in Central America.

These tablets lead us to a comprehension in an important degree, quite satisfactory, of the Palenque Cross; and that in related connection with the old Mexican hieroglyphical manuscript cross of the M. de Ferjèrvàry manuscript at Budapesth Hunga. ry, pictured in volume 22 of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. In this last the tree of life rises out of the yoni; under another meaning of the same symbolism life rising out of death; and this is part of the significance of the Palenque Cross. Having obtained a clear idea to some extent, of the symbolic interpretation of these, we become reassured as to a like significance attaching to the yoni and lingham symbols of the Hindus and especially to the asheras or groves, as depicted by Dr. Inman in his Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names." Indeed the phallic creative or generative symbol seems radical as to all systems of religion, ancient and modern, Pagan and Hebrew and Christian. So far from being hurtful to a rational or philosophical view of the latter, this helps to even a more acceptable comprehension thereof. For, in place of looking upon the Hebrew system as springing abruptly out from the world of thought and the nations, as the first true revelation of a personal God to man, we become informed that this Hebrew system was a legitimate development of a world effort at formulating a mode of religious philosophy out of material long before accumulated by the pre-semite Old Babylonians and Egyptians, who can be traced for their origin in Asia to the head of the Persian Gulf and the mouth of the Nile, where the trace is lost, unless it be recovered in Central America, and thence from the Mound Builders. The old and pure ideas conveyed under symbols, became lost, and acceptance of these symbols was made merely for what the eye saw; consequently a degradation to the sensuous, and that inexpressible offensiveness to modern ideas, which so loath any possible connection or relation of such symbols with the high ideals of the teachings of the Hebrew and Christian sacred books. the Hebrew religion as contained in the Sacred Text, as to some extent recognizing this ancient symbolic origin as the source out of which it sprung. But in doing this it reformed the abuse of gross interpretation and reverted to the true and ancient use of the phallic or nature symbols, as setting forth a mode of exact science, which should lay at the base of religious worship. Out of the natural science or knowledge the development of the true and pure went

We may look upon

on evolving out of the ages, culminating in the Christian Dispensation, which to-day actuates the world.

The writer would refer to the very sensible, temperate and judicious remarks on the phallic pictures made by Mr. Charles Rau in Chap. iv (The Group of the Cross") of his article on the Palenque Tablet, published in volume 22 of the Smithsonian Contributions spoken of, two of which it seems well to quote:

(a) "However, it will be evident to every one who has the facul ty of divesting himself for a time from now prevailing ideas that the mysteries of generation must have powerfully acted upon the imagination of men in earlier ages, and must have led, in consequence of a tendency characteristic of a certain stage in human development, to the symbolization of that life-giving and life continuing agency. In the course of time the meaning of the emblem became modified, though it always appears to relate in some sense to the creative energy of nature."

That which proves Mr. Rau to be right is the fact that, among other things, the technical terms for these real images with the Hebrews, became in after times, and are to day, made use of in modern languages, to convey a modified and spiritual, in place of a real, significance.* Again:

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(b) The pudency of Christian nations of our times is by no means an innate quality, but simply the result of long continued training."

*NOTE.-For an illustrative instance: The Hebrew Jehovah, in the most solemn passage of Exodus, gives his name as SaCR. which word means, in its first and essential signification, membrum virile. From the signification the word, passing over to the secondary meaning of male-victim, through the offering of which the Deity was memorialized, hence took the derived signifi. cation of "memorial." "The making of, or placing the SaCR, or memorial, before the Lord," was handed down, idem sonans, among the nations, and with the Roman priests became "SaCR-facere," or afterwards, with the Eng. lish-speaking race, SaCR-fice; thus showing that the latest modern usage points back to the ancient phallic usage as its essential element. To this can be added: The word cherub is, in Hebrew, a participle from the word CRB, the participle being CRUB (cherub). For the initial C use its kindred form SC, and we have SCRB, which, with the proper voweling and the Greek termination, gives us SCaRaB--eus, the scarabeus, or Egyptian beetle, emblem of divinity. The Egyptian hieroglyphical meaning of the winged beetle was, especially, the flight of lunar time; being sacred to the moon (Seyffarth); because of the moon's supposed generative influence.

This remark also is true. No one can carefully study the reach of phallic symbolism without, somewhat to his amazement, finding that one of the chief places for discovering multitudes of representations derived directly from it is in church ornamentation and dress. It seems the place especially devoted to this mode, slightly, and only slightly, obscured. The writer is led to make this comment from the idea that, though the remark of Mr. Rau is true in itself, Mr. Rau seems to have labored under a common misappresion in making it, viz., that of attributing to the origin of the symbol, and its use, a gross, sensual, and truly degrading, because merely animal and sexual, conception. The writer considers that the use of the symbol was conceived of in the utmost purity of thought, as the very basis and radix of all the religious systems of worship, and of all theosophic philosophy, which the better world has ever possessed.

He would also call attention to a remarkable fact connected with the phallic literature. While the cross-bones and skull have ever been taken as emblems of mortality, the grave and decay, they have also been taken as the emblems of femininity and its generative functions. In Hindoo representations, the skull and crossbones are placed over the pudendum, or door of life. The mountain top, gilded with light, presents the same type when contrasted with glooms of deep recesses or valleys. While the phallus represented life giving or bearing energy, and the yoni passive receptivity, the contrasting ideas were parallel with those of life and death. The woman represented the door of darkness or evening, into which the sun descended as into its grave, but out of which the new-born sun arose, or Horus was born of Osiris and Isis. With all her qualities of loveliness, fascination, and attraction, she was, by force of certain similes, represented as the insatiable monster, craving for and swallowing up all life, and hence her extreme emblem, Death, or the Dragon, or most horrid monster of destruction. To quote the language of the Early Fathers of the Church, she was-" Arma diaboli, via iniquitatis, scorpionis percussio, nocivum genus, sepulchri titulus." In this phase she was the type of death and destruction, hateful and devouring. In the Palenque Tablet and the Ferjérváry picture the phallus rises out of the yoni, which, in turn, rests upon a devouring monster, or of a skull; either of which answers for the appropriate symbol thus intended.