It was neither the absence of moral feeling, nor the presence of gross sensuality in them that made them imagine their Deities under a dual aspect; but rather their knowledge of the mysteries and processes of primitive Nature. The Science of Physiology was better known to them than it is to us now. It is in this that lies buried the key to the Symbolism of old, the true focus of national thought, and the strange dual‐sexed images of nearly every God and Goddess in both pagan and monotheistic Pantheons. Says Sir William Drummond in _Œdipus Judaïcus_: The truths of science were the arcana of the priests because these truths were the foundations of religion. But why should the missionaries so cruelly twit the Vaishnavas and Krishna worshippers for the supposed grossly indecent meaning of their symbols, since it is made clear beyond the slightest doubt, and by the most unprejudiced writers, that Chrestos in the pit—whether the pit be taken as meaning the grave or hell—had likewise a sexual element in it, from the very origin of the symbol. This fact is no longer denied to‐day. The “Brothers of the Rosy Cross” of the Middle Ages were as good Christians as any to be found in Europe, nevertheless, all their rites were based on symbols whose meaning was pre‐ eminently phallic and sexual. Their biographer, Hargrave Jennings, the best modern authority on Rosicrucianism, speaking of this mystic Brotherhood, describes how The tortures and the sacrifice of Calvary, the Passion of the Cross, were, in their [the Rose‐Croix’s] glorious blessed magic and triumph, the protest and appeal. Protest—by whom? The answer is, the protest of the crucified Rose, the greatest and the most unveiled of all sexual symbols—the Yoni and Lingam, the “victim” and the “murderer,” the female and male principles in Nature. Open the last work of that author, _Phallicism_, and see in what glowing terms he describes the sexual symbolism in that which is most sacred to the Christian: The flowing blood streamed from the crown, or the piercing circlet of the thorns of Hell. The Rose is feminine. Its lustrous carmine petals are guarded with thorns. The Rose is the most beautiful of flowers. The Rose is the Queen of God’s Garden (Mary, the Virgin). It is not the Rose alone which is the magical idea, or truth. But it is the “crucified rose,” or the “martyred rose” (by the grand mystic apocalyptic figure) which is the talisman, the standard, the object of adoration of all the “Sons of Wisdom” or the true Rosicrucians.(540)