Part 6

The teaching of the Church of Rome regarding the Virgin Mary shows a remarkable resemblance to the teachings of the ancients concerning the female associate of the triune deity. In ancient times she has passed under many and diverse names; she was the Virgin, conceiving and bringing forth from her own inherent power; she was the wife of Nimrod; she has been known as Athor, Artemis, Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, Cybele, etc.

As Anaitis she is Mother and Child, appearing again as Isis and Horus; even in ancient Mexico Mother and Child were worshipped. In modern times she reappears as the Virgin Mary and her Son; she was queen of fecundity, queen of the gods, goddess of war, Virgin of the Zodiac, the mysterious Virgin "Time" from whose womb all things were born. Although variously represented she has been usually pictured as a more or less nude figure carrying an infant in her arms. (Inman, "Ancient Faiths").

Inman declares without hesitation that the trinity of the ancients is unquestionably of phallic origin, and others have strenuously contended and apparently proven that the male emblem of generation in divine creation was three in one, and that the female emblem has always been the triangle or accepted symbol of trinity. Sometimes two triangles have been combined forming a six-rayed star, the two together being emblematical of the union of the male and female principles producing a new figure; the triangle by itself with the point down typifies the delta or yoni through which all things come into the world.

Another symbol of deity among the Indians was the Trident, and this marks the belief in the Trinity which very generally prevailed in India among the Hindoos. As Maurice says, "It was indeed highly proper and strictly characteristic that a three-fold deity should wield a triple scepter." Upon the top of the immense pyramids of Deoghur, which were truncated, and upon whose upper surface rested the circular cone--that ancient emblem of the Phallus and of the Sun, was found the trident scepter of the Greek Neptune. It is said that in India is to be found the most ancient form of Trinitarian worship. In Egypt it later prevailed widely, but scarcely any two states worshipped the same triad, though all triads had this in common at least that they were father, mother and son, or male and female with their progeny. In the course of time, however, the worship of the first person was lost or absorbed in the second and the same thing is prevalent among the Christians of today, for many churches and institutions are dedicated to the second or third persons of the Trinity but none to the first.

The transition from the old to the new could not be effected in a short time and must have been an exceedingly slow process, therefore we need not be surprised to be told of the ancient worship that after its exclusion from larger places it was maintained for a long time by the inhabitants of humbler localities; hence its subsequent designation, since from being kept up in the villages, the _pagi_, its votaries, were designated _pagani_, or pagans.

Even now some of these ancient superstitions remain in recognizable form. The moon is supposed to exert a baneful or lucky influence according as it is first viewed; the mystic horse-shoe, which is a purely uterine symbol, is still widely employed; lucky and unlucky days are still regarded; our playing cards are indicated by phallic symbols, the spade, the triadic club, the omphallic distaff and eminence disguised as the heart and the diamonds. Dionysius reappears as St. Denys, or in France as St. Bacchus; Satan is revered as St. Satur or St. Swithin; the Holy Virgin, Astraea, whose return was heralded by Virgil as introducing the Golden Age, is now designated as the Blessed Virgin, Queen of Heaven. The Mother and Child are to-day in Catholic countries adored as much as were Ceres and Bacchus, or Isis and the infant Horus, centuries ago. The nuns of Christian to-day are the nuns of the Buddhists or of the Egyptian worshippers of Isis, and the phallic import is not lost even in their case since they are the "Brides of the Savior." The libations of human blood which were formerly offered to Bacchus found most tragic imitation in the sacrifices of later days. The screechings of the ancient prophets of Baal, and of the Egyptian worshippers, preceded the flagellations of the penitentes. Even recently, during Holy Week in Rome, devotees lash themselves until the blood runs, as did the young men in ancient Rome during the Lupercalia. And even yet in New Mexico the Indian _penitentes_ repeat the cruel flagellations and cross-bearing taught by the Spanish priest, to the extent--sometimes--of an actual crucifixion. In the ancient Roman catacombs are found portraits of the utensils and furniture of the ancient mysteries, and one drawing shows a woman standing before an altar offering buns to a certain god. In fact we may say there is no Christian fast nor festival, procession nor sacrament, custom nor example, that do not come quite naturally from previous paganism.

