The Masculine Cross and Ancient Sex Worship: III. Unity

UNITY.

Fig. 12. Ardanari Iswari

MANY are the efforts made to set forth to the eye the conception of Deity in one person. The idea has evidently been one of growth from the crude to the more acceptable; and the result attained denotes composite labor.

Fig. 12 is a figure of this kind. It is a copy of an original drawing made by a learned Hindu pundit, for Win. Simpson, Esq., of London. It represents Brahma Supreme, who, in the act of creation, made himself double, i.e., male and female, as indicated by the crux ansata in the central part of the figure, which occupies the place of the conjoined triad and yoni of the original; the original being far too grossly shown for the public eye. The reader will notice the triad formed by the thumb and two fingers and serpent in the male hand, while in the female hand is to be seen a germinating seed, indicative of reproduction of

FOURFOLD GOD.

AMONG church paraphernalia and ecclesiastical ornament we find many mystic figures. A very ancient and prominent one is been in his form, Fig. 13,

Fig. 13.

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

Fig. 14.

Fig. 14 is a device denoting the triad or cross connected with the angular yoni. It is a favorite figure placed upon steeples and prominent parts of church edifices; the lower part is often formed in a circle or ring. Fig. 15

Fig. 15.

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

Fig. 16.

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

Fig. 17.

Worn as a part of the dress it is called the priest's pallium. It combines the cross and yoni--the triad and unit--with the prelate's head passed through the latter. The robe or surplice is a telltale portion of phallic and yonijic worship. It is common at the present time in all but the most democratic churches in this country. The surplice is a figment of woman's dress; it can be traced back to the Egyptians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, and others, who worshiped Isis, Astarte,

Fig. 18.

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

Fig. 19.

The Serpent, Fig. 19, with his tail in his mouth, is as significant as if is forbidding. It indicates the conjunction of male and female, also the ring or unit; it was at the same time a sign of eternity. Fig. 20

Fig. 20.

is a picture of two Egyptian deities al worship before the sacred triad, each holding, in faithful homage, the crux ansata.

These visible emblems may have been needful for an uncultured people, but Paul discarded them in visible form, though he seems to have clung to them in idea, or by the "eye of faith." His definition of faith--i.e., "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"--points to the Linga-Yoni mysteries, and those mysteries explain his otherwise hidden meaning of faith.

It is curious to be able to notice, in the present year of the world, how the fourfold conception of the unseen powers of the universe exists among ourselves. Throughout our churches a Trinity is worshiped, and a fourth

Arba-el, "God is fourfold," or

Fig. 21.

simply the Armaic Arba "four." And--strange to say, if it were not so common--the worshipful four is allied with erva, the pudenda of both sexes. Fig. 21 is a quadruple God planted in the centre of an elaborately carved yoni with a urethra or conduit, the elephant, the emblem of strength and Almighty power, Standing near, and a devotee below. It is to be borne in mind, there were in India different sects, as in our time. One, the Lingacitas, who worshiped the Trinity, or male Deity, whose emblem is Fig. 22, and the sect of Yonijas, or worshipers of woman, as figured above.

There is, indeed, no single Papal church, whether chapel or cathedral, to which the name Beth-Arbel, "Fourfold God," would not apply; for all are types in which adoration is paid to the undivided trinity in unity, and the Celestial Virgin, the mother of God and man. The name has also been traced to the Hebrew ar and bel: i.e., "a hero is Bel," or, "Bel is powerful."

MERU.

THE learned Higgins, an English judge, who for some years spent ten hours a day in antiquarian studies, Says that Moriah, of Isaiah and Abraham, is the Meru

mons veneris, through motives of neatness or religious sentiment, deprived of all hirsute appendage.

Fig. 22.

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

RELIGIOUS PROSTITUTION.

PASSING from figures, paintings, statuary, ornaments and symbols, it is requisite to notice the religious observances, the actual practice of the faith held by the world's primal worshipers.

It would appear, or rather it does appear, that phallic worship, or religion, was, first, an instinct or passion; second, it was a privilege and luxury; third, it was a pastime or calling; fourth, it became dominating and imperative; fifth, by euphemistic transformation, it was

In Num. xxxi, 18 and 35, we are assured, without a lisp or a twinge of horror, that thirty-two thousand Midianitish virgins were consecrated to this end. We need not go into details about the manner in which the sacrifice was made; but we must call attention to the fact that a Christian church still promulgates the same idea, in an alleged spiritual form, and that the nunneries of Christendom are vailed, perhaps decent, counterparts of those Oriental establishments where women consecrated their bodies and. themselves to fulfil the special duties of their sex, so they were taught in the name and for the glorification of their Deity.

There was a temple in Babylonia where every female had to perform once in her life a (to us) strange act of religion: namely, prostitution with a stranger. The name of it was Bit-Shagatha, or, "The Temple," the "Place of Union."

