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12. THE SEX OF DEITIES UNDER MONOSEXUAL DOMINANCE

HUMAN beings are either men or women, and those who serve the deities are either priests or priestesses. In like manner, the deities themselves are not neuter beings but sexed; they are either gods or goddesses. The question therefore arises, what influence, if any, monosexual dominance has upon the sex of deities and upon that of their chosen servants. In the case of the deities, we find that there is a uniform tendency which determines their sex under monosexual dominance. It may be formulated as a general law. As soon as a people has advanced sufficiently far to make deities for itself in human form, the inclination is in the Men's State to give the chief place to male divinities and in the Women's State to female divinities.

Except in the case of those deities which are merely symbols of the sexual life, men have a preference for gods and women for goddesses. There are deep-seated psychological causes for these preferences. The spiritual ties that bind men to gods and women to goddesses are duplex. There is more intellectual confidence between two persons of the same sex than between two persons of opposite sexes. This is a psychological law of fundamental importance. The relationship of a human being to a deity is above all one of trust in that deity, and in its essence (except, of course, in the case

of the specifically sexual divinities) it is untinged by sexual feeling. Hence in great emergencies, bodily or mental, a man inclines to turn for help to a god, a woman to a goddess. There is ample evidence to show that this statement is equally true of primitive folk and of civilised peoples. Cook found that in the Society Islands there were deities of both sexes, gods for the men and goddesses for the women. Moreover, the silver tablet recording the peace treaty between Hattusil II, king of the Hittites, and Rameses II shows on one side a picture of the god Sutech embracing the Hittite king and on the other side a picture of the sun-goddess embracing the Hittite queen. We see, then, that in connexion with a matter so important as the signing of a peace treaty, the king was protected by a god, the queen by a goddess.

Extremely instructive in its bearing upon the psychological law we are now considering is the following legend recorded by St. Augustine:— "During the reign of King Cecrops a twofold miracle occurred. Simultaneously there sprouted from the ground an olive-tree, and there burst forth from another place a spring of water. The king, greatly alarmed, sent to Delphi to ask the meaning of the portent and to seek counsel. The god answered that the olive-tree signified Minerva, the water Neptune. It was for the citizens to decide which of the two signs to accept, and after which of the two deities they would name their city. Cecrops thereupon summoned a citizens' meeting, consisting both of men and women, for it was then the custom for the women to take part in the public assemblies. The men voted for Neptune, the women for Minerva." We see that the men were unanimously in favour of a god, and

[1] De Civitate Dei, xviii, 9.

that the women were no less unanimously in favour of a goddess. The incident is typical of the psychological inclinations of the two sexes in their respective relationships of dependence upon gods and upon goddesses.[2]

Cumont[3] gives several instances of the religious predilection of women for goddesses and of men for gods. "Isis and Cybele found in women their most enthusiastic and generous supporters, those who were their most zealous propagandists, whereas the adherents of Mithra were almost exclusively men." Cumont, however, failed to recognise that the sex of the deity determined the preferences of the male and the female devotees. He imagined that the attraction exercised, in the one case upon men, and in the other case upon women, depended upon the nature of the religion. Writing of the cults of Isis and Cybele, he says that they aroused feelings and brought consolations which made them especially congenial to women, whereas men turned rather to Mithra for the sake of the rude discipline his worship imposed. This explanation fails to go to the psychological root of the matter; it is purely superficial. Besides, the worship of Isis in Rome involved a discipline no less rude and onerous than that of the Mithra cult. Juvenal[4] relates that the devotee of Isis had to bathe in mid-winter in the chill waters of

[2] The use of the Latin names by Augustine, Neptune for Poseidon, and Minerva for Pallas Athena, partly conceals the significance of the episode. The influence of the women was preponderant, for the new city was called Athens.—Of course there is another version of the legend. In this, while the olive represents Athena, Poseidon strikes the ground with his trident and a horse emerges. Athena and Poseidon are vying with each other which shall produce a gift more useful to mankind, and the council of the gods decides that the olive is more useful than the horse. Hence the name of Athens is chosen. But perhaps this version is a Men's-State gloss!—TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

[3] Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 1906.

[4] XI, 537.

the Tiber. Shivering with cold, she must then walk on bleeding knees round the temple. At the command of the goddess, she might even have to make a journey to Egypt, to bring back Nile water to the Roman shrine of Isis.

Very characteristic is the fact that the religion of the Magna Mater (Rhea, Cybele) was brought to Rome by women, that is to say through the vaticinations of the sibyls. Herodotus[5] reports that the temple of Athena at Lindos was built by the daughters of Danaos, when they landed there upon their flight. He also tells us that Ladike, the wife of Amasis, when in great trouble, made a vow to a goddess in order to secure a boon. In both cases, therefore, women had recourse to deities of their own sex.

