SEX WORSHIP AND SEX DEGRADATION
Every form of religious worship, from pre-historic time down to and
inclusive of the present century, and among all races, savage and
civilized, has been founded upon Sex--the inevitable, the inviolable,
the unescapable, and the unfathomable mystery of Creation.
Nor should this fact be distasteful to the most refined. An
intelligent review of the many evidences that prove this truth will
not shock the sensibilities of the most devout worshipper of an
unknown and unseen God. What can be more beautiful and more holy, more
worthy of our highest reverence and adoration, than the mystery of
birth, whether that birth be the growth of a flower from a tiny seed
planted in the womb of Mother Earth, or the birth of a tiny human life
from the seed Love sows in the womb of the human mother? The only
shocking thing about the matter is that there are persons who can be
"shocked" at contemplation of this wonderful and beautiful mystery. It
is shocking and deplorable that so many are still so far away from
spiritual consciousness, that the beauty and the purity of the miracle
of Sex is unrecognized by them.
With all due respect to the highest types of religious creeds which
survive today, we are bound to concede that the very first form of
worship which prevailed upon this earth was the purest as it was the
simplest. Truth is simple. Deception introduces us into a maze of
complexities. Nature worship prevailed we know not how many centuries
previous to the dawn of historic records. All allegorical literature
makes constant allusion to "The Golden Age," evidently referring to a
time before that which has come down to us in sacred literature, as
"The Fall of Man." The first conception of a supreme power, something
higher and more perfect than Man himself, originated in the mystery of
Sex; not only in the sex-function as exercised by Man, but also in the
evidences of sex seen in plants and animals.
It became evident to the earliest races that the human being was after
all only a progenitor. Somewhere there must be a First Cause. The
vital spark which gave to the seed its power to bring forth was seen
to be beyond and above the control of physical man, and the natural
and inevitable inference was drawn that there was some power greater
than that of human beings--a power manifesting itself in the act of
procreation. At this early stage in Man's efforts to know God, the
Female Principle was deified, because out of the womb of the woman
issued the little life. Thus the symbol of the "virgin with the child"
became the symbol of worship; the word "virgin" then having a somewhat
different meaning from that which we give it today, although we may
trace the analogy in our use of the term "virgin soil," signifying
fecundity. The virgin and child then, popularly supposed by those
whose prejudices prevail over their desire for Truth, to have
originated with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, antedates history, as
an object of worship.
Let us here again emphasize the fact that the very persistence of this
symbol as a pronounced part of our Twentieth Century traditions, and
reverence, offers proof of the fact that whatever is true is also
enduring. Truth is eternal and defies extinction. Love, although
defiled and scorned, will lift Mankind out of Hell.
The symbol of the mother with the child the very earliest of all
symbolic worship is also the truest and most consistent with the
ideals of spiritualized Man when we realize its higher significance.
At first, for the obvious reason that woman was the recipient and the
nurse of the seed, woman was regarded as a higher type than man; she
alone was supposed to possess the creative energy. This was ultimately
reversed and Man was thought to be the sole custodian of the
reproductive power.
Thus the age-long warfare between the sexes began--a warfare which, if
it had any foundation in Reality, must have resulted long since in
race-extinction. But despite this degrading warfare men and women have
continued to attract each other in varying degrees of love, until now
the future offers a golden promise of _union_. As long as primitive
man kept to nature worship, deifying earth as the mother who brought
forth the grains and fruits for her childrens' sustenance, religious
practices were devoid of sacrifice and strife. The advent of
springtime when the earth awakened from her long sleep and the period
of gestation began when the seeds were planted, or when from Nature's
own laws they were reproduced without the aid of man, was the occasion
of thanksgiving and rejoicing with general merry-making and general
good-will. Again, in harvest time there was feasting and rejoicing and
music and dancing; and we have no reason to believe that this very
natural method of showing their gratitude and their happiness was
accompanied by any suggestion of sacrifice or propitiation.
There is the best of evidence to support the claim that all the early
Deities were female and in all Mythology the earth is adored as the
"Divine Mother." The earliest Venus, worshipped as the goddess of
Universal Womanhood, was represented with a beard signifying her
androgynous character.
Venus worshipped as "the soul of the world" was said to be the "parent
of all things, the primary progeny of Time, the most exalted of all
the Deities." Neith, Minerva, Athena, Ceres, Cybele, all worshipped as
the first of all the Deities, were represented as female, and to this
day we refer to the qualities of wisdom, light, truth, and virtue as
feminine.
Even the sun is said to have been at one time worshipped as feminine,
as were all deities; but later, when it was shown that the sun
apparently fertilized the fecund earth, the gender was changed, and in
succeeding ages, when the male principle had become dominant as a
deific symbol, the earth was said to be but the nurse which cradled
and cared for the generic power resident in the male. Thus woman from
her lofty height of the one and only deity gradually sank to the level
of the nurse maid, permitted to care for man's offspring.
While the Female Principle of Sex was worshipped as the "giver of
life," the heads of families were female and descent was traced from
the mother only. The male parent was scarcely more than an intruder
and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the
mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon
the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this
ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law
is to be both feared and dreaded, if not propitiated. When we
contemplate the persistence of those traits of human nature that have
prevailed among all races and throughout all ages, we are easily
persuaded that time is a delusion, and that Eternity is Now. As it was
yesterday it is today and will be tomorrow in all that is really
fundamental.
From the refined simplicity of nature worship there gradually evolved
a phase of worship, which in the beginning had for its basic principle
an exalted ideal of the purpose and the powers of the female
sex-function; but this ideal sunk to the level of debauchery and
sex-degradation, in which the symbol of the female sex-organ of
generation was worshipped, literally, although not reverently; and yet
from the fact that it is only upon the temples and in the groves
dedicated to worship that are found the carvings of the generative
organs of either and sometimes of both sexes, it is evident that the
most exalted motives first actuated the worshippers.
The sex organs, representing the mystery of creative life, or the
Deity, would naturally be held in reverence by nature-children, and it
must be conceded that this attitude of mind toward the wonderful
miracle of creative energy is worthy of our emulation. As we look back
over the pages of history, we note the tendency of human nature to
fall far short of ideals; we mistake the letter for the spirit; we get
lost in the trap of the senses, and we miss the higher and more
exalted planes of our ideals.
From yoni worship (worship of the female organ of generation), with
all the privileges and perquisites which such honor bestowed upon
woman, there came the inevitable revolt, which comes in course of
time, from all tyranny and special privilege, whether it be
individual, national, racial, sexual, or supernatural. Thus there was
established a "new religion," and this time it was the male organ
which was deified as the symbol of eternal life, of creative energy.
In many instances both symbols were represented, but for the most part
the same subtle struggle for supremacy, the remnants of which we note
today among the different religious creeds and sects, waged, and waxed
stronger, with time and opposition. Which was the more worthy of
deification--the yoni, or the phallus? Woman, or man?
The Ionians, seeking religious freedom from the persecutions of the
phallic worshippers in India persisted in their adherence to yoni
worship, and from them dates the Eleusirian mysteries, which were
celebrated in Athens down to a comparatively late date. The Eleusirian
festivals represented the survival of the purest ideals of nature
worship, before the warfare between the yoni and the phallic
worshippers had brought both ideals into degradation.
There is a point in this festival, which the Greeks called
Thesmophoria and which is derived from the more ancient festival of
Ceres (the goddess of Life and Law), which we are anxious to have
noted here, because it marks a golden thread which runs throughout the
entire fabric of the sex-problem. This point is the fact, that the
rites and ceremonies of this festival were performed by "virgins
distinguished for their purity of life." Very rarely were men admitted
to the inner secrets of the Eleusirians.
Another important point is that this ceremony was performed in honor
of the androgynous character of the goddess, as it was declared that
the power to bring forth a child without the co-operation of the male
belonged exclusively to the exalted or perfected woman, which is to
say the goddess. Another translation and interpretation of this
ceremony claims that it was prophecied in these festivals, that a time
would come in the history of the world when a woman would so conceive
and bring forth a child and that when that time should come the
question as to which sex was supreme would be forever settled and that
purity and peace would reign upon earth.
