With the world as it is, and with man as he is, every possibility of
good has a corresponding possibility of evil. Good perverted becomes
evil. Truth which, rightly used, proves a savor of life, will, when
misused, prove a savor of death.[601] And that which is a symbol of
truth becomes a means of misleading when looked at as if it were in
itself the truth.
The primitive Threshold Covenant as an elemental religious rite was holy
and pure, and had possibilities of outgrowth in the direction of high
spiritual attainment and aspiring. But the temptation to uplift the
agencies in this rite into objects deemed of themselves worthy of
worship resulted in impurity and deterioration, by causing the symbol to
hide the truth instead of disclosing it.
Among the earliest forms of a temple as a place of worship was the
ziggurat, or stepped pyramid, erected as a mighty altar, with its
shrine, or holy of holies, at the summit, wherein a bride of the gods
awaited the coming of the deity to solemnize the primal Threshold
Covenant in expression of his readiness to enter into loving communion
with the children of men.[602] From this custom the practice of
Threshold Covenanting at the temple doorways became incumbent on women
of all conditions of society at certain times, and under certain
circumstances, in certain portions of the world, as a proof of their
religious devotion,[603] and thus there grew up all the excesses of
sacred prostitution in different portions of the world.[604]
The prominence given to the two factors in the primitive Threshold
Covenant as a sacred religious act, led to the perversion of the
original idea by making the factors themselves objects of reverence and
worship; and separately, or together, they came to be worshiped with
impure and degrading accompaniments.
Reverence for the phallus, or for phallic emblems, shows itself in the
earliest historic remains of Babylonia, Assyria, India, China, Japan,
Persia, Phrygia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Greece, Rome, Germany,
Scandinavia, France, Spain, Great Britain, North and South America, and
the Islands of the Sea. It were needless to attempt detailed proof of
this statement, in view of all that has been written on the subject by
historians, archæologists, and students of comparative religions.[605]
It is enough to suggest that the mistake has too often been made of
supposing that this “phallic worship” was a primitive conception of a
religious truth, instead of a perversion of the earlier and purer idea
which is at the basis of the highest religious conceptions, from the
beginning until now.
Quite as widely extended, in both time and space, as the worship of the
phallus as the symbol of masculine potency, is the recognition of the
tree of life as the symbol of feminine nature in its fruit-bearing
capacity. A single tree, or a grove of trees, or the lotus flower, the
fig, or the pomegranate, with the peculiar form of their seed capsules,
appear in all the earlier religious symbolisms, over against the phallus
in its realistic or its conventional forms, as representative of
reproductive life.[606]
In ancient Assyrian sculpture the most familiar representation of
spiritual blessing was of a winged deity with a basket and a palm cone,
touching with the cone a sacred tree, or again the person of a
sovereign, as if imparting thereby some special benefit or power. This
representation was long a mystery to the archeologist, but a recent
scholar has shown that it is an illustration of a practice common in the
East to-day, of carrying a cone of the male palm to a female palm tree,
in order to vitalize it by the pollen.[607] The cone is one of the
conventional forms of the phallus, worshiped as a symbol in the temples
of the goddesses of the East in earlier days and later.[608] Hence this
ancient Assyrian representation is an illustration of the truth that the
primitive threshold covenant was recognized as the type of divine power,
and covenant blessing, imparted to God’s representative, under the
figure of the phallus and the tree.
It would seem, indeed, that the pillar and the tree came to be the
conventional symbols of the male and female elements erected in front of
an altar of worship,[609] and that, in the deterioration of the ages,
these symbols themselves were worshiped, and their symbolism was an
incentive to varied forms of impurity, instead of to holy covenanting
with God and in God’s service. Therefore these symbols were deemed by
true worshipers a perversion of an originally sacred rite, and their
destruction was a duty with those who would restore God’s worship to its
pristine purity.
Thus the command to Jehovah’s people as to their treatment of the people
of Canaan was: “Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the
inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in
the midst of thee: but ye shall break down their altars, and dash in
pieces their pillars [or male symbols], and ye shall cut down their
Asherim [or trees as a female symbol]: for thou shalt worship no other
god: for the Lord [Jehovah], whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go
a whoring after their gods.”[610] Here is a distinct reference to the
primitive Threshold Covenant in its purity and sacredness, and to its
perversion in the misuse of the phallus and tree in their symbolism.
Again the command was explicit to the Israelites: “Thou shalt not plant
thee an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the Lord thy
God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up a
pillar; which the Lord thy God hateth.”[611]
From the earliest historic times the serpent seems to have been accepted
as a symbol of the nexus of union between the two sexes, and to be
associated, therefore, with the pillar and the tree, as suggestive of
the desire that may be good or evil, according to its right or wrong
direction and use. Its place as a symbol has been at the threshold of
palace and temple and home, with limitless powers of evil in its
misuse.[612]
“Mighty snakes standing upright,” together with “mighty bulls of bronze”
were “on the threshold of the gates” in ancient Babylon.[613] A serpent
wreathed the phallus boundary stone (as if suggestive of its being a
thing of life) on the threshold of Babylonian domains.[614] As a symbol
of life and life-giving power the serpent stood erect above the head of
the mightiest kings of Egypt, who gave and took life at their
pleasure,[615] and it even accompanied the winged sun-orb in its
manifestation of light and warmth and life over the grandest temples of
ancient Thebes.[616] The Egyptian goddess Ket, or Kadesh, “Mistress of
Heaven,” a divinity borrowed from the Semites, was represented as
standing on a lioness, with lotus flowers, their stems coiled in
circular form, in her right hand, and two serpents in her left hand, as
she came with her offering to Min, or Khem, the god of generative
force.[617] A similar representation of a goddess of life is found in
ancient Assyrian remains.
