the depth to which man has fallen, and also to encourage the Darwinians to deduce his origin from a reptile.

The origin of serpent-worship is to be sought for in the constitution of the human mind, and not in any invented system of religion or superstition. It has relation to the sexual system of nature, which is typified in the ancient mythologies under various emblems; the serpent representing the masculine element; but this was also worshipped in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and other idolatrous countries in later ages under the gross forms of the Phallus, Priapus, etc. So the sun was by the primitive races of mankind regarded as the emblem of a masculine deity, while the moon was worshipped as the feminine element. Cory contends that the mythology of the ancients recognizes two independent principles, male and female, as the primary elements of all things; and that these, in mystic union, constitute the great hermaphrodite Deity, the One God; the universe itself consisting of the two separate elements of its composition modified, though combined in one individual, of which all things are regarded but as parts.* The gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome are only embodiments of the powers of nature expressed in a variety of ways and by a multitude of fanciful names:† but they are all resolvable into the sun and moon, the male and the female elements. Thus Apollo, Osiris, Dionysos, Adonai, are representatives of the great luminary, while Luna, Diana, Ceres, Juno, and Proserpine are so of the lesser one. From this primitive duality, which constitutes the fundamental force of the universe, arises a double progression of cosmical powers, which, after having crossed each other by a mutual transition, at last proceed to blend in one supreme unity. This dualism is the fundamental theory of Swedenborg, who represents the Deity, or the Lord, as being a compound of love and wisdom, of goodness and truth, and the angels as perfected beings,

Ancient Fragments, p. 34. See also Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. ii, pp. 1, 60; vol. iii, p. 205.

+ Bryant On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India. Works, vol. vi, p. 273.

hermaphrodites, composed of the male and female natures in intimate conjunction.*

Ocellus Lucanus divides all nature into generative causes, and passive or prolific principles. He supposes the theatre of the former to be the region above the lunar sphere; and that of the latter to be the sublunary world. The first of these regions is filled with imperishable and immutable essences; the second, with beings subject to perpetual vicissitudes. All the changes in the sublunary world are produced by the sun as it approaches or recedes from it. The sphere of the moon forms the boundary line between these two regions of the world. Hence, it would appear, was derived the fiction that the moon was the seat of passive production; this is why she was identified with Ceres, Juno, Terra, Vesta, Isis, Diana, Latona, the powers presiding over child-birth, and all the prolific operations of nature, on all of whom the title of "Ops" (serpent) was conferred. In the theogonies of Egypt, Hindustan, and Mexico, as well as Greece, the serpent was a sacred emblem of nearly all the gods and goddesses, as we have seen. Many of the leading names of deities and objects are compounded of words relating to the worship of the reptile. In addition to those already mentioned, may be cited the name "Apollo," or more properly "Apollon," the Greek god of the sun: it is a compound of Ab-el-on, "serpent-godsun;" Phœbus or Phoibos, is from Phi-oub, "the oracular serpent." He was sometimes called Aph-el, "snake-god," and Helios, "the sun." The upright conical stones used by the Greeks to denote objects of worship, and called by them Baitvia, derived that name from the Hebrew Beth-el, "the house of God." The Syrian obelisks, 'oßeltono, were so called from Ob-el, "the snake-god," to whom they were dedicated, the Apollo of Syria. The name "pyramid" is taken from the Coptic Pi-ra-mu-e, "a ray of the sun :" the builder of the largest one was called "Cheops," or "Cha-ops," "the house of the serpent."

*Heaven and Hell, passim. Bryant, Anal., passim.

+ Opuscula Mythologica, cap. 2.

There is a singular parallelism in the traditions of both the Old and the New World in reference to the origin of evil. The Egyptian Osiris and Typhon, the Indian Kaliya and Surya, the Scandinavian Odin and Jörmungand, the Greek Python and Apollo, the Persian Ahriman and Oromanes, the Aztec Tetzcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli, are alike allegorical of the contest between the powers of good and those of evil, and the serpent is introduced into all their emblems. It is the same with all the mysteries and orgies of the ancient Egyptians, Hindoos, Syrians, Greeks, and Romans. The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt; of Atys and Cybele in Phrygia; of Ceres and Proserpine at Eleusis; of Venus and Adonis in Phoenicia; of Bona Dea and Priapus at Rome, are all susceptible of one explanation. They set forth and illustrated, by solemn and impressive rites and mystical symbols, the grand phenomena of nature, especially those connected with the creation of things and the perpetuation of life; and it is remarkable that in all of them the serpent was more or less conspicuously introduced, and always as symbolical of the invigorating or active energy of In the mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine, the grand secret communicated to the initiated was thus enigmatically expressed: "The bull begot the serpent and the serpent the bull." The bull was a prominent emblem of generative force, the Bacchus Zagreus or Tauriformis. The goat was another prominent emblem, especially among the Egyptians, on account of his strongly-developed salacity. They considered it in the same light as the Greeks regarded Priapus. Hence its incorporation in the figures of Pan, the Great Whole, the active instrument of production. It is upon these principles that the extraordinary Samaritan reading of the first verse of Genesis may be explained. Instead of "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," they

