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
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