Produced by Charles Keller

THE GOD-IDEA OF THE ANCIENTS

OR SEX IN RELIGION

By Eliza Burt Gamble

Author of "The Evolution of Woman"

PREFACE.

Much of the material for this volume was collected during the time that
I was preparing for the press the Evolution of Woman, or while searching
for data bearing on the subject of sex-specialization. While preparing
that book for publication, it was my intention to include within it this
branch of my investigation, but wishing to obtain certain facts relative
to the foundations of religious belief and worship which were not
accessible at that time, and knowing that considerable labor and
patience would be required in securing these facts, I decided to publish
the first part of the work, withholding for the time being that portion
of it pertaining especially to the development of the God-idea.

As mankind construct their own gods, or as the prevailing ideas of
the unknowable reflect the inner consciousness of human beings, a
trustworthy history of the growth of religions must correspond to the
processes involved in the mental, moral, and social development of the
individual and the nation.

By means of data brought forward in these later times relative to the
growth of the God-idea, it is observed that an independent chain of
evidence has been produced in support of the facts recently set forth
bearing upon the development of the two diverging lines of sexual
demarcation. In other words, it has been found that sex is the
fundamental fact not only in the operations of Nature but in the
construction of a god.

In the Evolution of Woman it has been shown that the peculiar
inheritance of the two sexes, female and male, is the result of the bias
given to these separate lines of development during the earliest periods
of sex-differentiation; and, as this division of labor was a necessary
step in the evolutionary processes, the rate of progress depended
largely on the subsequent adjustment of these two primary elements or
forces. A comprehensive study of prehistoric records shows that in
an earlier age of existence upon the earth, at a time when woman's
influence was in the ascendancy over that of man, human energy was
directed by the altruistic characters which originated in and have been
transmitted through the female; but after the decline of woman's power,
all human institutions, customs, forms, and habits of thought are seen
to reflect the egoistic qualities acquired by the male.

Nowhere is the influence of sex more plainly manifested than in the
formulation of religious conceptions and creeds. With the rise of male
power and dominion, and the corresponding repression of the natural
female instincts, the principles which originally constituted the
God-idea gradually gave place to a Deity better suited to the peculiar
bias which had been given to the male organism. An anthropomorphic god
like that of the Jews--a god whose chief attributes are power and virile
might--could have had its origin only under a system of masculine rule.

Religion is especially liable to reflect the vagaries and weaknesses
of human nature; and, as the forms and habits of thought connected with
worship take a firmer hold on the mental constitution than do those
belonging to any other department of human experience, religious
conceptions should be subjected to frequent and careful examination in
order to perceive, if possible, the extent to which we are holding on to
ideas which are unsuited to existing conditions.

In an age when every branch of inquiry is being subjected to reasonable
criticism, it would seem that the origin and growth of religion should
be investigated from beneath the surface, and that all the facts bearing
upon it should be brought forward as a contribution to our fund of
general information. As well might we hope to gain a complete knowledge
of human history by studying only the present aspect of society, as
to expect to reach reasonable conclusions respecting the prevailing
God-idea by investigating the various creeds and dogmas of existing
faiths.

The object of this volume is not only to furnish a brief outline of
religious growth, but to show the effect which each of the two forces,
female and male, has had on the development of our present God-idea,
which investigation serves to accentuate the conclusions arrived at in
the Evolution of Woman relative to the inheritance of each of the two
lines of sexual demarcation.

                                  E.B.G.

CONTENTS.

       INTRODUCTION

   I.--SEX THE FOUNDATION OF THE GOD-IDEA
   II.--TREE, PLANT, AND FRUIT WORSHIP
   III.--SUN WORSHIP--FEMALE AND MALE ENERGIES IN THE SUN
   IV.--THE DUAL GOD OF THE ANCIENTS A TRINITY ALSO
   V.--SEPARATION OF THE FEMALE AND MAKE ELEMENTS IN THE DEITY
   VI.--CIVILIZATION OF AN ANCIENT RACE
   VII.--CONCEALMENT OF THE EARLY DOCTRINES
   VIII.--THE ORIGINAL GOD-IDEA OF THE ISRAELITES
   IX.--THE PHOENICIAN AND HEBREW GOD SET OR SETH
   X.--ANCIENT SPECULATIONS CONCERNING CREATION
   XI.--FIRE AND PHALLIC WORSHIP
   XII.--AN ATTEMPT TO PURIFY THE SENSUALIZED FAITHS
   XIII.--CHRISTIANITY A CONTINUATION OF PAGANISM
   XIV.--CHRISTIANITY A CONTINUATION OF PAGANISM--(Continued)
   XV.--CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND
   XVI.--STONES OR COLUMNS AS THE DEITY
   XVII.--SACRIFICES
   XVIII.--THE CROSS AND A DYING SAVIOR

THE GOD-IDEA OF THE ANCIENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

Through a study of the primitive god-idea as manifested in monumental
records in various parts of the world; through scientific investigation
into the early religious conceptions of mankind as expressed by symbols
which appear in the architecture and decorations of sacred edifices and
shrines; by means of a careful examination of ancient holy objects and
places still extant in every quarter of the globe, and through the study
of antique art, it is not unlikely that a line of investigation has
been marked out whereby a tolerably correct knowledge of the processes
involved in our present religious systems may be obtained. The
numberless figures and sacred emblems which appear carved in
imperishable stone in the earliest cave temples; the huge towers,
monoliths, and rocking stones found in nearly every country of the
globe, and which are known to be closely connected with primitive belief
and worship, and the records found on tablets which are being unearthed
in various parts of the world, are, with the unravelling of extinct
tongues, proving an almost inexhaustible source for obtaining
information bearing upon the early history of the human race, and,
together, furnish indisputable evidence of the origin, development, and
unity of religious faiths.

By comparing the languages used by the earlier races to express their
religious conceptions; by observing the similarity in the mythoses
and sacred appellations among all tribes and nations, and through the
discovery of the fact that the legends extant in the various countries
of the globe are identical, or have the same foundation, it is probable
that a clue has already been obtained whereby an outline of the
religious history of the human family from a period even as remote as
the "first dispersion," or from a time when one race comprehended the
entire population of the globe, maybe traced. Humboldt in his Researches
observes: "In every part of the globe, on the ridge of the Cordilleras
as well as in the Isle of Samothrace, in the Aegean Sea, fragments of
primitive languages are preserved in religious rites."

Regarding the identity of the fundamental ideas contained in the various
systems of religion, both past and present, Hargrave Jennings, in
referring to a parallel drawn by Sir William Jones, between the deities
of Meru and Olympus, observes:

"All our speculations tend to the same conclusions. One day it is a
discovery of cinerary vases, the next, it is etymological research; yet
again it is ethnological investigation, and the day after, it is the
publication of unsuspected tales from the Norse; but all go to heap
up proof of our consanguinity with the peoples of history--and of an
original general belief, we might add."

That the religious systems of India and Egypt were originally the same,
there can be at the present time no reasonable doubt. The fact noted
by various writers, of the British Sepoys, who, on their overland route
from India, upon beholding the ruins of Dendera, prostrated themselves
before the remains of the ancient temples and offered adoration to
them, proves the identity of Indian and Egyptian deities. These foreign
devotees, being asked to explain the reason of their strange conduct
declared that they "saw sculptured before them the gods of their
country."

Upon the subject of the identity of Eastern religions, Wilford remarks
that one and the same code both of theology and of fabulous history, has
been received through a range or belt about forty degrees broad across
the old continent, in a southeast and northwest direction from the
eastern shores of the Malaga peninsula to the western extremity of
the British Isles, that, through this immense range the same religious
notions reappear in various places under various modifications, as might
be expected; and that there is not a greater difference between the
tenets and worship of the Hindoos and the Greeks than exists between the
churches of Home and Geneva.

Concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and opinions,
Faber, commenting upon the above statement of Wilford, observes that,
immense as is this territorial range, it is by far too limited to
include the entire phenomenon, that the observation

"applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable globe; for the
arbitrary rites and opinions of every pagan nation bear so close a
resemblance to each other, that such a coincidence can only have been
produced by their having had a common origin. Barbarism itself has not
been able to efface the strong primeval impression. Vestiges of the
ancient general system may be traced in the recently discovered islands
in the Pacific Ocean; and, when the American world was first opened to
the hardy adventurers of Europe, its inhabitants from north to south
venerated, with kindred ceremonies and kindred notions, the gods of
Egypt and Hindostan, of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia and Britain."(1)

     1) Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. i.

"Though each religion has its own peculiar growth, the seed from which
they spring is everywhere the same."(2)

     2) Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 48.

The question as to whether the identity of conception and the similarity
in detail observed in religious rites, ceremonies, and symbols in the
various countries of the globe are due to the universal law of unity
which governs human development, or whether, through the dispersion
of one original people, the early conceptions of a Deity were spread
broadcast over the entire earth, is perhaps not settled; yet, from
the facts which have been brought forward during the last century, the
latter theory seems altogether probable, such divergence in religious
ideas as is observed among the various peoples of the earth being
attributable to variations in temperament caused by changed conditions
of life. In other words, the divergence in the course of religious
development has doubtless been due to environment.

In an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the god-idea,
the fact should be borne in mind that, from the earliest conception of
a creative force in the animal and vegetable world to the latest
development in theological speculation, there has never been what might
consistently be termed a new religion. On the contrary, religion like
everything else is subject to the law of growth; therefore the faiths of
to-day are the legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea of
a Deity developed in accordance with the laws governing the peculiar
instincts which have been in the ascendancy during the life of mankind
on the earth.

The erroneous impression which under a belief in the unknown has come
to prevail, namely, that the moral law is the result of religion; or,
in other words, that the human conscience is in some manner dependent
on supernaturalism for its origin and maintenance, is, with a better
and clearer understanding of the past history of the development of the
human race, being gradually dispelled. On one point we may reasonably
rest assured that the knowledge of right and wrong and our sense of
justice and right-living have been developed quite independently of all
religious beliefs. The moral law embodied in the golden rule is not an
outgrowth of mysticism, or of man's notions of the unknowable; but,
on the contrary, is the result of experience, and was formulated in
response to a recognized law of human necessity,--a law which involves
the fundamental principle of progress. The history of human development
shows conclusively that mankind GREW into the recognition of the moral
law, that through sympathy, or a desire for the welfare of others,--a
character which had its root in maternal affection,--conscience and the
moral sense were evolved.

While the moral law and the conscience may not be accounted as in any
sense the result of man's ideas concerning the unknowable, neither can
the errors and weaknesses developed in human nature be regarded as the
result of religion. Although the sexual excesses which during three or
four thousand years were practiced as sacred rites, and treated as
part and parcel of religion in various parts of the world, have had the
effect to stimulate and strengthen the animal nature in man, yet these
rites may not be accounted as the primary cause of the supremacy of the
lower nature over the higher faculties. On the contrary, the impulse
which has been termed religion, with all the vagaries which its history
presents, is to be regarded more as an effect than as a cause. The stage
of a nation's development regulates its religion. Man creates his own
gods; they are powerless to change him.

As written history records only those events in human experience which
belong to a comparatively recent period of man's existence, and as the
primitive conceptions of a Deity lie buried beneath ages of corruption,
glimpses of the earlier faiths of mankind, as has already been stated,
must be looked for in the traditions, monuments, and languages of
extinct races.

In reviewing this matter we shall doubtless observe the fact that if the
stage of a nation's growth is indicated by its religious conceptions,
and if remnants of religious beliefs are everywhere present in the
languages, traditions, and monuments of the past through a careful
study of these subjects we may expect to gain a tolerably correct
understanding not alone of the growth of the god-idea but of the
stage of development reached by the nations which existed prior to the
beginning of the historic age. We shall be enabled also to perceive
whether or not the course of human development during the intervening
ages has been continuous, or whether, for some cause hitherto
unexplained, true progress throughout a portion of this time has been
arrested, thus producing a backward movement, or degeneracy.

If we would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths,
we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing
system or systems of belief and worship. Such a course is likely to end
not only in confusion and in a subsequent denial of the existence of the
religious nature in mankind, but is liable, also, to create an aversion
for and a distrust of the entire subject of religious experience. In
view of this fact it would appear to be not only useless but exceedingly
unwise to spend one's time in attempting to gain a knowledge of this
subject simply by studying the later developments in its history.

If we are really desirous of obtaining information regarding present
religious phenomena, it is plain that we should adopt the scientific
method and turn our attention to the remote past, where, by careful
and systematic investigation, we are enabled to perceive the earliest
conception of a creative force and the fundamental basis of all
religious systems, from which may be traced the gradual development of
the god-idea.

CHAPTER I. SEX THE FOUNDATION OF THE GOD-IDEA.

