Pagan and Christian creeds Part 11

There are two elements to be remembered here, as conspiring to this conclusion. One is the condition of affairs in a remote matriarchial period, when descent was reckoned always through the maternal line, and the fatherhood in each generation was obscure or unknown or commonly left out of account; and the other is the fact--so strange and difficult for us to realize--that among some very primitive peoples, like the Australian aborigines, the necessity for a woman to have intercourse with a male, in order to bring about conception and child-birth, was actually not recognized. Scientific observation had not always got as far as that, and the matter was still under the domain of Magic! (1) A Virgin-Mother was therefore a quite imaginable (not to say 'conceivable') thing; and indeed a very beautiful and fascinating thing, combining in one image the potent magic of two very wonderful words.

It does not seem impossible that considerations of this kind led to the adoption of the doctrine or legend of the virgin-mother and the heavenly father among so many races and in so many localities--even without any contagion of tradition among them.

(1) Probably the long period (nine months) elapsing between cohabitation and childbirth confused early speculation on the subject.

Then clearly cohabitation was NOT always followed by childbirth. And, more important still, the number of virgins of a mature age in primitive societies was so very minute that the fact of their childlessness attracted no attention--whereas in OUR societies the sterility of the whole cla.s.s is patent to everyone.

Anyhow, and as a matter of fact, the world-wide dissemination of the legend is most remarkable. Zeus, Father of the G.o.ds, visited Semele, it will be remembered, in the form of a thunderstorm; and she gave birth to the great saviour and deliverer Dionysus. Zeus, again, impregnated Danae in a shower of gold; and the child was Perseus, who slew the Gorgons (the powers of darkness) and saved Andromeda (the human soul (1)).

Devaki, the radiant Virgin of the Hindu mythology, became the wife of the G.o.d Vishnu and bore Krishna, the beloved hero and prototype of Christ. With regard to Buddha St. Jerome says (2) "It is handed down among the Gymnosophists, of India that Buddha, the founder of their system, was brought forth by a Virgin from her side." The Egyptian Isis, with the child Horus, on her knee, was honored centuries before the Christian era, and worshiped under the names of "Our Lady," "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mother of G.o.d," and so forth. Before her, Neith, the Virgin of the World, whose figure bends from the sky over the earthly plains and the children of men, was acclaimed as mother of the great G.o.d Osiris. The saviour Mithra, too, was born of a Virgin, as we have had occasion to notice before; and on the Mithrais monuments the mother suckling her child is a not uncommon figure. (3)

(1) For this interpretation of the word Andromeda see The Perfect Way by Edward Maitland, preface to First Edition, 1881.

(2) Contra Jovian, Book I; and quoted by Rhys Davids in his Buddhisim.

(3) See Doane's Bible Myths, p. 332, and Dupuis' Origins of Religious Beliefs.

The old Teutonic G.o.ddess Hertha (the Earth) was a Virgin, but was impregnated by the heavenly Spirit (the Sky); and her image with a child in her arms was to be seen in the sacred groves of Germany. (1) The Scandinavian Frigga, in much the same way, being caught in the embraces of Odin, the All-father, conceived and bore a son, the blessed Balder, healer and saviour of mankind. Quetzalcoatl, the (crucified) saviour of the Aztecs, was the son of Chimalman, the Virgin Queen of Heaven. (2) Even the Chinese had a mother-G.o.ddess and virgin with child in her arms (3); and the ancient Etruscans the same. (4)

(1) R. P. Knight's Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 21.

(2) See Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 176, where it is said "an amba.s.sador was sent from heaven on an emba.s.sy to a Virgin of Tulan, called Chimalman... announcing that it was the will of the G.o.d that she should conceive a son; and having delivered her the message he rose and left the house; and as soon as he had left it she conceived a son, without connection with man, who was called Quetzalcoat, who they say is the G.o.d of air." Further, it is explained that Quetzalcoatl sacrificed himself, drawing forth his own blood with thorns; and that the word Quetzalcoatlotopitzin means "our well-beloved son."

