l of the Christian sects made war upon them
and all their ephemeral substitutes, such as Maypoles, holy-trees, real
crosses, etc." It is declared also that, as "later" Christians were
unacquainted with the significance of these emblems, "they adopted them
as their own, employing them as the mystic signs of their own faith."

Although the earliest Greek and Roman missionaries understood the
signification of these faith shrines, the complaints against them seem
soon to have ceased, and the "fierce wars" waged over them appear to
have left little trace of their ravages, except that the female emblems
with which these monuments had been supplied by those who had received
the new faith direct from the East, were all removed. As the male
monuments and symbols were all permitted to remain undisturbed, this
fact of itself would seem to indicate that the "pagan abominations"
against which these pious devotees of a "spiritual religion" thundered
their denunciations, included only the female emblems.

The fact must be borne in mind that the Western Church, which was
rapidly usurping the ecclesiastical authority of Britain and Ireland,
had not itself at this time adopted the worship of the Virgin Mary.

A set of iconoclastic monks whom the Christian world is pleased to
designate as St. Patrick, and who probably early in the fifth century of
our era amused themselves by chiseling from the Irish monuments many of
the symbols of the female power, removed also the figures of serpents
which had for ages appeared in connection with the emblems of woman, and
by this act won the plaudits of an admiring Christian world; chiefly,
however, for the skill manifested in "banishing snakes from Ireland."
In addition to this dignified amusement, we find that the same person or
set of persons ordered to be burned hundreds of volumes of the choicest
Irish literature, volumes which contained the annals of the ancient
Irish nation, and in which, it is believed, was stored much actual
information concerning the remote antiquity of the human race.

The extent to which the worship of the male emblems of generation
prevailed in the Christian Church even as late as the 16th century,
proves that it was not the particular symbols connected with the worship
of fertility upon which the Western Christian missionaries made war,
but, on the contrary, that it was the recognition by them of that
detested female element against which, even before the erection of th