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THE STORY OF PHALLIC WORSHIP

    THE AGE OF THE WORLD can be approximated by its geological strata.  Students approximate where people came from when they finally located at certain places, by records left behind in the form of ruins, bas-reliefs, hieroglyphics, etc.  They leave a story which approximates driftings of entire tribes from place to place.  Certain common groups have certain things in common which they leave as a trail; thus students of migrations can differentiate one group from another, and each can be located definitely, even to saying where the division took place and when they came to a certain geographical settling.  Nothing, of course, is absolute, although reasonable so far as the present day mind which was not present then, can figure out, and thus determine with fair accuracy.
    This story is based upon a series of migrations of a more or less specific type of people.  There are exceptions to this rule, as is to be expected.
    The geography concerned in this analysis consists of all territory which now includes Asia, South Sea Islands, as far south to and including Australia and New Zealand, and north to the Equator, as far as the Hawaiian Islands, Alaskan Islands, western United States, all of Mexico, Central America, etc.  Whether or not it includes western South America, we do not know, not having been there.  Evidence exists that this analysis should include northwestern Africa, more particularly Egypt, as well as Greece and Rome.  Whether it spread further into what is now Europe, we are not prepared to state.
    The race under discussion originally was the Aryan people who were supposed to have dwelt in central Asia and thence to have separated in two great streams of migration, one toward Persia and India, one toward Europe.
    Let us follow the stream that went into India creating the East Indian, pouring over into Ceylon to make the Singhalese.  From India another stream crossed over into Burma, creating the Burmese.  The same stream, given time, poured down into Siam, creating the Siamese; then down into Malaya, creating the Malayans.
    From India, another stream crossed over to the northern portion of Sumatra and created the Batak people.  The stream poured over the southern end of Sumatra into Java and created the Javanese.  Continuing that same migration, they drifted into Bali and created the Balinese.
    From the stream that came from India and poured over into Siam, we find them drifting into Cambodia, creating the Khmer people; spreading a little farther into Laos and creating the Mois hill tribes, and down into Indo-China creating the native Endocheen.  The migration occurred this way across this peninsula because of a natural waterway gulf or water barrier.
    Another split occurred when they migrated from Java north into Borneo, creating the Borneans.  It was but a short jump from Borneo over into New Guinea, creating the savage there; up into the Fiji Islands, creating the Fijians, and then on up into the Hawaiian Islands, creating the Hawaiians; to the island of Celebes, creating the MacCassar people.
    Java appears to have been a starting place with several restless groups, for from Java, we find another stream going into Australia and creating the Bush People of that continent; thence to New Zealand and creating the Maoris; to the Samoan Islands, creating the Samoans, etc.
    From the Malayan peninsula, regardless of whether it was the Siamese or Mois hill tribes, we find a definite stream pouring north into China, creating the Chinese.  These spread into Korea, creating the Koreans; this spread over into Japan, creating the Japanese.  Gradually this migration continued up over the land bridge of Siberia to Alaska, spread out all over Alaska, gradually working its way down the western part of the United States, creating our North American Indians, and going down the coast into Mexico, creating the Mexican Indians, and finally into Yucatan, etc.
    These are the so-called black races of the Orient, in contradistinction to the so-called white races of Europe.  Even though we include the Chinese as a yellow race, the Koreans as black, the American Indians as red — we still include them as shades of black, modifying their color of black just as they changed their dialects, as time, geography, environment, circumstances necessitated.  The common background language is Malayan; but few, if any, of these people who we now set forth as separate groups, can understand any other, because of a marked change in dialect.
    As the occidental mind finds these people today, he discovers them in various states of so-called civilization.  Some, such as the Batak people, are cannibals, head-hunters, and are generally regarded as savages in all this term means.  Many tribes live in a natural state with all the civilization necessary to make a comfortable and existing living — considering where and how they live.  Other races which have come and gone have left behind herculean works of art, proving that they were very highly enlightened types.  Call any one tribe what you will — savage, semi-civilized, civilized, enlightened, educated — the terms are comparative.  If, by education is meant books, then they had it not.  If by being civilized is meant that they are happy, contented, making a comfortable living, and are satisfied within their sphere, then what more is there to life?
    That such migrations did occur is verified by all who have studied the ancient records left behind, of household utensils, implements of agriculture, war devices, carved stones, hieroglyphics, signs and symbols, found here and there amongst their ruins.
    The above grouping does not include the races of Egypt and the Romans to which we later allude, although this group may have come from that one stream that we have mentioned that spread into Europe.
    No discussion of this question could be considered as worth studying, did we not first define two terms which enter the picture.
    1.  The “occidental” with his occidental mind, religions and customs; educations and civilizations.
    2.  The “oriental” or native with his oriental mind, religions and customs; educations and civilizations.
    Kipling said it well:

                                     “East is East and West is West
                                       And ne’er the twain shall meet.”

     These two minds are at opposites, antipodes, diametrically opposed to each other.  One lives naturally, the other artificially; one lives from within, without; the other from without, within.  Neither mind is capable of fairly judging the other, regardless of whether it be the oriental judging the occidental or vice versa, unless one is willing to step aside and judge the other, solely by its own views, achievements, religions, and customs, educations and civilizations, without prejudice brought about by the injection of the opposite mind.
    If the occidental mind studies the oriental mind, and then the occidental mind criticizes and condemns the oriental mind by the standards of the occidental mind, he does him a grave injustice. And, the reverse would be equally as true. All any student of one people about another can do is to use one mind as a medium to think through, about the other mind.
    Throughout this discussion, we shall constantly refer to the peoples who have migrated, who reside in the East, the near-East and far-East, and in the South Pacific Islands, as “natives,” regardless of their geographical home, past or present, and also regardless of what name they may now go by.  The “native” is that people to whom their present habitat is theirs, has been theirs, was gained by natural squatters’ rights, and not by right of conquest, such as the whites have done in coming from Europe to America.
    Each native lived within a narrow scope.  His world, as he knew it, was within walking distance.  He had no method of long distance transportation, except ponies and draught animals — such as the cow.  He knew no world or worlds as we do.  His world was in his island, village, or tribe.  His world, as he was given to thinking about it, was confined to his walking or riding distance.  He had no radio, telegraph, newspaper, books, telescopes, or big ocean-going ships.
    What he thought, was limited by his horizon of action.  He looked about; saw fish, birds, animals, reptiles, fruits, cereals, vegetables, trees, etc., and human beings reproducing, multiplying, living and dying.  He did not know about other islands surrounding him, or other continents farther away, nor did he have knowledge of the meaning of stars or other planets.  The extent of his knowledge was circumscribed by the legends handed down by the story teller of the tribe or village; the amount of general knowledge he gained was prescribed and proscribed by the few men and women who surrounded him.  There could be no commingling of other ideas; no transplanting of other theories, ideas, principles of other men from other parts of the world.  His education, if it can be so called, consisted entirely in hearing the recitations of the legends of history backward; told word for word, from father to son, without a change of a word or letter.  How different our knowledge, where we can tap the minds of millions of men every day, in libraries, radio, books, etc.  Instead of having our education confined to the views of a mere handful, we bring to ourselves the printed or spoken word of millions.
    His concept of the creation of things was narrowed to that which surrounded him, which he saw and knew to be true.  Underlying all created things, he saw sex as the creator.  Sex, then, to him, became the great source of all creative life.  Sex predominated in his mind as the beginning of all things that lived.  Men knew how all this was done, because they knew themselves, what they had and how they used it to attain the end accomplished.  They knew that there was a male and female element which we today know by the names of lingum (male) and yoni (female), and that when coition took place certain things happened such as reproduction of their kind.  They knew that they lived, grew old, and died; that their children grew up, lived, and died — all because of certain sex actions clearly understood by them.
    Subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the mysteries involved in birth and life, the adoration of the creative principles in vegetable existence became supplemented by the worship of the creative functions in human beings and in animals.  The earth, including the power inherent in it by which the continuity of existence is maintained, and by which new forms are continuously called to life, embodied the idea of God; and, as this inner force was regarded as inherent in matter, or as a manifestation of it, in process of time, earth and the heavens, body and spirit came to be worshipped under the form of a mother and her child, this figure being the highest expression of a Creator which the human mind was able to conceive.  Not only did this emblem represent fertility, or the fecundating energies of Nature, but all the mental qualities and attributes of the two sexes were combined or correlated with the power to create.  In fact the whole universe was contained in the mother idea, the child, which was sometimes female, sometimes male, being a scion or off-shoot from the eternal or universal unit.
