GRICE E CATUCCI: COOPERIAMO

 La Teoria Cooperativa Come accennato in precedenza, l’idea di gioco cooperativo `e stata introdotta da von Neumann e Morgenstern. Il contributo del loro libro `e fonda- mentale per aver reso lo studio dei giochi una disciplina sistematica, e per aver proposto un cambiamento radicale nel modo di studiare i problemi dell’econo- mia, delle scienze politiche e di quelle sociali. Il metodo proposto consiste nel tradurre i problemi in giochi opportuni, nel trovare le soluzioni di questi con le tecniche sviluppate dalla teoria, e nel ritradurre le soluzioni trovate in termini di comportamenti economici ottimali. L’idea di gioco cooperativo nasce, come gi`a accennato in precedenza, dall’esigenza di analizzare il comportamento razionale di agenti che interagiscono in situazioni non strettamente competitive. In tal 15Strategia dominata invece `e quella tale che, ne esiste un’altra che procura al giocatore maggiore utilit`a, qualunque cosa faccia l’altro. Una strategia dominata non pu`o far parte di un equilibrio di Nash.   16 CAPITOLO 1. LA MATEMATICA DEI GIOCHI caso `e ragionevole pensare che i giocatori possano fare alleanze, formare coali- zioni ecc. Ogni coalizione sar`a in grado poi di garantire una certa distribuzione di utilit`a all’interno dei suoi membri. Che cosa distingue il gioco cooperativo da quello non cooperativo? Il fatto che si ipotizzi la nascita delle coalizioni non significa che si suppone che i giocatori siano diversi, meno egoisti; le coalizioni sono uno strumento possibile per ottenere migliori risultati individuali, come nel caso non cooperativo. La differenza nei due approcci sta in un’altra cosa: secondo J. Harsanyi, premio Nobel, con Nash, per l’Economia, un gioco `e defi- nito cooperativo se gli accordi tra i giocatori sono vincolanti. In caso contrario, il gioco `e non cooperativo. All’interno dei giochi cooperativi, la teoria distingue fra quelli TU (utilit`a trasferibile ) e quelli NTU (utilit`a non trasferibile). Qui ci limitiamo a qualche esempio di gioco TU, gi`a sufficiente comunque a introdurre le idee principali di questo approccio. Per definire un gioco cooperativo abbiamo bisogno dell’insieme N = {1, . . . , n} dei giocatori, e dal dato, per ogni A ⊂ N, di un numero reale, denotato con v(A). A ⊂ N rappresenta una possibile coalizione, e v(A) rappresenta l’utilit`a, o in altri casi un costo, che la stessa `e in grado di garantirsi se i giocatori di A si alleano. v `e detta la funzione caratteristica del gioco. Il modo migliore di capire l’idea sottostante questa definizione `e di illustrarla con qualche esempio. Esempio 10. (Due compratori e un venditore). Due persone sono interessate ad un bene che `e in possesso di una terza persona. Il giocatore 1, che possiede il bene, lo valuta meno di chi lo vuole comprare (altrimenti non c’`e situazione di interazione tra i tre). Fissiamo per esempio a 100 il valore che il possessore assegna al bene. Gli altri due, che chiamiamo rispettivamente 2 e 3, valutano il bene 200 e 300. Possiamo allora definire il gioco come N = {1,2,3}, e le coalizioni sono otto: {φ, {1}, {2}, {3}, {1, 2}, {1, 3}, {2, 3}, {1, 2, 3} = N}16. Possiamo inoltre porre v({1}) = 100, v({2}) = v({3}) = v({2, 3}) = 0, v({1, 2}) = 200, v({1,3} = v(N) = 30017. Esempio 11. (Due venditori e un compratore). Consideriamo invece il caso di un compratore (giocatore 1) e due venditori dello stesso bene; la situazione pu`o essere descritta efficacemente ponendo v(A) = 1 se A = {1, 2}, {1, 3}, {1, 2, 3}, zero altrimenti. In questo caso, quando la funzione caratteristica v assume solo valori zero e uno, il gioco si chiama semplice, e v assume piu` il significato di indice di forza della coalizione (A `e coalizione vincente se e solo se v(A) = 1). Il gioco non cambia se al posto di 1 mettiamo un altro numero positivo. 16φ rappresenta l’insieme vuoto, cio`e la coalizione che non contiene giocatori. Anche se pu`o sembrare inutile, `e invece opportuno tenerla in considerazione; qualunque sia v, si assume che v(φ) = 0. 17Perch ́e abbiamo definito in questo modo il gioco? Vediamo un paio di casi. Ad esempio, v({2,3}) = 0 perch ́e la coalizione {2,3} non possiede il bene, v({1,3}) = 300 perch ́e la coalizione {1, 3} possiede il bene, che valuta 300 (infatti non se ne priva per meno).   1.5. LA TEORIA COOPERATIVA 17 Esempio 12. (La pista dell’aeroporto, la bancarotta, la societ`a per azioni). Gli Esempi 4, 5 e 6 sono anch’essi descrivibili come giochi cooperativi. Nel caso della pista dell’aeroporto, v rappresenta un costo e non un’utilit`a. E` naturale pensare che a una coalizione venga assegnato il costo della pista piu` lunga necessaria per le compagnie che formano la coalizione. Dunque si ha v({1}) = c1, v({2}) = c2, v({3}) = c3, v({1,2}) = c2, v({1,3}) = v({2,3}) = v(N) = c3. Il caso della bancarotta, anche se si intuisce facilmente che `e un problema analogo a quello dell’areoporto, `e un pochino piu` complicato, perch ́e non `e chiaro a priori che cosa una coalizione possa garantire per s ́e. Una stima molto prudente potrebbe essere quello che rimane dopo che tutti gli altri creditori sono stati pagati. Nel caso della societ`a per azioni, siamo in presenza di un gioco semplice, e daremo valore 1 a quelle coalizioni in grado da avere la maggioranza dei voti necessaria nei vari tipi di votazioni (semplice, qualificata ecc). Una generica soluzione di un gioco cooperativo con N = {1, 2, . . . , n} come insieme di giocatori `e un vettore ad n componenti, ciascuna delle quali `e un numero reale. Il significato dovrebbe essere chiaro: se (x1, x2, . . . , xn) `e tale vettore, allora xi `e l’utilit`a assegnata (o il costo, se v rappresenta dei costi) al giocatore i. Tanto per fare un esempio, nel caso dei due compratori e un ven- ditore, se proponessimo come soluzione (100,100,100) ci`o significherebbe che l’esito del gioco prevede un’utilit`a di 100 a testa per i tre18. Un concetto di soluzione invece rappresenta un modo per trovare vettori che soddisfino parti- colari propriet`a. Ad un gioco una soluzione pu`o associare un insieme grande di vettori, ad un altro nessun vettore, ad altri ancora un solo vettore. E` bene osservare che la soluzione in genere non `e interessata a quanto viene assegnato alle coalizioni, ma solo a quel che viene dato ai giocatori: ancora una volta va ricordato che le coalizioni sono solo un mezzo che gli individui utilizzano per ottenere il meglio per s ́e. L’idea di gioco cooperativo `e cos`ı generale da rendere necessaria l’introduzione di molti concetti di soluzione: qui accenniamo rapidamente ad alcuni fra i piu` importanti. Una soluzione deve per prima cosa essere un’imputazione, cio`e un vettore (x1, . . . , xn) tale che: 1. xi ≥ v({i}) per ogni i; 2. x1 +x2 +···+xn =v(N)19. Si richiede cio`e ad ogni soluzione di godere delle propriet`a di razionalit`a indivi- duale e di efficienza collettiva: ogni giocatore deve ricavare almeno quel che `e in grado di garantirsi da solo (altrimenti esce dal gioco), e tutto l’utile disponibile 18Per il momento, non ci poniamo il problema se la suddivisione di utili proposta sia ragionevole. Vogliamo semplicemente capire che cosa significa in questo modello soluzione. 19Ad esempio sono imputazioni i vettori (100,100,100) nel gioco dei due compratori e un venditore (Esempio 10), ( 13 , 13 , 31 ) nel gioco dei due venditori e un compratore (Esempio 11), mentre in quest’ultimo non lo sono (0, 0, 0) e (1, −1, 1).   18 CAPITOLO 1. LA MATEMATICA DEI GIOCHI va distribuito (e ovviamente non di piu`)20. Questa richiesta `e quindi da rite- nere minimale. In realt`a, visto che le coalizioni sono possibili, sembra naturale richiedere che esse stesse gradiscano una distribuzione di utilit`a, altrimenti una parte dei giocatori potrebbe ritirarsi. Si arriva cos`ı ad uno dei concetti fonda- mentali di soluzione: il nucleo del gioco v `e l’insieme di quelle distribuzioni di utilit`a che nessuna coalizione ha interesse a rifiutare. D’altra parte, la coalizione A rifiuta quel che le viene proposto se la somma delle utilit`a proposte ai suoi giocatori `e inferiore al valore v(A) che, come detto, rappresenta quel che lei `e complessivamente in grado di procurarsi. Per capire meglio l’idea vediamo di caratterizzare il nucleo in un esempio semplice: quello dei due venditori e un compratore (Esempio 11): un elemento del nucleo `e un vettore x fatto da tre elementi, scriviamo x = (x1, x2, x3). Ora scriviamo i vincoli che questo vettore deve soddisfare:  x1 ≥0,x2 ≥0,x3 ≥0   x 1 + x 2 ≥ 1 x1 + x3 ≥ 1 .     x 2 + x 3 ≥ 0 x1 + x2 + x3 = 1 La prima riga impone le disequazioni relative alle coalizioni fatte dai singoli individui: essi non accettano meno di zero, evidentemente. La seconda riga riguarda il vincolo imposto dalla coalizione {1, 2}; essa `e in gradi di garantirsi 1, quindi la somma di quel che viene proposto ai giocatori 1 e 2, cio`e x1 +x2, deve essere maggiore o uguale a 1. E cos`ı via, fino all’ultima coalizione N = {1, 2, 3}. Ora, confrontando l’ultima equazione con la seconda si vede che deve essere x3 ≤ 0, ma la prima dice x3 ≥ 0, quindi x3 = 0. Analogamente x2 = 0. Poich ́e la somma delle utilit`a deve essere uno, allora x1 = 1. Quindi il nucleo consiste del solo vettore (1, 0, 0). Vediamo ora che cosa ci propone il nucleo in alcuni dei giochi introdotti in pre- cedenza. Nel gioco dei due compratori e un venditore (Esempio 10), la soluzione proposta dal nucleo `e che il primo vende l’oggetto al terzo (che lo valuta di piu` rispetto al secondo), ad un prezzo che pu`o variare fra 200 e i 300 Euro (quindi il nucleo propone in questo caso piu` spartizioni possibili). Nel gioco invece in cui ci sono un compratore e due venditori dello stesso bene, come abbiamo visto il nucleo consiste nell’unico vettore (1,0,0), il che significa che il compratore ottiene il bene per nulla. E` interessante notare che, nel primo esempio, il ruolo del secondo giocatore, che pure alla fine non fa nulla, `e messo in evidenza dal fatto che il prezzo di vendita `e influenzato dalla sua presenza. D’altra parte que- sto `e logico: se il terzo facesse un’offerta minore di 200 Euro, allora il secondo potrebbe a sua volta fare un’offerta superiore, fino a un massimo di 200 Euro. 20Anche se non si assume esplicitamente, l’ipotesi che v(N) ≥ v(A) per ogni A ⊂ N `e verificata in quasi tutti i giochi interessanti. Anzi, spesso i giochi verificano l’ipotesi detta di superadditivit`a, che cio`e v(A ∪ B) ≥ v(A) + v(B) se A ∩ B = ∅, che stabilisce che l’unione fa la forza. Questo fa s`ı che sia ragionevole assumere che i giocatori si metteranno d’accordo per spartirsi tutta la quantit`a v(N).   1.5. LA TEORIA COOPERATIVA 19 In questo caso il nucleo propone tante soluzioni possibili. Nel secondo caso ci`o che indica il nucleo `e un fatto ben noto in economia, anche se qui espresso in maniera brutale: l’eccesso di offerta mette i venditori in balia del compratore. Infatti nel nucleo sta solo il vettore che assegna tutto al compratore, nulla ai venditori. Altre soluzioni, come vedremo, propongono una soluzione diversa, che tiene conto del fatto che in qualche modo i due venditori non sono del tutto inutili. Un esempio ancora piu` interessante di come il nucleo possa proporre soluzioni bizzarre `e il famoso gioco dei guanti, di cui esistono infinite varian- ti: una versione che ne mette bene in luce la stranezza `e quando si hanno 4 giocatori; il primo ed il secondo possiedono uno e due guanti sinistri, rispettiva- mente, mentre il terzo e quarto un destro ciascuno. Naturalmente lo scopo del gioco consiste nel formare paia di guanti. In questo caso il nucleo `e costituito dal solo vettore (0, 0, 1, 1), il che significa che i possessori di un guanto sinistro (guanti che sono in eccedenza) devono cedere il loro per nulla. Risultato che appare ancora piu` bizzarro se si pensa che il giocatore due potrebbe cambiare la situazione semplicemente eliminando un guanto in suo possesso. A dispetto del fatto che a volte le soluzioni proposte dal nucleo sembrino controintuitive, esso rappresenta un concetto di soluzione molto importante, so- prattutto in applicazioni economiche. Per`o il nucleo presenta ancora un altro problema: `e facile verificare che in molti casi pu`o essere vuoto! L’esempio piu` semplice `e quando siamo in presenza di tre giocatori che si devono spartire a maggioranza una somma fissata (possiamo porre l’utilit`a della stessa uguale a 1). In tal caso le coalizioni di due giocatori risultano vincenti (v(A) = 1) se il numero dei componenti la coalizione A `e almeno due, 0 altrimenti-ancora un gioco semplice- ed un calcolo immediato mostra che il nucleo `e vuoto21. Il che rende indispensabile la definizione di altre soluzioni, che possano suggerire pos- sibili spartizioni anche nel caso in cui almeno una coalizione non sia soddisfatta della spartizione proposta. Una soluzione, che qui illustro solo a parole, con- sidera, per ogni possibile imputazione, il grado di insoddisfazione e(A, x) della xi. L’imputazione x sta nel nucleo, ad esempio, se e solo se e(A, x) ≤ 0 per ogni A, cio`e se nessuna coalizione si lamenta. Se per`o il nucleo `e vuoto, allora qualunque sia la distribuzione proposta c’`e almeno una coalizione che si lamenta. Che fare in questo caso? Un’idea intelligente `e di considerare, per ogni imputazione x, il lamento della coalizione piu` sfavorita (cio`e di quella che si lamenta maggiormen- te), e poi scegliere quella distribuzione di utilit`a efficiente che minimizza questo lamento massimo. Se poi sono molte le distribuzioni che hanno questa propriet`a, fra queste si pu`o scegliere quelle che minimizzano il secondo massimo lamento, e cos`ı via. Si dimostra che in questo modo si arriva ad un’unica distribuzione di utilit`a, che viene chiamata il nucleolo del gioco. Nel gioco precedente dei compratori, il prezzo di vendita `e 250, e cio`e il prezzo 21Supponiamo (x1, x2, x3) sia un vettore del nucleo. Le condizioni x1 + x2 ≥ 1, x1 + x3 ≥ 1, x2 + x3 ≥ 1, imposte dalle coalizioni formate da due giocatori implicano, prendendo la loro somma, 2(x1 + x2 + x3) ≥ 3, che `e in contraddizione con la condizione di efficienza x1 + x2 + x3 = 1. Quindi il nucleo `e vuoto. coalizione A per la distribuzione dell’imputazione x: e(A, x) = v(A) − 􏰙 i∈A   20 CAPITOLO 1. LA MATEMATICA DEI GIOCHI intermedio fra quello minimo e quello massimo proposti dal nucleo; nel gioco di maggioranza a tre giocatori, propone l’imputazione ( 13 , 13 , 31 ): in questo caso ogni coalizione di due giocatori si lamenta 13 , e non `e difficile verificare che ogni distribuzione di utilit`a diversa farebbe lamentare di piu` una coalizione. I risul- tati precedenti non sono sorprendenti, dal momento che il nucleolo `e soluzione che gode di forti propriet`a di simmetria; purtroppo per`o anche il nucleolo pu`o dare risultati bizzarri: ad esempio, siccome appartiene al nucleo, purch ́e natu- ralmente questo non sia vuoto, nel gioco dei due venditori ed un compratore il nucleolo assegna tutto al compratore. Passiamo al terzo concetto di soluzione che qui consideriamo: si chiama indice di Shapley. La sua formula `e un po’ complicata, ad una prima lettura, ma non bisogna spaventarsi. Se poi non si capiscono i dettagli, come ha scritto Nash nella sua celebre tesi, questo non impedisce a chi vuole di capire lo stesso le idee. Dunque, intanto va osservato che questa soluzione, come il nucleolo, ha l’interessante propriet`a di assegnare un’unica distribuzione di utilit`a ad ogni giocatore. La indichiamo con S, in onore di Shapley. Risulta cos`ı definita, per un qualunque gioco v22: Si(v) = 􏰚 (a − 1)!(n − a)![v(A) − v(A \ {i})]. i∈A⊂N n! L’indice di Shapley associa al giocatore i i contributi marginali23 che esso porta ad ogni coalizione, pesati secondo un certo coefficiente (per la coalizione A \ {i} esso `e (a−1)!(n−a)! ). Tale coefficiente ha un’interpretazione probabilistica inte- n!   ressante: supponendo che i giocatori decidano di trovarsi per giocare, in un certo luogo e ad una data ora, il coefficiente (a−1)!(n−a)! rappresenta la probabilit`a  n! 24 che i al suo arrivo trovi gli altri giocatori della coalizione A, e solo loro . Nel gioco di maggioranza semplice fra tre giocatori, l’indice di Shapley pro- pone ( 31 , 13 , 13 ), come il nucleolo. Nel gioco dei guanti, invece la soluzione `e ( 1 , 7 , 7 , 7 ). Vettore che presenta caratteristiche interessanti: tiene conto del 4 12 12 12 fatto che c’`e un eccesso di offerta di guanti sinistri, il che rende un po’ piu` debole degli altri il giocatore uno; il secondo ne risente relativamente, perch ́e sfrutta il fatto di poter soddisfare da solo la domanda dei giocatori col guanto destro. Questo mostra che il valore tiene conto di altri aspetti, ignorati dal nucleo. L’indice di Shapley ha applicazioni importanti anche nei giochi semplici. Come esempio, si pu`o pensare all’analisi della composizione di un Parlamento, potreb- be essere il Parlamento Europeo, o il Congresso negli Stati Uniti. Il problema fondamentale in questi casi `e come ripartire i seggi fra i vari stati. Tutti i metodi di ripartizione dei seggi hanno dei difetti: esiste persino un celebre risultato che lo afferma: si tratta del teorema di Arrow (un altro vincitore del Premio Nobel 22Data una coalizione A, indicheremo con a la sua cardinalit`a, cio`e il numero dei giocatori che formano la coalizione A. 23Il contributo marginale che il giocatore i porta alla coalizione C `e la quantit`a v(C ∪ {i}) − v(C). Chiaramente pu`o essere interpretato come l’apporto che il giocatore porta alla coalizione. 24Assumendo equiprobabile l’ordine d’arrivo dei giocatori.   1.6. CONCLUSIONI 21 per l’Economia), forse il piu` celebre di tutte le Scienze Sociali. Il valore Shapley `e quindi uno dei modi possibili per valutare il potere dei giocatori in un gioco. Per concludere, ecco la risposta che d`a l’indice di Shapley al problema di come suddividere le spese per la costruzione della pista dell’aeroporto (Esempi 4 e 12): il primo paga 13c1, il secondo 12c2 − 16c1, il terzo c3 − 16c1 − 12c2. Detto cos`ı non sembra molto significativo ma, per prima cosa `e utile osservare che la somma dei tre pagamenti fa proprio c3, il che mostra su un esempio quel che `e vero sempre, e cio`e che l’indice `e efficiente; poi, e questo `e molto interessante, il risultato, ha la seguente interpretazione molto naturale: il primo, che da solo spenderebbe c1, divide questa spesa equamente con gli altri due, che usufrui- scono dello stesso servizio. Il secondo chilometro porta un costo aggiuntivo di c2 − c1: questa spesa viene equamente divisa tra gli altri due che utilizzano la pista. Il resto che manca (c3 − c2) infine `e pagato dall’unico utente che ha bisogno del terzo chilometro. Concludo questo paragrafo riprendendo un concetto gi`a espresso: il fatto che esistano tante soluzioni per i giochi cooperativi non deve essere considerato sin- tomo di confusione. La variet`a di situazioni che vengono descritti come gioco cooperativo impone, in un certo senso, che si considerino diverse soluzioni possi- bili. Sta a chi utilizza questi modelli scegliere la soluzione piu` adatta. E nessuna soluzione `e adatta ad ogni gioco: per esempio l’indice di Shapley per il gioco del venditore e dei due compratori `e ( 650 , 50 , 200 ), cui sembra difficile dare un 333 significato sensato. Per questo le varie soluzioni vengono caratterizzate da pro- priet`a che servono a descriverle: abbiamo ad esempio ricordato che l’indice di Shapley ed il nucleolo godono di propriet`a di simmetria, il che significa che non privilegiano alcuni giocatori rispetto ad altri.

