Jupiter is called feminine, and the genetrixque Deûm,[1] by Augustine.
The Orphic verses make the Moon both male and female.[2]
9. The following extract from Sir W. Jones’s Dissertation on the Gods of Greece and India, will, perhaps, be of some weight with the very large class of mankind, who prefer authority to reason; and may serve to justify or excuse the opinions here expressed, by shewing them that they are neither new nor unsupported: “We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan Deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems a well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of Gods and Goddesses in ancient Rome and modern Váránes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the Sun, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names.”
In a future part of this work I shall have much more to say of the Goddesses or the female generative power, which became divided from the male, and in consequence was the cause of great wars and miseries to the Eastern parts of the world, and of the rise of a number of sects in the Western, which have not been at all understood.
Thus, we see, there is in fact an end of all the multitude of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses, so disguised in the Pantheons and books of various kinds, which the priests have published from time to time to instil into the minds of their pupils—that the ancient Heathen philosophers and legislators were the slaves of the most degrading superstition; that they believed such nonsense as the metamorphoses described by Ovid, or the loves of Jupiter, Venus, &c., &c. That the rabble were the victims of a degrading superstition, I have no doubt. This was produced by the knavery of the ancient priests, and it is in order to reproduce this effect that the modern priests have misrepresented the doctrines of their predecessors. By vilifying and running down the religion of the ancients, they have thought they could persuade their votaries that their new religion was necessary for the good of mankind: a religion which, in consequence of their corruptions, has been found to be in practice much worse and more injurious to the interests of society than the old one. For, from these corruptions the Christian religion—the religion of purity and truth when uncorrupted—has not brought peace but a sword.
After the astrologers had parcelled out the heavens into the forms of animals, &c., and the annual path of the Sun had become divided into twelve parts, each part designated by some animal, or other figure, or known emblem, it is not surprising that they should have become the objects of adoration. This M. Dupuis has shewn,[3] was the origin of the Arabian and Egyptian adoration of animals, birds, &c. Hence, in the natural progress of events, the adoration of images arose among the Heathens and Christians.
10. The same tolerating spirit generally prevailed among the votaries of the Heathen Gods of the Western world, which we find among the Christian saints. For though in some few instances the devotees in Egypt quarrelled about their Gods, as in some few instances the natives of Christian towns have quarrelled about their Divi or tutelar saints, yet these petty wars never created much mischief.[4] They were evidently no ways dangerous to the emoluments of the priests, and therefore they were not attended with very important consequences.
A great part of the uncertainty and apparent contradictions which we meet with in the history of the religions of antiquity, evidently arises from the inattention of the writers to the changes which long periods of time produce.
It is directly contrary to the law of nature for any thing to remain stationary. The law of