To a large extent men were excluded from the worship of feminine deities. The men of Lapland were not allowed to participate in the sacrificial rites performed by the women in honour of the goddess Sagarakka. We note the same thing in the case of the Thesmophoria, the festival in honour of Demeter celebrated in late autumn at various places in Hellas. In classical Rome special services were held by women in honour of the Bona Dea. In many cases males were forbidden to enter the sanctuary of a goddess. At Catana in Sicily there was a shrine of Demeter where men were never allowed to set foot. At Megalopolis in Arcadia was a temple dedicated to Persephone to which women had access at all times, but men only once a year. Poets have intuitively recognised this peculiar and sexually determined relationship of confidence between men and gods and between women and goddesses respectively. Aristophanes, for example, in Lysistrata

[5] III, 182.

makes the women invariably call upon goddesses and especially upon Pallas Athena. Schiller's Maid of Orleans turns to the Blessed Virgin. Körner addresses his Prayer during Battle to God the Father.

Thus we find that in the case both of men and of women, the votaries of religion do not give their perfect trust to deities unless these are of their own sex. A divinity of the opposite sex from the worshipper tends to arouse a sexually tinged emotion, and the worship of such a deity is either a sexual cult or else stands on the border-line between strictly religious worship and a sexual cult. The religious sentiments in such cases serve as a mask for the sexual instinct. When we call to mind the ecstatic mysteries celebrated by women in honour of Dionysos, we remember how they tended to degenerate into sexual frenzy. As a counterpart, we may recall the orgies of the Gaulish men in honour of the Magna Mater. In a paroxysm of sexual enthusiasm, the worshipper would sometimes offer up his manhood as a sacrifice to the goddess.

Religion, centring as it does in a human personification of one sort or another, naturally tends to arouse the idea that the best way of winning the favour of the deity is to imitate the deity's behaviour, to mould the worshipper's conduct upon the conduct of the object of adoration.[6] Thereby men and women are impelled by a psychological determinism to worship at the shrine of a deity which is masculine in the case of the male worshipper and feminine in the case of the female. This is because the worshipper can far more closely imitate a deity of his or her own sex. In youth, therefore, the season of life when religious influences are exceptionally powerful, it is quite common for Pro-

[6] Cf. Cumont, op. cit., p. 59.

testant women to turn Catholic. The ultimate cause of many of these conversions is the desire to have the Virgin Mary as a heavenly model. Speaking generally, Protestantism, with its elimination of the worship of the saints (which has involved the exclusion of the female quasi-divinities from the pantheon) is a much more definitely masculine religion than Catholicism. It will always be found, therefore, that at particular periods of life women exhibit a much stronger trend towards Catholicism than towards Protestantism. It would be interesting to compare the statistics of conversions. We think it would be found that among women conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism preponderate, and that among men the preponderance is the other way about.

Inasmuch as, under the guidance of purely religious sentiments, the members of both sexes will incline to prefer deities of the dominant sex, under monosexual dominance such deities will always hold the first rank (except in so far as the deities are sexual symbols). The ruling sex, having the power to diffuse its own outlooks, tends to generalise its specific ideology. Should the trends of the subordinate sex run counter, they are likely to be suppressed all the more forcibly in proportion as they diverge from those of the dominant sex and in proportion as the power of the dominant sex is more overwhelming. The result is that the hegemony of male deities is usually associated with the dominance of men, and the hegemony of female deities with the dominance of women.

This predominance of the deities that are of the same sex as that which holds sway is not exclusively

dependent upon the psychology of the religious sentiments. The psychology of the dominance itself tends to accentuate the predominance of the deities in question. The godhead is the personification of the highest, the best, the most efficient, and the wisest. As soon as human beings come to regard themselves as the highest and most perfect creatures on earth, they make deities after their own image. Anthropomorphic deities are an indication of the egocentric outlook of mankind. When, in any nation, one of the two sexes has become supreme, the members of that sex, simply because they are supreme, are regarded as more gifted, wiser, more efficient, in every respect better, than the members of the subordinate sex. Inasmuch as the godhead is the symbol and embodiment of the highest, as a matter of course it is endowed with the sex of the rulers—or at any rate the deities belonging to the dominant sex take the first rank. It seems only natural that the sex which holds sway on earth should likewise occupy the premier position in the kingdom of heaven.[7]

The awe-inspiring qualities of the godhead reinforce the tendency to make the divinities beings of the sex which dominates on earth. When the godhead is a symbol of the qualities that inspire dread, and when the deity is the wielder of power, it is given the sex of those who wield real power on earth and who therefore inspire more dread than the members of the subordinate sex.

When there is a transference of dominion from one

[7] In the case of kingship different factors are at work, although at first sight the psychological determinants might seem the same. We shall see later that the reality of kingly power makes all the difference.

sex to the other, the change is reflected in the sex of the dominant deities. Hence there are unceasing modifications in the sex of the deities. These modifications are greatly complicated by the fact that they do not run directly parallel with the changes in monosexual dominance, but have a rhythm peculiar to themselves. Every religion is impressed on the younger generation as something eternal and unalterable, with the aim of stabilising the religion as much as possible. Thereby modifications in a religion are retarded.

