LESLEY'S "ARKITE SYMBOLISM."

I have already referred to the similarity between the symbols of the sun-gods of antiquity and the natural objects introduced into the Mosaic myth of the fall; and it is necessary now to consider shortly what influence the phallic principle there embodied had over other portions of Hebraic theology. The inquiries of Dr. Faber have thrown great light on this question, although the explanation given by him of the myth of Osiris and of the kindred myths of antiquity is by no means the correct one. Finding an universal prevalence of phallic ideas and symbolism, Dr. Faber refers it to the degradation of a primitive revelation of the Great Father of the Universe. The truth thus taught was lost sight of, and was replaced by the dual notion of a great father and a great mother "the transmigrating Noah and the mundane Ark" of the universal deluge. Noah was, however, only a re-appearance of Adam, and the Ark floating on the waters of the deluge was an analogue of the earth swimming in the ocean of space. 117 There is undoubtedly a parallelism between the Adam and Noah of the Hebrew legends, as there is between the analogous personages of the other phases of these legends; yet it is evident that, if the deluge never happened, a totally different origin from the one supposed by Dr. Faber must be assigned to the great phallic myth of antiquity. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, to any explanation (other than the phallic one) of the origin of this myth, to establish the truth of the Noachic deluge. 118 Accordingly, a late American writer has formed an elaborate system of "Arkite Symbolism," founded on the supposed influence of the great deluge over the minds of the posterity of those who survived its horrors. Mr. Lesley sees in this catastrophe the explanation of "phallism," which, "converting all the older Arkite symbols into illustrations of its own philosophical conceptions of the mystery of generation, gave to the various parts and members of the human body those names which constitute the special vocabulary of obscenity of the present day." 119

But the priority of these symbols or conceptions is the question at issue. Did the development of "arkism" precede or follow the superstitions referred to by Mr. Lesley as Ophism, Mithraism, and Phallism, all of which I have shown to embody analogous ideas? If the question of priority is to be determined by reference to the written tradition which furnishes the real ground of belief in a great deluge, it must clearly be given to the phallic superstition; for I have shown, conclusively as I think, that almost the first event in the life of man there narrated is purely phallic in its symbolism. Nor is the account of the fall the only portion of the Mosaic history of primitive man which belongs to this category. The Garden of Eden, with its tree of life, and the river which divided into four streams, although it may have had a secondary reference to the traditional place of Semitic origin to which the Hebrews looked back with regretful longing, has undoubtedly a recondite phallic meaning. It must be so if the explanation I have given of the myth of the fall be correct, since the two are intimately connected, and the garden 120 is essential to the succeeding catastrophe. 121

The priority of the phallic superstition over "arkism," is proved, moreover, by the undoubted fact that, even in the traditions of the race to whom we are indebted for the precise details of the incidents accompanying the deluge, the phallic deities of the Hamitico-Semites are genealogically placed long before the occurrence of this event. The Semitic deity Seth is, according to one table, the semi-divine first ancestor of the Semites. Bunsen has shown clearly, also, that several of the antediluvian descendants of the Semitic Adam were among the Phoenician deities. Thus, the Carthaginians had a god Yubal, Jubal, who would appear to have been the sun-god AEsculapius, called "the fairest of the gods;" and so also "we read in a Phoenician inscription of Baal, i.e., beauty of Baal, which Movers ingeniously interprets AEsculapius-Asmun-Jubal." Here, then, adds Bunsen, "is another old Semitic name attached to a descendant of Lamekh, together with Adah, Zillah, and Naamah." 122 Hadah, the wife of Lamekh as well as of Esau, the Phoenician Usov, is identified with the goddess worshipped at BabyIon as Hera (Juno), and, notwithstanding Sir Gardner Wilkinson's dictum to the contrary, her names, Hera, Hadah, point to the connection with the Egyptian Her Her, or Hathor, who was the daughter of Seb and Netpe, as Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. The name of the god Kiyun, or Kivan, who was worshipped by the Hebrews, and who in Syria was said to devour children, is connected with the root kun, to erect, and therefore doubtless with the antediluvian Kain or Kevan. Kon, derived from the same root, was, according to Bunsen, a Phoenician designation of Saturn. 123 Even the great Carthaginian god Melekh, who was also held in universal honor throughout all Phoenicia, appears, although Bunsen does not thus identify him, to be no other than Lamekh, the father of Noah. 124 Ewald, indeed, says that both Lamekh and Enoch were gods or demi-gods, and that Methuselah was a sort of Mars, while Mahahal-el was a god of light, and Jareda a god of the lowland or of the water. 125

The priority of the phallic superstition over Arkism, or rather the existence of that superstition before the formation of the deluge-legend, is proved, moreover, by the agreement of this legend with the myth of Osiris and Isis in its primitive form, while Typhon (Seth) was honored by the Egyptians as a great god. 126 Bunsen fixes the origin of this myth in its amended form so late as the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C. 127 In the face of this agreement we can only suppose the myth and the deluge-legend to have had the same basis--a basis which, from the very circumstances of the case, must be purely "phallic." This explanation is the only one which is consistent with a peculiarity in the Hebrew legend, which is an insurmountable objection to its reception as the expression of a literal fact. We are told by the Mosaic narrative that Jehovah directed Noah to take with him into the Ark "of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort." Now, according to the ordinary acceptation of the legend, this passage expresses a simple absurdity, even on the hypothesis of a partial deluge. If, however, we read the narrative in a phallic sense, and by the Ark understand the sacred argha of Hindu mythology, the Yoni of Parvati, which, like the moon in Zoroastrian teaching, carries in itself the germs of all things, we see the full propriety of what otherwise is incomprehensible. As en arche, the Elohim created the heavens and the earth, so in the Ark were the seeds of all things preserved that they might again cover the earth. Taken in this sense, we see the reason of the curious analogy which exists in various points between the Hebrew legends of the creation and of the deluge; this analogy being one of the grounds on which the hypothesis of the Great Father as the central idea of all mythologies has been based. Thus, the primeval ship, the navigation of which is ascribed to the mythological being, is not the ark of Noah or Osiris, or the vessel of the Phoenician Kabiri. It was the moon, the ship of the sun, in which his seed is supposed to be hidden until it bursts forth in new life and power. The fact that the moon was in early mythologies a male deity almost necessitates, however, that there should have been another origin for the sacred vessel of Osiris. This we have in the Hastoreth-karnaim, the cow-goddess, whose horns represent the lunar ark, and who, without doubt, was a more primitive deity than the moon-goddess herself. 128 The most primitive type of all, however, is that of the argha or yoni of the Indian Iswara, which, from its name, was supposed to have been turned into a dove. 129 Thus, in Noah and the Ark, as in Osiris and the Moon, we see simply the combination of the male and female elements, as they are still represented in the Hindu lingam. The introduction of the dove into the myth is a curious confirmation of this view. For, this bird, which, as "the emblem of love and fruitfulness," was "consecrated to Venus under all her different names at Babylon, in Syria, Palestine, and Greece 130 which was the national banner-sign of the Assyrians, as of the earlier Scythic empire, whose founders, according to Hindu tradition, took the name of Ionim or Yoniyas, and which attended on Janus, a diluvian "God of opening and shutting," was simply a type of "the Yoni or Jonah, 131 or navicular feminine principle," which was said to have assumed the form of a ship and a dove. 132