In the representation of Nergal, the lord of the under world, in the
ancient Babylonian mythology, the phallus and the serpent were
identical.[618] Beltis-Allat, consort of Nergal, and lady of the under
world, brandished a serpent in either hand. She was guardian of the
waters of life which were under the threshold of the entrance of her
realm.[619]
That which was primarily a holy instinct became, in its perversion, a
source of evil and a cause of dread; hence the serpent became a
representative of evil itself, and the conflict with it was the conflict
between good and evil, between light and darkness. This is shown in the
religions of ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and India, and Phœnicia and
Greece, and Mexico and Peru, and various other countries.[620]
Vishnoo and his wife Lakshmi, from whom, according to Hindoo teachings,
the world was produced, and by whom it continues or must cease, are
represented as seated on a serpent, as the basis of their life and
power.[621] Siva, also, giver and destroyer of life, is crowned with a
serpent, and a serpent is his necklace, while the symbol of his worship
is the _linga in yoni_.[622] A mode of Hindoo worship includes the
placing of a stone _linga_ between two serpents, and under two trees,
the one a male tree and the other a female tree.[623] And in various
ways the serpent appears, in connection with different Hindoo deities,
as the agent of life-giving or of life-destroying.[624] A suggestive
representation of Booddha as the conqueror of desire shows him seated
restfully on a coiled serpent, the hooded head of which is a screen or
canopy above his head.[625]
Apollo, son of Zeus, was the slayer of the man-destroying serpent at
Delphi; yet the serpent, when conquered, became a means of life and
inspiration to others.[626] Æsculapius, the god of healing, a son of
Apollo, was represented by the serpent because he gave new life to those
who were dying. Serpents were everywhere connected with his worship as a
means of healing.[627] The female oracle who represented Apollo at
Delphi sat on a tripod formed of entwined serpents.[628] Serpents on the
head of Medusa were a means of death to the beholder; and these serpents
were given to Medusa instead of hair because of her faithlessness and
sacrilege in the matter of the Threshold Covenant.[629] Thus the good
and the evil in that which the serpent symbolized were shown in the
religions of the nations of antiquity, and serpent worship became one of
the grossest perversions of the idea of the primitive Threshold
Covenant.
As in the matter of phallic worship and tree worship, so in this of the
worship of the serpent, it would seem unnecessary to multiply
illustrations of its prominence in various lands, when so many special
treatises on the subject are already available.[630] It is only
necessary to emphasize anew the fact that the evident thought of the
symbol is an outgrowth or a perversion of the idea of the primitive
Threshold Covenant.
The form of the Bible narrative, portraying the first temptation and the
first sin, seems to show how early the symbolism of the tree and the
serpent was accepted in popular speech. From that narrative as it stands
it would appear that the first act of human disobedience was
incontinence, in transgression of a specific command to abstain, at
least for a time, from carnal intercourse. Desire, as indicated by the
serpent, prompted to an untimely partaking of the fruit of the forbidden
tree, and the consequences of sin followed. The results of this act of
disobedience, as recorded in the sacred text,[631] make evident the
correctness of this view of the case. When the Bible narrative was first
written, whenever that was, the terms “tree,”[632] “fruit” of the
tree,[633] “knowledge,”[634] “serpent,” were familiar figures of speech
or euphemisms, and their use in the Bible narrative would not have been
misunderstood by readers generally. Probably there was no question as to
this for many centuries. It was not until the dull prosaic literalism of
the Western mind obscured the meaning of Oriental figures of speech that
there was any general doubt as to what was affirmed in the Bible story
of the first temptation and disobedience.[635]
Philo Judæus at the beginning of the Christian era, seems to understand
this as the meaning of the narrative in Genesis, and he applies the
teachings of that narrative accordingly.[636] There are indications that
the rabbis looked similarly at the meaning of the Bible text. There are
traces of this traditional view in different Jewish writings.[637]
Evidently the original meaning was still familiar in the early Christian
ages. But its becoming connected with false doctrines and heresies, as
taught by the Ophites and other Gnostic sects, seems to have brought the
truth itself into disrepute, and finally led to its repudiation in favor
of a dead literalism.[638] The curse resting on the serpent, in
consequence of the first sin of incontinence, was the degradation of the
primitive impulse,[639] unless uplifted again by divine
inspiration.[640] Because of their breach of the covenant of divine love
our first parents were expelled from their home of happiness, and the
guardians of the threshold forbade their return to it.[641]
In the closing chapters of the New Testament, as in the opening chapters
of the Old, the symbolism of the tree and the serpent, and the covenant
relations involved in crossing the threshold, appear as familiar and
well-understood figures of speech. “The dragon, the old serpent, which
is the Devil and Satan,”[642] representing unholy desire, is shut out
from the precincts of the New Jerusalem. Within the gates of that city
is there the tree of life watered by the stream that flows from under
the throne of power.[643] The city threshold is the dividing line
between light and darkness, good and evil, life and death. “Blessed are
they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the
tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are
the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and
the idolators, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.”[644]
Thus it is in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, at their beginning
and at their close. And there are traces of the same truth in the
teachings of the various religions, and of the more primitive customs
and symbolisms. The all-dividing threshold separates the within from the
without; and a covenant welcome there gives one a right to enter in
through the gates into the eternal home, to be a partaker of the tree of
life, with its ever-renewing and revivifying fruits.
-----
Footnote 599:
See “Blood Covenant,” pp. 310–313.
Footnote 600:
See pp. 22 f., 39-44, 99-164, _supra_.
Footnote 601: