It is absurd to suppose that in this or any other science neat systems can be found which will cover all the facts. Nature and History do not deal in such things, or supply them for a sop to Man's vanity. Book Detail: Author : W. The subject of Religious Origins is a fascinating one, as the great multitude of books upon it, published in late years, tends to show. Indeed the great difficulty today in dealing with the subject, lies in the very mass of the material to hand-and that not only on account of the labor involved in sorting the material, but because the abundance itself of facts opens up temptation to a student in this department of Anthropology as happens also in other branches of general Science to rush in too hastily with what seems a plausible theory.
There is also in these matters of Science though many scientific men would doubtless deny this a great deal of "Fashion". Such has been notoriously the case in Political Economy, Medicine, Geology, and even in such definite studies as Physics and Chemistry.
In a comparatively recent science, like that with which we are now concerned, one would naturally expect variations. A hundred and fifty years ago, and since the time of Rousseau, the "Noble Savage" was extremely popular; and he lingers still in the story books of our children. Then the reaction from this extreme view set in, and of late years it has been the popular cue largely, it must be said, among "armchair" travelers and explorers to represent the religious rites and customs of primitive folk as a senseless mass of superstitions, and the early man as quite devoid of decent feeling and intelligence.
Again, when the study of religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up-say in the earlier part of last century-there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun-unless indeed if feminine of the Moon. Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts 1 We have not used OCR Optical Character Recognition , as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos.
Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy. The Nature of the Self Index. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and a friend of Walt Whitman. Morel, William Morris, Edward R.
Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner. As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had an influence on both D.
Lawrence and Aurobindo, and inspired E. Forster's novel Maurice. Born in Hove in Sussex, Carpenter was educated at nearby Brighton College where his father was a governor. His brothers Charles, George and Alfred also went to school there. When he was ten, he displayed a flair for the piano.
His academic ability appeared relatively late in his youth, but was sufficient enough to earn him a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Then inevitably, and at a later time, new or neglected facts alter the outlook, and a new per spective is established. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy.
In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. This is a reproduction of a book published before This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. The Nature of the Self Index. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and a friend of Walt Whitman. Morel, William Morris, Edward R. Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.
As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had an influence on both D. Lawrence and Aurobindo, and inspired E. Forster's novel Maurice. Born in Hove in Sussex, Carpenter was educated at nearby Brighton College where his father was a governor. His brothers Charles, George and Alfred also went to school there.
When he was ten, he displayed a flair for the piano. His academic ability appeared relatively late in his youth, but was sufficient enough to earn him a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Whilst there he began to explore his feelings for men.
One of the most notable examples of this is his close friendship with Edward Anthony Beck later Master of Trinity Hall , which, according to Carpenter, had "a touch of romance". Beck eventually ended their friendship, causing Carpenter great emotional heartache. Carpenter graduated as 10th Wrangler in After university he joined the Church of England as a curate, "as a convention rather than out of deep Conviction". In he was invited to become tutor to the royal princes George Frederick late King George V and his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, but declined the position.
The job instead went to his lifelong friend and fellow Cambridge student John Neale Dalton. Carpenter continued to visit Dalton while he was tutor, and was presented with photographs of themselves by the princes. In the following years he experienced an increasing sense of dissatisfaction with his life in the church and university, and became weary of what he saw as the hypocrisy of Victorian society. He found great solace in reading poetry, later remarking that his discovery of the work of Walt Whitman caused "a profound change" in him First published in , this vintage book looks at paganism and Christianity, exploring their various connections and analysing where these similarities came from and what they mean.
Edward Carpenter — was an English philosopher, poet, and pioneering activist for gay rights. He had many notable friends including the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore and celebrated American poet Walt Whitman; and also corresponded with many famous figures, including Jack London, Mahatma Gandhi and Annie Besant, amongst others. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
Edward Carpenter 29 August - 28 June was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals. As a philosopher he was particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Innumerable legends and customs connect the rebirth of the Sun with a Virgin parturition. Frazer in his Part IV of The Golden Bough 1 says: "If we may trust the evidence of an obscure scholiast the Greeks in the worship of Mithras at Rome used to celebrate the birth of the luminary by a midnight service, coming out of the inner shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has brought forth!
