Alluding to this subject, an anonymous writer, believed to be a Roman Catholic priest, some sixteen years ago, said:—“The primitive doctrine that God created man in his own image, male and female, and consequently that the divine nature comprised the two sexes within itself, fulfils all the conditions requisite to constitute a catholic theological dogma, inasmuch as it may truly be affirmed of it, that it has been held ‘semper, ubique, et ab omnibus,’ being universal as the phenomenon to which it owes its existence.
“How essential to the consistency of the Catholic system is this doctrine of duality you may judge by the shortcomings of the theologies which reject it. Unitarianism blunders alike in regard to the Trinity and the Duality. Affecting to see in God a Father, it denies him the possibility of having either spouse or offspring. More rational than such a creed as this was the primitive worship of sex, as represented by the male and female principles in nature. In no gross sense was the symbolism of such a system conceived, gross as its practice may have become, and as it would appear to the notions of modern conventionalism. For no religion is founded upon intentional depravity. Searching back for the origin of life, men stopped at the earliest point to which they could trace it, and exalted the reproductive organs into symbols of the Creator. The practice was at least calculated to procure respect for a side of nature liable under an exclusively spiritual regime to be relegated to undue contempt.
“It appears certain that the names of the Hebrew deity bear the sense I have indicated; El, the root of Elhoim, the name under which God was known to the Israelites prior to their entry into Canaan, signifying the masculine sex only; while Jahveh, or Jehovah, denotes both sexes in combination. The religious rites practised by Abraham and Jacob prove incontestably their adherence to this, even then, ancient mode of symbolising deity; and though after the entry into Canaan, the leaders and reformers of the Israelites strove to keep the people from exchanging the worship of their own divinity for that of the exclusively feminine principle worshipped by the Canaanites with unbridled licence under the name of Ashera, yet the indigenous religion became closely incorporated with the Jewish; and even Moses himself fell back upon it when, yielding to a pressing emergency, he gave his sanction to the prevailing Tree and Serpent worship by his elevation of a brazen serpent upon a pole or cross. For all portions of this structure constitute the most universally accepted symbols of sex in the world.
“It is to India that we must go for the earliest traces of these things. The Jews originated nothing, though they were skilful appropriators and adapters of other men’s effects. Brahma, the first person in the Hindoo Triad, was the original self-existent being, inappreciable by sense, who commenced the work of creation by creating the waters with a thought, as described in the Institutes of Manu. The waters, regarded as the source of all subsequent life, became identified with the feminine principle in nature—whence the origin of the mystic rite of baptism—and the atmosphere was the divine breath or spirit. The description in Genesis of the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, indicates the influence upon the Jews of the Hindoo theogony to which they had access through Persia.
“The twofold name of Jehovah also finds a correspondence in the Arddha-Nari, or incarnation of Brahma, who is represented in sculptures as containing in himself the male and female organisms. And the worship of the implements of fecundity continues popular in India to this day. The same idea underlies much of the worship of the ancient Greeks, finding expression in the symbols devoted to Apollo or the sun, and in their androgynous sculptures. Aryan, Scandinavian, and Semitic religions were alike pervaded by it, the male principle being represented by the sun, and the female by the moon, which was variously personified by the virgins, Ashtoreth or Astarte, Diana, and others, each of whom, except in the Scandinavian mythology, where the sexes are reversed, had the moon for her special symbol. Similarly, the allegory of Eden finds one of its keys in the phenomena of sex, as is demonstrated by the ancient Syrian sculptures of Ashera, or the Grove; and ‘the tree of life in the midst of the garden’ forms the point of departure for beliefs which have lasted thousands of years, and which have either spread from one source over, or been independently originated in, every part of the habitable globe.”[20]
It is evident that this worship is of the most extremely ancient character and that it was based originally upon ideas that had nothing gross and debasing in them. It is true that it at various times assumed indelicate forms and was associated with much that was of the most degrading character, but the first idea was only to use for religious purposes that which seemed the most apt emblem of creation and regeneration. “Is it strange,” asks a lady writer, “that they regarded with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure thus to regard it? Or, are we impure that we do not so regard it? Let us not smile at their mode of tracing the infinite and incomprehensible cause throughout all the mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity.”
It became with this very much as it does with all symbolism, more or less, that is to say from the worship of that which was symbolised, it degenerated to the worship of the emblem itself.
But the ancient Egyptians exerted themselves considerably to restrain within certain bounds of propriety the natural tendency of this worship and we find them allowing it to embrace only the masculine side of humanity, afterwards, as was perhaps only to be expected, the feminine was introduced. Then, as particularly exhibited in the case of India, it gradually became nothing more or less than a vehicle for satisfying the licentious desires of the most degrading of both sexes.
It is wonderful, however, the extraordinary hold these ideas attained upon the human mind, whether they entered into the religious conceptions of the people, or pandered to vicious desires under the mere cloak of religion. The Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy (four books relative to Starry Influences), speaking of the countries India, Ariana, Gedrosia, Parthia, Media, Persia, Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, says:—“Many of them practise divination, and devote their genitals to their divinities because the familiarity of these planets renders them very libidinous.”
Nor must we forget the peculiar sacredness with which in the early Jewish Church these organs were always regarded,—that is, the male organs. Injury of them disqualified the unfortunate victim from ministering in the congregation of the Lord, and the severest punishment was meted out to the criminal who should be guilty of causing such injury. Thus in the book of Deuteronomy, chap. xxv., 11, 12, we read:—“When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.” And this was not to be an act of revenge on the part of the injured man, but was to be the legal penalty duly enforced by the civil magistrate. It is very extraordinary, for it appears that such an injury inflicted upon an enemy—and evidently it meant the disablement of the man from the act of sexual intercourse—was regarded as even more serious than the actual taking of life in self-defence. The degradation attached to the man thus mutilated was greater than could otherwise be visited upon him—all respect for him vanished and he was henceforward regarded as an abomination.