This part of the record may easily have been either an interpolation
to sustain the claim of the miraculous birth of Jesus, or it may have
been simply the defiant fling of the vanquished to the victor, because
phallic worship was in the ascendant. It is, however, recorded, that
not an instance can be cited in which the honor of initiation into the
Eleusirian mysteries was conferred upon a bad man; nor of any man
violating the secrets of the inner temples of the Eleusirians. This
gives rise to the hope that the ideal of this spiritually exalted
sect, in the midst of almost universal degeneracy, was not so much
that of female supremacy, as of purity; that their ideal included the
pure and perfect union of male and female--the only ideal that will,
or can, redeem the world to a life of peace and love.
The festivals of Carthage were said to be similar to those of Eleusis.
For a period of several days during the time set apart for the
festivities, public feasts were prepared in honor of the deific nature
of Man, which, it was pointed out, was his prerogative only by virtue
of inward purity and strict adherence to high ideals of truth and
honor.
Crowning all the religious observances of the Ancients, whether
expressed in the legends of the sun-myths or of star and serpent
worship, we find the universally recognized fact that only those
qualities of mind and soul can be expected to endure, or reach
immortal godhood, which are of an exalted character. Which is to say
what the present day orthodox creed says, that immortality belongs
only to those who are pure in heart.
From the Eleusirian festivals is derived our custom of taking holy
communion, the symbol of the Lord's supper; albeit the substitution of
the male principle in the Christian ceremony attests the fact that the
phallic symbol ultimately supplanted the yoni, as a deific symbol.
Phallic worship reached its height during Hebrew and Assyrian
supremacy, and was perpetuated by Greek and Roman materialism.
Superstition is nothing more than Truth degenerated by men from a
spiritual to a material application. That which is held in awe and
reverence by any race; that which is embodied in the traditions of
every tribe on the globe; that which persists throughout all times
will be found to have a fundamental basis of truth, no matter how
obscured it may be by the ignorance with which it is so frequently
associated.
The sacredness of Sex, as exemplifying the Supreme Creative Energy,
underlies all the traditional ideals of man, from the fetishes of the
Central African savage to the cathedral spires which rise above the
din of our modern commercial civilization. The prejudiced and the
superficial observer of so-called "heathen" rites and ceremonies
records only the superstitions, and sees only the evidences of
depravity and savagery. He overlooks the fact that the spirit of the
idea conveyed may have been the highest ideal of an early race which
has sunk, as have all races during certain periods of the world's
evolution into the depths of a materialism, from which all races are
today emerging.
All mystic truths are expressed in symbolism. It has been said that
these truths are "veiled;" this is true only because the observer has
not yet learned to speak the language. The universal language is
symbolism. In the early Egyptian, the Indian, and the Hebrew
religions, the fundamental idea was the two generating principles (or
we might say the two aspects of the One principle) of generation. The
two in spiritual _union_ represented the Infinite--the Deity. The
Hebrew word "Elohim" is plural, and means male and female united,
forming the One Perfect and Complete Being. This union is the "Holy of
Holies" of the ancient mystics and alchemists. We see its reflection
and its persistence today in the Catholic service of the Mass, where
the priest raises the Eucharist as the "Holy of Holies" in which is
generated the Christ-man, and before whom all human devotees bow the
head that they may not look upon the perfection and beauty of its pure
radiance. Neither is the priest supposed to touch the chalice with
uncovered hands. He prepares himself by fasting and prayer before he
mounts the altar upon which this "Holy of Holies" is hidden from view.
The pattern of the Eucharist with its golden circle and radiations is
easily recognizable by any one who is familiar with the symbols of
yoni worship. Nor should this fact be distasteful to any one, although
it is either concealed, or flatly denied by the Church, since it is
only through the elevation of the sex-function that the Christ-man can
be born into the physical realms. The reason that this truth is either
concealed or denied by the Church is due to the influence of Greek and
Roman civilization, which subjugated woman to the control of man. This
debasement of woman reached its culmination under Roman rule and is
unquestionably the psychic cause of the fall of the Greek and Roman
empires.
