persisted to this day. The customs remain the same, the meanings
have become lost in the blind adherence to custom. It is known that the
old Jewish mourning customs originated with the desire for protection
from the liberated spirit of the deceased. The loud cries uttered by the
mourners were thought to frighten away the spirits. The change of dress,
the covering of the head with ashes, and the shaving of the hair of the
mourners were done with the purpose of making themselves unrecognizable
to the spirits. Hence, the custom still prevails of wearing the mourning
veil. The covering of mirrors when death occurs in the household may
well be an attempt to prevent the spirit from lingering in the vicinity.
Similarly, even today, the orthodox Jew, in case of grave illness in his
family, changes the given name of the sufferer. To confuse the evil
spirit causing the disease?

Further survivals of totemism as found in the Old Testament are
illustrated by the worship of the bull and the serpent. Portable gilded
images of bulls were consecrated and Hosea protested against the worship
of the bull in the kingdom of Israel (Hos. VIII, 5; X, 5). The famous
golden calf of the Israelites, which was the object of Moses' anger, was
a totemic idol. The worship of the serpent was practiced by Moses
himself (Num. XXI, 9). A brazen serpent was worshiped in the temple of
Jerusalem, and was only destroyed by Hezekiah about 700 B.C. (2 Kings
XVIII, 4).

The ancient Hebrews, as well as their neighbors, were phallic
worshipers. To primitive people it is but a natural phase to have the
phallus become the exponent of creative power, and as such to be
worshiped. To these primitive minds there was nothing immoral in genuine
phallic worship. Signs of phallicism among the ancient Hebrews can be
clearly pointed out; the serpent was a phallic symbol. "That the serpent
was the phallus is proved by the Bible itself. The Hebrew word used for
serpent is 'Nachash,' which is everywhere else translated in the Bible
in a phallic sense, as in Ezekiel XVI, 36, where it is rendered
'filthiness' in the sense of exposure, like the 'having thy Boseth
naked' of Micah." (_J. B. Hannay, "Christianity, the Sources of its
Teaching and Symbolism."_) The ark itself was a feminine symbol, and
phallicism would explain why Moses made an ark and put in it a rod and
two stones. "The Eduth, the Shechina, the Tsur, and the Yahveh were
identical; simply different names for the sam