and such as the barbarians of
the North employed to represent the solar year, divided into four parts,
at the back of each."(30)

30) Symbolism of Ancient Art.

It was doubtless at a time when woman constituted the head of the gens,
and when the feminine element in the sun, in human beings, and in Nature
generally was regarded as the more important, that Latona and her son
Apollo were worshipped together. Latona, Apollo, and Diana constituted
the triune God. The last two were the female and male energies, the
former being the source whence they sprang. As soon as one is divested
of a belief in the popular but erroneous opinion that the gods of the
early Egyptians and Greeks were deified heroes of former ages, he is
prepared to perceive the fact that, although to the uninitiated these
gods appear numberless, in reality they all represent the same idea,
namely: the dual, moving force in Nature, together with Light or Wisdom.

We have seen that when among the nations of antiquity civilization had
reached its height, the god-idea was represented by the figure of a
woman with her child; subsequently, however, as these nations began to
decline, the creative energy comprehended simply physical life, or the
power to reproduce, and was represented by various emblems which will
be noticed farther on in this work. In still later ages, after male
reproductive power had become God, and when, through superstition
and sensuality, the masses of the people had descended to the rank of
slaves, monarchs, representing themselves to their ignorant subjects
as the source of all blessings, even of life itself, appropriated the
titles of the sun, and claimed for themselves the adoration which had
formerly belonged to it. From this fact has doubtless arisen the opinion
so tenaciously upheld in recent times, that the gods of the ancients
were only deified heroes of former times.

If, during the earlier ages of human existence, all the gods resolved
themselves into the sun, and if Light and Life, or Wisdom and the power
to reproduce and sustain life, constituted the Deity, then of course God
or the sun would be female or male, or both, according to the prevailing
belief in the comparative creative and sustaining forces of the sexes.

From what appears in the foregoing pages the fact has doubtless been
perceived that the worship of a Virgin and Child does not, as is usually
supposed, belong exclusively to the Romish Christian Church,