If we will but take home to ourselves the important lesson that
neither sex is fundamentally, or even relatively, superior, but only
different; that no race is permanently in advance of another, but that
each little group and class of humans has its particular contribution
to the sum of knowledge, we will have done much toward freeing the
mind from the shackles of ignorance--that darkness which obscures our
inner vision. Let this truth penetrate the egotism of so-called
civilized races. Let it sink into the minds of the men and women of
this century: we are of service to the world in proportion as we are
different and not identical. In the direct ratio of our individuality
is our contribution to the work of the cosmic law, which is seeking
to lift the planet earth out of its undeveloped state into celestial
light.
The symbol of the Eucharist, occupying as it does an important place
in a religious system which is otherwise essentially masculine, is one
of the many evidences of the persistence of Truth. For approximately
four thousand years, phallic worship has predominated over the earlier
ideal, which was embodied in the "virgin of the spheres," the emblem
of the Female Principle as eternal motherhood; and in the sacred
character of androgynous plants and flowers, which were characterized
as feminine, such, for example, as the lily, the lotus, and the fleur
de lis. These flowers are still regarded as more or less sacred, and
they are called feminine, although really androgynous.
The lotus, long held sacred because of its androgynous character, has
been regarded as typical of the One Perfect One, because it is
supposed that the lotus reproduces itself without the male pollen. But
close examination of the flower will show that the little seed-vessel
in the center of the flower is shaped like a pine cone, in which are
tiny cells too small to let out the seeds as occurs in most plant and
seed life; these tiny seeds having no outlet, shoot when ripe into new
plants, the bulb of the plant being the matrix or womb of the new
life. Thus it is evident, that although the two sexes are not as
pronounced in the lotus as in the lily, yet the bulb and the cone are
both present in the lotus, making the plant bi-sexual, and not
feminine alone.
Our modern Easter festival, in which the lily is recognized as the
representative par excellence of the renewal of abundant life and
energy, the "sacred" flower, is a tribute to the Feminine Principle in
the Deity, as the lily like the lotus is called feminine, although in
reality bi-sexual.
The lily and the Eucharist have survived the centuries in which the
male principle has dominated, as the one true and only God--the giver
of life, the energizing power of Creation--and the lily and the
Eucharist are both representative of the Female principle.
Historians mark the beginning of the worship of the _One True God_,
defined philosophically as the "Monistic" God-idea, from the building
of the tower of Babel, and we may here note in passing that in the
earliest references to this tower, there is no allusion to anything
suggestive of "confusion of tongues." The name unquestionably came
from "babil" meaning "the gate of God." Thus only is its meaning
obvious, and consistent with the worship of the lingam and phallus
which obtained at that time. It is also evident that the phallic
worshippers borrowed the simile of "the gate of God" from the
worshippers of the yoni, who based their claim to truth upon the
indisputable fact, that out of the womb comes the life of plant, and
animal, and man.
The architecture of, and the inscriptions on, the tower of Babel show
conclusively that it was a monument to the victory of the phallic
worshippers over the yoni, proving that the "one true and only God"
was male. From that time also God has been alluded to as "He,"
although in the Oriental countries, and particularly among the Hindus,
we find repeated allusions to the Deity as "The Divine Mother," and
all the higher qualities are spoken of as feminine. It is because of
this fact also, that we note the spread of Oriental religions and
philosophies in this day of Woman's uprising. The Orientals retained
the divinity of the female principle in theory, but not in fact.
Sex-worship is contemptuously alluded to in modern literature as
"strange and erotic ideas," or words equally condemnatory. But this is
an absurd stand, since nothing could be more natural than that the
mystery of Creative Life should arouse our interest and our wonder;
and it certainly ought to enlist our highest reverence. It becomes
erotic only when men fail to worship in "spirit and in truth," and
when the letter of the ideal survives, and the spirit is ignored. It
becomes not only erotic but destructive when it involves a fight for
supremacy between the male and the female. When the spirit of union
shall prevail, which it must in a perfected world, no higher form of
religious aspiration can be imagined than that in which the miracle of
birth is reverenced and idealized. Then, and not until then, will the
family be what it should be, and Love, the one and only true God, be
worshipped.
