Woman is told that her present position in society is entirely due to Christianity; that it is superior to that of her sex at any prior age of the world, Church and State both maintaining that she has ever been inferior and dependent, man superior and ruler. These assertions are made the basis of opposition to her demands for exact equality with man in all the relations of life, although they are not true either of the family, the church, or the state. Such assertions are due to non-acquaintance with the existing phase of historical knowledge, whose records the majority of mankind have neither time nor opportunity of investigating.
Christianity tended somewhat from its foundation to restrict the liberty woman enjoyed under the old civilizations. Knowing that the position of every human being keeps pace with the religion and civilization of his country, and that in many ancient nations woman possessed a much greater degree of respect and power than she has at the present age, this subject will be presented from a historical standpoint. If in so doing it helps to show man's unwarranted usurpation over woman's religious and civil rights, and the very great difference between true religion and theology, this
The famous Iroquois Indians, or Six Nations, which at the discovery of America held sway from the great lakes to the Tombigbee river, from the Hudson to the Ohio, and of whom it has been said that 'another century would have found them master of all tribes to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and the Mississippi on the west, showed alike in form of government, and in social life, reminiscences of the Matriarchate. The line of descent, feminine, was especially notable in all tribal relations such as the election of Chiefs, and the Council of Matrons, to which all disputed questions were referred for final adjudication. No sale of lands was valid without consent of the squaws and among Her right of final disposal by will is also specified. Her effects acquired during marriage go to her daughters in preference to her sons, and possessing no daughters, to her mother. When a woman dies, then whatever effects she acquired during the Agàmini Shàdee, even though she hath a son living, shall go first to her unmarried daughter; if there is but one unmarried daughter she shall obtain the whole; if there are several unmarried daughters, they all shall have equal share. Property under the three forms of marriage, if no unmarried daughters and others mentioned here, goes to her mother before to her father; and if neither, to her husband, and if no husband to husband's younger brother, or several younger brothers, (if several). The specification of gifts of intention is remarkable in securing property to the wife that was seemingly given by the parents to the husband alone. An equally remarkable fact is the father's heirship in preference to the husband's, and the heirship of the daughters and mother in preference to any male relative however near, and is in striking contrast to Christian law in reference to woman's property. If a husband neglect to provide his wife necessary food and clothing, the East Indian wife is allowed to procure It is certainly a remarkable fact that the institution seems to have developed among the Hindoos at a period relatively much earlier than among the Romans. The Mitakshara, one of the oldest and most revered authorities of the Hindoo judicial treatises, defines Stridham, or woman's property, as that which is given to the wife by the father, the mother, or a brother at the time of the wedding, before the nuptial fire. But adds Maine: "The compiler of Mitakshara adds a proportion not found elsewhere; also property which she may have acquired by inheritance, purchase, partition, seizure or finding, is denominated woman's property. * * If all this be Stridham, it follows that the ancient Hindoo law secured to married women an even greater degree of proprietary independence than that given to them by the modern English Married Woman's Property Act. Property is common to the husband and the wife. The ample support of those who are entitled to maintenance is rewarded with bliss in heaven; but hell is the portion of that man whose family is afflicted with pain by his neglect. Therefore the Hindoo husband is taught to maintain his family with the utmost care. Maxims from the sacred books show the regard in which the Hindoo woman is held: "He who despises woman despises his mother." "Who is cursed by woman is cursed by God." "The tears of a woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make them flow." "Evil to him who laughs at woman's sufferings; God shall laugh at his prayers." "Who shall forget the sufferings of his mother at his birth shall be reborn in the body of an owl during three successive transmigrations." "There is no crime more odious than to persecute woman." "When women are honored the divinities are content; but when they are not honored all undertakings fail." "The households cursed by women to whom they have not rendered the homage due them, find themselves weighed down with ruin and destroyed as if they had been struck by some secret power." "We will not admit the people of to-day are incapable of comprehending woman, who alone can regenerate them." The marriage ceremony is of the slightest kind and under three forms: 1. Of mutual consent by the interchange of necklaces or strings of flowers in some secret place. 2. A woman says, "I am become your wife," and the man says, "I acknowledge it." 3. When the parents of a girl on her marriage day say to the bridegroom: "Whatever act of religion you perform, perform it with our daughter," and the bridegroom assents to this speech. The comparatively modern custom of suttee originated with the priests, whose avaricious desires created this system in order thereby to secure the property of the widow. The Vedas do not countenance either suttee or the widow's relinquishment of her property, the law specifically declaring "If a widow should give all her property and estate to the Brahmins for religious purposes, the gift indeed is valid, but the act is improper and the woman blamable." An ancient scripture declares that "All the wisdom of the Vedas, and all that has been written in
