OK Bob you are the researcher; answer the following.
When the study of religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up -- say in the earlier part of last century -- there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun -- unless indeed (if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod, of course; Hercules was a sungod; Samson was a sungod; Indra and Krishna, and even Christ, the same. C. F. Dupuis in France (Origine de tous les Cultes, 1795), F. Nork in Germany (Biblische Mythologie, 1842), Richard Taylor in England (The Devil's Pulpit,1 1830), were among the first in modern times to put forward this view. A little later the phallic explanation of everything came into fashion. The deities were all polite names for the organs and powers of procreation. R. P. Knight (Ancient Art and Mythology, 1818) and Dr. Thomas Inman (Ancient Faiths and Ancient Names, 1868) popularized this idea in England; so did Nork in Germany. Then again there was a period of what is sometimes called Euhemerism -- the theory that the gods and goddesses had actually once been men and
women, historical characters round whom a halo of romance and remoteness had gathered. Later still, a school has arisen which thinks little of sungods, and pays more attention to Earth and Nature spirits, to gnomes and demons and vegetation-sprites, and to the processes of Magic by which these (so it was supposed) could be enlisted in man's service if friendly, or exorcised if hostile.
It is easy to see of course that there is some truth in all these
explanations; but naturally each school for the time being makes the most of its own contention. Mr. J. M. Robertson (Pagan Christs and Christianity and Mythology), who has done such fine work in this field,2 relies chiefly on the solar and astronomical origins, though he does not altogether deny the others; Dr. Frazer, on the other hand -- whose great work, The Golden Bough, is a monumental collection of primitive customs, and will be an inexhaustible quarry for all future students -- is a monumental collection of primitive customs, and will be an inexhaustible quarry for all future students -- is apparently very little concerned with theories about the Sun and the stars, but concentrates his attention on the collection of innumerable details3 of rites, chiefly magical, connected with food and vegetation. Still later writers, like S. Reinach, Jane Harrison and E. A. Crowley, being mainly occupied with customs of very primitive peoples, like
the Pelasgian Greeks or the Australian aborigines, have confined themselves (necessarily) even more to Magic and Witchcraft.
Meanwhile the Christian Church from these speculations has kept itself severely apart -- as of course representing a unique and divine revelation little concerned or interested in such heathenisms; and moreover (in this country at any rate) has managed to persuade the general public of its own divine uniqueness to such a degree that few people, even nowadays, realize that it has sprung from just the same root as Paganism, and that it shares by far the most part of its doctrines and rites with the latter. Till quite lately it was thought (in Britain) that only secularists and unfashionable people took any interest in sungods; and while it was true that learned professors
might point to a belief in Magic as one of the first sources of Religion, it was easy in reply to say that this obviously had nothing to do with Christianity! The Secularists, too, rather spoilt their case by assuming, in their wrath against the Church, that all priests since the beginning of the world have been frauds and charlatans, and that all the rites of religion were merely devil's devices invented by them for the purpose of preying upon the superstitions of the ignorant, to their own enrichment.
They (the Secularists) overleaped themselves by grossly exaggerating a
thing that no doubt is partially true.
Thus the subject of religious origins is somewhat complex, and yields many aspects for consideration. It is only, I think, by keeping a broad course and admitting contributions to the truth from various sides, that valuable results can be obtained. It is absurd to suppose that in this or any other science neat systems can be found which will cover all the facts. Nature and History do not deal in such things, or supply them for a sop to Man's vanity.
It is clear that there have been three main lines, so far, along which human speculation and study have run. One connecting religious rites and observations with the movements of the Sun and the planets in the sky, and leading to the invention of and belief in Olympian and remote gods dwelling in heaven and ruling the Earth from a distance; the second connecting religion with the changes of the season, on the Earth and with such practical things as the growth of vegetation and food, and leading to or mingled with a vague belief in earth-spirits and magical methods of influencing such spirits; and the third connecting religion with man's own body and the tremendous force of sex residing in it -- emblem of undying life and all fertility and power. It is clear also -- and all investigation confirms it
-- that the second-mentioned phase of religion arose on the whole before the first-mentioned -- that is, that men naturally thought about the very practical questions of food and vegetation, and the magical or other methods of encouraging the same, before they worried themselves about the heavenly bodies and the laws of their movements, or about the sinister or favorable influences the stars might exert. And again it is extremely probable that the third-mentioned aspect -- that which connected religion with the procreative desires and phenomena of human physiology -- really came first. These desires and physiological phenomena must have loomed large on the primitive mind long before the changes of the seasons or of the sky had been at all definitely observed or considered. Thus we find it probable that, in order to understand the sequence of the actual and historical phases of religious worship, we must approximately reverse the order above-given in which they have been studied, and conclude that in
general the Phallic cults came first, the cult of Magic and the
propitiation of earth-divinities and spirits came second, and only last came the belief in definite God-figures residing in heaven.
At the base of the whole process by which divinities and demons were created, and rites for their propitiation and placation established, lay Fear -- fear stimulating the imagination to fantastic activity. Primus in orbe deos fecit Timor. And fear, as we shall see, only became a mental stimulus at the time of, or after, the evolution of self-consciousness. Before that time, in the period of simple consciousness, when the human mind resembled that of the animals, fear indeed existed, but its nature was more that of a mechanical protective instinct. There being no figure or image of self in the animal mind, there were correspondingly no figures or images of beings
who might threaten or destroy that self. So it was that the maginative
power of fear began with Self-consciousness, and from that imaginative
power was unrolled the whole panorama of the gods and rites and creeds of Religion down the centuries.
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