Sex--The Unknown Quantity: The Spiritual Function of Sex. Alexander J. McIvor-Tyndall

and the gender of this monistic God as masculine betrays the domination of phallicism over yoni worship and also over that of the two principles in conjunction—the bi-une Deity. The tree is universally accepted as an emblem of life-energy. The upright shape of the tree; the sap which rises at certain periods from invisible sources; and the fact that the germinal power of the seeds of the fruits and trees is not destroyed by eating; all combined to make the tree symbolical of eternal life. The tree is either male or female, except in certain instances where it is, like the lotus, androgynous, such for example as the ash, which is the "sacred" tree of Scandinavia. Wherever a plant or a tree is found to be bi-sexual, it has been regarded as "sacred." The same idea is found throughout all myths, and all religious symbolism, namely: the attainment of god-hood is reached when both sexes are united in one Being.

      The fuller meaning of this symbolical idea will be considered in a subsequent chapter; but for the present we are concerned with the history of sex-degradation from the pure ideal of nature worship to that of a monistic God whose gender is masculine. The pine tree, held sacred in many countries as a symbol of generation, and from which our own Christmas-tree is descended, is distinctively a male emblem, and its perennial green typifies the hope of Man that he too may manifest, in some form of life, the never-failing virility of the pine. The Latin name for the pine is pinus.

      Thus from nature worship to phallic worship was but a step, but that step led to others. The pine, from the fact of its erect form; its spiral convolutions; its sap; its fruit; its renewal of activity; its root and veins; became a universally accepted emblem of the life-energy in man and in animals, and the gradual substitution of the male principle alone, for the androgynous idea as a symbol of Deity contributed to the idea of the inferiority of woman, until she finally became the slave and the plaything of man. The "virgin of the spheres," from her exalted mission as the Eternal Mother of the race, became at best but a secondary personality, and finally was refused any part in the symbol of the Holy Trinity.

      Instead of father, mother and child, the Holy Trinity became "Father, Son and—Holy Ghost."

      The early Romans must have been devoid of a sense of humor. But what of our modern Christian creeds, and their idea of the Holy Trinity composed of three male beings?

      It is in Christian Science alone of all the modern creeds that the female principle is given a place co-equal with the male. Christian Science addresses the Deity as "Father-Mother-God," and their reverence for the woman who established the creed, as well as the Ionian type of architecture employed in their church edifices, are evidences of the re-establishment of the female principle in the God-idea. Christian Science is one of the most important instruments of the cosmic law in the present-day dethronement of the male principle as the only true God.

      So permeated with this male God-idea is every branch of our modern thought; so enwrapped with the glamour of worship, that we hardly notice the one-sidedness of the ideal. Tradition is a powerful hypnotist.

      Many members of the Masonic fraternity fail utterly to understand the symbolical language of their mosques and the phallic and yoni emblems which constitute their decorations. Notable among these emblems are the pomegranate; the lotus; the circle; the crescent; the swastika. The cone-shaped towers, that rise above the mosques, with their protruding heads, vein-tipped; the central symbol identical with the mound of Venus; denote the preservation of the Egyptian ideal, which venerated both sexes as co-equal. It is easy to realize why the Jews were driven out of Egypt when we remember that they refused to worship the Egyptian ideal of God as bi-sexual, but persisted in rearing the phallic symbol alone, denying the female principle a place in the God-head.

      It is also significant that side by side with the present-day Feminist Movement we find the revival of Egyptian fashions; Egyptian architecture; Egyptian philosophies and religions. Even Cubist art, which in itself could make no possible appeal to recognition on its artistic merits, has been received with much publicity, if not with acclaim. Cubist art is a lineal descendant of Egyptian art, and so closely resembles its far-off ancestry as to seem to have bridged the centuries and connected us as if by telephone with the days of ancient civilization. Our drama and our popular songs have responded to the Egyptian thought-wave. Talismanic jewelry, so essentially Egyptian, is in vogue, and on every sign board advertising breakfast foods, tobacco and what not (so essentially an American custom) we find the modernized use of Egyptian symbols, notably the swastika.

      The swastika, the earliest form of the cross, found in every country and in every out-of-the-way corner of the globe, is fundamentally, originally and pre-eminently a bi-une sex symbol, and although volumes have in recent years been written on its history and meaning, the whole story may be summed up by examining its form and by realizing its antiquity and its universality.

      The two sex principles, joined in the center of the four arms or legs, of the cross, accomplish that which is said (and truthfully if taken on the physical plane only) to be impossible of accomplishment—they square the circle. A circle is emblematical of completeness. Aum, the Absolute, the Omniscient, is always typified by a circle. To "square the circle" means esoterically to have reached godhood, and this can be accomplished only by the male and female united in spirit. The swastika is essentially a bi-une sex symbol although it has been sometimes called male and sometimes female, according to its shape, which varies with the various meanings ascribed to it. Primitive man was not prolific in language, and one symbol expressed many ideas according to its varied form and position.