Grice e Cavalcanti: il sìnolo degl'amanti

 sìnolo s. m. [dal gr. σύνολον, comp. di σύν«con» e ὅλος «tutto»]. – Nel linguaggio filos., termine aristotelico che designa la concreta sostanza (v. sostanza, n. 1 a), concepita come sintesi di materia (ciò che è mera potenza) e forma (ciò che porta all’atto la potenzialità della materia).THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE OF GUIDO  CAVALCANTI   In 1283 the young Dante sent out among the best known Italian  poets a sonnet asking interpretation of a dream. The god of love,  so it seemed, had come carrying Beatrice asleep, and had fed her  with Dante's own heart, and had then departed weeping.   Several poets answered. One, Dante of Maiano, suggested as a  probable solution of this, and other such distressing visions, a dose  of salts ; the others fell in with Dante's mood and answered seri-  ously. Of their various interpretations that which best pleased  Dante, though not quite satisfied him, was Guido Cavalcanti's.  " And this," wrote Dante later in the New Life, " was, as it were,  the beginning of the friendship between him and me, when he knew  that I was he who had sent it (the sonnet) to him."   Guido's interpretation was in an important particular ambiguous.  Love, he wrote, fed your heart to your lady, seeing that "vostra donna  la morte chedea" To understand this clause as meaning " Death  claimed your lady" is natural, and would make the interpretation  interestingly prophetic; but, whether or not this reading might be  justified symbolically, Dante himself forbids it. For, in spite of his  pleasure in his " first friend's " explanation of the dream, he added :  " The true meaning of this dream was not then seen by any one, but  now it is plain to the simplest." It was easy for him after the event  to read prophecy of Beatrice's death into the dream ; but he expressly  denies to Guido among the rest the prescience. We are bound,  therefore, to take as the interpreter's meaning that there was malice  prepense in the cannibal appetite of the sleeping lady, that she  claimed the death of her servant's heart. No wonder the love god  wept as he carried her off sated !   Irreverent though it be, one thinks of The Vampire of Kipling.  For Guido the gentle Beatrice was as "the woman who couldn't   9     IO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   understand," sucking, asleep, in a sort of diabolical innocence, the  life blood, literally eating the heart, out of her helpless victim. And  Dante, the lover, the victim, approves the picture !   Of course the gruesomeness of this symbolism may be explained  away as merely a conceitfully emphatic reassertion of the ancient  fancy that a lover's heart is no longer his own, but has passed into  the custody of his mistress. Only, the dream then and its interpre-  tation would indeed be a much ado about nothing. And why, at so  customary a happening, should love weep? In fact, Guido's thought  cuts deeper, and is, I venture to urge, not so remote, in a sense,  from the thought underlying The Vampire. It is The Vampire uplifted  into the more tenuous, yet.no less intense, atmosphere of mysticism.   Before attempting to let in light directly upon this dim utterance  it is expedient to recall certain facts in Guido's life and personality.   " Cortese e ardito, ma sdegnoso e solitario e intento alio studio " —  so Guido is introduced into the Florentine Chronicle of Dino Compagni,  who knew him personally. Guido could not have been much over  twenty-five when, at the death of his father, his elder brother being  in orders, he became head and champion of one of the two or three  most powerful and aristocratic families in the republic. For gen-  erations the Cavalcanti had been leaders in the state, haughtily  contemptuous of the mere people, yet fierce partisans of civic inde-  pendence against those who were willing to sacrifice this for the  dream of a " Greater Italy " united under a revivified Emperor of the  West. To this great feud and to the lesser local feuds which grew  out of it Guido may be said to have been a predestined, yet mostly  a willing, sacrifice. He was born into the feud ; he lived his life  long in the heat of it ; it married him ; it perhaps lost him his best  friend ; it certainly killed him before his time.   It married him. In 1267, a vear a *ter the decisive battle of Bene-  vento, when the last hope of the Imperialists, the Ghibellines, fell  with Manfred, in Florence an attempt was made towards permanent  peace by marrying together certain sons and daughters of victors  and vanquished. Among the rest Guido Cavalcanti was wedded, or  then more likely betrothed, — for he could not have been more than  fifteen, — to Bice, daughter of the Ghibelline leader, the Florentine  " Coriolanus," Farinata degli Uberti. Seven years before Farinata     OF GUIDO CA VALCANTI I I   had "painted the Arbia red" with the blood of Florentine Guelphs  at Monteaperti; and it had been a kinsman of Guido who com-  manded the Guelphs on that disastrous day. We do not know how  this real " Capulet-Montague " match turned out, — only that Monna  Bice bore children to her husband and outlived him many years,  and that the peace which their union, among others, was intended to  effect did not come to pass.   On the contrary the great Guelph families, after 1267 in secure  possession of the city, soon quarreled, even connived against each  other with the ever-ready Ghibelline exiles, or with popular dema-  gogues, so great was their common jealousy. Meanwhile, during  the distraction of the nobles, the middle classes had been prosper-  ing ; and coming at last to feel their strength and the weakness of  those above them, in 1293 they rebelled and crushed the aristocrats.  In the first insolence of triumph they excluded the nobles abso-  lutely from public office, but two years later conceded eligibility to  such nobles as would join one of the Arti, or trades unions. This  virtual abdication of caste Guido Cavalcanti refused to make. In  vain good easy Dino pleaded with him. " I am ever singing your  praises," he wrote in a kindly sonnet, " telling folks how wise you are,  and brave and strong, skilled to wield and ward the sword, and how  compact with sifted learning your mind is, and how you can run and  leap and outlast the best. Nor is there lacking you high birth  nor wealth ... in fine, the one thing wanting to give scope to all  these gifts and powers is a mere name.   " Ahi! com saresti stato om mercadiere! "   Now almost certainly some generations back the Cavalcanti had  been in trade, and had made their fortune in trade, but latterly it had  pleased them to entertain a genealogy reaching royally back into  Germany and descending into Italy with Charlemagne's baronage.  To traverse this pleasing legend with the gross title "om merca-  diere," tradesman, was out of the question : Guido declared himself  irreconcilable.   Meanwhile Dante, unfettered by a legend or a temperament,  had accepted the situation even cordially, and was taking active  part in the councils of the new bourgeois regime. That Guido must     12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   have regarded his friend's secession with disgust seems natural. It  was worse than an offense against party; it was an offense against  caste. " Uomo vertudioso in molte cose, se non ch'egli era troppo  tenero e stizzozo," writes Giovanni Villani of Guido. Fastidious,  exclusive, thin-skinned, choleric, Guido was just the man to feel this  consorting of his friend with vulgar political upstarts incompatible  with their own intimacy. And the matter was made worse by its  open denial of their poetic profession of faith in the " cor gentile."  This vulgar folk was that " fango," that human " mud " of which  Guinizelli had written :   Fere lo sole il fango tutto'l giorno,  Vile riman . . .   how might the " gentle heart " mix itself with this irredeemable  "mud" and be not defiled? So Guido addressed to his friend a  sonnet at once haughty and tender — like Guido himself: 1   lo vengo il giorno a te infinite volte  e trovoti pensar troppo vilmente :  allor mi dol de la gentil tua mente  e d'assai tue virtu che ti son tolte.   Solevanti spiacer persone molte,  tuttor fuggivi la noiosa gente,  di me parlavi si coralemente  che tutte le tue rime avei ricolte.   Or non ardisco per la vil tua vita,   far mostramento che tu' dir mi piaccia,  ne vengo 'n guisa a te che tu mi veggi.   Se '1 presente sonetto spesso leggi  lo spirito noioso che ti caccia  si partira da Panima invilita. 2   1 1 believe that E. Lam ma, in his Questioni Dante sche, Bologna, 1902, was the  first to propose this construction of the famous " reproach." It seems to me the  best of all.   2 1 come to thee infinite times a day  And find thee thinking too unworthily :  Then for thy gentle mind it grieveth me,  And for thy talents all thus thrown away.     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI     x 3     Whether the two friends again came together in life is not known.  The next situation in which we hear of them is tragic. Dante is sit-  ting among his " first friend's " judges ; Guido is condemned to exile,  and goes — in effect — to his death.   Under the new bourgeois rule civic disorders rather increased than  otherwise. Prime mover of discord was the Florentine " Catiline," as  Dino calls him, Corso Donati. Somewhat ineffectually opposing his  self-seeking machinations were the parvenu Cerchi, powerful only  through wealth and the popularity of their cause. With these also  stood Guido. Hatred, no less than misfortune, makes strange bed-  fellows ; and the hatred between Guido and Corso was intense. Each  had sought the other's life : Corso meanly, by hired assassins ; Guido  openly, in the public street, by his own hand. Violence followed  violence ; the number of factionaries increased, until at last in 1300  the city Priors determined to expel the leaders of both parties. Guido  was conspicuous among these leaders ; Dante, as has been said, among  these Priors. The place of exile, Sarzana, proved to be pestilent with  fever ; and although Guido and the Cerchi, less culpable than Corso,  were recalled within the year, it was too late. A few months after-  ward, the 28th or 29th of August, 1300, Guido died. " E fu gran  dommaggio" wrote Dino.   It was a strange preparation for "gentle and gracious rhymes  of love," — this short, tumultuous, hate-driven career. Yet there is  but one direct echo of the feudist in all Guido's verse, — a sonnet  to a kinsman, Nerone Cavalcanti. Nerone had made Florence too     To flee the vulgar herd was once thy way,  To bar the many from thine amity ;  Of me thou spakest then so cordially  When thou hadst set thy verse in full array.   But now I dare not, so thy life is base,   Make manifest that I approve thine art,  Nor come to thee so thou mayst see my face.   Yet if this sonnet thou wilt take to heart,   The perverse spirit leading thee this chase  Out of thy soul polluted shall depart.     14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   hot for the rival Buondelmonti, and Guido hails him with ironical  deprecation.   Novelle ti so dire, odi, Nerone,   che' Bondelmonti treman di paura,   e tutt* i fiorentin' no li assicura,   udendo dir che tu a* cor di leone.   E piu treman di te che d' un dragone  veggendo la tua faccia, ch* e si dura  che no la riterria ponte ne mura  se non la tomba del re faraone.   De ! com' tu fai grandissimo peccato  si alto sangue voler discacciare,  che tutti vanno via sanza ritegno.   Ma ben e ver che ti largar lo pegno,  di che potrai V anima salvare  se fossi paziente del mercato. 1   Guido's disdainful temper both piqued and puzzled his townsfolk.  Sacchetti's anecdote 2 of the Florentine small boy who, having slyly  nailed Guido's gown to his bench, then teased him until the irate  gentleman tried — naturally to his discomfiture — to chase him, has   1 News have I for thee, Nero, in thine ear.   They of the Buondelmonte quake with dread,  Nor by all Florence may be comforted,  For that thou hast a lion's heart they hear.   And more than any dragon thee they fear,   For looking on thy face they are as dead :  Bastion nor bridge against it stands in stead,  Nor less than Pharaoh's grave were barrier.   Marry ! but thou hast done a wicked thing,   Having the heart to scatter such high blood,  For without let now one and all they flee.   And 'sooth, a truce-bait too they proffered thee,  So that thy soul might still be with the Good,  Hadst but had stomach for the bargaining.   For the first quatrain of this sonnet I have slightly altered Rossetti's translation.  In the rest a mistaken understanding of the sonnet as if addressed to the pope  has misled him. 2 // aVm 53^     OF GUIDO CA VALCANTI \ 5   its point in a very human satisfaction at the scorner scorned. Boc-  caccio's novella 1 is more significant, illustrating vividly, if perhaps  by a fictitious occurrence only, the subtle mingling of awe and defi-  ance which Guido inspired. Boccaccio's " character " of Guido is a  eulogy. " He was one of the best thinkers (Joici) in the world and  an accomplished lay philosopher (filosofo naturale), . . . and withal a  most engaging, elegant, and affable gentleman, easily first in what-  ever he undertook, and in all that befitted his rank." This character,  together with the mood of tragic doubt upon which the point of Boc-  caccio's narrative turns, inevitably, if tritely, brings to mind Ophelia's  character of Hamlet :   The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword ;  The expectancy and rose of the fair state,  The glass of fashion and the mould of form,  The observed of all observers. . . .   But, if we may still trust Boccaccio, " that noble and most sovereign  reason " of Guido was also " out of tune and harsh " with scrupulous  doubt ; " so that lost in speculation, he became abstracted from men.  And since he held somewhat to the opinion of the Epicureans, gossip  among the vulgar had it that these speculations of his only went to  establish, if established it might be, that there was no God."   Boccaccio does not call Guido an atheist ; that was mere vulgar  gossip. He does not even declare him a convinced Epicurean, one  of those who with his own father   . . . P anima col corpo morta fanno.   Boccaccio's charge is qualified : " he held somewhat to the opinion  of the Epicureans " {egli alquanto tmea della opinione degli Epicurj).  Dante's commentator, indeed, Benvenuto da Imola, is more cate-  gorical and extreme : " Errorem, quern pater habebat ex ignorantia,  ipse (Guido) conabatur defendere per scientiam." Benvenuto is even  remoter in time, however, than Boccaccio ; and his phrasing suggests  at least a mere perpetuation of that vulgar gossip which Boccaccio con-  temptuously records. But can we trust Boccaccio's own testimony?  At least there is no antecedent improbability. Skepticism was  common, especially in the highly educated class to which Guido   1 Decam^ VI, 9.     1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   belonged ; and it was not unnatural at any rate for him to weigh  carefully an opinion held by his own father. Again, there is noth-  ing in either his life or writings to indicate an active faith. Much  indeed has been made of his " pilgrimage " to the shrine of St. James  at Compostella; but the mood of this was so little serious that a  pretty face at Toulouse was enough to change his intention. The  ironical sonnet of Muscia of Siena is a hint that his contemporaries  could not take him very seriously as a pious pilgrim; and Muscia  stresses Guido's excuse for breaking his supposed vow that there was  no vow in the case — " non v' era botio" Guido may have started in  a moment of reaction from his doubt — does not doubt itself imply  a wavering will ? He may have left Florence as a matter of prudence  — Corso tried to have him assassinated on the way as it was. As  for his writings, these, considering the intimate theological associa-  tions of the school of Guinizelli, are noticeably barren of religious  feeling or phrase ; and he certainly scandalized the worthy, if narrow,  Orlandi by his jesting sonnet about the thaumaturgic shrine of "my  Lady." The hypothetical confirmation of Guido's skepticism, on the  other hand, in his "disdain for Virgil, ,, mentioned by Dante in his  answer to the elder Cavalcanti's question 1 why Dante's "first friend "  had not accompanied him, has beendiscredited after twenty years of  support by its own proposer, D'Ovidio. The passage is, to be sure,  still a moot question ; and D'Ovidio, even in the zeal of his recanta-  tion, still admits the allegorical taking of it to be plausible as a sec-  ondary intention on Dante's part. In any case, even waiving the  confirmation, the tradition of Guido's skepticism is not impugned ; and  in view of the persistent tradition, and of the antecedent probability  in its favor, the burden of disproof would seem to rest on those who  reject the tradition. Meanwhile, I propose to test the credibility of  the tradition by assuming it. If the assumption proves to be a factor  in a coherent and credible interpretation of Guido's poetry, the credi-  bility of the assumption proportionately increases. The argument  is of course a circle, but I think not a vicious circle.   There is also another tradition, which happens likewise to be sub-  sidiary to the same end. As the one tradition charges Guido with  unfaith in religion, so the other charges him with faithlessness in love.   i Inf., X, 60.     OF GUIDO CA VALCANTI \ 7   Recently Mr. Maurice Hewlett, in his Masque of Dead Florentines,  has seized upon this supposed fickleness of Guido as Guido's char-  acteristic trait. Guido is made to say :   My way was best.  From lip to lip I past, from grove to grove :  I am like Florence ; they call me Light o' Love.   I am dubious indeed about that literal criticism which surmises a  " family skeleton " in every locked sonnet. Heine assuredly reckoned  without his Scholar when he complained :   Diese Welt glaubt nicht an Flammen,  Und sie nimmt's fur Poesie.   When Guido writes a sonnet describing how Love had wounded him  with three arrows, — Beauty, Desire, Hope of Grace, — it is hardly fair  for Rossetti to entitle his own translation He speaks of a third love  of his. Rossetti the scholar should have known better. Of course  Guido is simply copying a conceit from the Romance of the Rose : the  three arrows are three arrows from the eyes of one lady, not of three  ladies. Again, it is almost worse when poor Guido essays a pretty  pastourelle, which is by definition a gallant adventure between a pass-  ing knight and a shepherdess, to discuss the " peccadillo " in a solemn  footnote ! Yet Rossetti, himself a poet, does so. Nay, Guido's latest  learned editor, Signor Rivalta, speaks 1 of his singing "anche i suoi  desideri meno puri e piu umani come nella ballata :   In un boschetto trovai pasturella . . ."   This ballata is the pastourelle in question. Stifl, waiving such pseudo-  revelations of a stethoscopic criticism, there are, considering the  meagerness of Guido\s poetical remains, hints enough besides the  mention of several ladies — Mandetta, Pinella, and by, inference her  whom Dante calls Giovanna — to accept with discretion sober Guido  Orlandi's perhaps malicious insinuation, when he inquires of Guido  Cavalcanti concerning the nature, the effects, the virtues of Love :   Io ne domando voi, Guido, di lui :  odo che molto usate in la sua corte ;   1 Le Rime di Guido Cavalcanti^ Bologna, 1902, p. 23.     1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   and even the cruder implication in Orlandi's boast of his chaster mind :   Io per lung' uso disusai lo primo  amor carnale : non tangio nel limo.   Reckless feudist, unbeliever, " light o' love," squire of dames, pro-  found thinker, gracious gentleman — a perplexing motley of a man;  it is no wonder that his poetry, reflecting himself, more easily with  its many-faceted light dazzles rather than illumines the understand-  ing. In addition, one has to contend in his more doctrinal pieces,  especially in the famous canzone of love, with a rigorous scholastic  terminology dovetailed into a most intricate metrical schema, and with  a text at the best corrupt. In spots Guido — as we have him — is  as hopeless as Persius; yet we may waive these and still venture  upon a general interpretation.   In general, Guido's love poems hinge upon two parallel but opposite  moods, — a radiant mood of worshipful admiration of his lady, a tragic  mood of despair wrought in him by his love of her. His sight of  her is a rapture, as in the most magnificent of his sonnets, beginning  " Chi e questa che ven ":   Chi e questa che ven ch' ogn' om la mira  e fa tremar di chiaritate V a're,  e mena seco amor si che parlare  null' omo pote, ma ciascun sospira?   O Deo, che sembra quando li occhi gira   dica '1 Amor, ch' i' no '1 savria contare :   cotanto d' umilta donna mi pare,   ch' ogn' altra ver di lei i' la chiam' ira.   Non si poria contar la sua piagenza,   ch' a lei s' inchina ogni gentil virtute,  e la beltate per sua dea la mostra.   * Non f u si alta gia la mente nostra   e non si pose in noi tanta salute,   che propriamente n' aviam canoscenza. 1   1 Lo! who is this which cometh in men's eyes  And maketh tremulously bright the air,  And with her bringeth love so that none there  Might speak aloud, albeit each one sighs ?     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 19   The sonnet is a superb tribute ; but it is also more. It contains,  as I conceive, the pivotal idea in Guido's philosophy of love, —  namely, in the lines describing his mistress as   Lady of Meekness such, that by compare  All others as of Wrath I recognize,  (cotanto d* umilta donna mi pare,  ch' ogn' altra ver di lei i' la chiam' ira.)   Ira . . . umilta : wrath . . . meekness — the antithesis dominates  Guido's thought. Wrath is in his vocabulary the concomitant of  imperfection, of desire ; meekness the concomitant of perfection, of  peace. He, the lover, is therefore in a state of wrath ; she, the  lovable, in a state of meekness, —   Quiet she, he passion-rent.   The identification of passionate love with a state of wrath is fun-  damental in Guido's philosophy. It is the germinal idea of the  doctrinal canzone beginning " Donna mi prega." In answer to the  query as to the where and whence of the passion —   La ove si posa e chi lo fa creare —  he declares that   In quella parte dove sta memora   prende suo stato, si formato come  diaffan da lume, — d'una scuritate  la qual da Marte vene e fa dimora. 1   " In that part where memory is love has its being ; and, even as light  enters into an object to make it diaphanous, so there enters into the   Dear God, what seemeth if she turn her eyes  Let Love's self say, for I in no wise dare :  Lady of Meekness such, that by compare  All others as of Wrath I recognize.   Words might not body forth her excellence,  For unto her inclineth all sweet merit,  Beauty in her hath its divinity.   Nor was our understanding of degree,  Nor had abode in us so blest a spirit,  As might thereof have meet intelligence.  1 vv. 15-18. I use here as elsewhere the edition of Ercole Rival ta, Bologna, 1902.     20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   constitution of love a dark ray from Mars, which abides." Now Dante  conceives love as an emanation from the star of the third heaven, Venus,  along a bright ray : " I say then that this spirit (i.e. of love) comes  upon the * rays of the star ' (i.e. of the third heaven, Venus), because  you are to know that the rays of each heaven are the path whereby  their virtue descends upon things that are here below. And inas-  much as rays are no other than the shining which cometh from the  source of the light through the air even to the thing enlightened, and  the light is only in that part where the star is, because the rest of the  heaven is diaphanous (that is transparent), I say not that this ' spirit/  to wit this thought, cometh from their heaven in its totality but from  their star. Which star, by reason of nobility in them who move it, is  of so great virtue that it has extreme power upon our souls and upon  other affairs of ours," etc. 1 So Dante. Guido, on the other hand,  while accepting the notion of love as an emanation, holds the emana-  tion to be rather from the star of the fifth heaven, Mars, along a dark  ray. The power over the soul of this star is no less extreme than  that of Venus; only it is, in a sense, a power of darkness rather than  of light. It may strike at life itself —   Di sua potenza segue spesso morte. (v. 35)   The passion which its influence excites passes all normal bounds in  any case, destroying all healthful equilibrium :   L'esser e quando lo voler e tan to  ch' oltra misura di natura torna:  poi non s' adorna di riposo mai.  