Lunar and
Sex Worship

Around this symbol and the cult which it symbolized gathered
the first civilization of the human race, the first feeble aspirations
of savage humanity toward beauty, grace and unselfishness. For
the cross, in whatsoever land it be found—and it or some one of
its correlated emblems is reverenced in every civilized nation or
savage tribe yet met with upon the earth—is an old, old symbol
of the relation resulting from that mysterious attraction between
man and woman which is called sexual love.
To this mighty passion—stronger than even hunger or the fear of death—the animal
world owes the acquisition, through natural selection, of
grace in form or beauty in coloring, of perfumes, as in the muskdeer,
of splendid crests and gorgeous plumage, as in the male
birds of many species. The magnificent antlers of the stag, the
exquisite music of the canary, are alike the result of sexual selection.
In man, the higher animal, this force has acted on a more
extended scale still. The graceful contour of women, their soft
voices and coquetries, are but a few of those secondary differences
of sex intensified by masculine selection through long
centuries. But it is on the mind and heart that sexual attraction
has always exerted its greatest power, leading each sex to practice
every grace it possessed in order to attract the other. Primitive
man perforce abated his rude savagery to become tender and
considerate toward the woman he desired to possess; and primitive
woman, endowed by Nature with an Amazonian strength
which in a state of savagery rendered her the physical equal of the
man, laid aside her virgin fierceness to meet him more than
halfway in unselfish tenderness, and, for love of him, to become
less his equal and more his slave as the ages rolled on. Whatever
errors or immoralities may have gradually crept into the relationship
of the sexes, Nature has more than counterbalanced them by
making the law of sexual attraction the chief educator of the race
in acquiring with every generation increased sensibilities, physical,
intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and in many cases spiritual.

For this reason, we need not wonder that the euphemistic
symbol of sexual union, the Cross, should command universal
reverence. Its meaning has long since been forgotten, save by a
few of the educated; nevertheless, its symbolism still survives in
a thousand ways in the folklore of the people, and in the religions
of learned priests everywhere, whatsoever those religions be; and
though ignorantly, it (or some one of its correlated emblems) is
none the less loyally honored, and rightly so, as a sacred symbol
throughout the world.

(pp. 109-110)