On the other hand, whichever sex rules, there is a strong tendency to create gods of both sexes. It is true that the dominant sex aims at making the deities of its own sex dominant in heaven, and the ruling sex on earth has power to ensure that this shall be so. But religious need is usually stronger in members of the subordinate sex, and the religious need of the subordinate sex (except when it takes a purely sexual turn) is directed towards deities of its own sex. The result is that the dominance of deities of the ruling sex is persistently imperilled by the rivalry of deities of the other sex, deities which are continually being pushed to the front by the strong religious sensibilities of the members of the subordinate sex. The predominance of deities of the dominant sex is not secure unless monosexual dominance is absolute. This is the explanation of an association which, as we shall see, is very common: the association of monosexual absolutism with monotheism or henotheism.

A further complication ensues from the way in which the sexual instinct leads men and women to create sexual divinities which are of the opposite sex to the creators. We have a historic instance of a change in the sex of a deity as the outcome of a change in mono-

sexual dominance. According to the testimony of the classical authors, Typhon, the Egyptian Set, was a male deity. But on the ancient monuments he is mentioned under the name of Tipo as a goddess.[8] A noteworthy fact is that on Egyptian monuments the name of the god Set is often found to have been erased.[9] Probably these erasures were the outcome of a struggle concerning the sex of the deity.

There are additional but indirect indications of these changes in sex. According to Erman,[10] the dress of the male deities of Egypt resembles a woman's dress that has been turned up at the bottom. Perhaps this may signify that these gods were at one time goddesses, and that to facilitate the transformation the feminine dress was retained. There are also deities which have not merely feminine dress and masculine beards, but are definitely depicted as bisexual. They exhibit the sexual characters of both sexes, most of them having a woman's breasts and a man's beard. Various unsatisfactory theories have been brought forward to account for the origin of these hermaphrodite deities. Our own researches suggest that they are products of the transition between the two types of monosexual dominance. In the gradual adaptation of the sex of the deity to the changing type of sexual dominance in social life, one of the sexual characters was modified while the other was left intact. The goddess Istar seems at a certain stage to have been a bisexual deity of this kind.[11] The Nile is also personified by a bisexual figure with breasts and beard. Similar depictions are even to be found in the case of Christian saints. The reader

[8] Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, Parthey's ed., p. 153.

[9] Cf. Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, etc.

[10] Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 357.

[11] Cf. Jeremias, Das alte Testament, p. 38.

may recall the legends of St. Kümmernis,[12] whose beard has hitherto seemed an inexplicable trait.

In many cases the deities outlive the monosexual dominance whose product they are without experiencing any transformation. This happens especially when the new type of sexual dominance preserves a strong imprint of sexual equality. We may take Athens as an example. Bachofen has proved that here in very early days women held sway. Excavations have shown that the earliest pre-Homeric deities were for the most part feminine.[13] Athena was the most important of these. Later, in the days of masculine dominance, Athena remained the leading deity, the protectress of the city. Her predominance is still conspicuous in Homer's Iliad, for the side on which Athena fights is victorious. In the contest described by Homer between Athena and Ares, the goddess gets the better even of the god of war. This maintenance of the leading position by the goddess who had been supreme during the dominance of women is probably explicable on the supposition that later, when men had become dominant, women still exercised considerable influence, and that this enabled Athena to make headway against the competition of the male deities. There was still extant in the Attic Men's State a law by which, in certain circumstances, women as well as men were called upon to vote. As

[12] A "local saint," i.e., the object of profound local veneration, but not officially canonised. St. Kümmernis, also known as St. Wilgefortis (perhaps a corruption of "virgo fortis") and as St. Gehilfen, is worshipped especially in South Germany and Tyrol. She was, according to the legend, the daughter of a heathen king who had vowed herself to the service of Christ. Being troubled with suitors, she prayed for some change in her appearance which would scare away the wooers, and was vouchsafed a beard as an effectual deterrent.— TRANSLATORS' NOTE.

[13] Cf. G. Koch, Lehrbuch der Geschichte, Altertum, p. 42.

late as the days of Pericles (the supreme blossoming of Athenian civilisation), women continued to exercise a formative influence over the minds of men. Socrates was proud to speak of himself as a pupil of Aspasia. Moreover, Plato's Republic, which advocates perfect equality for the sexes, could not have been written had the position of women in the author's days been one of complete subjection. The oldest historical monuments and traditions show that in earlier days women were not, as in later days, entirely restricted to a domestic life.

Interesting in this connexion is a remark by Rosa Mayreder[14] to the effect that the Holy Ghost was originally feminine. Since the purely religious sentiment of human beings tends to be concentrated in men upon gods and in women upon goddesses, we often find under monosexual dominance that the supreme deity belongs to the dominant sex, but that there are many minor deities of the subordinate sex. The origin and preservation of deities of the subordinate sex is facilitated when the religious sensibilities have a sexual admixture. Such an admixture lessens the resistance of the dominant sex to the introduction of deities of the subordinate sex into the pantheon.