(3) Doane, p. 327.

(4) See Inman's Pagan and Christian Symbolism, p. 27.

Finally, we have the curiously large number of BLACK virgin mothers who are or have been worshiped. Not only cases like Devaki the Indian G.o.ddess, or Isis the Egyptian, who would naturally appear black-skinned or dark; but the large number of images and paintings of the same kind, yet extant--especially in the Italian churches--and pa.s.sing for representations of Mary and the infant Jesus. Such are the well-known image in the chapel at Loretto, and images and paintings besides in the churches at Genoa, Pisa, Padua, Munich and other places. It is difficult not to regard these as very old Pagan or pre-Christian relics which lingered on into Christian times and were baptized anew--as indeed we know many relics and images actually were--into the service of the Church. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and there is I believe more than one black figure extant of this Diana, who, though of course a virgin, is represented with innumerable b.r.e.a.s.t.s (1)--not unlike some of the archaic statues of Artemis and Isis. At Paris, far on into Christian times there was, it is said, on the site of the present Cathedral of Notre Dame, a Temple dedicated to 'our Lady' Isis; and images belonging to the earlier shrine would in all probability be preserved with altered name in the later.

(1) See ill.u.s.tration, p. 30, in Inman's Pagan and Christian Symbolism.

All this ill.u.s.trates not only the wide diffusion of the doctrine of the Virgin-mother, but its extreme antiquity. The subject is obscure, and worthy of more consideration than has yet been accorded it; and I do not feel able to add anything to the tentative explanations given a page or two back, except perhaps to suppose that the vision of the Perfect Man hovered dimly over the mind of the human race on its first emergence from the purely animal stage; and that a quite natural speculation with regard to such a being was that he would be born from a Perfect Woman--who according to early ideas would necessarily be the Virgin Earth itself, mother of all things. Anyhow it was a wonderful Intuition, slumbering as it would seem in the breast of early man, that the Great Earth after giving birth to all living creatures would at last bring forth a Child who should become the Saviour of the human race.

There is of course the further theory, entertained by some, that virgin-parturition--a kind of Parthenogenesis--has as a matter of fact occasionally occurred among mortal women, and even still does occur. I should be the last to deny the POSSIBILITY of this (or of anything else in Nature), but, seeing the immense difficulties in the way of PROOF of any such a.s.serted case, and the absence so far of any thoroughly attested and verified instance, it would, I think, be advisable to leave this theory out of account at present.

But whether any of the EXPLANATIONS spoken of are right or wrong, and whatever explanation we adopt, there remains the FACT of the universality over the world of this legend--affording another instance of the practical solidarity and continuity of the Pagan Creeds with Christianity.

XI. RITUAL DANCING

It is unnecessary to labor the conclusion of the last two or three chapters, namely that Christianity grew out of the former Pagan Creeds and is in its general outlook and origins continuous and of one piece with them. I have not attempted to bring together ALL the evidence in favor of this contention, as such work would be too vast, but more ill.u.s.trations of its truth will doubtless occur to readers, or will emerge as we proceed.

I think we may take it as proved (1) that from the earliest ages, and before History, a great body of religious belief and ritual--first appearing among very primitive and unformed folk, whom we should call 'savages'--has come slowly down, broadening and differentiating itself on the way into a great variety of forms, but embodying always certain main ideas which became in time the accepted doctrines of the later Churches--the Indian, the Egyptian, the Mithraic, the Christian, and so forth. What these ideas in their general outline have been we can perhaps best judge from our "Apostles' Creed," as it is recited every Sunday in our churches.

"I believe in G.o.d the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into h.e.l.l; the third day he rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of G.o.d the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."

