THE VARIOUS TYPES OF DEITY
There are certain objections against giving 'departmental' names, such
as 'god of fire,' 'god of wine,' to deities, but in certain stages of
religious evolution these 'departmental deities' are found--gods of
fire, water, earth, and air, hunting, thunder-deities connected with
various crafts and even with certain qualities. It is, however, only in
the higher stages of polytheism that such deities are finally stamped
with the 'departmental' character.[1]
As has already been pointed out, there is more than one explanation
of such gods. Fault has been found with the division of deities into
agricultural and non-agricultural, but there is no doubt whatever
that the change from nomadic to agricultural life and the consequent
altered conditions gave birth to a completely new set of religious
ideas. In the nomadic or hunting stage of existence, when man depends
for subsistence upon the flesh of animals and such wild fruits as
he can procure, he regards with veneration the supernatural beings
he thinks help or hinder him in the chase. Thus among certain North
American Indian tribes the barbarian hunter has a fetish shaped like
a mountain-lion. After making it an offering, he places its carven
nostrils to his own, believing that by so doing he inhales its courage.
He then breathes out deeply, in order to spread the breath of the
animal over a wide area and paralyse all the game in the neighbourhood.
On slaying a deer he cuts out the liver and smears the blood thereof
on the mouth of the fetish as a reward. Finally he prays to the Great
Deer, the mythical or magnified ancestor of the animal killed, not to
seek vengeance against him for having taken the life of one of his
children.
This is a picture of the utilitarian side of a savage hunter's
religion, and it is a representative one. Thus we see with what simple
religious elements the hunter has to do, and yet what an involved
ritual these primitive ideas may bring in their train. He recognizes
other supernatural beings than his own personal and tribal fetishes,
the eponymous heads of the beast clans. For example, he fears and
attempts to placate the being whom he deems to cause the thunder and
lightning. Later he sees in this god a great hunter, the patron of his
own craft of the chase, launching the fiery shaft from heaven.
The wind and the sun may appear to him to possess personality and
even deity, as they symbolize the breath and heat of life; but he can
scarcely adore them with the same fervour as that of the husbandman,
who depends entirely for his sustenance on the good will of sun and
wind.
The transition from the nomadic or hunting state to the agricultural
may or may not be abrupt. It may depend on slow evolution or on the
union of a hunting with an agricultural people, but whatever the cause
of the adoption of more settled habits of existence, the gods of the
chase do not all at once disappear into the background. Many of them
hold their own until a later stage of polytheism is reached, and not
a few supernatural forms of a primitive 'departmental' or 'animistic'
type have achieved high rank in more than one later pantheon. Thus, as
has already been shown, the Mexican Uitzilopochtli and the Latin Picus
were evolved from bird totems which had led their respective tribesmen
to battle in the days of old.
But the great measure of difference between the religions of nomadic
and agricultural peoples is the compact which each makes with its gods.
Adoration in the animistic stage is caused either by a sense of fear,
by the indefinable feeling for the sacred, or because something is
hoped for from the deity placated or worshipped. The contract between
the hunter and the fetish which guides his actions with its advice or
magic is of a low material type. He can scarcely have an agreement
with a thunder-god or any such being, but with the gods which preside
over vegetable growths the husbandman makes a very definite contract.
An unpropitious season brings home to him the risk attending an
agricultural existence, famine staring him in the face. Remembering the
manner in which he placated the deities of his nomadic existence--by
sacrifice--he proceeds by a like process[2] to placate the new deities
upon whose good-will the growth of his crops depends. The earth may be
weary after bearing so much grain; therefore it must be drenched with
blood in order that it may recover from the strain. The clouds may be
absent, so that the corn becomes scorched and withered; therefore a
tithe of human life must be given to the water--in other words, victims
must be drowned. The ever-present sun must be kept in good humour, for
without his light and heat the grain would not germinate and human life
would be destroyed; therefore the steam of blood must arise to fill his
nostrils. The contract is clear though unwritten: "Continue to feed us,
O gods, and we shall feed you."
Thus the strictly departmental type of deity arises. At first he is
a mere corn-spirit, maize-spirit, earth-spirit, water-, thunder-,
sun-spirit, or what not--sun, water, grain, or earth personified--but
as generations pass his fame grows and attracts wider reverence. His
attributes become numerous, his ritual more involved; and the wondrous
sentiment of the sacred surrounds him with a mystic veil. Ethical
ideas become attached to his worship; he is regarded as a fount of
righteousness; and, from being non-moral and non-human, he comes to
possess a sanctified human character as well as more than human powers.
Let us examine a few 'departmental' types of godhead with the object of
tracing them back to their original forms, if possible.
THE SUN-GOD
It will be well if we commence our inquiry with deities which are
obviously of elemental origin.
One of the first to attract our attention is naturally the sun
himself. In all times and in most climates the great luminary has been
regarded as the source of life. In nearly all the higher mythologies
he occupies a distinguished place, if not the principal seat, in the
pantheon. In the later stages of his godhead, also, his attributes
themselves are deified; but it is in his early career as a god that we
must first deal with him here.
