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
This so-called god was regarded much in the same light as 'St. Cosmo and
St. Damian were at Iseraia, and St. Foutin in Christian France. And it
is not at all surprising that a church, which has deified or made saints
of a spear and cloak, under the names Longinus and Amphibolus, should
also adopt the "god of the gardens," and consecrate him as an object for
Christian worship, and give him an appropriate name and emblem. But the
patron saint of Lampsacus was not really a deity, only a sort of saint,
whose business it was to attend to certain parts. The idea of guardian
angels was once common, see Matt, xviii. 10, where we read, that each
child has a guardian in heaven, who looks after his infantile charge. As
the pagan Hymen and Lucina attended upon weddings and parturitions,
so the Christian Cosmo and Damian attended to spouses, and assisted in
making them fruitful. To the last two were offered, by sterile wives,
wax effigies of the part left out from the nude figure in our plate.
To the heathen saint, we see a female votary offer quince leaves,
equivalent to la feuille de sage, egg-shaped bread, apparently a cake;
also an ass's head; whilst her attendant offers a pine cone. This
amongst the Greeks was sacred to Cybele, as it was in Assyria to Astarte
or Ishtar, the name given there to 'the mother of all saints.' The
basket contains apples and phalli, which may have been made of pastry.
See Martial's Epigrams, b. xiv. 69. This gem is valuable, inasmuch as it
assists us to understand the signification of the pine cone offered to
the 'grove,' the equivalent of le Verger de Cypris. The pillar and its
base are curiously significant, and demonstrate how completely an artist
can appear innocent, whilst to the initiated he unveils a mystery.
Figures 125, 126, 127, are various contrivances for indicating decently
that which it was generally thought religious to conceal, la bequile, au
les instrumens.
Figure 128 represents the same subject; the cuts are grouped iso as to
show how the knobbed stick, le baton, becomes converted either into a
bent rod, la verge, or a priestly crook, le baton pastoral. There is
no doubt that the episcopal crozier is a presentable effigy of a very
private and once highly venerated portion of the human frame, which was
used in long by-gone days by Etruscan augurs, when they mapped out
the sky, prior to noticing the flight of birds. Perhaps we ought to be
grateful to Popery for having consecrated to Christ what was so long
used in that which divines call the service of the devil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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