problem of the origin of life on the earth led these people to
contemplate with the profoundest reverence all the visible
objects which were believed to affect human destiny. Hence both
the pyramid and the tower served a double purpose, first, as
emblems of the Deity worshipped, and, second, as monuments for
the study of the heavenly bodies with which their religious ideas
were so intimately connected.
While comparing the early emblems which prefigure the primitive
elements in the god-idea, Hargrave Jennings observes:
"In the conveyance of certain ideas to those who contemplate it,
the pyramid boasts of prouder significance, and impresses with a
hint of still more impenetrable mystery. We seem to gather dim
supernatural ideas of the mighty Mother of Nature . . . that
almost two-sexed entity, without a name--She of the Veil which is
never to be lifted, perhaps not even by the angels, for their
knowledge is limited. In short, this tremendous abstraction,
Cybele, Ideae, Mater, Isiac controller of the Zodiacs, whatever
she may be, has her representative in the half-buried Sphinx even
to our own day, watching the stars although nearly swallowed up
in the engulphing sands."[58]
[58] Phallicism, p. 25.
From the time when the two religious elements began to separate
in the minds of the people, the prophets, seers, and priestesses
of the old religion, those who continued to worship the Virgin
and Child, had prophesied that a mortal woman, a virgin, would,
independently of the male principle, bring forth a child, the
fulfilment of which prophecy would vindicate the ancient faith
and forever settle the dispute relative to the superiority of the
female in the office of reproduction. Thus would the woman
"bruise the serpent's head." In process of time not only
Yonigas, but Lingajas as well, came to accept the doctrine of the
incarnation of the sun in the bodies of earthly virgins. By
Lingaites, however, it was the seed of the woman and not the
woman herself who was to conquer evil. Finally, with the
increasing importance of the male in human society, it is
observed that a reconciliation has been effected between the
female worshippers and those of the male. Athene herself has
acquiesced in the doctrine of male superiority.
Thalat, the great Chaldean Deity, who presided over Chaos prior
to the existence of organized matter, is finally transformed into
a male God. The Hindoo Vishnu, who as she slept on the bottom of
