If we wish to push our inquiry still further and ask why woman should be so much more subject than man to hysterical seizures and to hypnotic suggestion, we shall probably find that it is an essential part of her femininity.  Modern psychology and physiology have pointed out that the menstrual cycle of woman has a vast influence not only on her emotional nature but on her whole psychic life, so that there are times when she is more nervously tense, more apt to become hysterical or to yield to the influence of suggestion.  Moreover, because of the emphasis on chastity and the taboos with which she was surrounded, any neurotic tendencies which might be inherent in her nature were sure to be developed to the utmost.

As Lombroso suggests, hysteria and other neurotic phenomena are classed as evidence of spirit possession by the untutored mind.  Thus it happened that observing the strange psychic manifestations to which woman was periodically subject, the ancient peoples endowed her with spiritualistic forces which were sometimes held to be beneficent and at other times malefic in character.  Whatever the attitude at any time whether her mana were regarded as evil or benignant, the savage and primitive felt that it was well to be on his guard in the presence of power; so that the taboos previously outlined would hold through the swing of man’s mind from one extreme to the other.

As goddess, priestess and prophetess, woman continued to play her role in human affairs until the Christian period, when a remarkable transformation took place.  The philosophy of dualism that emanated from Persia had affected all the religions of the Mediterranean Basin and had worked its way into Christian beliefs by way of Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Neo-Platonism.  Much of the writing of the church fathers is concerned with the effort to harmonize conflicting beliefs or to avoid the current heresies.  To one who reads the fathers it becomes evident to what extent the relation of man to woman figures in these controversies.[16]

The Manicheanism which held in essence Persian Mithraism and which had so profound an influence on the writings of St. Augustine gave body and soul to two distinct worlds and finally identified woman with the body.  But probably as a result of the teachings of Gnosticism with its Neo-Platonic philosophy which never entirely rejected feminine influence, some of this influence survived in the restatement of religion for the folk.  When the restatement was completed and was spreading throughout Europe in the form which held for the next millennium, it was found that the early goddesses had been accepted among the saints, the priestesses and prophetesses were rejected as witches, while the needs of men later raised the Blessed Virgin to a place beside her son.