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
Figure 94 is copied by Higgins, Anacalypsis, on the authority of Dubois,
who states, vol. iii., p. 88, that it was found on a stone in a church
in France, where it had been kept religiously for six hundred years.
Dubois regards it as wholly astrological, and as having no reference to
the story told in Genesis. It is unprofitable to speculate on the draped
figures as representatives of Adam and Eve. We have introduced it to
show how such tales are intermingled with Sabeanism.
Figure 95 is a copy of a gem figured by Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, p.
156), and represents Harpocrates seated on a lotus, adoring the mundane
representative of the mother of creation. I have not yet met with any
ancient gem or sculpture which seems to identify the yoni so completely
with various goddesses.
Compare this with Figure 138, infra, wherein the Figure 95. emblem is
even more strikingly identified with woman, and with the virgin Mary.
Those who are familiar with the rude designs too often chalked on
hoardings, will see that learned ancients and boorish moderns represent
certain ideas in precisely similar fashion, and will understand the
mystic meaning of O ---- I have elsewhere called attention to the idea
that a sight of the yoni is a source of health, and a charm against evil
spirits; however grotesque the idea may be, it has existed in all ages,
and in civilised and savage nations alike. A rude image of a woman who
shamelessly exhibits herself has been found over the doors of churches
in Ireland, and at Servatos, in Spain, where she is standing on one side
of the doorway, and an equally conspicuous man on the other. The same
has been found in Mexico, Peru, and in North America. Nor must we forget
how Baubo cured the intense grief of Ceres by exposing herself in a
strange fashion to the distressed goddess. Arnobius, Op. Cit., pp. 249,
250.
As I have already noticed modern notions on the influence produced
by the exhibition of the yoni on those who are suffering, the legend
referred to may be shortly described. The goddess, in the story, was
miserable in consequence of her daughter, Proserpine, having been stolen
away by Pluto. In her agony, snatching two Etna-lighted torches, she
wanders round the earth in search of the lost one, and in due course
visits Eleusis. Baubo receives her hospitably; but nothing that the
hostess does induces the guest to depose her grief for a moment. In
despair the mortal bethinks her of a scheme, shaves off what is called
in Isaiah "the hair of the feet" and then exposes herself to the
goddess. Ceres fixes her eyes upon the denuded spot, is pleased with the
strange form of consolation, consents to take food and is restored to
comfort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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