In the study of primitive religion, the analogy existing between the
growth of the god-idea and the development of the human race, and
especially of the two sex-principles, is everywhere clearly apparent.

"Religion is to be found alone with its justification and explanation in
the relations of the sexes. There and therein only."(3)

     3) Hargrave Jennings, Phallicism.

As the conception of a deity originated in sex, or in the creative
agencies female and male which animate Nature, we may reasonably expect
to find, in the history of the development of the two sex-principles
and in the notions entertained concerning them throughout past ages,
a tolerably correct account of the growth of the god-idea. We shall
perceive that during an earlier age of human existence, not only were
the reproductive powers throughout Nature, and especially in human
beings and in animals, venerated as the Creator, but we shall find also
that the prevailing ideas relative to the importance of either sex in
the office of reproduction decided the sex of this universal creative
force. We shall observe also that the ideas of a god have always
corresponded with the current opinions regarding the importance of
either sex in human society. In other words, so long as female power
and influence were in the ascendency, the creative force was regarded
as embodying the principles of the female nature; later, however, when
woman's power waned, and the supremacy of man was gained, the god-idea
began gradually to assume the male characters and attributes.

Through scientific research the fact has been observed that, for ages
after life appeared on the earth, the male had no separate existence;
that the two sex-principles, the sperm and the germ, were contained
within one and the same individual. Through the processes of
differentiation, however, these elements became detached, and with the
separation of the male from the female, the reproductive functions were
henceforth confided to two separate individuals.

As originally, throughout Nature, the female was the visible organic
unit within whom was contained the exclusive creative power, and as
throughout the earlier ages of life on the earth she comprehended the
male, it is not perhaps singular that, even after the appearance of
mankind on the earth, the greater importance of the mother element in
human society should have been recognized; nor, as the power to bring
forth coupled with perceptive wisdom originally constituted the Creator,
that the god-idea should have been female instead of male.

From the facts to be observed in relation to this subject, it is
altogether probable that for ages the generating principle throughout
Nature was venerated as female; but with that increase of knowledge
which was the result of observation and experience, juster or more
correct ideas came to prevail, and subsequently the great fructifying
energy throughout the universe came to be regarded as a dual indivisible
force--female and male. This force, or agency, constituted one God,
which, as woman's functions in those ages were accounted of more
importance than those of man, was oftener worshipped under the form of a
female figure.

Neith, Minerva, Athene, and Cybele, the most important deities of their
respective countries, were adored as Perceptive Wisdom, or Light,
while Ceres and others represented Fertility. With the incoming of male
dominion and supremacy, however, we observe the desire to annul the
importance of the female and to enthrone one all-powerful male god whose
chief attributes were power and might.

Notwithstanding the efforts which during the historic period have been
put forward to magnify the importance of the male both in human affairs
and in the god-idea, still, no one, I think, can study the mythologies
and traditions of the nations of antiquity without being impressed with
the prominence given to the female element, and the deeper the study the
stronger will this impression grow.

During a certain stage of human development, religion was but a
recognition of and a reliance upon the vivifying or fructifying forces
throughout Nature, and in the earlier ages of man's career, worship
consisted for the most part in the celebration of festivals at
stated seasons of the year, notably during seed-time and harvest, to
commemorate the benefits derived from the grain field and vineyard.

Doubtless the first deified object was Gaia, the Earth. As within the
bosom of the earth was supposed to reside the fructifying, life-giving
power, and as from it were received all the bounties of life, it was
female. It was the Universal Mother, and to her as to no other divinity
worshipped by mankind, was offered a spontaneity of devotion and a
willing acknowledgment of dependence. Thus far in the history of mankind
no temples dedicated to an undefined and undefinable God had been
raised. The children of Mother Earth met in the open air, without the
precincts of any man-made shrine, and under the aerial canopy of heaven,
acknowledged the bounties of the great Deity and their dependence upon
her gifts. She was a beneficent and all-wise God, a tender and loving
parent--a mother, who demanded no bleeding sacrifice to reconcile her to
her children. The ceremonies observed at these festive seasons consisted
for the most part in merry-making and in general thanksgiving, in which
the gratitude of the worshippers found expression in song and dance, and
in invocations to their Deity for a return or continuance of her gifts.

Subsequently, through the awe and reverence inspired by the mysteries
involved in birth and life, the adoration of the creative principles in
vegetable existence became supplemented by the worship of the creative
functions in human beings and in animals. The earth, including the power
inherent in it by which the continuity of existence is maintained, and
by which new forms are continuously called into life, embodied the idea
of God; and, as this inner force was regarded as inherent in matter, or
as a manifestation of it, in process of time earth and the heavens, body
and spirit, came to be worshipped under the form of a mother and her
child, this figure being the highest expression of a Creator which the
human mind was able to conceive. Not only did this emblem represent
fertility, or the fecundating energies of Nature, but with the power
to create were combined or correlated all the mental qualities and
attributes of the two sexes. In fact the whole universe was contained in
the Mother idea--the child, which was sometimes female, sometimes male,
being a scion or offshoot from the eternal or universal unit.

Underlying all ancient mythologies may be observed the idea that the
earth, from which all things proceed, is female. Even in the mythology
of the Finns, Lapps, and Esths, Mother Earth is the divinity adored.
Tylor calls attention to the same idea in the mythology of England,

"from the days when the Anglo-Saxon called upon the Earth, 'Hal wes thu
folde fira modor' (Hail, thou Earth, men's mother), to the time when
mediaeval Englishmen made a riddle of her asking 'Who is Adam's mother?'
and poetry continued what mythology was letting fall, when Milton's
Archangel promised Adam a life to last

     '...  till like ripe fruit thou drop
     Into thy Mother's lap.' "(4)

     4) Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 295.

In the old religion the sky was the husband of the earth and the earth
was mother of all the gods.(5) In the traditions of past ages the fact
is clearly perceived that there was a time when the mother was not only
the one recognized parent on earth, but that the female principle was
worshipped as the more important creative force throughout Nature.

     5) Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 279.

Doubtless the worship of the female energy prevailed under the
matriarchal system, and was practised at a time when women were the
recognized heads of families and when they were regarded as the more
important factors in human society. The fact has been shown in a
previous work that after women began to leave their homes at marriage,
and after property, especially land, had fallen under the supervision
and control of men, the latter, as they manipulated all the necessaries
of life and the means of supplying them, began to regard themselves as
superior beings, and later, to claim that as a factor in reproduction,
or creation, the male was the more important. With this change the ideas
of a Deity also began to undergo a modification. The dual principle
necessary to creation, and which had hitherto been worshipped as an
indivisible unity, began gradually to separate into its individual
elements, the male representing spirit, the moving or forming force
in the generative processes, the female being matter--the instrument
through which spirit works. Spirit which is eternal had produced matter
which is destructible. The fact will be observed that this doctrine
prevails to a greater or less extent in the theologies of the present
time.

A little observation and reflection will show us that during this change
in the ideas relative to a creative principle, or God, descent and the
rights of succession which had hitherto been reckoned through the mother
were changed from the female to the male line, the father having in
the meantime become the only recognized parent. In the Eumenides of
Aeschylus, the plea of Orestes in extenuation of his crime is that he is
not of kin to his mother. Euripides, also, puts into the mouth of Apollo
the same physiological notion, that she who bears the child is only
its nurse. The Hindoo Code of Menu, which, however, since its earliest
conception, has undergone numberless mutilations to suit the purposes
of the priests, declares that "the mother is but the field which brings
forth the plant according to whatsoever seed is sown."

Although, through the accumulation of property in masses and the capture
of women for wives, men had succeeded in gaining the ascendancy, and
although the doctrine had been propounded that the father is the only
parent, thereby reversing the established manner of reckoning descent,
still, as we shall hereafter observe, thousands of years were required
to eliminate the female element from the god-idea.

We must not lose sight of the fact that human society was first
organized and held together by means of the gens, at the head of which
was a woman. The several members of this organization were but parts of
one body cemented together by the pure principle of maternity, the chief
duty of these members being to defend and protect each other if needs be
with their life blood. The fact has been observed, in an earlier work,
that only through the gens was the organization of society possible.
Without it mankind could have accomplished nothing toward its own
advancement.

Thus, throughout the earlier ages of human existence, at a time when
mankind lived nearer to Nature and before individual wealth and the
stimulation of evil passions had engendered superstition, selfishness,
and distrust, the maternal element constituted not only the binding and
preserving principle in human society, but, together with the power to
bring forth, constituted also the god-idea, which idea, as has already
been observed, at a certain stage in the history of the race was
portrayed by a female figure with a child in her arms.

From all sources of information at hand are to be derived evidences of
the fact that the earliest religion of which we have any account was
pure Nature-worship, that whatever at any given time might have been the
object adored, whether it were the earth, a tree, water, or the sun, it
was simply as an emblem of the great energizing agency in Nature. The
moving or forming force in the universe constituted the god-idea. The
figure of a mother with her child signified not only the power to bring
forth, but Perceptive Wisdom, or Light, as well.

As through a study of Comparative Ethnology, or through an investigation
into the customs, traditions, and mythoses of extant races in the
various stages of development, have been discovered the beginnings of
the religious idea and the mental qualities which among primitive races
prompted worship, so, also, through extinct tongues and the symbolism
used in religious rites and ceremonies, many of the processes have been
unearthed whereby the original and beautiful conceptions of the Deity,
and the worship inspired by the operations of Nature, and especially
the creative functions in human beings gradually became obscured by the
grossest ideas and the vilest practices. The symbols which appear in
connection with early religious rites and ceremonies, and under which
are veiled the conceptions of a still earlier and purer age, when
compared with subsequently developed notions relative to the same
objects, indicate plainly the change which has been wrought in the
original ideas relative to the creative functions, and furnish an index
to the direction which human development, or growth, has taken.

As the human race constructs its own gods, and as by the conceptions
involved in the deities worshipped at any given time in the history
of mankind we are able to form a correct estimate of the character,
temperament, and aspirations of the worshippers, so the history of
the gods of the race, as revealed to us through the means of symbols,
monumental records, and the investigation of extinct tongues, proves
that from a stage of Nature worship and a pure and rational conception
of the creative forces in the universe, mankind, in course of time,
degenerated into mere devotees of sensual pleasure. With the corruption
of human nature and the decline of mental power which followed the
supremacy of the animal instincts, the earlier abstract idea of God was
gradually lost sight of, and man himself in the form of a potentate
or ruler, together with the various emblems of virility, came to
be worshipped as the Creator. From adorers of an abstract creative
principle, mankind had lapsed into worshippers of the symbols under
which this principle had been veiled.

Although at certain stages in the history of the human race the evils,
which as a result of the supremacy of the ruder elements developed in
mankind had befallen the race were lamented and bewailed, they could not
be suppressed. Man had become a lost and ruined creature. The golden age
had passed away.

CHAPTER II. TREE, PLANT, AND FRUIT WORSHIP.

When mankind first began to perceive the fact of an all-pervading agency
throughout Nature, by or through which everything is produced, and when
they began to speculate on the origin of life and the final cause
and destiny of things, it is not in the least remarkable that various
objects and elements, such as fire, air, water, trees, etc., should in
their turn have been venerated as in some special manner embodying the
divine essence. Neither is it surprising although this universal agency
was regarded as one, or as a dual entity, they should have recognized
its manifold expressions or manifestations.

To primitive man, the visible sources whence proceeded his daily
sustenance doubtless constituted the first objects of his regard and
adoration. Hence, in addition to the homage paid to the earth, in due
course of time would be added the worship of trees, upon which the
early race was directly dependent for food. At a time when the art of
agriculture had not been attained, all such trees as yielded their
fruit for the support of the human race, and which afforded to mankind
pleasant beverages or cooling shade, would come to be regarded as
embodying the universal beneficent principle--the great creating
and preserving agency of Nature, and therefore as proper objects of
veneration.

According to the Phoenician theogony, "the first gods which were
worshipped by oblations and sacrifices were the fruits of the earth, on
which they and their descendants lived as their forefathers had done."

Although, after the art of agriculture had been developed, mankind was
gradually relieved from its past dependence on the tree as a means of
support, it nevertheless continued to be regarded with veneration as an
emblem of creative power or of productive energy.

Among the traditions and monuments of nearly every country of the globe
are to be found traces of a sacred tree--a Tree of Life. In various
countries there appear two traditional trees, the one typical of the
continuation of physical life, the other representing spiritual life, or
the life of the soul. After the age of pure Nature-worship had passed,
however, and serpent, fire, and phallic faiths had been introduced, the
original signification of the tree, like that of all other religious
emblems, became considerably changed. Through its energies, or
life-giving properties, existence had long been maintained, and for this
reason, as has already been observed, it became an object of veneration;
but, after the reproductive power in man had risen to the dignity of a
supreme God, the tree, to the masses of the people, became a symbol of
the physical, life-giving energy in mortals and in animals. In other
words, it became a phallic emblem representing the continuation of
existence, or the power to reproduce or continue life on the earth. As a
religious symbol it became the traditional Tree of Life.

