Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. C. Staniland Wake
The second phase of the Phallic superstition is that which arises from a perception of the value of the consequences of the act of generation. The distinction between this and the preceding phase is that, while the one has relation to the organs engaged, the other refers more particularly to the chief agent. Thus the father of the family is venerated as the generator, and his authority is founded altogether on the act and consequences of generation. We thus see the fundamental importance, as well as the Phallic origin, of the family idea. From this has sprung the social organisation of all primitive peoples. An instance in point may be derived from Mr. Hunter’s account of the Santals of Bengal. He says that the classification of this interesting people among themselves depends “not upon social rank or occupation, but upon the family basis.” This is shown by the character of the six great ceremonies in a Santal’s life, which are, “admission into the family; admission into the tribe; admission into the race; union of his own tribe with another by marriage; formal dismission from the living race by incremation; lastly, a reunion with the departed fathers.”9 We may judge from this of the character of certain customs which are widespread among primitive peoples, and the Phallic origin of which has long since been lost sight of. The value set on the results of the generative act would naturally make the arrival at the age of puberty an event of peculiar significance. Hence we find various ceremonies performed among primitive, and even among civilised peoples, at this period of life. Often when the youth arrives at manhood other rites are performed to mark the significance of the event. Marriage, too, derives an importance which it would not otherwise possess. Thus, among many peoples, it is attended with certain ceremonies denoting its object, or at least marking it as an event of peculiar significance in the life of the individual or even in the history of the tribe. The marriage ceremonial is especially fitted for the use of Phallic rites or symbolism, the former among semi-civilised peoples often being simply the act of consummation itself, which appears to be looked on as part of the ceremony. The symbolism we have ourselves retained to the present day in the wedding-ring, which had undoubtedly a Phallic origin, if, as appears probable, it originated in the Samothracian mysteries.10 Nor does the influence of the Phallic idea end with life. The veneration entertained for the father of the family, as the “generator,” led in time to peculiar care being taken of the bodies of the dead, and finally to the worship of ancestors, which, under one form or another, distinguished all the civilised nations of antiquity, as it does even now most of the peoples of the heathen world.
There is one Phallic rite which, from its wide range, is of peculiar importance. I refer to circumcision. The origin of this custom has not yet, so far as I am aware, been satisfactorily explained. The idea that, under certain climatic conditions, circumcision is necessary for cleanliness and comfort,11 does not appear to be well founded, as the custom is not universal, even within the tropics. Nor is the reason given by Captain Richard Burton, in his “Notes connected with the Dahoman,” for both circumcision and excision, perfectly satisfactory. The real origin of these customs has been forgotten by all peoples practising them, and therefore they have ceased to have their primitive significance. That circumcision at least had a superstitious origin may be inferred from the traditional history of the Jews. The old Hebrew writers, persistent in their idea that they were a peculiar people, chosen by God for a special purpose, asserted that this rite was instituted by Jehovah as a sign of the covenant between Him and Abraham. Although we cannot doubt that this rite was practised by the Egyptians and Phœnicians12 long before the birth of Abraham, yet two points connected with the Hebrew tradition are noticeable. These are, the religious significance of the act of circumcision—it is the sign of a covenant between God and man—and its performance by the head of the family. These two things are indeed intimately connected; since, in the patriarchal age, the father was always the priest of the family, the officer of the sacrifices. We have it on the authority of the Veda that this was the case also among the primitive Aryan people.13 Abraham, therefore, as the father and priest of the family, performed the religious ceremony of circumcision on the males of his household.
Circumcision, in its inception, is a purely Phallic rite,14 having for its aim the marking of that which from its associations is viewed with peculiar veneration, and it connects the two phases of this superstition, which have for their objects respectively the instrument of generation and the agent. We are thus brought back to the consideration of the simplest form of Phallic worship, that which has for its object the generative organs, viewed as the mysterious instruments in the realisation of that keen desire for children which distinguishes all primitive peoples. This feeling is so nearly universal that it is a matter of surprise to find the act by which it is expressed stigmatised as sinful. Yet such is the case, although the incidents in which the fact is embodied are so veiled in figure that their true meaning has long been forgotten. Clemens Alexandrinus tells us that “the bacchanals hold their orgies in honour of the frenzied Bacchus, celebrating their sacred frenzy by the eating of raw flesh, and go through the distribution of the parts of butchered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out the name of that Eva by whom error came into the world.” He adds that “the symbol of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent,” and that, “according to the strict interpretation of the Hebrew term, the name Hevia, aspirated, signifies a female serpent.”15 We have here a reference to the supposed fall of man from pristine “innocence,” Eve and the serpent being very significantly introduced in close conjunction, and indeed becoming in some sense identified with each other. In fact, the Arabic word for serpent, hayyat, may be said also to mean “life,” and in this sense the legendary, first human mother is called Eve or Chevvah, in Arabic hawwa. In its relations, as an asserted fact, the question of the fall has an important bearing on the subject before us. Quite irrespective of the impossibility of accepting the Mosaic Cosmogony as a divinely-inspired account of the origin of the world and man—a cosmogony which, with those of all other Semitic peoples, has a purely “Phallic” basis16—the whole transaction said to have taken place in the Garden of Eden is fraught with difficulties on the received interpretation. The very idea on which it is founded—the placing by God in the way of Eve of a temptation which he knew she could not resist—is sufficient to throw discredit on the ordinary reading of the narrative. The effect, indeed, that was to follow the eating of the forbidden fruit appears to an ordinary mind to furnish the most praiseworthy motive for not obeying the commandment to abstain. That the “eating of the forbidden fruit” was simply a figurative mode of expressing the performance of the act necessary to the perpetuation of the human race—an act which in its origin was thought to be the source of all evil—is evident from the consequences which followed and from the curse entailed.17 As to the curse inflicted on Eve, it has always been a stumbling block in the way of commentators. For what connection is there between the eating of a fruit and sorrow in bringing forth children? The meaning is evident, however, when we know that conception and child-bearing were the direct consequences of the act forbidden. How far this meaning was intended by the compiler of the Mosaic books we shall see further on.
The central feature of the Mosaic legend of the “fall” is the reference to the tree of knowledge or wisdom. It is now generally supposed that the forbidden fruit was a kind of citrus,18 but certain facts connected with aborolatry clearly show this opinion to be erroneous. Among peoples in the most opposite regions of the world various species of the fig-tree are considered sacred. In almost every part of Africa the banyan is viewed with a special veneration. Livingstone noticed this among the tribes on the Zambesi and the Shire,19 and he says that the banyan is looked upon with veneration all the way from the Barotse to Loanda, and thought to be a preservative from evil.20 Du Chaillu states that in almost every Ishogo and Ashango village he visited in Western Equatorial Africa there was a large ficus “standing about the middle of the main street, and near the mbuiti or idol-house of the village.” The tree is sacred, and if it dies the village is at once abandoned.21 Captain Tuckey found the same thing on the Congo, where he says the ficus religiosa is considered sacred.22 Again, according to Caillié, at Mouriosso, in Western Central Africa, the market was held under a tree, which, from his description, must have been the banyan, and he noticed the same thing in other towns.23 It is evident from Dr. Barth’s “Travels in Central Africa,” that superstitious regard for certain trees is found throughout the whole of the region he traversed, and among some tribes the fig-tree occupies this position. Thus, he says, “the sacred grove of the village of Isge was formed by magnificent