Art Magic

Adonis, Elijah, Elisha, El, Bael, Belus, Jehovah, Jah, Abraham, Samson, Jachin, Boaz, Adam, Eve, Mary, Esau, Edom, Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, Odin, Sol, Helios, Asher, Dyonisus, etc., etc., etc., are all names significant of sexual ideas.

Most of the names bestowed on Hindoo, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Hebrew Gods bear the same interpretation, or else are applicable, in a double sense, to Solar and Sex worship. The names of the twelve tribes of Israel have direct reference to the generative functions; and thus are Bible names and Bible terms put into the mouths of innocent, lisping children as "the word of God," a word which, if interpreted in all the fullness of its meaning, would crimson the cheek of every virtuous matron with shame.

Up to the days when European civilization prevailed, and the influence of a temperate, equatorial climate moderated the excessive energy of that emotional nature which man inherits from his association with matter, stimulated to immense activity in the fervid heat of tropical climes, his religious aspirations were all tinctured with the idiosyncrasies of his physical nature. He deemed of his God as of himself.

The sublime beauty of the spangled heavens, the obvious correspondence of heat, light and planetary influence with his material well-being, and the final mystery and power of the generative functions, were the most direct and natural appeals that he could find in the universe to his sense of reverence and his ideas of power. Is it any marvel that he worshiped the heavenly host and deemed the laws of generation the most direct representations of Deific action in creation?

The chief symbols of these interblended systems are found in the various forms of crosses extant; in the Phallus or Lingham, and the Yoni, the male and female emblems of generation; in the triangle or Tau, the origin of the cross, the Serpent who in so many ways was esteemed as a deific emblem, and every object, natural or artificial, which bore the least resemblance to the figures enumerated above.

As regards the cross, it has frequently been attempted to show that it owes its sacred character to the instrument of punishment upon which the Christian's God was supposed to have suffered death.

Ages before the Jews were known as a nation, the cross was regarded all through the East as a sacred symbol.

To remove the obscenity of the idea attached to its original meaning, from the image, which modern civilization so devoutly cherished, it has been urged that it was reverenced by the Egyptians, because it was used as a Nileometer or measure of the river Nile. Granting this, and admitting that the Nile was held sacred by the Egyptians as the source of plenty and irrigation, hence, that the Nileometer, with its upright post and cross-piece to mark the height to which the water attained, was also held sacred as an emblem of redemption from famine, or a sign of possible destruction, still this does not account for the prevalence of the cross nor the reverence attached to it in lands where no Nileometer was required, and in distant ages ere Nileometers were invented.

Sculptured over every temple of the East, the cross in many forms was used to signify the generative power.

It was originally designed to represent a Trinity, and thus gave rise to the sacredness attached to the number three, with all its multiples, and in all the varieties of form in which the cross is found from the plain letter T, the Tau of the Scandinavians, or the hammer of Thor, to the eight-sided cross of the Templars, and in all its variousness it signified and does signify, nothing more or less than the fertility, fecundity and creative structure of the masculine principle of generation. The fact that the sun's two chief incidents of Zodiacal travel were the crossings of the Ecliptic plane at Spring and Autumn, deepened the reverence which antique nations cherished for this all-prevailing symbol, but instead of removing it from the earth to the skies, it simply showed in this dual significance, the unity of design expressed throughout the cosmic motions or the universe.

The female emblem was signified by an unit, a circle, a boat shaped shell, a lozenge, or any object, animate or inanimate, that resembled these figured, or implied receptivity, fruitfulness or maternity. The union of the female unit with the male triad, was designed by the sacred and mystic number 4, or symbolized by a serpent with his tail in his mouth, two fishes bent to form a circle, the rite of circumcision, and many other symbolical rites and figures.

The origin of Serpent worship arose first from the universal prevalence of these creatures throughout the Orient; the extreme subtlety of their natures implying wisdom, the custom of casting their skins denoting renewed youth and immortality, their tremendous and deadly powers of destruction, analogous to the "wrath of God," their supposed healing virtue indicative of the life-giving power of the sun, the glory of their shining scales imitating light; but, above all, the Serpent was deified as the antagonistic power of the skies, defined in the great constellation of the Dragon, which did annual war with the heavenly legions of the sun.

Endless were the fables invented to typify the wisdom and life-giving properties of serpents; endless the myths in which they figured as the representatives of good and evil Genii.

Serpent worship is, in all probability, as old as Sex and Solar worship, and a thorough understanding of the three systems forms a clue to all the signs, symbols, allegories and mysteries of all the ancient faiths that prevailed before the Christian era.