The tree, like nearly every other object in nature, was and still is,
in various parts of the world, either female or male, and all ideas
connected with it are sacred and closely interwoven with sex.

The extent to which trees have been venerated in past ages seems to be
little understood, and there are doubtless few persons, at the present
time, who would willingly believe that all along the religious stream,
from its source to its latest developed branches, are to be observed
traces of this ancient worship, which, in its earliest stages, was
simply a recognition of Nature's bounties.

Barlow, in his work on Symbolism, says that "the most generally received
symbol of life is a tree--as also the most appropriate."

Again the same writer observes: "Besides the monumental evidence thus
furnished of a sacred tree, or Tree of Life, there is an historical and
traditional evidence of the same thing, found in the early literature
of various nations, in the customs, and popular usages."(6) As tree-
and sun-worship, or the adoration of Nature's processes, finally became
interwoven with phallic faiths, its history can be understood only after
these later developments in the religious stream have been examined, or
after the true significance of the serpent as a religious emblem, and
the various ideas connected with the traditional Tree of Life, have been
exposed.

     6) Essays on Symbolism, p. 84.

The palm, the pine, the oak, the banian, or bo, and many other species
of trees, have, at different times, and by various nations, been
invested with divine honors; but, in oriental countries, by far the most
sacred among them is the Ficus Religiosa, or the holy bo tree of India.
Something of the true significance of the traditional Tree of Life may
be observed in the ideas connected with the worship of this emblem. The
fig, when planted with the palm, as it frequently is in the East, near
temples and holy shrines, is regarded as a peculiarly sacred object.
When entwining the palm, which is male, it is always female; from
their embrace Kalpia, or passion, is developed. This union causes the
continuation of existence and the "revolutions of time." The whole
constitutes the Tree of Life.

In Ceylon, there stands at the present time a tree which we are told
is still worshipped by every follower of Buddha. It is a sacred bo, or
Ficus Religiosa, which stands adjacent to an ancient holy shrine known
as the Brazen Monastery, now in ruins. Of this tree Forlong remarks:

"Though now amidst ruins and wild forests, and although having stood
thus in solitary desolation for some 1500 years, yet there it still
grows, and is worshipped and deeply revered by more millions of our race
than any other god, prophet, or idol, which the world has ever seen."(7)

     7) Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 35.

This tree is sacred to Sakyu Mooni, is 2200 years old, and is said to be
a slip from a tree planted by Bood Gaya, one of the three former Buddhas
who, like Sakyu Mooni, visited Ceylon. Under the parent of this tree the
great prophet reposed after he had attained perfect rest, or after he
had overcome the flesh and become Buddha. It was under a bo tree that
Mai, Queen of Heaven, brought him forth, and, in fact, very many of the
most important incidents of his life are closely connected with this
sacred emblem.

In an allusion to the bo tree of Ceylon, a slip of which is said to have
been carried from India to that island by a certain priestess in the
year 307 B.C., Forlong observes:

"This wonderful idol has furnished shoots to half Asia, and every shoot
is trained as much as possible like the parent, and like it, also,
enclosed and tended. Men watch and listen for signs and sounds from this
holy tree just as the priests of Dodona did beneath their rustling oaks,
and, as many people, even of these somewhat sceptical days, still do,
beneath the pulpits of their pope, priest, or other oracle."(8)

     8) Rivers of Life, vol. i., p, 36.

The sacred Ficus is worshipped in India and in many of the Polynesian
islands.

Regarding the palm, Inman assures us that it is emblematical of the
active male energy, or the continuation of existence.(9)

     9) Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. ii., p. 448.

Within the legends underlying the Jewish religion, it will be remembered
that the tree appears mysteriously connected with the beginning of life
and is interwoven with the first ideas of human action and experience.
The literal sense, however, of the allegory in Genesis concerning the
woman, the tree, and the serpent, and its meaning as generally accepted
by laymen and the uneducated among the priesthood, has little in common
with its true significance as understood by the initiated.

In Vedic times, the home tree was worshipped as a god, and to the
exhilarating properties in its juice was ascribed that subtle quality
which was regarded as the life-giving, or creative, energy supposed
to reside in heat, and which was closely connected with passion or
procreative energy. This quality was their Bacchus, Dionysos, or
god-idea--the creator not alone of physical existence, but of good and
evil as well. It was the Destroyer, yet the Regenerator, of life.

Of the Zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the Persians was
worshipped for thousands of years, Layard remarks: "The plant or its
product was called the mystical body of God, the living water or food
of eternal life, when duly consecrated and administered according to
Zoroastrian rites." It has been suggested, and not without reason, that
to this idea of the ancients, respecting the sacred character of
the properties of the home juice, may be traced the "origin of the
celebration of Jewish holy or paschal suppers and other eucharistic
rites."

Although by the ancients water was sometimes regarded as the original
principle, later, wine, or the intoxicating quality within it, came to
constitute the god-idea. It was spirit, while water was matter; hence,
in the sacraments, water and wine were commingled, wine representing
the essence or blood of God; water, at the same time, standing for the
people. Cyprian, the bishop martyr, while contending for the use of
wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, makes use of the following
argument:

"The Holy Spirit also is not silent in the Psalms on the sacrament
of this thing, when He makes mention of the Lord's Cup, and says 'Thy
intoxicating cup how excellent it is!' Now the cup which intoxicates is
assuredly mingled with wine, for water cannot intoxicate anybody. And
the Cup of the Lord in such wise inebriates, as Noe also was intoxicated
drinking wine in Genesis. ... For because Christ bore us all, in that he
also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people,
but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ.... Thus, therefore, in
consecrating the Cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as
wine alone cannot be offered. For if anyone offer wine only, the blood
of Christ is dissociated from us; but if the water be alone, the people
are dissociated from Christ."(10)

     10) Epistles of Cyprian, vol. i., pp. 215-217.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, at which wine is mysteriously
converted into the essence of Deity, or into the blood of Christ, is
without doubt a relic of the idea once entertained regarding the homa
tree. Certain writers entertain the opinion that from the use of the
sacred homa juice have arisen various religious practices and rites,
such for instance as offering oblations to the gods, anointing holy
stones, and pouring wine on sacred hills, also the custom of pledging
oaths over glasses of wine.

The May pole, a decidedly phallic emblem, whose festivals until a very
recent time were celebrated in England by the old as well as the young,
was usually if not always sprinkled with wine. From the accounts which
we have of this sacred emblem and its festival, it seems that no royal
edict nor priestly denunciation was sufficient to expel it from the
country.

According to Dr. Stevenson, the festival of Holi or the worship of
Holika Devata, in the island of Ceylon, "has a close resemblance to
the English festival of the May-pole, which originated in a religious
ceremony or festival of the Cushites (called Phoenicians) who anciently
occupied Western Europe."(11)

     11) Quoted by Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, p. 223.

The ash is the Scandinavian Tree of Life, and, like the sacred trees of
all nations, is emblematical of the continuation of existence. This tree
has a triple root, which peculiarity doubtless accounts for its sacred
character. It is both female and male, and is said to be regarded as a
"sort of Logos or Wisdom." It is the first emanation from the Deity, and
yet a Trinity in Unity. To insult or injure this tree was sacrilege, to
cut it down was an offense punishable with death.

In the old Egyptian and Zoroastrian story, appear the descriptions of
two Trees of Life, also a Tree of Knowledge. In the accounts given of
these trees, the Ficus, the female Tree of Life, represents the life
of the soul, while the palm, the male Tree of Life, is that which gives
physical life, which also is the true significance of the word "lord."
When, however, either of these trees stood alone, or unaccompanied by
its counterpart, by it both of the creative principles were understood.
By these ideas is suggested the thought which among a certain school of
psychologists of the present century seems to be gaining ground, namely:
that man is a dual entity, or, in other words, that he has a subjective
mind and an objective self, which so long as this life endures must
co-operate or work together.

In the following descriptions of Egyptian emblems, will be perceived
some of the changes which finally took place relative to the idea of sex
in the god-idea.

In the museum of Egyptian antiquities in Berlin is a sepulchral tablet
representing the Tree of Life. This emblem figures the trunk of a tree,
from the top of which emerges the bust of a woman--Netpe. She is the
goddess of heavenly existence, and is administering to the deceased the
water and the bread of life, the latter of which is represented by a
substance in the form of cakes or rolls. The time at which this tablet
was found is not known, but it is supposed to belong to the period of
the XIXth dynasty, or about the time of Rameses II., 1400 years B.C.

There is also in the Berlin museum another representation of the
Egyptian Tree of Life, in which the trunk has given place to the entire
body of a woman. This, also, is Netpe, who is still spiritual wisdom
or the maternal principle. We are informed by Forlong that Diana was
worshipped by the Amazons under a sacred tree.(12) From this symbol
the tree, which grew first into the figure of a divine woman, and later
assumed the form of a divine man, arose the emblem of the cross.

     12) Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 70.

On the Nineveh tablets is pictured a Tree of Life which is surrounded
by winged spirits, bearing in their hands the pine cone, a symbol
indicating life, and which is said to have the same significance as the
crux-ansata, or cross, among the Egyptians.

In later ages, the Tree of Life, i. e., the divine man, or cross, or
both together, furnish immortal food to those who lay hold upon them,
exactly in the same manner as did Netpe, the goddess of wisdom, or
spiritual life, in former times. According to the testimony of Barlow,
this is the subject "most frequently symbolized on early Christian
sepulchral tablets and monuments."(13) Christ's body was the "bread of
life," and his blood was the "wine from the Tree of Life," of which
to partake was life eternal. The cross, as in earlier religions,
represented completeness of life. The jambu tree, the Buddhist god-tree,
is in the shape of a cross.(14)

     13) Essays on Symbolism, p. 74.

     14) Wilford, Asiatic Researches.

Among the Kelti a tall oak was not only a symbol of the Deity, but it
was Jupiter himself, while the earth from which it sprang was the Great
Mother. Throughout Europe, in all ages, the oak has received divine
honors. The fact that under its branches Jew, Pagan, and Christian
alike swore their most solemn oaths, shows that its veneration was not
confined to any particular nation or locality.

The sacredness of the oak among the Druids is well attested by all
writers who have dealt with this interesting people. In Rome its
branches formed the badge of victory worn by conquering heroes, this
emblem being the highest mark of distinction which could be conferred
upon them.

Forlong assures us that the oak was even more worshipped at the West
than was the sacred Ficus at the East. Like it, the wood of the oak must
be used

"to call down the sacred fire from Heaven and gladden in the yule (Suiel
or Seul) log of Christmas-tide even Christian fires, as well as annually
renew with fire direct from Ba-al, on Beltine day, the sacred flame on
every public and private hearth, and this from the temples of Meroe
on the Nile, to the farthest icy forests and mountains of the
Sklavonian."(15)

     15) Faiths of Man in All Lands, vol. i., p. 68.

Among the Druids, the mistletoe was also sacred especially when
entwining the oak. Together they represented the Tree of Life, or the
two generating agencies throughout Nature. Of the species of it which
grows on the oak, Borlaise says that they deified the mistletoe and were
not to look upon it but in the most devout and reverential manner: "When
the end of the year approached, they marched with great solemnity to
gather the mistletoe of the oak in order to present it to Jupiter,
inviting all the world to assist in the ceremony."(16)

     16) Borlaise.

According to the Latin writer Pliny, the "Druids have nothing more
sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it
be an oak." This plant, which is called All Heal, although sought after
with the greatest religious ardor, is seldom found, but should the
people who go forth at Christmas time in large numbers succeed in
finding it they immediately set about preparing feasts under the tree
upon which it grows; at the same time, in the most solemn manner, two
white bulls are brought forth to be sacrificed. After the feast has been
prepared and the sacrifice made ready, the priest ascends the tree and
with a golden pruning-knife cuts the sacred branches of the mistletoe,
dropping them into a white cloth prepared for the occasion. The bulls
are then sacrificed and a prayer offered that "God would render his own
gift prosperous to those on whom he has bestowed it." They believed that
administered in a potion it would impart fecundity to any barren animal,
and that it was a remedy against all kinds of poison. The branches of
the mistletoe were then distributed among the faithful, each cherishing
the token as the most sacred emblem of his faith. It is thought that the
Christmas tree is a remnant of this custom.

