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 worship 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 worship 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 worship of the lingam and phallus which obtained at that time. It is also evident that the phallic worshippers borrowed the simile of "the gate of G.o.d" from the worshippers 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 worshippers 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-worship 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 worship 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 worshipped.
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 worship 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 worship 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 worship to phallic worship 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 worship, 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 worship 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 fashions; 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."
There are spiritually advanced men and women today who can consciously leave the physical body as they do the house in which they live, while they visit distant places, annihilating s.p.a.ce. To these the body is no more than a garment. Thus death is overcome and the knowledge attained that we are souls using a physical body; that death does not in itself confer upon any one either immortality or youth or love, but that these may be acquired by acts of virtue and unselfish service--not as payment or reward for unwilling work, but as the result of unfailing law, which gives what we demand.
What we demand we naturally work for. If we serve Love, we get the coin in which Love pays as naturally as we get the checks signed by Jones when we work for Jones, and by Smith when we work for Smith.
Death merely discloses our interior nature. If we have failed to trans.m.u.te the life-energy into a love that is deeper than mere animal instinct; if we have missed the beautiful and the pure and the lofty idealism of Love, we will find ourselves as age-worn after death as before the change. But again we may note a wise provision of the Cosmic Law, for it is almost impossible for a human being to live through many years of life without having loved some person or some thing with at least a spark of unselfish love. Fortunately almost every one is better interiorly than he appears to our limited vision.
The most depraved of mortals has his moments of the higher vision.
From this deduction of inquiring primitive man, namely that the blood was the source of procreative virility, it is easy to trace the logical result in the terrible practise of blood-sacrifice which reigned so long and which, carried from one nation to another, and engrafted into the G.o.d-idea, has come down to us in the story of the "sacrificial lamb," at length personified in Jesus, the Son of G.o.d, as a final act of propitiation.
The blood-atonement idea is naturally repulsive to civilized beings, and were it not that nearly every one who adheres to the old form of orthodox Christianity swallows theologic interpretation of the Bible as he would swallow a dose of castor-oil, by closing his eyes and holding his nose, the teaching as thus interpreted would be stopped by police authority. And yet we may readily trace the gradual descent of the G.o.d-idea of the ancients until it reached the culmination in the idea of sacrifice of a son of G.o.d Himself.
In their blind but eager groping for some means of escape from death, even as we of this day and generation are groping, the early races observed that birth was accompanied by blood; that as age came on and the blood became thin, and in the case of the female ceased to flow at certain reproductive periods, the power of generation ceased. What more natural to primitive man than that he should conceive the idea of sending back to this unknown and invisible power behind the veil of the sky the blood, which he must need to supply his creative energies?
And when the sacrifice of animals was not sufficient for this G.o.d, they concluded that it must be because he required the blood of man.
And so at first the old and the sick and the deformed were sacrificed; but as it was seen that this did not answer the need, they began to sacrifice the young, and naturally the slaves were subst.i.tuted for the aged, as affording more blood; and when this failed the idea came, that the sacrifice must be that of one who was innocent of the world, and so they selected a girl or a young man, who had been secluded and trained to the thought of sacrifice, and in whom the s.e.x-function had been rigorously suppressed.
And still the old grew bloodless and death claimed his toll, and so they conceived the idea of voluntary blood-sacrifice, and we read of repeated occasions in which fanatical ones offered themselves freely on the sacrificial altars as atonement for the sins of their people.
At length this contagion of sacrifice consummated in the idea that the only Son of G.o.d Himself became a voluntary offering to pay the final debt of transgression and set men free from death, that they might have eternal life, which to them meant life in the physical body.
It is not at all possible that Jesus had any such idea of his mission.
He was far too illumined for that, even judging from the meager accounts which we have of his life and message. But when the story of his mission on earth came to be told and retold the idea of blood-sacrifice as _payment_ for the privilege of physical virility, so implanted in the race-thought from centuries of such belief, could not die immediately, and thus it reaches us today adown the centuries and is re-told (though we trust not believed) in most of the Christian churches in this civilized century.
And yet there is an esoteric truth underlying this universal idea of sacrifice, and when we come to this in a subsequent chapter, we will better understand how and why it has persisted throughout the centuries.
CHAPTER III
PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS: THE COSMIC CAUSE
From the study of ancient s.e.x-worship to our twentieth century systems of religion; our scientific discoveries; our intellectual standards of philosophy and social ethics; and above all, perhaps, our marvelous commercial order, connecting, as it does, the entire globe, seems a far cry; but it is only another link in a chain and fits into the past as accurately and as inevitably as the morning follows the night.
There is an erroneous idea current that public inst.i.tutions, such as law-courts, religious creeds, educational systems, reform movements, et cetera, are causes of race-advancement. As a matter of fact they are not causes but results. They do not determine progress; they reflect it.
Causes start from the Center and radiate outward. We may realize this more readily if we will remember that if we throw a pebble into a pool of water, it starts innumerable little waves which traveling outward, reach a point some distance from the central source, and if we were to see the outermost wavelet only, we might imagine that the disturbance begins and ends far from the place where the pebble was thrown.
This ill.u.s.tration explains the difference between the materialistic and the metaphysical points of view. The former notes the result, and the latter the cause of existing conditions. The mystical viewpoint takes into account the fact that there is a cosmic law which acts like a tidal-wave. Materialists call the action of this law "Evolution,"
a.s.suming that its impetus comes from our physical activities. It is, in fact, from the Center or spiritual source of life that all power, all evolution, emanates. The spiritual is the intensity of power; the physical is the attenuated.
The term, "spiritual realms" suggests to the average mind a vaporous s.p.a.ce where nothing happens; yet it requires only a little intelligent reflection to establish the fact that, as Paracelsus said long ago, "The mind is the workshop in which all visible life is formed." Our mental operations are silently, invisibly, carried on, and yet we see the effect of these silent plans and ideas in our noisy methods of locomotion; our architecture; our commerce--in all the avenues of our active civilization.
We wish to emphasize the point that every so-called advancement; every discovery; every improvement in moral ideals as well as in mechanics, and in those things that add to our physical comfort, comes from the center of Life.
The external but _reflects_ the action of the Cosmic Law which uncovers the vast areas of consciousness and frees the human soul from the hypnotisms, and the limitations of the animal-mind.
Animal force is still strong in the world to-day, but it is not as strong as it appears to be, because much of the seeming indifference and cold-heartedness of the people, taken en ma.s.se, is due to the hurried, feverish and insistent demands of our external life.