
 meaning the good goddess Maya (delusion) ; she is also called 
 Bagala, Vagala, and Bagala Muklii. She has neither images nor 
 pictures, and is usually typified by a vessel of water. The girl 
 who performs Sacti (for the time) is the only true representative 
 of the goddess. 
 
 " The Eleusinian mysteries bear a very striking analogy to the 
 Sacteya, and those writers err who have asserted that the mys- 
 teries of Eleusis were confined to men. A reference to d'Han- 
 carville (Naples edit., 1765, tome iv.) will give several instances 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 97 
 
 of the initiation of women. The method of purification, portrayed 
 on antique Greek vases, closely resembles the ceremony as pre- 
 scribed in the Sacti Sodhana. From this circumstance, and also 
 from the very frequent allusions to Sacteya rites in the writings 
 of the Jews and other ancient authors, it is evident that we have 
 now in India the remains of a very ancient superstitious mystic- 
 ism, if not one of the most ancient forms of idolatry, in the 
 Sacti, or Chacra Puja, or worship of Power." 
 
 These particulars, so far as Mr. Sellon's name is connected 
 with them, were communicated by a very learned orientalist, a 
 member of the Madras Civil Service, and a judge, whose name it 
 is impossible to give owing to a condition he himself imposed. 
 
 The worshippers of the Sakti, the power or energy of the 
 divine nature in action, are exceedingly numerous among all 
 classes of Hindus. This active energy is, agreeably to the spirit 
 of the mythological system, personified, and the forui with which 
 it is invested, considered as the special object of veneration, 
 depends upon the bias entertained by the individuals towards the 
 adoration of Vislinu or Siva. In the former case the personified 
 Sakti is termed Lakshmi, or Maha Lakshmi, and in the latter 
 Parvati Bhavam, or Durga. Even Sarasvati enjoys some portion 
 of homage, much more than her lord Brahma, whilst a vast 
 variety of inferior beings of malevolent character and formidable 
 aspect receive the worship of the multitude. The bride of Siva, 
 however, in one or other of her many and varied forms, is by far 
 the most popular emblem in Bengal and along the Ganges. 
 
 The worship of the female principle, as distinct from the 
 divinity, appears to have originated in the literal interpretation 
 of the metaphorical language of the Yedas, in which the will or 
 purpose to create the universe is represented as originating from 
 the creator, and co-existent with him as his bride, and part of 
 himself. Thus, in the Rig Yeda it is said, " That divine spirit 
 breathed without afilation, single with (Svadha) her who is sus- 
 tained within him ; other than him nothing existed. First, desire 
 was formed in his mind, and that became the original productive 
 seed ;" and the Sama Veda, speaking of the divine cause of 
 creation, says, " He felt not delight, being alone. He wished 
 another, and instantly became such. He caused his own self to 
 fall in twain, and thus became husband and wife. He approached 
 her, and thus were human beings produced." In these passages 
 it is not unlikely that reference is made to the primitive tradition 
 
98 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 of the origin of mankind, but there is also a figurative represen- 
 tation of the first indication of wish or will in the Supreme 
 Being. Being devoid of all qualities whatever, he was alone 
 until he permitted the wish to be multiplied, to be generated 
 within himself. This wish being put into action, it is said, 
 became united with its parent, and then created beings were pro- 
 duced. Thus this first manifestation of divine power is termed 
 Ichchharujm, personitied desire, and the creator is designated as 
 Svechchhamaya, united with his own will; whilst in the Veddnta 
 philosophy, and the popular sects, such as that of Kabir and 
 others, in which all created things are held to be illusory, the 
 Sakti, or active will of the deity, is always designated and spoken 
 of as Maya, or Mahamaya, original deceit or illusion. 
 
 Anotlier set of notions of some antiquity which contributed 
 to form the character of the Sakti, whether general or particular, 
 were derived from the Scmkhya philosophy. In this system, 
 nature, Prakriti, or Mula Prakriti, is defined to be of eternal 
 existence and independent origin, distinct from the supreme 
 spirit, productive, though no production, and the plastic origin of 
 all things, including even the gods. Hence Prakriti has come 
 to be regarded as the mother of gods and men, whilst as one with 
 matter, the source of error, it is again identified with Mdya, or 
 delusion, and as co-existent with the supreme as his Sakti, his 
 personified energy or his bride. 
 