The Creation is in fact a _human rather than a divine product_, in this sense that it was suggested to the mind of man by the existence of things, while its method was, at least at first, suggested by the operations of nature; thus man saw the living bird emerge from the egg, after a certain period of incubation, a phenomenon equivalent to actual creation as apprehended by his simple mind. Incubation obviously then associated itself with Creation, and this fact will explain the universality with which the egg was received as a symbol in the earlier systems of cosmogony. By a similar process creation came to be symbolized in the form of a phallus, and so the Egyptians, in their refinement of these ideas, adopted as their symbol of the first great cause, a Scarabaeus, indicating the great hermaphroditic unity since they believed this insect to be both male and female.

Further exemplification of the same underlying principle is seen in the fact that most all of the ancient deities were paired, thus we have heaven and earth, sun and moon, fire and earth, father and mother, etc. Faber says,--"The Ancient Pagans of almost every part of the globe were wont to symbolize the world by an egg; hence this symbol is introduced into the cosmogonies of nearly all nations, and there are few persons even among those who have made mythology their study to whom the mundane egg is not perfectly familiar; it is the emblem not only of earth and life but also of the universe in its largest extent."

I began this essay with the intention of demonstrating the recondite but positive connection between the symbolism of the Church of to-day and the phallic and iatric cults of pre-christian centuries. (Much of the subject matter contained in the previous essay (III) may be profitably read in this connection). As a humble disciple of that Aesculapius who was the reputed founder of our craft, I have felt that every genuine scholar in medicine should be familiar with these relations between the past and the present.

V

THE RELATION OF THE GRECIAN MYSTERIES TO THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY

Ever since mentality has been an attribute of mankind, man has appreciated that he is surrounded by a vast incomprehensible mystery which ever closes in upon him, and from whose environment he may never free himself. The endeavor to solve this mystery has on one hand stimulated his reasoning power, and on the other nearly paralyzed it. Having no better guidance he has in all time attributed to a Great First Cause powers and faculties, even shape and form, more or less human; thus from time immemorial God or the Gods have been given a kingdom, a throne, some definite form, and even offspring. To him or them have been given purely human attributes, and they have been supposed to possess human passions and to be capable of love, wrath, strength, etc. In nearly all ages lightning, for instance, has been regarded as an expression of divine fury. As intelligence advanced the number of Gods was reduced and their manifestations classified and studied more or less imaginatively; and so while men have always acknowledged the impossibility of explaining the great mysteries of creation and of space, they have seemed to find it necessary to create other equally inscrutable mysteries of purely human invention, such as the incarnation, the trinity, the resurrection, vicarious salvation, metempsychosis, and the like.

History shows the love of mystery to be contagious as well as productive of its kind, and the origin of mystic teachings as well as of most secret societies bears out these statements. Secrets, guarded by fearful oaths, personified by meaningless emblems, concealed either in language unintelligible to others, or else hidden in terms whose special meaning is known only to the initiated, made attractive by special signs, symbols, innocent rites, or barbarous observances,--all of these means were designed solely to keep men banded together for the purpose of forming a propaganda intended to perpetuate yet other mysteries in which the initiates were especially interested. Since history began such associations of men have existed for most diverse ends, all having this in common, that only by this means could they secure and maintain influence and power.

And so the series of pictures which represent man in this role may be regarded as a panorama, led by garlanded priests carrying images of Isis or droning hymns to Demeter of Eleusis, or Druids preparing for their human sacrifices; followed by gay and voluptuous Bacchantes, succeeded by white-robed Pythagoreans; next may come the suffering Essenes bearing crosses, then the Latin Brotherhoods, followed by the German and English Guilds, the Stone Masons with their implements, the Crusader Knights, those coming first having an appearance of actual humility and devotion, while those who follow are haughty and contemptuous to a degree. Then would follow the black-robed Penitentes and the members of the Society of Jesus, sanctimonious, with eyes cast down, human machines, mere tools in the hands of their superiors; the panorama continuing with a widely assorted lot of scholars, artisans and men of all conditions in various regalia, and terminated with an indistinguishable multitude of variously adorned men, some sleek and fat, others ill-conditioned, some devout and sincere, others mere jesters and knaves from every walk of life.

