The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860. Various
As such they appear in the Eleusinia; and in all mythology they furnish the only possible key for the interpretation of its mystic symbolism, its hieroglyphic records, and its ill-defined traditions.
Accordingly we find that all mythology naturally and inevitably flows about these centres into two distinct developments, which are indicated,—
1. In Nature; inasmuch as they are first made manifest through symbols which point to the two great forces, the active and the passive, which are concerned in all natural processes (sol et terra subjacens soli); and,
2. In the primitive belief among all nations, that men are the offspring of the earth and the heavens,—and in the worship equally prevalent of the sun, the personal Presence of the heavens, as Saviour Lord, and of the earth as sorrowing Lady and Mother.
Why the earth, in this primitive symbolism and worship, was represented as the Sorrowing One, and the sun as Saviour, is evident at a glance. It was the bosom of the earth which was shaken with storm and rent with earthquake. She was the Mother, and hers was the travail of all birth; in sorrow she forever gathered to herself her Fate-conquered children; her sorrowful countenance she veiled in thick mists, and, year after year, shrouded herself in wintry desolation: while he was the Eternal Father, the Revealer of all things, he drove away the darkness, and in his presence the mist became an invisible exhalation; and, as out of darkness and death, he called into birth the flowers and the numberless forests,—even as he himself was every morning born anew out of darkness,—so he called the children of the earth to a glorious rising in his light. Everything of the earth was inert, weighing heavily upon the sense and the heart, only waiting its transfiguration and exaltation through his power, until it should rise into the heavens; which was the type of his translation to himself of his grief-oppressed children.
Under these symbols our Lord and Lady have been worshipped by an overwhelming majority of the human race. They swayed the ancient world, from the Indians by the Ganges, and the Tartar tribes, to the Britons and Laplanders of Northwestern Europe,—having their representatives in every system of faith,—in the Hindu Isi and Isana, the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Assyrian Venus and Adonis, the Demeter and Dionysus of Greece, the Roman Ceres and Bacchus, and the Disa and Frey of Scandinavia,—in connection with most, if not all, of whom there existed festivals corresponding, in respect of their meaning and use, with the Grecian Eleusinia.
Moreover, the various divinities of any one mythology—for example, the Greek—were at first only representatives of partial attributes or incidental functions of these Two Presences. Thus, Jove was the power of the heavens, which, of course, centred in the sun; Apollo is admitted to have been only another name for the sun; Æsculapius represents his healing virtues; Hercules his saving strength; and Prometheus, who gave fire to men, as Vulcan, the god of fire, was probably connected with Eastern fire-worship, and so in the end with the worship of the sun. Some of the goddesses come under the same category,—such as Juno, sister and wife of Jove, who shared with him his aerial dynasty; as also Diana, who was only the reflection of Apollo,4 as the moon of the sun, carrying his power on into the night, and exercising among women the functions which he exercised among men. The representatives of our Lady, on the other hand, are such as the ancient Rhea,—Latona, with her dark and starry veil,—Tethys, the world-nurse,—and the Artemis of the East, or Syrian Mother; to say nothing of Oreads, Dryads, and Nereids, that without number peopled the mountains, the forests, and the sea.
The confusion of ancient mythology did not so much regard its subjective elements as its external development, and even here is easily accounted for by the mingling of tribes and nations, hitherto isolated in their growth,—but who, as they came together, in their mutual recognition of a common faith under different names and rites, must inevitably have introduced disorder into the external symbolism. But even out of this confusion we shall find the whole Pantheon organized about two central shrines,—those of the Mater Dolorosa and the Dominus Salvator,—which are represented also in Christendom, though detached from natural symbols, in the connection of Christianity with the worship of the Virgin.
The Eleusinia, collecting together, as it did, all the prominent elements of mythology, furnishes, in its dramatic evolution through Demeter and Dionysus, the highest and most complete representation of ancient faith in both of its developments. In a former paper, we have endeavored to give this drama its deepest interpretation by pointing to the human heart as the central source of all its movements. We shall now ask our readers to follow us out into these movements themselves,—that, as before we saw how the world is centred in each human soul, we may now see how each soul develops itself in the world; for thither it is that the ever-widening cycles of the Eleusinian epos will inevitably lead us.
And first as an epos of sorrow: though centring in the earthly Demeter, yet its movement does not limit itself by the remembrance of her nine days' search; but, in the torch-light procession of the fifth night, widens indefinitely and mysteriously in the darkness, until it has inclosed all hearts within the circuit of its tumultuous flight. Thus, by some secret sympathy with her movements, are gathered together about the central Achtheia all the Matres Dolorosoe,—our Ladies of Sorrow;—for, like her, they were all wanderers.
They were so by necessity. All unrest involves loss, and thus leads to search. It matters not if the search be unsuccessful; though the gadfly sting as sharply the next moment as it did the last, still so must continue her wanderings. Therefore that Jew, whose mythic fate it is to wait forever upon the earth, the victim of an everlasting sorrow, is also an everlasting wanderer. All suffering necessitates movement,—and when the suffering is intense, the movement passes over into flight.
Therefore it is that the epos of suffering requires not merely time for its accomplishment, but also space. Ulysses, the "much-suffering," is also the "much-wandering."
Thus our Lady in the Eleusinian procession of search represents the restless search of all her children.
Migrations and colonizations, ancient or modern,—what were they but flights from some phase of suffering,—name it as we may,—poverty, oppression, or slavery? It was the same suffering Io who brought civilization to the banks of the Nile.
Thus, from the very beginnings of history or human tradition, out of the severities of Scythian deserts there has been an endless series of flights,—nomadic invasions of tribes impelled by no merely barbarian impulse, but by some deep sense of suffering, flying from their Northern wastes to the happy gardens of the South. In no other way can you account for these movements. If you attribute them to ferocity, what was it that engendered and nourished that? Call them the results of a Divine Providence, seeking by a fresher current of life to revive systems of civilization which through long ages of luxury have come to frailty,—still it was through this severity of discipline alone that Providence accomplished its end. Besides, these nomads were fully conscious of their bitter lot; and those who fled not in space fled at least in their dreams,—waiting for death at last to introduce them to inexhaustible hunting-grounds in their happy Elysium.
The very mention of Rome suggests the same continually repeated series of antecedent tragedy and consequent wandering,—pointing backward to the fabled siege of Troy and the flight of Aeneas,—"profugus" from Asia to Italy,—and forward to the quick-coming footsteps of the Northern profugi, who were eager, even this side the grave, to enter the Valhalla of their dreams.
It is said that the Phoenician cities sent out colonies from a desire of gain, and because they were crowded at home. It is said, too, that, in search of gold, thousands upon thousands went to El Dorado, to California, and Australia; but who does not know that the greater part of these thousands left their homes for reasons which, if fully exposed, would reveal a tragedy in view of which gold appears a glittering mockery?
The great movement of the race westward is but an extension of this epic flight. Thus, the Pilgrim Fathers of New England,—the grandest profugi of all time,—or even the bold adventurers of Spain, would have been moved only by intense suffering, in some form, to exchange their homes for a wilderness.
The world is full of these wanderings, under various pretences of gain, adventure, or curiosity, hiding the real impulse of flight. So with the
This connection of Diana with Apollo has led some to the hasty inference, that the sun and moon—not the sun and earth—were the primitive centres of mythological symbolism. But it is plain that the sun and moon, as _active _forces referable to a single centre, stood over against the earth as