Ancient Egypt worshiped two classes of gods; one purely spiritual and eternal, the other secondary but best beloved, were believed to have been human beings who from the services they had rendered to humanity were upon death admitted to the assembly of the gods. Such deification common in ancient times, is still customary in some parts of the earth. Within the past few years a countryman of our own was thus apotheosized by the Chinese to whom he had rendered valuable service at the time of the Tae-ping rebellion. Isis was believed to contain germs within herself for the reproduction of all living things. The most universal of her 10,000 names was, "Potent Mother Goddess." Women performed the most holy offices of religion, carrying the Sacred Sistrum and offering sacrifices of milk, both ceremonies of great dignity and importance, being regarded as the most sacred service of the divinity. Such sacrificial rites were confined to queens and princesses of the royal household. Amés-Nofri-Ari, a queen who received great honor from Egyptians, spoken of as the "goddess-wife of Amun," the supreme god of Thebes, for whose worship the wonderful temple of Karnak was founded by a Pharaoh of the XII. dynasty, is depicted on the monuments as the Chief High Priest--the Sem, whose specific duty was offering sacrifices and pouring out libations in that temple. By virtue of her high office she preceded her husband, the powerful and renowned Rameses II. The high offices of the church were as habitually held by women as by men; Princess Neferhotep, of the fifth dynasty, was both a priestess and a prophetess of the goddesses Hathor and Neith, the representatives of celestial space, in which things were both created and preserved. A priestess and priest in time of the XIII. Pharaoh represented on a slab of limestone, n possession of the Ashmolean Library of Oxford, England, is believed to be the oldest monument of its kind in the world, dating to 3,500, B. C. Queen Hatasu, the light of the brilliant XVIII. dynasty, is depicted upon the monuments as preceding To unprotected woman there is freedom to wander through the whole country wheresoever she list without apprehending danger. A woman was one of the founders of the ancient Parsee religion, which taught the existence of but a single god, thus introducing monotheism into that rare old kingdom. Until the introduction of Christianity woman largely preserved the liberty belonging to her in the old civilizations. Of her position under Roman law before this period Maine (Gaius) says; The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of the law of equity. The situation of the Roman woman whether married or single became one of great personal and proprietary independence; but Christianity tended somewhat from the commencement to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted these rules concerning the position of women which belong to an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization. Rome not only secured remarkable personal and An Orphic hymn says: "Zeus is the first and the last, the head and the extremities; from him have proceeded all things. He is a man and an immortal nymph i. e. the male and female element. The Sohar declares "the ancient of the ancient has a form and has no form." The Holy Spirit, symbolized by a dove, is a distinctively feminine principle--the Comforter--and yet has ever been treated by the Christian Church as masculine, alike in dogmas propounded from the pulpit, and in translations of the Scriptures. A few notable exceptions however appear at an early date. Origen expressly referred to the Holy Ghost as feminine, saying: "The soul is maiden to her mistress the Holy Ghost". An article upon the "Esoteric character of the Gospels" in Madam Blavatsky's "Lucifer" (November 1887) says: Spirit or the Holy Ghost was feminine with the The word sacred simply meaning secret, having its origin as shown at the time when knowledge was kept hidden from the bulk of mankind, only to be acquired by initiation in the mysteries, so also the word 'holy' simply means whole, that is, undivided. In its ignorance, unwisdom, and fear of investigation, mankind has allowed a 2. Where a god and goddess are worshiped together they are not husband and wife, but mother and son. Neither does the god take pre-eminence, but the mother or goddess. This condition dates from the earliest days of society, when marriage in our sense of the word was unknown, and when kinship and Inheritance were in the female line. The Babylonian Ishtur of the Izdobar legend is a deity of this type.--W. Robertson Smith: Kinship in Ancient Arabia. 3. Dr. Th. Achelis.--Article on Ethnology: (The Open Court.) 5. Motherright. 6. Lubbuck.--Prehistoric Times and Origin of Civilization. Wilkin. 8. "Thus we see that woman's liberty did not begin at the upper, but at the lower end of civilization. Woman in those remote times, was endowed with and enjoyed rights that are denied to her but too completely in the higher phase of civilization This subject has a very important aspect, i. e. the position of woman to man, the place she holds in society, her condition in regard to her private and public (political) rights." 10. We find the mother's right exclusively together with a well-established monogamy.--Bachofen 13. History of the United States, Vol. I. 14. Cushing. 16. That the Veddas are the aborigines of Ceylon may be assumed from the fact that the highly civilized Singalese admit them to be of noble rank. Prehistoric Times.--Lubbuck. 17. "We find in some instances this independence of the maiden in regard to disposing of her hand, or selecting a husband as a memento of the time of the Matriarchate. * * The most remarkable instance of the self-disposition of woman we find among the ancient Arabs and the Hindoos; among the latter the virgin was permitted to select her own husband if her father did not give her in marriage within three years after her maturity." 19. Among the illustrative types of interior realities and the elementary geometric forms, point, direct line and deflected line, the last of which is a true arc produces the circle when carried to its ultimate, this circle representing the triune order of movement; the point in the line, the line in the curve, and the curve in the circle--The Path. 20. The phallus and lingum (or lingum and yoni), the point within the circle or diameter within the circle.--Volney's Ruins. 22. All mythology has pertinently been characterized as ill-remembered history. 27. "I am nature, the parent of all things, the sovereign of the elements, the primary progeny of time, the most exalted of the deities, the first of the heavenly gods and goddesses, the queen of the shades, the uniform countenance who dispose with my rod the innumerable lights of heaven." 28. The salubrious breezes of the sea, and the mournful silence of the dead whose single deity the whole world venerates in many forms with various rites and many names. The Egyptians, skilled in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies and call me by my true name--Queen Isis. 30. All the ancient nations appear to have had an ark or archa, in which to conceal something sacred.--Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis I, 347. 31. The Sacred Song of Moses and Miriam was an early part of Jewish literature; the idea was borrowed like the ark from the religion of Isis.
