When Parvati (Devi) was united in marriage to Mahadeva (Siva),
the divine pair had once a dispute on the comparative influence
of the sexes in producing animated beings, and each resolved by
mutual agreement to create a new race of men. The race produced
by Mahadeva were very numerous, and devoted themselves
exclusively to the worship of the male Deity, but their
intellects were dull, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted,
and their complexions of many different hues. Parvati had at the
same time created a multitude of human beings, who adored the
female power only, and were well shaped, with sweet aspects and
fine complexions. A furious contest ensued between the two
nations, and the Lingajas, or adorers of the male principle, were
defeated in battle, but Mahadeva, enraged against the Yonigas
(the worshippers of the female element), would have destroyed
them with the fire of his eye if Parvati had not interposed and
appeased him, but he would spare them only on condition that they
should instantly leave the country with a promise to see it no
more, and from the Yoni, which they adored as the sole cause of
their existence, they were named Yavanas.
The fact has been noticed in a previous work[49] that,
according to Wilford, the Greeks were the descendants of the
Yavanas of India, and that when the Ionians emigrated they
adopted the name to distinguish themselves as adorers of the
female, in opposition to a strong sect of male worshippers which
had been driven from the mother country. We are taught by the
Puranas that they settled partly on the borders of Varaha-Dwip,
or Europe, where they became the progenitors of the Greeks; and
partly in the two Dwipas of Cusha, Asiatic and African. In the
Asiatic Cusha-Dwip they supported themselves by violence and
rapine. Parvati, however, or their tutelary goddess, Yoni, always
protected them; and at length, in the fine country which they
occupied, they became a flourishing nation.[50] Wilford relates
that there is a sect of Hindoos who, attempting to reconcile the
two systems, declare in their allegorical style that "Parvati and
Mahadeva found their concurrence essential to the perfection of
their offspring, and that Vishnu, at the request of the goddess,
effected a reconciliation between them."[51]
[49] See The Evolution of Women, p. 303.
[50] Asiatic Researches, vol. iii., pp. 125-132.
[51] Asiatic Researches, "Egypt and the Nile," vol. iii., pp.
361-363.
The people who were dominant in Asia long before the rise of
the late Assyrian monarchy, are said to be those whom scriptural
writers represent as Cushim, and the Hindoos as Cushas. They were
the descendants of Cush, or Cuth, and were believed to have been
the architects of the Tower of Babel. Epiphanius, Eusebius, and
others assert that at the time of the building of this tower
there existed two rival beliefs, the one demonstrated as
Scuthism, the other as Ionism, or Hellenism, the latter of which
embodied the worship of the Great Mother, or the female element,
which was worshipped in the shape of the mystic "Iona or Dove."
The Scuths, on the other hand, believed in the pre-eminence of a
Great Father, or, perhaps I should say, in a Deity composed of a
triad containing the elements of a male parent. Upon this subject
the learned Faber remarks: "I am much mistaken if some dissension
on these points did not prevail at Babel itself; and I think
there is reason for believing that the altercation between the
rival sects aided the confusion of languages in producing the
dispersion."[52]
[52] Pagan Idolatry, book vi., ch. ii.
Those who believed in the superiority of the male in the
processes of reproduction, adored the male element in the Deity,
while those who held that the female is the more important,
worshipped the female energy throughout Nature under one or
another of its symbols, sometimes as a woman with her child and
sometimes as a dove, but oftener as an ark, box, or chest.
It is evident from the sacred writings of the Hindoos that in
India, during a period of several thousand years, there existed
various sects, those who worshipped the male as the only creative
force, others who adored the female as the origin of life, and
those who paid homage to both, as alike important in the office
of reproduction.
It would seem that the fierce wars which had devastated the
land had ceased prior to the beginning of the Tower of Babel.
According to the testimony of Moses, the Lord himself declared
"Behold the people is one." This unanimity of belief, as is
plainly shown, was of short duration, for the Tower arose
"upright and defiant," not, however, as an emblem of the primeval
dual or triune God in which the female energy was predominant,
but as a symbol of male creative power. It was the type of
virility which in the subsequent history of religion was to
assume the position of the "one only and true God."
It is not improbable that idolatry began with the Tower of
Babel.