Although the Christbaum of the Germans, the Yggdrasill of the
Scandinavians, and the Christmas tree of the English speaking nations
are still regarded as belonging exclusively to Christianity, their
birthplace was the far East, and their origin long anterior to our
present era. This subject will be referred to later in these pages. The
palm, which in course of time became the most sacred tree of Egypt, is
said to have put forth a shoot every month during the year. At Christmas
tide, or at the winter solstice, a branch from this tree was used as a
symbol of the renewal of time or of the birth of the New Year.

On the Zodiac of Dendera, preserved in the National Library at Paris,
are two trees, the one representing the East, or India and China, the
other, the West, or Egypt. The former of these trees is putting forth
a pair of leaves and is topped by the emblems of Siva, emblems which
indicate the fructifying powers of Nature, whilst the Egyptian sacred
tree, which is surmounted by the ostrich plume, the emblem of truth,
is indicative of Light, Intelligence, or the life of the soul. In a
discourse delivered by Dr. Stukeley in 1760, attention was directed to
the grove of Abraham as "that famous oak grove of Beersheba, planted
by the illustrious prophet and first Druid--Abraham; and from whom
our celebrated British Druids came, who were of the same patriarchal
reformed religion, and brought the use of sacred groves to Britain."(17)

     17) Barlow, Symbolism, p. 98.

The fact has been ascertained that in Arabia, in very ancient times,
there was a goddess named Azra who was worshipped under the form of a
tree called Samurch, and that in Yemen tree-worship still prevails.
To the date is ascribed divine honors. This tree is said to have its
regular priests, services, rites, and festivals, and is as zealously
worshipped as are the gods of any other country. We are not informed as
to whether the Jewish Tree of Life was borrowed from the Chaldeans or
the Egyptians, but, as the significance is the same in all countries,
it is of little consequence which furnished a copy for the writer in
Genesis.

In Dr. Inman's Ancient Faiths, is a drawing from the original, by
Colonel Coombs, of the "Temptation," or of the ancient tree-and-serpent
myth in Genesis. This drawing, in which it is observed that the Jewish
idea of woman as tempter is reversed, was copied from the inner walls
of a cave in Southern India. The picture is said to be a faithful
representation of the version of the story as accepted in the East.

Of the myrtle, Payne Knight says that it "was a symbol both of Venus and
Neptune, the male and female personifications of the productive powers
of the waters, which appear to have been occasionally employed in the
same sense as the fig and fig leaf."

The same writer refers to the fact that instead of beads, wreaths of
foliage, generally of laurel, olive, myrtle, ivy, or oak, appear upon
coins; sometimes encircling the symbolical figures, and sometimes as
chaplets on their heads. According to Strabo, each of these is sacred to
some particular personification of the Deity, and "significant of some
particular attribute, and in general, all evergreens were Dionysiac
plants, that is, symbols of the generative power, signifying perpetuity
of youth and vigor." The crowns of laurel, olive, etc., with which
the victors in the Roman triumphs and Grecian games were honored, were
emblems of immortality, and not merely transitory marks of occasional
distinction.(18)

     18) Payne Knight, Symbolism of Ancient Art. We are informed that this
book was never sold, but only given away. Although a copy of it was
formerly in the British Museum, care was taken by the trustees to keep
it out of the catalogues.

The tree and serpent, according to Ferguson, are symbolized in all
religious systems which the world has ever known. The two together
are typical of the processes of reproduction or generation. They also
symbolize good and evil and the cause which underlies the decline of
virtue.

Among the numberless fruits which from time to time have been regarded
as divine emblems, the principal are perhaps the fig, the pomegranate,
the mandrake, the almond, and the olive. The peculiarly sacred character
which we find attached to the fig ceases to be a mystery so soon as we
remember that the organs of generation, male and female, had, in process
of time, come to be objects of worship and that the fig was the emblem
of the latter.

A basket of this fruit is said to have been the most acceptable offering
to the god Bacchus, and therefore, by his devotees, was regarded as the
most sacred symbol. The favorite material for phallic devices was the
wood of the sacred fig, for it was by rubbing together pieces of it that
holy fire was supposed to be drawn from heaven. By holy fire, however,
was meant not so much the natural visible element which was kindled, as
that subtle substance contained in fire or heat which was supposed
to contain the life principle, and which was sent in response to the
cravings of pious devotees for procreative energy, which blessing, among
various peoples, notably the Jews, was indicative of special divine
favor.

By pagans, Jews, and Christians, the pomegranate has long been
regarded as a sacred emblem. It is a symbol of reproductive energy.
Representations of it were embroidered on the Ephod, and Solomon's
Temple is reported as having been literally covered with decorations, in
which, among the devices noticed, this particular fruit appears the most
conspicuous. Its significance, as revealed by Inman and other writers,
is too gross to be set forth in these pages.

Among the most sacred plants or flowers were the lotus and the fleur
de lis, both of which were venerated because of some real or fancied
organic sexual peculiarity. The lotus is adored as the female principle
throughout Nature, or as the "womb of all creation," and is sacred
throughout oriental countries. It is said to be androgynous or
hermaphrodite--hence its peculiarly sacred character.

It has long been thought that this lily is produced without the aid of
the male pollen, hence it would seem to be an appropriate emblem for
that ancient sect which worshipped the female as the more important
creative energy.

Of the lotus, Inman remarks: "Amongst fourteen kinds of food and flowers
presented to the Sanskrit God Anata, the lotus only is indispensable."
This emblem, as we have seen, was the symbol of the Great Mother, and
we are assured that it was "little less sacred than the Queen of Heaven
herself."

Regarding the lotus and its universal significance as a religious
emblem, Payne Knight says:

"The lotus is the Nelumbo of Linnaeus. This plant grows in the water,
and amongst its broad leaves puts forth a flower, in the center of which
is formed the seed vessel, shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and
punctured on the top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds
grow. The orifices of these cells being too small to let the seeds drop
out when ripe, they shoot forth into new plants, in the places where
they were formed, the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish
them until they acquire such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open
and release themselves, after which, like other aquatic weeds, they take
root wherever the current deposits them. This plant, therefore, being
thus productive of itself, and vegetating from its own matrix, without
being fostered in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the
productive power of the waters, upon which the creative spirit of the
Creator operated in giving life and vegetation to matter. We accordingly
find it employed in every part of the Northern hemisphere, where the
symbolical religion improperly called idolatry does or did prevail.
The sacred images of the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians are almost all
placed upon it, of which numerous instances occur in the publication of
Kaempfer, Sonnerat, etc: The Brama of India is represented sitting upon
a lotus throne, and the figures upon the Isaic table hold the stem of
this plant, surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the cross
representing the male organs in the other: thus signifying the universal
power, both active and passive, attributed to that goddess."(19)

     19) Symbolism of Ancient Art.

The lotus is the most sacred and the most significant symbol connected
with the sacred mysteries of the East. Upon this subject, Maurice
observes that there is no plant which has received such a degree of
honor as has the lotus. It was the consecrated symbol of the Great
Mother who had brought forth the fecundative energies, female and male.
Not only throughout the Northern hemisphere was it everywhere held
in profound veneration, but among the modern Egyptians it is still
worshipped as symbolical of the Great First Cause. The lotus was the
emblem venerated in the solemn celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis
in Greece and the Phiditia in Carthage.

In referring to the degree of homage paid to the lotus by the ancients,
Higgins says: "And we shall find in the sequel that it still continues
to receive the respect, if not the adoration, of a great part of the
Christian world, unconscious, perhaps, of the original reason of
their conduct." It is a significant fact that in nearly all the
sacred paintings of the Christians in the galleries throughout Europe,
especially those of the Annunciation, a lily is always to be observed.
In later ages as the original significance of the lotus was lost, any
lily came to be substituted. Godfrey Higgins is sure that although the
priests of the Romish Church are at the present time ignorant of the
true meaning of the lotus, or lily, "it is, like many other very
odd things, probably understood at the Vatican, or the Crypt of St.
Peter's."(20)

     20) Anacalypsis, book vii., ch. xi.

Of the lotus of the Hindoos Nimrod says:

"The lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expanse calyx
represents the ships of the gods floating on the surface of the water,
and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof... but as the
ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female principle, and the mast in it
the male deity, these parts of the flower came to have certain other
significations, which seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at
Benares."(21)

     21) Quoted in Anacalypsis.

In other words it was a phallic emblem and represented the creative
processes throughout Nature. Susa, the name of the capital of the
Cushites, or ancient Ethiopians, meant "the City of Lilies." In India
the lotus frequently appears among phallic devices in place of the
sacred Yoni. From the foregoing pages the fact will be observed that the
God of the ancients embodied the two creative agencies throughout the
universe, but as nothing could exist without a mother, the great Om who
was the indivisible God and the Creator of the sun was the mother
of these two principles, while the Tree of Life was the original
life-giving energy upon the earth, represented in the creation myths of
the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve or Adama.

Throughout the ages, this force, or creative agency has been symbolized
in various ways, many of which have been noted in the foregoing pages.
We have observed that notwithstanding the fact that the supremacy of
the male had been established, the sacred Yoni and the lotus were
still reverenced as symbols of the most exalted God. Finally, when the
masculine energy began to be worshipped as the more important agency
in reproduction, the female, although still necessary to complete the
god-idea, was veiled.

Among the sect known as Lingaites, those who adored the male creative
power, Man, Phallus, and Creator in religious symbolism signified one
and the same thing in the minds of the people. Each represented a Tree
of Life, the beginning and end of all things.

Tree-worship was condemned by the councils of Tours, Nantes, and
Auxerre, and in the XIth century it was forbidden in England by the laws
of Canute, but these edicts seem to have had little effect. In referring
to this subject, Barlow says: "In the XVIIIth century it existed in
Livonia, and traces of it may still be found in the British Isles."(22)
The vast area over which tree- and plant-worship once extended, and the
tenacity with which it still clings to the human race, indicate the hold
which, at an earlier age in the history of mankind, it had taken upon
the religious feelings of mankind.

     22) Essays on Symbolism, p. 118.

So closely has this worship become entwined with that of serpent and
phallic faiths, that it is impossible to consider it, even in a brief
manner, without anticipating these later developments; yet linked with
earth- and sun-worship, it doubtless prevailed for many ages absolutely
unconnected with the grosser ideas with which it subsequently became
associated.

CHAPTER III. SUN-WORSHIP--FEMALE AND MALE ENERGIES IN THE SUN.

"When we inquire into the worship of nations in the earliest periods to
which we have access by writing or tradition, we find that the adoration
of one God, without temples or images, universally prevailed."(23)

     23) Godfrey Higgins, Celtic Druids.

Underlying all the ancient religions of which we have any account, may
be observed the great energizing force throughout Nature recognized
and reverenced as the Deity. This force embraces not only the creative
energies in human beings, in animals, and in plants, but in the earlier
ages of human history it included also Wisdom, or Law--that "power by
which all things are discriminated or defined and held in their proper
places." The most renowned writers who have dealt with this subject
agree in the conclusion that, during thousands of years among all the
nations of the earth, only one God was worshipped. This God was Light
and Life, both of which proceeded from the sun, or more properly
speaking were symbolized by the sun.

In Egyptian hymns the Creator is invoked as the being who "dwells
concealed in the sun"; and Greek writers speak of this luminary as the
"generator and nourisher of all things, the ruler of the world." It is
thought, however, that neither of these nations worshipped the corporeal
sun. It was the "centre or body from which the pervading spirit, the
original producer of order, fertility, and organization, continued to
emanate to preserve the mighty structure which it had formed."

It is evident that at an early age, both in Egypt and in India,
spiritualized conceptions of sun-worship had already been formed.

We have seen that Netpe, the Goddess of Light, or Heavenly Wisdom,
conferred spiritual life on all who would accept it. The Great Mother of
the Gods in India was not only the source whence all blessings flow, but
she was the Beginning and the End of all things.

Of "Aditi, the boundless, the yonder, the beyond all and everything,"
Max Muller says that in later times she "may have become identified with
the sky, also with the earth, but originally she was far beyond the sky
and the earth."(24) The same writer quotes the following, also from a
hymn of the Rig-Veda:

     24) Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 221.

"O Mitra and Varuna, you mount your chariot which, at the dawning of
the dawn is golden-colored and has iron poles at the setting of the sun;
from thence you see Aditi and Diti--that is, what is yonder and what is
here, what is infinite and what is finite, what is mortal and what is
immortal."(25)

     25) Ibid.

Aditi is the Great She that Is, the Everlasting. Muller refers to the
fact that another Hindoo poet "speaks of the dawn as the face of Aditi;
thus indicating that Aditi is here not the dawn itself, but something
beyond the dawn." This Goddess, who is designated as the "Oldest," is
implored "not only to drive away darkness and enemies that lurk in
the dark, but likewise to deliver man from any sin which he may have
committed." "May Aditi by day protect our cattle, may she, who never
deceives, protect us from evil."