In the earliest animistic conception of the sun he is regarded as
having life and volition at least equal, if not superior, to man. His
character among a primitive people may be gauged from the utterance
of the Peruvian monarch who cast doubts upon his godhead and told the
solar priesthood that so far from possessing the attributes of deity,
the sun was compelled by some force superior to himself to make the
same journey daily over a fixed path. That this had not occurred to the
solar worshippers of Peru shows that they gave no scientific interest,
but merely a devout observation, to the luminary, and that, without
bestowing any theological thought on the matter, they had merely
adopted the old animistic idea of the sun as a living thing, little
more or less.
When we come to examine later phases of sun-worship (and these cast
light upon early solar religious ideas) we may discern that the
original animistic idea of the sun as a living thing has evolved into,
or given way before, a more purely anthropomorphic idea. This is a
point of the first importance. Many writers on mythology appear to
be under the impression that in later polytheistic times the sun was
regarded itself as a personified god, and in some cases it may be so,
but the idea was by no means universal, and it would seem that the
sun-god was regarded more as a dweller in the house of the sun than as
the sun himself.
Similarly the supernatural beings known as culture-heroes come to earth
for a season, introduce the arts of civilization to men, and return
once more to their bright abode, usually in a westerly direction.
Such is the Greek Apollo, whereas another Greek god, Helios, is the
sun himself. Apollo represents the dusk-dispelling, civilizing agency
of the orb of day, and with his golden arrows slays the Python, the
serpent of night. In Egyptian mythology the sun is a boat in which
several deities daily take ship to cross the heavens. Behind these
anthropomorphic conceptions, however, lurked the older animistic idea,
for we find that the Egyptians speak of the sun, the luminary itself,
as _the_ god, and that the Mexicans call it _the_ teotl, the deity _par
excellence_. Thus the animistic and anthropomorphic systems were in
certain mythologies kept distinct. In others the animistic idea of the
sun--that is, the sun itself, personified--remained to the end, as in
the case of the Babylonian Merodach or the Japanese Ama-terasu. It is
necessary, however, that the mythologist should distinguish between the
anthropomorphic 'man of the sun' and the merely animistic concept of
the sun-god.
Having thus distinguished between earlier and later types of the sun as
deity, let us attempt to discover first his attributes as a god, and
secondly if any definite and universal type of myth attaches to him. A
generation ago mythologists were prone to "see sun-gods everywhere,"
as Mannhardt expressed it; but since that time the pendulum has swung
too far in the other direction. Abundant criticism has been launched
against the 'solar' theory, but it is not always pertinent and in many
cases it is merely futile. The theory suffered from the philological
school with which it was unfortunately bound up, and neither critics
nor readers seem to be able to judge it on its mythological merits
alone. In our inquiries as to the attributes and mythical character of
the sun-god we shall find that the one will cast light on the other,
for as his almost universal myth becomes revealed to us his attributes
will gradually unfold themselves. In disentangling solar myths, too, we
must be careful to lift the veil of allegory often cast over them later.
A rough synopsis of the groundwork of solar myth might be given as
follows. After the sun has risen from the mysterious darkness, and
after he has forsaken his first love, the dawn, he pursues his course,
gaining access of strength as he proceeds in his bark or fiery chariot
until, having passed the zenith, he gradually declines in strength, and
on the verge o the western heavens encounters the monster night, who
fights with and devours him. He must then traverse the Underworld, with
all its dangers and horrors, until he succeeds in emerging once more at
the gates of morning.
Let us take a typical myth of this description, from which we may
be able to gauge the universality of the sun legend. Apollo was the
offspring of Zeus and Leto, the sky and the darkness. The name of
his mother, denoting the oblivion of night, reappears in 'Lethe,'
the gloomy river of the Underworld, and in 'Latmos,' the 'Land of
Shadows.' In the Ionian hymn which recounts the circumstances of his
birth we read that Leto, when about to become his mother, could find
no resting-place until she came to Delos. In that little stony island
alone could she find repose, and so poor was it that she dreaded that
her son, the great being about to be born, would spurn it into the
sea. When Apollo was born the earth rejoiced and Delos became covered
with flowers; but he was weak and helpless until Thetis touched his
lips with the drink and food of the gods, when his swaddling-clothes,
the white mists, fell off, and, seizing his lyre, he sang the praises
of Zeus. His sojourn in Delos was short, and a second hymn tells us
of his westward wanderings, of how he journeyed from land to land,
always, however, returning to his native Delos. As soon as he cast from
himself his swaddling-clothes, the white mists, he seized his quiver,
the universal symbol of the sun-god, and, thus armed, went forth on his
westward journey, until he came to the fountain of Telphussa, where he
desired to remain, but Telphussa urged him to seek the more favoured
land of Krisa. He then betook himself to Parnassus, where the two
supernatural builders, Trophonius and Agamedes, raised a palace for
him. It is at this point that he is confronted with the dragon which
all sun-heroes meet and overcome.
