Dioecy

“ Various temple officials impersonated the gods on certain occasions, and these were implored, invoked or praised as the living representative of the deity. But more frequently the animal sacred to the god was brought out and worshipped—not for himself, but for the deity he represented. ”

“ This deity remains even in name in the Greek Zeus, and Latin Jupiter, the Heaven-father, both religions keeping up its double sense of sky and sky-god, belonging to the barbaric theology which could see massive life in the over-arching firmament, and could explain that life by an in-dwelling deity, modelled on the human soul. We may best understand what was meant by the Heaven-god, if we think of him as the soul of the sky. Among all the relics of barbaric religion which surround us, few are more striking than the phrases which still recognise as a deity the living sky, as “Heaven forgive me!” ”

“ When the numen-feeling began to pass into that of deus, in the first place a connection was felt between the spirits of the dead and the [57] deities of the earth associated with the growth of the crops, in the second the notion that the underworld must have its gods as well as the world above, produced the shadowy female deities and Vediovis. ”

“ This sevenfold Deity personalization in time and space and to the seven superuniverses enables mortal man to attain the presence of God, who is spirit. This sevenfold Deity, to finite time-space creatures sometime power-personalizing in the Supreme Being, is the functional Deity of the mortal evolutionary creatures of the Paradise-ascension career. ”

“ In the remarkable Babylonian seal, Plate iv., Fig. 8, the deity is represented as uniting in himself the male and the female. On each side is a serpent, as the emblem of the life flowing from the Creator; that on the male side, having round his head the solar glory, is compared to the sun-god, as the active principle in creation; that on the female side, over whose head is the lunar crescent, to the moon- and earth- goddess, the passive principle in creation. ”

“ In this oldest Jupiter of the Latins and Romans, the god of the light and the heaven, and the god invoked in taking the most solemn oaths, we may undoubtedly see not only the great protecting deity of the race, but one, and perhaps the only one, whose worship embodies a distinct moral conception. ”

“ The antiquity of our former worship is still venerable in my eyes. The prayers of the priests of our new religion have wrought no miraculous interference in our behalf: let us therefore imitate the example of the inhabitants of Neveia, and by the force of our invocations hurl the thunders of Jupiter on the barbarian camp! Let us trust for deliverance to the potent interposition of the gods whom our fathers worshipped—those gods who now, perhaps, avenge themselves for our desertion of their temples by our present calamities. ”

“ Of the older mother-right scarcely more than traces remain, survivals from an older alien culture. The goddess is no longer supreme. A new divinity, a sky-god, or sun-god, or manifestation of light or brightness had already appeared—the Greek Zeus, Latin Ju-piter, with the same root appearing in all the languages. The earth-goddess is not banished, but remains as consort [Pg 252] of the male divinity. The supreme divinity of the religious cult is no longer local. ”

“ It is probable that objects belonging to or dedicated to deities were not originally worshipped—they were held as divine in consequence of their being possessed or used by a deity, like the bow of Merodach, placed in the heavens as a constellation, etc. The cities where the gods dwelt on earth, their temples, their couches, the chariot of the sun in his temple-cities, and everything existing in connection with their worship, were in all probability regarded as divine simply in so far as they belonged to a god. ”

“ The deities resembled men also in form, but they were, with some exceptions, of majestic stature and shone with celestial beauty. They could render themselves invisible at will, and were otherwise endowed with supernatural powers. There was this restraint upon their wonder-working gifts: no divinity was permitted to reverse the act of another. For example, when an offended god subjected a mortal to some cruel transformation, no other deity, not even Jupiter himself, could undo the spell. ”

“ We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems as well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, and modern Varānes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names. ”

“ But when the Seven Master Spirits vacate their individual seats of personal power and superuniverse authority and assemble about the Conjoint Actor in the triune presence of Paradise Deity, then and there are they collectively representative of the functional power, wisdom, and authority of undivided Deity—the Trinity—to and in the evolving universes. Such a Paradise union of the primal sevenfold expression of Deity does actually embrace, literally encompass, all of every attribute and attitude of the three eternal Deities in Supremacy and in Ultimacy. ”

“ For our fathers established images and altars, and the maintenance of undying fire, and, generally speaking, everything of the sort, as symbols of the presence of the gods, not that we may regard such things as gods, but that we may worship the gods through them. For since being in the body it was in bodily wise that we must needs perform our service to the gods also, though they are themselves without bodies; they therefore revealed to us in the earliest images the class of gods next in rank to the first, even those that revolve in a circle about the whole heavens. ”

“ These rude sculptures, ever repeated exactly, which represent a female divinity upon the walls of the grottoes of Baye, even prove that the religion of Neolithic times had risen to the height of anthropomorphism. Now, a clearly-defined deity, a god in human form, must have priests that are regularly initiated ”

“ Wherefore, the Divine institution of sacred rites bequeaths the supremely Divine participations to them both--to the soul, indeed, in pure contemplation and in science of the things being done, and to the body, by sanctifying the whole man, as in a figure with the most Divine Muron, and the most holy symbols of the supremely Divine Communion, sanctifying the whole man, and announcing, by purifications of the whole man, that his resurrection will be most complete. ”

“ Probably few among the many millions who worship these various deities know much or anything about their origin, innocently imagining that the Deity they bow allegiance to once manifested itself to some chosen individual, to whom it gave a revelation, the facts of which were handed down to posterity. They little dream of the vast cycles of time that have rolled past since the brain of man attained such a state of perfection as to enable it to evolve the idea of Deity. ”

