“And truly this _aurum potabile_, or drinkable gold, is a marvellous
thing, for it worketh wonders to sustain human life, removing all
disorders, and ’tis said that it will revive the dead.”—PHIL.
ULSTADT: _Cælum Philosophorum_, _seu Liber de Secretis_.
“And there be magic mirrors in which we may see the forms of our
enemies, and the like, battalions for battle, and sieges, and all
such things.”—PETER GOLDSCHMID: _The Witch and Wizard’s Advocate
overthrown_ (1705).
There was once in an old temple in Rome a great man, a very learned
Signore. His name was Virgilio, or Virgil. He was a magician, but very
good in all things to all men; he had a kind heart, and was ever a friend
to the poor.
Virgil was as brave and fearless as he was good. And he was a famous
poet—his songs were sung all over Italy. Some say that he was the son of
a fairy (_fata_), and that his father was a King of the magicians; others
declared that his mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world,
and that her name was _Elena_ (Helen), and his father was a spirit. And
how it came about was thus:
When all the great lords and princes were in love with the beautiful
Elena, she replied that she would marry no one, having a great dread of
bearing children. She would not become a mother. And to avoid further
wooing and pursuing she shut herself up in a tower, and believed herself
to be in safety, because it was far without the walls of Rome. And the
door to it was walled up, so that no one could enter it. But the god
Jove (_Giove_) entered; he did so by changing himself into many small
pieces of gilded paper (gold-leaf), which came down into the tower like a
shower.
The beautiful Helen held in her hand a cup of wine, and many of the bits
of gold-leaf fell into it.
“How pretty it looks!” said Helen. “It would be a pity to throw it away.
The gold does not change the wine. If I drink the gold I shall enjoy
good health and ever preserve my beauty.”
But hardly had Helen drunk the wine, before she felt a strange thrill in
all her body, a marvellous rapture, a change of her whole being, followed
by complete exhaustion. And in time she found herself with child, and
cursed the moment when she drank the wine. And to her in this way was
born Virgil, who had in his forehead a most beautiful star of gold.
Three fairies aided at his birth; the Queen of the Fairies cradled him in
a cradle made of roses. She made a fire of twigs of laurel; it crackled
loudly. To the crackling of twigs of laurel he was born. His mother
felt no pain. The three each gave him a blessing; the wind as it blew
into the window wished him good fortune; the light of the stars, and the
lamp and the fire, who are all spirits, gave him glory and song. He was
born fair and strong and beautiful; all who saw him wondered.
Then it happened, when Virgil was fourteen years old, that one day in
summer he went to an old solitary temple, all ruined and deserted, and
therein he laid down to sleep. But ere he had closed his eyes he heard a
sound as of a voice lamenting, and it said:
“Alas! I am a prisoner!
Will no one set me free?
If any man can do it,
Full happy shall he be.”
Then Virgil said:
“Tell me who thou art and where thou art.”
And the voice answered:
“I am a spirit,
Imprisoned in a vase
Under the stone
Which is beneath thy head.”
Then Virgil lifted the stone and found a vase, which was closed; and he
opened it, and there came forth a beautiful spirit, who told him that
there was also in the vase a book of magic and necromancy (_magia e
gramanzia_).
“Therein wilt thou find all secrets
Which thou desirest to obtain,
To make what thou wilt into gold,
To make the dead speak,
To make them come before thee,
To go invisibly where thou wilt,
To become a great poet.
Thou wilt learn the lost secret
How to become great and beautiful;
Thou wilt rediscover the mystery
Of predicting what is to take place;
Yea, to win fortune in every game.”
By the vase was a magic wand, the most powerful ever known. And from
that day Virgil, who had been as small as a dwarf, became a tall,
stately, very handsome man.
This was his first great work: he made a mirror wherein one could see all
that was going on in any country in the world, in any city, as well into
any house as anywhere. Keeping the mirror hidden (beneath his cloak), he
went to the Emperor. And because he was a very handsome man, well
dressed, and also by the aid of the mirror, he was permitted to go into
the hall where the Emperor sat. And, conversing with him, the Emperor
was so pleased that he spoke more familiarly and confidentially than he
was wont to do with his best friends; at which the courtiers who were
present were angry with jealousy.
Turning to Virgil, the Emperor said:
“I would give a thousand gold crowns to know just what the Turks are
doing now, and if they mean to make war on me.”
Virgil replied:
“If your Highness will go into another room, I can show in secret what
the Turks are now doing.”
“But how you can make me see what the Turks are doing is more than I can
understand,” replied the Emperor. “However, let us go, if it be only to
see what fancy thou hast in thy head.”
Then the Emperor rose, and giving his arm to Virgil, went to a room
apart, where the magician showed and explained to him (_per filo e per
segna_) all that the Turks were about. And the Emperor was amazed at
seeing clearly what Virgil had promised to show. Then he gave to Virgil
the thousand crowns with his own hand, and was ever from that day his
friend. And so Virgil rose in the world.