 These mythological fancies have been principally disseminated 
 by the Puranas, in all which Prakriti^ or Maya, bears a promi- 
 nent part. The aggregate of the whole is given in the Brahma 
 Vawartta Purana, one section of which, the Prakriti Khaiida, is 
 devoted to the subject, and in which the legends relating to the 
 principal modifications of the female principle are narrated. 
 
 According to this authority, Brahma, or the supreme being, 
 having determined to create the universe by his super-human 
 power, became two-fold, the right half becoming a male, and the 
 left half a female, which was Prakriti. She was of one nature 
 with Brahma. She was illusion, eternal and without end : as is 
 the soul, so is its active energy ; as the faculty of burning is in 
 fire. In another passage it is said, that Krishna, who is in this 
 work identified with the Supreme, being alone invested with the 
 divine nature, beheld all one universal blank, and contemplating 
 creation with his mental vision, he began to create all things by 
 his own will, being united by his will, which became manifest, as 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 99 
 
 Mula Prakriti. The original Prakiiti fii'st assumed five forms. 
 Durga the bricle, Sakti, and Maya, of Siva, Lakshmi the bride, 
 Sacti and Maya of Vishnu, Sarawasti the same of Brahma, or in 
 the Brahma Vaivartta Fui'dna, of Hari, while the next Savitri is 
 the bride of Brahma. The lifth division of the original Prakriti, 
 was Radha, the favourite of the youthful Krishna, and un- 
 questionably a modern intruder into the Hindu Pantheon. 
 
 Besides these more important manifestations of the female 
 principle, the whole body of goddesses and nymphs of every order 
 are said to have sprung from the same source, and indeed every 
 creature, whether human or brutal, of the female sex, is referred 
 to the same principle, whilst the origin of males is ascribed to the 
 primitive Purusha, or male. In every creation of the universe 
 it it is said the Mula Prakriti assumes the different gradations of 
 Ansarilpini, Kalarupini, Kalansarupini, or manifests herself in 
 portions, parts, and portions of parts, and further subdivisions. 
 The chief Ansas are, besides the five already enumerated, Ganga, 
 Tulasi, Manasa, Shashthi- or Davasena, Mangalachandika, and 
 Kali ; the principal Kalas are Swaha, Swadha, Dakshimi, Swasti, 
 Pushti, Tushti, and others, most of which are allegorical personi- 
 fications, as Dhriti, Fortitude, Pratishtha, Fame, and Adharma, 
 Wickedness, the bride of Myrityn, or Death. Aditi, the mother 
 of the Gods, and Diti the mother of the Demons, are also Kalas 
 of Prakriti. The list includes all the secondary goddesses. The 
 Kalansas and Ansdnsas, or subdivisions of the more important 
 manifestations, are all womankind, who are distinguished as good, 
 middling, or bad, according as they derive their being from, the 
 parts of their great original in which the Satya Rajas, and Tama 
 Guna or property of goodness, passion, and vice predominates. 
 At the same time as manifestations of the great cause of all they 
 are entitled to respect, and even to veneration : whoever, says 
 the Brahma Vaivartta Pur ana, oflfends or insults a female, incurs 
 the wrath of Prakriti, while he who propitiates a female, parti- 
 cularly the youthful daughter of a Brahman, with clothes, orna- 
 ments, and perfumes, offers worship to Prakitri herself. It is in 
 the spirit of this last doctrine that one of the principal rites of 
 the Saktas is the actual worship of the daughter or wife of a 
 Brahnyian, and leads with one branch of the sect at least to the 
 introduction of gross impurities. But besides this derivation of 
 Prakriti, or Sakti, from the Supreme, and the secondary origin of 
 all female nature from her, those who adopt her as their especial 
 
100 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 divinity employ the language invaiiably addressed towards the 
 preferential object of worship in every sect, and contemplate her 
 as comprising all existence in her essence. Thus she is not only 
 declared to be one with the male deity, of whose energy some one 
 of her manifestations is the type, as I)eni with Siva, and Lakshmi 
 with Vishnu ; but it is said, that she is equally in all things, and 
 that all things are in her, and that besides her there is nothing. * 
 
 The profligacy, debauchery, and licentiousness which charac- 
 terize the seet of Vallabhacharya have been noticed by several 
 distinguished persons, two or three of whom flourished some 
 hundred years ago. Damodar Svami, a dramatic writer, com- 
 posed a Sanskrit drama entitled Pakhanda Dharma Khandan, in 
 the year Samvat 1695 (about a.d. 3 639), in which a distinct 
 reference to Vallabhacharya and liis sect is made as follows : — 
 
 *' The Siitradhara (says to the Nati): — O dear, tlie Vedas have 
 fled somewhere ; no one knows the story of their flight {i.e., 
 whither they have gone). The collection of the Sankhya, Yoga, 
 and the Puranas, has sunk into the bowels of the earth. Now, 
 young damsels, look to the self-dedication preached by Shrimat 
 Vallabha Vittaleshvara, who has conspired to falsify the meaning 
 of the Vedas. 
 
