nd universally adored representation
of the ancient female Deity in Egypt was the Virgin Neit or Neith, the
Athene of the Greeks and the Minerva of the Romans. Her name signifies
"I came from myself." This Deity represents not only creative power,
but abstract intelligence, Wisdom or Light. Her temple at Sais was
the largest in Egypt. It was open at the top and bore the following
inscription: "I am all that was and is and is to be; no mortal has
lifted up my veil, and the fruit which I brought forth was the sun."
She was called also Muth, the universal mother. Kings were especially
honored in the title "Son of Neith."

To express the idea that the female energy in the Deity comprehended
not alone the power to bring forth, but that it involved all the natural
powers, attributes, and possibilities of human nature, it was portrayed
by a pure Virgin who was also a mother. According to Herodotus, the
worship of Minerva was indigenous in Lybia, whence it travelled to Egypt
and was carried from thence to Greece. Among the remnants of Egyptian
mythology, the figure of a mother and child is everywhere observed. It
is thought by various writers that the worship of the black virgin and
child found its way to Italy from Egypt.

The change noted in the growth of the religious idea by which the male
principle assumes the more important position in the Deity may, by a
close investigation of the facts at hand, be easily traced, and, as has
before been expressed, this change will be found to correspond with
that which in an earlier age of the world took place in the relative
positions of the sexes. In all the earliest representations of the
Deity, the fact is observed that within the mother element is contained
the divinity adored, while the male appears as a child and dependent on
the ministrations of the female for existence and support. Gradually,
however, as the importance of man begins to be recognized in human
affairs, we find that the male energy in the Deity, instead of appearing
as a child in the arms of its mother, is represented as a man, and that
he is of equal importance with the woman; later he is identical with the
sun, the woman, although still a necessary factor in the god-idea, being
concealed or absorbed within the male. It is no longer woman who is to
bruise the serpent's head, but the seed of the woman, or the son. He is
Bacchus in Greece, Adonis in Syria, Christna in India. He is indeed the
new sun which is born o