The trinity in unity has been a widespread and persistent part of all
religions, from which fact we may logically infer that this ideal has
a permanent place in the sum of human knowledge. Truth is often
obscured, but it can never be hidden from the eyes that are seeking
the light. The rightful interpretation of those ancient and obscured
truths, erroneously classified as "myths" and "superstitions," will
reveal a universal truth, and will also show their relation to modern
concepts.
But while we note a vague recognition of the female element in all our
modern religious systems, the general acceptance of the God-idea as
monistic and the gender of this monistic God as masculine betrays the
domination of phallicism over yoni worship and also over that of the
two principles in conjunction--the bi-une Deity. The tree is
universally accepted as an emblem of life-energy. The upright shape of
the tree; the sap which rises at certain periods from invisible
sources; and the fact that the germinal power of the seeds of the
fruits and trees is not destroyed by eating; all combined to make the
tree symbolical of eternal life. The tree is either male or female,
except in certain instances where it is, like the lotus, androgynous,
such for example as the ash, which is the "sacred" tree of
Scandinavia. Wherever a plant or a tree is found to be bi-sexual, it
has been regarded as "sacred." The same idea is found throughout all
myths, and all religious symbolism, namely: _the attainment of
god-hood is reached when both sexes are united in one Being._
The fuller meaning of this symbolical idea will be considered in a
subsequent chapter; but for the present we are concerned with the
history of sex-degradation from the pure ideal of nature worship to
that of a monistic God whose gender is masculine. The pine tree, held
sacred in many countries as a symbol of generation, and from which our
own Christmas-tree is descended, is distinctively a male emblem, and
its perennial green typifies the hope of Man that he too may manifest,
in some form of life, the never-failing virility of the pine. The
Latin name for the pine is pinus.
Thus from nature worship to phallic worship was but a step, but that
step led to others. The pine, from the fact of its erect form; its
spiral convolutions; its sap; its fruit; its renewal of activity; its
root and veins; became a universally accepted emblem of the
life-energy in man and in animals, and the gradual substitution of the
male principle alone, for the androgynous idea as a symbol of Deity
contributed to the idea of the inferiority of woman, until she finally
became the slave and the plaything of man. The "virgin of the
spheres," from her exalted mission as the Eternal Mother of the race,
became at best but a secondary personality, and finally was refused
any part in the symbol of the Holy Trinity.
Instead of father, mother and child, the Holy Trinity became "Father,
Son and--Holy Ghost."
The early Romans must have been devoid of a sense of humor. But what
of our modern Christian creeds, and their idea of the Holy Trinity
composed of three male beings?
It is in Christian Science alone of all the modern creeds that the
female principle is given a place co-equal with the male. Christian
Science addresses the Deity as "Father-Mother-God," and their
reverence for the woman who established the creed, as well as the
Ionian type of architecture employed in their church edifices, are
evidences of the re-establishment of the female principle in the
God-idea. Christian Science is one of the most important instruments
of the cosmic law in the present-day dethronement of the male
principle as the only true God.
So permeated with this male God-idea is every branch of our modern
thought; so enwrapped with the glamour of worship, that we hardly
notice the one-sidedness of the ideal. Tradition is a powerful
hypnotist.
Many members of the Masonic fraternity fail utterly to understand the
symbolical language of their mosques and the phallic and yoni emblems
which constitute their decorations. Notable among these emblems are
the pomegranate; the lotus; the circle; the crescent; the swastika.
The cone-shaped towers, that rise above the mosques, with their
protruding heads, vein-tipped; the central symbol identical with the
mound of Venus; denote the preservation of the Egyptian ideal, which
venerated both sexes as co-equal. It is easy to realize why the Jews
were driven out of Egypt when we remember that they refused to worship
the Egyptian ideal of God as bi-sexual, but persisted in rearing the
phallic symbol alone, denying the female principle a place in the
God-head.