In the Egyptian as in the Indian and Hebrew religions, the two
generating principles throughout Nature represent the Infinite, the
Holy of Holies, the Elohim or Aleim--the Ieue. Within the records of
the earliest religions of Ethiopia or Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria, and
Babylonia, is revealed the same monad principle in the Deity. This monad
conception, or dual unity, this God of Light and Life, or of Wisdom and
generative force, is the same source whence all mythologies have sprung,
and, as has been stated, among all peoples the fact is observed that
the religious idea has followed substantially the same course of
development, or growth. Within the sacred writings of the Hindoos there
is but one Almighty Power, usually denominated as Brahm or Brahme--Om or
Aum. This word in India was regarded with the same degree of veneration
as was the sacred Ieue of the Jews. In later ages, the fact is being
proved that this God, into whom all the deities worshipped at a certain
period in human history resolve themselves, is the sun, or if not
the actual corporeal sun, then the supreme agency within it which was
acknowledged as the great creative or life-force--that dual principle
which by the early races was recognized as Elohim, Om, Ormuzd, etc.,
and from which the productive power in human beings, in plants, and in
animals was thought to emanate.

Prior to the development of either tree or phallic worship, the sun
as an emblem of the Deity had doubtless become the principal object
of veneration. Ages would probably elapse before primitive man would
observe that all life is dependent on the warmth of the sun's rays, or
before from experience he would perceive the fact that to its agency as
well as to that of the earth he was indebted both for food and the power
of motion. However, as soon as this knowledge had been gained, the great
orb of day would assume the most prominent place among the objects of
his regard and adoration. That such has been the case, that the sun,
either as the actual Creator, or as an emblem of the great energizing
force in Nature, has been worshipped by every nation of the globe, there
is no lack of evidence to prove; neither do we lack proof to establish
the fact that, since the adoption of the sun as a divine object, or
perhaps I should say as the emblem of Wisdom and creative power, it has
never been wholly eliminated from the god-idea of mankind.

Bryant produces numberless etymological proofs to establish the fact
that all the early names of the Deity were derived or compounded from
some word which originally meant the sun.

Max Muller says that Surya was the sun as shining in the sky. Savitri
was the sun as bringing light and life. Vishnu was the sun as striding
with three steps across the sky, etc.

Inman, whose etymological researches have given him considerable
prominence as a Sanskrit and Hebrew scholar, says that Ra, Ilos,
Helos, Bil, Baal, Al, Allah, and Elohim were names given to the sun as
representative of the Creator.

We are assured by Godfrey Higgins that Brahme is the sun the same
as Surya. Brahma sprang from the navel of Brahme. Faber in his Pagan
Idolatry says that all the gods of the ancients "melt insensibly into
one, they are all equally the sun." The word Apollo signifies the
author or generator of Light. In the Rig Veda, Surya, the sun, is called
Aditya. "Truly, Surya, thou art great; truly Aditya, thou art great."

Selden observes that whether the gods be called Osiris, or Omphis, or
Nilus, or any other name, they all center in the sun.

According to Diodorus Siculus, it was the belief of the ancients that
Dionysos, Osiris, Serapis, Pan, Jupiter and Pluto were all one. They
were, the sun.

Max Muller says that a very low race in India named the Santhals call
the sun Chandro, which means "bright." These people declared to the
missionaries who settled among them, that Chandro had created the world;
and when told that it would be absurd to say that the sun had created
the world, they replied: "We do not mean the visible Chandro, but an
invisible one."

Not only did Dionysos, and all the rest of the gods who in later ages
came to be regarded as men, represent the sun, but after the separation
of the male and female elements in the originally indivisible God, Maut
or Minerva, Demeter, Ceres, Isis, Juno, and others less important in the
pagan world were also the sun, or, in other words, they represented the
female power throughout the universe which was supposed to reside in the
sun.

In most groups of Babylonian and Assyrian divine emblems, there occur
two distinct representations of the sun, "one being figured with four
rays or divisions within the orb, and the other, with eight." According
to George Rawlinson, these figures represent a distinction between
the male and female powers residing within the sun, the quartered disk
signifying the male energy, and the eight-rayed orb appearing as the
emblem of the female!(26)

     26) Essay x.

During an earlier age of human history, prior to the dissensions which
arose over the relative importance of the sexes in reproduction, and at
a time when a mother and her child represented the Deity, the sun was
worshiped as the female Jove. Everything in the universe was a part of
this great God. At that time there had been no division in the god-idea.
The Creator constituted a dual but indivisible unity. Dionysos formerly
represented this God, as did also Om, Jove, Mithras, and others. Jove
was the "Great Virgin" whence everything proceeds.

     "Jove first exists, whose thunders roll above,
          Jove last, Jove midmost, all proceeds from Jove;
      Female is Jove, Immortal Jove is male;
          Jove the broad Earth, the heavens irradiate pale.
      Jove is the boundless Spirit, Jove the Fire,
          That warms the world with feeling and desire."

In a former work the fact has been mentioned that the first clue
obtained by Herr Bachofen, author of Das Mutterrecht, to a former
condition of society under which gynaecocracy, or the social and
political pre-eminence of women, prevailed, was the importance attached
to the female principle in the Deity in all ancient mythologies.

According to the testimony of various writers, Om, although
comprehending both elements of the Deity, was nevertheless female in
signification. Sir William Jones observes that Om means oracle--matrix
or womb.(27) Upon this subject Godfrey Higgins, quoting from Drummond,
remarks:

     27) See Anacalypsis, book iii., ch. ii.

"The word Om or Am in the Hebrew not only signifies might, strength,
power, firmness, solidity, truth, but it means also Mother, as in
Genesis ii., 24, and Love, whence the Latin Amo, Mamma. If the word be
taken to mean strength, then Amon will mean (the first syllable being
in regimine) the temple of the strength of the generative or creative
power, or the temple of the mighty procreative power. If the word Am
means Mother, then a still more recondite idea will be implied, viz.:
the mother generative power, or the maternal generative power: perhaps
the Urania of Persia or the Venus Aphrodite of Crete and Greece, or the
Jupiter Genetrix of the masculine and feminine gender, or the Brahme
Mai of India, or the Alma Venus of Lucretius. And the City of On or
Heliopolis will be the City of the sun, or City of the procreative
powers of nature of which the sun was always an emblem."

According to Prof. W. R. Smith, Om means uniting or binding, a fact
which is explained by the early significance of the mother element in
early society. The name of the great Deity Om or Aum scarcely passes the
lips of its worshippers, and when it is pronounced is always reverently
whispered. Regarding the mystic word Om, we are told that it is the name
given to Delphi, and that "Delphi has the meaning of the female organs
of generation called in India the Os Minxoe."

Although the great God of India was female and male, yet we are assured
by Forlong that the female energy Maya, Queen of Heaven, even at the
present time is more heard of than the male principle.

According to Bryant, the worship of Ham is the most ancient as well as
the most universal of any in the world. This writer remarks that Ham,
instead of representing an individual, is but a Greek corruption of Om
or Aum, the great androgynous God of India, a God which is identical in
significance with Aleim, Vesta, and all the other representatives of
the early dual, universal power. "In the old language God was called
Al, Ale, Alue, and Aleim, more frequently Aleim than any other name."
According to the testimony of Higgins, Aleim denotes the feminine
plural. The heathen divinities Ashtaroth and Beelzebub were both called
Aleim, Ashtaroth being simply Astarte adorned with the horns of a ram.
Ishtar not unfrequently appears with the horns of a cow. We are informed
by Inman that whenever a goddess is observed with horns--emblems which
by the way always indicate masculine power--it is to denote the fact
that she is androgynous, or that within her is embodied the complete
Deity--the dual reproductive energy throughout Nature. The "figure
becomes the emblem of divinity and power."(28)

     28) Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 311.

Mithras--the Savior, the great Persian Deity which was worshipped as the
"Preserver," was both female and male. Among the representations of this
divinity which appear in the Townley collection in the British Museum,
is one in which it is figured in its female character, in the act of
killing the bull. The Divinity Baal was both female and male. The God of
the Jews in an early stage of their career was called Baal. The oriental
Ormuzd was also dual or androgynous.

Orpheus teaches that the divine nature is both female and male.
According to Proclus, Jupiter was an immortal maid, "the Queen of
Heaven, and Mother of the Gods." All things were contained within the
womb of Jupiter. This Virgin within whom was embodied the male principle
"gave light and life to Eve." She was the life-giving, energizing power
in Nature, and was identical with Aleim, Om, Astarte, and others. The
Goddess Esta, or Vesta, or Hestia, whom Plato calls the "soul of the
body of the universe," is believed by Beverly and others to be
the Self-Existent, the Great "She that Is" of the Hindoos, whose
significance is identical with the Cushite or Phoenician Deity, Aleim.

According to Marco Polo, the Chinese had but one supreme God of whom
they had no image, and to whom they prayed for only two things--"a sound
mind in a sound body." They had, however, a lesser god--probably the
same as the "Lord" (masculine) of the Jews, to whom they petitioned for
rain, fair weather, and all the minor accessories of existence. Upon the
walls of the houses of the Chinese is a tablet to which they pay their
devotion. On this tablet is the name of the "high, celestial, and
supreme God." The principal word which this tablet contains is "Tien."
Of this Chinese Deity Barlow says: "The Chinese recognize in Tienhow,
the Queen of Heaven nursing her infant son." Connected with this figure
is a lotus bud, symbol of the new birth.

Originally in Chaldea and in Egypt, only one supreme God was worshipped.
This Deity was figured by a mother and her child, as was the great
Chinese God. It comprehended the universe and all the attributes of the
Deity. It was worshipped thousands of years prior to the birth of Mary,
the Mother of Christ, and representations of it are still extant, not
only in oriental lands, but in many countries of Europe. Within the
oldest temples of Egypt are still to be observed sacred apartments which
contain the "Holy of Holies," and to which, in past ages, none might
gain access but priests and priestesses of the highest order. Within
these apartments are pictured the mysteries of birth, together with the
symbols of generation emblems of procreation.

On the banks of the river Nile are observed the ruins of the temple of
Philae, which structure, it is said, represents the most ancient style
of architecture. Within these ruins is to be seen an inner chamber in
which are depicted the birth scenes of the child god Horus, and, indeed,
everywhere among the monuments and ruins of Egypt, is plainly visible
the fact that the creative power and functions in human beings, in
animals, and in vegetable life, together with Wisdom, once constituted
the god-idea.

Between the ruins of the palace of Amunoph III. and the Nile are two
colossal statues, each hewn from a single block of stone. These figures,
although in a sitting posture, are sixty feet high. It is thought that
they once formed the entrance to an avenue of similar figures leading
up to the palace. It has been supposed that the most northern statue
represents Ammon, and that its companion piece is his Mother. It is now
believed by many writers, however, that these figures do not represent
two persons at all, but that in a remote age of the world's history
they were worshipped as the two great principles, female and male, which
animate Nature. The fact has been observed that Am or Om was originally
a female Deity, within whom was contained the male principle; when,
however, through the changes wrought in the relative positions of the
sexes, the male element in the Divinity adored came to be represented
as a man instead of as a child, he was Ammon. He was the sun, yet
notwithstanding the fact that he had drawn to himself the powers of the
sun, he was still, himself, only a production of or emanation from the
female Deity Om, Mother of the Gods and Queen of Heaven. She it was who
had created or brought forth the sun.

There is a tradition which asserts that every morning a melodious sound
is emitted from the first named of these two colossal figures as he
salutes his rosy-fingered Mother whom he acknowledges as the source of
all Light and Wisdom. The bodies are described as being "without motion,
the faces without expression, the eyes looking straight forward, yet a
certain grand simplicity occasions them to be universally admired."

The Goddess Disa or Isa of the North, as delineated on the sacred drums
of the Laplanders, was accompanied by a child similar to the Horus
of the Egyptians.(29) It is observed also that the ancient Muscovites
worshipped a sacred group composed of a mother and her children,
probably a representation of the Egyptian Isis and her offspring, or at
least of the once universal idea of the Deity.

     29) Jennings, Phallicism.

The following is from Payne Knight:

"A female Pantheitic figure in silver, with the borders of the drapery
plated with gold, and the whole finished in a manner surpassing almost
anything extant, was among the things found at Macon on the Saone,
in the year 1764, and published by Caylus. It represents Cybele, the
universal mother, with the mural crown on her head, and the wings of
pervasion growing from her shoulders, mixing the productive elements of
heat and moisture by making a libation upon the flames of an altar. On
each side of her head is one of the Discouri, signifying the alternate
influence of the diurnal and nocturnal Sun; and, upon a crescent
supported by the tips of her wings, are the seven planets, each
signified by a bust of its presiding deity resting upon a globe, and
placed in the order of the days of the week named after them.

