Let us here again emphasize the fact that the very persistence of this symbol as a pronounced part of our Twentieth Century traditions, and reverence, offers proof of the fact that whatever is true is also enduring. Truth is eternal and defies extinction. Love, although defiled and scorned, will lift Mankind out of Hell.
The symbol of the mother with the child the very earliest of all symbolic worship is also the truest and most consistent with the ideals of spiritualized Man when we realize its higher significance. At first, for the obvious reason that woman was the recipient and the nurse of the seed, woman was regarded as a higher type than man; she alone was supposed to possess the creative energy. This was ultimately reversed and Man was thought to be the sole custodian of the reproductive power.
Thus the age-long warfare between the sexes began—a warfare which, if it had any foundation in Reality, must have resulted long since in race-extinction. But despite this degrading warfare men and women have continued to attract each other in varying degrees of love, until now the future offers a golden promise of union. As long as primitive man kept to nature worship, deifying earth as the mother who brought forth the grains and fruits for her childrens' sustenance, religious practices were devoid of sacrifice and strife. The advent of springtime when the earth awakened from her long sleep and the period of gestation began when the seeds were planted, or when from Nature's own laws they were reproduced without the aid of man, was the occasion of thanksgiving and rejoicing with general merry-making and general good-will. Again, in harvest time there was feasting and rejoicing and music and dancing; and we have no reason to believe that this very natural method of showing their gratitude and their happiness was accompanied by any suggestion of sacrifice or propitiation.
There is the best of evidence to support the claim that all the early Deities were female and in all Mythology the earth is adored as the "Divine Mother." The earliest Venus, worshipped as the goddess of Universal Womanhood, was represented with a beard signifying her androgynous character.
Venus worshipped as "the soul of the world" was said to be the "parent of all things, the primary progeny of Time, the most exalted of all the Deities." Neith, Minerva, Athena, Ceres, Cybele, all worshipped as the first of all the Deities, were represented as female, and to this day we refer to the qualities of wisdom, light, truth, and virtue as feminine.
Even the sun is said to have been at one time worshipped as feminine, as were all deities; but later, when it was shown that the sun apparently fertilized the fecund earth, the gender was changed, and in succeeding ages, when the male principle had become dominant as a deific symbol, the earth was said to be but the nurse which cradled and cared for the generic power resident in the male. Thus woman from her lofty height of the one and only deity gradually sank to the level of the nurse maid, permitted to care for man's offspring.
While the Female Principle of Sex was worshipped as the "giver of life," the heads of families were female and descent was traced from the mother only. The male parent was scarcely more than an intruder and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law is to be both feared and dreaded, if not propitiated. When we contemplate the persistence of those traits of human nature that have prevailed among all races and throughout all ages, we are easily persuaded that time is a delusion, and that Eternity is Now. As it was yesterday it is today and will be tomorrow in all that is really fundamental.
From the refined simplicity of nature worship there gradually evolved a phase of worship, which in the beginning had for its basic principle an exalted ideal of the purpose and the powers of the female sex-function; but this ideal sunk to the level of debauchery and sex-degradation, in which the symbol of the female sex-organ of generation was worshipped, literally, although not reverently; and yet from the fact that it is only upon the temples and in the groves dedicated to worship that are found the carvings of the generative organs of either and sometimes of both sexes, it is evident that the most exalted motives first actuated the worshippers.
The sex organs, representing the mystery of creative life, or the Deity, would naturally be held in reverence by nature-children, and it must be conceded that this attitude of mind toward the wonderful miracle of creative energy is worthy of our emulation. As we look back over the pages of history, we note the tendency of human nature to fall far short of ideals; we mistake the letter for the spirit; we get lost in the trap of the senses, and we miss the higher and more exalted planes of our ideals.
From yoni worship (worship of the female organ of generation), with all the privileges and perquisites which such honor bestowed upon woman, there came the inevitable revolt, which comes in course of time, from all tyranny and special privilege, whether it be individual, national, racial, sexual, or supernatural. Thus there was established a "new religion," and this time it was the male organ which was deified as the symbol of eternal life, of creative energy. In many instances both symbols were represented, but for the most part the same subtle struggle for supremacy, the remnants of which we note today among the different religious creeds and sects, waged, and waxed stronger, with time and opposition. Which was the more worthy of deification—the yoni, or the phallus? Woman, or man?
The Ionians, seeking religious freedom from the persecutions of the phallic worshippers in India persisted in their adherence to yoni worship, and from them dates the Eleusirian mysteries, which were celebrated in Athens down to a comparatively late date. The Eleusirian festivals represented the survival of the purest ideals of nature worship, before the warfare between the yoni and the phallic worshippers had brought both ideals into degradation.
There is a point in this festival, which the Greeks called Thesmophoria and which is derived from the more ancient festival of Ceres (the goddess of Life and Law), which we are anxious to have noted here, because it marks a golden thread which runs throughout the entire fabric of the sex-problem. This point is the fact, that the rites and ceremonies of this festival were performed by "virgins distinguished for their purity of life." Very rarely were men admitted to the inner secrets of the Eleusirians.
Another important point is that this ceremony was performed in honor of the androgynous character of the goddess, as it was declared that the power to bring forth a child without the co-operation of the male belonged exclusively to the exalted or perfected woman, which is to say the goddess. Another translation and interpretation of this ceremony claims that it was prophecied in these festivals, that a time would come in the history of the world when a woman would so conceive and bring forth a child and that when that time should come the question as to which sex was supreme would be forever settled and that purity and peace would reign upon earth.
This part of the record may easily have been either an interpolation to sustain the claim of the miraculous birth of Jesus, or it may have been simply the defiant fling of the vanquished to the victor, because phallic worship was in the ascendant. It is, however, recorded, that not an instance can be cited in which the honor of initiation into the Eleusirian mysteries was conferred upon a bad man; nor of any man violating the secrets of the inner temples of the Eleusirians. This gives rise to the hope that the ideal of this spiritually exalted sect, in the midst of almost universal degeneracy, was not so much that of female supremacy, as of purity; that their ideal included the pure and perfect union of male and female—the only ideal that will, or can, redeem the world to a life of peace and love.
The festivals of Carthage were said to be similar to those of Eleusis. For a period of several days during the time set apart for the festivities, public feasts were prepared in honor of the deific nature of Man, which, it was pointed out, was his prerogative only by virtue of inward purity and strict adherence to high ideals of truth and honor.
Crowning