Demonology and Devil-lore Part 31

Whether this spirited description was written by Caedmon, and whether it is of his century, are questions unimportant to the present inquiry. The poem represents a mediaeval notion which long prevailed, and which characterised the Mysteries, that Satan and his comrades were humiliated from the highest angelic rank to a h.e.l.l already prepared and peopled with devils, and were there, and by those devils, severely punished. One of the illuminations of the Caedmon ma.n.u.script, preserved in the Bodleian Library, shows Satan undergoing his torment (Fig. 3). He is bound over something like a gridiron, and four devils are torturing him, the largest using a scourge with six p.r.o.ngs. His face manifests great suffering. His form is mainly human, but his bushy tail and animal feet indicate that he has been transformed to a devil similar to those who chastise him.

On Caedmon's foundation Milton built his gorgeous edifice. His Satan is an ambitious and very English lord, in whom are reflected the whole aristocracy of England in their hatred and contempt of the holy Puritan Commonwealth, the Church of Christ as he deemed it. The ages had brought round a similar situation to that which confronted the Jews at Babylon, the early Christians of Rome, and their missionaries among the proud pagan princes of the north. The Church had long allied itself with the earlier Lucifers of the north, and now represented the proud empire of a satanic aristocracy, and the persecuted Nonconformists represented the authority of the King of kings. In the English palace, and in the throne of Canterbury, Milton saw his Beelzebub and his Satan.

Th' infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile, Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from heav'n, with all his host Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers He trusted to have equall'd the Most High, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of G.o.d Raised impious war in heav'n, and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the almighty Power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. [61]

This adaptation of the imagery of Isaiah concerning Lucifer has in it all the thunder hurled by Cromwell against Charles. Even a Puritan poet might not altogether repress admiration for the dash and daring of a Prince Rupert, to which indeed even his prosaic co-religionists paid the compliment of ascribing to it a diabolical source. [62] Not amid conflicts that raged in ancient Syria broke forth such lines as--

Better to reign in h.e.l.l, than serve in heav'n.

With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regain'd in heav'n, or what more lost in h.e.l.l.

The Bel whom Milton saw was Cromwell, and the Dragon that serpent of English oppression which the Dictator is trampling on in a well-known engraving of his time. In the history of the Reformation the old legend did manifold duty again, as in the picture (Fig. 13) by Luther's friend Lucas Cranach.

It would seem that in the course of time Bel and the Dragon became sufficiently close allies for their worshippers to feed and defend them both with equal devotion, and for Daniel to explode them both in carrying on the fight of his deity against the G.o.ds of Babylon. This story of Bel is apocryphal as to the canon, but highly significant as to the history we are now considering. Although the Jews maintained their struggle against 'princ.i.p.alities and powers' long after it had been a forlorn hope, and never surrendered, nor made alliance with the Dragon, the same cannot be said of those who appropriated their t.i.tle of 'the chosen of G.o.d,' counterfeited their covenant, and travestied their traditions. The alliance of Christianity and the Dragon has not been nominal, but fearfully real. In fulfilling their mission of 'inheriting the earth,' the 'meek' called around them and pressed into their service agents and weapons more diabolical than any with which the Oriental imagination had peopled the abode of devils in the north.

At a Fair in Tours (August 1878) I saw two exhibitions which were impressive enough in the light they cast through history. One was a shrunken and sufficiently grotesque production by puppets of the Mediaeval 'Mystery' of h.e.l.l. Nearly every old scheme and vision of the underworld was represented in the scene. The three Judges sat to hear each case. A devil rang a bell whenever any culprit appeared at the gate. The accused was ushered in by a winged devil--Satan, the Accuser--who, by the show-woman's lips, stated the charges against each with an eager desire to make him or her out as wicked as possible. A devil with pitchfork received the sentenced, and shoved them down into a furnace. There was an array of brilliant dragons around, but they appeared to have nothing to do beyond enjoying the spectacle. But this exhibition which was styled 'Twenty minutes in h.e.l.l,' was poor and faint beside the neighbouring exhibition of the real h.e.l.l, in which Europe had been tortured for fifteen centuries. Some industrious Germans had got together in one large room several hundreds of the instruments of torture by which the nations of the West were persuaded to embrace Christianity. Every limb, sinew, feature, bone, and nerve of the human frame had suggested to christian inventiveness some ingenious device by which it might be tortured. Wheels on which to break bones, chairs of anguish, thumbscrews, the iron Virgin whose embrace pierced through every vital part; the hunger-mask which renewed for Christ's sake the exact torment of Tantalus; even the machine which bore the very name of the enemy that was cast down--the Dragon's Head! By such instrumentalities came those quasi-miraculous 'Triumphs of the Cross,'

