Now, this explanation, trite and meagre as it is, may do very well for the exoteric teaching of the order; but the question at this time is, not how it has been explained by modern lecturers and masonic system-makers, but what was the ancient interpretation of the symbol, and how should it be read as a sacred hieroglyphic in reference to the true philosophic system which constitutes the real essence and character of Freemasonry?

Perfectly to understand this symbol, I must refer, as a preliminary matter, to the worship of the Phallus, a peculiar modification of sun-worship, which prevailed to a great extent among the nations of antiquity.

The Phallus was a sculptured representation of the membrum virile, or male organ of generation,[76] and the worship of it is said to have originated in Egypt, where, after the murder of Osiris by Typhon, which is symbolically to be explained as the destruction or deprivation of the sun’s light by night, Isis, his wife, or the symbol of nature, in the search for his mutilated body, is said to have found all the parts except the organs of generation, which myth is simply symbolic of the fact, that the sun having set, its fecundating and invigorating power had ceased.  The Phallus, therefore, as the symbol of the male generative principle, was very universally venerated among the ancients,[77] and that too as a religious rite, without the slightest reference to any impure or lascivious application.[78] He is supposed, by some commentators, to be the god mentioned under the name of Baal-peor, in the Book of Numbers,[79] as having been worshipped by the idolatrous Moabites.  Among the eastern nations of India the same symbol was prevalent, under the name of “Lingam.”  But the Phallus or Lingam was a representation of the male principle only.  To perfect the circle of generation it is necessary to advance one step farther.  Accordingly we find in the Cteis of the Greeks, and the Yoni of the Indians, a symbol of the female generative principle, of co-extensive prevalence with the Phallus.  The Cteis was a circular and concave pedestal, or receptacle, on which the Phallus or column rested, and from the centre of which it sprang.

The union of the Phallus and Cteis, or the Lingam and Yoni, in one compound figure, as an object of adoration, was the most usual mode of representation.  This was in strict accordance with the whole system of ancient mythology, which was founded upon a worship of the prolific powers of nature.  All the deities of pagan antiquity, however numerous they may be, can always be reduced to the two different forms of the generative principle—­the active, or male, and the passive, or female.  Hence the gods were always arranged in pairs, as Jupiter and Juno, Bacchus and Venus, Osiris and Isis.  But the ancients went farther.  Believing that the procreative and productive powers of nature might be conceived to exist in the same individual, they made the older of their deities hermaphrodite, and used the term [Greek:  a)r)r(enothe/lys], or man-virgin, to denote the union of the two sexes in the same divine person.[80]