Here we have the All-Father and Creator, descending from the Sky in the form of a spirit to impregnate the earthly Virgin-mother, who thus gives birth to a Saviour-hero. The latter is slain by the powers of Evil, is buried and descends into the lower world, but arises again as G.o.d into heaven and becomes the leader and judge of mankind. We have the confirmation of the Church (or, in earlier times, of the Tribe) by means of a Eucharist or Communion which binds together all the members, living or dead, and restores errant individuals through the Sacrifice of the hero and the Forgiveness of their sins; and we have the belief in a bodily Resurrection and continued life of the members within the fold of the Church (or Tribe), itself regarded as eternal.

One has only, instead of the word 'Jesus,' to read Dionysus or Krishna or Hercules or Osiris or Attis, and instead of 'Mary' to insert Semele or Devaki or Alcmene or Neith or Nana, and for Pontius Pilate to use the name of any terrestrial tyrant who comes into the corresponding story, and lo! the creed fits in all particulars into the rites and worship of a pagan G.o.d. I need not enlarge upon a thesis which is self-evident from all that has gone before. I do not say, of course, that ALL the religious beliefs of Paganism are included and summarized in our Apostles' Creed, for--as I shall have occasion to note in the next chapter--I think some very important religious elements are there OMITTED; but I do think that all the beliefs which ARE summarized in the said creed had already been fully represented and elaborately expressed in the non-Christian religions and rituals of Paganism.

Further (2) I think we may safely say that there is no certain proof that the body of beliefs just mentioned sprang from any one particular centre far back and radiated thence by dissemination and mental contagion over the rest of the world; but the evidence rather shows that these beliefs were, for the most part, the SPONTANEOUS outgrowths (in various localities) of the human mind at certain stages of its evolution; that they appeared, in the different races and peoples, at different periods according to the degree of evolution, and were largely independent of intercourse and contagion, though of course, in cases, considerably influenced by it; and that one great and all-important occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the RISE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the Self-centred att.i.tude in human thought and action.

In the third place (3) I think we may see--and this is the special subject of the present chapter--that at a very early period, when humanity was hardly capable of systematic expression in what we call Philosophy or Science, it could not well rise to an ordered and literary expression of its beliefs, such as we find in the later religions and the 'Churches' (Babylonian, Jewish, East Indian, Christian, or what-not), and yet that it FELT these beliefs very intensely and was urged, almost compelled, to their utterance in some form or other. And so it came about that people expressed themselves in a vast ma.s.s of ritual and myth--customs, ceremonies, legends, stories--which on account of their popular and concrete form were handed down for generations, and some of which linger on still in the midst of our modern civilization.

These rituals and legends were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling and childish in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we have seen, were full of meaning and suggestion.

A critical and commercial Civilization, such as ours, in which (notwithstanding much TALK about Art) the artistic sense is greatly lacking, or at any rate but little diffused, does not as a rule understand that poetic RITES, in the evolution of peoples, came naturally before anything like ordered poems or philosophy or systematized VIEWS about life and religion--such as WE love to wallow in! Things were FELT before they were spoken. The loading of diseases into disease-boats, of sins onto scape-goats, the propitiation of the forces of nature by victims, human or animal, sacrifices, ceremonies of re-birth, eucharistic feasts, s.e.xual communions, orgiastic celebrations of the common life, and a host of other things--all SAID plainly enough what was meant, but not in WORDS. Partly no doubt it was that at some early time words were more difficult of command and less flexible in use than actions (and at all times are they not less expressive?). Partly it was that mankind was in the child-stage. The Child delights in ritual, in symbol, in expression through material objects and actions:

See, at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart.

And primitive man in the child-stage felt a positive joy in ritual celebrations, and indulged in expressions which we but little understand; for these had then his heart.

