"Daughters of Jove, All hail! but O inspire The lovely song! the sacred
race proclaim Of ever-living gods; who sprang from Earth, From the
starred Heaven, and from the gloomy Night, And whom the salt Deep
nourished into life. Declare how first the gods and Earth became; The
rivers and th' immeasurable sea High-raging in its foam; the glittering
stars, The wide impending Heaven; and who from these Of deities arose,
dispensing good; Say how their treasures, how their honors each Allotted
shar'd: how first they held abode On many-caved Olympus:--this declare,
Ye Muses! dwellers of the heavenly mount From the beginning; say, who
first arose? First Chaos was: next ample-bosomed Earth, Of deathless
gods, who still the Olympian heights Snow-topt inhabit.... Her
first-born Earth produced Of like immensity, the starry Heaven: That he
might sheltering compass her around On every side, and be forevermore To
the blest gods a mansion unremoved."(92)
92) Hesiod, The Theogony.
So long as human beings worshipped the abstract principle of creation,
the manifestations of which proceed from the earth and sun, they
doubtless reasoned little on the nature of its hitherto inseparable
parts. They had not at that early period begun to look outside of Nature
for their god-idea, but when through the peculiar course of development
which had been entered upon, the simple conception of a creative agency
originally entertained became obscured, mankind began to speculate on
the nature and attributes of the two principles by which everything is
produced, and to dispute over their relative importance in the office of
reproduction. Much light has been thrown upon these speculations by
the Kosmogonies which have come down to us from the Phoenicians,
Babylonians, and other peoples of past ages. In the Phoenician
Kosmogony, according to the Mokh doctrine as recorded by Philo, out
of the kosmic egg Toleeleth (female) "sprang all the impregnation of
creation and the beginning of the universe." In this exposition of the
beginnings of things, it is distinctly stated that the spirit which in
after ages came to be regarded as something outside or above Nature,
"had no consciousness of its own creation." Commenting on the above,
Bunsen is constrained to admit that it is usually understood as being
"decidedly pantheistic." He suggests, however, that the writer may
HAVE INTENDED TO SAY (the italics are mine) that "the spirit who was
heretofore the Creator was the unconscious spirit."
Berosus, the scholar of Babylon, who, until a comparatively recent
time has furnished all the information extant concerning Babylonian
antiquities, in his account of the creation of man and of the universe,
says that in the beginning all was water and darkness; that in the water
were the beginnings of life; but as yet there was no order. Men were
there with the wings of birds and even with the feet of beasts. There
were also quadrupeds and men with fishes' tails, all of which had been
produced by a twofold principle. Over this incongruous mass a woman
presided. This woman is called Omoroka by the Babylonians and by the
Chaldeans Thalatth. The latter name, signifies, "bearing" or "egg
producing."
In the Babylonian Kosmogony, according to Endemus, the pupil of
Aristotle, the beginning of the universe was called Tauthe, which being
interpreted means "Mother of the Gods." Associated with her sometimes
appears the male principle--Apason. In the history of Berosus, there is
given an account of Oaunes--a mythical teacher of Babylon, who appeared
with the head of a human being and the body of a fish or serpent.
This personage brought to the Babylonians all the knowledge which they
possessed. Oaunes wrote "concerning the generation of mankind, of their
different ways of life, and of their civil polity." He it was who
gave the above account of creation. He says that finally Omoroka, or
Thalatth, the woman who existed before the creation, was divided, one
half of her forming the heavens, "the other half the earth." "All this,"
Berosus declares, "was an allegorical description of Nature."(93)
93) Prof. Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, pp. 34, 35.
In the following legend will be observed the groundwork for the story
of the flood. Xisuthrus was a king of Chaldea. To him the deity, Kronos,
appeared in a vision and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of
the month Daesius there would be a flood, by which mankind would
be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the
beginning, progress, and conclusion of all things down to the present
time, and to bury it in Sippara, the City of the Sun. He was commanded
also to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and
relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life,
together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and
trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the deity whither he
was to sail, he was answered: "To the gods"; upon which he offered up
a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine admonition,
and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth. Into this
he put everything which he had prepared, and last of all conveyed into
it his wife, his children, and his friends.