"In her left hand she holds two cornucopiae, to signify the result of
her operation on the two hemispheres of the Earth; and upon them are the
busts of Apollo and Diana, the presiding deities of these hemispheres,
with a golden disk, intersected by two transverse lines, such as is
observed on other pieces of ancient art, and such as the barbarians of
the North employed to represent the solar year, divided into four parts,
at the back of each."(30)

     30) Symbolism of Ancient Art.

It was doubtless at a time when woman constituted the head of the gens,
and when the feminine element in the sun, in human beings, and in Nature
generally was regarded as the more important, that Latona and her son
Apollo were worshipped together. Latona, Apollo, and Diana constituted
the triune God. The last two were the female and male energies, the
former being the source whence they sprang. As soon as one is divested
of a belief in the popular but erroneous opinion that the gods of the
early Egyptians and Greeks were deified heroes of former ages, he is
prepared to perceive the fact that, although to the uninitiated these
gods appear numberless, in reality they all represent the same idea,
namely: the dual, moving force in Nature, together with Light or Wisdom.

We have seen that when among the nations of antiquity civilization had
reached its height, the god-idea was represented by the figure of a
woman with her child; subsequently, however, as these nations began to
decline, the creative energy comprehended simply physical life, or the
power to reproduce, and was represented by various emblems which will
be noticed farther on in this work. In still later ages, after male
reproductive power had become God, and when, through superstition
and sensuality, the masses of the people had descended to the rank of
slaves, monarchs, representing themselves to their ignorant subjects
as the source of all blessings, even of life itself, appropriated the
titles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration which had
formerly belonged to it. From this fact has doubtless arisen the opinion
so tenaciously upheld in recent times, that the gods of the ancients
were only deified heroes of former times.

If, during the earlier ages of human existence, all the gods resolved
themselves into the sun, and if Light and Life, or Wisdom and the power
to reproduce and sustain life, constituted the Deity, then of course God
or the sun would be female or male, or both, according to the prevailing
belief in the comparative creative and sustaining forces of the sexes.

From what appears in the foregoing pages the fact has doubtless been
perceived that the worship of a Virgin and Child does not, as is usually
supposed, belong exclusively to the Romish Christian Church, but, on the
contrary, that it constitutes the most remote idea of a Creator extant.
As has been hinted, there is little doubt that the earliest worship of
the woman and child was much simpler than was that which came to prevail
in later ages, at a time when every religious conception was closely
veiled beneath a mixture of astrology and mythology. After the planets
came to be regarded as active agencies in reproduction, and powerful
in directing all mundane affairs, the Virgin of the Sphere while she
represented Nature was also the constellation which appeared above the
horizon at the winter solstice, or at the time when the sun had reached
its lowest point and had begun to return. At this time, the 25th of
December, and just as the days began to lengthen, this Virgin gave birth
to the Sun-God. It is said that he issued forth from her side, hence the
legend that Gotama Buddha was produced from the side of Maya, and also
the story believed by the Gnostics and other Christian sects that Jesus
was taken from the side of Mary.(31)

     31) The fact will doubtless be remembered that a similar belief was
entertained concerning the birth of Julius Caesar.

Within the churches and in the streets of many cities of Germany are
to be observed figures of this traditional Virgin. She is standing, one
foot upon a crescent and the other on a serpent's head, in the mouth of
which is the sprig of an apple tree on which is an apple. The tail
of the serpent is wound about a globe which is partially enveloped in
clouds. On one arm of the Virgin is the Child, and in the hand of the
other arm she carries the sacred lotus. Her head is encircled with a
halo of light similar to the rays of the sun.

One is frequently disposed to query: Do the initiated in the Romish
Church regard these images as legitimate representations of Mary, the
wife of Joseph and Mother of Christ, or are they aware of their true
significance? Certainly the various accessories attached to this figure
betray its ancient origin and reveal its identity with the Egyptian,
Chaldean, and Phoenician Virgin of the Sphere.

The fact has already been observed that in the original representation
of the "Temptation" in the cave temple of India, it is not the woman
but the man who is the tempter, and a singular peculiarity observed in
connection with this ancient female Deity is that it is SHE and NOT HER
SEED who is trampling on the serpent, thus proving that originally woman
and not man was worshipped as the Savior. Another significant feature
noticed in connection with this subject is that the oldest figures
which represent this Goddess are black, thus proving that she must have
belonged to a dark skinned race.

This image, although black, or dark skinned, had long hair, hence not a
negress. The most ancient statue of Ceres was black, and Pausanias says
that at a place called Melangea in Arcadia there was a black Venus. In
the Netherlands only a few years ago, was a church dedicated to a black
goddess. The Virgin of the Sphere who treads on the head of the serpent
represents universal womanhood. She is the Virgin of the first book of
Genesis and mother of all the Earth. She represents not only creative
power but Perceptive Wisdom. Although this Goddess is usually seen with
the lotus in her hand, she sometimes carries ripe corn or wheat.

The mother of Gotama Buddha was called Mai or Maya, after the month in
which the Earth is arrayed in her most beautiful attire.

Maya is the parent of universal Nature. According to Davis, the mother
of Mercury "is the universal genius of Nature which discriminated all
things according to their various kinds of species," the same as was
Muth of Egypt. Mai is said to mean "one who begins to illuminate." She
was in fact the mother of the sun whence everything proceeds. She was
matter, within which was concealed spirit.

In the representations of Montfaucon appears the Goddess Isis sitting on
the lotus. Her head, upon which is a globe, is surrounded by a radiant
circle which evidently represents the sun. On the reverse side is Ieu,
the word "which is the usual way of the ecclesiastical authors reading
the Hebrew word Jehovah." Referring to this from Montfaucon, Godfrey
Higgins observes: "Here Isis, whose veil no mortal shall ever
draw aside, the celestial Virgin of the Sphere, is seated on the
self-generating sacred lotus and is called Ieu or Jove."(32) She has
also the mystic number 608 which stands for the Deity. Her breasts show
plainly that it is a female representation, although connected with the
figure appears the male emblem to indicate that within her are contained
both elements, or that the universe is embodied within the female.

     32) Anacalypsis, book v., ch. iv.

Higgins thinks there is no subject on which more mistakes have been made
than on that of the Goddess Isis, both by ancients and moderns. He calls
attention to the inconsistency of calling her the moon when in many
countries the moon is masculine. He is quite positive that if Isis is
the moon, Ceres, Proserpine, Venus, and all the other female gods were
the same, which in view of the facts everywhere at hand cannot be true.
It is true, however, that "the planet called the moon was dedicated to
her in judicial astrology, the same as a planet was dedicated to Venus
or Mars. But Venus and Mars were not these planets themselves, though
these planets were sacred to them."(33) Higgins then calls attention to
her temple at Sais in Egypt, and to the inscription which declares that
"she comprehends all that is and was and is to be," that she is "parent
of the sun," and he justly concludes that Isis can not be the moon.

     33) Anacalypsis, book vi., ch. ii.

Apuleius makes Isis say:

"I am the parent of all things, the sovereign of the elements, the
primary progeny of time, the most exalted of the deities, the first
of the heavenly gods and goddesses, whose single deity the whole world
venerates in many forms, with various rites and various names. The
Egyptians worship me with proper ceremonies and call me by my true name,
Queen Isis."

Isis, we are told, is called Myrionymus, or goddess with 10,000 names.
She is the Persian Mithra, which is the same as Buddha, Minerva, Venus,
and all the rest.

Faber admits that the female principle was formerly regarded as the Soul
of the World. He says:

"Isis was the same as Neith or Minerva; hence the inscription at Sais
was likewise applied to that goddess. Athenagoras informs us that
Neith or the Athene of the Greeks was supposed to be Wisdom passing and
diffusing itself through all things. Hence it is manifest that she was
thought to be the Soul of the World; for such is precisely the character
sustained by that mythological personage."(34)

     34) Pagan Idolatry, book i., p. 170.

The same writer says further:

"Ovid gives a similar character to Venus. He represents her as
moderating the whole world; as giving laws to Heaven, Earth, and Ocean,
as the common parent both of gods and men, and as the productive
cause both of corn and trees. She is celebrated in the same manner by
Lucretius, who ascribes to her that identical attribute of universality
which the Hindoos give to their Goddess Isi or Devi."(35)

     35) Ibid.

It seems to be the general belief of all writers whose object is
to disclose rather than conceal the ancient mysteries, that until a
comparatively recent time the moon was never worshipped as Isis. Until
the origin and meaning of the ancient religion had been forgotten, and
the ideas underlying the worship of Nature had been lost, the moon was
never regarded as representing the female principle.

When man began to regard himself as the only important factor in
procreation, and when the sun became masculine and heat or passion
constituted the god-idea, the moon was called Isis. The moon represented
the absence of heat, it therefore contained little of the recognized
god-element. It was, perhaps, under the circumstances, a fitting emblem
for woman.

In the sacred writings of the Hindoos there is an account of the moon,
Soma, having been changed into a female called Chandra, "the white or
silvery one."

While speaking of the moon, Kalisch says: "The whole ritual of the
Phoenician Goddess Astarte with whom that Queen of Heaven is identical,
and who was the goddess of fertility seems to have been transferred to
her."(36)

     36) Historical and Critical Commentary of the Old Testament.

To such an extent, in the earlier ages of the world had the female
been regarded as the Creator, that in many countries where her worship
subsequently became identified with that of the moon, Luna was adored as
the producer of the sun. According to the Babylonian creation tablets,
the moon was the most important heavenly body. In later ages, the gender
of the sun and the moon seems to be exceedingly variable. The Achts of
Vancouver's Island worship sun and moon--the sun as female, the moon
as male.(37) In some of the countries of Africa the moon is adored as
female and sun-worship is unknown. Among various peoples the sun and the
moon are regarded as husband and wife, and among others as brother and
sister. In some countries, both are female. I can find no instance in
which both are male. Hindoos and Aztecs alike, at one time, said that
Luna was male and often that the sun was female.

     37) Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii., p. 272.

The fact that among the Persians the moon as well as the sun was at
a certain period regarded as a source of procreative energy and as
influencing the generative processes, is shown by various passages in
the Avestas. In the Khordah Avesta, praise is offered to "the Moon which
contains the seed of cattle, to the only begotten Bull, to the Bull of
many kinds."

Perhaps the most widely diffused and universally adored representation
of the ancient female Deity in Egypt was the Virgin Neit or Neith, the
Athene of the Greeks and the Minerva of the Romans. Her name signifies
"I came from myself." This Deity represents not only creative power,
but abstract intelligence, Wisdom or Light. Her temple at Sais was
the largest in Egypt. It was open at the top and bore the following
inscription: "I am all that was and is and is to be; no mortal has
lifted up my veil, and the fruit which I brought forth was the sun."
She was called also Muth, the universal mother. Kings were especially
honored in the title "Son of Neith."

To express the idea that the female energy in the Deity comprehended
not alone the power to bring forth, but that it involved all the natural
powers, attributes, and possibilities of human nature, it was portrayed
by a pure Virgin who was also a mother. According to Herodotus, the
worship of Minerva was indigenous in Lybia, whence it travelled to Egypt
and was carried from thence to Greece. Among the remnants of Egyptian
mythology, the figure of a mother and child is everywhere observed. It
is thought by various writers that the worship of the black virgin and
child found its way to Italy from Egypt.

The change noted in the growth of the religious idea by which the male
principle assumes the more important position in the Deity may, by a
close investigation of the facts at hand, be easily traced, and, as has
before been expressed, this change will be found to correspond with
that which in an earlier age of the world took place in the relative
positions of the sexes. In all the earliest representations of the
Deity, the fact is observed that within the mother element is contained
the divinity adored, while the male appears as a child and dependent on
the ministrations of the female for existence and support. Gradually,
however, as the importance of man begins to be recognized in human
affairs, we find that the male energy in the Deity, instead of appearing
as a child in the arms of its mother, is represented as a man, and that
he is of equal importance with the woman; later he is identical with the
sun, the woman, although still a necessary factor in the god-idea, being
concealed or absorbed within the male. It is no longer woman who is to
bruise the serpent's head, but the seed of the woman, or the son. He is
Bacchus in Greece, Adonis in Syria, Christna in India. He is indeed the
new sun which is born on the 25th of December, or at the time when the
solar orb has reached its lowest position and begins to ascend. It is
not perhaps necessary to add that he is also the Christ of Bethlehem,
the son of the Virgin.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the growing importance of the male in the god-idea
more clearly traced than in the history of the Arabians. Among this
people are still to be found certain remnants of the matriarchal
age--an age in which women were the recognized heads of families and the
eponymous leaders of the gentes or clans. Concerning the worship of
a man and woman as god by the early Arabians, Prof. Robertson Smith
remarks:

"Except the comparatively modern Isaf and Naila in the sanctuary at
Mecca where there are traditions of Syrian influence, I am not aware
that the Arabs had pairs of gods represented as man and wife. In the
time of Mohammed the female deities, such as Al-lat, were regarded as
daughters of the supreme male God. But the older conception as we see
from a Nabataean inscription in De Vogue, page 119, is that Al-lat
is mother of the gods. At Petra the mother-goddess and her son were
worshipped together, and there are sufficient traces of the same thing
elsewhere to lead us to regard this as having been the general rule when
a god and goddess were worshipped in one sanctuary."(38)

     38) Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, ch. vi., p. 179.