It is also significant that side by side with the present-day Feminist
Movement we find the revival of Egyptian fashions; Egyptian
architecture; Egyptian philosophies and religions. Even Cubist art,
which in itself could make no possible appeal to recognition on its
artistic merits, has been received with much publicity, if not with
acclaim. Cubist art is a lineal descendant of Egyptian art, and so
closely resembles its far-off ancestry as to seem to have bridged the
centuries and connected us as if by telephone with the days of ancient
civilization. Our drama and our popular songs have responded to the
Egyptian thought-wave. Talismanic jewelry, so essentially Egyptian, is
in vogue, and on every sign board advertising breakfast foods, tobacco
and what not (so essentially an American custom) we find the
modernized use of Egyptian symbols, notably the swastika.
The swastika, the earliest form of the cross, found in every country
and in every out-of-the-way corner of the globe, is fundamentally,
originally and pre-eminently a bi-une sex symbol, and although volumes
have in recent years been written on its history and meaning, the
whole story may be summed up by examining its form and by realizing
its antiquity and its universality.
The two sex principles, joined in the center of the four arms or legs,
of the cross, accomplish that which is said (and truthfully if taken
on the physical plane only) to be impossible of accomplishment--they
square the circle. A circle is emblematical of completeness. Aum, the
Absolute, the Omniscient, is always typified by a circle. To "square
the circle" means esoterically to have reached godhood, and this can
be accomplished only by the male and female _united_ in spirit. The
swastika is essentially a bi-une sex symbol although it has been
sometimes called male and sometimes female, according to its shape,
which varies with the various meanings ascribed to it. Primitive man
was not prolific in language, and one symbol expressed many ideas
according to its varied form and position.
The original form of oath was to swear by the sacred power of the
generative organs, and we may readily conclude that this power was
conceded to be vested in the male only, from the fact that we still
"testify" when under oath and although the Bible has been substituted
for the generative organs, as an outward expression of our recognition
of the Creative Principle, we note that the Bible is made up of
"testaments," which stand for its "sacredness."
Evidently it was only after the advent of the male God that oaths and
vows and pledges were necessary. Previous to that time, a man's word
was reliable. It was inevitable that an ideal of the Supreme Creative
power of the universe so one-sided, and so lacking in the essential of
union, must degenerate into mere licentiousness and animalism; and it
is estimated that about six hundred years B.C. the level of debauchery
and vileness reigned. So-called religious rites and ceremonies were
nothing more than orgies of sex-degradation.
The ideal of godhood as nothing higher than masculine virility and
power evidenced by the number of his progeny, naturally reduced woman
to the lowest depths of slavery, since she was nothing more than a
receptacle for man's seed. Of course one wife was insufficient and a
man's claim to divinity was best expressed by profligacy--an ideal
which is rife even today among those, whose consciousness is bounded
by nothing higher than the conception of the animal nature of man.
Whence came this wonderful thing manifested as generative power? What
did it feed upon? These were natural queries. In seeking the answer
the idea originated that in the blood was to be found the secret of
the generative fluid. This idea arose from the evidence that as old
age conquered man's physical strength, his blood became weakened and
the supply insufficient.
This was accompanied by a loss of generative activity, and thus, they
argued, the power that made man god-like (the creative energy) left
him. This was indeed a calamity greater than we in this generation
realize, although we know that old age with consequent cessation of
physical vigor is the dread enemy of the undeveloped man. Even our
supposedly advanced thinkers have the absurd idea that sexual-energy
dies with the physical body. The few who have risen to the place where
they realize the truths made plain by soul-consciousness, know that
old age is but physical; that it is the vacation time between the
functions of physical activity and that of the soul-life. Old age is
the wise provision of the Cosmic Law which compels those who will not
do so of their own volition and wisdom, to transmute the life-energy
into higher channels. If the race knew enough to consciously transmute
the creative sex-energy into an interior function, there would come to
pass the time prophecied by St. Paul when Man shall consciously "lay
down his body and take it up again."