Thus we see that Apollo is born of a mother whose name is darkness,
that he casts from him the mists which enshroud him, and soars in the
height of his glory over Parnassus, latterly overcoming the Python.[3]
A story with a similar groundwork is that of Beowulf in our earliest
English saga. Betaking himself to the court of King Hrothgar of
Jutland, whose realm was being devastated by the monster Grendel, he
succeeded in slaying him, but later had to dive to the bottom of the
sea to encounter Grendel's mother. Years afterward he fights with and
conquers a dragon who guards a treasure, but in the combat is poisoned
by its fangs. Beowulf came to land in the traditional sun-boat as a
child. The Saxons called their harvest month _Beo_ or _Bewod,_ and
Grendel is, of course, the water-provider. The later dragon typifies
the continued contest between the sun-god and darkness, and the
treasure it guards is, of course, the gold of the setting sun, or
perhaps the elixir of life.
Similar stories are told regarding Indra, Cadmus, Horus, and lesser
sun heroes, such as Hercules, Perseus, Bellerophon, Sigurd, Siegfried,
and Rustem. The sun myth too has found its way into folklore. A good
example is the folk-tale of King Arthur, which shows how in all ages
the sun story has been interwoven with tales of local and even national
heroes. A great obscurity rests upon Arthur's birth, but at manhood
he springs into almost instant prominence and is hailed as rightful
monarch of Britain. He slays not one dragon but several. He possesses
the magic sword which all solar heroes wield. He kills his thousands
and tens of thousands, and finally, when placed _hors de combat_, like
other solar heroes, at Camelot, does not perish, but is wafted in a
magical boat to the island of Avalon in the western sea. The sun myth
has also attached itself to the stories of many of Arthur's knights,
especially to that of Sir Tristram. May it not be that even the Round
Table symbolizes the sun?
THUNDER-GODS
As a class, the deities usually called thunder-gods present a
peculiarly involved mythological problem, as they almost invariably
possess agricultural or military significance. The animistic conception
of the thunder is instanced in such myths as those of the tribes of the
Andes, who imagine the thunder to reside on the summit of a mountain,
surrounded by clouds, through the canopy of which the fire-red limbs
of the personified storm-spirits can ever and anon be seen. Other
tribes symbolize the thunder as a bird, the flapping of whose pinions
causes the reverberation of the storm, and this conception is found
among primitive peoples both in the American and Australian continents.
In passing it may be profitable to compare such a myth with the Greek
tale of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Heaven for human use.
Regarding the original bird form of Prometheus there can be little
doubt. Other forms of the myth, in America, Australia, and elsewhere,
tell of a hero who in bird form stole the celestial fire, and it is
obvious that to reach Heaven Prometheus must have been provided with
the means of flight. There appears to be a distinct connexion between
the fire-stealing myth and that of the thunder-bird. These animistic
conceptions of the thunder prepared the way for an anthropomorphic
presentation of the deity who wielded the bolts of Heaven, or launched
the lightning spear; and if we examine the attributes of certain
thunder-gods in the state of transition between the animal and the
human form, we shall find that they retain evidences of their bird-like
origin. Thus Uitzilopochtli, the great lightning-and war-god of the
Aztecs, bears a name signifying that in primitive Aztec legend he was
regarded as a bird pure and simple. Going farther afield in America, we
find that Yetl, the thunder-god of the Thlinkeets, borrowed the wings
of a supernatural crane, with which he flew about, as did Odin and Sin
in Scandinavian and Haida in Indian myth. In Vancouver the thunder
is represented by a bird, Tootah. The Hindu thunder-god, Indra, not
only steals the heavenly liquor, as do many bird-gods, but in order
to procure it he takes the shape of a quail. In other mythologies, in
those of Greece and Scandinavia, for example, Zeus and Thor, who wield
the thunder, have become too greatly humanized, if such a term may be
employed, to display any original bird-like characteristics, if they
ever possessed them. In passing it may be well to note briefly the
apparatus of the thunder-god, the machinery by which he creates the
noise of thunder. As has been said, the thunder-bird among the North
American Indians effects this by the beating of his wings. Another
American thunder-god causes the noise by beating a sheet of metal.
The thunder of Thor is produced either by the blows of his mighty
hammer or the rumbling of the wheels of his chariot drawn by goats. The
reverberation of Jupiter's thunder proceeds from bolts forged for him
by the Titans in the bowels of Mount Etna.
