ia and of Persia, became mingled and confused in a simple
demonology."[21]

In addition to the condemnation of Pagan deities and their ritualistic
worship, there was a force inherent in the very nature of Christianity
which worked toward the degradation of the sex life. After the death of
Christ, his followers had divorced their thoughts from all things
earthly and set about fitting themselves for their places in the other
world. The thought of the early Christian sects was obsessed by the idea
of the second coming of the Messiah. The end of the world was incipient,
therefore it behooved each and every one to purge himself from sin. This
emphasis on the spiritual as opposed to the fleshly became fixated
especially on the sex relationship, which came to be the symbol of the
lusts of the body which must be conquered by the high desires of the
soul. Consequently the feelings concerning this relation became
surcharged with all the emotion which modern psychology has taught us
always attaches to the conscious symbol of deeply underlying unconscious
complexes. In such a situation man, who had come to look with horror on
the being who reminded him that he was flesh as well as spirit saw in
her "the Devil's gateway," or "a fireship continually striving to get
along side the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces."[22][A]

[Footnote A: Dr Donaldson, translator of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, says:
"I used to believe ... that woman owes her present position to
Christianity ... but in the first three centuries I have not been able
to see that Christianity had any favourable effect on the position of
woman."]

With the rejection of the idea of the sanctity of sex as embodied in the
phallic rituals of the pagan cults, the psychic power of woman became
once more a thing of fear rather than of worship, and her uncleanness
was emphasized again more than her holiness, even as in primitive times.
The power of woman to tell the course of future events which in other
days had made her revered as priestess and prophetess now made her hated
as a witch who had control of what the Middle Ages knew as the Black
Art.[23] The knowledge of medicine which she had acquired through the
ages was now thought to be utilized in the making of "witch's brew," and
the "ceremonies and charms whereby the influence of the gods might be
obtained to preserve or injure"[21: v.1, p.12] became incantations to the
evil one. In addition to her natural erotic attrac