Part 2 (1/2)
The symbol of the Eucharist, occupying as it does an important place in a religious system which is otherwise essentially masculine, is one of the many evidences of the persistence of Truth. For approximately four thousand years, phallic wors.h.i.+p has predominated over the earlier ideal, which was embodied in the ”virgin of the spheres,” the emblem of the Female Principle as eternal motherhood; and in the sacred character of androgynous plants and flowers, which were characterized as feminine, such, for example, as the lily, the lotus, and the fleur de lis. These flowers are still regarded as more or less sacred, and they are called feminine, although really androgynous.
The lotus, long held sacred because of its androgynous character, has been regarded as typical of the One Perfect One, because it is supposed that the lotus reproduces itself without the male pollen. But close examination of the flower will show that the little seed-vessel in the center of the flower is shaped like a pine cone, in which are tiny cells too small to let out the seeds as occurs in most plant and seed life; these tiny seeds having no outlet, shoot when ripe into new plants, the bulb of the plant being the matrix or womb of the new life. Thus it is evident, that although the two s.e.xes are not as p.r.o.nounced in the lotus as in the lily, yet the bulb and the cone are both present in the lotus, making the plant bi-s.e.xual, and not feminine alone.
Our modern Easter festival, in which the lily is recognized as the representative par excellence of the renewal of abundant life and energy, the ”sacred” flower, is a tribute to the Feminine Principle in the Deity, as the lily like the lotus is called feminine, although in reality bi-s.e.xual.
The lily and the Eucharist have survived the centuries in which the male principle has dominated, as the one true and only G.o.d--the giver of life, the energizing power of Creation--and the lily and the Eucharist are both representative of the Female principle.
Historians mark the beginning of the wors.h.i.+p of the _One True G.o.d_, defined philosophically as the ”Monistic” G.o.d-idea, from the building of the tower of Babel, and we may here note in pa.s.sing that in the earliest references to this tower, there is no allusion to anything suggestive of ”confusion of tongues.” The name unquestionably came from ”babil” meaning ”the gate of G.o.d.” Thus only is its meaning obvious, and consistent with the wors.h.i.+p of the lingam and phallus which obtained at that time. It is also evident that the phallic wors.h.i.+ppers borrowed the simile of ”the gate of G.o.d” from the wors.h.i.+ppers of the yoni, who based their claim to truth upon the indisputable fact, that out of the womb comes the life of plant, and animal, and man.
The architecture of, and the inscriptions on, the tower of Babel show conclusively that it was a monument to the victory of the phallic wors.h.i.+ppers over the yoni, proving that the ”one true and only G.o.d”
was male. From that time also G.o.d has been alluded to as ”He,”
although in the Oriental countries, and particularly among the Hindus, we find repeated allusions to the Deity as ”The Divine Mother,” and all the higher qualities are spoken of as feminine. It is because of this fact also, that we note the spread of Oriental religions and philosophies in this day of Woman's uprising. The Orientals retained the divinity of the female principle in theory, but not in fact.
s.e.x-wors.h.i.+p is contemptuously alluded to in modern literature as ”strange and erotic ideas,” or words equally condemnatory. But this is an absurd stand, since nothing could be more natural than that the mystery of Creative Life should arouse our interest and our wonder; and it certainly ought to enlist our highest reverence. It becomes erotic only when men fail to wors.h.i.+p in ”spirit and in truth,” and when the letter of the ideal survives, and the spirit is ignored. It becomes not only erotic but destructive when it involves a fight for supremacy between the male and the female. When the spirit of union shall prevail, which it must in a perfected world, no higher form of religious aspiration can be imagined than that in which the miracle of birth is reverenced and idealized. Then, and not until then, will the family be what it should be, and Love, the one and only true G.o.d, be wors.h.i.+pped.