Indeed it has been confidently asserted by certain writers
that the earliest idols set up as emblems of the Deity, or as
expressions of the peculiar worship of the Lingajas, were
obelisks, columns, or towers, the first of which we have any
account being the Tower of Babel, erected probably at Nipur in
Chaldea. Until a comparatively recent time, the actual
significance of this monument seems to have been little
understood. Later research, however, points to the fact that it
was a phallic device erected in opposition to a religion which
recognized the female element throughout Nature as God. The
length of time which the adherents of these two doctrines had
contended for the mastery is not known, but through the
deciphered monuments of ancient nations, by facts gathered from
their sacred writings, and by the general voice of tradition, it
has been ascertained with a considerable degree of certainty that
this great upheaval of society was the culmination of a dispute
which had long been waged between two contending powers, and
which finally resulted in a separation of the people, and in the
final success, for the time being, of the sect which refused
longer to recognize the superior importance of the female in the
god-idea.
At what time in the history of mankind the Tower of Babel was
erected has not been ascertained, but the great antiquity of
Chaldea is no longer questioned. Sir Henry Rawlinson, in the
Royal Geographical Journal says:
"When Chaldea was first colonized, or at any rate
when the seat of empire was first established there, the emporium
of trade seems to have been at Ur of the Chaldees, which is now
150 miles from the sea, the Persian Gulf having retired nearly
that distance before the sediment brought down by the Euphrates
and Tigris."
To which Baldwin adds:
"A little reflection on the vast period of time
required to effect geological changes so great as this will
enable us to see to what a remote age in the deeps of antiquity
we must go to find the beginning of civilization in the
Mesopotamian Valley."[53]
[53] Prehistoric Nations, p. 191.
Although at the time of the building of the Tower of Babel the
worship of a Deity in which the male principle was pre-eminent
had not become universal, still the facts seem to indicate that
the doctrine of male superiority which for ages had been steadily
advancing had at length gained the ascendancy over the older
religion. The new faith and worship had corrupted the old, and
through the conditions which had been imposed upon women, and the
consequent stimulation of the lower nature in man, even the
adherents of the older faith were losing sight of those higher
principles which in preceding ages they had adored as God.
We have seen that in every country upon the earth there is a
tradition recounting the ravages of a flood. Whether or not this
legend is to be traced to an actual calamity by which a large
portion of Asia was inundated, is not for a certainty known; but
the fact that there was a deluge of contention and strife,
surpassing anything perhaps which the world has ever witnessed,
seems altogether probable.
Not long after the catastrophe designated as the flood,
emblems of the Deity, representations of the male and female
elements, appear in profusion. Babylon, at which place was
erected the Tower of Belus, and Memphis, which contained the
Pyramids, were among the first cities which were built. As the
tower typified the Deity worshipped by those who claimed
superiority for the male, so the pyramids symbolized the creative
agency and peculiar qualities of the female, or of the dual Deity
which was worshipped as female.
Although the grosser elements in human nature were rapidly
assuming a more intensely aggressive attitude, and although the
higher principles involved in an earlier religion were in a
measure forgotten, it is evident that at this time humanity had
not become wholly sensualized, and that the lower propensities
and appetites had not assumed dominion over the reasoning
faculties.
The Great Mother Cybele, who is represented by the Sphinx, had
doubtless been adored as a pure abstraction, her worship being
that of the universal female principle in Nature. She is pictured
as the "Eldest Daughter of the Mythologies," and as "The Great
First Cause." She represented the past and the future. She was
the source whence all that was and is had proceeded.
In its earliest representations, the Sphinx is figured with
the head of a woman and the body of a lion. By various writers it
is stated that the Sphinxes which were brought as spoils from
Asia, the very cradle of religion, were thus represented. The
lion, which symbolizes royal power and intellectual strength, is
always attached to the chariot of Cybele. The Sphinx is supposed
to typify not only Cybele, but the great androgynous God of
Africa as well. However, as Cybele and Muth portrayed the same
idea, namely, female power and wisdom, we are not surprised that
they should have been worshipped under the same emblem. Neither
is it remarkable, when we recall the fact that the female was
supposed to comprehend both sexes, that in certain instances a
beard appears as an accompanying feature of the Sphinx. We are
told that the fourth avatar of Vishnu was a Sphinx, but a further
search into the history of this Deity reveals the fact that her
ninth avatar is Brahm (masculine). The female principle has at
length succumbed to the predominance of male power, and Vishnu
herself has become transformed into a male God.
Although the rites connected with the worship of Cybele were
phallic they were absolutely pure. In an allusion to this
worship, Hargrave Jennings admits that the "spirituality to which
women in that age of the world were observed to be more liable
than men was peculiarly adverse to all sensual indulgence, and
especially that of the sexes."