    From all sources of information at hand are to be derived evidences of the fact that the earliest religion of which we have any account was pure Nature worship, that whatever at any given time might have been the object adored, whether it were the earth, a tree, water, or the sun, it was simply as an emblem of the great energizing agency in Nature.  The moving or forming force in the universe constituted the god-idea.  The figure of a mother with her child signified not only the power to bring forth, but Perceptive Wisdom, or Light, as well.
    As through a study of Comparative Ethnology, or through an investigation into the customs, traditions and myths of extant races in the various stages of development, have been discovered the beginnings of the religious idea and the mental qualities which prompted worship among primitive races, so, also, through extinct tongues and the symbolism used in religious rites and ceremonies, many of the processes have been unearthed whereby the original and beautiful conceptions of the Deity, and the worship inspired by the operations of Nature, and especially the creative functions in human beings, gradually became obscured by the grossest ideas and the vilest practices.  The symbols which appear in connection with early religious rites and ceremonies, and under which are veiled the conceptions of a still earlier and purer age, when compared with subsequently developed notions relative to the same objects, indicate plainly the change which has been wrought in the original ideas relative to the creative functions, and furnish an index to the direction which human development, or growth, has taken.
    As the human race constructs its own gods, and as from the conceptions involved in the deities worshipped at any given time in the history of mankind we are able to form a correct estimate of the character, temperament and aspirations of the worshippers, so the history of the gods of the race, as revealed to us through the means of symbols, monumental records and the investigation of extinct tongues, proves that from a stage of Nature worship and a pure and rational conception of the creative forces in the universe, men, in course of time, degenerated into mere devotees of sensual pleasure.  With the corruption of human nature and the decline of mental power which followed the supremacy of the animal instincts, the earlier abstract idea of God was gradually lost sight of, and man himself in the form of a potentate or ruler, together with the various emblems of virility, came to be worshipped as the Creator.  From adorers of an abstract creative principle, men have lapsed into worshippers of the symbol under which this principle has been veiled.
    Passion, symbolized by fire, is declared by various writers to have been the first idol, but later research has proved the falsity of this assumption.  It is true that at an early age of human experience the creative processes were worshipped, but such worship involved scientific and, I might say, spiritualized conceptions of the operations of Nature, which in time were altogether lost sight of.  Gross phallicism is clearly the result of degeneration and of a lapse into sensuality and superstition.
    At what time in the history of the human race the organs of generation first began to appear as emblems of the deity is not known.  Within the earliest cave temples, those hewn from the solid rock, sculptured representations of these objects are still to be observed.  Although until a comparatively recent period their true significance has been unknown, there is little doubt at the present time that they were originally used as symbols of fertility, or as emblems typifying the processes of Nature, and that, at some remote period of the world’s history, they were worshipped as the Creator, or, at least, as representations of the creative agencies of the universe.
    Concerning the origin and character of the people who executed them, there is scarcely a trace in written history.  Through the unraveling of extinct tongues, however, the monumental records of the ancient nations of the globe have been deciphered and the system of religious symbolism in use among them is now understood.
    A small volume by various writers, printed in London some years ago, entitled “A Comparative View of the Ancient Monuments of India,” says: “Those who have penetrated into the abstruseness of Indian mythology, find that in these temples was practiced a worship similar to that practiced by all the several nations of the world, in their earliest as well as their most enlightened periods.  It was paid to the Phallus by the Asiatics, to Priapus by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, to Baal-Peor by the Canaanites and idolatrous Jews.  The figure is seen on the fascia which runs around the circus at Nismes and over the portal of the Cathedral of Toulouse and several churches of Bordeaux.”
    Of the Lingham and Yoni, and their universal acceptance as religious emblems, Barlow remarks that it was a “worship which would appear to have made the tour of the globe and to have left traces of its existence where we might least expect to find it.”  In referring to the “sculptured indecencies” connected with religious rites, which, being wrought in imperishable stone, have been preserved in India and other parts of the East, Forlong says that when occurring in the temples or other sacred places, they are, at the present time, evidently very puzzling to the pious Indians; and in their attempts to explain them, the latter say they are placed there “in fulfillment of vows,” or that they have been wrought there “as punishments for sins of a sexual nature, committed by those who executed or paid for them.”  It is, however, the opinion of Forlong: that they are simply connected with an older and purer worship, a worship which involved the union of the sex principles as the foundation of the god-idea.
    Regarding the cause of the “indecent” sculptures of the Orissa temples, the same writer quotes the following from Baboo Ragendralala Mitra, in his work on the Antiquities of Orissa; “A satiated taste, aided by the general prevalence of immorality might at first sight appear to be the most likely one; but I cannot believe that libidinousness, however depraved, would ever think of selecting fanes dedicated to the worship of God as the most appropriate for its manifestations; for it is worthy of remark that they (these sculptures) occur almost exclusively on temples and their attached porches, and never on enclosing walls, gateways and other non-religious structures.  Our ideas of propriety, according to Voltaire, lead us to suppose that a ceremony (like the worship of Priapus) which appears to us infamous could only be invented by licentiousness; but it is impossible to believe that depravity of manners would ever have led among any people to the establishment of religious ceremonies.  It is probable, on the contrary, that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity, that the first thought was to honor the deity in the symbol of life which it has given us; such a ceremony may have excited licentiousness among youths and have appeared ridiculous to men of education in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times, but it never had its origin in such feelings . . . .  It is out of the question therefore to suppose that a general prevalence of the vice would of itself, without the authority of priests and scriptures, suffice to lead to the defilement of holy temples.”
    From the facts connected with the mysteries of Eleusis and the Thesmophorian rites, it is evident that in its earlier stages, Nature-worship was absolutely free from the impurities which came to be associated with it in later times.  As the organs of generation had not originally been wholly disgraced and outraged, it is not unlikely that when the so-called “sculptured indecencies” appeared on the walls of the temples they were regarded as no more an offense against propriety and decency than was the reappearance of the cross, the emblem of life, in later times, among orthodox Christians.
    Neither is it probable, in an age in which nothing that is natural was considered indecent, and before the reproductive energies had become degraded, that these symbols were any more suggestive of impurity than are the Easter offerings upon our church altars at the present time.  Whatever may now be the significance of these offerings to those who present them it is certain that they once, together with other devices connected with Nature worship, were simply emblems of fertility — symbols of a risen and a fructifying sun which by its gladdening rays recreates and makes all things new again.
    If we carefully study the religion of past ages, we shall discover something more than a hint of a time when the generative functions were regarded as a sacred expression of creative power and when the reproductive organs had not, through over-stimulation and abuse, been tabooed as objects altogether impure and unholy and as things too disgraceful to be mentioned above a whisper.  Indeed there is much evidence to show that, in an earlier age of the world’s history, degradation of mankind through the abuse of the creative functions and the ills of life resulting from such abuse were unknown.
    Behind the sex organs and materials, man understood there was a sex spirit that was immaterial.  This, then, became his great source of all things; the common denominator of the beginning; the alpha and omega of existence, was to acknowledge the sex creative life.  Sex was the source of all life; it was the great creative force of all and everything.  Sex became his fetish (as we occidentals call it); sex became his idol which he builded; therefore was the basic fundamental of his religion.  God is love.  Sex is love.  Sex and religion are one and the same — both are based on love.  One is for the native, the other for the white race.
    Man deduced from the operations of nature around him his first theory of creation.
    From the egg, after incubation, he saw the living bird emerging; a phenomenon which, to his simple comprehension, was nothing less than an actual creation.  How naturally, then, how almost of necessity, did this phenomenon, one of the most obvious in nature, associate itself with his ideas of creation, a creation which he could not help recognizing, but which he could not explain!
    By a similar process did the creative power come to be symbolized under the form of the phallus.  In it was recognized the cause of reproduction, or, as it appeared to the primitive man, of creation.
    Modem theologic systems are the offspring of sex-worship.  The establishment of deity may be said to have resulted from the act of procreation and its product.  The worship of the generative organs by primitive man caused him to conceive the gods Phallus and Priapus, Venus, Cottytis, Lingam and Yoni.  The phallus or lingam was symbolic of the male organ of generation, and the yoni, being oval in shape, was symbolic of female procreative power.
    It is probable that these were the first symbols worshipped by man.  Survivals of phallic and yoni worship persist in all religious teachings even to the present day.  The Bible is full of the symbols of phallicism, and the Old Testament literally teems with sex and discussion of sex.
    The Christian boasts that the cross is a Christian symbol, when in fact it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest symbol known to man.  For ages the cross has symbolized the phallus and its appendages.  The Egyptians used the cross (tau) and it is to be found on hundreds of monuments all over Egypt and India and in other parts of the world, even among the American Indians, the Mexicans, Aztecs and the inhabitants of Yucatan and Peru.
