underwent as many transformations as the snake has
skins. In this evolution, natural selection played a determining role as the Church bred into its conception those deities best suited to its particular brand o f dualistic
theology. It is a cultural constant that the gods o f one
religion become the devils o f the next, and the Church,
intolerant o f deviation in this as in all other areas,
Woman Hating
vilified the gods of those pagan religions which threatened Catholic supremacy in Europe until at least the 15th century. The pagan religions were not monotheistic and their pantheons were scarcely conservative in number. The Church had a slew of deities to dispatch and would have done so speedily had not the
old gods their faithful adherents who clung to the old
practices, who had local power, who had to be pacified.
Accordingly, the Church did a kind of roulette and sent
some gods to heaven (canonizing them) and others to
hell (damning them). Especially in southern Europe the
local deities, formerly housed on Olympus, were allowed
to continue their traditional vocations of healing the
sick and protecting the traveler. The Church often
transformed the names of the gods —so as not to be
embarrassed, no doubt. Apollo, for instance, became
St. Apollinaris; Cupid became St. Valentine. The pagan
gods were also allowed to retain their favorite haunts —
shrines, trees, wells, burial grounds, now newly decorated with a cross.
But in northern Europe the old gods did not fare
as well. The peoples o f northern Europe were temperamentally and culturally quite different from the Latin Christians, and their religions centered around animal
totemism and fertility rites. The “heathens” adhered
to a primitive animism. They worshiped nature (archenemy o f the Church), which was manifest in spirits who inhabited stones, rivers, and trees. In the paleolithic hunting stage, they were concerned with magical control o f animals. In the later neolithic agricultural
stage, fertility practices to ensure the food supply
predominated.
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Anthropologists now believe that man’s first representation o f any anthropomorphic deity is that o f a horned figure who wears a stag’s head and is apparently
dancing. That figure is to be found in a cavern in Ar-
riege. Early religions actively worshiped animals, and
in particular animals which symbolized male fertility—the bull, goat, or stag. Ecstatic dancing, feasts, sacrifice o f the god or his representative (human or animal) were parts o f the rites. T h e magician-priest- shaman became the earthly incarnation o f the god-animal and
apparently dressed in the skins o f the sacred animal
(even the Pharaoh o f Egypt had an animal tail attached
to his girdle). T here he stood, replete with horns and
hooves—the primitive deity, attributes o f him echoing
in the later deities Osiris, Isis, Hathor, Pan, and Janus.
His worship was assimilated into the phallic worship o f
the northern sky-thunder-warrior gods (the influence
o f which can be seen in Druidic practices). These pagan