In Babylon at the time of Hammurabi, this being an epoch when men were apparently dominant but when women seem to have been advancing towards a position of equal rights, there were always temples and oblations for deities of both sexes. The letters of Hammurabi show that feminine deities were worshipped as goddesses of victory.[15] They must lead the army to

[14] Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit, p. 266.

[15] King, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi.

ensure victory. Delitzsch considers that these "goddesses" were statues. But this seems doubtful, for Hammurabi in one of his letters orders that flour, wine, and sheep shall be brought on board the ship for the feeding of the goddesses. Of course we can imagine that these victuals may have been destined for sacrifices. Marduk and Sarpanit were the protectors of Babylonia. Here the masculine deity takes precedence.

In Syria and Phœnicia, feminine deities occupy the foremost place. In Byblos, the chief object of worship was the great goddess Ba'alat. There was also a male divinity, Adonis, addressed as "My Lord."[16] Syria is pre-eminently the home of Astarte, and there is hardly any other country where religion is so strongly tinged with sexuality.

In Carthage, likewise, a city said to have been founded by a Phœnician queen, feminine divinity takes precedence of masculine. Winckler writes that the chief temples of Juno-Astarte and Apollo-Esnum were consecrated in the citadel of Carthage. Unfortunately, the historical traditions that have come down to us concerning the Phœnicians are scanty. Gfrörer's view that the Phœnicians turned the men into women and the women into men throws a clear light on the dominance of women. The interchange of sex rôles, the reversal of feminine and masculine types, is an unmistakable criterion of a phase of social life in which women are dominant.

Cumont describes the predominance of Cybele, the Magna Mater, in Asia Minor. Beside her was a god named Attis who was regarded as her husband. In religious worship, however, the wife took the place of

[16] Cf. Meyer, op. cit., vol. i, 2, p. 426.

honour. Cumont[17] speaks of this as "a reminiscence of the days of matriarchy."

Though our information concerning the religion of ancient Egypt is copious, we are hazy about many points. There were deities of both sexes. With the possible exception of certain local divinities, the goddesses appear to have ranked higher than the gods. In especial we find that Diodorus[18] reports the absolute supremacy of the goddess Isis. She ruled her spouse Osiris. For Diodorus, this supremacy of the goddess was the cause of the supremacy of the queens of Egypt over the kings, and of Egyptian wives in general over Egyptian husbands. Diodorus' own religious sentiments made him believe that the position of the goddess was the determinant of the position of the human beings who were of the same sex as herself. But to us, who look upon the gods and the goddesses as creatures of the human spirit, it seems obvious that Diodorus is confusing cause and effect. The goddess Isis is supreme because women are dominant in social life. It is noteworthy, none the less, that Diodorus should have recognised a causal relationship between the two phenomena.

Some additional evidence of the predominant position of the goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon may be given. Important in this connexion is the fact previously mentioned that the male deities should take their style of dress from the female. The gods which are seeking recognition must make themselves resemble the authenticated goddesses as closely as possible. The oldest Egyptian deity is the goddess Neith or Nut. Neithotep, wife of one of the first kings of Egypt, had

[17 Op. cit., pp. 138 et seq.

[18] I, 27.

a temple erected to this deity.[19] In a text that is traditionally supposed to date from the sixth dynasty, but which according to Bissing[20] is certainly older than the fifth dynasty, we read: "Nut, thou art the victrix, for thou hast overpowered the gods, and their spirits, and their heritage, and their food, and all their possessions. . . . The whole earth is subject to thee, thou hast conquered it! Thou holdest the earth and all things thereon within the embrace of thy arms. . . . Far from the earth thou standest upon thy father Sos, over whom thou hast authority. He loved thee, he subordinated himself to thee everywhere. Every god thou takest upon his ship away to thee. . . ." In ancient texts[21] the goddess is spoken of as "Father of Fathers, Mother of Mothers, the Existent, namely that which has been from the beginning." In another passage she is called, "The Mother of the Morning Sun, the Creatrix of the Evening Sun, She that was when nothing else was and that created what came thereafter." In yet another ancient inscription the goddess is spoken of as, "Nuth, the Ancient of Days who gave birth to the Sun and brought forth the germs of gods and mortals. Mother of Ra, Creatrix of Atum, she was when nothing was, and created that which was after she was."

The primal deity, procreative energy, fundamental

[19] Another very early Egyptian deity is a god, Min of Koptos. Three colossal limestone statues of this divinity are extant. The images have huge erect penises, and this indicates that the god was definitely sexual in his attributes. Moreover, the fact that this sexual deity is masculine indicates that women were dominant. The god Ammon of Thebae is also depicted with an erect penis. It seems probable, therefore, that the male deities of the Egyptians were originally phallic, and that this is why they found a place in the pantheon during the days when women were dominant.