Footnotes
34. That Homer came into Egypt, amongst other arguments they endeavor to prove it especially by the potion Helen gave Telemachus--in the story of Menelaus--to cause him to forget all his sorrows past, for the poet seems to have made an exact experiment of the potion Nepenthes, which he says Helen received from Polymnestes, the wife of Thonus, and brought it from Thebes in Egypt; and indeed in that city, even at this day, the women use this medicine with good success, and they say that in ancient times the medicine for the cure of anger and sorrow was only to be found among the Diospolitans, Thebes and Diospolis being affirmed by them to be one and the same city.--Diodorus Siculus, Vol. I, Chap. VII.
35. The remaining three were Cyrus, Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander. Cyrus met defeat and death at the hands of Tomyris, queen of the Scythians, who caused him to be crucified, a punishment deemed so ignominious by the Romans that it was not inflicted upon the most criminal of their citizens. Because of his barbarity, Tomyris caused the head of Cyrus to be plunged into a sack of blood "that he might drink his fill."
39. The Anacalypsis II, 241
41. The Shakers hold that the revelation of God is progressive. That in the first or antediluvian period of human nature God was known only as a Great Spirit; that in the second or Jewish period he was revealed as the Jehovah. He, she or a dual being, male or female, the "I am that I am;" that Jesus in the third cycle made God known as a father; and that in the last cycle commencing with 1770, A. D., "God is revealed in the character of Mother, an eternal Mother, the bearing spirit of all the creation of God."--W. A. Parcelle.
42. In China the family acting through its natural representative is the political unit. This representative may be a woman. The only body in China that may be said to correspond with our law-making assemblies is the Academy of Science and Letters of Pekin, and women are not excluded from that learned conclave. La Cité Chinoise.--G. Eugene Simon.
45. The divine element, according to the idea of the ancient world, was composed of two sexes. There were dei femma, and hence temples sacred to goddesses; holy sanctuaries where were celebrated mysteries in which men could not be permitted to participate. The worship of goddesses necessitated priestesses, so that women exercised the sacerdotal office in the ancient world. The wives of the Roman Consuls even offered public sacrifices at certain festivals. The more property the wife had, the more rights she had.--M. Derraimes.
46. The superiority of woman's condition in Europe and America is generally attributed to Christianity. We are anxious to give some credit to that influence, but it must not be forgotten that the nations of Northern Europe treated women with delicacy and devotion long before they were converted to the Christian faith. Long before the Christian era women were held in high estimation, and enjoyed as many privileges as they generally have since the spread of Christianity. Nichols.--Women of all Nations.
49. The Perfect Way.--Kingsford.
51. Nork says the "Women clothed with the sign of the Sun and the Moon is the bi-sexed or male-female deity; hence her name is Iah, composed of the masculine I and the feminine Ah. Sod.--Appendix 123.
52. The Perfect Way, p. 78.
53. That name of Deity, which occurring in the Old Testament is translated the Almighty, namely El Shaddai, signified the Breasted God, and is used when the mode of the divine nature implied is of a feminine character. Kingsford.--The Perfect Way, p. 68.
Injustice to the sex reached its culmination in the enthronement of a personal God with a Son to share his glory, but wifeless, motherless, daughterless.--Dr. William Henry Channing.
No man seems shaken at hearing of the fatherhood of Jehovah. Is motherhood less divine? Nothing but a male-born theology evolved from the overheated fires of feeling would have burned away all recognition of the fact that the presence of the "Eternal Womanly" in Yod-he-vau's being is necessary to full-sphered perfection; none but those whose degraded estimate of woman has caused them to desecrate her holy office of high priestess of life, will see anything more sacrilegious in a recognition of "Our Mother in Heaven," and in offering her the prayer "hallowed be thy name, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," than in saying the same things to the Father there.
Those who chose to search will discover that the "Eternal Fatherhood of God, in regard to which Protestant theologians talk so much, has been balanced in all ancient religions as well as in the nature of things by the eternal Motherhood in Jehovah's being, without which Fatherhood would be impossible. This Motherhood has always and everywhere been the preserver and creator of the omnipresent life of all kinds which fills the throbbing universe. Yod-he-vau's Lost Name can never be hallowed (made whole) without the Mother is there. E. I. Mason.--The Lost Name.