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This relationship becomes important when it is appreciated that the sun worship expressed in the mysteries is also a part of phallicism. On some of these festive occasions the phallus was carried in the front of the procession and at other times the egg, the phallus and the serpent were carried in the secret casket.
The author's main thesis can be stated in a sentence: the essential constituents of every religion, and the underlying meaning of its symbolism, are phallicism and sun worship.
The way in which phallicism has been suppressed during the present era raises the general question of religious liberty in Japan. In this respect, no less than in many others, a change has taken place so great as to amount to a revolution. During two hundred and fifty years Christianity was strictly forbidden on pain of extreme penalties.
The first in each case is the emblem of the sun or of fire, as the male or active generative power. The second denotes the passive nature or female principle or the emblem of water. The author of the Round Towers of Ireland in discussing the symbols of sun worship, serpent worship and phallicism, found on the same tablet, practically reiterates these statements.
Those who desire further and more detailed information may consult Forlong's great work, The Rivers of Life, Payne Knight's Worship of Priapus, Westropp and Wake's Phallicism in Ancient Religion, Brown's Dionysiak Myth, Westropp's Primitive Symbolism, R. A. Campbell's Phallic Worship, Hargrave Jennings's Worship of Priapus, etc.
Gross phallicism is clearly the result of degeneration, and of a lapse into sensuality and superstition.
Some have called attention to its tenacity of life; others have spoken of its supposed mystic power of regeneration by casting its skin. Again, it seems probable that the form is of symbolic significance. However this may be, we find that this universal serpent worship of primitive man was a form of phallicism so prevalent in former times. Many other animals may be mentioned.
This relationship becomes important when it is appreciated that the sun worship expressed in the mysteries is also a part of phallicism. On some of these festive occasions the phallus was carried in the front of the procession and at other times the egg, the phallus and the serpent were carried in the secret casket.
It is the invariable testimony of all careful observers of every class that as a rule the aborigines were healthy, vigorous, virile, and chaste, until they became demoralized by the whites. With many of them certain ceremonies had a distinct flavor of sex worship: a rude phallicism which exists to the present day.
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.
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