One of the most pregnant of these expressions was DANCING. Children dance instinctively. They dance with rage; they dance with joy, with sheer vitality; they dance with pain, or sometimes with savage glee at the suffering of others; they delight in mimic combats, or in animal plays and disguises. There are such things as Courting-dances, when the mature male and female go through a ritual together--not only in civilized ball-rooms and the back-parlors of inns, but in the farmyards where the rooster pays his addresses to the hen, or the yearling bull to the cow--with quite recognized formalities; there are elaborate ceremonials performed by the Australian bower-birds and many other animals. All these things--at any rate in children and animals--come before speech; and anyhow we may say that LOVE-RITES, even in mature and civilized man, hardly ADMIT of speech. Words only vulgarize love and blunt its edge.

So Dance to the savage and the early man was not merely an amus.e.m.e.nt or a gymnastic exercise (as the books often try to make out), but it was also a serious and intimate part of life, an expression of religion and the relation of man to non-human Powers. Imagine a young dancer--and the admitted age for ritual dancing was commonly from about eighteen to thirty--coming forward on the dancing-ground or platform for the INVOCATION OF RAIN. We have unfortunately no kinematic records, but it is not impossible or very difficult to imagine the various gestures and movements which might be considered appropriate to such a rite in different localities or among different peoples. A modern student of Dalcroze Eurhythmics would find the problem easy. After a time a certain ritual dance (for rain) would become stereotyped and generally adopted.

Or imagine a young Greek leading an invocation to Apollo to STAY SOME PLAGUE which was ravaging the country. He might as well be accompanied by a small body of co-dancers; but he would be the leader and chief representative. Or it might be a WAR-DANCE--as a more or less magical preparation for the raid or foray. We are familiar enough with accounts of war-dances among American Indians. C. O. Muller in his History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (1) gives the following account of the Pyrrhic dance among the Greeks, which was danced in full armor:--"Plato says that it imitated all the att.i.tudes of defence, by avoiding a thrust or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Baccha.n.a.lian revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and boys of fifteen were instructed in it." Of the Hunting-dance I have already given instances. (2) It always had the character of Magic about it, by which the game or quarry might presumably be influenced; and it can easily be understood that if the Hunt was not successful the blame might well be attributed to some neglect of the usual ritual mimes or movements--no laughing matter for the leader of the dance.

(1) Book IV, ch. 6, Section 7.

(2) See also Winwood Reade's Savage Africa, ch. xviii, in which he speaks of the "gorilla dance," before hunting gorillas, as a "religious festival."

Or there were dances belonging to the ceremonies of Initiation--dances both by the initiators and the initiated. Jane E. Harrison in Themis (p.

24) says, "Instruction among savage peoples is always imparted in more or less mimetic dances. At initiation you learn certain dances which confer on you definite social status. When a man is too old to dance, he hands over his dance to another and a younger, and he then among some tribes ceases to exist socially.... The dances taught to boys at initiation are frequently if not always ARMED dances. These are not necessarily warlike. The accoutrement of spear and shield was in part decorative, in part a provision for making the necessary hubbub." (Here Miss Harrison reproduces a photograph of an Initiation dance among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.) The Initiation-dances blend insensibly and naturally with the Mystery and Religion dances, for indeed initiation was for the most part an instruction in the mysteries and social rites of the Tribe. They were the expression of things which would be hard even for us, and which for rude folk would be impossible, to put into definite words. Hence arose the expression--whose meaning has been much discussed by the learned--"to dance out ([gr ezorceisqai]) a mystery." (1) Lucian, in a much-quoted pa.s.sage, (2) observes: "You cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing ...

and this much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of the mysteries that they 'dance them out.'" Andrew Lang, commenting on this pa.s.sage, (3) continues: "Clement of Alexandria uses the same term when speaking of his own 'appalling revelations.' So closely connected are mysteries with dancing among savages that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not initiated, he said: 'Only the initiated men of that dance know these things.' To 'dance' this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action. So widely distributed is the practice that Acosta in an interesting pa.s.sage mentions it as familiar to the people of Peru before and after the Spanish conquest." (And we may say that when the 'mysteries' are of a s.e.xual nature it can easily be understood that to 'dance them out' is the only way of explaining them!)