The light is waxing! All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins of the myths does not of course imply that the Vegetational origins must be denied or ignored. These latter were doubtless the earliest, but there is no reason—as said in the Introduction ch. In fact it is quite clear that they must have done so; and to separate them out too rigidly, or treat them as antagonistic, is a mistake.
The Cave or Underworld in which the New Year is born is not only the place of the Sun's winter retirement, but also the hidden chamber beneath the Earth to which the dying Vegetation goes, and from which it re-arises in Spring.
The amours of Adonis with Venus and Proserpine, the lovely goddesses of the upper and under worlds, or of Attis with Cybele, the blooming Earth-mother, are obvious vegetation-symbols; but they do not exclude the interpretation that Adonis Adonai may also figure as a Sun-god.
The Zodiacal constellations of Aries and Taurus to which I shall return presently rule in heaven just when the Lamb and the Bull are in evidence on the earth; and the yearly sacrifice of those two animals and of the growing Corn for the good of mankind runs parallel with the drama of the sky, as it affects not only the said constellations but also Virgo the Earth-mother who bears the sheaf of corn in her hand.
I shall therefore continue in the next chapter to point out these astronomical references—which are full of significance and poetry; but with a recommendation at the same time to the reader not to forget the poetry and significance of the terrestrial interpretations. Between Christmas Day and Easter there are several minor festivals or holy days—such as the 28th December the Massacre of the Innocents , the 6th January the Epiphany , the 2nd February Candlemas 1 Day , the period of Lent German Lenz, the Spring , the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, and so forth—which have been commonly celebrated in the pagan cults before Christianity, and in which elements of Star and Nature worship can be traced; but to dwell on all these would take too long; so let us pass at once to the period of Easter itself.
The Vernal Equinox has all over the ancient world, and from the earliest times, been a period of rejoicing and of festivals in honor of the Sungod. It is needless to labor a point which is so well known. Everyone understands and appreciates the joy of finding that the long darkness is giving way, that the Sun is growing in strength, and that the days are winning a victory over the nights.
The birds and flowers reappear, and the promise of Spring is in the air. The priests who were, as I have said, the early students and inquirers, had worked out this astronomical side, and in that way were able to fix dates and to frame for the benefit of the populace myths and legends, which were in a certain sense explanations of the order of Nature, and a kind of "popular science. The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line or circle girdling the Earth half-way between the North and South poles.
If you imagine a transparent Earth with a light at its very centre, and also imagine the SHADOW of this equatorial line to be thrown on the vast concave of the Sky, this shadow would in astronomical parlance coincide with the Equator of the Sky—forming an imaginary circle half-way between the North and South celestial poles.
The Equator, then, may be pictured as cutting across the sky either by day or by night, and always at the same elevation—that is, as seen from any one place. But the Ecliptic the other important great circle of the heavens can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations as they are seen at NIGHT. It is in fact the Sun's path among the fixed stars. For really owing to the Earth's motion in its orbit the Sun appears to move round the heavens once a year—travelling, always to the left, from constellation to constellation.
The exact path of the sun is called the Ecliptic; and the band of sky on either side of the Ecliptic which may be supposed to include the said constellations is called the Zodiac. How then—it will of course be asked—seeing that the Sun and the Stars can never be seen together—were the Priests ABLE to map out the path of the former among the latter?
Into that question we need not go. Sufficient to say that they succeeded; and their success—even with the very primitive instruments they had—shows that their astronomical knowledge and acuteness of reasoning were of no mean order. To return to our Vernal Equinox. Let us suppose that the Equator and Ecliptic of the sky, at the Spring season, are represented by two lines Eq. The Sun, represented by the small circle, is moving slowly and in its annual course along the Ecliptic to the left.
When it reaches the point P the dotted circle it stands on the Equator of the sky, and then for a day or two, being neither North nor South, it shines on the two terrestrial hemispheres alike, and day and night are equal. It will be seen then that this point P where the Sun's path crosses the Equator is a very critical point.
It is the astronomical location of the triumph of the Sungod and of the arrival of Spring. How was this location defined? Among what stars was the Sun moving at that critical moment? For of course it was understood, or supposed, that the Sun was deeply influenced by the constellation through which it was, or appeared to be, moving.