Words and history corroborate each other, or are apt to do so if cotemporaneous. Thus kadesh, or kaesh, designate

That the religion was dominating and imperative is determined by Deut. xvii, 12, where presumptuous refusal to listen to the priest was death to the offender. To us it is inconceivable that the indulgence of passion could be associated with religion, but so it was. Much as it is covered over by altered words and substituted expressions in the Bible--an example of which see men for male organ, Ezek. xvi, 17--it yet stands out offensively bold. The words expressive of "sanctuary," "consecrated," and "Sodomite," are in the Hebrew essentially the same. They indicate the passion of amatory devotion. It is among the Hindus of to-day as it was in Greece and Italy of classic times; and we find that "holy women" is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire, the price of which hire goes to the service of the temple.

As a general rule, we may assume that priests who make or expound the laws, which they declare to be from God, are men, and, consequently, through all time, have .thought, and do think, of the gratification of the masculine half of humanity. The ancient and modern Orientals are not exceptions. They lay it down as a momentous fact that virginity is the most precious of all the possessions of a woman, and, being so, it ought, in some way or other, to be devoted to God.

Throughout India, and also through the densely inhabited parts of Asia, and modern Turkey, there is a class of females who dedicate themselves to the service of the Deity whom they adore; and the rewards accruing from their prostitution are devoted to the service of the temple

semen emittere," was the name of a woman who lived and practiced the same rite outside of the temple, from motives other than those esteemed pious. Feasts and holy days were devoted to this passion, and generally concluded with excess.

SHAGA.

IN the Assyrian language, Shaga signifies "a feast." The nature of this feast is explained by Diodorus Siculus. He says: "Our Gala or Solar days begin with fasting as a prelude to another form of sensual enjoyment." A detailed description of one of them conveys only a proximate idea of them. The most disgraceful of the Babylonian customs is the following: "Every native woman is obliged once in her life to sit in the temple of Venus and have intercourse with a stranger. And many, disdaining to mix with the rest, being proud on account of their wealth, dome in covered carriages, and take up their station at the temple with a numerous train of servants attending them. But the far greater do thus: Many sit down in the temple of

COMMUNION

HAS long been a custom in Christendom. Without explaining the origin of this custom, it will here suffice to give an example of it in early times, as an index of its character. Says S. B. Gould ("Origin

The methods adopted by different religions for accomplishing the desired union are numerous. The grossest and most repulsive is by sexual intercourse. The numerous legends and myths representing the union of Gods and women (as in Gen. vi, 2), or men and Goddesses, are reminiscences of ancient mysteries, the object of which was to effect such a union. At the summit of the temple of Belus was a chamber in which was a bed beside a figure of gold; the same was to be seen in Egyptian Thebes, says Herodotus, and every night a woman was laid in this bed, to which the God was supposed to descend. The same took place at Patara in Lycia, where a priestess was locked into the temple every night. Diodorus alludes to the tombs of the concubines of Jupiter Ammon, and Strabo says the fairest and noblest ladies were vowed to share his couch. It is easy to see how the obscene orgies celebrated during some of the festivals of the Gods rose out of this superstition. "The prince, head of Agapemone, as the impersonation of Deity, performed the sexual act with a young girl in the presence of the whole community, professedly in order to make her thereby a partaker of the divine nature."

In Casgrain's "Vie de Marie de l'Incarnation" is a frank confession of the bearing of erotic sanctimony, nearer home than the above. This Marie, a woman of intense piety and heroism, says of herself in her journal: "Going to prayer, I trembled in myself and exclaimed, 'Let us go into a solitary place, my dear love, that I may

The state of society and that of the public mind evinced by such social habits may not be considered depraved: they were undeveloped. Society had not risen above the crude; the moral mind had not reached the status of chaste refinement. With so prodigal a use of virtue, immodesty was without a contrast and without a name. Therefore these customs were inspired by the same artful and self-involving spirit which inspired the Assyrian and Hindu priests to invent a special hell for childless women. A relic of the same spirit continues in modern times among Christians, where masses have been said, saints invoked, offerings presented, for the cure of physical impotence.

The above is further testimony in proof of our first proposition: that the primitive religion in this early day of adolescent manhood was purely passion consecrated and sanctified--a religion of feeling. It was a physical

BUNS AND RELIGIOUS CAKES.

SAYS Hyslop: "The hot cross-buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The buns known, too, by that identical name were used in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the Goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarte), as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, 1,500 years before the Christian era." "One species of bread," says Bryant, "'which used to be offered to the gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun.' Diogenes mentioned 'they were made of flour and honey.'" It appears that Jeremiah the Prophet was familiar with this lecherous worship. He says: "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven (Jer. vii, 18). Hyslop does not add that the "buns" offered to the Queen of Heaven, and in sacrifices to other deities, were framed in the shape of the sexual organs, but that they were so in ancient times we have abundance of evidence.