Move cangiando color riso e pianto  e la figura con paura stoma. . . . 2 (vv. 43-47)   Finally, — and here we reach the gist of the matter, — the influ-  ence of the choleric planet engenders sighs and fiery wrath in the   1 Conv.y II, vii. (Wicksteed's translation.)   2 It has its being when the passionate will   Beyond all measure of natural pleasure goes :  Then with repose unblest forever, starts  Laughter and tears, aye changing color still,  And on the face leaves pallid trace of woes.     OF GUIDO CA VALCANTI 2 I   lover, impotent to reach the ever-receding goal of his desire (non   fermato loco):   La nova qualita move sospiri   e vol ch' om miri in non fermato loco   destandos' ira, la qual manda foco. 1   This strangely pessimistic reading of love seems to have struck at  least one of Guido's contemporaries with indignant surprise, not only  at the apparent slight upon love, but also at the silence seeming to  give assent of other poets, especially of Dante. Cecco d'Ascoli, in his  Acerba, iii, 1, denies that so sweet a thing as love could emanate  from the planet Mars, seeing that from that planet rather " proceeds  violence with wrath " (procede Vimpeto con Fire) ; wherefore :   Errando scrisse Guido Cavalcanti. . . .  qui ben mi sdegna lo tacer di Danti.   In fact, Dante, in the sonnet in the sixteenth chapter of the New Life,  apparently alludes sympathetically to Guido's dark rays of love —   Spesse fiate vegnommi a la mente   l'oscure qualita ch' Amor mi dona —   and proceeds to describe, though not by this name, just such a  " state of wrath " in himself as Guido believes inseparable from love.  With Dante, of course, the mood is but passing. For him love is  in its essence a beneficent power.   For Guido also it might seem that this tragic wrath of desire is  not incurable. There is a power in meekness to overcome wrath  and to subdue wrath also to meekness. And the meek one is  impelled to exercise this power, to confer this boon, by pity for the  one suffering in wrath. It is the failure to follow this blessed  impulse for which Guido reproaches his lady in the octave of the  sonnet beginning " Un amoroso sguardo," when he says that she is one   . . . for whom availeth not  Nor grace nor pity nor the suffering state. . . .   (. . . verso cui non vale  Merzede ne pieta ne star soffrente. . . .)   1 The novel state incites to sighs, and makes  Man to pursue an ever-shifting aim,  Till in him wrath is kindled, spitting flame.     2 2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   Meekness, grace, pity, the suffering state of wrath — the terms have  a scriptural sound, and of right ; for they are actually scriptural anal-  ogies applied to love. Precisely this poetical analogy was the innova-  tion of Guido Guinizelli, whom Dante called " father of me and of my  betters," — of which last Guido Cavalcanti was in Dante's mind first,  if not alone. Before Guinizelli Italian poets had accepted the other  analogy of the troubadours of Provence, which applied to love the canon  of feudal homage. For these the lady of desire was as the haughty  baron to whom they owed servile fealty, and whose inaccessible mood  was not of gentle meekness but of cruel pride, claiming willfully of  her vassal perhaps life itself. But feudalism and its harsh canon  of service were alien to the Italian communes ; Italian poetry built  upon an analogy with it must needs be an affectation. These burgher  poets were only play knights; these frank Tuscan and Lombard girls  were only play barons. Affectation, the pen following not the dicta-  tion of the feelings but of hearsay feelings, — this is the precise charge  which Dante, from the standpoint of the " sweet new style," brings  against the older style. 1 But if as free burghers Italians could not  really feel the alien mood of feudal homage, yet as Christian gentle-  men they could, and should, sanctify their love of women with the  mood of religious awe. There need be no affectation in that. Free  burghers, they recognized no temporal overlord, no absolute baron ;  Catholics, they did believe in, and might with sincerity worship, min-  istering angels — "donne angelicate," the meek ones whom, as the  Psalmist had declared, the Lord has beautified with salvation.   Guido therefore can no more worthily praise his mistress than by  calling her his " Lady of Meekness." Indeed, by further analogy he  sets her above the angels themselves; for the Christ himself had said :  "Mitis sum et humilis corde — I am meek and lowly in heart." For him-  self, " passion-rent " in his love, the poet speaks as St. Paul, — " we . . .  had our conversation ... in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires  of the flesh and of the mind ; and were by nature the children of wrath  (filii irae)" And the merzede, the "grace," for which he sues — solu-  tion of wrath by the spirit of meekness — is again in accord with  Paul's promise to these very "children of wrath," — "By grace are ye  saved through faith" — faith, that is, in loving and serving the one  divinity as the other.   i Purg., XXIV, 49 seq.     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 23   This is pious doctrine indeed for the righting cavalier, skeptic, Love-  lace I have in a measure assumed Guido to be. Is then his love creed  also a pose, worse than the apes of Provence whom Dante exposed,  because he thus adds hypocrisy to affectation ? Well, if so, the same  Dante would hardly have hailed him as "first friend" in life and  master after Guinizelli in poetry, nor have outraged the memory of  Beatrice by associating her in the New Life with Guido's lady Joan.   The solution of the apparent antinomy lies in the meaning for  Guido of that rnerzede, that " grace," the granting of which by ; the  lady, the meek one, might appease the lover, the one in "wrath."  The term itself — Italian merzede or English " grace " — has a fourfold  significance according as it is a function of the lady, of the lover, or  of the reciprocal relationship between them. "Grace" in her signifies  her beatitude, her "meekness"; in him, his "merit" which through  faith and loving service deserves the boon, or "grace," of her con-  descension to redeem him from his "state of wrath," for which  condescension it would be befitting him to render thanks, "yield  graces, — a phrase now obsolete in English but used by Dante, —  render mercede. Of this fourfold intention of the term the one funda-  mentally doubtful is ,the " grace " which is constituted by the act of  condescension of the lady : what then is the grace or boon that the  lover asks and hopes ? In other words, what is the end of desire ?   The answer is no mystery. The end of desire is always possession,  in one sense or another, of the thing desired. In the practical sense  possession of the loved one means union, physical or social, or both,  sacramentally recognized, in marriage ; but the sacrament of marriage  allows a more mystical sense, presenting the ideal, hardly realizable  on earth, of a spiritual union which is also a unity of two in one :   The single pure and perfect animal,   The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke,   Life.   So Tennyson modernly ; but more in accord with the metaphysical  mood of Guido is the old Elizabethan phrasing :   So they loved, as love in twain  Had the essence but in one ;  Two distincts, division one:  Number there in love was slain.     24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   To the " gentle heart " there is no love but highest love ; there is  no union but perfect union, wherein two shall   Be one, and one another's all.   Until the "gentle heart " may attain to that perfect union its desire  is unappeased, its " wrath " unsubdued. Tennyson premises it for  the right marriage; but there is ever the doubter ready to remark  that if such marriages are really made in heaven, they certainly  are kept there. Human sympathy cannot quite bridge the span  between two souls: self remains self; and though hands meet and  lips touch and wills accord, there is always something deeper still,  inexpressible, unreachable.   Yes ! in the sea of life enisled,  With echoing straits between us thrown,  Dotting the shoreless watery wild,  We mortal millions live alone.   In vain, says Aristophanes in Plato's Banquet, in vain, "after the  division (of the primeval man-woman in one), the two parts of man,  each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms  about one another eager to grow into one. . . ." True, Aristophanes  in effect goes on, Zeus in pity consoled the loneliness of dissevered  " man-woman " by physical union ; but that consolation the " gentle  heart " must forever regard as of itself inadequate and unworthy.   There is indeed a solution. Guinizelli and Dante read further into  the Banquet of Plato — or into the Christian doctrine built upon that  — to where the wise woman of Mantineia reveals the mysteries of a  love extending into a mystic otherworld — at least so Christians read  her teaching — where in the bosom of God all become as one. There  "wrath" is resolved into "meekness" perfectly.   The love of Guinizelli, and of Dante, was the love of happier men  of which Arnold speaks :   Of happier men — for they, at least,   Have dream '</ two human hearts might blend   In one, and were through faith released   From isolation without end   Prolong'd.     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 25   But if Guido, even as Arnold, lacked this faith, doubted this mystic  otherworld whither therefore he might not accompany his first friend  to find his Giovanna, as Dante his Beatrice, perfect in meekness,  purged of all wrath, and to learn from her release hereafter from the  dividing flesh, union at last with her spirit at peace ? — if he was of  those, even uncertainly wavered with those, who   . . . F anima col corpo morta f anno ? —   then indeed for him, in degree as his desire was ideally exalted,  so its grace, its merzede, became an irony, a tragic paradox. His  must be a passionate loneliness forever teased by an illusion, a  phantom mate of its own conjuring. And I at least so understand  the concluding words of the canzone :   For di colore d'esser e diviso,   assiso mezzo scuro luce rade :   for d'onne fraude dice, degno in fede,   che solo di costui nasce mercede. 1   That is, the only love of which grace is born, entire possession  granted, is love of the dim immaterial idea, — " la figlia della sua  tnente, Vamorosa idea" as Leopardi calls it. Ixion embraces his  Cloud. Guido's lady's desirable perfection, her " meekness," exists not  in her, but in his glorified ideal of her, " bereft " as that is " of color   1 Bereft is (love) of color of existence,   Seated half dark, it bars the light (i.e. which might make it visible).  Without deceit one saith, worthy of faith,  That born of such a love alone is grace.   Rivalta's reading without in would apparently make mezzo adverbial. The com-  moner reading, " assiso in mezzo oscuro luce rade' 1 more naturally gives mezzo as  a noun: " seated in a dark medium," etc. The meaning is not substantially  different. The reading in mezzo, however, is more suggestive, as implying not  only the immateriality of the mental fact but also the darkening of the " medium,"  i.e. the imagination, by the " Martian " ray of passion. The assertion of the  invisibility of love is in answer to Guido Orlandi's question restated by Caval-  canti in v. 1 4 — " s* omo per veder lo po y mostrare." Question and answer are alike  absurd, however, unless we understand "love" to mean the object loved, which it  may naturally do ; one's §l love " means both one's passion and one's lady.     26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   of existence." Therefore Guido's mood is essentially one with Leo-  pardi's when the latter exclaims :   Solo il mio cor piaceami, e col mio core  In un perenne ragionar sepolto,  Alia guardia seder del mio dolore. 1   Guido has himself described with quaint " preraphaelite " symbol-  ism the process of progressive detachment of the ideal from the  real in the ballata beginning " Veggio ne gli occhi."   Cosa m* avien quand* i' le son presente  ch' i' no la posso a lo 'ntelletto dire :  veder mi par de la sua labbia uscire  una si belladonna, che la mente  comprender no la pu6 ; che 'nmantenente  ne nasce un* altra di bellezza nova,  da la qual par ch' una Stella si mova  e dica: la salute tua e apparita. 2   The imagery here is manifestly in accord with contemporary pictorial  symbolism, in which souls as living manikins issue forth from the  lips of the dead; but the significance of the passage is, I take it, at  one with that of the so-called Platonic " ladder of love " by which  through successive abstractions the pure idea, the intelligible virtue,  is reached. The following stanza in the same ballata again defines  this "virtue" as "meekness," and again declares it to be merely  " intelligible,"   for di colore d' esser . . . diviso,  assiso mezzo scuro luce rade ;   1 Only my heart pleased me, and with my heart  In a communing without cease absorbed,   Still to keep watch and ward o'er my own smart.   2 Something befalleth me when she is by   Which unto reason can I not make clear:   Meseems I see forth through her lips appear   Lady of fairness such that faculty   Man hath not to conceive ; and presently   Of this one springs another of new grace,   Who to a star then seemeth to give place,   Which saith: Thy blessedness hath been with thee.     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 27   only instead of the metaphysical directness of the canzone, the poet  employs the theological tropes of the dolce stil.   La dove questa bella donna appare  s'ode una voce che le ven davanti,  e par che d' umilta '1 su' nome canti  si dolcemente, che s' P '1 vo' contare  sento che '1 su* valor mi fa tremare.  E movonsi ne 1' anima sospiri  che dicon : guarda, se tu costei miri  vedrai la sua vertu nel ciel salita. 1   And now the tragic note in Guido's is explained. It is neither  the polite fiction, the " pathetic fallacy " of the Sicilian school, nor  yet the quickly passing shadow of this life set between Dante and the  sun of his desire.   La tua magnificenza in me custodi,   SI che P anima mia che fatta hai sana,  Piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi.   Cosi orai . . . 2   "So I prayed," writes Dante, triumphant in expectation ; but for those  Che 1 'anima col corpo morta fanno,   there could be health of soul neither now nor hereafter. Wherefore  Guido's text in the analysis of his own passion is in all literalness  the words of the Preacher, — " All his days ... he eateth in dark-  ness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath in his sickness." Until   1 There where this gentle lady comes in sight   Is heard a voice which moveth her before  And, singing, seemeth that Meekness to adore  Which is her name, so sweetly, that aright  I may not tell for trembling at its might.  And then within my soul there gather sighs  Which say: Lo ! unto this one turn thine eyes:  Her virtue to heaven wingeth visibly.   2 Farad., XXXI, 88-91.     28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   Guido prays indeed for release in death, not triumphantly as Dante,  but piteously, in the spirit of Leopardi's words in Amore e Morte:   Nova, sola, infinita  Felicita . . . il suo (the lover's) pensier figura :  Ma per cagion di lei grave procella  Presentendo in suo cor, brama quiete,  Brama raccorsi in porto  Dinanzi al fier disio,  Che gia, rugghiando, intorno intorno oscura. 1   Poi, quando tutto avvolge  La formidabil possa,  E fulmina nel cor Tinvitta cura,  Quante volte implorata  Con desiderio intenso,  Morte, sei tu dair affanoso amante ! 2   Precisely in this mood Guido invokes death :   Morte gientil, rimedio de' cattivi,   merze merze a man giunte ti cheggio :  vienmi a vedere e prendimi, che peggio  mi face amor : che mie' spiriti vivi   1 Not only are Guido and Leopardi saying the same thing in effect, but even  their figures of speech are in accord. There is evident similarity of symbolism  between the soul-darkening storm blast of the one and the soul-darkening Martian  ray of the other ; although doubtless the mediaeval poet may have conceived his  " dark ray " as a real phenomenon.   2 New, infinite, unique  Felicity ... he pictures to his mind :  And yet because of it the wrath of storm  Foreboding in his heart, he longs for calm,  Longs for the quiet haven  Far from that fierce desire,  Which even now, rumbling, darkens all around.   Then, when o'erwhelmeth him  The fury of its might,   And in his heart thunders unconquerable care,  How many times he calls  In agony of need,  Death, upon thee in his extremity !     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 29   son consumati e spenti si, che quivi,  dov* i' stava gioioso, ora mi veggio  in parte, lasso, la dov' io posseggio  pena e dolor con pianto : e vuol ch' arrivi   ancora in piu di mal s' esser piu puote ;  perche tu, morte, ora valer mi puoi  di trarmi de le man di tal nemico.   Aime ! lasso quante volte dico :   amor, perche fai mal pur sol a' tuoi  come quel de lo 'nferno che i percuote ? 1   At other times Guido describes the combat to the death between  his " spirits " of life and love. He enlarges his canvas and, calling  to aid a whole dramatis personae of the various " souls " and " animal  spirits " of scholastic psychology, objectifies his mood into miniature  epic and drama. This mythology of the inner world arose naturally  enough to mind from the ambiguity of the term " spirits," meaning  at once bodily humors and bodiless but personal creatures ; and  in Guido's delicate handling the symbolism is singularly effective.  Only by exaggeration of imitation did it grow stale and ludicrous,  meriting the jibes of Onesto da Bologna at such " sporte piene di   1 Gentle death, refuge of th' unfortunate,   Mercy, mercy with clasp'd hands I implore :  Loo^ down upon me, take me, since more sore  Hath been love's dealing : in so evil state   Are brought the spirits of my life, that late   Where I stood joyous, now I stand no more,  But find me where, alas ! I have much store  Of pain and grief with weeping : and my fate   Yet wills more woe if more of woe might be ;   Wherefore canst thou, death, now avail alone  To loose the clutch of such an enemy.   How many times I say, Ah woe is me 1   Love, wherefore only wrongest thou thine own,  As he of hell from his wrings misery ?     3Q     THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE     spiriti." The following curiously rhymed sonnet may illustrate his  manner in this kind.   L' anima mia vilment' e sbigotita   de la battaglia ch* ell' ave dal core,  che, s T ella sente pur un poco amore  piu presso a lui che non sole, la more.   Sta come quella che non a valore,   ch' e per temenza da lo cor partita :  e chi vedesse com' ell* e fuggita  diria per certo : questi non a vita.   Per gli occhi venne la battaglia in pria,  che ruppe ogni valore immantenente  si, che del colpo fu strutta la mente.   Qualunqu* e quei che piu allegrezza sente,  se vedesse li spirti fuggir via,  di grande sua pietate piangeria. 1   It transpires then for Guido as for Leopardi that the only grace,  the only boon of peace, to which love leads is death ; and so is verified   1 The spirit of my life is sore bested   By battle whereof at heart she heareth cry,   So, that if but a little closer by   Love than his wont she feeleth, she must die.   She is as one dejected utterly ;   The heart she hath deserted in her dread :  And who perceiveth how that she is fled,  Saith of a certainty : This man is dead.   First through the eyes swept down the battle-tide,  Which broke incontinently all defense,  And by its wrath wrecked the intelligence.   Whoever he that most of joy hath sense,  Yet if he saw the spirits scattered wide,  In his excess of pity must have sighed.     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI %\   the warning of those who came to meet him when he first entered the  court of love :   Quando mi vider, tutti con pietanza  dissermi : fatto se' di tal servente  che mai non dei sperare altro che morte. 1   In reality, he knows the futility of any appeal to his lady for aid.  She is indeed the innocent occasion of his suffering, but of it she is  a mere passive spectator, hardly understanding it, and certainly help-  less to relieve it ; and so Guido himself describes her in the sonnet  beginning " S' io prego questa donna." In the midst of his agony,   Allora par che ne la mente piova  una figura di donna pensosa,  che vegna per veder morir lo core. 2   Here then at last we find the explanation of his interpretation of  Dante's sonnet, when he said that love fed Dante's heart to his lady,   vegendo  che vostra donna la morte chedea.   She claimed its death not willfully indeed, as the capricious mistress  of Ulrich von Lichtenstein " claimed " his mutilation, but innocently,  unwittingly, in that her beauty was as a firebrand, her perfection, her  " meekness," a goal of unavailing consuming desire. She is helpless  to relieve him, because — and here is the core of the matter — it is  not she, not the real woman, that he loves, but that idealization of  her which exists only in his own mind —   for di colore d' esser e diviso,   assiso mezzo scuro luce rade.   Compared with this glorified phantom "nel ciel (that is, into the  intelligible world) salita," the real woman also is but "ira," wrath  and imperfection. So he pines for his lady of dreams, who thus a   1 When they beheld me, unto me all cried   Pitiful : bondman art thou made of one   Such that for nought else mayst thou look but death.   2 " Into my mind then seems it that there rays a figure of a pensive lady, com-  ing to behold my heart die."     32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   ghostly " vampire " feeds upon his human heart ; but the real woman,  " the woman who does not understand," is no longer of moment to  him. She is, as it were, but the nameless model to his artist mind.  When that has drawn from her all that is of fitness for its master-  piece, it straightway leaves her for another otherwise completing the  ideal type. Giovanna passes ; Mandetta arrives.   Una giovane donna di Tolosa   bell' e gentil, d' onesta leggiadria,   tant' e diritta e simigliante cosa,   ne' suoi dolci occhi, de la donna mia,   ch' e fatta dentro al cor desiderosa   P anima in guisa, che da lui si svia  e vanne a lei ; ma tant* e paurosa,  che no le dice di qual donna sia.   Quella la mira nel su* dolce sguardo,  ne lo qual face rallegrare amore,  perche v' e dentro la sua donna dritta.   Po' torna, piena di sospir, nel core,   ferita a morte d* un tagliente dardo,  che questa donna nel partir li gitta. 1   Plainly it is not of Giovanna, nor of any actual woman, but of his  ideal woman, of whom Giovanna herself was but a reminiscence, that   1 A lady of Toulouse, young and most fair,  Gentle, and of unwanton joyousness,  So is the very image and impress,  In her sweet eyes, of one I name in prayer,   That my soul's wish is more than it can bear :   Wherefore it 'scapeth from the heart's duress  And cometh unto her ; yet for distress  What lady it obeys may not declare.   She looketh on it with her gentle mien,   Whereunto by the will of love it yearns,  Because that lady there it may perceive.   Then to the heart it, full of sighs, returns,  Unto death wounded by an arrow keen,  The which this lady loosed when taking leave.     OF GUIDO CA VALCANTI 33   Mandetta reminds him. In her turn Mandetta will pass also. Then  will come Pinella, or another — what does it matter? What cared  Zeuxis for any one of his five Crotonian maidens, once each in her  turn had supplied that particular trait of loveliness which only she,  perhaps, had to offer, but had to offer only ?   Mentre ch* alia belta, ch* i* viddi in prima  Apresso V alma, che per gli ochi vede,  L' inmagin dentro crescie, e quella cede  Quasi vilmente e senza alcuna stima. 