    To this purpose, the Rev. Mr. Maurice remarks:
    “Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian be offended at the preceding assertion that the cross was one of the most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India.  Equally honored in the gentile and Christian world, this emblem of universal nature, of that world to whose four corners its diverging radii pointed, decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former country (Egypt) and the latter (India) and stamped its form upon the most majestic shrines of their deities.”
    It is well known that the cross was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the emblem of plenty.
    “One of the most remarkable of these symbols,” says Payne Knight, “is a cross in the shape of a letter T, which served as the emblem of creation and generation before the church adopted it as the sign of salvation; a lucky coincidence of ideas which without doubt facilitated the reception of it among the faithful.
    “The male organs of generation are sometimes represented by signs of the same sort, which might be properly called symbols of symbols.”
    The famous crux ansata, or handled cross, which may be seen all over Egypt on its monuments and in the hands of its statues is nothing more than the symbolic example of the junction of the sexes, the handle representing the yoni, or female principle, and the tau or cross the male organ.
    The cross was just as much a sex symbol as was the obelisk or pyramid, both of which, according to all authorities, symbolized the human genitals.
    In Nashville, Tenn., there stands an old Presbyterian church whose architectural design is in exact accordance with the designs of pagan temples in Egypt.  The columns which support the roof of the portico are lotus stems with the bloom at the head.  One approaches the church by climbing a wide stairway of stone steps, and those familiar with temples dedicated to pagan gods unconsciously look for altar fires on either side of the steps and for priests and priestesses in the garb worn by them in their day, swinging censers, listening at the same time for the patter of the sandaled feet of worshippers attending the sacred rites of the temple.
    The interior of the church is even more startling to the eye of the student, for there he sees paganism minus its devotees, in all its pristine glory.  The sacred lotus of the Nile, the scarab, the hawk of Horus, the Sun of Thebes and the symbols of Isis and Osiris (all of these are sex symbols) are painted on the walls in the original and symbolic coloring used by the Egyptians ages ago.  The likeness of the phallus, stenciled on the wall, is not hard for the trained eye to find.  The reproduction of a pagan temple, presided over by a Scotch Presbyterian minister, proves conclusively to my mind, that while paganism was condemned by Christians, they did not hesitate to borrow from pagans the beautiful designs of their temples.
    Graceland cemetery (Chicago) is especially full of monuments and tombs which would gladden the hearts of primitive worshippers at the shrine of generation, could they but come back from out of the past and view the handiwork of modern makers of monuments.  In this cemetery one sees everywhere the lotus, the sacred lily of the Nile, formerly adored as a phallic emblem.  The cross is seen on every hand, and, in many instances, where the family of the deceased had means, they erected over the grave the ancient so-called Keltic cross, which, aside from symbolizing the male generative organ, depicts also the pudenda of the female by means of the circle which is a component part of the whole.  In other words, this cross is so-constructed that it symbolizes the union of the sexes to those familiar with phallic emblems.
    In one place, in this beautiful resting place of the dead, hidden away in a mass of foliage and surrounded by trees, is erected a single circular shaft of red granite, about six feet in height.  The artist who designed this monument his reproduced a fair likeness of the phallus, even to its red color and to emphasizing the glans.
    To our mind, the worship of the generative principle in nature represents the very acme of religion, and to symbolize in design the holiest, and certainly the most sacred, possessions of men and women was the most natural thing that could have been done by them.  Had they failed of homage before the shrine of nature, they would have been guilty of the basest sacrilege.
    Three of the most widely used symbols of phallic worship are employed as signatures:
    The Plough is used by Indian princes.
    The Triform Leaf by Buddhists, and
    The Cross by Christian bishops.
    Hargrave Jennings in his “Rosicrucians,” remarks: “The coarse sensuality which seems inseparable from modern times about the worship of the pillar or upright had no place in the solemn ancient mind, in which ideas of religion largely and constantly mingled.  We must not judge the ancients by too rigid an adherence to our own prepossessions, foolish and inevitably hardened as they continually are.  The adoration paid to this image of the phallus, which has persisted as an object of worship through all the ages in all countries was only an acknowledgment, in the ancient mind, of wonder at the seemingly accidental and unlikely, but certainly most complete and effectual, means by which the continuation of the human race is secured.  The cabalistic arguers contended that ‘man’ was a phenomenon, and that he did not, otherwise than in his presentment, seem intended; that there appeared nothing in the stupendous chain of organisms that seemed specially to hint at his approach or to explain his appearance (strange as this seems), according to likelihood and sequence; that between the highest of the animals and the being ‘man’ there was a great gulf, and seemingly an impassible gulf; that some ‘after reason,’ so to speak, according to the means of the comprehension of man, induced his introduction into the Great Design; that, in short, ‘man’ originally was not intended.”
    Revolutionary things are taking place in the realm of modern architecture, so architects say, because of a new era, wherein the exotic in building, especially the oriental, is replacing the gothic of the thirteenth century.  The two best examples of this so-called new type in building in the American midwest are seen in the new capitol of Nebraska (plans by Goodhue) and in the accepted drawings by Louis Bourgeois for the Bahai Temple to be constructed in Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan.
    The designs of these two structures are the most distinctly phallic in origin of any ever erected in America.  They show their phallic significance beyond all question of doubt.  The four hundred foot tower of the capitol, crowned by a glittering dome arising from the center of an oblong building, proves its lingam (phallic) and yonic origin.  Carved over the doorway of the main entrance is Apis, the Egyptian God of Virility.  This four hundred-foot attribute of the God of Gardens is visible for fifty miles across the flat country on which it stands.
    This building is neither Egyptian, Romanesque, nor yet from the ruins of Roman construction in northern Africa.  Yet it suggests these three unrelated periods.  In truth, what the architect has done is to select a mood and use form to create that mood.  It merely so happens that he has chosen the unyielding mood of the temple reared to Isis, of the churches that did honor to the God of gloomy asceticism and of those massive constructions of northern Africa that tell the story of a Rome that had not yielded to the luxury of the emperors, one that was still the Rome of Scipio Africanus.
    So speaks a writer in the New York Times of July 25, 1930, in describing the new capitol: “The Bahai Temple will groan under the weight of phallic symbols used in its construction.”
    Many modern architects deny using sex symbols in their building enterprises.  When they make such denials they display a lack of knowledge that they, as professional men, should possess.  The sex symbol is the most important factor in architectural design and has been in use since the birth of man.  This is evidenced by the use of the tower, cross, steeple, rounded dome, obelisk, pillar, pyramid, ovoid and triangular figures and the like, by all designers of buildings and monuments.  Certainly the use of these symbols should have none other than an elevating effect upon art, because the reproductive or creative impulse is man’s greatest possession.  Without it, art, religion, music, and poetry would cease to exist, and there would no longer be any need for the construction of beautiful temples and marvelous buildings, which, after all, are but the expressions of the souls of their designers.
    In January, 1920, we had the pleasure of seeing a collection of bishop’s rings.  Many of them dated back to mediaeval times, and one in particular was of interest to the student of sex symbols because of the exposition of the phallus arising out of a yoni.  The ring was evidently designed by someone perfectly familiar with the lingam and yoni of India.  The intention of the designer was apparent, for the phallus was so represented that even the glans was readily discernible to the untrained eye.
    The interior decorator who wrought the mural designs of the Lincoln Hotel at Indianapolis must have been a very close student of ancient art, for in the general scheme he used for decoration, phallic or Priapic and yoni symbols.  In this lobby one can see many things that will carry him back to the shrines of Venus and to a time when the divine principles of nature were worshipped.  The fig-shaped vase, which is a female symbol, is reproduced over all the openings in the lobby, while the figure of a woman worshipping before the altar of Priapus is to be seen everywhere on the walls, in bas-relief.  The entire decoration of the walls carries one back to the beginning of the myth-making age, and what was certainly foremost in the artist’s mind was the reproduction of an ancient Priapic shrine.
    The “Principle of Life,” being adored at once led the founders of modern medicine to the adoption of the caduceus, which is nothing more than an improved Tautic (cross) emblem which symbolized generation or the reciprocal forces of nature in action.  It is a very prominent phallic emblem, and represents the lingam (phallus) receiving energy and potency from the divine influx of passion from Siva.  It received its significance from the fact that the sacred serpents, the cobras, unite sexually in this double circular form.  Eastern teachers avow that it is most fortunate for anyone to see this serpentine congress, and declares that if a cloth be thrown over them, or even waved so as to touch them, it becomes a form of Lakshni and, therefore, of the greatest procreative energy.  They preserve such a piece of cloth with the greatest care, as a most potent charm in securing good fortune, in bringing about the birth of numerous and healthy offspring and in warding off all evil influences.  The entwined snakes are also supposed to represent the sun and moon in the conjugal embrace.
