EMPLE OF
MARS, ROME; CAULICULUS OF CORINTHIAN CAP; BULUSTER BY SAN GALLO]

[Illustration 14: EGG AND TONGUE; BEAD AND REEL; BANDED TORUS]

The entire cathedral symbolized the crucified body of Christ; its two
towers, man and woman--that Adam and that Eve for whose redemption
according to current teaching Christ suffered and was crucified. The
north or right-hand tower ("the man's side") was called the sacred
male pillar, Jachin; and the south, or left-hand tower ("the woman's
side"), the sacred female pillar, Boaz, from the two columns flanking
the gate to Solomon's Temple--itself an allegory to the bodily temple.
In only a few of the French cathedrals is this distinction clearly
and consistently maintained, and of these Tours forms perhaps the most
remarkable example, for in its flamboyant facade, over and above the
difference in actual breadth and apparent sturdiness of the two towers
(the south being the more slender and delicate), there is a clearly
marked distinction in the character of the ornamentation, that of the
north tower being more salient, angular, radial--more masculine in
point of fact (Illustration 17). In Notre Dame, the cathedral of
Paris, as in the cathedral of Tours, the north tower is perceptibly
broader than the south. The only other important difference appears to
be in the angular label-mould above the north entrance: whatever may
have been its original function or significance, it serves to define
the tower sexually, so to speak, as effectively as does the beard on
a man's face. In Amiens the north tower is taller than the south, and
more massive in its upper stages. The only traceable indication of
sex in the ornamentation occurs in the spandrels at the sides of the
entrance arches: those of the north tower containing single circles,
and those of the south tower containing two in one. This difference,
small as it may seem, is significant, for in Europe during the Middle
Ages, just as anciently in Egypt and again in Greece--in fact wherever
and whenever the Secret Doctrine was known--sex was attributed to
numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine, and even, as
feminine. Two, the first feminine number, thus became a symbol of
femininity, accepted as such so universally at the time the cathedrals
were built, that two strokes of a bell announced the death of a woman,
three, the death of a man.

[Illustration 15: FRIEZE OF THE FARNESE PALACE; ROMAN CONSOLE. VATICAN
MUSEUM; FRIEZE IN T