amilies and of the gentes, and at a time when
Perceptive Wisdom, or the female energy in the Deity, was worshipped as
the supreme God, is a fact which in time will be proved beyond a doubt.
Indeed, had not the judgment of man become warped by prejudice, and
his reason clogged by superstition and sensuality, the fact so plainly
apparent in all ancient mythologies, that in the early god-idea two
principles were contained, the female being in the ascendancy, would
long ere this have been acknowledged, and our present religious systems,
which are but outgrowths from these mythologies, would, with the partial
return of civilized conditions, have been so modified or changed as to
embrace some of the fundamental truths which formed the basis of early
religion.

Regarding the religion of the ancient race which we have been
considering, we are told that they worshipped a dual Deity, under the
appellations of Ashtaroth and Baal, and that this God "comprehended
the generative or reproductive powers in human beings and in the sun,
together with Wisdom or Light." In other words, they adored the great
moving force throughout Nature, a force which they venerated as the
Great Mother.

Before the Zend and Sanskrit branches of the Aryan race had separated,
their religion was doubtless that given them by their Cushite
civilizers. The worship of the sun and the planets, with which were
inextricably interwoven the fructifying agencies in Nature, explains
their devotion to the study of the heavenly bodies and their advanced
knowledge of astronomy. The types of regeneration or reproduction which
they venerated were symbols of abstract principles, and, from facts
connected with their religious ceremonies as practiced by their
immediate successors, and from the pure significance attached to their
emblems, we are justified in the conclusion before referred to, that
the sensuous element, which became so prominent in later religious
developments, constituted no part of their worship.

The number of ages during which the most primitive religion, namely,
that of pure Nature-worship, prevailed among the inhabitants of the
earth may not be conjectured, and the exact length of time during which
earth and sun adoration unalloyed by serpent and phallic faiths remained
is not known. It is probable, however, that its duration is to be
measured by that of the supremacy of the altruistic or mother element
in human affairs, and that the gradual engrafting