 Enters a Vaishnava, having on his neck, ear, hand, head, and 
 around his loins, a wreath made of the Vrinda, having on his 
 forehead Gopichandana (a substitute for sandal-wood). He is the 
 one who repeats Radha I Krishna ! Being opposed to the Shruti, 
 he is the reproacher of those who adhere to the Vedas. He finds 
 at every step crowds of females filled by Kama (lust or cupid). 
 He is the Kisser of female Vaishnavas. Ye Vaishnavas, ye 
 Vaishnavas, hear the excellent and blessed Vaishnava doctrine : 
 the embracing and clasping with the arms the large-eyed damsels, 
 good drinking and eating, making no distinction between your 
 own and anothers, offering one's self and life to gurus, is in the 
 world the cause of salvation. 
 
 Mutual dining, intercourse with females night and day, 
 drinking, forming endless alliances, are the surpassing, beautiful 
 customs of the persons who have consecrated their souls to Sri 
 Gokulesha. Charity, devotion, meditation, abstraction, the 
 Vedas, and a crore of sacrifices are nothing : the nectarine 
 pleasure of the worshippers of the Pddukd (wooden slipper), in 
 
 * See H. H. Wilson's Works, vol. i. 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 101 
 
 Sri Gokula, is better than a thousand other expedients. Our 
 own body is the source of enjoyment, the object of worship 
 reckoned by all men fit to be served. If intercourse do not take 
 place with the Gokulesha, the paramour of men is useless, like 
 a worm or ashes. 
 
 The chief religion of the worshippers of the Paduka is the 
 consecration of a daughter, a son's wife, and a wife, and not the 
 worship of Brahmanas learned in the Vedas, hospitality, the 
 Shraddha, vows and fastings." 
 
 The following is a specimen of several stories written in a 
 religious book of the Maharajahs, known as " Chorasi Vaishnava 
 Ki Barta (the Stories of Eighty-four Yaishnavas), It is intended 
 to show that a devotee is bound at any rate, and if female, even 
 at the sacrifice of her chastity, to become serviceable not only to 
 Acharyaji (Maharaja), but also to the time Vaishnavas or 
 believers in Maharajas : — 
 
 "Krashnadas (a follower of Yallabha) lived in a town. He 
 was a pious and reserved man. The followers of Shri Achariaji 
 Maha Prabhii (Yallabha) lived in various villagers. They used to 
 go in company to pay darshna (divine homage), to Maha Prabhii 
 to a village called Adel. At one time, about ten or twenty 
 Yaishnavas meeting together, set out to pay homage to Maha 
 Prabhii. They arrived at the village in which Krashnadas lived. 
 When they entered the house of Krashnadas, he was not there. 
 He had gone on business to a village situated at the distance of 
 two or three Kos. The wife of Krashnadas was in the house. 
 She bowed to her visitors, and after making the usual salutation 
 of Shri Krishna, they were requested with great reverence to 
 take their seat. Afterwards, going in her chamber, she began to 
 think for herself as to what she was to do. At that time she 
 recollected that a certain Yania shop-keeper was enamoured of 
 her and he used to say if I cohabited with him he should give 
 me whatever I asked for. ' To-day I will go to his shop and get 
 some articles of food and say to him to give me the things I want 
 to-day for food.' So thinking, the female walked on and arrived 
 at the shop. The Yania (shop-keeper) made some becks or signs 
 of love, upon which the female said to the Yania, ' I shall once 
 meet you (in the embrace of love), give me to-day what I want 
 for food.' The Yania replied ' I would believe if you give me a 
 promise.' Then the female gave a promise, and took whatever 
 articles of food she wanted. Afterwards arriving at home, having 
 