[20] Op. Cit., p. 29.

[21] Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, pp. 58 and 144, et seq.

substance, is in the most ancient times feminine. The feminine deity takes the first and highest place over all the other gods. A goddess, not a god, creates heaven and earth. From her proceeds all existence, divine and human. Significant in relation to the problem we are now considering is the fact that in later days, when men were winning to power, male deities appeared side by side with female, and were worshipped as creators. From the days of King Seti I comes the inscription in the temple at Abydos: "Nun, the Father of the Gods." Elsewhere he is spoken of as "the beginning of all things," "that which was in the beginning."[22] In Memphis, Nun appears under the name of Ptah. In the Ramesseum at Thebae he is called: "Ptah-Nun, Ancient of Days." Creative energy is ascribed to him: "Ptah, the Father of the beginnings, the creator of heaven and of the sun and of the moon, the creator of everything that is to be found in the world." In Thebae, Nun was the god Ammon. In inscriptions on Ptolemaic monuments he is spoken of as: "Ammon, the primal water;" or "Nun-Ammon, Father of the Light-God Ra, eldest God, the Being that was in the beginning." In the temples of Elefantine and Letopolis, Nun is Chnum, of whom it is said that he is: "Father of the Gods, very Being, who makes mankind and forms the Gods." It is obvious that the male primal deity is constructed after the model of the female primal deity. Neith or Nut was the earlier divinity. Schneider holds this view. Thus in the oldest sagas the sun-god Ra was born of the heavenly cow or the heavenly woman, whereas in later sagas he was derived from Nun, the primal water.

In ancient Egypt the feminine divine principle took

[22] Brugsch, op. cit., pp. 108 et seq.

precedence of all male deities. Plato relates concerning the temple of the goddess Neith (who for the Hellenes was equivalent to Athena) that the Egyptians inscribed upon her temple: "I am what is, what will be, and what has been. No one has raised my chiton. The fruit to which I gave birth was the sun." Plutarch explains that Neith is Isis, Isis who has taken over from her mother the leading rôle among the divinities, and is directly identified with her. The same author[23] relates that the monument of Athena, who is also identified with Isis, bore the following inscription: "I am the all, the past, the present, and the future. No mortal has raised my robe."

On several occasions predominance over the male deities is expressly ascribed to Isis. She is invariably named before her spouse Osiris in the ancient records. In a complaint Isis brings against Osiris, the goddess says: "Thy wife is thy protectress."[24] The matter is made even plainer in an old inscription reported by Brugsch, which runs as follows: "Isis the Great, Mother of God, Mistress of Tentyra in the temple of Au, the Golden, was born in the city of Golden, Pinubut, the birth of her brother Osiris took place in Thebae, that of her son Horus in Ous, and that of her sister Nephtys in the city of Little Diospolis." Thus Isis stands in the very centre of the stage; she is the head of the family, around whom are grouped her brother and spouse Osiris, her son, and her sister. In a record belonging to the Ptolemaic era we still read of "the Great Isis, the Mother of the Gods."[25]

When the religion of Egypt won to influence in

[23] Isis and Osiris, 9.

[24] V. von Strauss, Altägyptischer Götterglaube, vol. i, p. 128.

[25] Erman and Krebs, op. cit., p. 117.

Rome, it was chiefly to Isis that temples were built.[26] Here we have additional evidence that, even in these comparatively late times, Isis was considered far more important than Osiris.

There is much conflict of opinion among Egyptologists concerning the Egyptian deities and their relative importance. A comparison of the writings of Brugsch with those of Schneider suffices to convince the reader of this. Doubtless the discrepancies are partly dependent upon the uncertainty of the data. But the main cause is that students of Egyptian lore have hitherto had no inkling of the principle of monosexual dominance and of its significance in relation to the process of god-making. The bearing of the dominance of women upon the mythology of Egypt was not recognised, and could not be recognised, because the investigators' vision was subjectively restricted by their familiarity with the opposite type of monosexual dominance. Once more we have a plain indication of the way in which blindness to the influences operative in the Women's State results from the Men's-State ideology of the observer. Typical in this respect are the differing opinions concerning the importance of the feminine deities voiced in the respective works of Brugsch, published in 1888, and Schneider, published in 1907. Brugsch speaks of the gods and the goddesses of ancient Egypt as coequal in rank. He states in set terms that according to the Egyptians the divine energy immanent in the primal matter of the universe was both male and female, and that the creative rôle was ascribed by them to deities of both sexes. He quotes from Horapollon a passage to show that this view prevailed in Egypt from very early days. Horapollon

[26] Schneider, Op. cit., pp. 548 et seq.

writes:[27] "To the Egyptians the world seems to consist, on the one hand of the masculine, and on the other hand of the feminine. Thus to Athena they ascribe beetles, and to Hephæstus vultures, for these are the only ones among the deities who by nature are simultaneously male and female."