An important attribute which we may observe here is the thunder-god's
lightning spear or arrow. This is the attribute of the Greek Apollo,
of at least half a dozen American thunder-deities, of Indra, and of
the Egyptian goddess Neith. En-lil, the thunder-god of Babylonia, was
also a god of war. As patron of the chase and war, the thunder-god
is often represented with a spear or bow and arrow, as, for example,
the Mexican god Mixcoatl, who is supposed to range far and wide in
search of game. Often, too, the lightning flash is symbolized by the
serpent; Uitzilopochtli's robe was interwoven with serpents, and he
possessed a drum of serpent's skin, while 'Mixcoatl,' just cited,
signifies 'Cloud-serpent.' Besides symbolizing the lightning flash,
the serpent in its connexion with the thunder-god may typify the rain
which invariably accompanies thunder; and because of his character as a
fertilizing agent and bearer of the rain which causes vegetable growth,
the thunder-god is at times regarded as a deity of agriculture, even
in his character of war-god. The Roman Mars so appears in the song of
the Arval brethren, a sect whose duty it was to guard crops and herds,
and as Mars Sylvanus he was invoked by the Roman farmer in the yearly
lustration of his land. The Mexican Uitzilopochtli, too, was regarded
as a patron of agriculture.
As we have seen in the myth of Brounger, the thunder-god might be
connected in some manner with flint, from the circumstance that fire is
capable of being struck from that mineral.
A word is necessary upon the connexion of the thunder-god with rain and
with water generally. There are, of course, water-gods who have nothing
whatever to do with thunder, but a good many thunder-gods possess power
over not only the rain but the winds as well. Especially is this the
case in America.
MARINE DEITIES
Another striking example of the manner in which deities become
departmental is the sea-god or goddess. As the corn-god presided over
the harvest of the land, so does the sea-god preside over the harvest
of the waste of waters. Later, when men build ships and go down to the
sea in them, the powers and functions of these marine deities become
greatly magnified. The circumstance that sea-gods or goddesses are
almost invariably represented as having a fish's tail is accounted
for in the same manner as the possession of animal characteristics by
certain land deities is explained--that is, just as gods derived from
eponymous or totemistic animals are sometimes represented as men with
animal heads or animal attributes, so deities which were once eponymous
fish are represented partly in anthropomorphic, partly in piscine form.
The following are instances of this. The coast Peruvians before the
Spanish Conquest regarded the sea in much the same manner as many
primitive peoples regard the land--that is, as a nourishing mother.
Indeed they called it Mama-cocha, or Mother Sea, because it yielded
the fish which formed so large a part of their subsistence. The whale
was a general object of worship all along that coast, and the skate,
sea-dog, dory, crab, and sardine, especially the last, were worshipped.
It was not the individuals of those finny tribes which the Peruvian
Indian adored, but the original eponymous fish which engendered all
the others of the same species, and sent them periodically into the
ocean, according to the season of each, to be food for man. All over
North and South America the belief held good that animals, birds, and
fish have eponymous counterparts who act as kings, chiefs, or even gods
to the others of their species.[4] In course of time such fish-gods
became anthropomorphic. In Peru, again, we find in connexion with the
worship of the fish-bearing lake Tuncapata the adoration of an idol
called Copacahuana, carven out of a bluish-green stone (obviously
the symbol for water) and having the body of a fish, surmounted by
a rude human head. She was venerated as the giver of the fish with
which the lake abounded. To come to classical examples, Poseidon and
Neptune were usually represented as half man, half fish, bearded and
grasping a trident. Oannes or Ea, the sea-god of Babylonia, is also
figured as a man with a fish's tail, below which human feet peep out.
Like many corn-gods or gods of the harvest, he was also a culture-god,
and, according to Berosus, taught the natives of the Babylonian shore
the arts of life. Thus, as the corn-plant itself, as we shall see,
is capable of evolving into a god, so was the fish--so intimate and
complete is the connexion between religious conceptions and the food
supply. In one representation of a deity executed as a bas-relief on
the walls of Nimrud, and on a signet from Nineveh, we notice that the
head and shoulders of the deity are covered by the skin of a fish,
remnant of his piscine origin, just as many anthropomorphic gods, once
animal in form, have the skins of their animal prototypes cast about
the upper parts of their statues.
It was probably not until men took to the sea that the god of the
waters developed to the full his protective or destructive tendencies.
Thus the raising or allaying of storms, the granting of favourable
winds and prosperous voyages, would naturally vest in the sea-god,
once navigation became general. His relation to the other gods would
then become a mere matter of mythic rearrangement and a niche would be
found for him in the pantheon. As the sun-god or wind-god was supreme
in the sky, so was he supreme in the waters; nor did his dominion stop
with the sea alone, but every estuary, lake, river, or even brook, was
beneath his sway and peopled by his subjects.
LUNAR GODS
The deity who presides over the moon is in most pantheons full of
mythological interest. Primitive ideas of the luminary regarded it
as equally the cause of vegetable growth with the sun; the work
which was accomplished by the sun through the day was, argued early
man, continued by the moon at night. All primitive time-reckoning
was calculated on a lunar basis, and as time-reckoning among savages
assumes the character of science, this would assist in bestowing
upon the spirit which presided over the moon a certain reputation for
wisdom. Primary lunar spirits are not as a rule very high in the scale
of god-like evolution.