1   The words are Michelangelo's, but the idea is in effect Guido's. And  it is an idea which, I think, renders perfectly compatible in him con-  stancy in ideal love with inconstancy in real loves. To keep faith  with perfection is to break faith with imperfection. The love of  Guido brooked no compromise. The perfect one might be unattain-  able in this life; perfect union with her, even if found, might be  impossible in this life; there might be no other life than this so  marred by the perpetual " state of wrath " to which his impossible  desire in its impotence doomed him ; yet nevertheless Guido was  willing to be damned for the greater glory of Love.   In conclusion, I would quote a passage from the elegy to Aspasia  of Leopardi, which puts into modern phrasing exactly what I con-  ceive to be Guido's intention, obscured as that is for us by its  scholastic terminology and its mixture of chivalric and obsolete  psychological imagery. Especially I would call attention to the  precisely similar way in which Leopardi, like Guido, combines in his  mood the loftiest idealization of Woman with the most contemptuous  conception of women. So Hamlet insults, even while he adores.  Dante too had his cynical time, to judge from Beatrice's immortal  rebuke, — when he   . . . volse i passi suoi per via non vera,  Imagini di ben seguendo false.   1 While to the beauty, which first drew my gaze,   My soul I open, which looketh through the eyes,  The inward image grows, the outward dies  In scorn away, unworthy all of praise.     34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE   But Dante was saved from ultimate cynicism, ultimate unfaith, by the  promise of perfect union with his ideal in paradise. That promise  Guido, like Leopardi, rejected.  Here is Leopardi's confession :   Raggio divino al mio pensiero apparve,  Donna, la tua belta. Simile effetto  Fan la bellezza e i musicali accordi,  Ch' alto mistero d* ignorati Elisi  Paion sovente rivelar. Vagheggia  II piagato mortal quindi la figlia  Delia sua mente, l'amorosa idea,  Che gran parte d* Olimpo in se racchiude,  Tutta al volto, ai costumi, alia favella  Pari alia donna che il rapito amante  Vagheggiare ed amar confuso estima.  Or questa egli non gia, ma quella, ancora  Nei corporali amplessi, inchina ed ama.  Alfin Perrore e gli scambiati oggetti  Conoscendo, s' adira . . .   (" Sadira /" — " is wrathful " — Leopardi's very words form a gloss  to Guido's. But as little as Guido's is Leopardi's wrath directed  against the real woman, innocent occasion of his illusion and disillu-  sion. Leopardi continues :)   . . . e spesso incolpa  La donna a torto. A quella eccelsa imago  Sorge di rado il femminile ingegno;  E ci6 che inspira ai generosi amanti  La sua stessa belta, donna non pensa,  Ne comprender potria. . . .   (" The woman who does not understand " !)   . . . Non cape in quelle  Anguste fronti ugual concetto. E male  Al vivo sfolgorar di quegli sguardi  Spera V uomo ingannato, e mal richiede  Sensi profondi, sconosciuti, e molto  Piu che virili, in chi dell' uomo al tutto     OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 35   Da nature e minor. Che se piu molli  E piu tenui le membra, essa la mente  Men capace e men forte anco riceve. 1   So the idealist skeptic of the nineteenth century aligns himself  with the idealist skeptic of the thirteenth, even to that last truly  mediaeval touch — confusio hominis est femina. And, if I have not  somewhere gone off on a tangent, I have described my circle. Guido's  philosophy of love at least fits with the hypothesis of his skepticism,  and a practical consequence of both would be that actual fickleness  of heart to which tradition again bears witness.   1 A ray celestial to my thought appeared,  Lady, thy loveliness. Similar effects  Have beauty and those harmonies of music  Which the high mystery of unfathomed heavens  Seem ofttimes to illumine. Even so  Enamoured man upon the daughter broods  Of his own fancy, the amorous idea,  Which great part of Olympus comprehends,  In feature all, in manner, and in speech  Unto the woman like, whom, rapturous man,  In his false lights he seems to see and love.  Yet her he doth not, but that other, even  In corporal embracings, crave and love.  Until, his error and the intent transferred  Perceiving, he grows wrathful ; and oft blames  With wrong the woman. To that ideal height  Rarely indeed the wit of woman rises ;  And that which is in gentle hearts inspired  By her own beauty, woman dreams not of,  Nor yet might understand. No room have those  Too straitened foreheads for such thoughts. And fondly  Upon the spirited flashing of that glance  Builds the infatuate man, and fondly seeks  Meanings profound, undreamt-of, and much more  Than masculine, in one than man in all  By kind inferior. For if more tender,  More delicate of limb, so with a mind  Less broad, less vigorous is she endowed.

GRICE E CAVALLO: HOMO ELECTRICVS

 Mary Shelley Who put the spark in Frankenstein’s monster? On the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s gothic horror, a new edition discusses its roots in experiments with electricity on the dead  Jamie Doward Sun 4 Mar 2018 09.00 EST Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare via Email  4 years old It is one of the most famous novels of all time, often cited as the first work of science fiction, with a genesis almost as well known as its terrifying central character.  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus was published 200 years ago in 1818, when she was just 21. It was the result of a challenge laid down in 1816 by Lord Byron, when Shelley and her lover – later her husband – Byron’s fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley were holidaying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland.  The party had hoped for good weather, but the eruption of a volcano in the East Indies in 1815, the greatest event of its kind in recorded history, had ushered in three years of bone-chilling cold that killed crops and cast a shadow across Europe. As they huddled for warmth around a fire one night, Byron suggested each of them should write a horror story.  For days Shelley suffered writer’s block until she came up with the idea of a scientist who reanimated a creature stitched together from body parts, only to be horrified by his success. Some believe Shelley was inspired by a trip to Germany, where she is thought to have learned the legend of Frankenstein Castle and one of its 17th-century inhabitants, an alchemist called Johann Conrad Dippel, who was rumoured to have exhumed bodies for experimentation.  But it now appears Shelley’s true source of inspiration for Victor Frankenstein’s monster was considerably closer to home. In a foreword to a new edition of the classic, to be published by Oxford University Press next month, Nick Groom, of Exeter University, sometimes referred to as the “Prof of Goth”, suggests it was her husband’s fascination with galvanism – chemically generated electricity – that sparked her imagination.  Mary Shelley.Mary Shelley. Photograph: Getty Images Percy Shelley, one of Britain’s most cherished Romantic poets and author of the celebrated sonnet Ozymandias, was fascinated by science, in particular the creation of electricity. “He was very excited by galvanic apparatus,” Groom explained. “His sister, Helen, would recall that he would, as she put it, ‘practise electricity upon us’. He used to make all the family sit around the dining room table holding hands, and he’d turn up with some brown paper, a bottle and a wire and they’d all get electrocuted.”  On one occasion Percy even threatened to electrocute the son of his scout at Oxford University.  Mary and Percy enjoyed a symbiotic working relationship. She corrected his proofs and he helped edit Frankenstein. But Groom is clear that the book was, contrary to what some have argued, Mary’s creation. “The work is by her and should be attributed to her.”  Sent down in 1811 from Oxford for co-authoring a pamphlet on atheism, Percy attended anatomy classes for a term at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London.. “One of the things she would have got from talking to her husband about laboratories was that they were really filthy places,” Groom said. “The cadavers would be in a state of advanced putrefaction when they arrived. These were not antiseptic places full of chaps in white coats. They were unpleasant. The word filthy turns up a lot in Frankenstein. There was something really disreputable about medical science, which Mary Shelley is fascinated in.”  She would have been aware of notorious public experiments involving galvanism. “There was a particularly chilling one in London in 1803 when galvanism was used on the body of an executed criminal,” Groom said. “The very first thing that happened was that the corpse opened its eyes. A very Frankenstein moment.”  At the time Mary was writing, the rights of animals had become a concern for many of the intelligentsia. “The being that Victor creates knows he’s not human but still believes that he should have rights,” Groom said. “Part of the conundrum of the novel is, do you afford comparable rights to non-human sentient creatures?”  Two centuries on, the novel continues to shape contemporary thinking, Groom suggested, posing questions about matters such as artificial intelligence and genetic modification.  But Mary’s astonishing foresight has yet to be fully recognised.  “Her reputation has been overtaken by the films, which have oversimplified these questions in ways that don’t really reflect the sophistication of her novel,” Groom said. “Boris Karloff’s monster has none of the subtlety that the being has in the novel. He’s not a zombie, he’s intelligent and sentient.  “People need to see this as a novel for today. It’s very much entangled with the pressing questions of humanity, which still concern us.”

GRICE E CAZZANIGA BACCHANALIVM

 THE    MASCULINE   CROSS   t               PHALLIC WORSHIP     PHALLIC WORSHIP    A DESCRIPTION OF THE MYSTERIES   OF THE   SEX WORSHIP OF THE ANCIENTS   WITH THE HISTORY OF   THE MASCULINE CROSS    AN ACCOUNT OF   PRIMITIVE SYMBOLISM, HEBREW PHALLICISM,  BACCHIC FESTIVALS, SEXUAL RITES, AND  THE MYSTERIES OF THE ANCIENT FAITHS    LONDON   PRIVATELY PRINTED   1880       PREFACE    The present somewhat slight sketch of a most interesting  subject, whilst not claiming entire originality, yet embraces  the cream, so to speak, of various learned works of great cost,  some of which being issuedfor private circulation only, are almost  unobtainable.   During the past few years several books have been written  upon Phallicism in conjunction with other kindred matters,  but not devoting themselves entirely to one ancient mystery,  the writers have only partially ventilated the subject. The  present work seeks to obviate this failing by confining its  attention entirely to the Sex Worship or Phallicism of the  ancient world.   Many of the topics have received only slight treatment,  being little more than indicated ; but the work will enable the  reader to understand and possess the truth concerning the  Phallic Worship of the Ancients.   Those who desire to know more, or to authenticate the  statements and facts given in this book, should consult the large  and important works of Payne Knight, Higgins, Dulaure,  Kolle, Inman, and other writers.   It was intended to give with this volume a list of works  and miscellaneous pieces written on the subject, but the length  of the list prevented its being added.        PHALLIC WORSHIP    NATURE AND SEX WORSHIP   Sex Worship has prevailed among all peoples of ancient  times, sometimes contemporaneous and often mixed with  Star, Serpent, and Tree Worship. The powers of nature  were sexualised and endowed with the same feelings,  passions, and performing the same functions as human  beings.   Among the ancients, whether the Sun, the Serpent,  or the Phallic Emblem was worshipped, the idea was the  same—the veneration of the generative principle. Thus  we find a close relationship between the various  mythologies of the ancient nations, and by a comparison  of the creeds, ideas, and symbols, can see that they spring  from the same source, namely, the worship of the forces  and operations of nature, the original of which was doubt¬  less Sun worship. It is not necessary to prove that in  primitive times the Sun must have been worshipped  under various names, and venerated as the Creator,  Light, Source of Life, and the Giver of Food.   In the earliest times the worship of the generative  power was of the most simple and pure character, rude  in manner, primitive in form, pure in idea, the homage  of man to the supreme power, the Author of life.   Afterwards the worship became more depraved, a  religion of feeling, sensuous bliss, corrupted by a priest-    8    Phallic Worship    hood who were not slow to take advantage of this state  of affairs, and inculcated with it profligate and mysterious  ceremonies, union of gods with women, religious prosti¬  tution and other degrading rites. Thus it was not long  before the emblems lost their pure and simple meaning  and became licentious statues and debased objects.   Hence we have the depraved ceremonies at the worship  of Bacchus, who became, not only the representative  of the creative power, but the God of pleasure and  licentiousness.   The corrupted religion always found eager votaries,  willing to be captives to a pleasant bondage by the  impulse of physical bliss, as was the case in India and  Egypt, and among the Phoenicians, Babylonians, Jews  and other nations.   Sex worship once personified became the supreme and  governing deity, enthroned as the ruling God over all;  dissent therefrom was impious and punished. The priests  of the worship compelled obedience; monarchs complied  to the prevailing faith and became willing devotees to the  shrines of Isis and Venus on the one hand, and of Bacchus  and Priapus on the other, by appealing to the most  animating passion of nature.    PHALLICISM   This is the worship of the reproductive powers, the  sexual appointments revered as the emblems of the  Creator. The one male, the active creative power;  the other the female or passive power ; ideas which were  represented by various emblems in different countries.     Phallic Worship    9    These emblems -were of a pure and sacred character,  and used at a time when the prophets and priests spoke  plain speech, understood by a rude and primitive people ;  although doubtless by the common people the emblems  were worshipped themselves, even as at the.present day  in Roman Catholic countries the more ignorant, in many  cases, actually worship the images and pictures themselves,  while to the higher and more intelligent minds they are  only symbols of a hidden object of worship. In the  same manner, the concealed meaning or hidden truth  was to the ignorant and rude people of early times entirely  unknown, while the priests and the more learned kept  studiously concealed the meaning of the ceremonies and  symbols. Thus, the primitive idea became mixed with  profligate, debased ceremonies, and lascivious rites,  which in time caused the more pure part of the worship  to be forgotten. But Phallicism is not to be judged  from these sacred orgies, any more than Christianity  from the religious excitement and wild excesses of a few  Christian sects during the Middle Ages.   In a work on the “ Worship of the Generative Powers  during the Middle Ages,” the writer traces the superstition  westward, and gives an account of its prevalence through¬  out Southern and Western Europe during that period.   The worship was very prevalent in Italy, and was  invariably carried by the Romans into the countries they  conquered, where they introduced their own institutions  and forms of worship. Accordingly, in Britain have  been found numerous relics and remains; and many  of our ancient customs are traced to a Phallic origin.  “ When we cross over to Britain,” says the writer, “ we  find this worship established no less firmly and extensively  in that island; statuettes of Priapus, Phallic bronzes.    IO    Phallic Worship    pottery covered with obscene pictures, are found wherever  there are any extensive remains of Roman occupation,  as our antiquaries know well. The numerous Phallic  figures in bronze found in England are perfectly identical  in character with those that occur in France and Italy.”   All antiquaries of any experience know the great number  of obscene subjects which are met with among the fine  red pottery which is termed Samian ware, found so  abundantly in all Roman sites in our island. “ They  represent erotic scenes, in every sense of the word, with  figures of Priapus and Phallic emblems.”    PHALLUS   The Phallus, or Lingam, which stood for the image  of the male organ, or emblem of creation, has been  worshipped from time immemorial. Payne Knight  describes it as of the greatest antiquity, and as having  prevailed in Egypt and all over Asia.   The women of the former country carried in their re¬  ligious processions, a movable Phallus of disproportionate  magnitude, which Deodorus Siculus informs us signified  the generative attribute. It has also been observed  among the idols of the native Americans and ancient  Scandinavians, while the Greeks represented the Phallus  alone, and changed the personified attribute into a distinct  deity, called Priapus.   Phallus, or privy member (membrum virile), signifies,  “ he breaks through, or passes into.” This word survives  in German pfahl, and pole in English. Phallus is supposed     Phallic Worship    ii    to be of Phoenician origin, the Greek word pallo, or  phallo , “ to brandish preparatory to throwing a missile,”  is so near in assonance and meaning to Phallus, that one  is quite likely to be parent of the other. In Sanskrit  it can be traced to phal, “ to burst,” “ to produce,” “ to  be fruitful ” ; then, again, phal is “ a ploughshare,” and  is also the name of Siva and Mahadeva, who are Hindu  deities. Phallus, then, was the ancient emblem of  creation: a divinity who was companion to Bacchus.   The Indian designation of this idol was Lingam, and  those who dedicated themselves to its service were to  observe inviolable chastity. “ If it were discovered,”  says Crawford, “ that they had in any way departed from  them, the punishment is death. They go naked, and  being considered as sanctified persons, the women  approach without scruple, nor is it thought that their  modesty should be offended by it.”    SYMBOLS OR EMBLEMS   The Phallus and its emblems were representative of the  gods Bacchus, Priapus, Hercules, Siva, Osiris, Baal, and  Asher, who were all Phallic deities. The symbols were  used as signs of the great creative energy or operating  power of God from no sense of mere animal appetite,  but in the highest reverence. Payne Knight, describing  the emblems, says :—   “ Forms and ceremonials of a religion are not always  to be understood in their direct and obvious sense, but     12    Phallic Worship    are to be considered as symbolical representations of some  hidden meaning extremely wise and just, though the  symbols themselves, to those who know not their true  signification, may appear in the highest degree absurd  and extravagant. It has often happened that avarice  and superstition have continued these symbolical repre¬  sentations for ages after their original meaning has  been lost and forgotten; they must, of course, appear  nonsensical and ridiculous, if not impious and extravagant.  Such is the case with the rite now under consideration,  than which nothing can be more monstrous and indecent,  if considered in its plain and obvious meaning, or as part  of the Christian worship ; but which will be found to be  a very natural symbol of a very natural and philosophical  system of religion, if considered according to its original  use and intention.”   The natural emblems were those which from their  character were most suitable representatives; such as  poles, pillars, stones, which were sacred to Hindu,  Egyptian, and Jewish divinities.   Blavalsky gives an account of the Bimlang Stone, to  be found at Narmada and other places, which is sacred  to the Hindu deity Siva; these emblem stones were  anointed, like the stone consecrated by the Patriarch  Jacob.   Blavalsky further says that these stones are “ identical  in shape, meaning, and purpose with the * pillars ” set up  by the several patriarchs to mark their adoration of the  Lord God. In fact, one of these patriarchal lithoi might  even now be carried in the Sivaitic processions of Calcutta  without its Hebrew derivation being suspected.”     Phallic Worship    13    THE POLE   The Pole was an emblem of the Phallus, and with the  serpent upon it, was a representative of its divine wisdom  and symbol of life. The serpent upon the tree is the same  in character, both are representative of the tree of life.  The story of Moses will well illustrate this, when he  erected in the wilderness this effigy, which stood as a  sign of hope and life, as the cross is used by the Catholics  of the present day ; the cross then, as now, being simply  an emblem of the Creator, used as a token of resurrection  or regeneration. iEsculapius, as the restorer of health,  has a rod or Phallus with a serpent entwined.   The Rev. M. Morris has shown that the raising of the  May-pole is of Phallic origin, the remains of a custom of  India or Egypt, and is typical of the fructifying powers  of spring.   The May festival was carried on with great licentious¬  ness by the Romans, and was celebrated by nearly all  peoples as the month consecrated to Love. The May-day  in England was the scene of riotous enjoyment, very  nearly approaching to the Roman Floralia. No wonder  the Puritans looked upon the May-pole as a relic of  Paganism, and in their writings may be gleaned much  of the licentious character of the festival.   Philip Stubbes, a Puritan writer in the reign of Elizabeth,  thus describes a May-day in England: “ Every parishe,  towne, and village assemble themselves together, bothe  men, women, and children, olde and younge even indiffer¬  ently ; and either goyng all together, or devidyng  themselves into companies, they go some to the woods  and groves, some to one place, some to another, where  thei spend all the night in pleasant pastymes; and in the    14    Phallic Worship    mornyng they returne, bryngyng with them birch bowes  and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall.  . . . But their cheerest jewell thei bryng from thence  is their Maie pole, whiche thei bryng home with great  veneration, as thus : thei have twentie or fortie yoke  of oxen, every oxe havyng a sweet nosegaie of flowers  placed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen drawe  home this Maie pole (this stinckyng idoll rather), which  is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound  rounde aboute with strynges from the top to the bottome,  and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two  or three hundred men, women, and children, foliowyng  it with great devotion. And thus beyng reared up, with  handekerchiefes and flagges streamyng on the top, thei  strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughes aboute  it, sett up sommer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by  it. And then fall thei to banquet and feast, to leape and  daunce aboute it, as the heathen people did at the dedication  of their idols, whereof this is a perfect patterne, or rather  the thyng itself.”   The ceremony was almost identical with the Roman  festival, where the Phallus was introduced with garlands.  Both were attended with the same licentiousness, for  Stubbes gives a further account of the depravity attending  the festivities.    PILLARS   Another type of emblem was the stone pillar, remains of  which still exist in the British Isles. These pillars or so  called crosses generally consist of a shaft of granite with     Phallic Worship    i5    a carved head. In the West of England crosses are very  common, standing in the market and receiving the name  of “ The Cross.”   These stone pillars were first erected in honour of the  Phallic deity, and on the introduction of Christianity  were not destroyed, but consecrated to the new faith,  doubtless to honour the prejudices of the people. These  monolisks abound in the Highlands, they are stones set  up on end, some twenty-four or thirty feet high, others  higher or lower and this sometimes where no such stones  are to be quarried.   We learn that the Bacchus of the Thebans was a pillar.  The Assyrian Nebo was represented by a plain pillar,  consecrated by anointing with oil. Arnobius gives an  account of this practice, as also does Theophrastus, who  speaks of it as a custom for a superstitious man, when  he passed by these anointed stones in the streets to take  out a phial of oil and pour it upon them and having  fallen on his knees to make his adorations, and so depart.   