As the worship of the black virgin and child is connected with the
earliest religion of which we may catch a glimpse, the exact locality
in which it first appeared must be somewhat a matter of conjecture,
but that this idea constituted the Deity among the Ethiopian or early
Cushite race, the people who doubtless carried civilization to Egypt,
India, and Chaldea, is quite probable.

If we bear in mind the fact that the gods of the ancients represented
principles and powers, we shall not be surprised to find that Muth,
Neith, or Isis, who was creator of the sun, was also the first emanation
from the sun. Minerva is Wisdom--the Logos, the Word. She is Perception,
Light, etc. At a later stage in the history of religion, all emanations
from the Deity are males who are "Saviors."

That the office of the male as a creative agency is dependent on the
female, is a fact so patent that for ages the mother principle could
not be eliminated from the conception of a Deity, and the homage paid
to Athene or Minerva, even after women had become only sexual slaves and
household tools, shows the extent to which the idea of female supremacy
in Nature and in the Deity had taken root.

Notwithstanding the efforts which during numberless ages were made to
dethrone the female principle in the god-idea, the Great Mother, under
some one of her various appellations, continued, down to a late period
in the history of the human race, to claim the homage and adoration of a
large portion of the inhabitants of the globe. And so difficult was it,
even after the male element had declared itself supreme, to conceive of
a creative force independently of the female principle, that oftentimes,
during the earlier ages of their attempted separation, great confusion
and obscurity are observed in determining the positions of male deities.
Zeus who in later times came to be worshipped as male was formerly
represented as "the great dyke, the terrible virgin who breathes out on
crime, anger, and death." Grote refers to numerous writers as authority
for the statement that Dionysos, who usually appears in Greece as
masculine, and who was doubtless the Jehovah of the Jews, was indigenous
in Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia as the Great Mother Cybele. He was
identical with Bacchus, who although represented on various coins as
a "bearded venerable figure" appears with the limbs, features, and
character of a beautiful young woman. Sometimes this Deity is portrayed
with sprouting horns, and again with a crown of ivy. The Phrygian Attis
and the Syrian Adonis, as represented in monuments of ancient art, are
androgynous personifications of the same attributes. According to
the testimony of the geographer Dionysius, the worship of Bacchus was
formerly carried on in the British Islands in exactly the same manner as
it had been in an earlier age in Thrace and on the banks of the Ganges.

In referring to the Idean Zeus in Crete, to Demeter at Eleusis, to
the Cabairi in Samothrace, and Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes, Grote
observes: "That they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by
the way in which they necessarily run together and become confused in
the minds of various authors."

Concerning Sadi, Sadim, or Shaddai, Higgins remarks:

"Parkhurst tells us it means all-bountiful--the pourer forth of
blessings; among the Heathen, the Dea Multimammia; in fact the Diana of
Ephesus, the Urania of Persia, the Jove of Greece, called by Orpheus the
Mother of the Gods, each male as well as female--the Venus Aphrodite; in
short, the genial powers of Nature."

To which Higgins adds: "And I maintain that it means the figure which
is often found in collections of ancient statues, most beautifully
executed, and called the Hermaphrodite."

As in the old language there was no neuter gender, the gods must always
appear either as female or male. For apparent reasons, in all the
translations, through the pronouns and adjectives used, the more
important ancient deities have all been made to appear as males.

By at least two ancient writers Jupiter is called the Mother of the
Gods. In reference to a certain Greek appellation, Bryant observes that
it is a masculine name for a feminine deity--a name which is said to be
a corruption of Mai, the Hindoo Queen of Heaven.

In process of time, as the world became more and more masculinized, so
important did it become that the male should occupy the more exalted
place in the Deity, that even the Great Mother of the Gods, as we have
seen, is represented as male.

The androgynous or plural form of the ancient Phoenician God Aleim,
the Creator referred to in the opening chapter of Genesis, is clearly
apparent. This God, speaking to his counterpart, Wisdom, the female
energy, says: "Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness,"
and accordingly males and females are produced. By those whose duty
it has been in the past to prove that the Deity here represented is
composed only of the masculine attributes, we are given to understand
that God was really "speaking to himself," and that in his divine
cogitations excessive modesty dictated the "polite form of speech"; he
did not, therefore, say exactly what he meant, or at least did not mean
precisely what he said. We have to bear in mind, however, that as man
had not at that time been created, if there were no female element
present, this excess of politeness on the part of the "Lord" was wholly
lost. Surely, in a matter involving such an enormous stretch of power
as the creation of man independently of the female energy, we would
scarcely expect to find the high and mighty male potentate which was
subsequently worshipped as the Lord of the Israelites laying aside his
usual "I the Lord," simply out of deference to the animals.

In Christian countries, during the past eighteen hundred years, the
greatest care has been exercised to conceal the fact that sun-worship
underlies all forms of religion, and under Protestant Christianity
no pains has been spared in eliminating the female element from the
god-idea; hence the ignorance which prevails at the present time in
relation to the fact that the Creator once comprehended the forces of
Nature, which by an older race were worshipped as female.

CHAPTER IV. THE DUAL GOD OF THE ANCIENTS A TRINITY ALSO.

Although the God of the most ancient people was a dual Unity, in later
ages it came to be worshipped as a Trinity. When mankind began to
speculate on the origin of the life principle, they came to worship
their Deity in its three capacities as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer
or Regenerator, each of which was female and male. We have observed
that, according to Higgins, when this Trinity was spoken of
collectively, it was called after the feminine plural.

By the various writers who have dealt with this subject during the last
century, much surprise has been manifested over the fact that for untold
ages the people of the earth have worshipped a Trinity. Forster, in his
Sketches of Hindoo Mythology, says: "One circumstance which forcibly
struck my attention was the Hindoo belief of a Trinity."

Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, observes that the idea of three
persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the nations of the
earth, in regions as distant as Japan and Peru, that it was memorially
acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt and India,
"flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains of Thibet, and
the vast deserts of Siberia." The idea of a Trinity is supposed to have
been first elaborated on the banks of the Indus, whence it was carried
to the Greek and Latin nations. Astrologically the triune Deity of the
ancients portrayed the processes of Nature.

This recondite doctrine as understood by the very ancient people
which originated it, involved a knowledge of Nature far too deep to
be appreciated or understood by their degenerate descendants, except
perhaps by a few philosophers and scholars who imbibed it in a modified
form from original sources in the far East.

After the establishment of the Trinity, the creative energy, which had
formerly been represented by a mother and child, came to be figured
by the mother, father, and the life derived therefrom. Sometimes the
Trinity took the form of the two creative forces, female and male, and
the Great Mother.

Whenever the two creative principles were considered separately, there
always appeared stationed over or above them, as their Creator, an
indivisible unity. This Creator was the "Beyond," the "most High
God"--Om or Aleim. It was the Mother of the Gods in whom were contained
all the elements of the Deity. Among the representations of the god-idea
which are to be observed on the monuments and in the temples of Egypt
appear triads, each of which is composed of a woman stationed between
a male figure and that of a child. She is depicted as the Light of the
sun, or Wisdom, while the male is manifested as the Heat of the orb
of day. She is crowned and always bears the male symbol of life--the
crux-ansata.

Later, it is observed that the worship of Light has in a measure given
place to the adoration of Heat, in other words Light is no longer
adored as essence of the Deity, Heat or Passion having become the most
important element in creative power.

After the ancient worship of the Virgin and Child had become somewhat
changed or modified so as to better accommodate itself to the growing
importance of the male, the most exalted conception of the Deity in
Egypt seems to have been that of a trinity composed of Mout the Mother,
Ammon the Father, and Chons the Infant Life derived from the other two.
Mout is identical with Neith, but she has become the wife as well as the
mother of Ammon. Directly below this conception of the Deity is a triad
representing less exalted attributes, or lower degrees of wisdom, under
the appellations of Sate, Kneph, and the child Anouk; and thus downward,
through the varying spheres of celestial light and life involved in
their theogony are observed the divine creative energies represented
under the figures of Mother, Father, and the Life proceeding therefrom,
until, finally, when the earth is reached, Isis, Osiris, and Horus
appear as the representation of the creative forces in human beings, and
therefore as the embodiment of the divine in the human.

The Deity invoked in all the earlier inscriptions is a triad, and we are
assured that in Babylonia, where Beltis is associated with Belus, "no
god appears without a goddess."

The supreme Deity of Assyria was Asshur, who was worshipped sometimes
as female, sometimes as male. This God doubtless represents the dual or
triple creative principle observed in all the earlier forms of worship.
Asshur had no distinct temple, but as her position was at the head of
the Pantheon, all the shrines throughout Assyria were supposed to have
been open to her worship.

According to Bunsen, in the Sidonian Tyrian district, there were
originally three great gods, at the head of which appears Astarte--a
woman who represents pure reason or intelligence; then follows Zeus,
Demarius, and Adorus. Without doubt this triad represents a monad Deity
similar in character to the one observed in Egypt and other countries.

In the minds of all well-informed persons, there is no longer any doubt
that in Abraham's time the Canaanites worshipped the same gods as did
the Persians and all the other nations about them--namely, Elohim,
the dual or triune creative force in Nature. As the Sun was the
source whence proceeded all light and life as well as reproductive or
generative power, it had become the object of adoration, and as the
emblem of the Deity, it was worshipped by all the nations of the
earth in its three capacities as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer or
Regenerator each female and male.

Melchizedek, who was a priest of the most high God, blessed Abraham, who
was a worshipper of the same Deity. On this subject Dr. Shuckford says:

"It is evident that Abraham and his descendants worshipped not only the
true and living God, but they invoked him in the name of the Lord, and
they worshipped the Lord whose name they invoked, so that two persons
were the object of their worship, God and this Lord: and the Scriptures
have distinguished these two persons from one another by this
circumstance, that God no man hath seen at any time nor can see but
the Lord whom Abraham and his descendants worshipped was the person who
appeared to them."

We are told that when chap. xxi., verse 33, of Genesis is correctly
translated, Abraham is represented as having invoked Jehovah, the
everlasting God.

In the Hebrew name Yod-He-Vau (Jehovah), was set forth the triune
character of the Creator; in other words, this name "comprehended
the essential perfections of the great God," and was used in their
Scriptures as a "kind of summary or revelation of the attributes of the
Deity."

Although Abraham, while in Egypt, was the worshipper of idols, we
are assured that "the peculiar privilege vouchsafed to him lay in the
revelation of God's holy name, Yod-He-Vau." There is indeed much evidence
going to prove that the people represented by Abraham understood the
earlier conception of a Deity, and that while the great universal
principle whose name it was sacrilege to pronounce was still
acknowledged, there was another God (the Lord), the same as in China,
whose worship they were beginning to adopt. "And Jacob vowed a vow,
saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go,
and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come
again to my Father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God."

He then declared that the pillar or stone which he had set up, and which
was the emblem of male procreative energy, should be God's house.

As at the time represented by Jacob there was evidently little or no
spirituality among the Israelites, this Lord whom they worshipped was
simply a life-giver in the most material or practical sense.

The reproductive energy in man had become deified. It had, in other
words, come to possess all the attributes of a god, or of a powerful
man, which in reality was the same thing. It is this god personified
which is represented as appearing to Abraham and talking with him face
to face. With this same god Jacob wrestled, while the real God--the dual
or triune principle, the Jehovah or Iav, no man could behold and live.

To conceal the fact that the God of Abraham originally consisted of a
dual or triple unity, and that the Deity was identical in significance
with that of contemporary peoples, the priests have, as usual, had
recourse to a trick to deceive the ignorant or uninitiated. In reference
to this subject Godfrey Higgins says:

"In the second book of Genesis the creation is described not to have
been made by Aleim, or the Aleim, but by a God of a double name Ieue
Aleim; which the priests have translated Lord God. By using the word
Lord, their object evidently is to conceal from their readers several
difficulties which afterward arise respecting the names of God and this
word, and which show clearly that the books of the Pentateuch are the
writings of different persons."(39)

     39) Anacalypsis, book ii., ch, i.