"After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated,
Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which not finding any food,
nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him
again. After an interval of some days, he sent them forth a second time;
and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial
a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from
which he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the
waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, end upon looking out
found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain, upon which
he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot.
Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and, having constructed
an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those who had come
out of the vessel with him, disappeared. Him they saw no more, but they
could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them
to pay due regard to the gods. He informed them that it was on account
of his piety that he had been taken away to live with the gods, and that
his wife and daughter had obtained the same honor."
It is more than likely that this story, which as we have seen has
extended to the remotest corners of the earth, has an esoteric
meaning, and that it embodies the doctrines of the ancients relative to
re-incarnation and the renewal of worlds. Doubtless it portrays not only
the end of a cycle, but that by it is prefigured the fortunes of a human
soul, which in its ascent, is from time to time forced into a human
body.
All the early Kosmogonies are intermingled with the history of a great
flood, from the ravages of which an ark which contained a man was saved.
The Gothic story of creation indicates that the Scythians belonged to
the same race as the Chaldeans. At the beginning of time when nothing
had been formed, and before the earth, the sea, or the heavens appeared,
Muspelsheim existed. A breath of heat passing over the vapors, melted
them into water, and from this water was formed a cow named Aedumla,
who was the progenitor of Odin, Vile, and Ve, the Trinity of the Gothic
nation.
There is also another tradition, probably a later, which asserts that
from the drops of water produced by the primeval breath of heat, a man,
Ymer, was brought forth. The son of Ymer was preserved in a storm-tossed
bark, his father being dragged into the middle of the abyss, where,
from his body the earth was produced. The sea was made of his blood,
the mountains of his bones, and the rocks of his teeth. As three of his
descendants were walking on the shore one day, they found two pieces of
wood which had been washed up by the waves. Of these they made a man and
a woman. The man they named Aske and the woman Emla. From this pair has
descended the human race.
The marked resemblance between the characters of the Gothic Ymer and the
Chaldean Omoroka, from each of whose bodies the universe is created,
has been observed by various writers. After referring to Mallet's
conclusions upon this subject, Faber remarks:
"They are indeed evidently the same person, not only in point of
character, but, if I mistake not, in appellation: for Ymer or Umer is
Omer-Oca expressed in a more simple form. The difference of sex does by
no means invalidate this opinion, which rests upon the perfect identity
of their characters: for the Great Mother, like the Great Father, was
an hermaphrodite; or, rather, that person from whom all things were
supposed to be produced, was the Great Father and the Great Mother
united together in one compound being. Ymer and Omoroca are each the
same as that hermaphrodite Jupiter of the Orphic theology."
We have observed, however, that in all the older traditions this
hermaphrodite conception is accounted as female, it is the Great
Mother within whom is contained the male; in later ages, however, it
is represented as male, the female being concealed beneath convenient
symbols.
The Trinity of the Goths was male; yet as Odin could not create
independently of the female energy he is provided with a wife, Frigga,
to whom "all fair things belonged, and who had priestesses among the
early German tribes." Frigga when worshipped alone was both female
and male. According to one German tradition, Tiw (Zeus), which in its
earliest conception was female, was the parent of the first man. This
man begat three sons who became the fathers of the three Deutsch tribes.
Ish (or Ash) was the parent of the Franks and Allemans; Ing was the
progenitor of the Swedes, Angles, and Saxons; and Er, or Erman, was the
eponymous leader of the tribes called by the Romans Hermiones.
The Kosmogony of the Chinese is similar in all respects to that of other
countries. The first man, Puoncu, was born from an egg.
The Chinese say that this egg-born Puoncu, who is identical with Brahm,
Noah, and Adam, is not the great Creator or God, but only the first man.
Their great God or Tien is a Unity which comprehends three, and their
human triad--a triplicated being who is the parent of the human race--is
a lower expression of the same power, and to him has finally been
ascribed the office of Creator.
