male principle in an active state. The creature had a very strong symbolic connection with the worship of Aphrodite, and the Romanists still eat it on that day of the week called Dies Veneris, Venus’ Day.”

“At the present time there are certain fish which are supposed to give greatly increased virile power to those who eat them. I have (proceeds Inman) indistinct recollection of a similar fact having been recorded in Athenæus, who quotes Theophrastus as his authority. The passage is to the effect, that a diet on a certain fish enabled an Indian prince to show one hundred proofs of his manhood in a single day. The same writer mentions goat’s flesh as having something of the same effect. The Assyrian Oannes was represented as a man-fish, and the Capricorn or goat with fish tail, in the Zodiac, is said to have been an emblem of him.

“The fish was also associated with Isis, who, like Venus, represented the female element in creation. It was likewise a sacred emblem amongst the Buddhists.

“Since writing the above, I have ascertained that eating fish for supper, on Friday night, is a Jewish custom or institution. As amongst that nation fecundity is a blessing specially promised by the Omnipotent, so it is thought proper to use human means for ensuring the blessing on the day set apart by the Almighty. The Jewish Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday, and three meals are to be taken during the day, which are supposed to have a powerful aphrodisiac operation. The ingredients are meat and fish, garlic and pepper; and the particular fish selected, so far as I can learn, is the skate—that which in the Isle of Man is still supposed to be a powerful satyrion. The meal is repeated twice on a Saturday. Mons. Lajard bears testimony to the extent of this custom in the following passage, though he does not directly associate it with the fish, except that the latter are often seen on coins, with the other attributes of Venus. After speaking of the probable origin of the cult, he says—‘In our days, indeed, the Druses of Lebanon, in their secret vespers, offer a true worship to the sexual parts of the female, and pay their devotions every Friday night—that is to say, the day which is consecrated to Venus; the day in which, on his side, the Mussulman finds in the code of Mahomet, the double obligation to go to the mosque and to perform the conjugal duty.’”[8]

“In 1492, Bede mentions that ‘a God Krodo is worshipped in the Hartz, having his feet on a fish, a wheel in one hand and a pail of water in the other—clearly a Vishnoo or Fishnoo solar deity carrying the solar or lunar disk, and the ark or womb of fertility. These fish-gods, as Mr. Baring Gould states in the case of the American Kox-Kox or Teokipaktli, i.e., fish-god, much resemble the Old Testament Noah, for Kox, encountered a flood and rescued himself in a cypress trunk (a true phallic symbol), and peopled the world with wise and intelligent beings.’ His full title mixes him up with the ‘flesh-god’ idea of Hebrews and others. North American Indians relate that they too followed a fish-man or demi-god from Asia; he was only a man from the breasts upward, below he was a fish, or, indeed, two fish, for each leg was a separate fish.”[9]

“It is said Oanes was a man-headed fish, and the earliest Hermes or Messenger of God to Kaldia. Berosus says he ate not, yet taught all the arts of geometry, and the harvesting and storing of fruits and seeds. Every night he retired to the sea (the Female and Holy Spirit), and after him came Messiahs. Helladius called him Oes, but says he had the feet of a man, and sprang from a mundane egg. He had a fish’s skin, and Higgins says he first taught astrology in Kaldia. The mother of Oanes was worshipped as Venus Atergates, ‘the good spirit,’ and Oanes himself possibly signifies the ‘first-born of the Yoni,’ the Protogonos of Sankuniathon. The Japanese represent their Messiah emerging like Vishnoo from a fish, and as such call him Kan-On or Can-on, and his temple, Onius, and make his spirit repose on twelve cushions, just as they do in the case of Fo or Boodha, showing clearly the solar significance of the whole. So we see a close connection between the Kaldian O-AN or Oanes the Hebrew AON, which in Koptic is the ‘Enlightener,’ and the Egyptian ON. In Armorik, Oan and Oanic, and in Irish, UAN is a lamb, and in Hebrew Jonas signifies the gentle one, a ‘Revealer’ or word from God, and a dove, so that the sum of the whole points to the Sanscrit Yoni.

“Pan, Jove’s senior brother, used to be called ‘a whale-like fish,’ and he entangled Typhon in his nets and caught him, and yet who so unlike a fish in character as the goat-footed god.

“So Boodha is called Day-Po or Fishpo; Vishnoo appears in the first Avatar as a fish, for he is Viçoo, Fiçoo or Fish-oo, as Christ is Ischa in Ireland, which is the Welsh Fischa. In all lands, fish have proved the saviours of many men, and among the fish, the dolphin, as the delphus or womb. She who has dedicated her life to her God we call a nun, and this with Hebrews is a fish, and the Yoni. Fish and birds were called in Asyrian Nanu-Itsurn, yet a fish spoken of in opposition to a bird was Kha and a bird Khu. Isis was a brooding bird, yet is generally seen with a fish on her head. The fish was the first to swallow up the genitals of Osiris, when Typhon caused him to be cut up into pieces and thrown away.

“Eating fish was considered to induce venery even more than beef or garlic, and Shemitic races recommended or ordered such repasts on Frig’s Day, or night—their Sabbath or Sabbath Eve. Among the Druses of Syria, Layard assures us such matters are still carefully attended to on Venus’ or Frig’s Eve, adding that ‘in secret vespers’ these pious persons ‘offer a true worship to the sexual parts of the female.’”[10]

“Oannes and Dag-on (the fish On) are identical. According to an ancient fable preserved by Berosus, a creature half man and half fish came out of that part of the Erythræan Sea, which borders upon Babylonia, where he taught men the arts of life, to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and, in short, instructed them in all things that tend to soften manners and humanize their lives; and, he adds, that a representative of this animal Oannes was preserved in his day. A figure of him sporting in the waves, and apparently blessing a fleet of vessels, was discovered in a marine piece of sculpture by M. Botta, in the excavations of Khorsabad.

“At Nimroud, a gigantic image was found by Mr. Layard, representing him with the fish’s head as a cap and the body of the fish depending over his shoulders, his legs those of a man, his left hand holding a richly decorated bag, and his right hand upraised as if in the act of presenting the mystic Assyrian fir-cone.” (Baring Gould’s Myths of the Middle Ages.)

Mr. Layard, in his interesting work “Nineveh and its Remains,” thus alludes to this—“I must not omit to allude to the tradition preserved by Berosus, which appears to attribute to a foreign nation, arriving by sea, the introduction at some remote period of civilization and certain arts into Babylonia. According to the historian, there appeared out of the Erythræan or Persian Gulf, an animal endowed with reason, called Oannes. Its body