As the moon is associated with the dampness and dews of night, an
ancient and widespread belief connects her with water. Thus in folklore
she is universally associated with rain; but she has also an evil
reputation as the distributer of miasmatic fogs and exhalations,
because these more generally make their appearance during the hours of
her reign. The Mexicans invariably confounded the words _citatli_, the
moon, and _atl,_ water. As representing water, the universal mother,
the moon was regarded as the patroness of fertility. She is also often
the goddess of love, ruling over the hours of night, generally sacred
to courtship. With some of the more primitive peoples she is the mother
of ghosts and all such nocturnal abominations.
Her connexion with wisdom has been touched upon. This is perhaps best
instanced in the Egyptian moon-god Thoth, who, probably because he was
supposed to keep the records of the Nile inundations, supposed to be
under the influence of the moon, was also regarded as god of writing,
and therefore, by inference, as god of wisdom. Diana, or Artemis, the
chaste huntress of the Greeks and Romans, is, like many moon-goddesses,
a patron of human fertility and love. But she is more; as one of the
ancient moon-goddesses, and therefore connected with the old lunar
calendar, she was a deity of the harvest. Her character as a huntress
is a little obscure. Some water-goddesses, like the Egyptian Neith,
possess the lightning arrow, symbolical of the thunder-cloud from
whence the lightning issues; and it may be that Artemis possessed the
bow and arrow simply because she was sister of Apollo, and, by analogy,
if the sun-god possessed these weapons, so must his sister, the
moon-goddess. Again, it may be that she possessed them as a goddess of
death. It is strange to find a lunar goddess connected with the chase,
that _rôle_ being nearly always filled by the thunder- or wind-god.[5]
AGRICULTURAL DEITIES
We have seen how a compact for their mutual weal arose between men and
the gods when an agricultural elementary basis had been arrived at; but
ere the evolution of departmental deities of agriculture, and of the
various grains and plants cultivated, these appear to possess separate
guardian spirits. In dealing with the great class of corn-spirits Sir
James Frazer distinguished between the spirit and the god as follows.
He says:
"As distinguished from gods, spirits are restricted in their operations
to definite departments of nature. Their names are general, not
proper; their attributes are generic rather than individual. In other
words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the
individuals of a class are all much alike, they have no definitely
marked individuality, no accepted traditions are current as to their
origin, life, adventures, and character. On the other hand, gods, as
distinguished from spirits, are not restricted to definite departments
of nature. It is true that there is generally some one department
over which they preside as their special province, but they are
not rigorously confined to it. They can exert their power for good
or evil in many other spheres of life. Again, they bear individual
or proper names, such as Ceres, Proserpine, Bacchus, and their
individual characters and histories are fixed by current myths and the
representations of art."
The corn-spirit, so characteristic of early agricultural life, is still
to be found in present-day folklore. The researches of Mannhardt and
Sir James Frazer have supplied numerous illustrations of the manner in
which a sheaf at harvest-time is connected with certain rites, more
or less similar in all countries, associated with the corn-spirit
or corn-mother. Thus it was thought in primitive days that a spirit
resided in or watched over the growing grain. In time this animistic
conception gave way to the idea of a departmental god of agriculture.
Strangely enough the agricultural departmental deity does not
represent the same generally uniform characteristics as do other
departmental gods, for example, gods of the sun or gods of the sea.
A likeness exists between the myths of Demeter in Greece, Osiris in
Egypt, and Ishtar in Babylonia, and it is probable that these three
myths had a common origin; but there is no likeness between the
person or attributes of the three gods alluded to. The establishment
of agriculture may be--indeed, often is--part of the earthly
accomplishment of a culture-god. Thus Apollo was guardian of the crops
and even of the herds, and during the mythical reign of Quetzalcoatl in
Mexico the ears of maize were so heavy that one might scarce be carried
by a strong man. Agricultural gods too frequently have a connexion
with the Underworld, for seed grows to fruition there. Thus among the
Greeks, Persephone, the wife of Aides or Hades, was unquestionably
symbolic of the corn sleeping in winter and coming to fruition in the
warm months.
THE CORN-SPIRIT AND ITS ABODE
The mother of Persephone, or Kore, was Demeter--_i.e.,_ 'corn-mother,'
Persephone was carried off and wed by Hades, king of the dead, was
sought for in his dark country by her mother, and was restored, with
the proviso that she must spend so many months every year underground
with her husband. Many circumstances in the myth of Osiris point to
the same corn-spirit origin. The wanderings of Isis in search of her
dismembered husband Osiris throughout the length and breadth of Egypt,
the passing of the son of the King of Byblos through the magic flame,
as well as other incidents, well illustrate the similarity.
