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Regarding these remarkable stones to which the Lingham god is a mere introduction, Forlong says: "No one who has studied phallic and solar worship in the East could make any mistake as to the purport of the shrine at Stonehenge... yet the indelicacy of the whole subject often so shocks the ordinary reader, that, in spite of facts, he cannot grant what he thinks shows so much debasement of the religious mind; facts are facts, however, and it only remains for us to account for them.
The Eleusirian festivals represented the survival of the purest ideals of nature worship, before the warfare between the yoni and the phallic worshippers had brought both ideals into degradation. This point is the fact, that the rites and ceremonies of this festival were performed by "virgins distinguished for their purity of life."
It is impossible longer to conceal the fact that passion, symbolized by a serpent, an upright stone, and by the male and female organs of generation, the male appearing as the "giver of life," the female as a necessary appendage to it, constituted the god-idea of mankind for at least four thousand years; and, instead of being confined to the earlier ages of that period, we shall presently see that phallic worship had not disappeared, under Christianity, as late and even later than the sixteenth century.
In Russia the Vegetation or Year Spirit is known as Yarilo, and is represented by a doll with phallic attributes, which is enclosed in a coffin, and carried through the streets to the accompaniment of lamentation by women whose emotions have been excited by drink. Mannhardt gives the lament as follows: "Wessen war Er schuldig? Er war so gut! Er wird nicht mehr aufstehen!
And not only does it so occur upon a very large number of coins, but in some instances we see the Victory surmounting it; recalling to our minds the fact that victory, as signifying the triumph of Life over Death, had a phallic as well as a martial meaning, and is achieved every time that a man is born into the world as a result of the tasting of the fruit of the Tree of Life or of the knowledge of good and evil.
Max Ohnefalsch-Richter is in a cut of an ancient Cyprian coin on Plate X.; upon which coin we see over a temple gateway the phallic symbol since adopted by the Moslems, and commonly spoken of as the 'star and crescent' although, as already shown, it originality represented the radiate Sun or Male Principle in conjunction with the Crescent moon or Female Principle.
Now since in the above rites, where the increase of the food supply is the main motive, the entire development and symbolism centers about articles of food, and since in the phallic rites an entirely analagous development and symbolism centers about the generative organs, it is only reasonable to infer that the phallic rites have to do with the desire for children.
In this instance we feel that the symbolism is very definite, and doubtless the stone pillars in the other temples of India and elsewhere are of the same significance. A clergyman in the Chinese Review of 1876, under the title "Phallic Worship in China," gives an account of the phallicism as he observed it at that time.
Concerning the form of religious worship in Great Britain, and the fact that phallic worship prevailed there, Forlong writes: "The generality of our countrymen have no conception of the overruling prevalence of this faith, and the number of its lingham gods throughout our Islands." These symbols were always in the form of an obelisk or tower, thereby indicating the worship of the male energy.
And to this very day the so-called Coronation Orb is known throughout Germany and Austria as Reichsapfel, the Imperial Apple. It is therefore by no means certain that the round portion of the Coronation Orb which thus caused the name of "the Golden Apple" to be given to this compound Christian symbol, is not, like the cross above it, to some extent a phallic symbol.
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