nature.

"Taurus Draconem genuit et Taurum Draco."

+ Duncan's Religions of Profane Antiquity, pp. 288, 289.

wrote, "In the beginning the goat Azima created the universe," equivalent to "In the beginning Jupiter, Ægiochus, or Pan, created the universe."*

The annual sloughing of its skin by the serpent was another reason for its being looked upon as emblematic of reproductive power. By this process, it was supposed to rejuvenate itself indefinitely. The doctrine of an unending

succession of forms was not remotely connected with that of regeneration, or new birth, which was part of the phallic system, and which was recognized, in a form more or less distinct, in nearly all the primitive religions. In Hindustan this doctrine is still enforced in the most unequivocal manner, through the medium of rites of portentous solemnity and significance to the devotees of the Hindu religion. The Lingham, corresponding to the Phallus of the Egyptians, is always to be found in the interior and most sacred part of the temples of Siva Sometimes it represents both the male and the female parts of generation, and sometimes only the former. A lamp is kept constantly burning before it; but, whẹn sacrifices are made, seven lamps are lighted. Married women wear a small gold Lingham around the neck or arm, and pay worship to it, to obtain fecundity. Those who dedicate themselves to the service of the Lingham swear to observe inviolable chastity, and are regarded as sanctified persons. At the festival of Osiris, in Egypt, the Phallus was carried by the women, as it now is by those of Hindustan.†

The Brahmins hold that Brahma was half male, half female; that he divided himself into two parts, and thus produced the female Vira'j, and from her all creatures. In the Orphic theogony, Phanes or Ericapous, who corresponds to the Hindu Brahma, is represented as having around him the heads of a ram, a bull, a lion, and a serpent, and as being both male and female. The Egyptian Phtha, and the Assyrian

*Squier, chap. vi, notes.

Crawford's Hindustan, vol. i, pp. 203, 212.

Baal, were also androgynous.

So in the Hindu system,

the female energy, the sacred Yoni, is frequently blended with the Lingham in one idol, and grossly indecent ceremonies attend the worship of it.* Nearly every inquirer into the primitive superstitions of mankind has observed a close relationship, if not an absolute identity, between what are usually distinguished as solar, phallic, and serpent worship; they are, in fact, forms of a single worship. "If," says Mr. O'Brien, the Irish antiquary, "they be all three identical, as seems certain, where is the occasion for surprise at cur meeting the sun, phallus, and serpent, the constituent symbols of each, occurring in combination, embossed upon the same table, and grouped under the same architrave?" The obelisks of Syria, the pyramids of Egypt, the conical shafts of India, and the round towers of Ireland, are all symbolical of this triple worship of a dual principle. "The sun was the great god of the heathen world, and the moon was considered his wife; so that the sun and moon of Egyptian worship were the Creator, in the mystical character of husband and wife, under which he was expressed by many names and symbols. The sun and moon, the male and female serpent, Osiris and Isis, are in turn employed to denote the Intelligent Being, the maker of all things, in conjugal unity." The same is the case with the Siva and the Bhavani, the Lingham and Yoni, of the Hindus, and the Tetzcatlipoca and Cihuacohuatl of Mexico. They also appear under terrestrial aspects, as human beings, and actuated by human passions, and we find most primitive nations tracing their origin to a first pair.

Nor did the human imagination content itself with terrestrial representations of the serpent. The star gazers of Asia, Egypt, and Greece, beheld it in the heavens. The Milky Way was to them a celestial serpent, and they formed the constellations of Draco, Ophiuchus, and Orion (Aur-ai-on) in

*Round Towers of Ireland, p. 224. † Ibid., p. 224.

Deane, p. 293.