Schneider is a typical Men's-State investigator. In his study of Egyptian religious lore he practically confines his attention to the male deities. The goddesses are mentioned only in passing, so that a reader who has no independent knowledge of the subject would naturally infer that their position was altogether subordinate to that of the gods. We encounter in the picture presented by this author the characteristic lineaments of monosexual masculine absolutism; the Egyptian traditions, with their Women's-State atmosphere, are transmogrified into Men's-State traditions. Whereas all the ancient records, and even Plutarch, who flourished about a century after the birth of Christ, invariably name Isis before Osiris, Schneider no less invariably reverses the order.[28] He goes so far as to imply that Isis is a mere appendage to Osiris, for he writes: "The need for pairing has led to her being placed by Osiris' side."[29] He refers in several places to this inclination to form pairs, and says that in the Old Kingdom at the time of Narmer there were at least two gods having human shape, Min and Hathor. In the Osiris cycle, he says, the gods are invariably paired.[30] Although he thus faintly indicates the tendency to equivalence, in general he alludes solely to male deities—and the phrase "the Osiris cycle" is, in-

[27] Brugsch, op. cit., p. 114.

[28] Cf. pp. 156, 324, 407, 548, etc.

[29] Op. cit., p. 407.

[30] Ibid., pp. 348, 413.

deed, a sufficient indication of his trend. It is extremely characteristic of his Men's-State outlook that the only detailed reference to Isis is the one in which he reproduces the lament of the goddess for her dead husband.

Nevertheless, Isis' precedence over Osiris has been often expressly recognised by recent investigators. Bachofen tells us that Egypt is the land where the dominance of women became stereotyped, and that all the culture of the country was based upon the precedence of Isis over Osiris. He also points out that consecration to Isis took place before the initiation into the Osiris mysteries. Jablonski[31] holds the same view, writing: "Isis takes precedence of Osiris as an object of adoration. We see the same thing in the subsequent diffusion of the Isis cult in the Roman Empire."

Autocracy or predominance of female divinities is reported in the case of many other Women's States. The Iroquois had no gods, but only goddesses. In Crete, goddesses occupied the premier place, and Demeter was of Cretan origin. Weinhold[32] tells us that among the ancient Teutons the Norris ranked high above the other deities. At a later date they came to be regarded as merely prophetesses or witches, the change being presumably due to a waning of feminine dominance. According to Sayce,[33] among the Hittites, who showed a strong Women's-State trend, the supreme deity was of the female sex. The Kamchadales[34] worshipped two deities, one male and one female. The latter was regarded as a superior being to the former. Kutka, the male deity, was derided as clumsy and stupid. It was his fault that the world had

[31] Pantheon Aegyptiorum, p. 99.

[32] Die deutschen Frauen in dern Mittelalter, p. 42.

[33] The Hittites, 1892.

[34] Cf. Meiners, Vermischte philosophische Schriften, vol. i, p, 167.

turned out so badly. But concerning the goddess, Kutka's wife, the belief prevailed that she "excelled him infinitely in intelligence and other good qualities."

Just as in Women's States the leading place is usually given to a goddess, so in Men's States a god ordinarily occupies the chief position. This trend is especially conspicuous when a new religion comes into being in a community where Men's-State institutions are already firmly established. In such a case a male deity is given unmistakable precedence over all the goddesses. Often enough, indeed, the latter tend to vanish from the scene, so that a god becomes the one and only deity. Attempts have frequently been made to represent monotheism as a product of advance in civilisation and general intelligence. Our information regarding two of the most highly civilised nations known to history, the Egyptian and the Greek, conflicts with this theory. During the days of their highest development, the Greeks and the Egyptians were polytheists, and their deities were of both sexes. Nevertheless the Greek civilisation seems to have attained a supremely high level.

It is probable that various causes have contributed to the growth of monotheism and henotheism. Among these causes, exalted motives predominate, but monosexual dominance was unquestionably a contributory and important cause, which has hitherto been overlooked. The dominant sex inclines to give the first rank to a deity of its own sex. This superior rank is most effectively secured when there is only one divine being, whose sex of course is that of those who are dominant in the social sphere, for there is no better way of ensuring against attempts on the part of deities of the other sex to push their way to the front.

Monotheism is characterised by a jealous insistence upon the unity of the godhead, and its first law is always: Thou shalt have none other gods but me.

It is a demonstrable fact that monotheism has always taken its rise during the phase of monosexual dominance, and the invariability of this sequence suggests a causal relationship. Monosexual dominance is the cause, monotheism the effect. Monotheism cannot take root except upon the soil of monosexual dominance. This is shown by the history of all the great monotheistic religions. The ancient records show that Moses was the first to introduce the worship of one God among the Jews. He is supposed to have lived about 1300 B.C. At this time masculine dominance was already established among the Jews, as the Mosaic code of laws plainly shows. It is true that among these laws we find an admixture of Women's-State notions, for Moses drew from old sources as well as from new; but the Men's-State trends predominate.