“ Sometimes this worship was veiled in mysteries, like those of Eleusis. To all these deities temples were erected, and offerings made, sometimes of fruits and flowers, and then of animals. Of all these deities there were legends—sometimes absurd, and these were interwoven with literature and religious solemnities. The details of these fill many a large dictionary, and are to be read in dictionaries, or in poems. Those which pertain to Ceres, to Apollo, to Juno, to Venus, to Minerva, to Mercury, are full of poetic beauty and fascination. ”

“ First, we have a number of deities of the first rank, housed in temples, embodied in statues, and recognised in all the Roman world; next a number of minor divinities whose operations and worship may be remotely rural or otherwise local, and whose functions are by no means always distinguishable from those of the greater gods; then a series of more or less unintelligible ceremonials carried out by ancient rule in honour of divinities often practically forgotten ”

“ And he could at last distinctly picture that Roman clergy which at first is so difficult of comprehension to a French priest, that Government of the Church, represented by the pope, the cardinals, and the prelates, whom the Deity has appointed to govern and administer His mundane possessions—mankind and the earth. They begin by setting that very Deity on one side, in the depths of the tabernacle, and impose whatever dogmas they please as so many essential truths. That the Deity exists is evident, since they govern in His name which is sufficient for everything. ”

“ For, indeed, we may perceive that the properties which are collected in the sun, are every where distributed to subsequent natures constituted in a solar order, that is, to angels, dæmons, souls, animals, plants, and stones. Hence the authors of the ancient priesthood discovered from things apparent the worship of superior powers, while they mingled some things and purified others. ”

“ Many early priests and prophets, both pagan and Christian, were versed in astronomy and astrology; their writings are best understood when read in the light of these ancient sciences. With the growth of man's knowledge of the constitution and periodicity of the heavenly bodies, astronomical principles and terminology were introduced into his religious systems. The tutelary gods were given planetary thrones, the celestial bodies being named after the deities assigned to them. ”

“ In the second and third place, they thus distinguished the deities into those which are beneficial and those that are injurious to mankind. Those which are beneficial they call Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Ceres; those who are mischievous the Dirae, Furies, and Mars. These, which threaten dangers and violence, men endeavor to appease and conciliate by sacred rites. The fourth and the fifth order of gods they assign to things and passions; to passions, Love, Venus, and Desire; the deities that preside over things, Hope, Justice, and Eunomia. ”

“ This happens very readily in a country where, to parody Pope's line, "most deities have no characters at all." On the other hand their numbers are recruited from time to time by new Gods produced by various processes. The same deity, worshipped at different places, comes to be recognized as so many different deities. Horus in ancient Egypt, the Virgin Mary in Italy, and many of the Greek and Roman deities illustrate this principle. ”

“ Directness of Relation—Functions of Priests.—In contrast to all this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the Roman religion—the immediateness of relation between the god and his worshippers. Not only may the individual at any time approach the altar of the god with his prayer or thank-offering, but in every community of persons its religious representative is its natural head. ”

“ Others, without sufficient grounds, have referred the title to the papacy, interpreting the First and Second Beasts as Rome pagan and papal. Another interpretation is that the First Beast is the secular persecuting power, pagan or Christian, and the Second Beast is the sacerdotal persecuting power, pagan and Christian; while still another and better interpretation is that world-force is the first, and world-worship, i. e. world-religion and superstition, the second.477 Symbolist interpreters always prefer the wider to a narrower symbolism in accordance with their general view of the book. ”

“ It is sometimes difficult to determine to which of the two currents of religious thought a particular deity belongs. For example, we find a sword worshipped as a deity. Is it on account of its wonderful cutting property, or because it was once an offering to a nature or a man-deity, and had therefore at length absorbed to itself a portion of his divinity? ”

“ Every nation had its respective gods, over which one more excellent than the rest presided; yet in such a manner that the supreme Deity was himself controlled by the rigid decrees of fate, or by what the philosophers called eternal necessity. The gods of the east were different from those of the Gauls, the Germans, and other northern nations. The Grecian divinities differed from those of the Egyptians, who deified plants, and a great variety of the productions both of nature and art. Each people had also their peculiar manner of worshipping and appeasing their respective deities. ”

“ Why then do we make offerings and sacrifices to the gods, when the gods need nothing and can have nothing added to them? We do so in order to have more communion with the gods. The whole temple service, in fact, is an elaborate allegory, a representation of the divine government of the world. ”

“ The next clue that I propose to follow in our general comparison is the relative prominence of the goddess-cult in the areas that we are surveying. The subject is of importance and interest, partly because it may throw some light on the question of the interdependence of the adjacent religions, partly because it brings into view certain striking facts of religious psychology. A religion without a goddess is liable to differ markedly in tone and colour, and probably in ritual, from those that possess one. ”

“ Nay, their several worshippers could carry their rites along with them in their various sojourns and settlements, and even in Rome build [pg 005] altars, and adore Egyptian, Asiatic, African, or Gallic gods. These various systems agreed all in one point, that they were systems of polytheistic idolatry: they all divided the attributes of the godhead, assigning them to more or fewer objects, and worshipping all these by visible symbols which the power worshipped was deemed to inhabit:2 but they did not make the same division with a mere difference of name ”