Masculine Cross and Ancient Sex Worship

The worship of the woman by man naturally led to developments which our comparatively sensitive natures shun, as being opposed to all religious feeling. But among a people whose language was without the gloss of modern politeness, whose priests both spoke and wrote without the least disguise, and whose God, through his prophets and lawgivers, promised abundance of offspring and an increase in flocks and herds, as one of the greatest blessings he had to bestow, we can readily believe that what we call "obscenities" might be regarded as sacred homage or divine emblems. What were these emblems? When plainness of speech is restored to its original office, and the meaning of words is defined or traced to their primitives, names of natural objects give us this wonderful answer, and tell us the homely story of these emblems.

THE triad is parent to the idea of Trinity. It is met with in the most distant countries, and is traced to Phoenicia, Egypt, on the west, and Japan on the east, of our hemisphere, and to India. Constituting, as the triad and yoni did, the ever-dominant thought, and actuated by the narrow realm of an absorbing self-personality, they formed the basis and spirit of religious observance.

They were referred to openly and broadly, or more generally and in later times by a mark, a metaphor, a motion, or a sign. For this sign the letter T became typical, and still later the figure of the cross became that sign. "It is most remarkable," says Payne Knight, that "the letter T and the cross, symbols of symbols, are made to represent the male procreative powers, which are emblems of generation and regeneration."