Why do Demeter and Isis wander up and down, the one seeking for her
daughter, the other for her husband? Persephone and Osiris in one of
his many forms--probably his original form--both represent the sown
seed of the wheat, lying dormant for so long, but later resurrected
and recovered. Who or what then are Demeter and Isis? It is one of the
tenets of animism that the animistic spirit must, as spiritualists
would say, 'materialize' in some natural object, and the wandering
spirit may thus be enticed by the sorcery of the shaman into the
fetish object. When the corn is cut down, whither does the corn-spirit
betake itself? It must of necessity become a wanderer on the face of
the earth until once more the corn sprouts to give it house-room. If
our conclusions are correct, the myths of Demeter and Isis are late and
elaborated versions of an early animistic belief that the corn-spirit
was driven from its shelter until the green shoots attracted it
once more. The myth is most surely an animistic one, and perhaps
one of the oldest myths in the world. Demeter and Isis are deified
corn-spirits seeking the corn (Persephone and Osiris) for the purpose
of rematerializing it. Persephone and Osiris represent the corn-seed as
well as the corn-spirit, as is obvious from their sojourn underground.
FIRE-GODS
Fire-gods are usually associated with the sun, but later achieve a
certain domestic and mechanical significance. Undoubtedly fire with
its movement and appearance of life would be regarded in animistic
times as informed by spirit. In later times there is a departmental
god of fire who is often an artificer in metals. This idea could not,
of course, have arisen before the discovery of the uses of metals, so
that departmental deities of this type must be of comparatively recent
origin.
In India the great god of fire was Agni, who ruled not only over the
lightning and other fires of Heaven, but over those of earth as well.
He is occasionally confounded with Indra and Varuna, but in the earlier
hymns he is the fire which men prize as an indispensable boon. He bears
up sacrifices from men to the gods under the dark canopy of the smoke
which arises from the sacred fires below. He is occasionally credited
with the wisdom of the sun-god himself. He is 'black-backed' and
'many-limbed'; like the serpent, he is laid hold of with difficulty; he
is the regulator of sacrifices, and is regarded as the guide of souls
in the unseen world.
Among the Greeks, Hephæstus was regarded as the youngest of the gods.
He was a lame and ugly dwarf, the son of Zeus and Hera, who was so
displeased with his appearance that she wished to cast him out
of Olympus. He took her part in a quarrel with Zeus, however, and
thereupon the king of Heaven cast him from the heights to the island of
Lemnos, where he fell maimed and wounded. He was the great artificer
of the gods, an incomparable worker in metal. He raised the shining
palaces of Olympus, forged the marvellous armour of Achilles, and
made the necklace of Harmonia. Strangely enough, in Norse myth and
English legend, Regin, the smith of the _Volsunga Saga_, and Wieland
the Smith are stunted, lame, or limping, and forge arms for heroes,
as did Hephæstus for Achilles. In his Latin shape of Vulcan Hephæstus
is pre-eminently a god of fire, the conception becoming associated
with volcanic districts, especially with Mount Etna in Sicily, where,
with the Cyclops for his assistants, he laboured in the bowels of the
volcano.
Among the Scandinavian peoples, Loki appears to be the god of fire.
He also is limping and misshapen, but one does not espy in him the
mechanical ability of the Greek god. He sides now with the gods, now
with the giants, thus typifying the twofold nature of fire as a friend
and an enemy. He was probably grafted on to an older fire-demon.
In ancient Mexico Xiuhtecutli, the fire-god, was known as Huehueteotl,
eldest of the gods, not youngest, as in Greece and India. His body was
flame-coloured, and his face black and surmounted by a head-dress of
green feathers. A yellow serpent sprawling across his back typified
the serpentine nature of fire. He was also the god of the domestic
hearth, and on rising in the morning all Mexican families offered him
an oblation of food and drink.
From the examples given above it will be seen that although in one
instance, that of Hephæstus, the possession of the thunderbolt is
assumed, most fire-gods are truly departmental in character, and do
not appear to have any connexion with the lightning. They arise from
a purely animistic conception of fire, and later become personified.
Occasionally we find them, as in the case of Agni, and Yibil, the
Babylonian fire-god, partially absorbed by, or having the attributes
of, the sun-god.
WIND-GODS
Although gods of the winds appear in nearly all mythological systems,
in many instances they are neither more nor less than representatives
of tempest or gentle breeze. In some mythologies, as in that of Egypt,
they occupy a subordinate position, whereas in others the wind, usually
as the tempest, is one of the attributes of the supreme god of the
pantheon. Odin is undoubtedly in one of his aspects a god of storm and
in later folklore figures as the 'Wild Huntsman.' In Mexico, too, the
great god Tezcatlipoca was also known as Yoalli Ehecatl, or 'Lord of
the Night Wind.' In some mythologies, as in those of India and Greece,
every aspect of the wind, whether in gale or breeze, is personified and
deified. Of course it is easy to see that wind, like fire, with its
movement and utterance, either gentle or boisterous, would lend itself
to primitive animistic interpretation. It would seem a very living
thing indeed to early man, and was identified with the source of life
itself.