Upon this subject Bishop Colenso observes:

"And it is especially to be noted that when the Elohistic passages
are all extracted and copied one after another, they form a complete,
connected narrative; from which we infer that these must have composed
the original story, and that the other passages were afterwards inserted
by another writer, who wished to enlarge or supplement the primary
record. And he seems to have used the compound Jehovah Aleim in the
first portion of his work in order to impress upon the reader that
Jehovah, of whom he goes on to speak in the later portions, is the same
Great Being who is called simply Elohim by the older writer, and notably
in the first account of the creation."(40)

     40) Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, p. 7.

We are informed by Bunsen that El, or Elohim, comprehends the true
significance of the Deity among all the Aramaic or Canaanitish races,
El representing the abstract principle taken collectively, Elohim
pertaining to the separate elements as Creator, Preserver, and
Regenerator. Each of these Canaanitish races had inherited these ideas
from their fathers, and, although they had become grossly idolatrous,
"Moses knew, and educated Israelites remained a long time conscious,
that they used them not merely in their real but in their most ancient
sense."(41) Maurice and other writers call attention to the fact that
Moses himself uses this word Elohim with verbs and adjectives in the
plural. That the God worshipped by the more ancient peoples, namely
Aleim, or Elohim, the same who said, "Let us make man in our image," was
not the Lord adored at a later age by the Jews, is a fact which at the
present time seems to be clearly proven; that it constituted, however,
the dual or triune unity venerated by all the nations on the globe of
which we have any record, appears to be well established.

     41) Bunsen, History of Egypt, vol. iv., p. 421.

We have seen that although the two sex-principles which underlie Nature
constituted the Creator, the ancients thought of it only as one and
indivisible. This indivisible aspect was the sacred Iav, the Holy
of Holies. When it was contemplated in its individual aspect it was
Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, each of which was female and male.

The difficulty of the ancients in establishing a First Cause seems to
have been exactly the same as is ours at the present time. When we say
there must have been a God who created all things, the question at once
arises, Who created God? According to their theories, nothing could be
brought forth without the interaction of two creative principles, female
and male; yet everything, even these principles, must proceed from an
indivisible energy--an energy which, as the idea of the sex functions
became more and more clearly defined, could not be contemplated except
in its dual aspect. So soon, therefore, as the Great First Cause was
separated into its elements, a still higher power was immediately
stationed above it as its Creator. This Creator was designated as
female. It was the Mother idea Even gods could not be produced without a
mother.

In referring to the doctrines contained in the Geeta, one of the sacred
writings of the Hindoos, Faber observes:

"In the single character of Brahm, all the three offices of Brahma,
Vishnu, and Siva are united. He is at once the Creator, the Preserver,
and the Destroyer. He is the primeval Hermaphrodite, or the Great Father
and the Great Mother blended together in one person."

The fact that a trinity in unity, representing the female and male
energies symbolized by the organs of generation, formerly constituted
the Deity throughout Asia is acknowledged by all those who have examined
either the literature or monumental records of oriental countries. The
Rev. Mr. Maurice bears testimony to the character of Eastern religious
ideas in the following language:

"Whoever will read the Geeta with attention, will perceive in that small
tract the outlines of all the various systems of theology in Asia. The
curious and ancient doctrine of the Creator being both male and female,
mentioned on a preceding page, to be designated in Indian temples by
a very indecent exhibition of the masculine and feminine organs of
generation in union, occurs in the following passage: 'I am the Father
and Mother of this world; I plant myself upon my own nature and
create again and again this assemblage of beings; I am generation
and dissolution, the place where all things are deposited, and the
inexhaustible seed of all Nature. I am the beginning, the middle, and
the end of all things.' "(42)

     42) Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. iv., p. 705.

According to Sir W. Jones, the Brahme, Vishnu, and Siva coalesce to form
the mystic Om, which means the essence of life or divine fire. In the
Bhagavat Geeta the supreme God speaks thus concerning itself: "I am the
holy one worthy to be known"; and immediately adds: "I am the mystic
(trilateral) figure Om; the Reig, the Yagush, and the Saman Vedas." It
is a unity and still a trinity. This Om or Aum stands for the Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer or Regenerator, and represents the threefold
aspect of the force within the sun. The doctrine maintained throughout
the Geeta is not only that the great life-force represents a trinity in
unity, but that it is both female and male. On this subject Maurice, in
his Indian Antiquities, says:

"This notion of three persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the
nations of the earth, established at once in regions so distant as Japan
and Peru, immemorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt
and India, and flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy mountains
of Thibet, and the vast deserts of Siberia."

We have observed that the idea of a trinity as conceived by the
so-called ancients, although at all times founded on the same
conception, viz., that of the reproductive powers of Nature and
especially of mankind, differed in expression according to its
application. Although in human beings this triune creative idea was
expressed by the mother, father, and child, as set forth in the temples
and on the monuments of Egypt, when applied directly to the sun and
the planets, it appears as the Creator, Preserver, and Regenerator or
Destroyer.

Destruction, or the absence of the sun's heat, represented by winter,
was necessary to life, and therefore the Destroyer was also the
Regenerator and equally with the Creator and Preserver constituted a
beneficent factor in the god-idea. In fact as this third element really
embodied the substance of the other two, it finally became the supreme
God, little afterward being heard about the Creator and Preserver. The
Regenerator or Destroyer was of course the sun, which in winter died
away and rose again in the spring-time as a beneficent Savior or
renewer of life. The principle involved in these processes represented
Fertility, Life, reproductive energy. As applied to mortals, it
comprehended the power to create combined with perceptive Wisdom or
Knowledge.

This idea, portrayed as it was by a mother and her child, linked woman
with the stars. It produced the "Virgin of the Sphere," Queen of Heaven,
"Isiac Controller of the Zodiac," at the same time that it made her the
mother of all mankind.

Every year this Virgin of the Sphere as she appeared above the horizon
at the winter solstice gave birth to the sun. Astronomically this
new sun was the Regenerator, by which all Nature was renewed.
Mythologically, after the higher truths contained in these doctrines
were lost, it came to be the Savior, the Son of the Virgin, the seed of
the woman, which was to bruise the serpent's head.

That the religion of an ancient race comprehended a knowledge of the
evolutionary processes of Nature may not be doubted. The myths still
extant, and even the oldest Assyrian inscriptions which have been
deciphered, reveal the fact that the seeds of the visible universe were
hidden in the "great deep"--that animal creation sprang from the earth
and the sea through the influence of the sun's rays.

It is now known that the philosophy of an older race involved a belief
in the Eternity of Matter. The abstruse doctrine of Reincarnation
and the Renewal of Worlds seems to have formed the basis of their
philosophy. According to these speculations, a portion of the earth was
destroyed or resolved into its primary elements every six hundred years,
while at the end of each Kalpia, or great Cycle of several thousand
years, the entire earth was renovated or absorbed into the two
fecundating principles of the universe. These two indivisible forces
represented by Vishnu rested in the water, or brooded on the face of the
deep. When stirred by love for each other they again became active, and
from the germs of a former world, which had been absorbed by themselves,
created again the earth and everything upon it. In other words, "the
earth sprang from the navel of Vishnu or Brahme." According to the
Buddhists of Ceylon, the universe has perished ten different times,
and each time has been renewed by the operations of Nature, or by the
preservation of germs from a former world. In their mythology these
germs are represented by a parent and a triplicated offspring. It is
perhaps unnecessary to add that this monad trinity is the Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer with their great parent, the Mother of the
Gods, which in process of time came to be regarded as male. According to
Wilford, Hindoo chronology presents fourteen different periods, six of
which have already elapsed; we are in the seventh, which began with
the flood. Each of these periods is called a Manwantara, the presiding
genius or Deity of which is a Menu. At the close of each dynasty a total
destruction of the world takes place, everything being destroyed except
the ruler, or Menu, who "escapes in a boat." Each new world is an exact
counterpart of the one destroyed, and each Menu is a representation of
all preceding ones. Thus the history of one dynasty serves for all the
rest. This doctrine of a triplicated Deity appearing at the beginning of
a new creation may be traced in nearly every country of the globe. Among
the Buddhists of China, Fo is mysteriously multiplied into three persons
in the same manner as is Fo-hi, who is evidently Noah. Among the Hindoos
is observed the triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva springing from the monad
Brahm or Brahme. This triad appears on the earth at the beginning of
each Manwantara in the human form of Menu and his three sons. We are
assured that among the Tartars evident traces are found of a similar
God, who is seated on the lotus. It is also figured on a Siberian medal
in the imperial collection at St. Petersburg. The Jakuthi Tartars,
who are said to be the most numerous people of Siberia, worship
a triplicated Deity under the three denominations of Artugon and
Schugo-tangon and Tangara. Faber tells us that this Tartar God is the
same even in appellation with the Tanga-tanga of the Peruvians, who,
like other tribes of America, seem plainly to have crossed over from the
North-eastern extremity of Siberia. Upon this subject the same writer
remarks thus:

"Agreeably to the mystical notion so familiar to the Hindoos, that
the self-triplicated Great Father yet remained but one in essence, the
Peruvians supposed their Tanga-tanga to be one in three, and three
in one: and in consequence of the union of hero worship with the
astronomical and material systems of idolatry they venerated the sun
and the air, each under three images and three names. The same opinions
equally prevailed throughout the nations which lie to the west of
Hindostan. Thus the Persians had their Ormuzd, Mithras, and Ahriman:
or, as the matter was sometimes represented, their self-triplicating
Mithras. The Syrians had their Monimus, Aziz, and Ares. The Egyptians
had their Emeph, Eicton, and Phtha. The Greeks and Romans had their
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; three in number, though one in essence, and
all springing from Cronus, a fourth, yet older God. The Canaanites had
their Baal-Spalisha or self-triplicated Baal. The Goths had their Odin,
Vile, and Ve, who are described as the three sons of Bura, the offspring
of the mysterious cow, and the Celts had their three bulls, venerated as
the living symbols of the triple Hu or Menu. To the same class we must
ascribe the triads of the Orphic and Pythagorean and Platonic schools;
each of which must again be identified with the imperial triad of the
old Chaldaic or Babylonian philosophy."(43)

     43) Faber, Pagan Idolatry, book vi., ch. ii., p. 470.

The history of the catastrophe known as the deluge, which, it is
claimed, took place either in Armenia, at Cashgar, or at some other
place in the East, is observed, in later ages, to furnish a covering
beneath which have been veiled the mythical doctrines of the priests. Of
the catastrophes which from time to time have visited our planet, and
of the belief which has come to be entertained by ecclesiastics that the
earth will be destroyed by fire, Celsus writes:

"The belief has spread among them, from a misunderstanding of the
accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and
the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations, and floods are
wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in
the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude
of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give
utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire
like a torturer."(44)

     44) Origen against Celsus, book iv., ch. xi.

The mythologies of all nations are largely founded upon the "religious
history" of a flood. The doctrine of a triplicated God saved from
destruction by a storm-tossed ark which rested on some local mountain
answering to Ararat, and which was filled with the natural elements of
reproduction, is found amongst the traditions of every country of the
globe. In Egypt, the destructive agency drives the God into the ark--or
into the fish's belly, where he is obliged to remain until the flood
subsides. In other words, at the time of the destruction of the world,
the creative agency is forced within the womb of Nature, there to remain
until it again comes forth to recreate the world; nor does the symbolism
end here, for this God--the sun, or the reproductive power within it,
which every year is put to death by the cold of winter, must for a
season remain lifeless, but, at the proper time, will come forth with
healing in his wings. This God must issue forth to life through female
Nature.

The god-man, Noah, who appears under one appellation or another in all
extant mythologies, was slain, or shut up in a box, ark, or chest in
which he or his seed was preserved from the ravages of a mighty flood,
or from destruction by the calamity which had befallen the rest of
mankind. In one sense he represents a Savior, in another sense he is
the saved, for he is the seed of a former world and is born again from
a boat, a symbol which always represents the female energy. Sometimes
he is shut up in a wooden cow, from which he issues forth to new life.
Again this storm tossed mariner is born from a cave, or the door of
a rocky cavern, within which he had been preserved from some terrible
catastrophe, caused either by water or fire.

Sir W. Jones, Faber, Higgins, and many others who have investigated this
subject are confident that the Noah of Genesis is identical with Menu,
the law-giver of India, and that both are Adam, a man who appears
with his three sons at the end of each cycle, or six hundred years, to
renovate the world. In the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, in
the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up
from the earth. The drying of the waters, and the beginning anew just at
the close of the six hundred years, are thought to refer to the end of
the cycle of the Neros. A year of Menu or Buddha had expired and a new
dynasty or Mamwantara was to begin.

Regarding this trinity, Faber remarks:

"Brahm then at the head of the Indian triad is Menu at the head of his
three sons. But that by the first Menu we are to understand Adam,
is evident, both from the remarkable circumstance of himself and his