* * * * *
In this tale there is as quaint and naïve a mixture of traditions and
ideas as one could desire. The fair Helen, in her tower of Troy, becomes
Danae visited by Jupiter, and as the narrator had certainly seen Dantzic
Golden Water, or some other cordial with gold-leaf in it, the story of
the shower is changed into aureated wine. It is evident that the one who
recast the legend endeavoured to make this incident intelligible. All
the rest is mediæval. “Gold,” says Helen, “will preserve my beauty.”
Thus the _aurum potabile_ of the alchemists was supposed to do the same
as Paracelsus declared.
We all recognise a great idea when put into elaborate form by a skilled
artist, but to perceive it as a diamond in the rough and recognise its
value is apparently given to few. It is true that those few may
themselves be neither poets nor geniuses—just as the Hottentot who can
find or discern diamonds may be no lapidary or jeweller. What I would
say is, that such ideas or motives abound in this Italian witch-lore to a
strange extent.
Thus, the making Virgil a son of Jupiter by a Helen-Danae is a flight of
mythologic invention, far surpassing in boldness anything given in the
Neapolitan legends of the poet. Thomas Carlyle and Vernon Lee have
expressed with great skill great admiration of the idea that Faust begat
with the fair Helen the Renaissance. It was indeed a magnificent
conception, but in very truth this fathering of Virgil, the grand type of
poetry and magic, and of all earthly wisdom, by Jupiter on Helen-Danae is
far superior to it in every way. For Virgil to the legend-maker
represented the Gothic or Middle Ages in all their beauty and exuberance,
their varied learning and splendid adventure, far more perfectly than did
the mere vulgar juggler and thaumaturgist Faust, as the latter appears in
every legend until Goethe transfigured him. And, strangely enough, the
Virgilian cyclus, as I have given it, is as much of the Renaissance as it
is classic or mediæval. The Medicis are in it to the life. In very
truth it was Virgil, and not Faust, who was the typical magician _par
éminence_ after Apollonius, some of whose legends he, in fact, inherited.
And Virgil has come to us with a traditional character as marked and
peculiar as any in Shakespeare—which Faust did not. He has passed
through the ages not only as a magus and poet, but as a personality, and
a very remarkable one.
There is another very curious, and, indeed, great idea lurking in these
witch-Virgilian legends, especially set forth in this of the birth and
continued in all. It is that there is in them a cryptic, latent
heathenism, a sincere, lingering love of the old gods, and especially of
the _dii minores_, of _fate_ or fays, and fauns and fairies, of spirits
of the air and of rivers and fountains, an adoration of Diana as the
moon-queen of the witches, and a far greater familiarity with
incantations than prayers, or more love of sorceries than sacraments.
Whenever it can be done, even as a post-scriptum, we have a conjuration
or spell, as if the tale had awakened in the mind of the narrator a
feeling of piety towards “the old religion.” The romances of Mercury,
and Janus, and Vesta, and Apollo, and Diana all inspire the narrator to
pray to them in all sincerity, just as a Catholic, after telling a legend
of a saint, naturally repeats a prayer to him or a novena. It is the
last remains of classic faith.
Or we may say, as things fell out, that the
Goethean-Helen-Faust-Renaissance poem represents things as they were, or
as they came to pass, as if it were the acme, while the Virgilian
tradition which I here impart indicates things as they might have
happened, had the stream of evolution been allowed to run on in its
natural course, just as Julian the apostate (or rather apostle of the
gospel of letting things be) held that progress or culture and science
might have advanced just as surely and rapidly on the old heathen lines
as any other. According to Heine, this would have saved us all an
immense amount of trouble in our school-studies, in learning Latin and
mythology, had we kept on as we were.
I mean by this that these traditions of Virgil indicate, as no other book
does, the condition of a naïvely heathen mind, “suckled in a creed
out-worn,” believing in the classic mythology half turned to fairies,
much more sincerely, I fear, than many of my readers do in the Bible, and
from this we may gather very curious reflection as to whether men may not
have ideas of culture, honesty, and mercy in common, whatever their
religion may be.
The marvels of the birth of Virgil of old, as told by Donatus, probably
after the lost work of Suetonius, are that his mother Maia dreamed, _se
enixam laureum ramum_, that she gave birth to a branch of laurel; that he
did not cry when born, and that the pine-tree planted according to
ancient custom on that occasion attained in a very short time to a great
height, which thing often happens when plants grow near hot springs, as
is the case on the Margariten Island, by Budapesth, where everything
attains to full-size in one-third of the usual time. The custom of
planting a pine-tree on the birth of a child, in the belief that its
condition will always indicate its subject’s health and prosperity, is
still common among the Passamaquoddy, and other Red Indians in America, I
having had such a tree pointed out to me by an old grandfather.
In the Aryan or Hindu mythology Buddha, who subsequently becomes a great
_magus_ and healer of all ills, like Christ, “was born of the mother-tree
Maya,” according to J. F. Hewitt (“L’Histoire et les Migrations de la
Croix et du Su-astika,” Bruxelles, 1898). He was the son of Kapila
Vastu, who was born holding in his hands a medicament, whence he became
“the Child of Medicine,” or of healing. Buddha appears to be confused
with his father.
Now Virgil is clearly stated to be born of Maya or Maia, who is a
mythical tree; his life is involved in that of a mysterious tree, and in
more than one legend he is unquestionably identical with Esculapius, the
god of medicine.