In various parts of the Bible the Pillar is referred to as  of a sacred character, as in Isaiah xix. 19, 20, “In that  day shall there be an altar to Jehovah in the midst oi the  land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to Jehovah,  and it should be for a sign and a witness to the Lord.”   The Orphic Temples were doubtless emblems of the  same principle of the mystic faiths of the ancients, the  same as the Round Towers of Ireland, a history of which  was collected by O’Brien, who describes the Towers as  “ Temples constructed by the early Indian colonists  of the country in honour of the 'Fructifying principle of  nature, emanating as was supposed from the Sun, or the  deity of desire instrumental in that principle of universal  generativeness diffused throughout all nature.”    i6    Phallic Worship    According to the same author these towers were very  ancient, and of Phoenician origin, as similar towers have  been found in Phoenicia. “ The Irish themselves,” says  O’Brien, “ designated them ‘ Bail-toir,’ that is the tower  of Baal. Baal was the name of the Phallic deity, and the  priest who attended them * Aoi Bail-toir ’ or superin¬  tendent of Baal tower.” This Baal was worshipped  wherever the Phoenicians went, and was represented by  a pillar or stone or similar objects. The stone that  Jacob set up, and anointed as a rallying place for worship,  became afterwards an object of worship to the Phoenicians.   The earliest navigators of the world were the Phoenicians,  they founded colonies and extended their commerce  first to the isles of the Mediterranean, from thence to  Spain, and then to the British Isles. Historians have  accorded to them the settlements of the most remote  localities. They formed settlements in Cyprus, and  Atticum, according to Josephus, was the principal settle¬  ment of the Tyrians upon this island. Strabo’s testimony  is, that the Phoenicians, even before Homer, had possessed  themselves of the best part of Spain.   Where the Phoenicians settled, there they introduced  their religion, and it is in these countries we find the  remains of ancient stone and pillar worship.    LOGGIN STONES, ETC.   Loggin stones are by Payne Knight considered as  Phallic emblems. “ Their remains,” he says, “ are still  extant, and appear to have been composed of a crone set  into the ground, and another placed upon the point of     Phallic Worship    17    it and so nicely balanced that the wind could move it,  though so ponderous that no human force, unaided by  machinery, can displace it; whence they are called  * logging rocks * and * pendre stones,’ as they were  anciently * living stones ’ and * stones of God,’ titles  which differ very little in meaning from that on the  Tyrian coins. Damascius saw several of them in the  neighbourhood of Heliopolis or Baalbeck, in Syria,  particularly one which was then moved by the wind;  and they are equally found in the Western extremities  of Europe and the Eastern extremities of Asia, in Britain,  and in China.”   Bryant mentions it as very usual among the Egyptians  to place with much labour one vast stone upon another  for a religious memorial.   Such immense masses, being moved by causes seeming  so inadequate, must naturally have conveyed the idea of  spontaneous motion to ignorant observers, and persuaded  them that they were animated by an emanation of the  vital spirit, whence they were consulted as oracles, the  responses of which could always be easily obtained by  interpreting the different oscillatory movements into  nods of approbation or dissent.   Phallic emblems abounded at Heliopolis in Syria, and  many other places, even in modern times. A physician,  writing to Dr. Inman, says : “ I was in Egypt last winter  (1865-66), and there certainly are numerous figures of  gods and kings, on the walls of the temple at Thebes,  depicted with the male genital erect. The great temple  at Karnak is, in particular, full of such figures, and the  temple of Danclesa likewise, though that is of much later  date, and built merely in imitation of old Egyptian art.  The same inspiring bas-reliefs are pointed out by Ezek.   B    i8    Phallic Worship    xxiii. 14. I remember one scene of a king (Rameses II)  returning in triumph with captives, many of whom were  undergoing the process of castration.”   Obelisks were also representative of the same emblem.  Payne Knight mentions several terminating in a cross,  which had exactly the appearance of one of those crosses  erected in churchyards and at cross roads for the adoration  of devout persons, when devotions were more prevalent  than at present. Stones, pillars, obelisks, stumps of  trees, upright stones have all the same signification, and  are means by which the male element was symbolised.    TRIADS   The Triune idea is to be found in the system of almost  every nation. All have their Trinity in Unity, three in  one, which can be distinctly recognised in the cross.  The Triad is the male or triple, the constitution of the  three persons of most sacred Trinity forming the Triune  system. In the analysis of the subject by Rawlinson,  we find the Trinity consisted of Asshur or Asher, associated  with Anu and Hea or Hoa. Asshur, the supreme god of  the Assyrians, represents the Phallus or central organ  or the Linga, the membrum virile. The cognomen Anu  was given to the right testis, while that of Hea designated  the left.   It was only natural that Asshur being deified, his  appendages should be deified also. “ Beltus,” says  Inman, “ was the goddess associated with them, the four  together made up Arba or Arba-il, the four great gods,”  the Trinity in Unity. The idea thus broached receives     Phallic Worship    *9    great confirmation when we examine the particular stress  laid in ancient times respecting the right and left side of  the body in connection with the Triad names given to  offspring mentioned in the scriptures with the titles given  to Anu and Hea. The male or active principle was typified  by the idea of “solidity ” and “ firmness,” and the  females or passive by the principles of “ water,” “ soft¬  ness,” and other feminine principles. Thus the goddess  Hea was associated with water, and according to Forlong,  the Serpent, the ruler ot the Abyss, was sometimes repre¬  sented to be the great Hea, without whom there was no  creation or life, and whose godhead embraced also the  female element water.   Rawlinson also gives a similar conclusion, and states  as far as he could determine the third divinity or left side  was named Hea, and he considered this deity to correspond  to Neptune. Neptune was the presiding deity of the deep,  ruler of the abyss, and king of the rivers. As Darwin  and his coadjutors teach, mankind, in common with all  animal life, originally sprung from the sea ; so physiology  teaches that each individual had origin in a pond of water.  The fruit of man is both solid and fluid. It was natural  to imagine that the two male appendages had a distinct  duty, that one formed the infant, the other water in which  it lived, that one generated the male, the other the female  offspring; and the inference was then drawn that water  must be feminine, the emblem of all possible powers of  creation.   It will be seen that the names and signification of the  gods and their attributes had no ideal meaning. Thus in  Genesis xxx. 13, we find Asher given as a personality,  which signifies “ to be straight,” “ upright,” “ fortunate,”  “ happy.” Asher was the supreme god of the Assyrians,    20    Phallic Worship    the Vedic Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male  structure and creative energy. The same idea of the  creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Phoenicia, the  Mediterranean, Europe, and Denmark, depicted on stone  relics.   To a rude and ignorant people, enslaved with such a  religion, it was an easy step from the crude to the more  refined sign, from the offensive to a more pictured and  less obnoxious symbol, from the plain and self-evident  to the mixed, disguised, and mystified, from the unclothed  privy member to the cross.    THE CROSS   The Triad, or Trinity, has been traced to Phoenicia,  Egypt, Japan, and India; the triple deities Asshur, Anu,  and Hea forming the “ tau.” This mark of the Christians,  Greeks, and Hebrews became the sign or type of the  deities representing the Phallic trinity, and in time became  the figure of the cross. It is remarked by Payne Knight  that “ The male organs of generation are sometimes found  represented by signs of the same sort, which properly  should be called the symbol of symbols. One of the most  remarkable of these is a cross, in the form of the letter  (T), which thus served as the emblem of creation and  generation before the Church adopted it as a sign of  salvation.”   Another writer says, “ Reverse the position of the  triple deities Asshur, Anu, Hea, and we have the figure  of the ancient c tau ’ of the Christians, Greeks, and ancient  Hebrews. It is one of the oldest conventional forms of     Phallic Worship    21    the cross. It is also met with in Gallic, Oscan, Arcadian,  Etruscan, original Egyptian, Phoenician, Ethiopic, and  Pelasgian forms. The Ethiopic form of the * tau ’ is the  exact prototype and image of the cross, or rather, to state  the fact in order of merit and time, the cross is made in  the exact image of the Ethiopic * tau.’ The fig-leaf,  having three lobes to it, became a symbol of the triad.  As the male genital organs were held in early times  to exemplify the actual male creative power, various  natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic  idea, and at the same time point to those parts of the human  form. Hence, a similitude was recognised in a pillar,  a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between  two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied round with two  ribbons with the two ends pendant, a thumb and two  fingers, the caduceus. Again, the conspicuous part of  the sacred triad Asshur is symbolised by a single stone  placed upright—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower,  spire, minaret, pole, pine, poplar, or palm tree, while  eggs, apples, or citrons, plums, grapes, and the like  represented the remaining two portions, altogether called  Phallic emblems. Baal-Shalisha is a name which seems  designed to perpetuate the triad, since it signifies * my  Lord the Trinity,’ or * my God is three.’ ”   We must not omit to mention other Phallic emblems,  such as the bull, the ram, the goat, the serpent, the torch,  fire, a knobbed stick, the crozier; and still further per¬  sonified, as Bacchus, Priapus, Dionysius, Hercules,  Hermes, Mahadeva, Siva, Osiris, Jupiter, Moloch, Baal,  Asher, and others.   If Ezekiel is to be credited, the triad, T, as Asshur,  Anu, and Hea, was made of gold and silver, and was in  his day not symbolically used, but actually employed;    22    Phallic Worship    for he bluntly says “ whoredom was committed with the  images of men,” or, as the marginal note has it, images  of “ a male ” (Ezek. xvi. 17). It was with this god-mark  —a cross in the form of the letter T—that Ezekiel was  directed to stamp the foreheads of the men of Judata  who feared the Lord (Ezek. ix. 4).   That the cross, or crucifix, has a sexual origin we  determine by a similar rule of research to that by which  comparative anatomists determine the place and habits of  an animal by a single tooth. The cross is a metaphoric  tooth which belongs to an antique religious body physical, and that essentially human. A study of some of the  earliest forms of faith will lift the veil and explain the  mystery.   India, China, and Egypt have furnished the world with  a genus of religion. Time and culture have divided and  modified it into many species and countless varieties.  However much the imagination was allowed to play upon  it, the animus of that religion was sexuality—worship  of the generative principle of man and nature, male and  female. The cross became the emblem of the male  feature, under the term of the triad —three in one. The  female was the unit ; and, joined to the male triad, con¬  stituted a sacred four. Rites and adoration were sometimes  paid to the male, sometimes to the female, or to the two  in one.   So great was the veneration of the cross among the  ancients that it was carried as a Phallic symbol in the  religious processions of the Egyptians and Persians.  Higgins also describes the cross as used from the earliest  times of Paganism by the Egyptians as a banner, above  which was carried the device of the Egyptian cities.   The cross was also used by the ancient Druids, who held    Phallic Worship    23    it as a sacred emblem. In Egypt it stood for the significa¬  tion of eternal life. Schedeus describes it as customary  for the Druids “ to seek studiously for an oak tree, large  and handsome, growing up with two principal arms in  the form of a cross , besides the main stem upright. If  the two horizontal arms are not sufficiently adapted to  the figure, they fasten a cross-beam to it. This tree they  consecrate in this manner: Upon the right branch they  cut in the bark, in fair characters, the word ‘ Hesus ’;  upon the middle, or upright stem, the word ‘ Taranius ’;  upon the left branch ‘ Belenus ’; over this, above the  going off of the arms, they cut the name of the god Thau ;  under all, the same repeated, Thau.”    YONI   There is in Hindostan an emblem of great sanctity,  which is known as the “ Linga-Yoni.” It consists of  a simple pillar in the centre of a figure resembling the  outline of a conical ear-ring. It is expressive of the female  genital organ both in shape and idea. The Greek letter  “ Delta ” is also expressive of it, signifying the door of a  house.   Yoni is of Sanskrit origin. Yanna, or Yoni, means  (1) the vulva, (2) the womb, (3) the place of birth, (4)  origin, (5) water, (6) a mine, a hole, or pit. As Asshur  and Jupiter were the representatives of the male potency,  so Juno and Venus were representatives of the female  attribute. Moore, in his “ Oriental Fragments,” says :  “ Oriental writers have generally spelled the word,  * Yoni,’ which I prefer to write ‘ IOni.’ As Lingam     24    Phallic Worship    was the vocalised cognomen of the male organ, or deity,  so IOni was that of hers.” Says R. P. Knight: “ The  female organs of generation were revered as symbols  of the generative powers of nature or of matter, as those  of the male were of the generative powers of God. They  are usually represented emblematically by the shell  Concoa Veneris , which was therefore worn by devout  persons of antiquity, as it still continues to be by the  pilgrims of many of the common people of Italy ” (“ On  the worship of Priapus,” p. 28).   If Asshur, the conspicuous feature of the male Creator,  is supplied with types and representative figures of himself,  so the female feature is furnished with substitutes and  typical imagery of herself.   One of these is technically known as the sistrum of  Isis. It is the virgin’s symbol. The bars across the  fenestrum, or opening, are bent so that they cannot be  taken out, and indicate that the door is closed. It signifies  that the mother is still virgo intacta —a truly immaculate  female—if the truth can be strained to so denominate  a mother. The pure virginity of the Celestial Mother  was a tenet of faith for 2,000 years before the accepted  Virgin Mary now adored was born. We might infer  that Solomon was acquainted with the figure of the  sistrum , when he said, “ A garden enclosed is my spouse,  a spring shut up, a fountain sealed ” (Song of Sol. iv. 12).  The sistrum, we are told, was only used in the worship  of Isis, to drive away Typhon (evil).   The Argha is a contrite form, or boat-shaped dish or  plate used as a sacrificial cup in the worship of Astarte,  Isis, and Venus. Its shape portrays its own significance.  The Argha and crux ansata were often seen on Egyptian  monuments, and yet more frequently on bas-reliefs.    Phallic Worship    *5    Equivalent to Iao, or the Lingam, we find Ab, the  Father, the Trinity; Asshur, Anu, Hea, Abraham, Adam,  Esau, Edom, Ach, Sol, Helios (Greek for Sun), Dionysius,  Bacchus, Apollo, Hercules, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Jupiter,  Zeus, Aides, Adonis, Baal, Osiris, Thor, Oden; the cross,  tower, spire, pillar, minaret, tolmen, and a host of others ;  while the Yoni was represented by IO, Isis, Astarte, Juno,  Venus, Diana, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Rhea, Cybele,  Ceres, Eve, Frea, Frigga ; the queen of Heaven, the oval,  the trough, the delta, the door, the ark, the ship, the  chasm, a ring, a lozenge, cave, hole, pit. Celestial Virgin,  and a number of other names. Lucian, who was an  Assyrian, and visited the temple of Dea Syria, near the  Euphrates, says there are two Phalli standing in the porch  with this inscription on them, “ These Phalli I, Bacchus,  dedicate to my step-mother Juno.”   The Papal religion is essentially the feminine, and built  on the ancient Chaldean basis. It clings to the female  element in the person of the Virgin Mary. Naphtali  (Gen. xxx. 8) was a descendant of such worshippers,  if there be any meaning in a concrete name. Bear in mind,  names and pictures perpetuate the faith of many peoples.  Neptoah is Hebrew for “ the vulva,” and, A 1 or El being  God, one of the unavoidable renderings of Naphtali is  “ the Yoni is my God,” or “ I worship the Celestial  Virgin.” The Philistine towns generally had names  strongly connected with sexual ideas. Ashdod, aisb or  esb, means “ fire, heat,” and dod means “ love, to love,”  “ boiled up,” “ be agitated,” the whole signifying “ the  heat of love,” or “ the fire which impels to union.”  Could not those people exclaim . Our “ God is love ” ?  (i John iv. 8).   The amatory drift of Solomon’s song is undisguised.    26    Phallic Worship    though the language is dressed in the habiliments of seem¬  ing decency. The burden of thought of most of it bears  direct reference to the Linga-Yoni. He makes a woman  say, “ He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts ” (S. of S.  i. 13). Again, of the Phallus, or Linga, she says, “I  will go up the palm-tree, I will take hold of the boughs  thereof” (vii. 8). Palm-tree and boughs are euphemisms  of the male genitals.    HEBREW PHALLICISM   The nations surrounding the Jews practising the  Phallic rites and worshipping the Phallic deities, it is not  to be supposed that the Jews escaped their influence.  It is indeed certain that the worship of the Phallics was a  great and important part of the Hebrew worship.   This will be the more plainly seen when we bear in  mind the importance given to circumcision as a covenant  between God and man. Another equally suggestive  custom among the Patriarchs was the act of taking the  oath, or making a sacred promise, which is commented  upon by Dr. Ginsingburg in Kitto’s Cyclopedia. He says :  “ Another primitive custom which obtained in the  patriarchal age was, that the one who took the oath put  his hand under the thigh of the adjurer (Gen. xxiv. 2,  and xlvii. 29). This practice evidently arose from the  fact that the genital member, which is meant by the euphe¬  mistic expression thigh, was regarded as the most sacred  part of the body, being the symbol of union in the tenderest  relation of matrimonial life, and the seat whence all issue     Phallic Worship    27    proceeds and the perpetuity so much coveted by the  ancients. Compare Gen. xlvi. 26; Exod. i. 5 ; Judges  vii. 30. Hence the creative organ became the symbol  of the Creator, and the object of worship among all  nations of antiquity. It is for this reason that God  claimed it as a sign of the covenant between himself  and his chosen people in the rite of circumcision. Nothing  therefore could render the oath more solemn in those days  than touching the symbol of creation, the sign of the  covenant, and the source of that issue who may at any  future period avenge the breaking a compact made with  their progenitor.” From this we learn that Abraham,  himself a Chaldee, had reverence for the Phallus as an  emblem of the Creator. We also learn that the rite of  circumcision touches Phallic or Lingasic worship. From  Herodotus we are informed that the Syrians learned  circumcision from the Egyptians, as did the Hebrews.  Says Dr. Inman: “I do not know anything which  illustrates the difference between ancient and modern  times more than the frequency with which circumcision is  spoken of in the sacred books, and the carefulness with  which the subject is avoided now.”   The mutilation of male captives, as practised by Saul  and David, was another custom among the worshippers  of Baal, Asshur, and other Phallic deities. The practice  was to debase the victims and render them unfit to take  part in the worship and mysteries. Some idea can be  formed of the esteem in which people in former times  cherished the male or Phallic emblems of creative power  when we note the sway that power exercised over them.  If these organs were lost or disabled, the unfortunate one  was unfitted to meet in the congregation of the Lord,  and disqualified to minister in the holy temples. Excessive    28    Phallic Worship    punishment was inflicted upon the person who had the  temerity to injure the sacred structure. If a woman were  guilty of inflicting injury, her hand was cut off without  pity (Deut. xxv. 12). The great object of veneration  in the Ark of the Covenant was doubtless a Phallic  emblem, a symbol of the preservation of the germ of  life.   In the historical and prophetic books of the Old  Testament we have repeated evidence that the Hebrew  worship was a mixture of Paganism and Judaism, and  that Jehovah was worshipped in connection with other  deities. Hezekiah is recorded in 2 Kings xviii. 3, to  have “ removed the high places, and broken the images,  and cut down the groves (Ashera), and broken in pieces  the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those  days the children of Israel did burn incense to it.” The  Ashera, or sacred groves here alluded to are named  from the goddess Ashtaroth, which Dr. Smith describes  as the proper name of the goddess ; while Ashera is the  name of the image of the goddess. Rawlinson, in his  Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World , describes  Ashera to imply something that stood straight up, and  probably its essential element was the stem of a tree,  an analogy suggestive of the Assyrian emblem of the  Tree of Life of the Scriptures. This stem, which stood  for the emblem of life, was probably a pillar, or Phallus,  like the Lingi of the Hindus, sometimes erected in a grove  or sacred hollow, signifying the Yoni and Lingi. We  read in 2 Kings xxi. 7, that Manasseh “ set up a graven  image in the grove,” and, according to Dr. Oort, the older  reading is in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 7, 15, where it is an image  or pillar. During the reigns of the Jewish kings, the  worship of Baal, the Priapus of the Greeks and Romans,    Phallic Worship    2 9   was extensively practised by the Jews. Pillars and  groves were reared in his name.   In front of the Temple of Baal, in Samaria, was erected  an Ashera (i Kings xvi. 31, 32) which even survived  the temple itself, for although Jehu destroyed the Temple  of Baal, he allowed the Ashera to remain (2 Kings x.  18, 19; xiii. 6). Bernstein, in an important work on  the origin of the legends of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,  undoubtedly proves that during the monarchial period  of Israel, the sanguinary wars and violent conflicts between  the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel were between  the Elohistic and Jehovahic faiths, kept alive by the  priesthood at the chief places of worship, concerning the  true patriarch, and each party manufacturing and inserting  legends to give a more ancient and important part to its  own faith.   It is not at all improbable that the conflict was between  the two portions of the Phallic faith, the Lingam and  Yoni parties. The cause of this conflict was the erection  of the consecrated stones or pillars which were put up  by the Hebrews as objects of Divine worship. The altar  erected by Jacob at Bethel was a pillar, for according  to Bernstein the word altar can only be used for the erection  of a pillar. Jacob likewise set up a Matzebah, or pillar  of stone, in Gilead, and finally he set one up upon the  tomb of Rachel.   