The following interesting chapter is taken from a valuable book issued a
few years ago anonymously:
“Mother Earth” is a legitimate expression, only of the most
general type. Religious genius gave the female quality to the
earth with a special meaning. When once the idea obtained that
our world was _feminine_, it was easy to induce the faithful to
believe that natural chasms were typical of that part which
characterises woman. As at birth the new being emerges from the
mother, so it was supposed that emergence from a terrestrial
cleft was equivalent to a new birth. In direct proportion to the
resemblance between the sign and the thing signified was the
sacredness of the chink, and the amount of virtue which was
imparted by passing through it. From natural caverns being
considered holy, the veneration for apertures in stones, as
being equally symbolical, was a natural transition. Holes, such
as we refer to, are still to be seen in those structures which
are called Druidical, both in the British Isles and in India. It
is impossible to say when these first arose; it is certain that
they survive in India to this day. We recognise the existence of
the emblem among the Jews in Isaiah li. 1, in the charge to look
“to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.” We have also an
indication that chasms were symbolical among the same people in
Isaiah lvii. 5, where the wicked among the Jews were described
as “inflaming themselves with idols under every green tree, and
slaying the children in the valleys under the clefts of the
rocks.” It is possible that the “hole in the wall” (Ezek. viii.
7) had a similar signification. In modern Rome, in the vestibule
of the church close to the Temple of Vesta, I have seen a large
_perforated stone_, in the hole of which the ancient Romans are
said to have placed their hands when they swore a solemn oath,
in imitation, or, rather, a counterpart, of Abraham swearing his
servant upon his thigh—that is the male organ. Higgins dwells
upon these holes, and says: “These stones are so placed as to
have a hole under them, through which devotees passed for
religious purposes. There is one of the same kind in Ireland,
called St. Declau’s stone. In the mass of rocks at Bramham Crags
there is a place made for the devotees to pass through.” We read
in the accounts of Hindostan that there is a very celebrated
place in Upper India, to which immense numbers of pilgrims go,
to pass through a place in the mountains called “The Cow’s
Belly.” In the Island of Bombay, at Malabar Hill, there is a
rock upon the surface of which there is a natural crevice, which
communicates with a cavity opening below. This place is used by
the Gentoos as a purification of their sins, which they say is
effected by their going in at the opening below, and emerging at
the cavity above—“born again.” The ceremony is in such high
repute in the neighbouring countries that the famous Conajee
Angria ventured by stealth, one night, upon the Island, on
purpose to perform the ceremony, and got off undiscovered. The
early Christians gave them a bad name, as if from envy; they
called these holes “Cunni Diaboli.” (_Anacalypsis_, p. 346)