The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other EssaysPark, Roswell
Religion
The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays
Park, Roswell
Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600; Evil eye; Knights of Malta; Medicine; Mythology; Religion; Students
The phallic symbol was always found in temples of Siva, who corresponds
to Baal, and was usually placed as are the most precious emblems of
our Christian temples to-day, in some inmost recess of the sanctuary.
Moreover lamps with seven branches were kept burning before it, these
seven branched lamps long antedating the golden candlestick of the
Mosaic Tabernacle. The Jews by no means escaped the objective evidence
of phallic worship; in Ezekiel 16:17, is a very marked allusion to the
manufacture by Jewish women of gold and silver phalli.
As a purely phallic symbol and custom mark the significance of certain
superstitions and practices even now prevalent in Great Britain. Thus
in Boylase's _History of Cornwall_ it is stated that there is a
stone in the Parish of Mardon, with a hole in it fourteen inches in
diameter, through which many persons creep for the relief of pains
in the back and limbs, and through which children are drawn to cure
them of rickets, this being a practical application of the doctrine
of regeneration. In 1888 there was printed in the _London Standard_ a
considerable reference to passing children through clefts in trees as
a curative measure for certain physical ailments. The same practice
prevails in Brazil and in many other places, and within the present
generation it has been customary to split a young ash tree and, opening
this, pass through it a child for the purpose of curing rupture or some
other bodily ailment.
The phallic element most certainly cannot be denied in Christianity
itself, since in it are many references which to the initiated are
unmistakable. From the fall of man with its serpent myth and its
phallic foundation to the peculiar position assigned to the Virgin
Mary as a mother, phallic references abound. However, it should not
be forgotten that whatever were the primitive ideas on which these
dogmas were based, they had been lost sight of or had been received in
a fresh aspect by the founders of Christianity. The fish and the cross
originally typified the idea of generation and later that of life,
in which sense they were applied to Christ. The most plainly phallic
representation used in early Christian Iconography, is undoubtedly the
_Aureole_ or elliptical frame work, containing usually the figure of
Christ, sometimes that of Mary. The Nimbus also, generally circular
but sometimes triangular, is of positive phallic significance, even
though it contain within it the name of Jehovah. The sun flowers
which sometimes are made to surround the figure of St. John the
Evangelist are the lotus flowers of the Egyptians. The divine hand
with the thumb and two fingers outstretched, even though it rests on a
cruciform nimbus, is a phallic emblem, and is used by the Neapolitans
of to-day to avert the Evil Eye, although it was originally a symbol
of Isis. Indeed the Virgin Mary is the ancient Isis, as can be most
easily established, since the virgin "Succeeded to her form, titles,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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