red squill, because consecrated to Typhon; the other kinds they ate
indiscriminately.”—(Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843,
vol. ii. p. 109, article “Onion.”)
“At Babylon, beside Memphis, they made an onion their god.”—(Reginald
Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,” London, 1651, p. 376.)
“Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country; neither do
they eat those that happen to grow there, nor taste them when dressed.
The priests indeed abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it
impure.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 36.)
Among the Romans, “the Flamen Dialis might not ride, or even touch, beans
or ivy.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M.A., London, 1890, vol.
i. p. 117.)
Pliny mentions the medicinal use of certain bulbs, difficult of
identification in our day. “The bulb of Mægara acts as a strong
aphrodisiac;” others “aid delivery;” others were used “for the cure of
the sting of serpents.” The ancients used to give bulb-seeds “to persons
afflicted with madness, in drink.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 20, cap. 40.)
Martial has the following: “XXXIV. Bulbs. If your wife is old and your
members languid, bulbs can do no more for you than fill your belly”
(edition of London, 1871). A footnote to the above says: “To what
particular bulb provocative effects were attributed is unknown.”
Acosta says of the Peruvians that before any of their great ceremonies,
“to prepare themselves, all the people fasted two days, during which
they did neyther company with their wives nor eate any meate with salt
or garlicke, nor drink any chica.”—(Acosta, “Historie of the Indies,”
edition of London, 1604, quoted by Lang, “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,”
London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 283.)
According to Avicenna, garlic was a provocative of the menses (vol. i. p.
276 a 52).
When a priest of the state religion of China is about to offer a
sacrifice he must abstain from cohabitation with his wives and “from
eating onions, leeks, or garlic.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835,
vol. iii. p. 52.)
Juvenal says of the Egyptians: “It is an impious act to break with the
teeth a leek or an onion.”—(Satire XV., Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation.)
By the Irish peasantry “garlic is planted in the thatch” to drive away
fairies and witches.—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” James Mooney,
American Philosophical Society, 1887.)
The Danes placed garlic in the cradle of the new-born child to avert the
maleficence of witches.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p.
73, article “Groaning Cakes and Cheese.”)
In rustic England many good folk still believe that the house upon which
grows the leek will never be struck by lightning.—(See Brand, “Popular
Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 317, article “Rural Charms.”)
Speaking of the Russian dissenters, known as the Raskol, Heard says:
“They carried their resistance into all the details of daily life; as
matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for ‘the things
which come out of him, those are they that defile the man’ (Mark vii.
15); of the potato, as being the fruit with which the serpent tempted
Eve.”—(“The Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” Albert F. Heard, New
York and London, 1887, p. 194.)
The quotation from the New Testament seems applicable to the subject of
urine dances, and the interdiction of the use of the potato may mean more
than appears on the surface.
Possibly, the intention in Russia was to wean the sectaries away from the
use of bulbs or fungi not to the liking of the more thoughtful leaders of
the new movement.
“From the earliest times garlic has been an article of
diet.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, mentioning Israelites, Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans.)
In the time of Shakspeare, “to smell of garlic was accounted a sign of
vulgarity.”—(Idem, referring to “Coriolanus,” iv. 6, and “Measure for
Measure,” iii. 2.)
“Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at
cross-roads as a supper for Hecate.”—(Idem.)
“According to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the
Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium, in Lower
Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic
in aversion as food.”—(Encyc. Brit., article “Garlic.”)
Garlic is “fastened to the caps of children, suspended from the
sterns of vessels and from new houses, in the Levant, as, centuries
ago, it was hung over the door in the more civilized parts of
Europe.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” John Graham Dalyell, Edinburgh,
1834, p. 219.)
“The onion was among the earliest cultivated vegetables, and in Egypt
was a sort of divinity.”—(American Encyclopædia, New York, 1881, article
“Onion.”)