(1) Meaning apparently either simply to represent, or, sometimes to DIVULGE, a mystery.

(2) [gr peri 'Orchsews], Ch. xv. 277.

(3) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 272.

Thus we begin to appreciate the serious nature and the importance of the dance among primitive folk. To dub a youth "a good dancer" is to pay him a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes what is really meant--namely the fitness of the loved comrade to lead in religious and magical rituals--then indeed the compliment takes on a new complexion. Religious dances, in dedication to a G.o.d, have of course been honored in every country. Muller, in the work just cited, (1) describes a lively dance called the hyporchema which, accompanied by songs, was used in the worship of Apollo. "In this, besides the chorus of singers who usually danced around THE BLAZING ALTAR, several persons were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate pantomimic display." It was probably some similar dance which is recorded in Exodus, ch. x.x.xii, when Aaron made the Israelites a golden Calf (image of the Egyptian Apis). There was an altar and a fire and burnt offerings for sacrifice, and the people dancing around. Whether in the Apollo ritual the dancers were naked I cannot say, but in the affair of the golden Calf they evidently were, for it will be remembered that it was just this which upset Moses' equanimity so badly--"when he SAW THAT THE PEOPLE WERE NAKED"--and led to the breaking of the two tables of stone and the slaughter of some thousands of folk. It will be remembered also that David on a sacrificial occasion danced naked before the Lord. (2)

(1) Book II, ch. viii, Section 14.

(2) 2 Sam. vi.

It may seem strange that dances in honor of a G.o.d should be held naked; but there is abundant evidence that this was frequently the case, and it leads to an interesting speculation. Many of these rituals undoubtedly owed their sanct.i.ty and solemnity to their extreme antiquity. They came down in fact from very far back times when the average man or woman--as in some of the Central African tribes to-day--wore simply nothing at all; and like all religious ceremonies they tended to preserve their forms long after surrounding customs and conditions had altered.

Consequently nakedness lingered on in sacrificial and other rites into periods when in ordinary life it had come to be abandoned or thought indecent and shameful. This comes out very clearly in both instances above--quoted from the Bible. For in Exodus x.x.xii. 25 it is said that "Aaron had made them (the dancers) naked UNTO THEIR SHAME among their enemies (READ opponents)," and in 2 Sam. vi. 20 we are told that Michal came out and sarcastically rebuked the "glorious king of Israel" for "shamelessly uncovering himself, like a vain fellow" (for which rebuke, I am sorry to say, David took a mean revenge on Michal). In both cases evidently custom had so far changed that to a considerable section of the population these naked exhibitions had become indecent, though as parts of an acknowledged ritual they were still retained and supported by others. The same conclusion may be derived from the commands recorded in Exodus xx. 26 and xxviii. 42, that the priests be not "uncovered"

before the altar--commands which would hardly have been needed had not the practice been in vogue.

Then there were dances (partly magical or religious) performed at rustic and agricultural festivals, like the Epilenios, celebrated in Greece at the gathering of the grapes. (1) Of such a dance we get a glimpse in the Bible (Judges xxi. 20) when the elders advised the children of Benjamin to go out and lie in wait in the vineyards, at the time of the yearly feast; and "when the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man a wife from the daughters of Shiloh"--a touching example apparently of early so-called 'marriage by capture'! Or there were dances, also partly or originally religious, of a quite orgiastic and Baccha.n.a.lian character, like the Bryallicha performed in Sparta by men and women in hideous masks, or the Deimalea by Sileni and Satyrs waltzing in a circle; or the Bibasis carried out by both men and women--a quite gymnastic exercise in which the performers took a special pride in striking their own b.u.t.tocks with their heels! or others wilder still, which it would perhaps not be convenient to describe.

(1) [gr Epilhnioi umnoi]: hymns sung over the winepress (Dictionary).