Even stronger were the Men's-State trends in the days of Mohammed. That is why in Mohammedanism we find that women's title to enter the religious community is disputed on the ground that women probably have no souls.

Christ did not create a new monotheism. He merely gave a new content to the extant Judaic monotheism. In Christianity we have to make a sharp distinction between the aims of Christ, the founder of the religion, and those of Paul, the most active of its apostles. Christ's whole teaching shows him to have been an advocate of equal rights for the sexes. Paul, on the other hand, had a Men's-State mentality. We should have known this if the only one of his

precepts handed down to us had been the adjuration: "Wives, obey your husbands." The demand is typical of monosexual dominance. In Women's States—in Egypt for instance, and among the Chamorros, the Kamchadales, the Spartans, the Basque-Iberian stocks, and the Balonda—the first duty of a man was to obey his wife. In Men's States, on the other hand, we are continually being told that the first duty of a woman is to obey her husband.

The contrast in this respect between Christ and Paul may be dependent upon the outstanding endowments of the former. It may, however, be due to the fact that the two men derived from racial stocks in different phases of monosexual development. In the times of Christ, the Jews were certainly far from having established equality of rights for the sexes, but there seem to have been traces of a Women's-State complexion about the régime of King Herod. There are two historical incidents bearing on this view. First of all, Herod's sister Salome divorced her husband Costobar—a purely Women's-State procedure, like that of any ancient Egyptian wife. Reitzenstein[35] points out that this is the only instance known to us in Jewish history in which the initiative in divorce was taken by the wife. He quotes Josephus, who declares that the action was contrary to the Mosaic Law. In the Men's State, only the husband is entitled to seek divorce. Secondly, the legendary massacre of the innocents belongs to the time of Herod. In this massacre the victims were all boys. We have already learned that when infanticide and the mutilation of children are practised, the members of the dominant sex escape. The infanticide of boys is characteristic

[35] Op. Cit., p. 102.

of the dominance of women, and the infanticide of girls is characteristic of the dominance of men. It seems possible, therefore, that Christ owed, wholly or in part, to certain Women's-State trends of his day his inclination to give expression, in the religion that he founded, to the demand for equality of rights for the sexes. Paul, who appears to have been born in Cilicia, presumably grew to manhood under different and more exclusively Men's-State auspices.

Nevertheless, we must not forget that the differing ideologies of Christ and Paul may have been purely individual. The greater the genius, the more complete is emancipation from the reign of custom. Invariably, therefore, we find that in the teaching of persons of great genius, in the teaching of those whose minds are detached from the epoch in which they happen to live, there is a powerful inclination to give expression to the demand for equal rights.[36] The reader need think only of Plato, Goethe, and Kant. Plato devotes a whole section of his teaching to this matter of equal rights. Goethe, reversing the customary Men's-State demand that women shall be subordinate to men, insists that it is the business of men to obey.[37] Kant, in his Athropologie, expressly declares that the two sexes are equal in intelligence; he even goes so far as to compare women with the king and man with the king's minister. Paul was certainly a lesser genius than Christ. He may have excelled Christ in will power, but did not do so in understanding.

[36] In a later work, the authors hope to show that the establishment of equal rights for the sexes will betoken the highest phase in the evolution of mankind.

[27] Chapter and verse will be given in the work mentioned in the foregoing note.

The Men's-State imprint stamped by Paul on the Christian religion has been a hindrance to its spread among many peoples who were in a different phase of development. The Men's-State Judaico-Christian monotheistic creed has only been able to make headway against bisexual polytheism by concessions to the latter. The plurality of the gods reappeared in the hierarchy of the saints. Above all, there developed the cult of the Virgin Mary, in whose person the feminine divine principle was reincorporated.

In Germany, when the dominance of men had entirely replaced the phase of equal rights, favourable conditions had been established for the efforts of the Reformation to abolish the widespread polytheism which took the f orm of the cult of the saints. Protestantism is especially contrasted with Catholicism by the stressing of monotheism characteristic of the reformed faith, for the Reformation would never have been possible had not masculine dominance been intensified almost to absolutism. Were it not that by the time of the Reformation the influence of women had greatly dwindled in comparison with their influence in the days when Christianity was founded, it would have been impossible to degrade the Virgin Mary (the incorporation of the feminine divine principle) to the insignificant position she occupies in the Protestant faith to-day.

As regards ancient Egypt, some Egyptologists contend that monotheism prevailed there in the very earliest times.[38] In view of the well-marked feminine dominance of those days, the opinion is not improbably correct.