    The symbol used as a seal by the Chicago Academy of Medicine is nothing more than the serpent goddess nourishing the divine impulse by which she is aroused to enthusiastic creative activity, thus increasing the number and improving the character of her children.
    The same design is also used to indicate the selfish and vampire witch, who thus seeks to renew her vitality and arouse her failing passion so as to indulge in prostitution and destructive lechery, which depletes and destroys the victims of her guile, without increasing or improving humanity.
    In one case, the ring in which she stands is the celestial womanhood of eternal and virginal motherhood, and in the other the infernal region of burning sensual desire, not only sterile, but murderous.  In the first interpretation, it is the door of life and the vestibule of heaven, which it is every virile man’s duty to enter and occupy.  In the other it is the entrance of the grave and the portal of hell to all who therein pour their passion-poisoned seed upon a burning soil, where it is always consumed but never germinates.
    The reverence as well as the worship paid to the phallus in early and primitive days, had within itself nothing which partook of indecency; all ideas connected with it were reverential and religious.  When Abraham, as mentioned in Genesis, in asking his servant to take a solemn oath, makes that servant lay his hand upon his master’s parts of generation (in the common version, “under his thigh”) it was that which he required as a token of utter sincerity, the placing of the hand upon the most sacred part of the body.  The dying Jacob makes his son, Joseph, perform the same act.
    The indecent ideas attached to the representation of the phallus were, though it seems a paradox to say so, the result of a more advanced civilization verging towards its decline, as we have evidenced at Rome and Pompeii.
    The fact that the worship of phallus (lingam) finally had degenerated into licentiousness and sensual indulgence does not in any way prove that, in the beginning, it was not performed with the utmost sincerity by a people bent only on paying homage to the great life-giving forces of nature.  The Christian church taught asceticism, and it was Paul who first placed the idea in the minds of the Corinthians and others that the conjugal act was impure.  He it was who railed at women and declared them inferior beings.  He undoubtedly was suffering from a psychosis which might have been easily diagnosed by present day psychoanalysis, a psychosis which made him possibly the most prurient-minded man of all time.  He conceived in his own mind, constantly, the thought that purity and chastity, as such, were agents of the devil.
    “We must carefully distinguish,” as M. Barre writes, “among these phallic representations, a religious side and a purely licentious side.  The two classes correspond with two different epochs of civilization, with two different phases of human mind.  The generative power presented itself first as worthy of the adoration of men; it was symbolized in the organs in which it centered, and then no licentious idea was mingled with the worship of these sacred objects.  If this spirit became weaker, as civilization became more developed, as luxury and vices increased, it still must have remained the peculiar attribute of some simple minds; and hence we must consider under this point of view all objects in which nudity is veiled, so to speak, under a religious motive.
    Voltaire has spoken most wisely, and it is to be hoped that what he has said about phallicism will react in favor of more study of this, the most ancient of all religions.
    “There is a religious meaning,” says Crawley, “inherent in the primitive conception and practice of all relations, which is always ready to become actualized; and the same is true of all individual processes of sense, emotion and intellection and, in especial, of those functional processes that are most easily seen in their working and results.
    “Not only the ‘master know of human fate’ but all human actions and relations, all individual and social phenomena, have for primitive man, always potentially and often actually, a full religious content.  So it is with that subdivision of human nature and human life caused by sex; all actions and relations, all individual and social phenomena conditioned by sex, are likewise filled with a religious meaning.  Sexual relations and sexual processes, as all human relations and human processes, are religious to the primitive mind.”
    The egoist of modern times has failed to take into his scheme of things anything that would in any way reflect the opinions of primitive culture.  He has arrogated to himself the right to formulate dogmatic and bigoted creeds and fails entirely to consider the psychology of the primitive mind in its relation to the psychology of the cultured mind of today.  Because primitive man reverenced the generative function, he declares such a practice obscene, and condemns it as being a remnant from a period when all men were degenerate, in the sense that they permitted “lewed” and “licentious” practices which, if viewed by a mind free from the entanglements of hypocrisy and prurience of today, would be declared pure, and be said to possess a religious element not to be found among the theologic systems of modern religious institutions.
    We are assured that on the banks of the Ganges, the very cradle of religion, are still to be found various remnants of the most ancient form of Nature-worship and that there are to be observed there “certain high places sacred to more primitive ideas than those represented by the Pedic gods.”
    We are assured by Forlong that Solomon’s temple was like hundreds observed in the East, except that its walls were a little higher than those usually seen, and the phallic spire out of proportion to the size of the structure.  “The Jewish porch is but the obelisk which the Egyptian placed beside his temple, the Buddhist pillar which stood all around the Dagobas, the pillars of Hercules, which stood near the Phoenician temple, and the spire which stands beside the Christian church.
    It is impossible longer to conceal the fact that passion, symbolized by a serpent, an upright stone and by the male and female organs of generation, the male appearing as the “giver of life,” the female as a necessary appendage to it, constituted the god-idea of mankind for at least four thousand years; and, we shall presently see that instead of being confined to the earlier ages, phallic worship had not disappeared, under Christianity, as late as, and even later than, the sixteenth century.
    Regardless of where this native lived, when he lived, whether he was an Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, Roman, or Grecian, living in Australia or Hawaii, being male and female reproducing, they had this common sex understanding, which they all had, saw and recognized alike.  Even though one tribe, village, or island population did not intertravel with other tribes, villages, or islands, and in spite of the fact that they did not intercommunicate, had different talking dialects and perhaps differed slightly in shades of black, they all had the sex concept in common, easily understood by all, independent of any necessity of inter-travel or intercommunication.  For this reason, we see the sex symbols prominently standing forth in religious edifices anywhere, everywhere, where it can be said a native lived.
    The native, possibly because of living in hot climates, perhaps because of crowded and congested quarters, or it might be because of poverty, laziness, or other necessity, has never seen fit to clothe his body to any extent.  The native, therefore, has always uncovered his body, he has lived a naked life — both male and female.  And by naked, here, is meant the comparative term.  The degree of nakedness varies in countries.  Some women cover breasts and uncover the balance; some uncover from the waists up and wear long blankets, sampats, sarongs, panungs, etc., to the ground; many others wear nothing but a gee-string.  The majority of native men wear nothing but the gee-string regardless.
    The native, thinking of sex as the great all-natural creative force of all existence, is proud of his body, his or her male and female sex, and its organs and what they can do; therefore, he honors sex, idealizes it, and glorifies it by creating out of it his religion.  This conclusion is found amongst all natives referred to in the great migrations.
    The white race; by contrast, have covered their bodies; they have been taught to cover their skin — both male and female.  By covering is here meant, even in former years, to the neck and arms.  It was but a short time ago when women wore tight-fitting neck collars, long skirts, that dragged to the ground.  To show a neck, naked arm, or ankle, would have been considered obscene and branding herself in the social scheme of things.  Gradually, evolution of dress has permitted women to show their upper chests, then more of the chest, until today the entire breast region is shown.  Dresses have been cut lower and lower down the back, until one can practically see the waist-line in evening gowns, in extreme cases.  In these respects it can be seen that there is a tendency to reach the same situation as the native, in exposing the naked skin without still denying to themselves the moral disrespect which we occidentals sometimes attach to the native who does more than we have done.  The male has made little improvement in this respect — still covering the entire body and practically keeping it so, summer and winter.
    The white race has been taught that the naked body, exposing its sex, was a thing of shame; any discussion or conversation on sex was in bated breath and obscene at its best; to study sex was to place filthy thoughts in mind; therefore, sex is taboo in polite society and has been denied any place in the white race conversation, education, literature, or religion.
    Obviously, these two races are in opposition on the sex question; the native makes a religion of it; the white race taboos it.  The native puts it boldly into common, every-day use in home, altar, drawings, designs, architecture, carvings, and in his temples, as well as in religious symbols which he worships; the white race denies it in conversation, prohibits it in print, makes illegal any information about it, condemns pictures, symbols, or other illustrations for the public to see, think about, or study.
    We occidentals, tourists, travelers, have seen it everywhere.  We have seen fit to neither condone nor condemn; and study the native and his fundamental of existence, that we might bring to you information as to what he is, what he does, why he does it, and what high and lofty inspiration he religiously gets from the doing of same.  A study, therefore, of the native is not complete without knowing this.  We shall, then, call this study Phallic Worship, Its Symbols and Meanings.  We shall study the meaning of phallicism, phallic customs, phallicism and religion, phallicism in literature and art, phallicism as it weaves itself into life in general.
    Throughout all the world, the first object of idolatry seems to have been a plain, unwrought stone, placed in the ground as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of Nature.
