through all Eastern creeds--of which Christianity is one--and we
shall not be surprised to find similar symbols expressing similar ideas;
there are, in fact, cardinal symbols re-appearing in all these allied
religions; the virgin and child; the trinity in unity; the cross; these
have their roots struck deep in human nature, and are found in every
Eastern creed. So also can we trace sacraments and ceremonies, and many
minor dogmas. In looking back into those ancient creeds it is necessary
to get rid of the modern fashion of regarding any natural object as
immodest. Sir William Jones justly remarks that in Hindustan "it never
seems to have entered the heads of the legislators, or people, that
anything natural could be offensively obscene; a singularity which
pervades all their writings and conversation, but is no proof of
depravity in their morals" ("Asiatic Researches," vol. i., p. 255).
Gross injustice is sometimes done to ancient creeds by contemplating
them from a modern point of view; in those days every power of Nature
was thought divine, and most divine of all was deemed the power of
creation, whether worshipped in the sun, whose beams impregnated the
earth, or in the male and female organs of generation, the universal
creators of life in the animal world; thus we find in all ancient
sculptures carvings of the phallus and the yoni, expressed both
naturally and symbolically, the representations becoming more and more
conventional and refined as civilisation advanced; of the infant world
it may be said that it was "naked, and was not ashamed;" as it grew
older, and clothed the human form, it also draped its religious symbols,
but as the body remains unaltered under its garments, so the idea
concealed beneath the emblems remains the same.

The union of male and female is, then, the foundation of all religions;
the heaven marries the earth, as man marries woman, and that union is
the first marriage. Saturn is the sky, the male, or active energy; Rhea
is the earth, the female, or receptive; and these are the father and the
mother of all. The Persians of old called the sky Jupiter, or Jupater,
"Ju the Father." The sun is the agent of the generative power of the
sky, and his beams fecundate the earth, so that from her all life is
produced. Thus the sun becomes worshipped as the Father of all, and the
sun is the emblem which crowns the images of the Supreme God; the vernal
equinox is the resurrection of the sun, and the sig