A great portion of the facts have been suppressed by  the translators, who have given to the world histories  which have glossed over the ancient rites and practices  of the Jews.   An instance is given by Forlong on the important  word “ Rock or Stone,” a Phallic emblem to which the  Jews addressed their devotions. He says, “ It should    3°    Phallic Worship    not be, but I fear it is, necessary to explain to mere English  readers of the Old Testament that the Stone or Rock Tsur  was the real old god of all Arabs, Jews, and Phoenicians,  that this would be clear to Christians were the Jewish  writings translated according to the first ideas of the  people and Rock used as it ought to be, instead of ‘ God,’  * Theos,’ £ Lord,’ etc., being written where Tsur occurs .  Numerous instances of this are given in Dr. Ort’s worship  of Baal in Israel, where praises, addresses, and adorations  are addressed to the Rock, instance, Deut. xxxii. 4, 18.  Stone pillars were also used by the Hebrews as a memorial  of a sacred covenant, for we find Jacob setting up a pillar  as a witness, that he would not pass over it. Connected  with this pillar worship is the ceremony of anointing  by pouring oil upon the pillar, as practised by Jacob  at Bethel. According to Sir W. Forbes, in his Oriental  Memoirs, the “ pouring of oil upon a stone is practised  at this day upon many a shapeless stone throughout  Hindostan.”   Toland gives a similar account of the Druids as practising  the same rite, and describes many of the stones found in  England as having a cavity at the top made to receive the  offering. The worship of Baal like the worship of  Priapus was attended with prostitution, and we find the  Jews having a similar custom to the Babylonians.   Payne Knight gives the following account of it in his  work: “ The women of every rank and condition held  it to be an indispensable duty of religion to prostitute  themselves once in their lives in her temple to any stranger  who came and offered money, which, whether little or  much, was accepted, and applied to a sacred purpose.  Women sat in the temple of Venus awaiting the selection  of the stranger, who had the liberty of choosing whom    Phallic Worship    3 1    he liked. A woman once seated must remain until she  has been selected by a piece of silver being cast into her  lap, and the rite performed outside the temple.”   Similar customs existed in Armenia, Phrygia, and even  in Palestine, and were a feature of the worship of Baal  Peor. The Hebrew prophets described and denounced  these excesses which had the same characteristics as the  rites of the Babylonian priesthood. The identical  custom is referred to in i Sam. ii. 22, where “ the sons of  Eli lay with the women that assembled at the door of the  tabernacle of the congregation.”   Words and history corroborate each other, or are apt  to do so if contemporaneous. Thus kadesh , or kaesh,  designate in Hebrew “ a consecrated one,” and history  tells the unworthy tale in descriptive plainness, as will  be shown in the sequel.   That the religion was dominating and imperative is  determined by Deut. xvii. 12, where presumptuous  refusal to listen to the priest was death to the offender.  To us it is inconceivable that the indulgence of passion  could be associated with religion, but so it was. Much  as it is covered over by altered words and substituted  expressions in the Bible—an example of which see men  for male organ, Ezek. xvi. 17—it yet stands out offensively  bold. The words expressive of “ sanctuary,” “ conse¬  crated,” and “ Sodomite,” are in the Hebrew essentially  the same. They indicate the passion of amatory devotion.  It is among the Hindus of to-day as it was in Greece and  Italy of classic times ; and we find that “ holy women ”  is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used  for hire, the price of which hire goes to the service of the  temple.   As a general rule, we may assume that priests who make    3 2    Phallic Worship    or expound the laws, which they declare to be from God,  are men, and, consequently, through all time, have  thought, and do think, of the gratification of the masculine  half of humanity. The ancient and modern Orientals  are not exceptions. They lay it down as a momentous  fact that virginity is the most precious of all the possessions  of a woman, and, being so, it ought, in some way or  other, to be devoted to God.   Throughout India, and also through the densely  inhabited parts of Asia, and modern Turkey there is a  class of females who dedicate themselves to the service  of the deity whom they adore; and the rewards accruing  from their prostitution are devoted to the service of the  temple and the priests officiating therein.   The temples of the Hindus in the Dekkan possessed  their establishments. They had bands of consecrated  dancing-girls called the Women of the Idol , selected in their  infancy by the priests for the beauty of their persons, and  trained up with every elegant accomplishment that could  render them attractive.   We also find David and the daughters of Shiloh per¬  forming a wild and enticing dance ; likewise we have the  leaping of the prophets of Baal.   It is again significant that a great proportion of Bible  names relate to " divine,” sexual, generative, or creative  power; such as Alah, “ the strong one ” ; Ariel, “ the  strong Jas is El ” ; Amasai, “ Jah is firm ” ; Asher,  “ the male ” or “ the upright organ ” ; Elijah, “ El is  Jah ” ; Eliab, “ the strong father ” ; Elisha, “ El is  upright ” ; Ara, “ the strong one,” “ the hero ” ; Aram,  “ high,” or, “ to be uncovered ” ; Baal Shalisha, “ my  Lord the trinity,” or “ my God is three ” ; Ben-zohett,  “ son of firmness ” ; Camon, “ the erect One ” ; Cainan,    Phallic Worship    33   “ he stands upright ” ; these are only a few of the many  names of a similar signification.   It will be seen, from what has been given, that the Jews,  like the Phoenicians (if they were not the same), had the  same ceremonies, rites, and gods as the surrounding  nations, but enough has been said to show that Phallic  worship was much practised by the Jews. It was very  doubtful whether the Jehovah-worship was not of a  monotheistic character, but those who desire to have a  further insight into the mysteries of the wars between the  tribes should consult Bernstein’s valuable work.    EARTH MOTHER   The following interesting chapter is taken from a  valuable book issued a few years ago anonymously :   “ Mother Earth ” is a legitimate expression, only of  the most general type. Religious genius gave the female  quality to the earth with a special meaning. When once  the idea obtained that our world was feminine, it was  easy to induce the faithful to believe that natural chasms  were typical of that part which characterises woman.  As at birth the new being emerges from the mother,  so it was supposed that emergence from a terrestrial  cleft was equivalent to a new birth. In direct proportion  to the resemblance between the sign and the thing signified  was the sacredness of the chink, and the amount of virtue  which was imparted by passing through it. From natural  caverns being considered holy, the veneration for apertures  in stones, as being equally symbolical, was a natural   c     34    Phallic Worship    transition. Holes, such as we refer to, are still to be seen  in those structures which are called Druidical, both in  the British Isles and in India. It is impossible to say  when these first arose; it is certain that they survive in  India to this day. We recognise the existence of the  emblem among the Jews in Isaiah li. i, in the charge to  look “ to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.” We  have also an indication that chasms were symbolical  among the same people in Isaiah lvii. 5, where the wicked  among the Jews were described as “ inflaming themselves  with idols under every green tree, and slaying the children  in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks.” It is possible  that the “ hole in the wall ” (Ezek. viii. 7) had a similar  signification. In modern Rome, in the vestibule of the  church close to the Temple of Vesta, I have seen a large  perforated stone, in the hole of which the ancient Romans  are said to have placed their hands when they swore a  solemn oath, in imitation, or, rather, a counterpart, of  Abraham swearing his servant upon his thigh—that is  the male organ. Higgins dwells upon these holes, and  says: “ These stones are so placed as to have a hole under  them, through which devotees passed for religious  purposes. There is one of the same kind in Ireland,  called St. Declau’s stone. In the mass of rocks at Bramham  Crags there is a place made for the devotees to pass  through. We read in the accounts of Hindostan that  there is a very celebrated place in Upper India, to which  immense numbers of pilgrims go, to pass through a place  in the mountains called “ The Cow’s Belly.” In the  Island of Bombay, at Malabar Hill, there is a rock upon  the surface of which there is a natural crevice, which  communicates with a cavity opening below. This place  is used by the Gentoos as a purification of their sins,    Phallic Worship    35    which they say is effected by their going in at the opening  below, and emerging at the cavity above—“ born again.”  The ceremony is in such high repute in the neighbouring  countries that the famous Conajee Angria ventured by  stealth, one night, upon the Island, on purpose to perform  the ceremony, and got off undiscovered. The early  Christians gave them a bad name, as if from envy; they  called these holes “ Cunni Diaboli ” ( Anacalypsis , p. 346)    BACCHANALIA AND LIBERALIA FESTIVALS   The Romans called the feasts of Bacchus, Bacchanalia  and Liberalia, because Bacchus and Liber were the names  for the same god, although the festivals were celebrated  at different times and in a somewhat different manner.  The latter, according to Payne Knight, was celebrated  on the 17th of March, with the most licentious gaiety,  when an image of the Phallus was carried openly in  triumph. These festivities were more particularly cele¬  brated among the rural or agricultural population, who,  when the preparatory labour of the agriculturist was over,  celebrated with joyful activity Nature’s reproductive  powers, which in due time was to bring forth the fruits.  During the festival a car containing a huge Phallus was  drawn along accompanied by its worshippers, who in¬  dulged in obscene songs and dances of wild and extrava¬  gant character. The gravest and proudest matrons  suddenly laid aside their decency and ran screaming  among the woods and hills half-naked, with dishevelled  hair, interwoven with which were pieces of ivy or vine.     3^    Phallic Worship    The Bacchanalian feasts were celebrated in the latter part  of October when the harvest was completed. Wine and  figs were carried in the procession of the Bacchants, and  lastly came the Phalli, followed by honourable virgins,  called canephora , who carried baskets of fruit. These were  followed by a company of men who carried poles, at the  end of which were figures representing the organ of  generation. The men sung the Phallica and were crowned  with violets and ivy, and had their faces covered with  other kinds of herbs. These were followed by some  dressed in women’s apparel, striped with white, reaching  to their ancles, with garlands on their heads, and wreaths  of flowers in their hands, imitating by their gestures the  state of inebriety. The priestesses ran in every direction  shouting and screaming, each with a thyrsus in their  hands. Men and women all intermingled, dancing and  frolicking with suggestive gesticulations. Deodorus says  the festivals were carried into the night, and it was then  frenzy reached its height. He says, “ In performing  the solemnity virgins carry the thyrsus, and run about  frantic, halloing ‘ Evoe ’ in honour of the god; then  the women in a body offer the sacrifices, and roar out the  praises of Bacchus in song as if he were present, in imitation  of the ancient Mamades, who accompanied him.” These  festivities were carried into the night, and as the celebrators  became heated with wine, they degenerated into extreme  licentiousness.   Similar enthusiastic frenzy was exhibited at the Luper-  calian Feasts instituted in honour of the god Pan (under  the shape of a Goat) whose priests, according to Owen in  his Worship of Serpents , on the morning of the Feast ran  naked through the streets, striking the married women  they met on the hands and belly, which was held as an    Phallic Worship    37    omen promising fruitfulness. The nymphs performing  the same ostentatious display as the Bacchants at the  festival of Bacchanalia.   The festival of Venus was celebrated towards the begin¬  ning of April, and the Phallus was again drawn in a car,  followed by a procession of Roman women to the temple  of Venus. Says a writer, “ The loose women of the town  and its neighbourhood, called together by the sounding  of horns, mixed with the multitude in perfect nakedness,  and excited their passions with obscene motions and  language until the festival ended in a scene of mad revelry,  in which all restraint was laid aside.”   It is said that these festivals took their rise from Egypt,  from whence they were brought into Greece by Metampus,  where the triumph of Osiris was celebrated with secret  rites, and from thence the Bacchanals drew their original;  and from the feasts instituted by Isis came the orgies of  Bacchus.    DRUID AND HEBREW FAITHS   It seems not at all improbable that the deities wor¬  shipped by the ancient Britons and the Irish, were no  other then the Phallic deities of the ancient Syrians and  Greeks, and also the Baal of the Hebrews. Dionysius  Periegites, who lived in the time of Augustus Caesar,  states that the rites of Bacchus were celebrated in the  British Isles ; while Strabo, who lived in the time of  Augustus and Tiberius, asserts that a much earlier writer  described the worship of the Cabiri to have come originally     38    Phallic Worship    from Phoenicia. Higgins, in his History of the Druids,  says, the supreme god above the rest was called Seodhoc  and Baal. The name of Baal is found both in Wales,  Gaul, and Germany, and is the same as the Hebrew Baal.   The same god, according to O’Brien, was the chief deity  of the Irish, in whose honour the round towers were  erected, which structures the ancient Irish themselves  designated Bail-toir, or the towers of Baal. In Numbers,  xxii, will be found a mention of a similar pillar consecrated  to Baa]. Many of the same customs and superstitions  that existed among the Druids and ancient Irish, will  likewise be found among the Israelites. On the first  day of May, the Irish made great fires in honour of Baal,  likewise offering him sacrifices. A similar account is  given of a custom of the Druids by Toland, in an account  of the festival of the fires ; he says :—“ on May-day eve  the Druids made prodigious fires on these earns, which  being everyone in sight of some other, could not but  afford a glorious show over a whole nation.” These  fires are said to be lit even to the present day by the  Aboriginal Irish, on the first of May, called by them  Bealtine, or the day of Belan’s fire, the same name as  given them in the Highlands of Scotland.   A similar practice to this will be noticed as mentioned in  the II Book of Kings, where the Canaanites in their worship  of Baal, are said to have passed their children through the  fire of Baal, which seems to have been a common practice,  as Ahaz, King of Israel, is blamed for having done the  same thing. Higgins in his Anacalypsis, says this super¬  stitious custom still continues, and that on “ particular  days great fires are lighted, and the fathers taking the  children in their arms, jump or run through them, and  thus pass their children through them; they also light    Phallic Worship    39    two fires at a little distance from each other, and drive  their cattle between them.” It will be found on reference  to Deuteronomy, that this very practice is specially for¬  bidden. In the rites of Numa, we have also the sacred  fire of the Irish; of St. Bridget, of Moses, of Mithra,  and of India, accompanied with an establishment of  nuns or vestal virgins. A sacred fire is said to have been  kept burning by the nuns of Kildare, which was established  by St. Bridget. This fire was never blown with the  mouth, that it might not be polluted, but only with  bellows; this fire was similar to that of the Jews, kept  burning only with peeled wood, and never blown with  the mouth. Hyde describes a similar fire which was kept  burning in the same way by the ancient Persians, who  kept their sacred fire fed with a certain tree called Hawm  Mogorum; and Colonel Vallancey says the sacred fire  of the Irish was fed with the wood of the tree called  Hawm. Ware, the Romish priest, relates that at Kildare,  the glorious Bridget was rendered illustrious by many  miracles, amongst which was the sacred fire, which had  been kept burning by nuns ever since the time of the  Virgin.   The earliest sacred places of the Jews were evidently  sacred stones, or stone circles, succeeded in time by  temples. These early rude stones, emblems of the  Creator, were erected by the Israelites, which in no way  differed from the erections of the Gentiles. It will be  found that the Jews to commemorate a great victory,  or to bear witness of the Lord, were all signfied by stones :  thus, Joshua erected a stone to bear witness ; Jacob  put up a stone to make a place sacred ; Abel set up the  same for a place of worship; Samuel erected a stone as  a boundary, which was to be the token of an agreement    40    Phallic Worship    made in the name of God. Even Maundrel in his travels  names several that he saw in Palestine. It is curious that  where a pillar was erected there, sometime after, a temple  was put up in the same manner that the Round Towers  of Ireland were,—always near a church, but never formed  part of it. We find many instances in the Scriptures of the  erection of a number of stones among the early Israelites,  which would lead us to conclude that it was not at all  unlikely that the early places of worship among them, were  similar to the temples found in various parts of Great  Britain and Ireland. It is written in Exodus xxiv. 4,  that Moses rose up early in the morning, and builded  an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to  the twelve tribes of Israel, were erected. It is also  given out that when the children of Israel should pass  over the Jordan, unto the land which the Lord giveth  them, they should set up great stones, and plaster them  with plaster, and also the words of the law were to be  written thereon. In many other places stones were  ordered to be set up in the name of the Lord, and repeated  instances are given that the stones should be twelve  in number and unhewn.   Stone temples seem to have been erected in all countries  of the world, and even in America, where, among the  early American races are to be found customs, superstitions,  and religious objects of veneration, similar to the  Phoenicians. An American writer says:—“ There is  sufficient evidence that the religious customs of the  Mexicans, Peruvians and other American races, are  nearly identical with those of the ancient Phoenicians. . . .  We moreover discover that many of their religious terms  have, etymologically, the same origin.” Payne Knight,  in his Worship of Priapus, devotes much of his work to    Phallic Worship    4i    show that the temples erected at Stonehenge and other  places, were of a Phoenician origin, which was simply  a temple of the god Bacchus.    STONEHENGE A TEMPLE OF BACCHUS   Of all the nations of antiquity the Persians were the  most simple and direct in the worship of the Creator.  They were the puritans of the heathen world, and not  only rejected all images of God and his agents, but also  temples and altars, according to Herodotus, whose  authority we prefer to any other, because he had an  opportunity of conversing with them before they had  adopted any foreign superstitions. As they worshipped  the ethereal fire without any medium of personification  or allegory, they thought it unworthy of the dignity of  the god to be represented by any definite form, or cir¬  cumscribed to any particular place. The universe was  his temple, and the all-pervading element of fire his only  symbol. The Greeks appear originally to have held  similar opinions, for they were long without statues  and Pausanias speaks of a temple at Siciyon, built by  Adrastus—who lived in an age before the Trojan war—  which consisted of columns only, without wall or roof,  like the Celtic temples of our northern ancestors, or the  Phyroetheia of the Persians, which were circles of stones  in the centre of which was kindled the sacred fire, the  symbol of the god. Homer frequently speaks of places  of worship consisting of an area and altar only, which were  probably enclosures like those of the Persians, with an     42    Phallic Worship    altar in the centre. The temples dedicated to the creator  Bacchus, which the Greek architects called kypcethral,  seem to have been anciently of this kind, whence probably  came the title (“ surround with columns ”) attributed  to that god in the Orphic litanies. The remains of one of  these are still extant at Puzznoli, near Naples, which the  inhabitants call the temple of Serapis ; but the ornaments  of grapes, vases, etc., found among the ruins, prove it  to have been of Bacchus. Serapis was indeed the same  deity worshipped under another form, being usually a  personification of the sun. The architecture is of the  Roman times ; but the ground plan is probably that of a  very ancient one, which this was made to replace—for  it exactly resembles that of a Celtic temple in Zeeland,  published in Stukeley’s Itinerary. The ranges of square  buildings which enclose it are not properly parts of the  temple, but apartments of the priests, places for victims  and sacred utensils, and chapels dedicated to the sub¬  ordinate deities, introduced by a more complicated and  corrupt worship and probably unknown to the founder  of the original edifice. The portico, which runs parallel  with these buildings, encloses the temenss , or area of  sacred ground, which in the pyratheia of the Persians was  circular, but is here quadrangular, as in the Celtic temple  in Zeeland, and the Indian pagoda before described.  In the centre was the holy of holies, the seat of the god,  consisting of a circle of columns raised upon a basement,  without roof or walls, in the middle of which was probably  the sacred fire or some other symbol of the deity. The  square area in which it stood was sunk below the natural  level of the ground, and, like that of the Indian pagoda,  appears to have been occasionally floated with water;  the drains and conduits being still to be seen, as also several    Phallic Worship    43    fragments of sculpture representing waves, serpents, and  various aquatic animals, which once adorned the basement.  The Bacchus here worshipped, was, as we learn from the  Orphic hymn above cited, the sun in his character of  extinguisher of the fires which once pervaded the earth.  He is supposed to have done this by exhaling the waters  of the ocean and scattering them over the land, which was  thus supposed to have acquired its proper temperature  and fertility. For this reason the sacred fire, the essential  image of the god, was surrounded by the element which  was principally employed in giving effect to the beneficial  exertions of the great attribute.   From a passage of Hecatasus, preserved by Diodorus  Siculus, it seems evident that Stonehenge and all the monu¬  ments of the same kind found in the north, belong to the  same religion which appears at some remote period to  have prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere.  According to that ancient historian, the Hyperboreans  inhabited an island beyond Gaul , as large as Sicily , in which  Apollo was worshipped in a circular temple considerable for  its si^e and riches. Apollo, we know, in the language of  the Greeks of that age, can mean no other than the sun,  which according to Caesar was worshipped by the Germans,  when they knew of no other deities except fire and the  moon. The island can evidently be no other than Britain,  which at that time was only known to the Greeks by the  vague reports of the Phoenician mariners ; and so uncertain  and obscure that Herodotus, the most inquisitive and  credulous of historians, doubts of its existence. The  circular temple of the sun being noticed in such slight and  imperfect accounts, proves that it must have been some¬  thing singular and important; for if it had been an  inconsiderable structure, it would not have been mentioned    44    Phallic Worship    at all; and if there had been many such in the country,  the historian would not have employed the singular  number.   