Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

THE ELEUSIXIAN MYSTERIES. IZi
It is no accident which has given to Iswara Arghanautha, CHAP.
IL
the Hindu Dionysos, an epithet which makes him the lord
of that divine ship which bore the Achaian warriors from
the land of darkness to the land of the morning. The testimony
of Theodoret, Arnobios, and Clement of Alexandria,
that an emblem similar to the Yoni was worshipped in the
mysteries of Eleusis needs no confirmation, when we remember
that the same emblem was openly carried in pro-
cession at Athens. The vases in the Hamiltonian collection
at the British Museum leave us as little in doubt that the
purification of women in the Hellenic mysteries agreed closely
with that of the Sacti in the mysteries of the Hindus. That
ornaments in the shape of a vesica have been popular in all
countries as preservatives against dangers, and especially
from evil spirits, can as little be questioned as the fact that
they still retain some measure of their ancient popularity in
England, where horse-shoes are nailed to walls as a safe-
guard against unknown perils, where a shoe is thrown by
way of good-luck after newly married couples, and where
the villagers have not yet ceased to dance round the Maypole
on the green.
It may be confidently said that the facts now stated
furnish a clue which will explain all the phenomena of tree
and serpent worship. The whole question is indeed one of
fact, and it is useless to build on hypothesis. If there is
any one point more certain than another, it is that, wherever
tree and serpent worship has been found, the cultus of the
Phallos and the Ship, of the Linga and the Yoni, in con-
nection with the worship of the sun, has been found also. It
is impossible to dispute the fact ; and no explanation can be
accepted for one part of the cultus which fails to explain the
other. It is unnecessary, therefore, to analyse theories which
profess to see in it the worship of the creeping brute or the
wide-branched tree. A religion based on the worship of the
venomous reptile must have been a religion of terror ; in the
earliest glimpses which we have of it, the serpent is a symbol
of life and of love. Nor is the Phallic cultus in any respect a
• Cansha Om Paesha,' with which the Brahnians close their religious services.
Nork, i. vii.
—
Real
meaning of
tree and
serpent
worship.