of which so much has been said and sung! The most salient phenomenon of christian history is the steady triumph of the Dragon. Misleader and Deceiver to the last, he is quite willing to sprinkle his fork and rack with holy water, to cross himself, to label his caldrons 'divine justice,' to write CHRIST upon his forehead; by so doing he was able to spring his infernal engine on the best nations, and cow the strongest hearts, till from their pallid lips were wrung the 'confessions of faith,' or the last cry of martyred truth. So was he able to a.s.sault the pure heavens once more, to quench the stars of human faith and hope, and generate a race of polite, learned, and civilised hypocrites. But the ancient sunbeams are after him: the mandate has again gone forth, 'Let there be light,' and the Light that now breaks forth is not of that kind which respects the limit of Darkness.

CHAPTER XII.

STRIFE.

Hebrew G.o.d of War--Samael--The father's blessing and curse--Esau --Edom--Jacob and the Phantom--The planet Mars--Tradesman and Huntsman--'The Devil's Dream.'

Who is this that cometh from Edom, In dyed garments from Bozrah?

This that is glorious in his apparel, Travelling in the greatness of his strength?

I who promise deliverance, mighty to save.

Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, And thy garments like him that treadeth the wine-vat?

I have trodden the wine-press alone; And of the peoples there was none with me: And I will tread them in mine anger, And trample them in my fury; And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, And I will stain all my raiment.

For the day of vengeance is in my heart, And the year of mine avenged is come.

And I looked, and there was none to help; And I wondered that there was none to uphold; Therefore mine own arm gained me the victory, And mine own fury, it upheld me.

And I will tread down the peoples in mine anger, And make them drunk in my wrath, And will bring down their strength to the earth. [63]

This is the picture of the G.o.d of War. Upon it the comment in Emek Hammelech is: 'The colour of the G.o.dless Samael and of all his princes and lords has the aspect of red fire; and all their emanations are red. Samael is red, also his horse, his sword, his raiment, and the ground beneath him, are red. In the future the Holy G.o.d shall wear his raiment.' [64] Samael is leader of the Opposition. He is the Soul of the fiery planet Mars. He is the Creator and inspirer of all Serpents. Azazel, demon of the Desert, is his First Lord. He was the terrestrial Chief around whom the fallen angels gathered, and his great power was acknowledged. All these characters the ancient Rabbins found blended in his name. Simme (dazzling), Some (blinding), Semol (the left side), and Samhammaveth (deadly poison), were combined in the terrible name of Samael. He ruled over the sinister Left. When Moses, in war with the Amalekites, raised his ten fingers, it was a special invocation to the Ten Sephiroth, Divine Emanations, because he knew the power which the Amalekites got from Samael might turn his own left hand against Israel. [65] The scapegoat was a sacrifice to him through Azazel.

Samael is the mythologic expression and embodiment of the history of Esau, afterward Edom. Jacob and Esau represented the sheep and the goat, divided in the past and to be sundered for ever. As Jacob by covering his flesh with goat-skins obtained his father's blessing due to Esau, the Israelites wandering through the wilderness (near Edom's forbidden domain) seemed to have faith that the offering of a goat would convince his Viceroy Azazel that they were orthodox Edomites. The redness of Samael begins with the red pottage from which Esau was called Edom. The English version does not give the emphasis with which Esau is said to have called for the pottage--"the red! the red!" The characteristics ascribed to Esau in the legend are merely a saga built on the local names with which he was a.s.sociated. 'Edom' means red, and 'Seir' means hairy. It probably meant the 's.h.a.ggy Mountains.' [66]

It is interesting to observe the parting of the human and the theological myths in this story. Jacob is the third person of a patriarchal trinity,--Abraham the Heavenly Father, Isaac the Laugher (the Sun), and Jacob the Impostor or Supplanter. As the moon supplants the sun, takes hold of his heel, shines with his light, so does Jacob supplant his elder brother; and all the deadliness ascribed to the Moon, and other Third Persons of Trinities, was inherited by Jacob until his name was changed by euphemism. As the impartial sun shines for good and evil, the smile of Isaac, the Laugher, promised great blessings to both of his sons. The human myth therefore represents both of them gaining great power and wealth, and after a long feud they are reconciled. This feature of the legend we shall consider hereafter. Jehovah has another interest to be secured. He had declared that one should serve the other; that they should be cursed who cursed Jacob; and he said, 'Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.' Jahvistic theology had here something more important than two brothers to harmonise; namely a patriarch's blessing and a G.o.d's curse. It was contrary to all orthodoxy that a man whom Jehovah hated should possess the blessings of life; it was equally unorthodox that a father's blessing should not carry with it every advantage promised. It had to be recorded that Esau became powerful, lived by his sword, and had great possessions.