Although the creative principle was adored under its
representatives, the Yoni and the Lingham, still the principal
object seems to have been, when administering the rites
pertaining to the worship of Cybele, to ignore sex and the usual
sex distinctions; hence we find that, in order to assume an
androgynous appearance, the priestesses of this Goddess
officiated in the costumes of males, while priests appeared in
the dress peculiar to females. However, that the sensuous element
was to a certain extent already assuming dominion over the higher
nature, and that priests were regarded as being incapable of
self-control, is observed in the fact that in the later ages of
female worship one of the principal requirements of a priest of
Cybele was castration.
It is the opinion of Grote that the story which appears in the
Hesiodic Theogony, of the castration of Saturn and Uranus by
their sons with sickles forged by the mother, was borrowed from
the Phrygians, or from the worship of the Great Mother.
In India, the strictest chastity was prescribed to the priests
of Siva, a God which was worshipped as the Destroyer or
Regenerator, and which in its earlier conception was the same as
the Great Mother Cybele. These priests were frequently obliged to
officiate in a nude state, and during the ceremony should it
appear that the symbols with which they came in contact had
appealed to other than their highest emotions, they were
immediately stoned by the people.[54]
[54] Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, i., 311.
The identity of the religions of India and Egypt has been
noted in an earlier portion of this work. Wilford, in his
dissertations upon Egypt and the Nile, says that in a
conversation which he had with some learned Brahmins, upon
describing to them the form and peculiarities of the Great
Pyramid, they told him that "it was a temple appropriated to the
worship of Padma Devi." The true Coptic name of these edifices is
Pire Honc, which signifies a sunbeam. Padma Devi means the lotus,
or the Deity of generation.
It is thought by many writers that these gigantic structures
were erected by the Cushite conquerors of Egypt, who invaded and
civilized the country, as emblems of the female Deity whom they
worshipped. Certainly the magnitude of these monuments and the
ingenuity displayed in their construction indicate the
intelligence of their builders and the exalted character of the
Deity adored. The Great Pyramid is in the form of a square, each
side of whose base is seven hundred and fifty-five feet, and
covers an area of nearly fourteen acres. An able writer in
describing the pyramids says that the first thing which impresses
one is the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in
their architecture. They all have their sides accurately adapted
to the four cardinal points.
In six of them which have been opened, the principal passage
preserves the same inclination of 26 degrees to the horizon,
being directed toward the polar star. . . . Their obliquity being
so adjusted as to make the north side coincide with the obliquity
of the sun's rays at the summer's solstice, has, combined with
the former particulars, led some to suppose they were solely
intended for astronomical uses; and certainly, if not altogether
true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate acquaintance with
astronomical rules, as well as a due regard to the principles of
geometry. Others have fancied them intended for sepulchres; and
as the Egyptians, taught by their ancient Chaldean victors,
connected astronomy with their funereal and religious ceremonies,
they seem in this to be not far astray, if we but extend the
application to their sacred bulls and other animals, and not
merely to their kings, as Herodotus would have us
suppose."[55]
[55] The Round Towers of Ireland, p. 159.
According to the testimony of Inman, the pyramid is an emblem
of the Trinity--three in one. The triangle typifies the flame of
sacred fire emerging from the holy lamp. With its base upwards it
typifies the Delta, or the door through which all come into the
world. With its apex uppermost, it is an emblem of the phallic
triad. The union of these triangles typifies the male and female
principles uniting with each other, thus producing a new figure,
a star, while each retains its own identity.[56]
[56] Ancient Faiths, vol. i., p. 145.
Thus the primary significance of the pyramid was religious,
and in its peculiar architectural construction was manifested the
prevailing conception of the Deity worshipped; namely, the
fructifying energies in the sun. We are informed that "all
nations have at one time or another passed through violent stages
of pyrolatry, a word which reminds us that fire and phallic cult
flourished around the pyramids. . . . Every town in Greece had a
Pyrtano."[57]
[57] Forlong, Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in All Lands, vol.
i., p. 325.
As not alone the sun but the stars also had come to be
venerated as agencies in reproduction, the worship of these
objects was, as we have seen, closely interwoven with that of the
generative processes throughout Nature. The attempt to solve the
great problem of the origin of life on the earth led these people
to contemplate with the profoundest reverence all the visible
objects which were believed to affect human destiny. Hence both
the pyramid and the tower served a double purpose, first, as
emblems of the Deity worshipped, and, second, as monuments for
the study of the heavenly bodies with which their religious ideas
were so intimately connected.