102 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 cooked the food and dedicated it to Thukurji (the image), she fed 
 the Vaishnavas. Then the Yaishnavas ate the feast with great 
 joy. Afterwards Krashnadas came home in the evening. He 
 paid his respects to all the Vaishnavas in person. He 
 went in his chamber after making the usual salutation of Shri 
 Krishna. He asked his wife as to whether she had feasted the 
 guests. The female replied she had done so ; and related to him 
 all the matters that had passed. Then Krashnadas greatly be- 
 came pleased with his \vife. And then the wife and the husband 
 feasted together. Afterwards Krashnadas came and sat in the 
 assembly of the Yaishnavas. The whole night they talked about 
 God. The day then broke; the Vaishnavas went away after 
 taking leave of Krashnadas. Krashnadas saw them in person to 
 a certain distance. Returning home, and after making his 
 ablutions and worshipping Thakurji (the image), he went out (on 
 business). The female after cooking the food, dedicated it to 
 Thakurji, and kept the same under a cover. Krashnadas came 
 home in the evening, when he and his wife feasted together. 
 Then Krashnadas spoke thus to his wife : — ' The Vaishnava to 
 whom you have given a promise must be waiting for you. You 
 must fulfil your promise and that is proper.' The female having 
 bathed and applied anjmi (black powdery substance) to the lower 
 part of her eyes (which is the usual fashion in India of making 
 them more attractive), and after having dressed herself most 
 gaudily, with all proper adornments, she set out. It was the 
 rainy season and it had ceased raining then. In consequence of 
 this the roads were dirty and muddy. Therefore Krashnadas 
 said to his wife, ' I shall carry you on my shoulder ; otherwise 
 you shall dirty your feet and therefore the Yania would not like 
 you.' So placing his wife on his shoulders, he took her to the 
 shop of the Yania, and there alighted her. Afterwards the 
 female called aloud the Yania, and asked him to open the doors. 
 Opening the doors, the Yania took her in. He brought water 
 and desired to wash her feet. The female then told 'my feet 
 are not dirty.' On this the Yania inquired 'how it was that 
 while the road was dirty, your feet are clean.' The female then 
 said to the Yania, ' what business have you with that question 
 or matter ; do your business (meaning that for which the meeting 
 was appointed.') The Yania then said the whole truth must be 
 related to him. The female then related that her husband 
 brought her there on his shoulders. The Yania was wonder- 
 
NATURE WORSHIP. 103 
 
 struck when he heard the whole story. He took the female 
 to her husband and implored forgiveness of him. He then 
 became a follower of Maha Prabhu." 
 
 A few extracts from the opinions of the press, published some 
 years ago, will throw light upon the character of this notorious 
 sect : — 
 
 " The Gosainji Maharajas of the Yaishnavas of this place, 
 instead of giving religious instructions, carry on debaucherous 
 practices on their followers. This appears nothing, looking on 
 them with the eyes of a savage man ; but, thinking justly, it 
 appears a wicked practice. These Maharajas appear totally 
 divine to the Hindus, but their acts seem extremely base, and 
 their heart full of sin, and their conduct out of the way of social 
 arrangements, and their practices opposed to religion. Their 
 followers expose the vices of their religious guides with respect to 
 
 all this Oh, Shiva ! Shiva ! that aged matrons like their 
 
 (Maharajas) mothers, young women like their sisters, and maidens 
 like their daughters, who come to touch the feet of these true 
 religious guides in their temples, who come to pay aarshana 
 (divine homage) to these godly Maharajas, who repair to pay 
 darshana believing them to be God, that they should be made 
 victims of carnal intercourse by the Maharajas, instead of giving 
 them religious instruction. Fie ! Fie ! upon this incarnation, oh ! 
 damned (burnt) your Vaishnava religion." 
 
 Bombay Chabuh : June, 1859. 
 
 " Not only are their bodies and wealth dedicated to the ser- 
 vice of these Maharajas, but their daughters, sisters, and wives, 
 with their persons, are dedicated to these debaucherous religious 
 preceptors. The authority of the Maharajas is exercised over 
 their followers without any restraint." 
 
 The Prabhodaya : August, 1859. 
 
 " I have seen the deceit of the Maharajas ; now, lady ! none 
 of you should go into the Maharajas' temple. Inviting a girl of 
 tender age, they give the sacred sweetmeats, and representing 
 the story of the Kahn Gopies, make a wanton assault. If they 
 see wealth, they invite with affection, otherwise they heed not ; 
 robbing the wealth and bloom of youthful beauty ! See the 
 honesty of these religious instructors." 
 