Martial distinctly speaks of such things in two epigrams, first wherein the male organ is spoken of, second wherein the female part is commemorated,. the cakes being

mulloi, shaped like the female organ, and in some temples where the priestesses were probably ventriloquists they so far imposed on the credulous multitude who came to adore the Vulva as to make them believe that it spoke and gave oracles."

We can understand how such things were allowed in licentious Rome, but we can scarcely comprehend bow they were tolerated in Christian Europe, as, to all innocent surprise, we find they were, from the second part of the "Remains of the Worship of Priapus": that in Saintonge, in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, small cakes baked in the form of the phallus are made as offerings at Easter, carried and presented from house to house. Dulare states that in his time the festival of Palm Sunday, in the town of Saintes, was called le fete des pinnes--feast of the privy members--and that during its continuance the women and children carried in the procession a phallus made of bread, which they called a pinne, at the end of their palm branches; these pinnes were subsequently blessed by the priests, and carefully preserved by the women during the year. Palm Sunday! Palm, it is to be remembered, is an euphemism of the male organ, and it is curious to see it united with the phallus in Christendom. Dulare also says that, in some of the earlier inedited French books on cookery, receipts are given for making cakes of the salacious form in question, which are broadly named. He further tells us those cakes Symbolized the male, in Lower Limousin, and especially

ANTIQUITY OF THE CROSS.

In a work entitled "The Celtic Druids," by Godfrey Higgins, occurs this strong statement "Few causes have been more powerful in producing mistakes in ancient history than the idea, hastily formed by all ages, that every monument of antiquity marked with a cross, or with any of those symbols which they conceived to be monograms of Christ, were of Christian origin. The cross is as common in India as in Egypt or Europe." The Rev. Mr. Maurice says ("Indian Antiquities"): "Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian be offended at the assertion that the cross was one of the most usual symbols of Egypt and India. The emblem of universal nature is equally honored in the Gentile and Christian world. In the cave of Elephanta in India, over the heal of the principal figure, may be seen the cross, and a little in front a huge lingham (male organ)." The last-named author describes a statue in Egypt as bearing a kind of a cross in his hand--that is to say, a lingham--which. among the Egyptians was the symbol of fertility. Upon the breast of one of the Egyptian mummies in the museum of the London University is a cross exactly in the shape of Fig. 23,

Fig. 23.

namely, a cross upon a Calvary, a Meru, or Mount of Venus. People in the above-named countries marked their sacred water jars, dedicated to Canopus, with T or this

. Sometimes they were marked thus

From the erudite Dr. G. L. Ditson, on this subject, we learn:

X. And whenever proselytes were admitted into the religious mysteries of Eleusis they were marked with a cross." Tertullian says: "The Devil signed his soldiers with the cross in the forehead in imitation of the Christians."

CRUCIFIXION.

FROM the cross we are naturally led to the topic of crucifixion. Many Deities have been crucified. Christ was preceded by Christna, Prometheus, Esculapius, Wittoba, and Buddha. They were all crucified Redeemers long before Jesus of Nazareth was born. They were all sons of virgins: So say mythological accounts.

In view of the prevalent ideas in relation to the cross, it is singular and more than strange that the cross is not to be seen on any ancient sculpture as an instrument of punishment. In none of the ancient gems pictured by Layard is any form of the cross except the crux ansata to be found. In the Ninevite remains, the punishment which is depicted of the vanquished is impalement. We are told by Herodotus (Book III, 159) that, after the taking of Babylon, Darius impaled about three thousand of its principal citizens, and his plan, Seneca tells us, was one carried out among the Romans. When the cross was made of two pieces of wood, there seems to have been no orthodox shape, and the victims were sometimes, tied and sometimes nailed, being usually left to perish of thirst and hunger. We learn from Juvenal that crucifixion was a punishment for slaves.

Whether the story of the crucifixion of Jesus has any better foundation than the myths of antiquity, like those

CHRISTNA

WAS mouldy with years ere Jesus was born. He is one of the most popular of all the Hindu Deities. An immense number of legends are told of him which are not worth recording, but the following, condensed from the "Anacalypsis," of Godfrey Higgins, will repay perusal. It appears to be the legitimate fountain from which that of Christ springs.

He is represented as the son of Brahma and Maria, or as some say of Devaci, and is usually called "the Savior," or the preserver. He, being God, became incarnate in the flesh. As soon as he was born, he was saluted by a chorus of devatars, or angels. His birthplace was Mathura. He was cradled among shepherds. Soon after his birth he was carried away by night to a remote place, for fear of a tyrant, Cansa, whose destroyer it was foretold he would become) and who ordered all male children to be slain. (An episode marked in the sculptures at Elephanta; and over the head of this slaughtering figure, surrounded by supplicating mothers and murdered male infants, are the mitre, a crosier, and a cross.) By the male line he was of royal descent, though born in a dungeon,

to be found in the very oldest caves and temples, the inscriptions on

Why were these twins, Christna and Christ, born in eras so divergent, with incidents so identical?