“A phallic importance seems to have attached to the onion. Burton,
in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ edition of 1660, p. 538, speaks of
‘cromnysmantia,’—a kind of divination with onions laid on the altar at
Christmas Eve, practised by girls to know when they shall be married
and how many husbands they shall have. This appears also to have been a
German custom.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. pp. 356, 357.)
Sir Thomas More wrote the following (the original is in Latin; the
translation is by Harington):—
“If leeks you leek, but do their smell disleek,
Eat onions, and you shall not smell the leek;
If you of onions would the scent expel,
Eat garlic, that shall drown the onion’s smell;
But against garlic’s savour, at one word,
I know but one receipt. What’s that? Go look.”
The last line is left untranslated; in the original it reads,—
“Aut nihil, aut tantum, tollere merda potest.”
(Harington, “Ajax,” quoting Sir Thomas More.)
XV.
SACRED INTOXICATION AND PHALLISM.
Two fundamental principles underlie the structure of primordial
religion,—Intoxication and Phallism. All perversion of the cerebral
functions, whether temporary estrangement or permanent alienation, is
classified as Obsession; and the pranks and gibberish of the maniac or
the idiot are solemnly treasured as outbursts of inspiration.
Where such temporary exaltation can be produced by an herb, bulb, liquid,
or food, the knowledge of such excitant is kept as long as possible from
the laity; and even after the general diffusion of a more enlightened
intelligence has broadened the mental horizon of the devotee, these
narcotics and irritants are “sacred,” and the frenzies they induce are
“sacred” also.
If the drug in question, whatever it be, possess the additional
recommendation of acting upon the genito-urinary organs, and by arousing
the sexual energies appeals to the phallic element in the religious
nature, the apotheosis of the drug follows as a matter of course, no
matter under what expression or symbolism it may be veiled; and as human
nature feels the necessity of restraint upon the passions as well as
a stimulus thereof, it follows that there are to be noted many cases
in which a veneration is paid to plants and drugs which have just the
opposite effect,—that is to say that where an aphrodisiac is held among
the sacred essences or agents its counter or antagonist is held in almost
equal esteem.
Mushroom, mistletoe, rue, ivy, mandrake, hemp, opium, the stramonium
of the medicine-man of the Hualpai Indians of Arizona,—all may well
be examined in the light of this proposition. Frazer says: “According
to primitive notions, all abnormal states—such as intoxication or
madness—are caused by the entrance of a spirit into the person; such
mental states, in other words, are regarded as forms of possession or
inspiration.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 184.)
“Women who were addicted to Bacchanalian sports presently ran to the ivy
and plucked it off, tearing it to pieces with their hands and gnawing it
with their mouths.... It was reported ... it hath a spirit that stirreth
and moveth to madness, transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that
alone by itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that
have an easy inclination to enthusiasm.”—(Plutarch, “Morals,” Goodwin’s
English translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 264.)
An eternal drunkenness was the reward held out to the savage warrior in
many regions of the world; the Scandinavians, as well as the Indians of
the Pampas, had this belief.—(See “Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris,
1885, p. 123.)
Speaking of the Ur-Orgy of the Siberians, Dr. J. W. Kingsley comments in
the following terms: “I remember being shown this fungus by an Englishman
who was returning via the Central Pacific Railway from Siberia. He fully
confirmed all that I had heard on the subject, having seen the orgy
himself.... Nothing religious in this, you may say; but look at the
question a little closer and you will see that these ‘intoxicants,’ which
nowadays are used to produce mere excitement or brutal drunkenness, were
at first looked upon as media able to raise the mere man up to a level
with his gods, and enable him to communicate with them, as was certainly
the case with the ‘soma’ of the Hindu ecstatics and the hashich I have
seen used by some tribes of Arabs. It would be well worth while trying
to ascertain whether the actors in the Ur-Orgy had eaten any particular
kind of herb before its commencement, or whether they had any tradition
of their ancestors having done so.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke,
dated Cambridge, England, May, 1888.)