Stonehenge has certainly been a circular temple, nearly  the same as that already described of the Bacchus at.  Puzznoli, except that in the latter the nice execution and  beautiful symmetry of the parts are in every respect the  reverse of the rude but majestic simplicity of the former.  In the original design they differ but in the form of the  area. It may therefore be reasonably supposed that we  have still the ruins of the identical temple described by  Hecatasus, who, being an Asiatic Greek, might have  received his information from Phoenician merchants, who  had visited the interior parts of Britain when trading there  for tin. Anacrobius mentions a temple of the same kind  and form, upon Mount Zilmissus, in Thrace, dedicated  to the sun under the title of Bacchus Sebrazius. The  large obelisks of stone found in many parts of the north,  such as those at Rudstone, and near Boroughbridge, in  Yorkshire, belong to the same religion; obelisks being,  as Pliny observes, sacred to the sun, whose rays they  represented both by their form and name .—Pajne Knight’s  Worship of Priapus.    BUNS AND RELIGIOUS CAKES   Says Hyslop :—“ The hot cross-buns of Good Friday,  and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in  the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The buns known,  too, by that identical name, were used in the worship of the     Phallic Worship    45    Queen of Heaven, the goddess Easter (Ishtar or Astarte),  as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens,  1,500 years before the Christian era.” “ One species of  bread,” says Bryant, “ ‘ which used to be offered to the  gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun’ Diogenes  mentioned * they were made of flour and honey.’ ” It  appears that Jeremiah the Prophet was familiar with this  lecherous worship. He says :—“ The children gather  wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead  the dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven (Jer.  vii., 18). Hyslop does not add that the “ buns ” offered  to the Queen of Heaven, and in sacrifices to other deities,  were framed in the shape of the sexual organs, but that  they were so in ancient limes we have abundance of  evidence.   Martial distinctly speaks of such things in two epigrams,  first, wherein the male organ is spoken of, second, wherein  the female part is commemorated ; the cakes being made  of the finest flour, and kept especially for the palate of the  fair one.   Captain Wilford (“ Asiatic Researches,” viii., p. 365)  says :—“ When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to  goddesses, they offered cakes called mulloi, shaped like the  female organ, and in some temples where the priestesses  were probably ventriloquists, they so far imposed on the  credulous multitude who came to adore the Vulva as to  make them believe that it spoke and gave oracles.”   We can understand how such things were allowed in  licentious Rome, but we can scarcely comprehend how  they were tolerated in Christian Europe, as, to all innocent  surprise we find they were, from the second part of the  “ Remains of the Worship of Priapus ” : that in Saintonge,  in the neighbourhood of La Rochelle, small cakes baked in    46    Phallic Worship    the form of the Phallus are made as offerings at Easter,  carried and presented from house to house. Dulare  states that in his time the festival of Palm Sunday, in the  town of Saintes, was called le fete des pinnes —feast of the  privy members—and that during its continuance the  women and children carried in the procession a Phallus  made of bread, which they called a pinne , at the end of their  palm branches ; these pinnes were subsequently blessed  by priests, and carefully preserved by the women during  the year. Palm Sunday 1 Palm, it is to be remembered,  is a euphemism of the male organ, and it is curious to see  it united with the Phallus in Christendom. Dulare also  says that, in some of the earlier inedited French books on  cookery, receipts are given for making cakes of the  salacious form in question, which are broadly named. He  further tells us those cakes symbolized the male, in Lower  Limousin, and especially at Brives ; while the female  emblem was adopted at Clermont, in Auvergne, and other  places.    THE ARK AND GOOD FRIDAY   The ark of the covenant was a most sacred symbol in  the worship of the Jews, and like the sacred boat, or  ark of Osiris, contained the symbol of the principle of  life, or creative power. The symbol was preserved with  great veneration in a miniature tabernacle, which was  considered the special and sanctified abode of the god.  In size and manner of construction the ark of the Jews  and the sacred chest of Osiris of the Egyptians were     Phallic Worship    47   exactly alike, and were carried in processions in a similar  manner   The ark or chest of Osiris was attended by the priests,  and was borne on the shoulders of men by means of  staves. The ark when taken from the temple was placed  upon a table, or stand, made expressly for the purpose,  and was attended by a procession similar to that which  followed the Jewish ark. According to Faber, the ark  was a symbol of the earth or female principle, containing  the germ of all animated nature, and regarded as the  great mother whence all tilings sprung. Thus the ark,  earth, and goddess, were represented by common symbols,  and spoken of in the old Testament as the “ ashera.”   The sacred emblems carried in the ark of the Egyptians  were the Phallus, the Egg, and the Serpent; the first  representing the sun, fire, and male or generative principle  —the Creator; the second, the passive or female, the  germ of all animated things—the Preserver; and the  last the Destroyer: the Three of the sacred Trinity.  The Hindu women, according to Payne Knight, still  carry the lingam, or consecrated symbol of the generative  attribute of the deity, in solemn procession between two  serpents; and in a sacred casket, which held the Egg  and the Phallus in the mystic processions of the Greeks,  was also a Serpent.   “ The ark,” says Faber, “ was reverenced in all the  ancient religions.” It was often represented in the form of  a boat, or ship, as well as an oblong chest. The rites of  the Druids, with those of Phoenicia and Hindostan, show  that an ark, chest, cell, boat, or cavern, held an important  place in their mysteries. In the story of Osiris, like that  of the Siva, will be found the reason for the emblem being  carried in the sacred chest, and the explanation of one of    48    Phallic Worship    the mysteries of the Egyptian priests. It is said that  Osiris was torn to pieces by the wicked Typhon, who  after cutting up the body, distributed the parts over the  earth. Isis recovered the scattered limbs, and brought  them back to Egypt; but, being unable to find the part  which distinguished his sex, she had an image made of  wood, which was enshrined in an ark, and ordered to  be solemnly carried about in the festivals she had instituted  in his honour, and celebrated with certain secret rites.   The Egg, which accompanied the Phallus in the ark was  a very common symbol of the ancient faiths, which was  considered as containing the generation of life. The  image of that which generated all things in itself. Jacob  Bryant says :—“ The Egg, as it contained the principles  of life was thought no improper emblem of the ark,  in which were preserved the future world. Hence in the  Dionysian and in other mysteries, one part of the nocturnal  ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg.”  This egg was called the Mundane Egg.   The ark was likewise the symbol of salvation, the place  of safety, the secret receptacle of the divine wisdom.  Hence we find the ark of the Jews containing the tables  of the law; we find too that the Jews were ordered to  place in the ark Aaron’s rod, which budded, conveying  the idea of symbolised fertility : showing that the ark  was considered as the receptacle of the life principle—as  an emblem of the Creator.   With the Egyptians Osiris was supposed to be buried in  the ark, which represented the disappearance of the deity.  His loss, or death, constituted the first part of the mysteries,  which consisted of lamentations for his decease. After the  third day from his death, a procession went down to the  seaside in the night, carrying the ark with them. During    Phallic Worship    49    the passage they poured drink offerings from the river, and  when the ceremony had been duly performed, they raised a  shout that Osiris had again risen—that the dead had been  restored to life. After this followed the second or joyful  part of the mysteries. The s imila rity of this custom with  the Good Friday celebrations of the death of Jesus, and the  rejoicings on account of his resurrection on Easter Sunday,  will be at once observed. It is further said that the missing  part of Osiris was eaten by a fish, which made the fish a  sacred symbol. Thus we have the Ark, Fish, and Good  Friday brought together, also the Egg, for the origin of  the Easter eggs is very ancient. A bull is represented as  breaking an egg with his horn, which signified the  liberating of imprisoned life at the opening or spring of  the year, which had been destroyed by Typhon. The  opening of the year at that time commenced in the spring,  not according to our present reckoning; thus, the Egg  was a symbol of the resurrection of life at the spring, or  our Easter time. The author of the “ Worship of the  Generative Powers,” describes the origin of the hot cross¬  bun at Easter, which is a further parallelism of the Christian  and Pagan festivals. The author also draws a further  conclusion—that the cakes or buns have in reality a  Phallic origin, for in France and other parts, the Easter  cakes were called after the membrun virile. The writer  says :—“ In the primitive Teutonic mythology, there  was a female deity named in old German, Ostara, and in  Anglo-Saxon, Eastre or Eostre ; but all we know of her  is the simple statement of our father of history, Bede,  that her festival was celebrated by the ancient Saxons in  the month of April, from which circumstance that month  was named by the Anglo-Saxons, Easter-mona or Eoster-  mona, and that the name of the goddess had been frequently    5 °    Phallic Worship    given to the Paschal time, with which it was identical. The  name of this goddess was given to the same month by  the old Germans and by the Franks, so that she must have  been one of the most highly honoured of the Teutonic  deities, and her festival must have been a very important  one and deeply implanted in the popular feelings, or the  Church would not have sought to identify it with one of  the greatest Christian festivals of the year. It is under¬  stood that the Romans considered this month as dedicated  to Venus, no doubt because it was that in which the  productive powers of nature began to be visibly developed.  When the Pagan festival was adopted by the Church, it  became a moveable feast, instead of being fixed to the  month of April. Among other objects offered to the  goddess at this time were cakes, made no doubt of fine  flour, but of their form we are ignorant. The Christians  when they seized upon the Easter festival, gave them the  form of a bun, which indeed was at that time the ordinary  form of bread ; and to protect themselves and those who  ate them from any enchantment—or other evil influences  which might arise from their former heathen character—  they marked them with the Christian symbol—the cross.  Hence we derived the cakes we still eat at Easter under  the name of hot cross-buns, and the superstitious feelings  attached to them; for multitudes of people still believe  that if they failed to eat a hot cross-bun on Good Friday,  they would be unlucky all the rest of the year.”     Phallic Worship    Ji    ARCHITECTURAL PILLARS DEVISED FROM THE   LOTUS   The earliest capital seems to have been the bell or  seed vessel, simply copied without alteration, except a  little expansion at the bottom to give it stability. The  leaves of some other plant were then added to it, and  varied in different capitals according to the different  meanings intended to be signified by the accessory symbols.  The Greeks decorated it in the same manner, with the  foliage of various plants, sometimes of the acanthus and  sometimes of the aquatic kind, which are, however,  generally so transformed by excessive attention to elegance,  that it is difficult to distinguish them. The most usual  seems to be the Egyptian acacia, which was probably  adopted as a mystic symbol for the same reasons as the  olive, it being equally remarkable for its powers of  reproduction. Theophrastus mentions a large wood of  it in the “ Thebaid,” where the olive will not grow, so  that we reasonably suppose it to have been employed by  the Egyptians in the same symbolical sense. From  them the Greeks seem to have borrowed it about the  time of the Macedonian conquest, it not occurring in any  of their buildings of a much earlier date ; and as for the  story of the Corinthian architect, who is said to have  invented this kind of capital from observing a thorn  growing round a basket, it deserved no credit, being fully  contradicted by the buildings still remaining in Upper  Egypt.   The Doric column, which appears to have been the  only one known to the very ancient Greeks, was equally  derived from the Nelumbo; its capital being the same  seed-vessel pressed flat, as it appears when withered and    5*    Phallic Worship    dry—the only state probably in which it had been seen in  Europe. The flutes in the shaft were made to hold  spears and staves, whence a spear-holder is spoken of in  the “ Odyssey ” as part of a column. The triglyphs and  blocks of the cornice were also derived from utility,  they having been intended to represent the projecting  ends of the beams and rafters which formed the roof.   The Ionic capital has no bell, but volutes formed in  imitation of sea-shells, which have the same symbolical  meaning. To them is frequently added the ornament which  architects call a honeysuckle, but which seems to be  meant for the young petals of the same flower viewed  horixontally, before they are opened or expanded. Another  ornament is also introduced in this capital, which they  call eggs and anchors, but which is, in fact, composed of  eggs and spear-heads, the symbols of female generation  and male destructive power, or in the language of  mythology, of Venus and Mars .—Payne Knight.    BELLS IN RELIGIOUS WORSHIP   Stripped, however, of all this splendour and magnifi¬  cence it was probably nothing more than a symbolical  instrument, signifying originally the motion of the  elements, like the sistrum of Isis, the cymbals of Cybele,  the bells of Bacchus, etc., whence Jupiter is said to have  overcome the Titans with his aegis, as Isis drove away  Typhon with her sistrum, and the ringing of the bells  and clatter of metals were almost universally employed  as a means of consecration, and a charm against the     Phallic Worship    53    destroying and inert powers. Even the Jews welcomed  the new moon with such noises, which the simplicity of  the early ages employed almost everywhere to relieve  her during eclipses, supposed then to be morbid affections  brought on by the influence of an adverse power. The  title Priapus , by which the generative attribute is dis¬  tinguished, seems to be merely a corruption of Brt'apuos  (clamorous); the beta and pi being commutable letters,  and epithets of similar meaning, being continually applied  both to Jupiter and Bacchus by the poets. Many  Priapic figures, too, still extant, have bells attached to  them, as the symbolical statues and temples of the Hindus  are; and to wear them was a part of the worship of  Bacchus among the Greeks : whence we sometimes find  them of extremely small size, evidently meant to be worn  as amulets with the phalli, lunulas, etc. The chief priests  of the Egyptians and also the high priests of the Jews,  hung them as sacred emblems to their sacerdotal garments ;  and the Brahmins still continue to ring a small bell at the  interval of their prayers, ablutions, and other acts of  devotion; which custom is still preserved in the Roman  Catholic Church at the elevation of the host. The  Lacedaemonians beat upon a brass vessel or pan, on the  death of their kings, and we still retain the custom of  tolling a bell on such occasions, though the reason of it  is not generally known, any more than that of other  remnants of ancient ceremonies still existing. 1 It will  be observed that the bells used by the Christians very  probably came direct from the Buddhists. And from the  same source are derived the beads and rosaries of the  Roman Catholics, which have been used by the Buddhist   1 The above description is from Payne Knight’s “ Symbolical  Language of ancient Art and Mythology.”    Phallic Worship    54   monks for over 2,000 years. Tinkling bells were  suspended before the shrine of Jupiter Ammon, and  during the service the gods were invited to descend upon  the altars by the ringing of bells ; they were likewise  sacred to Siva. Bells were used at the worship of Bacchus,  and were worn on the garments of the Bacchantes, much  in the same manner as they are used at our carnivals and  masquerades.    HINDU PHALLICISM   The following curious fable is given by Sir William  Jones, as one of the stories of the Hindus for the origin of  Phallic devotion:—“ Certain devotees in a remote time had  acquired great renown and respect, but the purity of the  art was wanting, nor did their motives and secret thoughts  correspond with their professions and exterior conduct.  They affected poverty, but were attached to the things of  this world, and the princes and nobles were constantly  sending their offerings. They seemed to sequester them¬  selves from this world ; they lived retired from the towns ;  but their dwellings were commodious, and their women  numerous and handsome. But nothing can be hid from  their gods, and Sheevah resolved to put them to shame.  He desired Prakeety (nature) to accompany him; and  assumed the appearance of a Pandaram of a graceful  form. Prakeety was herself a damsel of matchless worth.  She went before the devotees who were assembled with  their disciples, awaiting the rising of the sun, to perform  their ablutions and religious ceremonies. As she advanced     Phallic Worship    55    the refreshing breeze moved her flowing robe, showed  the exquisite shape which it seemed intended to conceal.  With eyes cast down, though sometimes opening with a  timid but tender look, she approached them, and with a  low enchanting voice desired to be admitted to the sacrifice.  The devotees gazed on her with astonishment. The  sun appeared, but the purifications were forgotten;  the things of the Poojah (worship) lay neglected; nor  was any worship thought of but that of her. Quitting the  gravity of their manners, they gathered round her as  flies round the lamp at night—attracted by its splendour,  but consumed by its flame. They asked from whence  she came; whither she was going. ‘ Be not offended  with us for approaching thee, forgive us our importunities.  But thou art incapable of anger, thou who art made to  convey bliss ; to thee, who mayest kill by indifference,  indignation and resentment are unknown. But whoever  thou mayest be, whatever motive or accident might have  brought thee amongst us, admit us into the number of  thy slaves; let us at least have the comfort to behold  thee.’ Here the words faltered on the lip, and the soul  seemed ready to take its flight; the vow was forgotten,  and the policy of years destroyed.   “ Whilst the devotees were lost in their passions, and  absent from their homes, Sheevah entered their village  with a musical instrument in his hand, playing and singing  like some of those who solicit charity. At the sound of his  voice, the women immediately quitted their occupation;  they ran to see from whom it came. He was as beautiful  as Krishen on the plains of Matra. Some dropped their  jewels without turning to look for them ; others let  fall their garments without perceiving that they discovered  those abodes of pleasure which jealousy as well as decency    56    Phallic Worship    had ordered to be concealed. All pressed forward with  their offerings, all wished to speak, all wished to be taken  notice of, and bringing flowers and scattering them before  him, said—‘ Askest thou alms ! thou who are made to  govern hearts. Thou whose countenance is as fresh as  the morning, whose voice is the voice of pleasure, and  they breath like that of Vassant (Spring) in the opening of  the rose! Stay with us and we will serve thee; not  will we trouble thy repose, but only be zealous how to  please thee.’ The Pandaram continued to play, and sung  the loves of Kama (God of Love), of Krishen and the  Gopia, and smiling the gentle smiles of fond desire. . . .   “ But the desire of repose succeeds the waste of pleasure.  Sleep closed the eyes and lulled the senses. In the  morning the Pandaram was gone. When they awoke  they looked round with astonishment, and again cast  their eyes on the ground. Some directed to those who  had formerly been remarked for their scrupulous manners,  but their faces were covered with their veils. After  sitting awhile in silence they arose and went back to their  houses, with slow and troubled steps. The devotees  returned about the same time from their wanderings after  Prakeety. The days that followed were days of embarrass¬  ment and shame. If the women had failed in their  modesty, the devotees had broken their vows. They  were vexed at their weakness, they were sorry for what  they had done; yet the tender sigh sometimes broke  forth, and the eyes often turned to where the men first  saw the maid—the women, the Pandaram.   “ But the women began to perceive that what the  devotees foretold came not to pass. Their disciples,  in consequence, neglected to attend them, and the offerings  from the princes and nobles became less frequent than    Phallic Worship    57    before. They then performed various penances; they  sought for secret places among the woods unfrequented  by man; and having at last shut their eyes from the  things of this world, retired within themselves in deep  meditation, that Sheevah was the author of their  misfortunes. Their understanding being imperfect,  instead of bowing the head with humility, they were  inflamed with anger; instead of contrition for their  hypocrisy, they sought for vengeance. They performed  new sacrifices and incantations, which were only allowed  to have effect in the end, to show the extreme folly of  man in not submitting to the will of heaven.   “ Their incantations produced a tiger, whose mouth  was like a cavern and his voice like thunder among the  mountains. They sent him against Sheevah, who with  Prakeety was amusing himself in the vale. He smiled  at their weakness, and killing the tiger at one blow with  his club, he covered himself with his skin. Seeing them¬  selves frustrated in this attempt, the devotees had recourse  to another, and sent serpents against him of the most  deadly kind; but on approaching him they became  harmless, and he twisted them round his neck. They  then sent their curses and imprecations against him, but  they all recoiled upon themselves. Not yet disheartened  by all these disappointments, they collected all their  prayers, their penances, their charities, and other good  works, the most acceptable sacrifices ; and demanding  in return only vengeance against Sheevah, they sent a  fire to destroy his genital parts. Sheevah, incensed at  this attempt, turned the fire witti indignation against the  human race; and mankind would soon have been  destroyed, had not Vishnu, alarmed at the danger,  implored him to suspend his wrath. At his entreaties    58    Phallic Worship    Sheevah relented ; but it was ordained that in his temples  those parts should be worshipped, which the false doctrines  had impiously attempted to destroy.”    