The Kosmogony of the Japanese begins with the opening of the sacred egg
from which all things were produced. This egg is identical with the ark,
and from it the diluvian patriarch was born. He was "Baal-Peor or the
lord of opening; and, from an idea that the Ark was an universal mother,
he was considered as the masculine principle of generation, and was
adored by his apostate descendants with all the abominations of phallic
worship."
In the Theogony of Hesiod, Uranus is represented as being the parent of
three sons, and the same legend repeated in the story of Cronus portrays
him also as a triplicated deity. According to the Peruvian Kosmogony all
things sprang from Viracocha who is said to be identical with the Greek
Aphrodite. Besides this superior God they venerated a triad which
was closely connected with the sun. These gods were called Chuquilla,
Catuilla, and Intyllapa. They say that as their ancestors journeyed from
a remote country to the Northwest they bore the image of their god in a
coifer or box made of reeds. To the four priests who had charge of this
box or ark he communicated his oracles and directions. He not only gave
them laws but taught them the ceremonies and sacrifices which they were
to observe. "And even as the pillar of cloud and fire conducted the
Israelites in their passage through the wilderness, so this Spanish
devil gave them notice when to advance forward, and when to stay."(94)
94) Faber, Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. v.
According to Marsden, the New Zealanders believe that three gods created
the first man, and that the first woman was made from one of his ribs.
Among the Otaheitans and various tribes of Indians, the belief prevails
that all created things have proceeded from a triplicated deity who was
saved from the ravages of a flood in an ark or ship.
The fact is observed that the Theogonies and Kosmogonies of all
peoples have reference to a flood or to the renewal of life after the
destruction of the world, and that the Great Father who is preserved,
and who comes forth from an ark or ship with the seeds of a former
world, represents the beginning of a new era. Adam with his three sons,
Cain, Abel, and Seth, Noah with his triad, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Menu
and his triple offspring, and so on, all mean exactly the same thing,
namely, the renewal of life at the close of a cycle, or manwantara.
From the traditions extant in nearly every quarter of the globe, it
would seem that, prior to the so-called flood in the time of Noah,
man, as a Creator, had not to any extent been worshipped, but, on the
contrary, that the great universal dual principle which pervades Nature
and which is back of matter and force, for instance Tien among the
Chinese, Iav among the Hebrews, and Aum among the Hindoos, had been the
Deity adored; but with the decline of virtue and knowledge, this God
was gradually abandoned for a lesser one, a deity better suited to the
comprehension of "fallen" man.
In the Elohistic narrative of creation which appears in the first
chapter of Genesis, a dual or triune God, female and male, says, Let
us make man in our own image, and accordingly a male and a female are
created. In the Jehovistic account, however, in the second chapter of
the same book, a document of much later date, man is made first and
afterward woman. In fact, in the latter narrative she appears as an
afterthought and is created simply for his use; she is taken from
his side and is wholly dependent upon him for existence. This fact is
recognized by Bishop Colenso in the following words:
"Thus in the second account of creation, the man is APPARENTLY created
first, and the woman is CERTAINLY created the last, of all living
creatures; whereas, in the older story the man and woman are
created last of all, as the crowning work of Elohim, and are created
together--'and Elohim created man in His own image, in the image of
Elohim created He him; male and female created He them.' This ancient
Elohistic narrative, then, the Jehovist had before him; and he
enlarged and enlivened it by introducing a number of passages recording
additional incidents in the lives of the patriarchs before and after the
flood, and especially by inserting the second account of the creation,
ii., 4-25."
Colenso observes that verse four of chapter second belongs to the
Elohist, and that it was removed from its original position at
the beginning of Gen. i., in order to form the commencement of the
Jehovistic account of the creation.(95)
95) Lectures on the Pentateuch, p. 32.
Quoting from Bishop Browne in the New Bible Commentary, the same writer
remarks that in the Elohistic account of the creation "we have that
which was probably the ancient primeval record of the formation of the
world."(96)
96) Ibid. p. 16.
The oldest or Elohistic portion of Genesis is, at the present time, seen
to conceal great wisdom and a knowledge of Nature far surpassing that of
later times.