The trinity in unity has been a widespread and persistent part of all religions, from which fact we may logically infer that this ideal has a permanent place in the sum of human knowledge. Truth is often obscured, but it can never be hidden from the eyes that are seeking the light. The rightful interpretation of those ancient and obscured truths, erroneously cla.s.sified as ”myths” and ”superst.i.tions,” will reveal a universal truth, and will also show their relation to modern concepts.
But while we note a vague recognition of the female element in all our modern religious systems, the general acceptance of the G.o.d-idea as monistic and the gender of this monistic G.o.d as masculine betrays the domination of phallicism over yoni wors.h.i.+p and also over that of the two principles in conjunction--the bi-une Deity. The tree is universally accepted as an emblem of life-energy. The upright shape of the tree; the sap which rises at certain periods from invisible sources; and the fact that the germinal power of the seeds of the fruits and trees is not destroyed by eating; all combined to make the tree symbolical of eternal life. The tree is either male or female, except in certain instances where it is, like the lotus, androgynous, such for example as the ash, which is the ”sacred” tree of Scandinavia. Wherever a plant or a tree is found to be bi-s.e.xual, it has been regarded as ”sacred.” The same idea is found throughout all myths, and all religious symbolism, namely: _the attainment of G.o.d-hood is reached when both s.e.xes are united in one Being._
The fuller meaning of this symbolical idea will be considered in a subsequent chapter; but for the present we are concerned with the history of s.e.x-degradation from the pure ideal of nature wors.h.i.+p to that of a monistic G.o.d whose gender is masculine. The pine tree, held sacred in many countries as a symbol of generation, and from which our own Christmas-tree is descended, is distinctively a male emblem, and its perennial green typifies the hope of Man that he too may manifest, in some form of life, the never-failing virility of the pine. The Latin name for the pine is pinus.
Thus from nature wors.h.i.+p to phallic wors.h.i.+p was but a step, but that step led to others. The pine, from the fact of its erect form; its spiral convolutions; its sap; its fruit; its renewal of activity; its root and veins; became a universally accepted emblem of the life-energy in man and in animals, and the gradual subst.i.tution of the male principle alone, for the androgynous idea as a symbol of Deity contributed to the idea of the inferiority of woman, until she finally became the slave and the plaything of man. The ”virgin of the spheres,” from her exalted mission as the Eternal Mother of the race, became at best but a secondary personality, and finally was refused any part in the symbol of the Holy Trinity.
Instead of father, mother and child, the Holy Trinity became ”Father, Son and--Holy Ghost.”
The early Romans must have been devoid of a sense of humor. But what of our modern Christian creeds, and their idea of the Holy Trinity composed of three male beings?
It is in Christian Science alone of all the modern creeds that the female principle is given a place co-equal with the male. Christian Science addresses the Deity as ”Father-Mother-G.o.d,” and their reverence for the woman who established the creed, as well as the Ionian type of architecture employed in their church edifices, are evidences of the re-establishment of the female principle in the G.o.d-idea. Christian Science is one of the most important instruments of the cosmic law in the present-day dethronement of the male principle as the only true G.o.d.
So permeated with this male G.o.d-idea is every branch of our modern thought; so enwrapped with the glamour of wors.h.i.+p, that we hardly notice the one-sidedness of the ideal. Tradition is a powerful hypnotist.
Many members of the Masonic fraternity fail utterly to understand the symbolical language of their mosques and the phallic and yoni emblems which const.i.tute their decorations. Notable among these emblems are the pomegranate; the lotus; the circle; the crescent; the swastika.
The cone-shaped towers, that rise above the mosques, with their protruding heads, vein-tipped; the central symbol identical with the mound of Venus; denote the preservation of the Egyptian ideal, which venerated both s.e.xes as co-equal. It is easy to realize why the Jews were driven out of Egypt when we remember that they refused to wors.h.i.+p the Egyptian ideal of G.o.d as bi-s.e.xual, but persisted in rearing the phallic symbol alone, denying the female principle a place in the G.o.d-head.
