ignorance, superstition, and fear, in order that he may be "first a man,"
"then a Master," and at length on a higher plane of being, something more
than man has yet realized, or ever dreamed.

Something "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it yet entered
into the heart of man to conceive the glory that shall be revealed."

The beginning is here and now, when man shall achieve the Mastery of Self
and really possess his own soul, and not hold it tremblingly as a _pawn_
of some pretentious potentate of the soul.

The right of Light, Knowledge, and further progress by "_Being a Man_,"
and not a chattel, an asset, a pawn, or a slave.

This is the coming _Avatar_, and the dawn is already here.

Will the day darken, the Light be quenched? Who can tell?

The redemption of Woman from the slavery of all the past is well under
way, and it is indeed a glorious sign.

No lesson in history is plainer nor more readily demonstrated than the
fact that the degeneracy of a religion and the degradation of woman go
hand in hand.

Demonstrate to-day in any country on earth the status of woman as a whole,
and no mistake need be made as to the prevailing religion.

Woman's political disability is another matter entirely; for she is
dominated by man only because, and only so far as, she is handicapped or
degraded by the dominant religion.

Take woman from the churches, Protestant or Romish, to-day, and no church
could do business for a twelvemonth.

For these reasons the immense and rapidly growing movements, Women's Clubs
and the like, to-day, are of great significance, backed and illuminated as
they are by all past history.

In the new movement, the School of Natural Science, the door is as wide
open to woman as to man. I might paraphrase the slogan of the Robber
Barons of the middle ages. "_She_ may seize who hath the power, _She_ may
hold who can."

In the coming Illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all
opportunity, endeavor, or achievement.

In the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of.

We might call this new age "_the Woman's Avatar_," without doing violence
to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred Hymns
of the Vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul
of man, the worship of Divinity, by both men and women, opened a new
heaven on this old earth.

And then--such children as will be born, without pain, not through c