In the Vedas of the Hindus we find Veyu personified in the gentler
movements of the air, answering in this respect to the Latin Favonius
or the Greek Pan. The more violent forces of the wind in Hindu myth are
represented by the Maruts, who overturn trees and uproot forests, roar
like lions, and shake the mountains. The rain is their raiment, and
they are swift as Thor. When the tempest rages, the wayfarer may hear
the cracking of their whips as they pass overhead. But their onslaught
over and their purpose accomplished, they resume the shape of new-born
babes. They are the crushers or grinders, the children of Rudra, father
of the winds, who is also the deceiver, the master-thief; this last
attribute possibly symbolizing the shifting nature of wind.
In Greek myth we have the gentle or intermittent wind in Pan, who
breathes melody through his reed pipes. As the lover of Pitys, the
nymph of the pine-tree, he aroused the jealousy of Boreas, the rude
north wind, who hurled the maiden from a rock, and changed her into the
tree which bears her name. Boreas is the son of the night and the dawn,
and is usually figured in Greek myth as dwelling in the north. In the
_Odyssey_ all the winds are placed by Zeus under the charge of Æolus,
to whom is entrusted the power of rousing or quelling them at will.
The more vigorous wind from the west was known as Zephyros, husband of
Podarge, the white-footed wind who drives before her the snow-white
vapours.
The fury of the storm occasionally furnishes the conception of a god of
war, as in the case of the Greek Ares. Tezcatlipoca in Mexico, too, was
called 'the Slayer.'
EARTH-GODS
The earth was personalized by early man, who regarded it as the parent
of all things dwelling thereon. A union is often conceived of between
the Sky-Father and the Earth-Mother; and myths from centres as far
apart as Egypt and New Zealand tell how these primeval parents were
separated. No mere fetishism would suffice for the primeval idea of
the earth-Early man seems to have regarded it as his mother, just as
the late Mr Andrew Lang insisted that the primeval conception of a
heavenly father who dwelt in the sky was prior to animistic belief
or, at any rate, came before the polytheistic stage. As previously
suggested, the primitive All-Father of Mr Lang may have been no other
than the primitive sky-god. In a striking passage in his _Introduction
to Mythology and Folklore_ Sir George Cox says: "It may seem almost
a paradox to say that the thought of the earth as a producer and
restorer would be more likely to lead men on to the thought of a power
transcending nature, or the forces which we see at work in the outward
world, than the impressions made on the human mind by the phenomena of
the daily or nightly heavens; but on further thought we can scarcely
fail to see that the continuance of life on the earth, the unceasing
restlessness, the perpetual change which is going on upon its surface,
the sensitiveness of all vegetable and animal substances to the
influences which act upon them from without, must inevitably lead men
on to something more like a scheme of philosophy than any which could
be furnished by mere phrases describing the phenomena of the day or the
year."
The Earth-Mother, then, would be practically universal. We should
expect to find her everywhere, and indeed we do. In the Vedic hymns the
earth is the bride of Dyaus; in Greece she was known as Gæa. Bacchus or
Dionysus is certainly a deity with an earth connexion. In Mexico more
than one god was connected with the earth--for example, Tepeyollotl,
usually worshipped in a cavern, and a god of earthquakes. The name
signifies 'Heart of the Mountain' and evidently has a seismic meaning.
In the worship of Centeotl, the maize-god, there was a ceremony called
the Niticapoloa, or 'Tasting of the Soil,' consisting in raising a
little earth on one finger to the mouth and eating it, thus achieving
communion with the earth-god. The Spanish conquerors left it on record
that the soil was in reality tasted, and not merely placed to the lips.
Like the Babylonians, the Aztecs sometimes painted the Earth-Mother as
a woman with countless breasts; the Peruvians called her Mama Allpa,
'Mother Earth,' and the Caribs addressed her as Mama Nono, 'the Good
Mother from whom all things come.' In the dialect of the Algonquin
Indians the word for 'earth' is derived from the same root as those
for 'mother' and 'father,' but the Western Algonquin tribes call her
Nokomis, 'My grandmother.' The Passes of Brazil believed that the
earth was a great creature, that the rivers and streams were its
blood-vessels, and that it circled round the sun, turning first one
and then the other of its sides toward that luminary in order to keep
itself warm--not a bad guess for the early scientist to make! In some
parts of Europe we find the small progeny of the dwarfs connected with
the cult of earth.
These teeming animistic spirits are not confined to Europe, however. An
earth-goddess in German tradition is the benignant Holda, who preserves
the life of the winter-bound world under a mantle of snow.
A group of interesting earth-deities were known to Latin Italy. Ops, a
goddess of wealth and fertility, the wife of Saturnus, corresponded to
the Greek Rhea. The Latin genii were also closely akin to the dryads
and hamadryads of the Greeks, who inhabited groves and trees. Pilumnus
and Picumnus too were worshipped as rural deities, but they seem to
have had a more agricultural than terrestrial significance, Pomona was
the Latin goddess of fruit-trees and their fruits, and Fauna and Faunus
were also rural deities. The satyrs in Greece were cognate types.
