at androgynous God of India, a God which is identical in
significance with Aleim, Vesta, and all the other representatives of
the early dual, universal power. "In the old language God was called
Al, Ale, Alue, and Aleim, more frequently Aleim than any other name."
According to the testimony of Higgins, Aleim denotes the feminine
plural. The heathen divinities Ashtaroth and Beelzebub were both called
Aleim, Ashtaroth being simply Astarte adorned with the horns of a ram.
Ishtar not unfrequently appears with the horns of a cow. We are informed
by Inman that whenever a goddess is observed with horns--emblems which
by the way always indicate masculine power--it is to denote the fact
that she is androgynous, or that within her is embodied the complete
Deity--the dual reproductive energy throughout Nature. The "figure
becomes the emblem of divinity and power."(28)

28) Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. i., p. 311.

Mithras--the Savior, the great Persian Deity which was worshipped as the
"Preserver," was both female and male. Among the representations of this
divinity which appear in the Townley collection in the British Museum,
is one in which it is figured in its female character, in the act of
killing the bull. The Divinity Baal was both female and male. The God of
the Jews in an early stage of their career was called Baal. The oriental
Ormuzd was also dual or androgynous.

Orpheus teaches that the divine nature is both female and male.
According to Proclus, Jupiter was an immortal maid, "the Queen of
Heaven, and Mother of the Gods." All things were contained within the
womb of Jupiter. This Virgin within whom was embodied the male principle
"gave light and life to Eve." She was the life-giving, energizing power
in Nature, and was identical with Aleim, Om, Astarte, and others. The
Goddess Esta, or Vesta, or Hestia, whom Plato calls the "soul of the
body of the universe," is believed by Beverly and others to be
the Self-Existent, the Great "She that Is" of the Hindoos, whose
significance is identical with the Cushite or Phoenician Deity, Aleim.

According to Marco Polo, the Chinese had but one supreme God of whom
they had no image, and to whom they prayed for only two things--"a sound
mind in a sound body." They had, however, a lesser god--probably the
same as the "Lord" (masculine) of the Jews, to whom they petitioned for
rain, fair weather, and all the minor accessories of existence. Upon the
walls