Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove," and Other Allied SymbolsInman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove," and Other Allied Symbols
Inman, Thomas
Christian art and symbolism; Symbolism
Figures 35, 36, are Maltese crosses. In a large book of Etrurian
antiquities, which came casually under my notice about twenty years ago,
when I was endeavouring to master the language, theology, etc., of the
Etruscans, but whose name, and other particulars of which, I cannot
now remember; I found depicted two crosses, made up of four masculine
triads, each asher being erect, and united to its fellows by the gland,
forming a central diamond, emblem of the yoni. In one instance, the
limbs of the cross were of equal length; in the other, one asher was
three times as long as the others. A somewhat similar cross, but one
united with the circle, was found some time ago near Naples. It is made
of gold, and has apparently been used as an amulet and suspended to
the neck. It is figured in plate 35 of An Essay on the Worship of the
Generative Powers during the Middle Ages (London, privately printed,
1865). It may be thus described: the centre of the circle is occupied by
four oblate spheres arranged like a square; from the salient curves of
each of these springs a yoni (shaped as in Figure 59), with the point
outwards, thus forming a cross, each ray of which is an egg and fig. At
each junction of the ovoids a yoni is inserted with the apex inwards,
whilst from the broad end arise four ashers, which project beyond the
shield, each terminating in a few golden bead-like drops. The whole is
a graphic natural representation of the intimate union of the male and
female, sun and moon, cross and circle, Ouranos and Ge. The same idea is
embodied in Figure 27, p. 86, but in that the mystery is deeply veiled,
in that the long arms of the cross represent the sun, or male, indicated
by the triad; the short ones, the moon, or the female (see Plate xi.
Fig. 4).
The Maltese cross, a Phoenician emblem, was discovered cut on a rock
in the island from which it takes its name. Though cruciform, it had
nothing Christian about it; for, like the Etruscan ones referred to
above, it consisted of four lingas united together by the heads, the
"eggs" being at the outside. It was an easy thing for an unscrupulous
priesthood to represent this "invention" of the cross as a miracle,
and to make it presentable to the eyes of the faithful by leaving the
outlines of Anu and Hea incomplete. Sometimes this cross is figured
as four triangles meeting at the points, which has the same meaning,
Generally, however, the Church (as may be seen by a reference to Pugin's
Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament) adopts the use of crosses where
the inferior members of the trinity are more or less central, as in our
Plate xi., Figs. 2, 8, and as in the Figures 40, 41, 42, infra. When
once a person knows the true origin of the doctrine of the Trinity--one
which is far too improper to have been adopted by the writers of the
New Testament--it is impossible not to recognise in the signs which are
symbolic of it the thing which is signified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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