Monotheism, however, is not a necessary conse-

[38] Gruppe, op. cit., p. 502.

quence of monosexual dominance. The example of Greek polytheism suffices to show that it is merely a possible consequence. It does not follow that monotheism will develop, because monosexual dominance exists. On the other hand, it certainly seems to be true that monotheism cannot thrive except upon the soil of monosexual dominance. In the study of the connexion between monotheism and monosexual dominance, this fact must be borne in mind. Inasmuch as monotheism cannot thrive unless monosexual dominance prevails, the establishment of equal rights for the sexes is a menace to monotheism. The overthrow of the extant men's dominion will increase the possibilities of the introduction of feminine deities. In Germany a so-called folk movement is afoot aiming at the re-establishment of the ancient Teutonic creeds. But this will involve equality of rights for male and female deities. Herein we find the explanation of the support the movement in question receives, in especial, from women. Another religious trend is that which aims at the reintroduction of the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[39]

The way in which the sex of deities is interconnected with the religious predilections of the worshippers explains why there have apparently been hardly any women among the founders of religion. Very various reasons for this have been adduced.[40] But the main and hitherto unrecognised reason is that all the history of religions, like history in general, either relates to the Men's-State epoch, or else has been written by Men's-State investigators. Just as, in the Men's State, but little information has come down to us concerning

[39] Cf. the periodical "Neues Leben," edited by Dr. Ernst Hunkel.

[40] Cf. Havelock Ellis. Man and Women.

preexistent phases when women held sway, so also in particular, we have received very few details concerning the religions of the Women's State and concerning the founders of these religions. In fact, the prevailing theory that there have been very few women founders of religions is valid only for the Men's-State epochs which are the theme of history as we know it. All we are entitled to say is that very few women have founded religions in the Men's State.

Obviously, the Men's State is an unfavourable environment for the work of a woman founder of religion. A woman who should found a religion would, generally speaking, make a feminine deity the centre of that religion. Since, however, men, like women, prefer deities of their own sex, the dominant males would be disinclined to accept the new woman-made religion—and the attitude of the dominant sex is decisive as to the chances a new religion has of making its way. Even if in the Men's State there be just as many women as men with a talent for founding religions, very few religions will, in practical experience, be founded in the Men's State, seeing that the psychology of the dominant sex will, in the case of women, deprive the talent of scope for exercise.

This explains, moreover, why the male founders of religion, with their doctrine of a male deity, address themselves especially to men, whereas women, preaching a female deity, address themselves rather to women. The founder of a religion finds that the members of his or her own sex are those most inclined to accept and to spread the new doctrine. As regards the male founders of religion, proof of this statement would be superfluous. We have much less evidence concerning female founders of religion. In view of

the scantiness of materials, every tittle of evidence is important in this connexion. Plutarch writes of Isis that she founded the religion in whose centre she appears as goddess. It would seem that in the earliest times—we are referring to a legendary period, before written history began—women carried the religion of Isis to foreign lands. Herodotus[41] relates that the daughters of Danaos brought from Egypt the worship of Demeter (the Egyptian Isis) and taught it to the Pelasgian women. The characteristic point in this relation is that women are the missionaries of the cult of a female divinity, and that their disciples are likewise women. Herodotus tells us that the new doctrine brought by the Danaides found acceptance among the Pelasgi (probably because at this period women were dominant among the primitive inhabitants of Greece), for he writes: "Subsequently, when all the inhabitants of Peloponnesus fled before the Dorian invasion, the worship of Demeter decayed, for it was preserved only by the Arcadians, who alone among the Peloponnesians remained in their original home."

It seems probable, therefore, that women, in the days of their dominance, were also energetic founders of religions.

In this connexion, an interesting parallel may be drawn between the Men's State and the Women's State in the religious domain. We find that the history of the creation is influenced in its various versions by monosexual dominance. The legend that Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs is a typical product of Men's-State ideology. According to the Younger Edda,[42] the gods created men and women

[41] I, 171.

[42] Scherr, Geschichte der deutschen Frauen, p. 79.

respectively out of two trees growing on the sea shore. Unquestionably here we have a version of the creation myth deriving from the phase of equal rights. To the same phase belongs the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Wishing to re-people the earth after a deluge in which all other mortals have perished, the two survivors consult an oracle, and are told to throw "the bones of their mother" behind them. They thereupon walk along throwing stones over their shoulders. The stones thrown by Deucalion become men; those thrown by Pyrrha become women. Thoroughly Women's State in their trend are the stories recently deciphered by Stephen Langdon from the earthenware tablets of Babylon dating from Sumerian days. Here we read that it was the man who tasted the forbidden fruit. The deity is of the female sex. It is through this female divinity that salvation from sin is to be secured. The influence of monosexual dominance is thus plainly manifested in the persistent determination to assign the leading place among gods and mortals to members of the dominant sex.

We have similar reversals of sex rôles in the legends of unions between gods and mortals. In the Women's State we are told of the union between a female deity and a mortal of the male sex. Such stories have been preserved in ancient saga. In the Men's-State versions, on the other hand, we read, as in Genesis (vi. 2-4) : "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and. . . . when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children unto them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."