While comparing the early emblems which prefigure the
primitive elements in the god-idea, Hargrave Jennings
observes:
"In the conveyance of certain ideas to those who
contemplate it, the pyramid boasts of prouder significance, and
impresses with a hint of still more impenetrable mystery. We seem
to gather dim supernatural ideas of the mighty Mother of Nature .
. . that almost two-sexed entity, without a name--She of the Veil
which is never to be lifted, perhaps not even by the angels, for
their knowledge is limited. In short, this tremendous
abstraction, Cybele, Ideae, Mater, Isiac controller of the
Zodiacs, whatever she may be, has her representative in the
half-buried Sphinx even to our own day, watching the stars
although nearly swallowed up in the engulphing
sands."[58]
[58] Phallicism, p. 25.
From the time when the two religious elements began to
separate in the minds of the people, the prophets, seers, and
priestesses of the old religion, those who continued to worship
the Virgin and Child, had prophesied that a mortal woman, a
virgin, would, independently of the male principle, bring forth a
child, the fulfilment of which prophecy would vindicate the
ancient faith and forever settle the dispute relative to the
superiority of the female in the office of reproduction. Thus
would the woman "bruise the serpent's head." In process of time
not only Yonigas, but Lingajas as well, came to accept the
doctrine of the incarnation of the sun in the bodies of earthly
virgins. By Lingaites, however, it was the seed of the woman and
not the woman herself who was to conquer evil. Finally, with the
increasing importance of the male in human society, it is
observed that a reconciliation has been effected between the
female worshippers and those of the male. Athene herself has
acquiesced in the doctrine of male superiority.
Thalat, the great Chaldean Deity, who presided over Chaos
prior to the existence of organized matter, is finally
transformed into a male God. The Hindoo Vishnu, who as she slept
on the bottom of the sea brought forth all creation, has changed
her sex. Brahm, the Creator, is male, and appears as a
triplicated Deity in the form of three sons within whom is
contained the essence of a Great Father, the female creative
principle being closely veiled.
Hence we see that the God of the ancients, the universal dual
force which resides in the sun and which creates all things, is
no longer worshipped under the figure of a mother and her child.
Although the female principle is still a necessary factor in the
creative processes, and although it is capable of producing gods,
the mother element possesses none of the essentials which
constitute a Deity. In other words, woman is not a Creator. From
the father is derived the soul of the child, while from the
mother, or from matter, the body is formed. Hence the prevalence
at a certain stage of human history of divine fathers and earthly
mothers; for instance, Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar, and
later the mythical Christ who superseded Jesus, the Judean
philosopher and teacher of mankind.
Henceforth, caves, wells, cows, boxes and chests, arks, etc.,
stand for or symbolize the female power. We are given to
understand, however, that for ages these symbols were as holy as
the God himself, and among many peoples even more revered and
worshipped.
We have seen that the ancients knew that matter and force were
alike indestructible. According to their doctrine all Nature
proceeded from the sun. Hence the power back of the sun, which
they worshipped as the Destroyer or Regenerator, or, in other
words, as the mother of the sun, was the Great Aum or Om, the
Aleim or Elohim, who was the indivisible God. The creative agency
which proceeded from the sun was both male and female, yet one in
essence. Later, the male appeared as spirit, the female as
matter. Spirit was something above and independent of Nature.
It had indeed created matter from nothing. The fact will be
remembered that man claimed supremacy over woman on the ground
that the male is spirit, while the female is only matter; in
other words, that she was simply a covering for the soul, which
is divine.
Thus was the god-idea divorced from Nature, and a masculine
principle, outside and independent of matter, set up as a
personal potentate or ruler over the universe.
The logic by which the great female principle in the Deity has
been eliminated, and the subterfuges which have been and still
are employed to construct and sustain a Creator who of himself is
powerless to create, is as amusing as it is suggestive, and
forcibly recalls to mind la couvade, in which, among certain
tribes, the father, assuming all the duties of procreation, goes
to bed when a child is born.[59]
[59] The Evolution of Woman, p. 127.
All mythologies prove conclusively that ages elapsed before
human beings were rash enough, or sufficiently blinded by
falsehood and superstition, to attempt to construct a creative
force unaided by the female principle. Just here it may not be
out of place to refer to the fact that in the attempt to divorce
God from Nature have arisen all the superstitions and senseless
religious theories with which, since the earliest ages of
metaphysical speculation, the human mind has been crowded.