It seems then that at the period when these questions were occupying men's minds—say about three thousand years ago—the point where the Ecliptic crossed the Equator was, as a matter of fact, in the region of the constellation Aries or the he-Lamb.
The triumph of the Sungod was therefore, and quite naturally, ascribed to the influence of Aries. At first such an explanation sounds hazardous; but a thousand texts and references confirm it; and it is only by the accumulation of evidence in these cases that the student becomes convinced of a theory's correctness.
It must also be remembered what I have mentioned before that these myths and legends were commonly adopted not only for one strict reason but because they represented in a general way the convergence of various symbols and inferences.
Let me enumerate a few points with regard to the Vernal Equinox. In the Bible the festival is called the Passover, and its supposed institution by Moses is related in Exodus, ch. In every house a he-lamb was to be slain, and its blood to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the house. Then the Lord would pass over and not smite that house. The Hebrew word is pasach, to pass. But what was that lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb— though certainly the earthly lambs on the hillsides WERE just then ready to be killed and eaten —but the heavenly Lamb, which was slain or sacrificed when the Lord "passed over" the equator and obliterated the constellation Aries.
This was the Lamb of God which was slain each year, and "Slain since the foundation of the world. The sacrifice of the Lamb, and its blood, were to be the promise of redemption.
The door-frames of the houses—symbols of the entrance into a new life—were to be sprinkled with blood. See St. Paul's epistles, and the early Fathers.
And we have the expression "washed in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian Church. In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression and its origin we must turn for a moment to the worship both of Mithra, the Persian Sungod, and of Attis the Syrian god, as throwing great light on the Christian cult and ceremonies.
It must be remembered that in the early centuries of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole Western world. It has left many monuments of itself here in Britain. At Rome the worship was extremely popular, and it may almost be said to have been a matter of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity, or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the rites of the older one should establish itself as it did in the face of the latter.
Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra cult the slaying of a Bull by the Sungod occupies the same sort of place as the slaving of the Lamb in the Christian cult.
It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the blood of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue. Mithraism was a greatly older religion than Christianity; but its genesis was similar. In fact, owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of the Ecliptic and Equator was different at the time of the establishment of Mithra-worship from what it was in the Christian period; and the Sun instead of standing in the He-lamb, or Aries, at the Vernal Equinox stood, about two thousand years earlier as indicated by the dotted line in the diagram , in this very constellation of the Bull.
Nor must we overlook here the agricultural appropriateness of the bull as the emblem of Spring-plowings and of service to man. The sacrifice of the Bull became the image of redemption. In a certain well-known Mithra-sculpture or group, the Sungod is represented as plunging his dagger into a bull, while a scorpion, a serpent, and other animals are sucking the latter's blood. From one point of view this may be taken as symbolic of the Sun fertilizing the gross Earth by plunging his rays into it and so drawing forth its blood for the sustenance of all creatures; while from another more astronomical aspect it symbolizes the conquest of the Sun over winter in the moment of "passing over" the sign of the Bull, and the depletion of the generative power of the Bull by the Scorpion—which of course is the autumnal sign of the Zodiac and herald of winter.
One such Mithraic group was found at Ostia, where there was a large subterranean Temple "to the invincible god Mithras. In the worship of Attis there were as I have already indicated many points of resemblance to the Christian cult. On the 22nd March the Vernal Equinox a pinetree was cut in the woods and brought into the Temple of Cybele.
It was treated almost as a divinity, was decked with violets, and the effigy of a young man tied to the stem cf. The 24th was called the "Day of Blood"; the High Priest first drew blood from his own arms; and then the others gashed and slashed themselves, and spattered the altar and the sacred tree with blood; while novices made themselves eunuchs "for the kingdom of heaven's sake. But when night fell, says Dr. Frazer, 1 sorrow was turned to joy. A light was brought, and the tomb was found to be empty.
The next day, the 25th, was the festival of the Resurrection; and ended in carnival and license the Hilaria. Further, says Dr. Frazer, these mysteries "seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood.
A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear.
Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the worshiper on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows—as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull.
Robertson, 3 "which grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the literal and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of the lamb' 4 ; the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the actual blood of a sacrificial bull or ram.
