are still in use. The masses of the people, however, are without
a knowledge of their origin or early significance.
Everywhere, throughout the early historic nations, were
worshipped symbols of the attributes or functions of the dual or
triune God. Each symbol represented a distinctive female or male
quality. Animals, trees, the sea, plants, the moon, and the
heavens were, at a certain stage of religious development,
symbolized as parts of the Deity and worshipped as possessing
certain female or male characteristics or attributes.
It is plain that, with the decline of female power, and the
consequent stimulation of the animal instincts in man, the pure
creative principles involved in Nature-worship gradually became
unsuited to the sensualized capacities and tastes of the masses;
but in addition to this were other reasons why the female
principle in the Deity should be concealed. Women were already
deposed from their former exalted position as heads of families
and as leaders of consanguine communities. All their rightful
prerogatives had been usurped. The highest development in Nature
had become the slave of man's appetites, and motherhood, which
had hitherto been accepted as the most exalted function either in
heaven or on the earth, trailed in the dust.
Under these conditions it is not perhaps singular that the
capacity to bring forth, and the qualities and attributes of
women which are correlated with it, namely, sympathy--a desire
for the welfare of others outside of self, or altruism,--should
no longer have been worshipped as divine, or that in their place
should have been substituted the leading characters developed in
man. From the facts at hand it is plain that at a certain stage
of human growth physical might and male reproductive energy, or
virility, became the recognized God. With passion as the highest
ideal of a Creator, the female element appeared only in a
sensualized form and simply as an appendage to the god which was
dependent upon her ministrations. Under the above conditions it
is not in the least remarkable that by the priests it should have
been deemed necessary to conceal from women the facts bound up in
their nature. Woman's importance as a creative agency and as a
prime and most essential factor in the universe must be
concealed. "Isis must be veiled."
Through the appropriation of the titles of the original dual God
by reigning monarchs, is perceived at least one of the processes