    In the language of symbolism the upright stone prefigures either a man, reproductive energy, or a god, all of which at a certain stage in the human career had come to mean one and the same thing; namely, the Creator.
    In the earlier ages of male worship, upright stones as emblems of the deity were plain, unwrought shafts, but in process of time they began to be carved into the form of a man, a man who usually represented the ruler or chief of the people, and who, as he was the source of all power and wisdom, was supposed by the ignorant masses to be an incarnation of the sun.  Thus arose the spiritual power of monarchs, or the “divine right of kings.”
    Wherever obelisks, columns, pillars, attenuated spires, upright stones or crosses at the intersection of roads are found, they always appear as sacred monuments, or as symbols of the Lingam God.
    The Chaldean Tower of which there are extant traditions in Mexico and in the South Sea Islands, the Round Towers of Ireland, the remarkable group of stones known as Stonehenge, in England, the wonderful circle at Abury through which the figure of a huge serpent was passed, the monuments which throughout the nations of the East were set up at the intersection roads in the center of market places, and the bowing stones employed as oracles in various portions of the world have all the same signification and proclaim the peculiar religion of the people who worshipped them.
    Whether, as among the Jews in Egypt, a pillar set up as a “sign” and a “witness” to the Lord, or, with the Mohammedans, such figures appear as minarets with egg-shaped summits, whether, as among the Irish, stand forth as stately towers defying time and the elements or, as among the Christians, appear as the steeple which points towards heaven, the symbol remains and the original significance is the same.
    The Lord of the Israelites who was wont to manifest himself to his chosen people in a “pillar of smoke by day” and a “pillar of fire by night” is said to be none other than a reproductive emblem, as was also the “Lord” who “reposed in the ark of the covenant.”  Monuments set up to symbolize the religion of the Parsees or fire-worshippers, after they had succumbed to the pressure brought to bear upon them by the adorers of the prototype, the tower of Babel, typical of the universal creative power which was worshipped as male.
    Notwithstanding the fact that the male energy had come to be recognized as the principal factor in reproduction, it is observed that wherever these monuments or other symbols of fertility appear, there is always to be found in close connection with them certain emblems symbolical of the female power, thus showing that although the people by whom they were erected had become worshippers of the masculine principle, and although they had persuaded themselves that it was the more important element in the deity, they had not become so regardless of the truths of Nature as to attempt to construct a Creator independently of its most essential factor.
    Protestant Christianity, probably the most intensely masculine of all religious schemes which have claimed the attention of man, has not wittingly retained any of the detested female emblems, yet so deeply has the older symbolism taken root, that even in the architecture of the modern Protestant Church with its ark-shaped nave and its window toward the rising sun, may be detected the remnants of that early worship which the devotees of this more recently developed form of religious faith so piously ignore.
    The large number of upright columns, circles of stone, cromlechs and cairns still extant in the British Isles, bears testimony to the peculiar character of the religious worship which once prevailed there.  Of these shrines perhaps none is more remarkable than that of Stonehenge, in England.  Although during the numberless ages which have passed since this temple was erected many of the stones have fallen from their original places, still by the light of more recently established facts concerning religious symbolism, it has been possible, even under present conditions of decay, for scholars to unravel the mysterious significance of this remarkable structure.  Stonehenge is composed of four circles of mammoth upright shafts twenty feet high, the one circle within the other, with immense stones placed across them like architraves.
    In ancient symbolism the circle was the emblem of eternity, or of the eternal female principle.  Mountains were also sacred to the gods.  It has been said that a ring of mountains gave rise to these circular temples.  Faber assures us that a circular stone temple was called the circle of the world or the circle of the ark, that it represented at once the inclosure of the Noetic Ship, the egg from which creation was produced, the earth and the Zodiacal circle of the universe in which the sun performs its annual revolutions through the signs.  Stonehenge is said to be the temple of the water god, Noah, who, as we have seen, was first worshipped as half woman and half fish or serpent, but who finally came to be regarded as a man-serpent (or fish) deity.
    On approaching Stonehenge from the northeast, the first object which engages the attention is a rude boulder, sixteen feet high, in a leaning posture.  This stone has been named the Friar’s Heel, but until recently its signification was wholly unknown.
    Regarding the upright shaft which stands sentinel over the mysterious circle of mammoth stones called Stonehenge, Forlong says that it is no Friar’s Heel, but an emblem of fertility dedicated to the Friday divinity.  It is represented as the “Genius of Fire,” not the genius of ordinary fire, “but of the supersensual Divinity, celestial fire.”
    Forlong says: “No one who has studied phallic and solar worship in the East could make any mistake as to the purport of the shrine of Stonehenge — yet the indelicacy of the whole subject often so shocks the ordinary reader that, in spite of facts, he cannot grant what he thinks shows so much debasement of the religious mind; facts are facts, however, and it only remains for us to account for them.  Perhaps indeed in these later times an artificial and lower phase of sensuality has taken the place of the more natural indulgence of the passions, for procreative purposes, which principally engrossed the thoughts of early worshippers.”
    It is within the province of the occidental mind to call them pagans, living and existing with a pagan philosophy which generated (or, we should say occidentally degenerated) into a pagan religion.  The fact remains that such is his basis of observation and existence; that it was based on physiological, functional, and psychological facts of human relations which are alike to the native as they are to occidentals.  We admit it is a necessity and deny it a place in our social scheme; the native admits it is a necessity and creates out of it a religion.
    We have studied many religions in their native habitats, many of which are called pagan because, being native, they had a belief differing from our Christian one.  They have their customs and ceremonies which have a fundamental quite different from ours.  At tap-root, the Christian faith believes in the divinity of Christ; therefore, He speaks the word of God to mankind.  At tap-root, many “pagan religions” worship sex; some male, some female, some both, as the source and inspiration of that mysterious beginning of all life.
    We have seen ancient sex ideas weave themselves into modern history, religions, superstitions, architecture, both ancient and modern.  It is not generally known but the present day church steeple is the ancient lingam.  The fleur-de-lis of France is the female yoni.  We have seen sex relations idolized and idealized into temples, shrines, churches, etc., knowingly in native edifices and perhaps unknowingly into Christian structures; the phallus and lingam on altars, male and female figures carved in various, many, and devious forms, on altars, etc., not in a sense of obscenity, but with the most profound worship upon the part of its devotees; carved in ivory, wood, stone, etc.; heroic and small; that which our modern intelligentsia calls obscene, idolized and worshipped with the same spiritual respect as our modern Christians respect the crucifix.  They see no wrong in it.  We think we do.  We hark back to the days of pagan Rome.  We call their lives lascivious.  Was it that, or was it religion?
    Wherever we have gone, we have tried to seek, see, and study any and all such, because we wanted to know their viewpoint.  We have purchased photos, carvings, idols, in any and all forms, we have an historical, architectural collection well worth seeing and studying.  Some day we propose putting it within reach, that others may study, who want to grow and understand more than that which closely surrounds them, who want to push their horizons farther beyond the borders of their own family, home, or village.  It consists of pieces from Tibet, China, Japan, Hawaii, France, Egypt, Rome, Alaska, India, Pompeii, Fiji, etc.
    After all, is there anything wrong in the worship of that which is natural in nature, from which we all spring and have our being?  What is wrong in its study or putting its religious symbols on exhibition, that others may study it also?  Some day we shall arrange our collection that it may be seen.  We anticipate that we shall be criticized, for we know it is hard for an average circumscribed occidental mind to understand the philosophies, religions, and customs of other nations and races, past and present.
    In presenting this subject, in giving you observed facts, in laying before occidental minds the basic religion of natives of the oriental East, in even illustrating such specimens as we have obtained from reliable sources in the conduct of our more than one million miles of travel and study and mixing with these natives, we assume no responsibility for the moral question your occidental minds may see fit to inject; neither do we endorse or condemn.  As a student of native peoples, we present an analysis of the history of the peoples studied.  As an author, we shall allow you to accept, or reject in that spirit because it differs from your views, if you prefer.
    Coitus, to the native, has two aspects:
    First: physical contact brings forth a physiological act to produce a spiritual communion with the great source to produce a child.
    Second: the same act brings them in contact, thereby making of that act a religious one.  To them, such an act is equal to a prayer at a shrine.  We find frequent proof of this in bas-reliefs and paintings found frequently and commonly in temples, shrines, and in Roman homes and in the ruins of ancient buildings.  Feeling this way about this act, the native does not regard any necessity for secrecy in what he does.  As the native views it, why should secrecy be demanded in performing such an act that to them is only a natural function; therefore, he may perform this function in temple grounds, at the feet of sacred shrines, and before his symbolic gods, which is the best evidence that he gives to that, that which we construe as a religious worshipping aspect.
