"Here is the Rose, Wherein the Word Divine was made incarnate."
In Plate xviii., the Virgin goddess is seated with the God-child in a bower, exactly the shape of the Assyrian, composed of fruits highly significant of sex, as has already been explained. In some Hindoo pictures, the child is naked, having the member erect, and also making the phallic hand, with the right forefinger erected. (Plate xiv., Fig. 14.)
In other conventional forms we have male symbols only within the female O. This is a very numerous class. In the Fig. 3, Plate xvii., we see the fir-tree or pine take the place of the palm-tree, and in Fig. 6, Plate xvii., the cone. On this remarkable medal of Cyprus is a representation of the temple of Venus at Paphos, famous even in the days of Homer. (Odyss. viii. 862.) The worship of that divinity is said to have been imported into Cyprus from the East. The goddess united both sexes in her own person, and was served by castrated priests. We see here, within the innermost sanctum of the temple, a cone as emblem of the male; and the meaning is further pointed by the sun-emblem above, inserted within the crescent moon.
Let us next examine how the cone came to be used as a masculine emblem. If we turn to Figs. 174 and 175, it will be seen that the "glans" was particularly honoured as the head of the phallus; it was also the part dedicated to God by effusion of blood in the rite of circumcision. This "acorn" is conical or dome-shaped, and thus--a part being taken for the whole--the cone or pyramid was used as a conventional symbol of the male creator. Placed on a stem it is frequently represented as worshipped on Assyrian bas reliefs. See Fig. 177. It was also a symbol of fire, the sun, and life; as such it formed a fitting monument for the Egyptian kings. Our word pyramid is from the Greek puramis, itself derived from pur, Jire, and puros, wheat, because pyramid-shaped cakes of wheat and honey were used in the Bacchic Fig. 177. rites. It played an important part in sun-worship. The emperor Heliogabalus (who, as his name implies, had been a priest of Baal, the sun-god, in Syria,) established the Syrian worship at Rome. He himself drove the golden chariot of the sun, drawn by six white horses, through the streets of Rome to a splendid new temple on the Palatine mount, the god being represented by a conical black stone, said to have fallen from heaven; and which the emperor removed from a temple of the sun, at Emesa, in Syria. At a subsequent period, an image of the moon-goddess, or Astarte, was brought by his orders from a celebrated fane at Carthage to Rome, and there solemnly married with licentious rites to the sun-god, amidst general rejoicing.