Anacalypsis/Volume 1/Preliminary Observations/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
ORIGIN OF THE ADORATION OF THE BULL, AND OF THE PHALLIC AND VERNAL FESTIVALS.
1. The Rev. Mr. Maurice, in his learned work on the Antiquities of India, has shewn, in a way which it is impossible to contradict, that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain, with its garlands, &c., known to us all, are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and India, and probably of Phœnicia, when these nations, in countries very distant, and from times very remote, have all, with one consent, celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus, at the vernal equinox; but which, in consequence of the astronomical phenomenon, no longer disputed, of the precession of the equinoxes, is removed far in the year from its original situation. This festival, it appears from a letter in the Asiatic Researches,[1] from Colonel Pearce, is celebrated in India on the first of May, in honour of Bhavani (a personification of vernal nature, the Dea Syria of Chaldea, and the Venus Urania of Persia). A May-pole is erected, hung with garlands, around which the young people dance, precisely the same as in England. The object of the festival, I think with Mr. Maurice, cannot be disputed; and that its date is coeval with the time when the equinox actually took place on the first of May. To account for these facts consistently with received chronology, he says, “When the reader calls to mind what has already been observed, that owing to the precession of the equinoxes, after the rate of seventy-two years to a degree, a total alteration has taken place through all the signs of the ecliptic, insomuch that those stars which formerly were in Aries have now got into Taurus, and those of Taurus into Gemini: and when he considers also the difference before mentioned, occasioned by the reform of the calendar, he will not wonder at the disagreement that exists in respect to the exact period of the year on which the great festivals were anciently kept, and that on which, in imitation of primeval customs, they are celebrated by the moderns. Now the vernal equinox, after the rate of that precession, certainly could not have coincided with the first of May less than four thousand years before Christ, which nearly marks the æra of the creation, which, according to the best and wisest chronologers, began at the vernal equinox, when all nature was gay and smiling, and the earth arrayed in its loveliest verdure, and not, as others have imagined, at the dreary autumnal equinox, when that nature must necessarily have its beauty declining, and that earth its verdure decaying. I have little doubt, therefore, that May-day, or at least the day on which the Sun entered Taurus, has been immemorially kept as a sacred festival from the creation of the earth and man, and was originally intended as a memorial of that auspicious period and that momentous event.” He afterwards adds, “on the general devotion of the ancients to the worship of the Bull, I have had frequent occasion to remark, and more particularly in the Indian history, by their devotion to it at that period,
Taurus,
‘When the Bull with his horns opened the Vernal year.’ I observed that all nations seem anciently to have vied with each other in celebrating that blissful epoch; and that the moment the sun entered the sign Taurus, were displayed the signals of triumph and the incentives to passion: that memorials of the universal festivity indulged at that season are to be found in the records and customs of people otherwise the most opposite in manners and most remote in situation. I could not avoid considering the circumstance as a strong additional proof, that mankind originally descended from one great family, and proceeded to the several regions in which they finally settled, from one common and central spot: that the Apis, or Sacred Bull of Egypt, was only the symbol of the sun in the vigour of vernal youth; and that the Bull of Japan, breaking with his horn the mundane egg, was evidently connected with the same bovine species of superstition, founded on the mixture of astronomy and mythology.”[2]
2. Mr. Maurice in a previous part of his work had shewn that the May-day festival was established to celebrate the generative powers of nature, called by the ancient Greeks φαλλοφερος—that φαλλος, in Greek, signifies a pole, and that from this comes our May-pole.
3. After the equinox (in consequence of the revolution of the pole of the equator round the pole of the ecliptic) ceased to be in Taurus, and took place in Aries, the equinoctial festivals were changed to the first of April, and were celebrated on that day equally in England and India: in the former, every thing but the practice of making April fools has ceased; but in the latter, the festival is observed as well as the custom of making April fools; that is, the custom of sending persons upon ridiculous and false errands to create sport and merriment, is one part of the rites of the festival. In India this is called the Naurutz and the Huli[3] festival. This vernal festival was celebrated on the day the ancient Persian year began, which was on the day the sun entered into the sign of Aries; and Mr. Maurice says, “The ancient Persian coins, stamped with the head of a ram, which, according to D’Ancarville, were offered to Gemshid, the founder of Persepolis, and first reformer of the solar year amongst the Persians, are an additional demonstration of the high antiquity of this festival.” When Sir Thomas Roe was ambassador at Delhi, this festival was celebrated by the Mogul with astonishing magnificence and splendour: it has the name of Naurutz both in India and Persia, and was celebrated in both alike.[4] And in the ambassador’s travels the writer acquaints us, “That some of their body being deputed to congratulate the Schah on the first day of the year, they found him at the palace of Ispahan, sitting at a banquet, and having near him the Minatzim, or astrologer, who rose up ever and anon, and taking his astrolobe went to observe the sun; and at the very moment of the sun’s reaching the equator, he published aloud the new year, the commencement of which was celebrated by the firing of great guns both from the castle and the city walls, and by the sound of all kinds of instruments.”
4. It is not only in Persia and India that this worship of the Bull is to be found; there is no part of the old world, from the extremest East to the West, where the remains of it are not to be found.[5]
5. The reader will observe in the whole of the above quotations from Mr. Maurice the style of the Christian apologist, who is endeavouring to account for a disagreeable circumstance which he cannot deny, and to shew that it is not inconsistent with his religious system. He will see that it is the evidence of an unwilling witness, and on this account evidence of the greatest importance. The learning and talent of Mr. Maurice are unquestionable, and it cannot for a moment be doubted, that he would have denied the fact if he could have done it honestly. But in the teeth of the most clear evidence of its existence that was absolutely impossible. I do not, however, mean to insinuate that he was dishonest enough to have attempted it if he could have done so with a chance of success, for I believe no book was ever more honestly written. The reality, close connexion, and object, of the Tauric and Phallic worship, have been so clearly and fully proved by D’Ancarville, Payne Knight, Maurice, Parkhurst in his Hebrew Lexicon, Bryant, Faber, Dupuis, Drummond, and many others, that there is no room left for a moment’s doubt. It would therefore only be an idle waste of time to attempt to prove it. I could only repeat an immense mass of facts, now well known, from these authors, without adding any thing new. I have therefore determined not to attempt it, but to trust that any reader who may not have studied this subject, will depend upon the irreproachable testimony of Mr. Maurice. If he be not satisfied, he may consult the works above-named, where he will find much instruction, if not amusement. For these reasons I hope I shall be excused going into the proof of the antiquity of the Phallic and Tauric festivals, although their ancient existence is of the very first importance to my system.—My system, in fact, is founded upon them, and upon them I rest my foot as upon a foundation from which I am convinced nothing can remove me. The fact that the May-day festivals of India and Britain are admitted to have been instituted to celebrate the entrance of the sun into the sign Taurus at the vernal equinox, overthrows all our learned men’s systems of chronology, root and branch; it leaves scarcely a wreck behind, and will enable me nearly to explain the origin and meaning of all the Mythoses of antiquity, and, indeed, of almost all those of modern times also.