Whether Mr. Robertson is right in ascribing to the priests as he appears to do so materialistic a view of the potency of the actual blood is, I should say, doubtful. I do not myself see that there is any reason for supposing that the priests of Mithra or Attis regarded baptism by blood very differently from the way in which the Christian Church has generally regarded baptism by water—namely, as a SYMBOL of some inner regeneration.
There may certainly have been a little more of the MAGICAL view and a little less of the symbolic, in the older religions; but the difference was probably on the whole more one of degree than of essential disparity.
But however that may be, we cannot but be struck by the extraordinary analogy between the tombstone inscriptions of that period "born again into eternity by the blood of the Bull or the Ram," and the corresponding texts in our graveyards to-day. Cumont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra 2 vols.
Cumont, it may be noted vol. And Mithra was the hero who first won this conception of divinity for mankind—though of course it is in essence quite similar to the conception put forward by the Christian Church. As illustrating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer quotes an ancient writer 1 who says that for some time after the ceremony the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting the devotee on MILK, like a new-born babe.
Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in or From the Vatican as a centre," he continues, "this barbarous system of superstition seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican.
It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early days of the Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials of Mithra and Cybele, probably much intermingled and blended, were exceedingly popular. Both religions had been recognized by the Roman State, and the Christians, persecuted and despised as they were, found it hard to make any headway against them—the more so perhaps because the Christian doctrines appeared in many respects to be merely faint replicas and copies of the older creeds.
Robertson maintains 1 that a he-lamb was sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying 2 that "a place near the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an appropriate seat; and on this account he bears the sword of the Ram Aries which is a sign of Mars Ares. Many people think that the association of the Lamb-god with the Cross arose from the fact that the constellation Aries at that time WAS on the heavenly cross the crossways of the Ecliptic and Equator-see diagram, ch.
And it is curious to find that Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho 1 a Jew alludes to an old Jewish practice of roasting a Lamb on spits arranged in the form of a Cross. For one spit is transfixed right through the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs forelegs of the lamb.
To-day in Morocco at the festival of Eid-el-Kebir, corresponding to the Christian Easter, the Mohammedans sacrifice a young ram and hurry it still bleeding to the precincts of the Mosque, while at the same time every household slays a lamb, as in the Biblical institution, for its family feast. But it will perhaps be said, "You are going too fast and proving too much. In the anxiety to show that the Lamb-god and the sacrifice of the Lamb were honored by the devotees of Mithra and Cybele in the Rome of the Christian era, you are forgetting that the sacrifice of the Bull and the baptism in bull's blood were the salient features of the Persian and Phrygian ceremonials, some centuries earlier.
How can you reconcile the existence side by side of divinities belonging to such different periods, or ascribe them both to an astronomical origin? As I have explained before, the Precession of the Equinoxes caused the Sun, at its moment of triumph over the powers of darkness, to stand at one period in the constellation of the Bull, and at a period some two thousand years later in the constellation of the Ram.
It was perfectly natural therefore that a change in the sacred symbols should, in the course of time, take place; yet perfectly natural also that these symbols, having once been consecrated and adopted, should continue to be honored and clung to long after the time of their astronomical appropriateness had passed, and so to be found side by side in later centuries.
Peter's to-day has of the origin of the Lamb-god whose vicegerent on earth is the Pope. It is indeed easy to imagine that the change from the worship of the Bull to the worship of the Lamb which undoubtedly took place among various peoples as time went on, was only a ritual change initiated by the priests in order to put on record and harmonize with the astronomical alteration.
Anyhow it is curious that while Mithra in the early times was specially associated with the bull, his association with the lamb belonged more to the Roman period. Somewhat the same happened in the case of Attis. In the Bible we read of the indignation of Moses at the setting up by the Israelites of a Golden Calf, AFTER the sacrifice of the ram-lamb had been instituted—as if indeed the rebellious people were returning to the earlier cult of Apis which they ought to have left behind them in Egypt.
In Egypt itself, too, we find the worship of Apis, as time went on, yielding place to that of the Ram-headed god Amun, or Jupiter Ammon.