It was most natural and to be expected that primitive man should be most profoundly impressed with the forces of nature, often terrifying and frightful, often winsome and attractive, and that he should bow himself down to the unknown cause of these manifestations. With his extremely finite mind he necessarily personified them; after having done this he proceeded to propitiate them by worship with certain forms of ritual. Perhaps fire first and most of all attracted him in this way, and drew from him the earliest acts of worship, for in spite of the general views to the contrary fire is often of natural origin, and must have been known to men before they became able to produce it by their own efforts. From practical to generalized concepts was a natural step, and thus mythology had its beginnings; the earliest distinctions were as between that which is overhead, i. e. Heaven, and that which is beneath, namely, the earth; these are the beginnings of all cosmogonies. Next the Gods were given the attributes of sex; Heaven was represented as masculine, fructifying, powerful; Earth as conceptive, female and gentle. By the union of these two were produced sun, moon and their progeny--the stars. Later the sun became Poseidon or Neptune, because he appeared from and disappeared into the sea. Then the imagination began to run riot, and gave rise to many individual divinities, gods and goddesses, all with human passions and attributes, mingling and propagating after human fashion, and begetting dynasties and half human races, whose doings were the subject of countless epics, dramas, myths and romances.

Thus time passed on and the original sense or meaning of these myths, descending slowly by oral tradition, became lost, while the myths themselves were for a long time accepted as historical facts. Nevertheless in all ages there have been men who, like Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch, have questioned the accuracy of these statements and shown themselves intelligent and active sceptics. During all these times, however, a wily priest-craft had lived and thrived on the superstitions of the common people and the practices in which they have indulged; by these men, thus conditioned, any active doubt was regarded as subversive of the system by which they were supported, and as one not to be tolerated;--this condition pertaining not only to antiquity, since it is too significant a feature even of the early years of this twentieth century. A more or less honest though misinformed priesthood has, in all times, been in favor of the purification of the theology in vogue in their times and among their inner circles, and has in the main given the most rationalistic interpretation to the obscure things which they taught, and practised what their education and environment would permit. But in order to preserve the mysteries, to maintain them as such, and save themselves from becoming superfluous, not to say intolerable, these same mysteries have been tricked out with mysticism, symbolism of the most fantastic character, and allegory of the most bewildering kind; moreover this has often been accomplished by dramatic representations and by moralizing or demoralizing ceremonies. The countries in which these "mysteries," as they have since been known, were most commonly practised and most widely believed were Egypt, Chaldea and Greece.

The sources of the Egyptian mysteries, like those of Egyptian civilization, are the most difficult to discover. The Nile is necessarily the basis of Egyptian history, geography, activity and habits, and consequently must be also of the Egyptian cult. The people who were known as Egyptians invaded the land of the Nile from the direction of Asia, and found there a race of negro type whom they subdued and with whom they later mingled. The Semites called the land Misraim; the Greeks finally changed the name of its great river to Neilos. The country is a land of enigmas. Who built those pyramids, and why? Who originated the system of pictorial writing which we call the hieroglyphic? Who planned those wonderful temples now either in ruins, as in upper Egypt, or buried beneath the desert sands, as in lower Egypt? Who brought and erected those mighty blocks of stone or massive slabs from enormous distances, and handled them as we could scarcely do to-day with the best of modern machinery?

In course of time two hereditary classes were formed, the priests who dominated the minds, and the warriors who controlled the bodies of the conquered people and the lower classes. The latter kept the throne of Egypt occupied, while the former, having a monopoly of the knowledge of the time, prescribed for the people what they must believe, yet were very far from accepting these precepts for themselves, and in their inner circles made light of that which they preached to the despised classes without.

The Egyptians named their Sun God RE, but assigned the various attributes of the sun to different personalities; they had moreover not only Gods for the whole land, but Ptah was God of Memphis, Ammon God of Thebes, etc. Local deities were often constructed out of inspiring objects or from animals inhabited by spirits, and thus the fetichism of the original negro race exerted no little influence upon the higher cult of their lighter colored conquerors. Worship was paid to animals not for their own sake but because of the Gods who were supposed to reside within them; thus their prominent Gods were represented with the head of some animal. This honor belonged not to any individual animal but of necessity to the entire species, certain representatives of which were maintained at public expense in the temples, where they were carefully guarded and waited upon by the faithful. To harm one of these animals was to be severely punished, to kill one of them was to die. Conversely when a God failed in responding to the prayers of the faithful his fetich had to suffer, and the priests first threatened the animal, and if menaces were unavailing they killed the sacred beast, albeit in secret, lest the people should learn of it.