    Coitus to the occidental mind is a physical act to reproduce one’s kind, but being a secret thing, must be considered as shameful and obscene, to say the least, and not discussed in public; thus it is the opposite of the native view.
    The religions of the native and most of their legends are based on love; love is sex and sex is their religion.  And, how far removed are we?  Look at our ordinary books — the theme is love.  Look at our movies — the plot involves sex.  Love and sex weave themselves into almost all ordinary literature, even Shakespeare, deplore it as we will.  Read the newspapers — sex problems and sex crimes.  Study the annals of our courts — largely sex and sex problems.  So, how far are we occidentals removed from the physiological facts, notwithstanding we do not make a religion of it?
    Both native and occidental have the same physiological fundamental.  One respects sex, idealizes it, makes a religion based around it, and when left alone by white man, has no sex crimes, because he respects his religion.  We shame sex and have sex crimes because it is not respected and does not come within the purview of any religion that teaches us to respect something in it higher than ourselves.
    The native, in sex, runs natural.  The native even goes sometimes so far as to run to the ascetic or chaste, whereas many amongst the occidentals run wild to excesses upon the same subject.  It is noticeably an observation that the native is clean, pure, and a moral abiding type, allowing him to interpret the question of morals from his point of view.
    Perhaps there is no one book which has created a more disgusting picture of the lives of the Roman than Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur.  Again we must construe this question from the viewpoint of the native, for Romans were a native people to their own country; the only difference is that they were a trifle closer as to our time than are some other natives, and notwithstanding they were more white than are the natives of other surrounding countries infiltrated with the native concept.  The Romans were a people who lived and conducted their lives just previous to the advent of Christianity which places restriction as to dress, etc., on the native and teaches him that the naked body is a thing of shame and that sex is not to be discussed in society.
    The Roman baths, with their retiring rooms for male and female, were not houses of prostitution, as our occidental minds conceive that institution.  They were places where they could practice that which was an integral part of their pagan religion.  That there was excess and an abuse of this one-sided use of their religion, we have no doubt, just as it is undoubtedly true that every native as soon as he is divorced from his natural connection with his own, does run wild, but that does not change the fundamental which is being here set forth.
    In many of the luxurious nymphiae in Rome, those marvelously ornate restaurants, where bridal couples made their first appearance after the wedding, there were artistic panels with life-size figures in the nude, displaying the various postures in which the “Great Act” could be most successfully accomplished, both for purposes of sensation and progeny.
    Suetonis, in his life of Tiberius, speaks of such a painting, from the hand of a master, in which were shown Atalanta and Meleager, the former ministering to the latter’s pleasures.
    The appearance of pictures such as these on the walls of banquet halls resulted in lewd and licentious practices on the part of the banqueters; and because of their conduct, the worship of the reproductive function fell from the high estate of a religion into an excuse for the basest of practices in Rome.  Thus did the Eternal City become depraved beyond all hope of regeneration.
    The ancients paid respect to the goat and the bull, and viewed them with awe, because of their ability to indulge in the sexual act more frequently than other animals; and, because of their virility, they made them gods, in many instances.
    The satyr, a creature half human and half goat, was supposed to live in the woods, and was accredited with possessing a virility of such stamina as made him the most envied of all the imaginary creatures conceived in the mind of primitive man.  There are many pictures extant, and also hundreds of sculptured objects, where the satyr is shown performing the sexual act with woman and with the female goat.  This creature of the imagination has been given many names, the chief and best known of which is Pan.
    Each Roman home had its retiring room.  This was the home shrine where the male and female natives retired and did those things which were a portion of their concept of their religion.  The paintings upon the walls were portions of their home shrines.  The nearest, and possibly an unfair comparison, is to cite our Christian shrines in many of our homes.  We worship our concepts, they did the same.  They had a place of worship, so have we.
    We need go no further into this question than to set forth that Venus was the Goddess of Love.  To one who has made a study of Grecian and Roman mythology, or of the pagan religions, many other names will come to mind which bear this further.  Any traveler who has made more than a superficial study of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum will have long ago reached the conclusion that they erected temples of gorgeous, expensive, and often tremendous size to the Gods whom they named after varying attributes of sex.
    Two views are held about ancient Rome.  The occidental view is best contained in the book by Lew Wallace, Ben Hur.  He paints a horrid, lascivious, obscene picture of the life of the native Roman.  He would lead his readers to believe that they were libertines and prostitutes, conducting themselves in a wild riot of sex life, both publicly and privately.  We do not deny but what some such did exist.  They may have been all as bad as he paints them, but to condemn any and all and the nation at large as being what he pictures, we feel he does them manifestly a grave injustice.  The question that percolates through our mind frequently is “did Lew Wallace know anything about phallic worship; did he understand that religions can be and were based on sex; did he even attempt to analyze them as they were, or did he jump to wholesale conclusions based upon the modern occidental, educated, civilized interpretations of what constitutes morality and immorality?”  Mind you, we are not saying that his views are wrong, neither are we saying the views of the Romans were right; but we do raise the question that each must be interpreted by the standard of each as they thought it, believed it, lived it, and worshipped, if we are to throw any light upon them more than is generally believed.  If Lew Wallace had understood the native as the native understood himself; if he had seen beyond and behind the riff-raff, the small group of scum that is to be found in every community (even ours), that the nation at large was a religious, sincere, earnest, constructive, and uplifting race, even though they did worship at the shrine of Venus, would he have written that book as a supposed-to-be honest interpretation of the people he wrote about?
    The other view is that taken by the scientists and students in Italy who are digging out the remains of ancient Rome as it lay buried in the lava ruins of Pompeii.  These folks have dug out many things in the form of phallic symbols, shrines; they are studying the temples themselves to more correctly know the true motives of these Romans, that they might neither do them injustice nor hold them up in disgrace before all the world for all time.  In a private room of the Naples Municipal National Museum is the Phallic Room.  Again, for obvious reasons, few tourists are told about it, fewer even know where it is or get in to see it.  The Italian Government and the officers of this museum know that this is a modern age, that the majority of traveler who visit Naples are occidentals, they know the process of reasoning of this educated mind, they know their opinions in regard to what is considered moral and immoral in relation to sex, and rather than have visitors come and go and condemn after they have left, they rarely let it be known that such exists.  Guides are cautioned about saying anything about it.  The same is true as one is being conducted through the rooms of Pompeii.  Here and there is a locked door within which is a room that contains much to see; here is a cupboard underneath which is a painting on the wall; many such exist but the guide will say nothing, neither will he ask the attendants to unlock them.  Why?  Because Italy does not desire to have forced upon it the natural stigma that would follow by the wholesale condemnation that would occur if the multitude came, saw, went away, and interpreted what they saw.  They would condemn the modern Italian as the ancient Romans have been condemned by many writers.
    In spite of this, modern scientists, students of antiquity, professors of custom, those who delve into religions and gain motives, have gathered this collection in this museum that they might more accurately study the phallic worship of ancient Romans.  These people are convinced that the Romans were not anywhere near as bad as they have been painted.  That sex was prevalent in almost everything they did is acknowledged.  But it was their religion, why shouldn’t it be?  As a race throughout, from their understanding, they were a moral people.  It is very interesting to talk to these students of ancient Rome.  They take us back to the days of Rome and show us the Roman as we would see him if we could be transported back to them.  They show us that after all the Romans who conquered the world could not have done so if they had been all that they are now supposed to have been.  There had to be goodness and vitality amongst them, something substantial, or the race would have died aborning.
    We have, amongst our phallic pieces, a carved ivory snuff box which was dug out of the ruins of ancient Pompeii.  That makes this symbol approximately 2,000 years old.  It is much like a bi-valve double-shell oyster shell, convex on the outside, concave inside.  Between the two outside shells, inside, is a straight partition of ivory that divides the two halves.  On one side of one shell are the carved figures of the male; the other is the female.  To say the least, from the carving point of new, they are masters of art.  The partition piece of ivory represents a male and female in coitus carved in a bas-relief effect.  This piece was more than likely carried by some prominent business man or in the toga of some rich or wealthy Roman to carry his snuff or whatever else he used in those days.  In what sense did he carry this piece?  Was it a thing that he dragged out from his pocket to laugh and carouse over when a group of a certain type of men gathered together in some wine cellar where they became gluttonly drunk?  We have our serious doubts.  Knowing the type of mind of the ancient Roman native, we are of the opinion that it was carried as a pocket piece much in the same sense as we today in the occidental countries may wear a crucifix as an amulet around our necks.  The crucifix is but a symbol of our religion of this day; so was that snuff box and other symbols used in the religion of that day.  True, as we today look back, we call this obscene unless we grasp the full importance of how he believed it had religious significance.
