Ophiolatreia: An Account of the Rites and Mysteries Connected with the Origin, Rise, and Development of Serpent Worship in Various Parts of the WorldSellon, Edward
History
Ophiolatreia: An Account of the Rites and Mysteries Connected with the Origin, Rise, and Development of Serpent Worship in Various Parts of the World
Sellon, Edward
Phallicism; Serpent worship
We may in this manner rationally and satisfactorily account for the origin
of the doctrine of the reciprocal principles. Its universal acceptance
establishes that it was deduced from the operations of that law so
obviously governing all animated nature--that of reproduction or
procreation.
In the Egyptian mythology, the Divine Osiris was venerated as the active,
dispensing, or originating energy, and was symbolized as the Sun; Isis as
terrene nature, the passive recipient, the producer; their annual
offspring was Horus, the vernal season or infant year. The poet Hesiod, in
the beginning of his Theogony, distinguishes the male and female, or
generative and productive powers of Nature, as Ouranus and Gaia, Heaven
and Earth. The celestial emblems of these powers were usually, as we have
said, the Sun and Moon; the terrestrial, Fire and Earth. They were
designed as Father and Mother; and their more obvious symbols, as has
already been intimated, were the Phallus and Kteis, or the Lingham and
Yoni of Hindustan.
That the worship of the phallus passed from India or from Ethiopia into
Egypt, from Egypt into Asia Minor, and into Greece, is not so much a
matter of astonishment,--these nations communicated with each other; but
that this worship existed in countries a long time unknown to the rest of
the world--in many parts of America, with which the people of the Eastern
Continent had formerly no communication--is an astonishing but well
attested fact. When Mexico was discovered, there was found in the city of
Panuco, the particular worship of the Phallus well established, its image
was adorned in the temples; there were in the public places bas reliefs,
which like those of India, represented in various manners the union of the
two sexes. At Tlascalla, another city of Mexico, they revered the act of
generation under the united symbols of the characteristic organs of the
two sexes. Garcilasso de la Vega says--"that according to Blas Valera, the
God of Luxury was called Tiazolteuli," but some writers say, "this is a
mistake." One of the goddesses of the Mexican Pantheon was named
Tiazolteotl, which Boturini describes as Venus unchaste, low, and
abominable, the hieroglyphic of these men and women who are wholly
abandoned, mingling promiscuously one with another, gratifying their
bestial appetites like animals. Boturini is said to be not entirely
correct in his apprehensions of the character of this goddess. She is
Cinteotl, the goddess of Maize, under another aspect. Certain of the
temples of India abound with sculptured representations of the symbols of
Phallic Worship, and if we turn to the temples of Central America, which
in many respects exhibit a strict correspondence with those of India, we
find precisely the same symbols, separate and in combination.
CHAPTER IV.
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