Finally it has been pointed out, and there may be some real connection in the coincidence, that in the quite early years of Christianity the FISH came in as an accepted symbol of Jesus Christ. Considering that after the domination of Taurus and Aries, the Fish Pisces comes next in succession as the Zodiacal sign for the Vernal Equinox, and is now the constellation in which the Sun stands at that period, it seems not impossible that the astronomical change has been the cause of the adoption of this new symbol.
Anyhow, and allowing for possible errors or exaggerations, it becomes clear that the travels of the Sun through the belt of constellations which forms the Zodiac must have had, from earliest times, a profound influence on the generation of religious myths and legends. To say that it was the only influence would certainly be a mistake. Other causes undoubtedly contributed. But it was a main and important influence. The origins of the Zodiac are obscure; we do not know with any certainty the reasons why the various names were given to its component sections, nor can we measure the exact antiquity of these names; but—pre-supposing the names of the signs as once given—it is not difficult to imagine the growth of legends connected with the Sun's course among them.
Of all the ancient divinities perhaps Hercules is the one whose role as a Sungod is most generally admitted. The helper of gods and men, a mighty Traveller, and invoked everywhere as the Saviour, his labors for the good of the world became ultimately defined and systematized as twelve and corresponding in number to the signs of the Zodiac.
It is true that this systematization only took place at a late period, probably in Alexandria; also that the identification of some of the Labors with the actual signs as we have them at present is not always clear. But considering the wide prevalence of the Hercules myth over the ancient world and the very various astronomical systems it must have been connected with in its origin, this lack of exact correspondence is hardly to be wondered at.
The Labors of Hercules which chiefly interest us are: 1 The capture of the Bull, 2 the slaughter of the Lion, 3 the destruction of the Hydra, 4 of the Boar, 5 the cleansing of the stables of Augeas, 6 the descent into Hades and the taming of Cerberus.
The first of these is in line with the Mithraic conquest of the Bull; the Lion is of course one of the most prominent constellations of the Zodiac, and its conquest is obviously the work of a Saviour of mankind; while the last four labors connect themselves very naturally with the Solar conflict in winter against the powers of darkness. The Boar 4 we have seen already as the image of Typhon, the prince of darkness; the Hydra 3 was said to be the offspring of Typhon; the descent into Hades 6 —generally associated with Hercules' struggle with and victory over Death—links on to the descent of the Sun into the underworld, and its long and doubtful strife with the forces of winter; and the cleansing of the stables of Augeas 5 has the same signification.
It appears in fact that the stables of Augeas was another name for the sign of Capricorn through which the Sun passes at the Winter solstice 1 —the stable of course being an underground chamber—and the myth was that there, in this lowest tract and backwater of the Ecliptic all the malarious and evil influences of the sky were collected, and the Sungod came to wash them away December was the height of the rainy season in Judaea and cleanse the year towards its rebirth.
It should not be forgotten too that even as a child in the cradle Hercules slew two serpents sent for his destruction—the serpent and the scorpion as autumnal constellations figuring always as enemies of the Sungod—to which may be compared the power given to his disciples by Jesus 1 "to tread on serpents and scorpions. The Jesus-story, it will now be seen, has a great number of correspondences with the stories of former Sungods and with the actual career of the Sun through the heavens—so many indeed that they cannot well be attributed to mere coincidence or even to the blasphemous wiles of the Devil!
Let us enumerate some of these. There are 1 the birth from a Virgin mother; 2 the birth in a stable cave or underground chamber ; and 3 on the 25th December just after the winter solstice. There is 4 the Star in the East Sirius and 5 the arrival of the Magi the "Three Kings" ; there is 6 the threatened Massacre of the Innocents, and the consequent flight into a distant country told also of Krishna and other Sungods. There are the Church festivals of 7 Candlemas 2nd February , with processions of candles to symbolize the growing light; of 8 Lent, or the arrival of Spring; of 9 Easter Day normally on the 25th March to celebrate the crossing of the Equator by the Sun; and 10 simultaneously the outburst of lights at the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
There is 11 the Crucifixion and death of the Lamb-God, on Good Friday, three days before Easter; there are 12 the nailing to a tree, 13 the empty grave, 14 the glad Resurrection as in the cases of Osiris, Attis and others ; there are 15 the twelve disciples the Zodiacal signs ; and 16 the betrayal by one of the twelve.
