Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its HistoryBesant, Annie
Religion
Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
darkness and death, giving life to the world. The phallus is the other
great symbol of the Life-Giver, generating life in woman, as the sun in
the earth. Bacchus, Adonis, Dionysius, Apollo, Hercules, Hermes,
Thammuz, Jupiter, Jehovah, Jao, or Jah, Moloch, Baal, Asher, Mahadeva,
Brahma, Vishnu, Mithra, Atys, Ammon, Belus, with many another, these are
all the Life-Giver under different names; they are the Sun, the Creator,
the Phallus. Red is their appropriate colour. When the sun or the
Phallus is not drawn in its natural form, it is indicated by a symbol:
the symbol must be upright, hard, or else burning, either conical, or
clubbed at one end. Thus--the torch, flame of fire, cone, serpent,
thyrsus, triangle, letter T, cross, crosier, sceptre, caduceus, knobbed
stick, tall tree, upright stone, spire, tower, minaret, upright pole,
arrow, spear, sword, club, upright stump, etc., are all symbols of the
generative force of the male energy in Nature of the Supreme God.
One of the most common, and the most universally used, is THE CROSS.
Carved at first simply as phallus, it was gradually refined; we meet it
as three balls, one above the two; the letter T indicated it, which, by
the slightest alteration, became the cross now known as the Latin: thus
"Barnabas" says that "the cross was to express the grace by the letter
T" (ante, p. 233). We find the cross in India, Egypt, Thibet, Japan,
always as the sign of life-giving power; it was worn as an amulet by
girls and women, and seems to have been specially worn by the women
attached to the temples, as a symbol of what was, to them, a religious
calling. The cross is, in fact, nothing but the refined phallus, and in
the Christian religion is a significant emblem of its Pagan origin; it
was adored, carved in temples, and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and
nature worshippers, long before there were any Christians to adore,
carve, and wear it. The crowd kneeling before the cross in Roman
Catholic and in High Anglican Churches, is a simple reproduction of the
crowd who knelt before it in the temples of ancient days, and the girls
who wear it amongst ourselves, are--in the most innocent unconsciousness
of its real signification--exactly copying the Indian and Egyptian women
of an elder time. Saturn's symbol was a cross and a ram's horn. Jupiter
bore a cross with a horn. Venus a circle with a cross. The Egyptian
deities a cross and oval. (The signification of these will be dealt with
below.) The Druids sought oak trees with two main arms growing in shape
of a cross, and, if they failed to find such, nailed a beam cross-wise.
The chief pagodas in India are built, like many Christian churches, in
the form of a cross. I have read in a book on church architecture that
churches should be built either in the form of a cross, or else in that
of a ship, typifying the ark; i.e., they should either be built in the
form of the phallus or the yoni, the ship or ark being one of the
symbols of the female energy (see below, p.
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