that the feminine was to be left out of Hebrew worship. But notwithstanding all the editing, they could not entirely disentangle the double sex, which almost invariably comes into all stories of creation. The Hebrews seem to have been entirely lacking in the sentiment western nations call love. They have no story of Andromeda, of Helen of Troy, or of Cleopatra, nor of Guinevere, and as for the troubadours or the knight errants fighting to save fair maidens or jousting for the bright smile of noble ladies, their brains seem to have been atrophied to all such emotions. Hence we have none of that female symbolism which enables us in other religions to gain a clear idea of the origin and meaning of their legends. For instance, in Babylonian and Roman mythology the Queen of Heaven was also Goddess of Love, and was symbolised by a dove. Semiramis, perhaps the earliest Queen of Heaven of whom we have fables, was called D'iune "of the Dove," or Juno; and Juno's mother was Dione, and so on, generations of Dove goddesses. But in Hebrew we have only one hidden mention of Queen of Heaven in Ruach, and we have her symbol in the Ark. As the Hebrew writers who edited the Holy Writ in a purely

masculine direction and turned the great female Tiamat of Babylon into the masculine Tehom, I think that if they had known the meaning of Ark and the association of Tabernacles they would have cut them out and produced that chaos of language quite common in the Bible, where in many passages they have arrived at a stage where the lines of the myth are nearly washed out and the lacunæ filled in with theological ideas mixed with artificial family history or attempts to systematise cosmogony. But we get glimpses of the editorial obliteration of the sources of their fables, and yet trying to render the whole story more natural. I have quoted one about the gradual reduction of the ages of patriarchs. That was quite cleverly done, but the names and occupations of the patriarchs are clearly Babylonian, only their ages are immensely reduced, and instead of being of some number emblematical of some myth, as was the case with the Babylonian, the writer makes them all odd numbers with no significance, so as to look natural. Thus, to draw any deduction from the ages given is quite hopeless. Then the incident of Noah and Ham. The Jewish Haggada says that Ham emasculated Noah, but the Bible only says he

saw the nakedness of his father, as it were quite accidentally, as Noah was drunk, and as proof that it was quite innocently done he told his brothers. When Noah awoke from his wine he knew what his youngest son had done to him. Now, it does not say he had done anything, but it was something very serious, and he seems to have died very shortly afterwards.

He was 365 days in years after the flood

Noah was a sun god. the Ark, and lived 350 (surely an error for 365). Then he was the first to plant a vineyard, so he was, as Bacchus and Dionysius were, a vine god, as all sun gods are. Even Jesus, the last sun god, is the "true vine," and made wine and so on. All the sun gods when they get old in December lose their life-giving power or vitality, and this is represented as being emasculated as Adonis was by a boar, or the Phoenician Chronos emasculates Auranos, and the Persian scorpion devouring the phallus of the Bull which Mithras slays. So we have much proof that Haggada is right, yet how little of the sun god is left of Noah. No doubt it was originally a full tale like Hercules or Apollo. So we must look for other signs and symbolical proof of the female character of the ark.

CHAPTER VIII

QUEEN OF HEAVEN SYMBOLISM

The ark or Queen of Heaven is always the Habitation of God or the Tabernacle or Temple of God, and is represented by a dove, ark, ship, crescent, and a host of other hollow vessels, especially by bowls or vases with an almond-shaped opening. But this dove or almond-shaped vessel which represents the female is always accompanied by a cylindrical stone, rod, or vessel, as we see in our almondshaped monstrance with its holy phial or pyx of oil, phial and pyx being two words both meaning phallus. We have it also in the Indian dove referred to on p. 466, with its actual phallus of oil, thus making the bi-sexual combination; so the Ark was specially made to hold the Rod of Jové and the two constituted the emblem of Eternal life and were the most sacred and secret of all the paraphernalia of the Hebrew religion. When Aaron's

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rod was made to sprout it produced almonds," so again we have the combination of Rod and Almond. In Gen. 17, 15, it says Moses built an altar and called the name of it "Jehovah nissi," which, as I have explained, is Jehovah's phallus (p. 512), and that was quite in keeping with the intense masculinity of their worship. But they could not get away from a female ark if they wanted a house for their god, because the original house of all gods was the Ooma, or mother of all, and hence all churches are feminine. The Bishop weds the Church with a ring on his appointment as "Mea Sposa," my wife. The true form of the Church" Isha," Eve, woman, as in Genesis 1st, and her husband Adam, Ish," is shown in the Italian Churches, such as Pisa, Florence, or Venice, where the church has a dome or Omph or rounded belly of the fertile Uma; and her husband as a pillar or tower standing quite apart from her, often on the other side of the street-forming the twin sex emblem like the heap of stones and pillar of Jacob and Laban (Gen. xxxi., 51). The Protestants who adopted the severely masculine Hebrew cult put their towers or spires on the church to make it masculine, but their architects adopted the "Gothic" or female arch, as