[ 2 o] 



Per intercessionem beati Cosmi, liberet te ab omni malo, 

 Amen. The ceremony finishes by the canons of the 

 church dividing the spoils, both money and wax, which 

 must be to a very considerable amount, as the concourse 

 at this fete is said to be prodigiously numerous." 



At the present day phallic symbolism is perpetuated 

 in our church steeples, in the crosses and circles on our 

 altars and prayer-books, in the pictures of the lamb 

 holding a cross within a circle on our church windows, 

 in the cross-buns eaten at the paschal feast, in the Easter 

 eggs, and in various other ways ; while the Pyramids of 

 Egypt and the Luxor obelisks one in London, one in 

 Paris, and one in St. Petersburg form a connecting 

 phallic link between the ancient Egyptians and our- 

 selves. The sphynx has been said by some to be a 

 phallic figure ; but I do not subscribe to this view at all, 

 holding the opinion that it is simply a union of two 

 zodiacal signs, July and August of the fixed zodiac. It 

 appears to me that at a very remote time, when the sign 

 Virgo was about to be supplanted at the vernal equinox 

 by the next sign, Leo somewhere about fifteen thou- 

 sand years ago, or rather later the priests or astrologers 

 hit upon the idea of placing the head of Virgo upon the 

 shoulders of Leo, thus manufacturing a new kind of 

 figure, which, on account of its partaking of the dual 

 nature of the then most prominent of the gods, became 

 very popular, and was depicted in various forms and in 

 many parts of the country. This may also have been 

 the modus faciendi of Capricornus and Sagittarius, if we 

 can imagine a still earlier period when the .zodiac was 

 so different from the present form as to have signs re- 

 presented by a fish, a goat, a horse, and an archer 

 respectively. 



Next to the vernal equinoxial sign the ancients held 

 the winter solstitial sign in the greatest veneration, and 

 consequently the goat was a very sacred animal and 

 occupied a prominent place in all symbolical mytho- 

 logies. It was from this point that the Egyptians calcu- 

 lated their new year, although the Persians always 

 reckoned theirs from the vernal equinox ; and it was on 

 December 2ist that the Egyptians fixed the creation of 

 the world, which gave origin to the fable of a goat 



