earlier age in Thrace and on the banks of the Ganges.
In referring to the Idean Zeus in Crete, to Demeter at Eleusis,
to the Cabairi in Samothrace, and Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes,
Grote observes: "That they were all to a great degree analogous,
is shown by the way in which they necessarily run together and
become confused in the minds of various authors."
Concerning Sadi, Sadim, or Shaddai, Higgins remarks:
"Parkhurst tells us it means all-bountiful--the pourer forth of
blessings; among the Heathen, the Dea Multimammia; in fact the
Diana of Ephesus, the Urania of Persia, the Jove of Greece,
called by Orpheus the Mother of the Gods, each male as well as
female--the Venus Aphrodite; in short, the genial powers of
Nature."
To which Higgins adds: "And I maintain that it means the figure
which is often found in collections of ancient statues, most
beautifully executed, and called the Hermaphrodite."
As in the old language there was no neuter gender, the gods must
always appear either as female or male. For apparent reasons, in
all the translations, through the pronouns and adjectives used,
the more important ancient deities have all been made to appear
as males.
By at least two ancient writers Jupiter is called the Mother of
the Gods. In reference to a certain Greek appellation, Bryant
observes that it is a masculine name for a feminine deity--a name
which is said to be a corruption of Mai, the Hindoo Queen of
Heaven.
In process of time, as the world became more and more
masculinized, so important did it become that the male should
occupy the more exalted place in the Deity, that even the Great
Mother of the Gods, as we have seen, is represented as male.
The androgynous or plural form of the ancient Phoenician God
Aleim, the Creator referred to in the opening chapter of Genesis,
is clearly apparent. This God, speaking to his counterpart,
Wisdom, the female energy, says: "Let us make man in our own
image, in our own likeness," and accordingly males and females
are produced. By those whose duty it has been in the past to
prove that the Deity here represented is composed only of the
masculine attributes, we are given to understand that God was
really "speaking to himself," and that in his divine cogitations
excessive modesty dictated the "polite form of speech"; he did