It had also to be recorded that 'Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah and made a king unto themselves,' and that such independence continued 'unto this day' (2 Kings viii. 20, 22). There was thus no room for the exhibition of Jacob's superiority,--that is of Israel's priority over Edom,--in this world; nor yet any room to carry out Isaac's curse on all who cursed Jacob, and the saying: 'Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness' (Mal. i.).

Answers to such problems as these evolve themselves slowly but inevitably. The agonised cry of the poor girl in Browning's poem--'There may be heaven, there must be h.e.l.l'--marks the direction in which necessity led human speculation many ages before her. A future had to be invented for the working out of the curse on Esau, who on earth had to fulfil his father's blessing by enjoying power, wealth, and independence of his brother. In that future his greatness while living was repaid by his relegation to the desert and the rock with the he-goat for his support. Esau was believed to have been changed into a terrible hairy devil. [67] But still there followed him in his phantasmal transformation a ghostly environment of his former power and greatness; the boldest and holiest could not afford to despise or set aside that 'share' which had been allotted him in the legend, and could not be wholly set aside in the invisible world.

Jacob's share began with a shrewd bargain with his imprudent brother. Jacob by his cunning in the breeding of the streaked animals (Gen. x.x.x.), by which he outwitted Laban, and other manoeuvres, was really the cause of bringing on the race called after him that repute for extortion, affixed to them in such figures as Shylock, which they have found it so hard to live down. In becoming the great barterers of the East, their obstacle was the plunderer sallying forth from the mountain fastnesses or careering over the desert. These were the traditional descendants of Esau, who gradually included the Ishmaelites as well as the Edomites, afterwards merged in the Idumeans. But as the tribal distinctions became lost, the ancient hostility survived in the abstract form of this satan of Strife--Samael. He came to mean the spirit that stirs up antagonism between those who should be brethren. He finally became, and among the more superst.i.tious Jews still is, instigator of the cruel persecutions which have so long pursued their race, and the prejudices against them which survive even in countries to whose wealth, learning, and arts they have largely contributed. In Jewish countries Edom has long been a name for the power of Rome and Romanism, somewhat in the same way as the same are called 'Babylon' by some christians. Jacob, when pa.s.sing into the wilderness of Edom, wrestled with the invisible power of Esau, or Samael, and had not been able to prevail except with a lame thigh,--a part which, in every animal, Israel thereafter held sacred to the Opposing Power and abstained from eating. A rabbinical legend represents Jacob as having been bitten by a serpent while he was lingering about the boundary of Edom, and before his gift of goats and other cattle had been offered to his brother. The fiery serpents which afflicted Israel were universally attributed to Samael, and the raising of the Brazen Serpent for the homage of the people was an instance of the uniform deference to Esau's power in his own domain which was long inculcated.

As I write, fiery Mars, near enough for the astronomer to detect its moons, is a wondrous phenomenon in the sky. Beneath it fearful famine is desolating three vast countries, war is raging between two powerful nations, and civil strife is smiting another ere it has fairly recovered from the wounds of a foreign struggle. The dismal conditions seem to have so little root in political necessity that one might almost be pardoned even now for dreaming that some subtle influence has come among men from the red planet that has approached the earth. How easy then must it have been in a similar conjunction of earthly and celestial phenomena to have imagined Samael, the planetary Spectre, to be at work with his fatal fires! Whatever may have been the occasion, the red light of Mars at an early period fixed upon that planet the odium of all the burning, blighting, desert-producing powers of which it was thought necessary to relieve the adorable Sun. It was believed that all 'born under' that planet were quarrelsome. And it was part of the popular Jewish belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil that under Mars the Messias was to be born.

We may regard Esau-Samael then as the Devil of Strife. His traditional son Cain was like himself a 'murderer from the beginning;' [68] but in that early period the conflict was between the nomad and the huntsman on one side, on the other the agriculturist and the cattle-breeder, who was never regarded as a n.o.ble figure among the Semitic tribes. In the course of time some Semitic tribes became agriculturists, and among them, in defiance of his archaeological character, Samael was saddled with the evils that beset them. As an ox he brought rinderpest. But his visible appearance was still more generally that of the raven, the wild a.s.s, the hog which brought scurvy; while in shape of a dog he was so generally believed to bring deadly disease, that it would seem as if 'hydrophobia' was specially attributed to him.