Before agriculture proper with its especial pantheon was evolved
the forces of fertility may have received a considerable amount of
adoration and were probably in some measure connected with the spirit
of earth. Rites innumerable were carried out to secure the revival of
vegetation in spring, most of them having for object the rejuvenation
of nature. In some instances trees, and in others human beings, were
sacrificed. Such gods, for example, as Adonis, who was worshipped in
Western Asia, Osiris, and Attys represented the decay and revival of
vegetation. Much of their ritual is still performed by the peasantry of
all parts of Europe, and has been collected by the labours of Mannhardt
and Sir James Frazer. It may be interesting to give here an account of
such an observance which came beneath the writer's own notice.
THE BURRY MAN
At South Queensferry, near Edinburgh, a strange annual ceremony took
place, the chief actor in which was known locally as 'the Burry Man,'
It was supposed to commemorate the passage of Malcolm Canmore and Queen
Margaret to and from Edinburgh and Dunfermline, but this is local
surmise and nothing more. It can be traced back at least to the period
of the last battle of Falkirk, for an old woman of eighty, whose mother
was thirteen years of age at the date of that battle (1746), stated
that the observance had been unaltered from that time till her own
old age. It took place on the day preceding the annual fair, usually
about the second week in August, and was long upheld by the boys of
Queensferry. On the day preceding the fair the Burry Man, always a
stout fellow or a robust lad, was dressed in loosely fitting flannels,
and his face, arms, and legs thickly covered with burrs. He carried
two staves at arm's-length, and these, as well as his hands, were
beautifully adorned with flowers. Thus accoutred, he was led from door
to door by two attendants, who assisted him in upholding his arms by
grasping the staves. As each successive door was reached a shout was
raised and the inhabitants came out to bestow greetings and money on
the Burry Man, the amount collected being equally divided and spent at
the fair by the youths who kept up the custom. On some occasions two
persons were thus selected and led in procession from door to door--the
one being styled the 'King' and the other the 'Queen,' it is thought
in allusion to the passage of the royal couple through the borough. It
used to be a popular belief that when this quaint custom was abandoned
misfortune would befall the town.
Now what did the Burry Man represent? The custom was certainly a relic
of a most ancient festival. The Burry Man of South Queensferry was as
elsewhere the representation in human form of a tree- or plant-spirit,
for these often are represented in anthropomorphic or man-like shape
in folk festival. In Bohemia on the fourth Sunday in Lent the girls
of the villages go into a wood, cut down a young tree, fasten to it a
puppet dressed in white clothes to look like a woman, and with this
figure go from house to house collecting gratuities and singing that
they bring summer into the village, summer being represented as the
spirit of vegetation, returning or reviving. At Thann in Alsace a
girl called the 'Little May Rose,' dressed in white, carries a small
may-tree covered with garlands and ribbons, and she and her companions
collect gifts from door to door, singing as they go. In Lithuania the
lads of the village choose the prettiest girl, swathe her in birch
branches, and dress her as the May. In Brie, in the Île de France, a
lad is wrapped in leaves and is called 'Father May.' In the Frankenwald
mountains, in Northern Bavaria, on the 2nd of May a man is enveloped
in straw from head to foot to personify a sheaf, and in this guise he
dances round a tree erected before the local tavern, after which he is
led in procession through the streets, which are adorned with sprigs of
birch. In Thuringia as soon as the trees begin to grow green in spring
the children choose one of their playmates, around whom they twine
leaves till only his shoes peep out from the greenery. Two of them
lead him about so that he may not stumble or fall, and they address
him as the 'Little Leaf Man.' In Carinthia on St George's Day a young
fellow called 'Green George' is clad from head to foot in green birch
branches. In England, too, a good example of these leaf-clad mummers
is 'Jack-in-the-Green,' who walks enshrouded in a framework of wicker
covered with holly and ivy and surmounted by flowers and ribbons. Many
other examples could be given.
The Burry Man, like these, is a representation of the spirit of
vegetation, the festival of which has survived in South Queensferry
from early times, just as it has elsewhere.
[1] Of course 'departmental' gods may possess many attributes, some of
these entirely foreign to their character-in-chief, and drafted upon
it by the circumstances of myth, politics, or amalgamation with other
forms.
[2] Of course these deities may have an animistic origin; indeed, they
certainly do have, so that the idea of sacrifice will not seem novel.
[3] As I have shown elsewhere (p. 95), Professor Rendel Harris has
brought a good deal of proof in favour of a hypothesis that Apollo was
the god of an apple cult; but it was not as such that he was known to
the later Greeks, whatever he may have been originally--an instance, if
such were needed, that the solar story finds its way into the myths of
gods of all types.
[4] The study of these eponymous animal-gods will one day certainly
throw a flood of light upon the obscure question of the origin of
totemism.
[5] See the illuminating remarks of Professor Rendel Harris upon this
goddess in his _Ascent of Olympus_, pp. 56 _sqq._