 " The conduct of the Maharajas of the present day is so 
 notorious that it is not necessary to say much about it. Besides, 
 their acts are so disgraceful that our pen does not move to des- 
 
104 NATURE WORSHIP. 
 
 cribe them in this work. Being possessed of affluence, they are, 
 from their childhood, brought up in indulgence, and are allowed 
 to do as they fancy, and receive no education whatever ; most of 
 the present Gosainjis (Maharajas), therefore, are ignorant fools ; 
 they do not possess as much knowledge as is required for the office 
 of a guru. What admonition can one impart to others who does 
 
 not himself possess any knowledge The Gosainjis pass 
 
 their time in eating daintiest viands, in wearing fancy clothes and 
 jewels, in driving carriages, in committing adultery with strange 
 women, and in repose." 
 
 Ancient Religion of the Hindus, 1861. 
 
 Captain MacMurdo, the Resident in Kutch says : — " The 
 principal Maharaja at present, on this side of India, is named 
 Gopinathji, a man worn to a skeleton, and shaking like a leaf 
 from debauchery of every kind except spirituous liquors. He is 
 constantly in a state of intoxication, from opium and various other 
 stimulants which the ingenuity of the sensual has discovered." 
 Transactions of Literary Soc. , Bombay, Vol. II. 
 
 " The Maharajas, for these evil purposes, through certain 
 females and males, order sooner or later the female whom they 
 have singled out from those who ha'/e come to pay darshana 
 (divine homage). Sumptuously-dressed females, who are wantons, 
 are invited by the Maharajas merely with a beck of their eyes. 
 An invitation from the Maharaja is an invitation from Krishna, 
 and thinking she has met God, she hastens with delight and pre- 
 cipitation to touch the person of the Maharaja In these 
 
 purposes, they (the Maharajas) do not use females of their own 
 age, but upon tender youthful girls they exert their beastly 
 strength." 
 
 " At this time a few Maharajas may be going in the right 
 path. The majority of them follow the wrong path. The youth- 
 ful fops are given to ostentation. The present children of Valla- 
 
 bha disgrace the name of their ancestors The lalji (showy) 
 
 Maharajas, when the darshana time has commenced and people 
 crowded, sit in their bed-chamber inside the temple, and by the 
 gesture of the eyes, or through some persons kept for the purpose, 
 invite the female designed (for evil purposes), and commit evil 
 act with her. In Surat once, a Maharaja, exerting his wild 
 strength upon a girl who had not attained the age of puberty, 
 had almost caused her death. Similar horrible events have hap- 
 
I NATURE WORSHIP. 105 
 
 pened at (Kutch) Mandvee, with which the Raja and his subjects 
 of that country are not unacquainted." 
 
 The Guru and Woman, 1858. 
 
 " The temple of the Hindu Marajas is proved a brothel ; their 
 private dwelling, the home of a corrupt and disrespectable family; 
 their eyes, wanton licentiousness ; their senses, the seat of wicked 
 appetites (desires) ; every pore of their body, unrighteousness, 
 uncleanliness, dirtiness ; and, in short, they have been found in- 
 carnations of devils, and possessed of the qualities of Satan 
 instead of the incarnation of God." 
 
 The A2)ektyar : June, 1869. 
 
 " These Maharajas, claiming to be your spiritual guides, enjoy 
 your young daughters and sisters, destroy your domestic comfort, 
 and stain your character. Therefore, you Vaishnavas should 
 keep anxiety about it, and, as the reformed party of your caste 
 have used their prudence to shun these refuges, it behoves you to 
 be on your guard. It is a credit to you to keep off your females 
 from these debaucherous (Maharajas), and to observe the dictates 
 of religion with prudence." 
 
 The Parsi Reformer : May, 1861. 
 
 " Most of the simple and ignorant female devotees are en- 
 trapped into this religious snare, and, giving money to Maharajas, 
 practise adultery with them. But those immoral creatures, the 
 Maharajas, are not content with this, and they many a time use 
 violence on the tender body of the maidens (of their devotees), 
 the instances of which are not uncommon. Such are these Ma- 
 harajas — the pretended preceptors of religion, and their acts." 
 
 The Khoja Dost : August, 1861. 
 
 The End. 
 
BL435 .J54 
 
 Nature worship; an account of phallic 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1012 00162 4289