For sacred intoxication among the Finns, see also “Chaldean Magic,”
Lenormant, p. 255, where there is a reference to “intoxicating drugs.”
XVI.
AN INQUIRY INTO THE DRUIDICAL USE OF THE MISTLETOE.
But the question at once presents itself, For what reason did the Celtic
Druids employ the much venerated mistletoe? This question becomes of deep
significance in the light of the learning shed by Godfrey Higgins and
General Vallencey upon the derivation of the Druids from Buddhistic or
Brahminical origin.
“Ajasson enumerates the following superstitions of ancient Britain, as
bearing probable marks of an Oriental origin: ... the ceremonials used
in cutting the plants.”—(“Mistletoe,” Pliny, Bohn, lib. 30, cap. 6,
footnote.)
That the mistletoe was regarded as a medicine, and a very potent one,
is easy enough to show. All the encyclopædias admit that much; but the
accounts that have been preserved of the ideas associated with this
worship are not complete or satisfactory.
“The mistletoe, which they (the Druids) called ‘all-heal,’ used to cure
disease.”—(McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, quoting Stukeley.)
“The British bards and Druids had an extraordinary veneration for the
number three. ‘The mistletoe,’ says Vallencey, in his ‘Grammar of the
Irish Language,’ ‘was sacred to the Druids, because not only its berries,
but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stock. The
Christian Irish held the Seamroy sacred in like manner, because of three
leaves united to one stock.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London,
1872, vol. i, p. 109, article “St. Patrick’s Day.”)
“Within recent times the mistletoe has been regarded as a valuable remedy
in epilepsy (query, on the principle of _similia similibus_?) and other
diseases, but at present is not employed.... The leaves have been fed to
sheep in time of scarcity of other forage (which shows at least that it
is edible).”—(Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.)
“Seems to possess no decided medical properties.”—(International
Encyclopædia.)
“It is now perhaps impossible to account for the veneration in which
it was held and the wonderful qualities which it was supposed to
possess.”—(“The Druids,” Rev. Richard Smiddy, Dublin, 1871, p. 90.)
Pliny mentions three varieties. Of these “the hyphar is useful for
fattening cattle, if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative
effect it produces at first; the viscum is medicinally of value as an
emollient, and in cases of tumors, ulcers, and the like.”
Pliny is also quoted as saying that it was considered of benefit to
women in childbirth,—“in conceptum feminarum adjuvare si omnino secum
habeant.”[26] Pliny is also authority for the reverence in which the
mistletoe growing on the robur (Spanish _roble_, or evergreen oak)
was held by the Druids. The robur, he says, is their sacred tree, and
whatever is found growing upon it, they regard as sent from heaven and as
the mark of a tree chosen by God.—(Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. article “Mistletoe”)
cites the opinion of various old authors that mistletoe was regarded “as
a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other
convulsive disorders.... The high veneration in which the Druids were
held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the
wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak.... The
mistletoe of the oak, which is very rare, is vulgarly said to be a cure
for wind-ruptures in children; the kind which is found upon the apple is
said to be good for fits.”
“The Persians and Masagetæ thought the mistletoe something divine, as
well as the Druids.”—(“Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1796, p. 63.)
After telling of the use of this plant among the Druids and their mode
of gathering it, Fosbroke adds: “Mistletoe was not unknown in the
religious ceremonies of the ancients, and was supposed to have magical
and medicinal properties.”—(Fosbroke, Cyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii.
p. 1047, article “Mistletoe,” London, 1843.)
Mr. W. Winwood Reade mentions, in his “Veil of Isis” (London, 1861), at
page 69, that the missolding or mistletoe of the oak, still called in
Wales “all-iach,” or “all-heal,” was the sovereign remedy of the Druids;
and at page 71 he adds that a powder from its berries was considered a
cure for sterility. He describes the effect of mistletoe as that of a
strong purgative.—(Personal letter from Frank Rede Fowke, Esq., South
Kensington Museum, London, England, June 18, 1888.)