The ideas indicated by these symbols, and the legends attached to them, underlie all those stupendous rites, solemn mysteries and gigantic monuments of art that have overlaid the once splendid Orient with ruins that will remain the mystery and admiration of the race till time shall be no more. The myths and symbols of these interblended systems prevailed indeed long after the Christian era, and were preserved by the Gnostics, Manicheans, Neo Platonists, and many of the early sects amongst Christians and Philosophic Greeks; they are preserved and prevail amongst the most civilized of sects to-day, but alas! without any real appreciation of the ideas that once vitalized the images.

Much of the mysticism of the "Divine Plato," and the numerical wisdom of Pythagoras, owed their identity to the esoteric meaning veiled in Oriental symbolism.

The famous mysteries of Eleusis, the Bacchic and Dyonisian rites, the feats in honor of Ceres, the orgies of Cybele, and other mythical personages of the Greek Pantheon; ancient masonry, both speculative and operative, and its degraded and imbecile descendant, modern masonry, founded their origin upon the basic principles of these ancient systems of worship, and the mass of legendary lore to which they gave rise.

Curious as would be the tracery of these primitive roots through all the tendrils, branches and reproductive germs that have overlaid the world with theological systems, the work must be reserved for another place and time, and this part of our subject must close with a few words in evidence of the lamentable tendency to degeneracy which all great ideas suffer when they outlive their day and usefulness; whilst the ark of the tabernacle survives through the sacred flame that of old dwelt between the Cherubim and Seraphim is quenched in eternal night.

Throughout the churches of Christendom, the name of the Most High God, the Alpha and Omega of Being, the Great Spirit who dwells alone and unknown in central orgs of primal light, is scarcely remembered, and ever subordinated to the worship of the Cross, with all its varieties of expression and form.

The myth of the Sun-God reappears in every phase of the Christian's creed.

The surplices, robes and fantastic adornments of high ecclesiasticism, are simply imitations of the women's garments which the priests of antiquity wore to indicate that God was both male and female.

The bells and holy candles, the Lambs, Bulls, Eagles, Men, Lions, and twelve apostolic personages, the Serpents, etc., etc., which cast their prismatic glory from costly painted windows on the chequered marbles of the floor beneath, are all but so many astronomical signs of antique fire worship, or emblems of sexual religion. The very shape of the steeples that crown the "houses of God" are mementos of the reverence accorded to the sacred flame, or veiled effigies of the "divine Lingham."

It would be equally painful and humiliating to analyze the mythical character of every sign and symbol of modern ecclesiasticism, were we not deeply, reverentially conscious that the spirit that no longer vivifies the dead husks of extinct faiths, still pervades the earth, still manifests its undying love for poor, idolatrous humanity, still illumines the heart, and sustains the drooping tendrils of that religion which erects its altar in the soul, and finds its most imperishable shrine in the depths of man's spiritual consciousness.

Witnesses, too - witnesses on the sensuous plane of life - are not wanting to the truth of this undying spiritual influx, permeating every age, and adapting its revelations to all forms of faith that recognize spiritual existence.

Like the waving lines of the shining Ecliptic, over bounding yet ever sustaining the sun-like progress of human destiny, comes down the ages the tracery of an all-pervading realm of spiritual existence, at once the cause and effect of earthly being.

Soul and spiritual essence is the God and the procedure, the Creator and the creature; all things else are phantasmagoric shapes, born of the hour, as formative moulds in which the soul essences grow, perishing with the hour when their office is ended.

Were it not for the assurance that there is a realm of spirit adequate to produce, sustain and guide the tangled woof of creation, the pictures we have drawn, however faithful to the exoteric history of the race, would be but a temporary assemblage of dust and ashes heaped together into grotesque and incomprehensible images. With this compass to steer our way through the restless billows of life's storm-tossed ocean, we may rise and sink, drift far and wide of our mark, stagnate for awhile on the sluggish sea of materialism, or seem to founder amidst the foam-crested upheavals of convulsed opinions, but we are in the hands of that Love that will never forsake us, that Wisdom that is all-sufficient to direct us, that Power that is almighty to save us.

"God lives and reigns!" said stout-hearted Martin Luther, when, standing alone, he bore testimony to his faith before princes, potentates and the opposing force of earth's assembled great ones.

His strength is ours, and in that strength we can afford to stand by and watch the wreck of empires and dynasties, ecclesiastical faiths and man-made dogmas.

We are immortal parts of the immortal Soul of the Universe, and we never can be lost, or perish out of his hand.