asses 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 by which
the great universal f