    The practice, derived from the Romans, of placing the figure of a phallus on the walls of buildings, prevailed also in the Middle Ages, and churches were especially placed under the influence of this symbol.  It was believed to be a protection against enchantments of all kinds, of which the people in those times lived in constant terror.  This protection extended over the place and over those who frequented it, provided they cast a confiding look upon the image.  Such images were usually to be seen upon the portals, as on the cathedral churches in France; but, at the time of the revolution, they were often destroyed as marks only of the depravity of the clergy.
    The figure of the female organ, as well as the male, appears to have been employed during the Middle Ages in western Europe far more generally than we might suppose.  It was placed upon a building as a talisman against evil influence, and especially against witchcraft and the evil eye, and was used for this purpose in many parts of the world.  It was the universal practice among the Arabs of northern Africa to place over the door of the house or tent, or to put up, nailed on a board, or in some other way, the vulva of a cow, mare, or female camel, as a talisman to avert the influence of the evil eye.  It is evident that the figure of this member was far more liable to degradation in form than that of the male, for the reason that, in the hands of the rude draftsman, it was much less easy to delineate in an intelligible form, and hence it soon assumed shapes which, though intended to represent it, might rather be called symbolic of it, though no symbolism was intended.  Thus the figure of the female organ easily assumed the rude form of a horseshoe, and as the original meaning was forgotten would be readily taken for that object, and a real horseshoe would be nailed up for the same purpose.  In this way originated, apparently from popular worship of the generative powers, the vulgar practice of nailing a horseshoe upon buildings to protect them and all they contained against the power of witchcraft, a practice which continues even to the present day.  Other marks are found sometimes among architectural ornaments, such as certain triangles and triple loops, which are perhaps typical forms of the same object.
    We have herein set forth what constitutes our analysis of the religious aspect of the native, regardless of country, climate, or age, believing that it matters little whether that native is of one country, climate, or age, believing that it matters little whether that native is of one country or another, therefore we will not proceed to cite instances of varying kinds in differing countries as substantiation of these facts.
    The use of the wedding ring has a strong phallic significance; the ring symbolizing the female principle and the third finger the phallus.  It will be recalled that in the Buddhistic blessing the sign of the yoni is made by joining the thumb and forefinger, while the phallus is indicated by extending the second, third and fourth fingers, the third finger symbolizing the phallus and the second and fourth the testes.  When the ring is put on the third finger it symbolizes the union of the sexes.  The left of everything symbolizes the female principle.
    In our book, “Round the World With B. J.,” we have described extensively the geisha girl question of Japan.  The occidental mind regards the geisha girl question with its yoshiwara as an attempt to curb or control the social evil.  Not so, the native of Japan.  To him there is no wrong in what he does.  It is endorsed and countenanced by the church of state, by priests of the Buddhist and Shinto faiths.  Not that they countenance what we think but that they do countenance that which they believe.  To pilgrims who tour to the summit of Mt. Fujiyama, sex ideas underlie in their worship.  It is quite common to run into sex-religious symbols in temples, not in isolated places but frequently and usually.  We will not elaborate upon it here because it can be found in the book mentioned.
    Dr. Sinclair Coghill, now of Venton, who has traveled extensively in China and Japan, has kindly contributed the following, recording his experiences of superstitious beliefs and practices in India and Japan at the present day:
    “On my way out of the Far East, in 1861, I had an opportunity of visiting the great cave-temple of Elephanta, near Bombay.  In each of the monolithic chapels within the area of the main temple, I observed a gigantic stone phallus projecting from the center of the floor.  The emblem was in some cases wreathed with flowers, while the floor was strewn with faded chaplets of the fair devotees, some of whom, at the time of my visit, fancying themselves unobserved, were invoking the subtle influence of the stony charm by rubbing their pudenda against its upsympathetic surface, while muttering their prayers for conjugal love or maternal joy, as the need might be.
    “In the course of two visits I paid to Japan, in 1864 and in 1869, I was very much struck with the extent to which this ancient symbolic worship had survived through the many phases of the national religion, and was still attracting numerous devotees to its shrine.  I visited a large temple devoted to this cult in a small island off Kamatura, the ancient and now deserted capital of Japan, in the Bay of Yokohama, some miles below the Foreign Settlements.  The temple ‘Timbo,’ as the Japanese term such places of worship, covered a large extent of ground.  The male symbol was the only object of veneration, apparently; in various sizes, some quite colossal, more or less faithfully modeled from nature, it held the sole place of honor on the altars in the principal hall and subsidiary chapels of the temple.  Before each, the fair devotees might have been seen fervently addressing their petitions and lying upright on the altar, already thickly studded with similar oblations, a votive phallus, either of plain or wrought cut wood from the surrounding grove or of other more elaborately prepared materials.  I also remarked some of them handing to the presiding priests pledgets made of the luxurious silk tissue paper of Japan, which previously had been applied to the genitals.
    “These pledgets, with an uttered invocation, were burned in a large censer before the phallic idol.  I was struck with the earnestness with which the whole proceedings were conducted, and with the strong hold which the most ancient religious cult evidently still retained over the minds of a people otherwise remarkable for the mobility of their opinions and their manners.”
    Let us go to Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands.  There stands the original lava-rock Christian Church built in the early days of the invasion of the Christian missionaries.  In the rear yard and just behind that church is the early Christian missionaries’ graveyard or cemetery.  Standing erect upon one of those graves, a Christian missionary named Chamberlain, is a heroic sized lingam.  It seems most inconsistent to find a pagan idol on a Christian grave.  We cannot tell you how it got there, whether by request of the deceased before he died, or placed there by the hands of his loved ones, or whether placed there by respecting natives who followed his teachings, but this much we know — it is there.  We can conceive a possible explanation.  We have known and talked with many occidentals who have either gone to native countries for missionary or commercial reasons, who have become imbued with the superior and lofty heights of this sex-religious idea and have practically become converted to or “gone native” in the belief that to respect sex as a religion is a much better way to live a moral life than it is to shame it out of our lives and make it an obscene thing to be practiced in secrecy.  Perhaps this missionary “went native” to that extent and he preferred the Christian religion, spiritually, and respected the religious side of sex, physically.
    It is to be expected that evidence of sex worship would be found connected with religions where sex is worshipped.  This made our sixteenth trip to Honolulu and we have never discovered it before.  We took motion pictures that we might have tangible evidence of the grave, tombstone, and lingam.  How could any such Christian missionaries associate with and study the pagan religion of the native Hawaiian people and be ignorant of the nature of the natives they came to convert?  If they understood and knew the full import of the religious significance of the lingam in the native religion did they knowingly put this phallus on the grave as a compromise to the natives or did they partially deny the Christian crucifix and partially adopt the lingam belief?  Did the Christian turn pagan or did the pagan turn Christian?  Did the two marry and mix their religions and did the children carry the mixture to their grave?  At any rate, this lingam was brought from another Hawaiian Island, over 400 miles away, for this express purpose.  Whatever the facts, there’s the phallus lingam on a Christian missionary’s grave in Honolulu for all to see and wonder about.
    While we are discussing cemeteries, let us take a look at any Mohammedan grave.  It contains a square or round tombstone, usually from 4 inches up to 12 inches in diameter.  It has a rounded head on top.  It is the phallic symbol.  The man lies in his grave back down, face upward.  This lingam erect as it is, is pointing to the heaven he desires to reach.  This is not an isolated type, it is the regular thing.  Peculiarly, the Mohammedan heaven permits no woman to attain it or ever reach it, yet when a man reaches this celestial abode, women are always there.  No wonder he does not fear to die; no wonder he wants to die.  Death means that he will cut off just that number of years of worry and physical strife here and that he can quicker reach the delights of his most avid dreams up there.  (There is a photo of a Mohammedan graveyard in January or February, 1931, National Geographic Magazine.)
    Man never grows old and never tires of his celestial experiences, in his belief.  To die is to get away from all of earth with its cares and worries, to go to a place that is not encumbered with physical limitations.  Yet, as he also builds his religion, women are necessary on earth but they cannot attain heaven; yet they are there waiting for him in all the beauty of face, figure, and form when he arrives.
    Angkor-Vat is a temple erected in the 8th century, A.D., or about 1200 years ago.  It passed through three revolutions of religious warfare and its affiliations were transferred from Brahman to Buddhist and back to Brahman again.  At one place on the walls is a 1500 feet long, 8 feet high, wall of carved bas-reliefs.  It is commonly referred to as “The Churning of the Sea of Milk.”  As ordinarily observed and seen by the average tourist it means nothing unusual.  As a center piece, is seen a man in a standing position, holding the erect lingam in his hands.  He is “churning,” that is, transforming from the inside of his “milk” member to the outside of himself, the “milk” which he can give.  It is being caught in a small saucer by a woman who is seated in front of him.  As the panel is a running picture, we next see the woman handing the saucer to the king, who in turn is seen drinking the “milk.”  The religious interpretation of this picture is that everything that lives reproduces itself by “churning” the “milk,” therefore, because it is so extensive as to include vegetable and tree life, birds, animals, fishes and humans, it represents a “sea” because “sea” was the biggest and broadest thing he could conceive of that began and had no ending.