As time went on there was less of zoölatry, and the Sun-Gods and their associates figured more largely among the cult of the people. The sun's course was not represented as that of a chariot, as among the Persians and Greeks, but rather as the voyage of a Nile boat, upon which the God Re navigated the heavens; from which it will appear that the priestly religion was making slow progress to monotheism by means of oligotheism. The secret teaching of the priests was now more and more to the effect that the Gods stood not so much for themselves as for something else. During the fourth dynasty the lower Egyptian city Anu was known as the City of the Sun, hence the Greek name for the place, Heliopolis. Still more characteristic was the giving of the name of Osiris, who figured as God of Abdu, which the Greeks called Abydos, in upper Egypt, to the God of the Sunset, who was king of the lower domains and of death, brother and at the same time husband of Isis, brother also of Set, who slew him, and father of Horus, i. e. God of the new sun, who figures after each sunset. Horus fought with Set, but being unable to completely destroy him left him the desert as his kingdom, while himself holding to the Nile valley. This story of the Gods was publicly represented in various scenes on certain holidays, but only the priests, i. e., the initiated, knew the real meaning of the representations. Even the name of Osiris and his abode were kept secret, and outsiders heard only of the "great God" dwelling somewhere in "the West."

These were the most famous of all the old Egyptian mysteries, though to them were added many others, including that of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, who served also as the symbol of the Sun and of the fructifying Nile; beneath his tongue was to be seen the sacred beetle, and the behavior of the great animal was supposed to be prophetic and his actions to mean oracular sayings. The Sphinx again was a sun-God, his image being repeated throughout the Nile region, and was always thought of as a male; the head was represented as that of some king, while the whole figure stood for the Sun-God Harmachis; although the sphinx later introduced into Greece was always female.

While the Egyptians did not attribute to their numerous Gods divine perfection, they nevertheless regarded religious practices as a means of currying favor with their divinities, a custom apparently still in favor. The priests believed in a Sun-God as the only true deity, but not so the people; thus the priests in the various cities praised their local and tutelary God as supreme and made him identical with Re, whose name they appended to the original, as for instance _Amon-Re_. The king, no matter where he was, prayed always to the local deity as lord of heaven and earth, yet in words always the same.

At last during the eighteenth dynasty, about 1460 B. C., Amenhotep IV realized that the power of the priesthood was a menace to the crown and therefore proclaimed the Sun as the sole God, not in human shape, but in that of a disk. He ordered all other images of other Gods associated with the sun to be destroyed; the priests of these deposed Gods lost their places and estates, which latter were confiscated. But his sons-in-law who succeeded him restored the deposed monarchs. Nevertheless they were marked as heretics by those priests who were reinstated in their former power. In consequence of this conflict, which was violent and prolonged, the intellectual life of Egypt was paralyzed and the mystic teachings of the priests were henceforth not disturbed by any wave of progress or advance.

The people again sank into a stupid and unredeemable formalism, demonism and sorcery. With the purpose of amusing them the priests furnished gorgeous sacrificial processions and festivals, while at the same time drawing them away from the true God by teaching them a worship of deceased kings and queens. They also built temples, to only the outer portion of which were the people generally admitted, while the innermost portions were guarded by these priests lest the mysteries thus protected be such no longer. They also procured the building of the ancient Labyrinth, near Lake Moeris, of which Herodotus tells us that there were fifteen hundred chambers above ground and as many more under ground, which latter were never shown except to the initiated, and which contained the remains of sacred crocodiles and of the Pharaohs.

The Egyptian priests taught that man was made up of _body_, a material essence or the _soul_, which in the shape of a bird left the body at death, and an _immaterial spirit_ which held to the man the same relation which a God held to the animal in which he dwelt, and which at death departed from the body like the image of a dream. They taught also that, if the soul and spirit were to live on, the body should be embalmed and laid in a rock chamber, and that then the relatives must supply meat, drink, and clothing for its use. The spirit took its way to Osiris and by means of a magic formula the dead would be made one with Osiris; hence in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" the deceased was addressed as Osiris with his own name added, and could now lead a happy life in the other world, which life was portrayed on the walls of the Sepulchres in pictures which are still to be seen, showing how the creature comforts of this world were to be enhanced in the next. Having reached the outer world, and having escaped the host of demons that threatened him on his passage, he could then revisit this earth at will in any form.

The Egyptian priests also taught that there was a judgment of the dead, and that new comers had to appear before Osiris, with his forty-two Assessors, and disclaim the commission of each one of forty-two sins; all of which was a magic formula for obtaining bliss according to their notion rather than anything intended as a true statement. The hippopotamus figured as an active agent in the Book of the Dead, appearing always as the accuser, when the sins and the good deeds were being weighed in the balance, while the God Thot was the "attorney for the defense."