It is also significant that side by side with the present-day Feminist Movement we find the revival of Egyptian fas.h.i.+ons; Egyptian architecture; Egyptian philosophies and religions. Even Cubist art, which in itself could make no possible appeal to recognition on its artistic merits, has been received with much publicity, if not with acclaim. Cubist art is a lineal descendant of Egyptian art, and so closely resembles its far-off ancestry as to seem to have bridged the centuries and connected us as if by telephone with the days of ancient civilization. Our drama and our popular songs have responded to the Egyptian thought-wave. Talismanic jewelry, so essentially Egyptian, is in vogue, and on every sign board advertising breakfast foods, tobacco and what not (so essentially an American custom) we find the modernized use of Egyptian symbols, notably the swastika.
The swastika, the earliest form of the cross, found in every country and in every out-of-the-way corner of the globe, is fundamentally, originally and pre-eminently a bi-une s.e.x symbol, and although volumes have in recent years been written on its history and meaning, the whole story may be summed up by examining its form and by realizing its antiquity and its universality.
The two s.e.x principles, joined in the center of the four arms or legs, of the cross, accomplish that which is said (and truthfully if taken on the physical plane only) to be impossible of accomplishment--they square the circle. A circle is emblematical of completeness. Aum, the Absolute, the Omniscient, is always typified by a circle. To ”square the circle” means esoterically to have reached G.o.dhood, and this can be accomplished only by the male and female _united_ in spirit. The swastika is essentially a bi-une s.e.x symbol although it has been sometimes called male and sometimes female, according to its shape, which varies with the various meanings ascribed to it. Primitive man was not prolific in language, and one symbol expressed many ideas according to its varied form and position.
The original form of oath was to swear by the sacred power of the generative organs, and we may readily conclude that this power was conceded to be vested in the male only, from the fact that we still ”testify” when under oath and although the Bible has been subst.i.tuted for the generative organs, as an outward expression of our recognition of the Creative Principle, we note that the Bible is made up of ”testaments,” which stand for its ”sacredness.”
Evidently it was only after the advent of the male G.o.d that oaths and vows and pledges were necessary. Previous to that time, a man's word was reliable. It was inevitable that an ideal of the Supreme Creative power of the universe so one-sided, and so lacking in the essential of union, must degenerate into mere licentiousness and animalism; and it is estimated that about six hundred years B.C. the level of debauchery and vileness reigned. So-called religious rites and ceremonies were nothing more than orgies of s.e.x-degradation.
The ideal of G.o.dhood as nothing higher than masculine virility and power evidenced by the number of his progeny, naturally reduced woman to the lowest depths of slavery, since she was nothing more than a receptacle for man's seed. Of course one wife was insufficient and a man's claim to divinity was best expressed by profligacy--an ideal which is rife even today among those, whose consciousness is bounded by nothing higher than the conception of the animal nature of man.
Whence came this wonderful thing manifested as generative power? What did it feed upon? These were natural queries. In seeking the answer the idea originated that in the blood was to be found the secret of the generative fluid. This idea arose from the evidence that as old age conquered man's physical strength, his blood became weakened and the supply insufficient.
This was accompanied by a loss of generative activity, and thus, they argued, the power that made man G.o.d-like (the creative energy) left him. This was indeed a calamity greater than we in this generation realize, although we know that old age with consequent cessation of physical vigor is the dread enemy of the undeveloped man. Even our supposedly advanced thinkers have the absurd idea that s.e.xual-energy dies with the physical body. The few who have risen to the place where they realize the truths made plain by soul-consciousness, know that old age is but physical; that it is the vacation time between the functions of physical activity and that of the soul-life. Old age is the wise provision of the Cosmic Law which compels those who will not do so of their own volition and wisdom, to trans.m.u.te the life-energy into higher channels. If the race knew enough to consciously trans.m.u.te the creative s.e.x-energy into an interior function, there would come to pa.s.s the time prophecied by St. Paul when Man shall consciously ”lay down his body and take it up again.”