There are spiritually advanced men and women today who can consciously
leave the physical body as they do the house in which they live, while
they visit distant places, annihilating space. To these the body is no
more than a garment. Thus death is overcome and the knowledge attained
that we are souls using a physical body; that death does not in itself
confer upon any one either immortality or youth or love, but that
these may be acquired by acts of virtue and unselfish service--not as
payment or reward for unwilling work, but as the result of unfailing
law, which gives what we demand.
What we demand we naturally work for. If we serve Love, we get the
coin in which Love pays as naturally as we get the checks signed by
Jones when we work for Jones, and by Smith when we work for Smith.
Death merely discloses our interior nature. If we have failed to
transmute the life-energy into a love that is deeper than mere animal
instinct; if we have missed the beautiful and the pure and the lofty
idealism of Love, we will find ourselves as age-worn after death as
before the change. But again we may note a wise provision of the
Cosmic Law, for it is almost impossible for a human being to live
through many years of life without having loved some person or some
thing with at least a spark of unselfish love. Fortunately almost
every one is better interiorly than he appears to our limited vision.
The most depraved of mortals has his moments of the higher vision.
From this deduction of inquiring primitive man, namely that the blood
was the source of procreative virility, it is easy to trace the
logical result in the terrible practise of blood-sacrifice which
reigned so long and which, carried from one nation to another, and
engrafted into the God-idea, has come down to us in the story of the
"sacrificial lamb," at length personified in Jesus, the Son of God, as
a final act of propitiation.
The blood-atonement idea is naturally repulsive to civilized beings,
and were it not that nearly every one who adheres to the old form of
orthodox Christianity swallows theologic interpretation of the Bible
as he would swallow a dose of castor-oil, by closing his eyes and
holding his nose, the teaching as thus interpreted would be stopped by
police authority. And yet we may readily trace the gradual descent of
the God-idea of the ancients until it reached the culmination in the
idea of sacrifice of a son of God Himself.
In their blind but eager groping for some means of escape from death,
even as we of this day and generation are groping, the early races
observed that birth was accompanied by blood; that as age came on and
the blood became thin, and in the case of the female ceased to flow at
certain reproductive periods, the power of generation ceased. What
more natural to primitive man than that he should conceive the idea of
sending back to this unknown and invisible power behind the veil of
the sky the blood, which he must need to supply his creative energies?
And when the sacrifice of animals was not sufficient for this God,
they concluded that it must be because he required the blood of man.
And so at first the old and the sick and the deformed were sacrificed;
but as it was seen that this did not answer the need, they began to
sacrifice the young, and naturally the slaves were substituted for the
aged, as affording more blood; and when this failed the idea came,
that the sacrifice must be that of one who was innocent of the world,
and so they selected a girl or a young man, who had been secluded and
trained to the thought of sacrifice, and in whom the sex-function had
been rigorously suppressed.
And still the old grew bloodless and death claimed his toll, and so
they conceived the idea of voluntary blood-sacrifice, and we read of
repeated occasions in which fanatical ones offered themselves freely
on the sacrificial altars as atonement for the sins of their people.
At length this contagion of sacrifice consummated in the idea that the
only Son of God Himself became a voluntary offering to pay the final
debt of transgression and set men free from death, that they might
have eternal life, which to them meant life in the physical body.
It is not at all possible that Jesus had any such idea of his mission.
He was far too illumined for that, even judging from the meager
accounts which we have of his life and message. But when the story of
his mission on earth came to be told and retold the idea of
blood-sacrifice as _payment_ for the privilege of physical virility,
so implanted in the race-thought from centuries of such belief, could
not die immediately, and thus it reaches us today adown the centuries
and is re-told (though we trust not believed) in most of the Christian
churches in this civilized century.
And yet there is an esoteric truth underlying this universal idea of
sacrifice, and when we come to this in a subsequent chapter, we will
better understand how and why it has persisted throughout the
centuries.