to be worthy of wearing the royal insignia of the Garter; while the Fleur-de-lis of France, meaning something precisely similar, has been the boast of her noblest for centuries.
Now what does that same Garter mean? Is there any one so uninformed as to imagine for a moment that it signifies the mere string worn about the leg to keep nice stockings from dragging about fair heels? If so, here let that absurd notion be rectified, for the emblem signifies no such puerile nonsense at all. The motto of the order, Princely and Imperial, is in these days written Honi soit qui mal y pense, translated to mean—to the uninitiated, outside world—"Evil to him who evil thinks," which, in a certain sense, is true and correct, for it does mean that, but not at all in the manner that people generally think it does. It has no reference to general evil whatever, but it expressly means evil of a certain and peculiar kind; for it so happens that the real first word is not Honi but Yoni, and that means nothing more nor less than the feminine organs of generation, coupled with their periodic functions.
Now, while in all ages of the world's known history, a grand majority of all mankind, including all modern Christians, worship brute force, and luxuriate in varied forms of Phallic or Priapic worship, and the Phallus is the male organ of generation and Priapus was its god; while they, I repeat, adored and adore creative energy as symbolized by the emblem alluded to, of which all steeples, towers, beacons, light-houses, monuments, cenotaphs, and May and liberty poles and flagstaffs, are but symbols; while that form of worship—of the male god—has been, and still is, almost universal, except in its coarser, grosser forms, in our days, there have not been wanting other human hosts who did, and still do, pay homage at the shrine of the Feminine Deity, whose symbol is the rose, discus, arch, oval, and dome; and in some barbaric lands the organ itself, openly, as in all lands sub rosa or secretly; but in civilized America in its most low and disgusting form, for thousands seem to adore no god but Lust, and practically worship at no other shrine. Witness the universal prevalence of concubinage and harlotry, gotten to be even a licensed thing, and everywhere a winked-at adjunct of civilization, to the debasement of man and blasphemy of God and Womanhood, as of yore