    The Island of Bali is Hindu in religion.  It was pointed out to us; we saw them, and took motion pictures of several places in various Hindu temples wherein male and female are seen in conjugal embrace.  This was not chalked on as a result of some perverted mind of a later period.  It was carved in at the time of the building of the temple and represented a part of the religion of those natives.
    The Island of Java is Hindu and Buddhistic.  Weltervreden is the capitol city of the Dutch East Indies.  In the National Museum are dozens of lingams carved in wood and stone.  One of them is the finest specimen I have ever seen; carved true to form in enlarged heroic size.  It has placed about it four testes rather than the normal number of two.  All of these linga, in this museum, have been gathered from various old temples found in and about these islands.
    The visitor to the islands either does or does not go to this museum.  Thousands undoubtedly go, see these “stones” and possibly wonder for a moment what they are — and pass on, none the wiser; nor would they know unless they understood the fundamentals underlying the religions of native people.  Local people know; the museum people know; anybody who lives in the islands and knows the natives knows; but few occidentals who come there know, because they are thinking the things the occidental mind thinks, rather than trying to know the native mind as the native mind exists religiously.
    In the center of the Island of Bali is the Court of Justice — an open-air, raised-high place where the former kings tried the cases of crimes as they occurred.  It is still used as the Court of Justice by the Dutch Governor-General and the local justices when called up to try cases.  The ceiling is painted in colors.  On this ceiling is one set of pictures illustrating the pleasures that come to those who do right, both on earth and in heaven.  The other group pictures 1,000 punishments that can be inflicted upon the wrong-doer.  Many of these punishments consist of ways of inflicting pain and suffering so far as they concern sex organs of male or female, including the breasts and buttocks.  For example: placing a burning fire brand between the legs and burning the sex-organs.  The average visiting occidental seeing the Court of Justice, rarely looks; and if he looked, rarely sees; and if he sees, rarely understands what it is that he sees.  The average occidental seeing these paintings would jump to the conclusion that these people were savages, brutal, obscene, horrible, etc.  The Balinese are not savages in any sense.  They are not brutal, horrible, or obscene.  They regard sex as the source of life and the greatest punishment they can give any Balinese is to injure the thing or place from whence comes this source of life.  They believe in “sterilizing” some forms of criminals by destroying the sex life of the criminal from which came the crime.  Some of their forms of punishment are, in native thought, equal to our religious punishments back in the days of the Spanish inquisition; it is a question of where the church visits punishments upon him who desecrates and injures that which is a part of their religion.
    Coming over on the boat from Japan, on our recent trip to the Antipodes, we were shown a series of photographs of punishment inflicted upon Chinese female spies in their recent civil war.  The women spies were stripped, needles were then used to puncture the breasts at various intervals.  Perhaps the female was laid upon the ground, naked, her legs were spread split fashion until they were broken, after which a bamboo pole was inserted into the yoni and she was left to suffer accordingly.  The occidental mind construes this as brutal in the extreme; and, grant that it is, the fact still remains that the Chinese inflict this form of punishment to show their contempt for the organs which are the source of their spiritual understanding of a religion.  They mutilate sex in many forms to express an abhorrence against the symbol of their religion as inflicted upon that culprit who goes wrong.  As they idolize the same parts, when right, so do they inflict punishment upon them when they go wrong, thus reversing their religious symbol so as to make it a symbol of their concept of hell.
    Go with us to the ruins of Karnak or Luxor in Egypt and you will again find sex manifested in these ancient Egyptian temples in two forms.  Paintings upon the walls illustrating sex of both male and female; you will find carvings of the male with erect lingam in enlarged form.  The ancient Egyptian was much a native to his country and this all existed in days before the occidental mind had made inroads, the same as in other places.  None of these are considered obscene by the native.  It is but one of the many symbols which best express his deification of the source of life as he understood it in his limited concept of his world.
    Several phalluses suspended from a necklace were worn by the gravest of women among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Italians, nor did they blush at wearing these amulets in public.  They were especially for barren women, and for such as generally brought forth children with difficulty and miscarriage.
    Within the oldest temples of Egypt were sacred apartments which may still be seen.  In these fanes were the Holy of Holies, and in the past ages, none could obtain access to these places except priests and priestesses of the highest order.  In these compartments the mysteries of birth were pictured, together with the symbols of generation, emblems of procreation.  Priests and priestesses were the instructors of young men and women in all matters pertaining to sex.  It is needless to say that as a result of this broad education, their views of life were purified; and that as a consequence of their early training, they developed into physical and intellectual giants and gave Egypt the wonderful civilization she once enjoyed, a civilization mighty in its proportions.  This statement also holds true of Greece, Rome, and of the peoples of the Orient.
    Up in Brastagi, Sumatra, the native women wear solid silver ear-rings that must weigh approximately three pounds apiece.  They wear one in each ear.  The ear-rings are rods of silver, about the size of a small little-finger, curled in two round balls, between which is an elongated section with an opening at the end.  The cut-out section is at the end of the elongated section between.  In this opening is placed the ear.  This phallic symbol represents the testes and lingam of the male.  It is worn only by the female.  She places it in her ears at the end of the lingam, so that she may receive into her ears that which the male (as symbolized) can give her.  It then goes into her head and she will become fertile.  These ear-rings are worn as a religious significance.
    The triangle that has become such a regular part of all our modern architecture, drawings, illustrations, etc., originally had its inception by people seeing the triangular pubic hair line of the female.  From that source it sprang and from there it has become such a part of the occidental arts that we hardly dare think backward to its common origin.
    The most ancient way of administering the oath was by placing the hand between the thighs, on the genitals.  The latter was regarded as the Christian and the Jew regard the Bible, as being the most sacred of tangible things.  This proves the holy reverence for the generative functions held by the forbears of the present civilization.
    According to Davenport, in his essay, “Ancient Phallic Worship”:  “A custom greatly resembling this manner of swearing existed also in the north of Europe, as is proved by an ancient law still extant: thus, one of the articles of the Welsh laws enacted by Hoel the Good provided that in cases of rape, if the woman wished to prosecute the offender, she must, when swearing to the identity of the criminal, lay her right hand upon the relics of the saints and grasp with her left the peccant member of the party accused.”  However repugnant these customs may be to the mind today, they show conclusively that in ancient times a greater reverence was shown for the biologic forces which bring about conception in the great laboratory of nature, the womb, wherein the new entity takes form, than is being shown by Anglo-Saxon members of modem social systems.
    On the K.P.M. boat, Nieuw Zeeland, is an open-air, upper-deck Roman swimming pool.  To bring forth the Roman spirit of this bath, the sea-water comes into the pool through a Roman head with a faucet coming forth from the mouth of the face of the head.  The ornament was a reproduction of a similar device found in the ruins of Pompeii.  What was it?  A face with a lingam protruding from the mouth.  This was a modern boat with a reproduced ancient phallic symbol of the native of Rome.  More than likely the architect who copied this device for this modern pool little knew that it was phallic in its origin in the early days.  It was Roman and he thought it fitted nicely into a Roman pool.
    Passing through New Zealand one studies the native Maori people.  They are noted for their odd and peculiar wood carvings to be found in their homes and meeting place of the tribes and communities.  Many of these carvings are of great size, as long as 10 feet, as wide as 5 to 6 feet, and as thick as 10 to 12 inches in a solid log.  The average person looking at these peculiar carvings would pass judgment that they were odd and let it rest at that.  Studying these carvings, however, proves that each and every design and character is phallic in its nature.  At the peak, in front, of the roof of the community house at Rotorua is a male figure with heroic male organs.  Few would notice it unless they were looking for phallic symbols knowing sex was the fundamental of their native religion.  Traveling through New Zealand, we found it constantly.
    We finally reached Wellington where we asked the Publicity Department of New Zealand Government if they had any photos of phallic nature in its relation with the Maoris.  They had some, and we secured copies.  We were then introduced to E. Elsdon Best, the Librarian of their National Turnbull Library, who is an internationally known authority upon this question.  He gave us some of his writings which are quoted in this book.  With Mr. Best, we went to the National Museum, where they had on exhibit many Maori wood carvings.  We asked the Curator if he had any phallic symbols and we were surprised to learn that he did not know what we were talking about, notwithstanding