“The Druids named it Uil-loc or All-Heal, because they said it promoted
increase of species or prevented sterility.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong,
vol. ii. p. 331.)
“We shall probably never hear the whole truth in regard to this ancient
religion (Druidism); for, as Mr. Davies says, ‘most of the offensive
ceremonies must have been either retrenched or concealed,’ as the Roman
laws and edicts had for ages (before the Bardic writings) restrained the
more cruel and bloody sacrifices, and at the time of the Bards nothing
remained but symbolic rites.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p.
331.)
The plant (mistletoe) is one of world-wide fame. Masagetæ, Skythians, and
the most ancient Persians called it the “Healer,” and Virgil calls it a
“branch of gold;” while Charon was dumb in presence of such an augur of
coming bliss; it was “the expectancy of all nations, longe post tempore
visum, as betokening Sol’s return to earth.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong,
vol. i. p. 81.)
Borlase sees much similarity between the Magi and our Druids, and Strabo
did the same. “Both carried in their hands, during the celebration of
their rites, a bunch of plants; that of the Magi was of course the Hom,
called Barsom,—Assyrian and Persepolis sculptures substantiate this. The
Hom looks very much like the Mistletoe, and the learned Dr. Stukeley
thinks that this parasite is meant as being on the tree mentioned by
Isaiah, vi. 13.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 43.)
“But yet it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as
a teil tree and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast
their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”—(Isaiah,
vi. 13.)
“The mistletoe wreath marks in one sense Venus’s temple, for any girl
may be kissed if caught under its sprays,—a practice, though modified,
which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by Herodotus, where all
women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in
Mylitta’s temple.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p.
91.)
The following are Frazer’s views on this subject: “The mistletoe was
viewed as the seat of life of the oak. The conception of the mistletoe
as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive
people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe
which grows on it is evergreen. In winter, the sight of its fresh foliage
among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the
tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the
branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of the sleeper still
beats when his body is motionless. Hence, when the god had to be killed,
when the sacred tree had to be burnt, it was necessary to begin by
breaking off the mistletoe, for so long as the mistletoe remained intact,
the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable,—all the blows of their
knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear
from the oak its sacred heart, the mistletoe, and the tree nodded to its
fall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, vol.
ii. pp. 295, 296.)
This train of reasoning would be irrefutable, as it is most logical, were
we in a position to be able to say that the excision of the fungus was
followed by the felling of the tree; but, unfortunately, that is just
what we are not able to determine. As a surmise, there is no impropriety
in believing that such excision may have marked the oak for destruction
at some future day; but there is no authority that we can produce at this
time to justify anything more than a surmise in the premises. That the
sacred character of the oak was due to the properties discovered in the
mistletoe is quite likely in view of all the facts already presented.
O’Curry, who appears to have known all that was to be learned on the
subject of Druidism, admits that the world is in possession of very
little that is reliable; he inclines to the view that Druidism was of
Eastern origin. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” Eugene
O’Curry, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York, 1873.) He contends that
“the Sacred Wand” of the Druids was made of the yew, and not of the oak
or mistletoe.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 194.)
Vallencey did not believe that the Persians were acquainted with the
mistletoe; at least, he could not find any name for it in Persian.—(See
Major Charles Vallencey, “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774,
vol. ii. p. 433.)
“In Cambodia, when a man perceives a certain parasitic plant growing
on a tamarind-tree, he dresses in white and taking a new earthen pot
climbs the tree at mid-day. He puts the plant in the pot and lets the
whole fall to the ground. Then in the pot he makes a decoction which
renders him invulnerable.”—(Aymonier, “Notes sur les Coûtumes, etc., des
Cambodgiens,” quoted in “The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 286, footnote.)
“It was that only which is found upon the oak which the Druids
employed; and being a parasitic plant, the seeds of which are not
sown by the hand of man, it was well adapted for the purposes of
superstition.”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 229.)
