CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES.

135

"Nothing of Cadmus nor Saint George, those names of great renown, survives them but their names;

But Shonke one serpent kills, t'other defies,

And in this wall, as in a fortress, lies."

See Weever's Ancient Funeral Monuments. He calls the place "Burnt Pelham," and he says: "In the wall of this Church lieth a most ancient Monument: A Stone wherein is figured a man, and about him an Eagle, a Lion, and a Bull, having all wings, and a fourth of the shape of an Angell, as if they should represent the four Evangelists: under the feet of the man is a crosse Flourie."

"The being represented cross-legged is not always a proof of the deceased having had the merit either of having been a crusader, or having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. I have seen at Milton, in Yorkshire, two figures of the Sherbornes thus represented, who, I verily believe, could never have had more than a wish to enter the Holy Land." Pennant writes thus of the Temple, London.

Weever points out, in relation to the monument of Sir Pierce or Piers Shonke described above: "Under the Cross is a Serpent. Sir Piers Shonke is thought to havve been sometime the Lord of an ancient decaied House, well moated, not farre from this place, called 'O Piers Shonkes.' He flourished Ann. a conquestu, vicesimo primo."-Weever,

P. 549.

"The personation of a dog-their invariable accompaniment, as it is also found amongst the sculptures of Persepolis, and in other places in the East-would in itself be sufficient to fix the heathen appropriation of these crosses" (the ancient Irish crosses), 66 as that animal can have no possible relation to Christianity; whereas, by the Tuath-de-danaans, it was accounted sacred, and its maintenance enjoined by the ordinances of the state, as it is still in the Zend books, which remain after Zoroaster."-O'Brien's Round Towers of Ireland, 1834, P. 359.

"I apprehend the word 'Sin' came to mean Lion when the Lion was the emblem of the Sun at his summer solstice,

when he was in his glory, and the Bull and the Man' were the signs of the Sun at the Equinoxes, and the Eagle at the winter solstice."-Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 292.

Figure 23 is an Egyptian bas-relief, of which the ex

.E.

A

...B.

Fig. 23.

planation is the following: A is the Egyptian Eve trampling the Dragon (the goddess Neith, or Minerva); B, a Crocodile; C, Gorgon's head; D, Hawk (wisdom); E, feathers (soul).

"The first and strongest conviction which will flash on the mind of every ripe antiquary, whilst surveying the long series of Mexican and Toltecan_monuments preserved in these various works, is the similarity which the ancient monuments of New Spain bear to the monumental records of Ancient Egypt. Whilst surveying them, the glance falls with familiar recognition on similar graduated pyramids, on similar marks of the same primeval Ophite worship, on vestiges of the same Triune and Solar Deity, on planispheres and temples, on idols and sculptures, some of rude and some of finished workmanship, often presenting the most striking affinities with the Egyptian."-Stephens' and Catherwood's Incidents of Travel in Central America.

LX

The Tables of Stone.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND.

T is astonishing how much of the Egyptian and the Indian symbolism of very early ages passed into the usages of Christian times. Thus the high cap and the hooked staff of the god became the bishop's mitre and crosier; the term nun is purely Egyptian, and bore its present meaning; the erect oval,

symbol of the Female Principle of Nature, became the Vesica Piscis, and a frame for Divine Things; the CruxAnsata, testifying the union of the Male and Female

Ѣ

Fig. 27.

Fig. 28.

Fig. 29.

Fig. 30.

Principle in the most obvious manner, and denoting fecundity and abundance as borne in the god's hand, is transformed, by a simple inversion, into the Orb surmounted by the Cross, and the ensign of royalty." Refer to The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 72.

q +

The famous "Stone of Cabar," Kaaba, Cabir, or Kebir, at Mecca, which is so devoutly kissed by the faithful, is a talisman. It is called the "Tabernacle" (Taberna, or Shrine) of the Star Venus. "It is

LT said that the figure of Venus is seen

Fig. 31.

to this day engraved upon it, with a crescent." The very Caaba itself was at first an idolatrous temple, where the Arabians worshipped "Al-Uza "—that is, Venus. See Bobovius, Dr. Hyde Parker, and others, for particulars regarding the Arabian and Syrian Venus. She is the "Uraniæcorniculata sacrum (Selden, De Venere Syriaca). The "Ihrâm is a sacred habit, which consists only of two woollen wrappers; one closed about the middle of devotees, to cover," &c., "and the other thrown over their shoulders." Refer to observations about Noah, later in our book; Sale's Discourse, p. 121; Pococke's India in Greece, vol. ii. part i. p. 218. The Temple of Venus at Cyprus was the Temple of VenusUrania. "No woman entered this temple" (Sale's Koran, chap. vii. p. 119; note, p. 149). Accordingly, Anna Commena and Glycas (in Renald. De Mah.) say that the Mahometans do worship Venus." Several of the Arabian idols were no more than large, rude stones (Sale's Discourse, p. 20; Koran, chap. v. p. 82). The stone at Mecca is black. The crypts, the subterranean churches and chambers, the choirs, and the labyrinths, were all intended to enshrine (as it were) and to conceal the central object of worship, or this sacred "stone." The pillar of Sueno, near Forres, in Scotland, is an obelisk. These obelisks were all astrological gnomons, or "pins," to the imitative stellar mazes, or to the "fateful charts" in the "letter-written" skies. The astro

66

66

THE LETTERS "S" AND "Z."

139

"sections

nomical "stalls," or "stables," were the many into which the "hosts" of the starry sky were distributed by the Chaldæans. The Decumens (or tenths), into which the ecliptic was divided, had also another name, which was Ashre, from the Hebrew particle as, or ash, which means 66 'fiery," or FIRE." The Romans displayed reverence for the ideas connected with these sacred stones. Cambyses, in Egypt, left the obelisks or single magic stones. The Linghams in India were left untouched by the Mohammedan conquerors. The modern Romans have a phallus or lingha in front of almost all their churches. There is an obelisk, altered to suit Christian ideas (and surmounted in most instances in modern times by a cross), in front of every church in Rome. There are few churchyards in England without a phallus or obelisk. On the top is usually now fixed a dial. In former times, when the obeliscar form was adopted for ornaments of all sorts, it was one of the various kinds of Christian acceptable cross which was placed on the summit. We have the single stone of memorial surviving yet in the Fire-Towers (Round Towers of Ireland). This phallus, upright, or "pin of stone," is found in every Gilgal or Druidical Circle. It is the boundary-stone or terminus, the parish mark-stone; it stands on every motehill; lastly (and chiefly), this stone survives in the stone in the coronation chair at Westminster (of which more hereafter), and also in the famous "London Stone," or the palladium, in Cannon Street, City of London: which stone is said to be "London's fate "—which we hope it is not to be in the unprosperous sense.

The letter "S," among the Gnostics, with its grimmer or harsher brother (or sister) "Z," was called the "reprobate," or "malignant," letter. Of this portentous sigma (or sign) "S" (the angular and not serpentine "S" is the grinding or bass "S"-the letter "Z"), Dionysius the Halicarnassian says as follows: that "the letter 'S' makes a noise more brutal than human. Therefore the ancients used it very sparingly" ("Пgi σudes;" see, also, sect. 14 of Origin and Progress of Language, vol. ii. p. 233).