In process of time benignant Peace dwelt more and more with the agriculturists, but still among the Israelites the tradesman was the 'coming man,' and to him peace was essential. The huntsman, of the Esau clan, figures in many legends, of which the following is translated from the Arabic by Lane:--There was a huntsman who from a mountain cave brought some honey in his water-skin, which he offered to an oilman; when the oilman opened the skin a drop of honey fell which a bird ate; the oilman's cat sprang on the bird and killed it; the huntsman's hound killed the cat; the oilman killed the dog; the huntsman killed the oilman; and as the two men belonged to different villages, their inhabitants rose against each other in battle, 'and there died of them a great mult.i.tude, the number of whom none knoweth but G.o.d, whose name be exalted!' [69]

Esau's character as a wild huntsman is referred to in another chapter. It is as the genius of strife and nomadic war that he more directly stands in contrast with his 'supplanter.'

From the wild elemental demons of storm and tempest of the most primitive age to this Devil of Strife, the human mind has a.s.sociated evil with unrest. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.' Such is the burthen of the j.a.panese Oni throned in the heart of the hurricane, of the wild huntsman issuing forth at the first note of war, of Edom hating the victories of peace, living by the sword. The prophecy that the Prince of Peace should be born under the planet Mars is a strange and mystical suggestion. In a powerful poem by Thomas Aird, 'The Devil's Dream,' the last fearful doom of Satan's vision is imprisonment beneath a lake for ever still,--the Spirit of Unrest condemned for ever to the realm of absolute stillness!

There all is solemn idleness: no music here, no jars, Where Silence guards the coast, e'er thrill her everlasting bars.

No sun here shines on wanton isles; but o'er the burning sheet A rim of restless halo shakes, which marks the internal heat; As, in the days of beauteous earth, we see with dazzled sight The red and setting sun o'erflow with rings of welling light.

Oh! here in dread abeyance lurks of uncreated things The last Lake of G.o.d's Wrath, where He His first great Enemy brings.

Deep in the bosom of the gulf the Fiend was made to stay, Till, as it seemed, ten thousand years had o'er him rolled away; In dreams he had extended life to bear the fiery s.p.a.ce; But all was pa.s.sive, dull, and stern within his dwelling-place.

Oh! for a blast of tenfold ire to rouse the giant surge, Him from that flat fixed lethargy impetuously to urge!

Let him but rise, but ride upon the tempest-crested wave Of fire enridged tumultuously, each angry thing he'd brave!

The strokes of Wrath, thick let them fall! a speed so glorious dread Would bear him through, the clinging pains would strip from off his head.

The vision of this Last Stern Lake, oh! how it plagued his soul, Type of that dull eternity that on him soon must roll, When plans and issues all must cease that earlier care beguiled, And never era more shall stand a landmark on the wild: Nor failure nor success is there, nor busy hope nor fame, But pa.s.sive fixed endurance, all eternal and the same.

CHAPTER XIII.

BARBARIC ARISTOCRACY.

Jacob, the 'Impostor'--The Barterer--Esau, the 'Warrior'--Barbarian Dukes--Trade and War--Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau--Their Ghosts--Legend of Iblis--Pagan Warriors of Europe--Russian Hierarchy of h.e.l.l.

In the preceding chapter it was noted that there were two myths wrapped up in the story of Jacob and Esau,--the one theological, the other human. The former was there treated, the latter may be considered here. Rabbinical theology has made the Jewish race adopt as their founder that tricky patriarch whom Shylock adopted as his model; but any censure on them for that comes with little grace from christians who believe that they are still enjoying a covenant which Jacob's extortions and treacheries were the divinely-adopted means of confirming. It is high time that the Jewish people should repudiate Jacob's proceedings, and if they do not give him his first name ('Impostor') back again, at least withdraw from him the name Israel. But it is still more important for mankind to study the phases of their civilisation, and not attribute to any particular race the spirit of a legend which represents an epoch of social development throughout the world.

When Rebekah asked Jehovah why her unborn babes struggled in her womb, he answered, 'Two nations are in thy womb. One people shall be stronger than the other people; the elder shall be subject to the younger.' What peoples these were is described in the blessings of Jacob on the two representatives when they had grown up to be, the one red and hairy, a huntsman; the other a quiet man, dwelling in tents and builder of cattle-booths.