To this separation of the two original elements in the Deity,
and the consequent exaltation of one of the factors in the
creative processes, is to be traced the beginning of our present
false, unnatural, and unphilosophical masculine system of
religion--a system under which a father appears as the sole
parent of the universe.
The fact is tolerably well understood that mysticism and the
accumulation of superstitious ideas are the result of the
over-stimulation of the lower animal instincts. When the agencies
which had hitherto held the lower nature in check became
inoperative--when man began to regard himself as a Creator and
therefore as the superior of woman--he had reached a point at
which he was largely controlled by supernatural or mystical
influences.
The fact is observed that in course of time the governmental
powers are no longer in the hands of the people; the masses have
become enslaved. Their rulers are priests--deified tyrants who
are unable to maintain their authority except through the
ignorance and credulity of the masses. Hence one is not surprised
to find that the change which took place at a certain stage of
human growth in respect to the manner of reckoning descent was
instigated and enforced by religion. Apollo had declared that
woman is but the nurse to her own offspring. Neither is it
remarkable at this stage in the human career, as women had lost
their position as heads of families, and as they were no longer
recognized as of kin to their children, that man should have
attempted to lessen the importance of the female element in the
god-idea.
Wherever in the history of the human race we observe a change
in the relations of the sexes involving greater or more
oppressive restrictions on the natural rights of women, such
change, whether it assume a legal, social, or religious form,
will, if traced to its source, always be found deeply rooted in
the wiles of priestcraft. Since the decay of the earliest form of
religion, namely, Nature-worship, the gods have never been found
ranged on the side of women.
Later investigations are proving that the primitive idea of a
Deity had its foundation in actual physical facts and
experiences; and, as the maternal principle constituted the most
important as well as the most obvious of the facts which entered
into the conception of a Creator, and as it was the only natural
bond capable of binding human society together, so long as reason
was not wholly clouded by superstition and warped by sensuality,
it could not be eliminated. In other words, a Creator in which
the more essential element of creative force was wanting, was
contrary to all human experience and observation. Indeed nothing
could be plainer than that the deified male principle could of
itself create nothing, and that it was dependent for its very
existence on the female element.
By this attempt to construct a masculine Deity, absurdities
were presented to the human judgment and understanding which for
ages could not be overcome, and by it contradictions were
necessitated which could not be reconciled with human reason and
with the ideas of Nature which had hitherto been held by mankind.
It was not, therefore, until reason had been suspended in all
matters pertaining to religion, and blind faith in the
machinations of priestcraft had been established, that a male God
was set up as the sole Creator of the universe.
When women, who had become the legitimate plunder not only of
individuals but of bands of warriors whose avowed object was the
capture of women for wives, had degenerated into mere tools or
instruments for the gratification and pleasure of men, Perceptive
Wisdom or Light, and Maternal Affection the Preserver of the
race, gradually became eliminated from the god-idea of mankind.
Passion became God. It was the Creator in the narrowest and most
restricted sense.
Although in an age of pure Nature-worship the ideas connected
with reproduction, like those related to all other natural
functions, were wholly unconnected with impurity either of
thought or deed, still when an age arrived in which all checks to
human passion had been withdrawn, and the lower propensities had
gained dominion over the higher faculties, the influence of
fertility or passion-worship on human development or growth may
in a degree be imagined.
The fact must be borne in mind that curing the later ages of
passion-worship the creative processes and the reproductive
organs were deified, not as an expression or symbol of the
operations of Nature, but as a means to the stimulation of the
lower animal instincts in man.
With religion bestialized and its management regulated wholly
with an idea to the gratification of man's sensuous desires,
religious temples, under the supervision of the priesthood,
became brothels, in which were openly practiced as part and
parcel of religious rites and ceremonies the most wanton
profligacy and the most shameless self-abandonment. The worship
of Aphrodite or Venus, and also that of Bacchus, originally
consisted in homage paid to the reproductive principles contained
in the earth, water, and sun, but, as is well known, this pure
and beautiful worship, in later times, and especially after it
was carried to Greece, became synonymous with the grossest
practices and the most lawless disregard of human decency.
With the light which in these later ages science and
ethnological research are throwing upon the physiological and
religious disputes of the ancients, the correctness of the
primitive doctrines elaborated under purer conditions at an age
when human beings lived nearer to Nature is being proved--namely,
that matter like spirit is eternal and indestructible, and
therefore that the one is as difficult of comprehension as the
other, and that Nature, instead of being separated from spirit,
is filled with it and can not be divorced from it; also that the
female is the original organic unit of creation, without which
nothing is or can be created.