Christianity
I have already shown that Christianity was preeminently a
religion of male deities, and that in this, it differed from the old
phallic faiths which either recognized a female as the third person
in the trinity of Divine Powers or in some other way paid
homage to the feminine principle. Moreover, Christianity was, as
I have also stated, the culmination of centuries of reaction
against the licentiousness into which sex worship had degenerated.
For this reason, being preeminently a male religion, the
promoters evidently thought it advisable to assert the power of
the new god (the Son of the Father) over the feminine principle.
If a symbol venerated as typifying the feminine principle could
be shown to be subject to the power of the new god, his triumph
might be assured with the common people. And so we find in the
New Testament…the really remarkable and apparently unnecessary miracle of the
cursing of the fig tree by Jesus. Looked at as a bold statement of
fact, it is difficult to see in the latter story—reverently as we may
strive to view it—anything but a display of ill-temper, totally
incompatible with the character of a good man, let alone a godlike
one. But viewed as the type of an old worship whose symbol
is behooved the new god to show the weakness of, we can readily
see how necessary was the cursing of the fig tree and its
eventual withering away before him. Perhaps, too, in his cursing
the tree for its lack of fruit, we may see a symbolic reproof by the
new religion aimed at the woman who exists for sexual pleasure
only, and not for propagative purposes.
(pp. 256-257)