Then later there is 17 Midsummer Day, the 24th June, dedicated to the Nativity of John the Baptist, and corresponding to Christmas Day; there are the festivals of 18 the Assumption of the Virgin 15th August and of 19 the Nativity of the Virgin 8th September , corresponding to the movement of the god through Virgo; there is the conflict of Christ and his disciples with the autumnal asterisms, 20 the Serpent and the Scorpion; and finally there is the curious fact that the Church 21 dedicates the very day of the winter solstice when any one may very naturally doubt the rebirth of the Sun to St.
Thomas, who doubted the truth of the Resurrection! These are some of, and by no means all, the coincidences in question. But they are sufficient, I think, to prove—even allowing for possible margins of error—the truth of our general contention. To go into the parallelism of the careers of Krishna, the Indian Sungod, and Jesus would take too long; because indeed the correspondence is so extraordinarily close and elaborate.
I have already Ch. II mentioned the Eucharistic rite held in commemoration of Mithra, and the indignant ascription of this by Justin Martyr to the wiles of the Devil. Justin Martyr clearly had no doubt about the resemblance of the Mithraic to the Christian ceremony. A Sacramental meal, as mentioned a few pages back, seems to have been held by the worshipers of Attis 1 in commemoration of their god; and the 'mysteries' of the Pagan cults generally appear to have included rites—sometimes half-savage, sometimes more aesthetic—in which a dismembered animal was eaten, or bread and wine the spirits of the Corn and the Vine were consumed, as representing the body of the god whom his devotees desired to honor.
But the best example of this practice is afforded by the rites of Dionysus, to which I will devote a few lines. Dionysus, like other Sun or Nature deities, was born of a Virgin Semele or Demeter untainted by any earthly husband; and born on the 25th. He was nurtured in a Cave, and even at that early age was identified with the Ram or Lamb, into whose form he was for the time being changed.
At times also he was worshiped in the form of a Bull. His grave "was shown at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo. Secret offerings were brought thither, while the women who were celebrating the feast woke up the new-born god Festivals of this kind in celebration of the extinction and resurrection of the deity were held by women and girls only amid the mountains at night, every third year, about the time of the shortest day.
The rites, intended to express the excess of grief and joy at the death and reappearance of the god, were wild even to savagery, and the women who performed them were hence known by the expressive names of Bacchae, Maenads, and Thyiades. They wandered through woods and mountains, their flying locks crowned with ivy or snakes, brandishing wands and torches, to the hollow sounds of the drum, or the shrill notes of the flute, with wild dances and insane cries and jubilation. Oxen, goats, even fawns and roes from the forest were killed, torn to pieces, and eaten raw.
This in imitation of the treatment of Dionysus by the Titans, 1 —who it was supposed had torn the god in pieces when a child. Dupuis, one of the earliest writers at the beginning of last century on this subject, says, describing the mystic rites of Dionysus 1 : "The sacred doors of the Temple in which the initiation took place were opened only once a year, and no stranger might ever enter.
Night lent to these august mysteries a veil which was forbidden to be drawn aside—for whoever it might be. It was in that place that the partition took place of the body of the god, 3 which was then eaten—the ceremony, in fact, of which our Eucharist is only a reflection; whereas in the mysteries of Bacchus actual raw flesh was distributed, which each of those present had to consume in commemoration of the death of Bacchus dismembered by the Titans, and whose passion, in Chios and Tenedos, was renewed each year by the sacrifice of a man who represented the god.
That Eucharistic rites were very very ancient is plain from the Totem-sacraments of savages; and to this subject we shall now turn. Much has been written on the origin of the Totem-system—the system, that is, of naming a tribe or a portion of a tribe say a CLAN after some ANIMAL—or sometimes—also after some plant or tree or Nature-element, like fire or rain or thunder; but at best the subject is a difficult one for us moderns to understand. A careful study has been made of it by Salamon Reinach in his Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 1 where he formulates his conclusions in twelve statements or definitions; but even so—though his suggestions are helpful—he throws very little light on the real origin of the system.
There are three main difficulties. The first is to understand why primitive Man should name his Tribe after an animal or object of nature at all; the second, to understand on what principle he selected the particular name a lion, a crocodile, a lady bird, a certain tree ; the third, why he should make of the said totem a divinity, and pay honor and worship to it.