According to Higgins, the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis,
if properly translated, would not declare that in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth, but that Wisdom "formed" the earth
and the planets. In none of the ancient Kosmogonies can there be a word
found regarding the creation of matter. From the facts which have come
down to us respecting the speculations of the ancients, it is plain
that the original conception was, that within the primeval beginnings
described in their Kosmogonies, in chaos or unorganized matter, was
contained primeval force; no attempt, however, was made by them to
account for the creation of either motion or matter.
As soon as human beings began to speculate on the attributes of their
Deity; when the two principles composing it began to separate, and the
idea was gaining ground that the male was the only important factor in
reproduction, the sun became male, the earth and sea female. Still, even
then the doctrine seems not to have been questioned, that the creative
agency had proceeded from matter, or that it was developed in and
through it. The belief that something can be made from nothing was
reserved for a later age.
In the oldest Semitic Kosmogonies, we are assured that the
self-conscious God who is manifested in the order of the universe,
proceeded out of the great abyss, and out of unorganized, dark, primeval
matter. During the earlier historic period, however, by both Jew and
Gentile, the belief was entertained that spirit is material. It is the
essence of fire--a substance akin to the galvanic or electric fluid.
This masculine element, the manifestation of which is desire, or heat,
and which was finally set up as an eternal, self-existent, creative
force, or God, was originally regarded as a manifestation of matter, and
as having no independent existence. In an earlier age, this so-called
creative agency is associated with a force far superior to itself,
namely, Light or Wisdom. Minerva, who is the first emanation from the
Deity, "formed" all things. She it is who discriminates all things
and gives laws to the universe. "She represented to the Greeks that
spiritual element which lifts knowledge into wisdom, and talent into
genius."(97) But with the importance which began to be assumed by man
when he began to regard himself as a creator, and when through ignorance
and sensuality the principles of a more enlightened race were forgotten,
desire, or heat, was separated from matter and came to be regarded as an
independent entity, which itself had created matter out of nothing.
Thus is noticed the extent to which the god-idea has been developed in
accordance with the relative positions of the sexes.
97) L. T. Ives, Art Words.
According to the Grecian mythology, much of which was a comparatively
late development, mortal woman was the handiwork of Vulcan the Firegod,
who, being commissioned by Jove to execute "a snare for gods and man,"
moulded the beauteous form of woman. This is a worthy example of the
contempt and scorn shown by the Greeks for women during the later period
of their career as a nation. That such contempt was a later development
is shown in the fact that woman was originally the gift of Pallas
Athene, or Wisdom. When she first appeared on the scene she was crowned
by the gods, in fact she was the first object honored with a crown.
Concerning the conceptions regarding women as held at an earlier age,
and those which came to prevail after she had become "the cause of evil
in the world," we have the following from Tertullian:
"If there was a Pandora, whom Hesiod mentions as the first woman, hers
was the first head the Graces crowned, for she received gifts from all
the gods, whence she got her name Pandora. But Moses, a prophet, not
a poet-shepherd, shows us the first woman Eve having her loins more
naturally girt about with leaves than her temples with flowers. Pandora
then is a myth."(98)
98) Tertullian, vol. i., p. 341.
Woman, who was originally the gift of Wisdom, or Minerva, and who when
created was garlanded with flowers as the crown of creation, became, in
course of time, an accursed and wicked thing who must henceforth cover
herself with leaves to hide her shame. Tertullian, who, with the rest
of the early fathers in the Christian church, had imbibed the latter
doctrine concerning her, could not believe the tradition set forth by
Hesiod; therefore Pandora was a myth, while the corrupted fable, that
of Eve as the tempter, was accepted as a natural representation of
womanhood.
When woman was created, "all the gods conferred a gifted grace."
"Round her fair brow the lovely-tressed Hours
A garland twined of Spring's purpureal flowers:
The whole attire Minerva's graceful art
Disposed, adjusted, form'd to every part."(99)
99) Hesiod, Works and Days.
Later, however, Pandora herself becomes the pourer forth of ills on the
head of defenceless man.