Jove, Jehova, sun, and moon have all
been male and female by turn."

No doubt many of the inconsistencies hitherto observed in the religion
of the ancients will disappear so soon as we obtain a clearer knowledge
of their chronology; and events which now seem contradictory will be
satisfactorily explained when placed in their proper order with regard
to date. Religion, like everything else, is constantly shifting its
position to accommodate itself to the changed mental conditions of
its adherents; hence, ideas which at any given time in the past were
perfectly suited to a people, would, in the course of five hundred or
one thousand years, have become changed or greatly modified.

During a certain stage in human history "all great women and mythical
ladies were serpents"; but when monumentally or pictorially represented,
they appeared "with the head of a woman, while the body was that of a
reptile." This figure represented Wisdom and Passion, or the spiritual
and material planes of human existence. The mythical woman whom Hercules
met in Scythia, and who was doubtless the original eponymous leader
of the Scythian people, had the head of a woman and the body of a
serpent.(73) Even the Mexicans declare that "he, the serpent, is the
sun, Tonakatl-Koatl, who ever accompanies their first woman." Their
primitive mother, they said, was Kihua-Kohuatl, which signifies a
serpent. In referring to this Mexican tradition, Forlong remarks: "So
that the serpent here was represented as both Adam and Adama; and their
Eden, as in Jewish story, was a garden of love and pleasure."(74)

73) Herodotus, book iv., 9.

74) Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 143.

The traditions extant among all peoples seem to connect the introduction
of the serpent into religious symbolism, with a time in the history of
mankind when they first began to recognize the fact, that through the
abuse of the reproductive functions, evil, or human wretchedness, had
gained the ascendency over the higher forces. The Deity represented by a
woman and a serpent involved the idea not alone of good, but of good and
evil combined. Together they prefigured not only Wisdom and generative
power, but evil as well. Mythologically they represented the cold of
winter and the heat of the sun's rays, both of which were necessary
reproduction. From this conception sprang the Ormuzd and Ahryman of the
Persians, the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent in Genesis, and the
lege