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
