when Perceptive Wisdom, or the female energy in the Deity, was
worshipped as the supreme God, is a fact which in time will be
proved beyond a doubt. Indeed, had not the judgment of man
become warped by prejudice, and his reason clogged by
superstition and sensuality, the fact so plainly apparent in all
ancient mythologies, that in the early god-idea two principles
were contained, the female being in the ascendancy, would long
ere this have been acknowledged, and our present religious
systems, which are but outgrowths from these mythologies, would,
with the partial return of civilized conditions, have been so
modified or changed as to embrace some of the fundamental truths
which formed the basis of early religion.
Regarding the religion of the ancient race which we have been
considering, we are told that they worshipped a dual Deity, under
the appellations of Ashtaroth and Baal, and that this God
"comprehended the generative or reproductive powers in human
beings and in the sun, together with Wisdom or Light." In other
words, they adored the great moving force throughout Nature, a
force which they venerated as the Great Mother.
Before the Zend and Sanskrit branches of the Aryan race had
separated, their religion was doubtless that given them by their
Cushite civilizers. The worship of the sun and the planets, with
which were inextricably interwoven the fructifying agencies in
Nature, explains their devotion to the study of the heavenly
bodies and their advanced knowledge of astronomy. The types of
regeneration or reproduction which they venerated were symbols of
abstract principles, and, from facts connected with their
religious ceremonies as practiced by their immediate successors,
and from the pure significance attached to their emblems, we are
justified in the conclusion before referred to, that the sensuous
element, which became so prominent in later religious
developments, constituted no part of their worship.
The number of ages during which the most primitive religion,
namely, that of pure Nature-worship, prevailed among the
inhabitants of the earth may not be conjectured, and the exact
length of time during which earth and sun adoration unalloyed by
serpent and phallic faiths remained is not known. It is
probable, however, that its duration is to be measured by that of
the supremacy of the altruistic or mother element in human
affairs, and that the gradual engrafting of the later-developed
sensuous faiths upon their earlier god-idea, marks the change
