the earth, so that from her all life is produced.
Thus the sun becomes worshipped as the Father of all,
and the sun is the emblem which crowns the images
of the Supreme God; the vernal equinox is the resurrection
of the sun, and the sign of the zodiac in which he
then is becomes the symbol of his life-producing power;
thus the bull, and afterwards the ram, became his
sign as Life-Giver, and the Sun-god was pictured as
bull, or as ram (or lamb), or else with the horns
of his, emblem, and the earthly animals became sacred
for his sake. Mithra, the Sun-god of Persia,
is sculptured as riding on a bull; Osiris, the Sun-god
of Egypt, wears the horns of the bull, and is worshipped
as Osiris-Apis, or Serapis, the Sun-god in the sign
of Apis, the bull. Later, by the precession of
the equinoxes, the sun at the vernal equinox has passed
into the sign of the ram (called in Persia, the lamb),
and we find Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter with ram’s
horns, and Jesus the Lamb of God. These symbols
all denote the sun victorious over darkness and death,
giving life to the world. The phallus is the other
great symbol of the Life-Giver, generating life in
woman, as the sun in the earth. Bacchus, Adonis,
Dionysius, Apollo, Hercules, Hermes, Thammuz, Jupiter,
Jehovah, Jao, or Jah, Moloch, Baal, Asher, Mahadeva,
Brahma, Vishnu, Mithra, Atys, Ammon, Belus, with many
another, these are all the Life-Giver under different
names; they are the Sun, the Creator, the Phallus.
Red is their appropriate colour. When the sun
or the Phallus is not drawn in its natural form, it
is indicated by a symbol: the symbol must be
upright, hard, or else burning, either conical, or
clubbed at one end. Thus—the torch,
flame of fire, cone, serpent, thyrsus, triangle, letter
T, cross, crosier, sceptre, caduceus, knobbed stick,
tall tree, upright stone, spire, tower, minaret, upright
pole, arrow, spear, sword, club, upright stump,
etc.,
are all symbols of the generative force of the male
energy in Nature of the Supreme God.
One of the most common, and the most universally used,
is THE CROSS. Carved at first simply as phallus,
it was gradually refined; we meet it as three balls,
one above the two; the letter T indicated it, which,
by the slightest alteration, became the cross now
known as the Latin: thus “Barnabas”
says that “the cross was to express the grace
by the letter T” (ante, p. 233). We find
the cross in India, Egypt, Thibet, Japan, always as
the sign of life-giving power; it was worn as an amulet
by girls and women, and seems to have been specially
worn by the women attached to the temples, as a symbol
of what was, to them, a religious calling. The
cross is, in fact, nothing but the refined phallus,
and in the Christian religion is a significant emblem
of its Pagan origin; it was adored, carved in temples,
and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and nature worshippers,
long before there were any Christians to adore, carve,
and wear it. The crowd kneeling before the cross