THE CROSS AND ROSARY   The key which is still worn with the Priapic hand, as an  amulet, by the women of Italy appears to have been an  emblem of the equivocal use of the name, as the language  of that country implies. Of the same kind, too, appears to  have been the cross in the form of the letter tau, attached  to a circle, which many of the figures of Egyptian deities,  both male and female, carry in their left hand ; and by the  Syrians, Phoenicians and other inhabitants of Asia,  representing the planet Venus, worshipped by them as the  emblem or image of that goddess. The cross in this  form is sometimes observable on coins, and several of  them were found in a temple of Serapis, demolished at the  general destruction of those edifices by the Emperor  Theodosius, and were said by the Christian antiquaries  of that time to signify the future life. In solemn sacrifices,  all the Lapland idols were marked with it from the blood  of the victims ; and it occurs on many Runic ornaments  found in Sweden and Denmark, which are of an age  long anterior to the approach of Christianity to those  countries, and probably to its appearance in the world.  On some of the early coins of the Phoenicians, we find it  attached to a chaplet of beads placed in a circle, so as to  form a complete rosary, such as the Lamas of Thibet  and China, the Hindus, and the Roman Catholics now  tell over while they pray.     Phallic Worship    59    BEADS   Beads were anciently used to reckon time, and a circle,  being a line without termination, was the natural emblem  of its perpetual continuity ; whence we often find circles  of beads upon the heads of deities, and enclosing the  sacred symbols upon coins and other monuments.  Perforated beads are also frequently found in tombs, both  in the northern and southern parts of Europe and Asia,  whence are fragments of the chaplets of consecration  buried with the deceased. The simple diadem, or fillet,  worn round the head as a mark of sovereignty, had a  similar meaning, and was originally confined to the statues  of deities and deified personages, as we find it upon the  most ancient coins. Chryses, the priest of Apollo, in  the “ Iliad,” brings the diadem, or sacred fillet, of the  god upon his sceptre, as the most imposing and invocable  emblem of sanctity ; but no mention is made of its being  worn by kings in either of the Homeric poems, nor of any  other ensign of temporal power and command, except the  royal staff or sceptre.    THE LOTUS   The double sex typified by the Argha and its contents is  by the Hindus represented by the “ Mymphoea ” or  Lotus, floating like a boat on the boundless ocean, where  the whole plant signifies both the earth and the two  principles of its fecundation. The germ is both Meru and  the Linga; the petals and filaments are the mountains     6o    Phallic Worship    which encircle Meru, and are also a type of the Yoni;  the leaves of the calyx are the four vast regions to the  cardinal points of Meru ; and the leaves of the plant are  the Dwipas or isles round the land of Jambu. As this  plant or lily was probably the most celebrated of all the  vegetable creation among the mystics of the ancient world,  and is to be found in thousands of the most beautiful and  sacred paintings of the Christians of this day—I detain  my reader with a few observations respecting it. This is  the more necessary as it appears that the priests have now  lost the meaning of it; at least this is the case with everyone  of whom I have made enquiry ; but it is like many other  very odd things, probably understood in the Vatican,  or the crypt of St. Peter’s. Maurice says that among the  different plants which ornament our globe, there is not  one which has received so much honour from man as  the Lotus or Lily, in whose consecrated bosom Brahma  was born, and Osiris delighted to float. This is the  sublime, the hallowed symbol that eternally occurs in  oriental mythology, and in truth not without reason, for it  is itself a lovely prodigy. Throughout all the northern  hemispheres it was everywhere held in profound  veneration, and from Savary we learn that the veneration  is yet continued among the modern Egyptians. And  we find that it still continues to receive the respect if  not the adoration of a great part of the Christian world,  unconscious, perhaps, of the original reason of this  conduct. Higgins's Anacalypsis.   The following is an account given of it by Payne  Knight, in his curious dissertation on Phallic Worship :—  “ The Lotus is the Nelumbo of Linnaeus. This plant  grows in the water, among its broad leaves puts forth  a flower, in the centre of which is formed the seed vessel.    Phallic Worship    6i    shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and perforated on the  top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds grow.  The orifices of these cells being too small to let the seeds  drop out when ripe, they shoot forth into new plants in  the places where tney are formed : the bulb of the vessel  serving as a matrix to nourish them, until they acquire  such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open and release  themselves, after which, likfe other aquatic weeds, they  take root wherever the current deposits them. This  plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and  vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered  in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the  productive power of the waters, upon which the active  spirit of the Creator operated in giving life and vegetation,  to matter. We accordingly find it employed in every  part of the northern hemisphere, where the symbolical  religion, improperly called idolatry , does or ever did prevail.  The sacred images of rhe Tartars, Japanese, and Indians  are almost placed upon it, of which numerous instances  occur in the publications of Kcempfer, Sonnerat, etc.  The Brahma of India is represented as sitting upon his  Lotus throne, and the figure upon the Isaaic table holds the  stem of this plant surmounted by the seed vessel in one  hand, and the Cross representing the male organs of  generation in the other; thus signifying the universal  power, both active and passive, attributed to that goddess.”   Nimrod says :—“ The Lotus is a well-known allegory,  of which the expansive calyx represents the ship of the  gods floating on the surface of the water ; and the erect  flower arising out of it, the mast thereof. The one was  the galley or cockboat, and the other the mast of cockayne ;  but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female  principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of    62    Phallic Worship    the flower came to have certain other significations, which  seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at Benares.  This plant was also used in the sacred offices of the Jewish  religion. In the ornaments of the temple of Solomon,  the Lotus or lily is often seen.”   The figure of Isis is frequently represented holding the  stem of the plant in one hand, and the cross and circle  in the other. Columns and capitals resembling the  plant are still existing among the ruins of Thebes, in  Egypt, and the island of Pbilce. The Chinese goddess,  Pussa, is represented sitting upon the Lotus, called in  that country Lin, with many arms, having symbols  signifying the various operations of nature, while similar  attributes are expressed in the Scandinavian goddess  Isa or Disa.   The Lotus is also a prominent symbol in Hindu and  Egyptian cosmogony. This plant appears to have the  same tendency with the Sphinx, of marking the connection  between that which produces and that which is produced.  The Egyptian Ceres (Virgo) bears in her hand the blue  Lotus, which plant is acknowledged to be the emblem of  celestial love so frequently seen mounted on the back of  Leo in the ancient remains. The following is a translation  of the Purana relating to the cosmogony of the Hindus,  and will be found interesting as showing the importance  attached to the Lotus in the worship of the ancients :—  “ We find Brahma emerging from the Lotus. The whole  universe was dark and covered with water. On this  primeval water did Bhagavat (God), in a masculine  form, repose for the space of one Calpho (a thousand  years); after which period the intention of creating  other beings for his own wise purposes became pre¬  dominant in the mind of the Great Creator . In the first    Phallic Worship    63    place, by his sovereign will was produced the flower  of the Lotus, afterwards, by the same will, was brought  to light the form of Brahma from the said flower ; Brahma,  emerging from the cup of the Lotus, looked round on all  the four sides, and beheld from the eyes of his four heads  an immeasurable expanse of water. Observing the whole  world thus involved in darkness and submerged in water,  he was stricken with prodigious amazement, and began  to consider with himself, £ Who is it that produced me ? ’  * whence came I ? ’ ‘ and where am I ? *   “ Brahma, thus kept two hundred years in contem¬  plation, prayers, and devotions, and having pondered in  his mind that without connection of male and female an  abundant generation could not be effected—again entered  into profound meditation on the power of the Supreme,  when, on a sudden by the omnipotence of God, was  produced from his right side Swayambhuvah Menu , a man  of perfect beauty; and from the Brahma’s left side a  woman named Satarupa. The prayer of Brahma runs  thus :—‘ O Bhagavat! since thou broughtest me from  nonentity into existence for a particular purpose,  accomplish by thy benevolence that purpose.’ In a  short time a small white boar appeared, which soon  grew to the size of an elephant. He now felt God in all,  and that all is from Him, and all in Him. At length the  power of the Omnipotent had assumed the body of Vara.  He began to use the instinct of that animal. Having  divided the water, he saw the earth a mighty barren  stratum. He then took up the mighty ponderous globe  (freed from the water) and spread the earth like a carpet  on the face of the water; Brahma, contemplating the  whole earth, performed due reverence, and rejoicing  exceedingly, began to consider the means of peopling    64    Phallic Worship    the renovated world.” Pjag, now Allahabad, was the  first land said to have appeared, but with the Brahmins  it is a disputed point, for many affirm that Cast or Benares  was the sacred ground.    MERU   The learned Higgins, an English judge, who for some  years spent ten hours a day in antiquarian studies, says  that Moriah, of Isaiah and Abraham, is the Meru of the  Hindus, and the Olympus of the Greeks. Solomon  built high places for Ashtoreth, Astarte, or Venus, which  because mounts of Venus, mans veneris —Meru and Mount  Calvary—each a slightly skull-shaped mount, that might  be represented by a bare head. The Bible translators  perpetuate the same idea in the word “ calvaria.” Prof.  Stanley denies that “ Mount Calvary ” took its name  from its being the place of the crucifixion of Jesus.  Looking elsewhere and in earlier times for the bare calvaria,  we find among Oriental women, the Mount of Venus,  mons veneris , through motives of neatness or religious  sentiment, deprived of all hirsute appendage. We see  Mount Calvary imitated in the shaved poll of the head of  a priest. The priests of China, says Mr. J. M. Peebles,  continue to shave the head. To make a place holy,  among the Hindus, Tartars, and people of Thibet, it  was necessary to have a mount Meru, also a Linga-Yoni,  or Arba.      Phallic Worship    65    LINGAM IN THE TEMPLE OF ELORA   This marvellous work of excavation by the slow process  of the chisel, was visited by Capt. Seeley, who afterwards  published a volume describing the temple and its vast  statues. The beauty of its architectural ornaments, the  innumerable statues or emblems, all hewn out of solid  rock, dispute with the Pyramids for the first place among  the works undertaken to display power and embody  feeling. The stupendous temple is detached from the  neighbouring mountain by a spacious area all round, and  is nearly 2 5 o feet deep and 15 o feet broad, reaching to the  height of 100 feet and in length about 145 feet. It has  well-formed doorways, windows, staircases, upper floors,  containing fine large rooms of a smooth and polished  surface, regularly divided by rows of pillars ; the whole  bulk of this immense block of isolated excavation being  upwards of 500 feet in circumference, and having beyond  its areas three handsome figure galleries or verandas  supported by regular pillars. Outside the temple are  two large obelisks or phalli standing, “ of quadrangular  form, eleven feet square, prettily and variously carved, and  are estimated at forty-one feet high; the shaft above the  pedestal is seven feet two inches, being larger at the base  than Cleopatra’s Needle.”   In one oi the smaller temples was an image of Lingam,  “ covered with oil and red ochre, and flowers were daily  strewed on its circular top. This Lingam is larger than  usual, occupying with the altar, a great part of the room.  In most Ling rooms a sufficient space is left for the votaries  to walk round whilst making the usual invocations to the  deity (Maha Deo). This deity is much frequented by  female votaries, who take especial care to keep it clean   E    66    Phallic Worship    washed, and often perfume it with oderiferous oils and  flowers, whilst the attendant Brahmins sweep the apartment  and attend the five oil lights and bell ringing.” This oil  vessel resembled the Yoni (circular frame), into which the  light itself was placed. No symbol was more venerated  or more frequently met with than the altar and Ling, Siva,  or Maha Deo. “ Barren women constantly resort to it to  supplicate for children,” says Seeley. The mysteries  attended upon them is not described, but doubtless they  were of a very similar character to those described by the  author of the “ Worship of the Generative Powers of  the Western Nations,” showing again the similarity of  the custom with those practised by the Catholics in France.  The writer says :—“ Women sought a remedy for barren¬  ness by kissing the end of the Phallus ; sometimes they  appear to have placed a part of their body, naked, against  the image of the saint, or to have sat upon it. This latter  trait was perhaps too bold an adoption of the indecencies  of Pagan worship to last long, or to be practised openly ;  but it appears to have been innocently represented by  lying upon the body of the saint, or sitting upon a stone,  understood to represent him without the presence of the  energetic member. In a corner in the church of the  village of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there is a  stone called the chair of St. Fiacre, which confers fecundity  upon women who sit upon it; but it is necessary nothing  should intervene between their bare skin and the stone.  In the church of Orcival in Auvergne, there was a pillar  which barren women kissed for the same purpose and  which had perhaps replaced some less equivocal object.”   The principal object of worship at Elora is the stone, so  frequently spoken of ; “ the Lingam,” says Seeley, and he  apologises for using the word so often, but asks to be    Phallic Worship    67    excused, “ is an emblem not generally known, but as  frequently met with as the Cross in Catholic worship.”  It is the god Siva, a symbol of his generative character,  the base of which is usually inserted in the Yoni. The  stone is of a conical shape, often black stone, covered  with flowers (the Bella and Asuca shrubs). The flowers  hang pendant from the crown of the Ling stone to the  spout of the Argha or Yoni (mystical matrix) ; the same  as the Phallus of the Greeks. Five lamps are commonly  used in the worship at the symbol, or one lamp with five  wicks. The Lotus is often seen on the top of the Ling.    VENUS-URANIA.—THE MOTHER GODDESS   The characteristic attribute of the passive generative  power was expressed in symbolical writing, by different  enigmatical representations of the most distinguished  characteristic of the female sex: such as the shell or  Concha Veneris , the fig-leaf, barley corn, and the letter  Delta, all of which occur very frequently upon coins and  other ancient monuments in this sense. The same  attribute personified as the goddess of Love, or desire,  is usually represented under the voluptuous form of a  beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of these  symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names  of rather uncertain mythology. She is said to be the  daughter of Jupiter and Dione, that is of the male and  female personifications of the all-pervading Spirit of the  Universe ; Dione being the female Dis or Zeus, and there¬  fore associated with him in the most ancient oraculai     68    Phallic Worship    temple of Greece at Dodona. No other genealogy appears  to have been known in the Homeric times ; though a  different one is employed to account for the name of  Aphrodite in the “ Theogony ” attributed to Hesiod.   The Genelullides or Genoidai were the original and  appropriate ministers or companions of Venus, who was  however, afterwards attended by the Graces, the proper  and original attendants of Juno; but as both these  goddesses were occasionally united and represented in  one image, the personifications of their respective sub¬  ordinate attributes were on other occasions added:  whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a  beard, and other appearances of virility, which seems to  have been the most ancient mode of representing the  celestial as distinguished from the popular goddess of that  name—the one being a personification of a general  procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or  concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however,  when advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant  modes of distinguishing them ; and, in a celebrated work  of Phidias, we find the former represented with her foot  upon a tortoise ; and in a no less celebrated one of Scopas,  the latter sitting upon a goat. The tortoise, being an  androgynous animal, was aptly chosen as a symbol of  the double power ; and the goat was equally appropriate  to what was meant to be expressed in the other.   The same attribute was on other occasions signified by a  dove or pigeon, by the sparrow, and perhaps by the  polypus, which often appears upon coins with the head  of the goddess, and which was accounted an aphrodisiac,  though it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig  was a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus  being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with the    Phallic Worship    69    Phallus in the ancient processions in honour of Bacchus,  and still continuing among the common people of Italy  to be an emblem of what it anciently meant: whence  we often see portraits of persons of that country painted  with it in one hand, to signify their orthodox elevation to  the fair sex. Hence, also arose the Italian expression far la  fica , which was done by putting the thumb between the  middle and fore-fingers, as it appears in many Priapic orna¬  ments extant; or by putting the finger or thumb into the  corner of the mouth and drawing it down, of which there  is a representation in a small Priapic figure of exquisite  sculpture, engraved among the Antiquities of Herculaneum.    LIBERALITY AND SAMENESS OF THE  WORLD-RELIGIONS   The same liberal and humane spirit still prevails among  those nations whose religion is founded on the same  principles. “ The Siamese,” says a traveller of the  seventeenth century, “ shun disputes and believe that  almost all religions are good ” (“ Journal du Voyage de  Siam ”). When the ambassador of Louis XIV asked their  king, in his master’s name, to embrace Christianity, he  replied, “ that it was strange that the king of France  should interest himself so much in an affair which concerns  only God, whilst He, whom it did concern, seemed to  leave it wholly to our discretion. Had it been agreeable  to the Creator that all nations should have had the same  form of worship, would it not have been as easy to His  omnipotence to have created all men with the same senti-     7°    Phallic Worship    ments and dispositions, and to have inspired them with the  same notions of the True Religion, as to endow them with  such different tempers and inclinations ? Ought they  not rather to believe that the true God has as much pleasure  in being honoured by a variety of forms and ceremonies,  as in being praised and glorified by a number of different  creatures ? Or why should that beauty and variety,  so admirable in the natural order of things, be less  admirable or less worthy of the wisdom of God in the  supernatural ? ”   The Hindus profess exactly the same opinion. “ They  would readily admit the truth of the Gospel,” says a very  learned writer long resident among them, “ but they  contend that it is perfectly consistent with their Shastras.  The Deity, they say, has appeared innumerable times in  many parts of this world and in all worlds, for the salvation  of his creatures ; and we adore, they say, the same God, to  whom our several worships, though different in form, are  equally acceptable if they be sincere in substance.”   The Chinese sacrifice to the spirits of the air the  mountains and the rivers ; while the Emperor himself  sacrifices to the sovereign Lord of Heaven, to whom all  these spirits are subordinate, and from whom they are  derived. The sectaries of Fohi have, indeed, surcharged  this primitive elementary worship with some of the  allegorical fables of their neighbours ; but still as their  creed—like that of the Greeks and Romans—remains  undefined, it admits of no dogmatical theology, and of  course no persecution for opinion. Obscure and  sanguinary rites have, indeed, been wisely prescribed on  many occasions ; but still as actions and not as opinions.  Atheism is said to have been punished with death at  Athens ; but nevertheless it may be reasonably doubted    Phallic Worship    7 1    whether the atheism, against which the citizens of that  republic expressed such fury, consisted in a denial of the  existence of the gods ; for Diagoras, who was obliged  to fly for this crime, was accused of revealing and calum¬  niating the doctrines taught in the Mysteries ; and from  the opinions ascribed to Socrates, there is reason to believe  that his offence was of the same kind, though he had not  been initiated.   These were the only two martyrs to religion among the  ancient Greeks, such as were punished for actively violating  or insulting the Mysteries, the only part of their worship  which seems to have possessed any vitality; for as to  the popular deities, they were publicly ridiculed and  censured with impunity by those who dared not utter a  word against the populace that worshipped them; and  as to the forms and ceremonies of devotion, they were  held to be no otherwise important, then as they were  constituted a part of civil government of the state; the  Phythian priestess having pronounced from the tripod,  that whoever performed the rites of his religion according to the  laws of his country, performed them in a manner pleasing to the  Deity. Hence the Romans made no alterations in the  religious institutions of any of the conquered countries ;  but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and extravagant  as they pleased, and to enforce their absurdities and  extravagances wherever they had any pre-existing laws  in their favour. An Egyptian magistrate would put  one of his fellow-subjects to death for killing a cat ora  monkey; and though the religious fanaticism of the  Jews was too sanguinary and too violent to be left entirely  free from restraint, a chief of the synagogue could order  anyone of his congregation to be whipped for neglecting  or violating any part of the Mosaic Ritual.    7 2    Phallic Worship    The principle underlying the system of emanations  was, that all things were of one substance, from which they  were fashioned and into which they were again dissolved,  by the operation of one plastic spirit universally diffused  and expanded. The polytheist of ancient Greece and  Rome candidly thought, like the modern Hindu, that all  rites of worship and forms of devotion were directed  to the same end, though in different modes and through  different channels. “ Even they who worship other gods, says  Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem  ( Bhagavat-Gita ), “worship me although they know it not ''—  Payne Knight.