It may be worth while to pause for a moment over these. Plainly to call his tribe "The Wayfarers" or "The Pioneers" or the "Pacifists" or the "Invincibles," or by any of the thousand and one names which modern associations adopt, would have been impossible, since such abstract terms had little or no existence in his mind. And again to name it after an animal was the most obvious thing to do, simply because the animals were by far the most important features or accompaniments of his own life.
As I am dealing in this book largely with certain psychological conditions of human evolution, it has to be pointed out that to primitive man the animal was the nearest and most closely related of all objects. Being of the same order of consciousness as himself, the animal appealed to him very closely as his mate and equal. He made with regard to it little or no distinction from himself. We see this very clearly in the case of children, who of course represent the savage mind, and who regard animals simply as their mates and equals, and come quickly into rapport with them, not differentiating themselves from them.
Any unusual incident might superstitiously precipitate a name. We can hardly imagine the Tribe scratching its congregated head in the deliberate effort to think out a suitable emblem for itself.
That is not the way in which nicknames are invented in a school or anywhere else to-day. At the same time the heraldic appeal of a certain object of nature, animate or inanimate, would be deeply and widely felt.
The strength of the lion, the fleetness of the deer, the food-value of a bear, the flight of a bird, the awful jaws of a crocodile, might easily mesmerize a whole tribe. Reinach points out, with great justice, that many tribes placed themselves under the protection of animals which were supposed rightly or wrongly to act as guides and augurs, foretelling the future. At one time the Samoan warriors went so far as to rear owls for their prophetic qualities in war.
The jackal, or 'pathfinder'—whose tracks sometimes lead to the remains of a food-animal slain by a lion, and many birds and insects, have a value of this kind.
Men must soon have realized that the senses of animals were acuter than their own; nor is it surprising that they should have expected their totems—that is to say, their natural allies—to forewarn them both of unsuspected dangers and of those provisions of nature, WELLS especially, which animals seem to scent by instinct. Hudson—himself in many respects having this deep and primitive relation to nature—speaks in a very interesting and autobiographical volume 2 of the extraordinary fascination exercised upon him as a boy, not only by a snake, but by certain trees, and especially by a particular flowering-plant "not more than a foot in height, with downy soft pale green leaves, and clusters of reddish blossoms, something like valerian.
In various ways of this kind one can perceive how particular totems came to be selected by particular peoples. The animal or other object admired on account of its strength or swiftness, or adopted as guardian of the tribe because of its keen sight or prophetic quality, or infinitely prized on account of its food-value, or felt for any other reason to have a peculiar relation and affinity to the tribe, is by that fact SET APART.
It becomes taboo. It must not be killed—except under necessity and by sanction of the whole tribe—nor injured; and all dealings with it must be fenced round with regulations.
It is out of this taboo or system of taboos that, according to Reinach, religion arose. In Man, the positive content of religion is the instinctive sense—whether conscious or subconscious—of an inner unity and continuity with the world around. This is the stuff out of which religion is made. The scruples or taboos which "impede the freedom" of this relation are the negative forces which give outline and form to the relation. The tendency to divinize the totem is at least as much dependent on the positive sense of unity with it, as on the negative scruples which limit the relation in each particular case.
But I shall return to this subject presently, and more than once, with the view of clarifying it. Just now it will be best to illustrate the nature of Totems generally, and in some detail.
As would be gathered from what I have just said, there is found among all the more primitive peoples, and in all parts of the world, an immense variety of totem-names. The Dinkas, for instance, are a rather intelligent well-grown people inhabiting the upper reaches of the Nile in the vicinity of the great swamps.
According to Dr. Seligman their clans have for totems the lion, the elephant, the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the fox, and the hyena, as well as certain birds which infest and damage the corn, some plants and trees, and such things as rain, fire, etc.
The tribes of Australia much the same again, with the differences suitable to their country; and the Red Indians of North America the same. Garcilasso, della Vega, the Spanish historian, son of an Inca princess by one of the Spanish conquerors of Peru and author of the well-known book Commentarias Reales, says in that book i, 57 , speaking of the pre-Inca period, "An Indian of Peru was not considered honorable unless he was descended from a fountain, river or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild animal, as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur condor , or some other bird of prey.
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