Much testimony may be adduced to show that the mistletoe was valued as
an aphrodisiac, as conducive to fertility, as sacred to love, and, in
general terms, an excitant of the genito-urinary organs, which is the
very purpose for which the Siberian and North American medicine-men
employed the fungus, and perhaps the very reason for which both fungus
and mistletoe were excluded from the Brahminical dietary.
Brand shows that mistletoe “was not unknown in the religious ceremonies
of the ancients, particularly the Greeks,” and that the use of it,
savoring strongly of Druidism, prevailed at the Christmas service of York
Cathedral down to our own day.—(See in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,”
London, 1849, vol. i. p. 524.)
The merry pastime of kissing pretty girls under the Christmas mistletoe
seems to have a phallic derivation. “This very old custom has descended
from feudal times, but its real origin and significance are lost.”
(“Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.”) Brand shows that the young men
observed the custom of “plucking off a berry at each kiss.” (Vol. i. p.
524.) Perhaps, in former times, they were required to swallow the berry.
The deductions of a recent writer merit attention:—
“The mistletoe was dedicated to Mylitta, in whose worship every woman
must once in her life submit to the sexual embrace of a stranger. When
she concluded to perform this religious duty in honor of her acknowledged
deity, she repaired to the temple and placed herself under the mistletoe,
thus offering herself to the first stranger who solicited her favors.
The modern modification of the ceremony is found in the practice among
some people of hanging the mistletoe, at certain seasons of the year, in
the parlor or over the door, when the woman entering that door, or found
standing under the wreath, must kiss the first man who approaches her and
solicits the privilege.” (“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, C.
E., St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 202.)
A writer in “Notes and Queries” (Jan. 3, 1852, vol. v. p. 13) quotes
Nares to the effect that “the maid who was not kissed under it at
Christmas would not be married in that year.” But another writer (Feb.
28, 1852, same volume) points out that “we should refer the custom to the
Scandinavian mythology, wherein the mistletoe is dedicated to Friga, the
Venus of the Scandinavians.”[27]
Grimm speaks of Paltar (Balder) being killed by the stroke of a piece of
mistletine, but ventures upon no explanation.—(“Teutonic Mythology,” vol.
i. p. 220, article “Paltar.”)
“Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch
might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he
could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight
the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead
with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis.) Tradition averred
that the fatal branch was that ‘golden bough’ which at the Sibyl’s
bidding, Æneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the
world of the dead.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 4, article
“The Arician Grove.”)
“A plant associated with the death of one of their greatest and
best-beloved gods must have been supremely sacred to all of Teutonic
blood; and yet this opinion of its sacredness was shared by the Celtic
nations.” (Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. iii. p. 1205.) “Our herbals
divide mistletoe into those of the oak, hazel, and pear tree; and none of
them must be let touch the ground.”—(Idem, p. 1207.)
Another writer (“Notes and Queries,” 2d series, vol. iv. p. 506) says:
“As it was supposed to possess the mystic power of giving fertility and a
power to preserve from poison, the pleasant ceremony of kissing under the
mistletoe may have some reference to this belief.”
In vol. iii. p. 343, it is stated: “A Worcestershire farmer was
accustomed to take down his bough of mistletoe and give it to the cow
that calved first after New Year’s Day. This was supposed to insure good
luck to the whole dairy. Cows, it may be remarked, as well as sheep, will
devour mistletoe with avidity.”
And still another (in 2d series, vol. vi. p. 523) recognizes that “the
mistletoe was sacred to the heathen Goddess of Beauty,” and “it is
certain that the mistletoe, though it formerly had a place among the
evergreens employed in the Christian decorations, was subsequently
excluded.” This exclusion he accounts for thus: “It is also certain that,
in the earlier ages of the church, many festivities not at all tending
to edification (the practice of mutual kissing among the rest) had
gradually crept in and established themselves, so that, at a certain part
of the service, ‘statim clerus, ipseque populus per basia blande sese
invicim oscularetur.’”