The earth-mother of the Teutons was Frigg, the wife of Odin; but perhaps when Frigg’s natural character was forgotten, Hertha (Earth) became separated into another personage. ‘Odin and Frigg,’ says the Edda, ‘divide the slain;’ and this means that the sky-god received the breath, the earth-goddess the body. But on the whole Frigg plays an insignificant part in our late form of Teuton mythology. Closely related to her, as Persephone is related to Dêmêtêr, with a name formed out of hers, stands Freyja, the goddess of spring and beauty and love; for the Northern goddess of love might better accord with the innocence of spring than could the Phœnician Aphroditê. Freyja has a brother Freyr, who reduplicates her name and character, for he too is a sun-god or a god of spring.
Very beautiful is the myth which reverses the sad story of Persephone (and of Balder), and tells of the barren earth wooed by the returning spring. Freyr one day mounted the seat of Odin which was called air-throne, and whence a god might look over all the ways of earth. And looking out into giant-land far in the north, he saw a light flash forth as the aurora lights up the wintry sky.[86] And looking again, he saw that a maiden wondrously beautiful had just opened her father’s door, and that this was her beauty which shone out over the snow. Then Freyr left the air-throne and determined to send to the fair one and woo her to be his wife. Her name was Gerda.[87] Freyr sent his messenger Skirnir to carry his suit to Gerda; and Skirnir told her how great Freyr was among the gods, how noble and happy a place was Asgard, the home of the gods. For all Skirnir’s pleading Gerda would give no ear to his suit. But Freyr had given his magic sword (the sun’s rays) to Skirnir; and at last the ambassador, tired of pleading, drew that and threatened to take the life of Gerda unless she granted Freyr his wish. So she consented to meet him nine nights hence in the wood of Barri. The nine nights typify, it is thought, the nine winter months of the Northern year; and the name of the wood, Barri, means ‘the green;’ the beginnings of spring in the wood being happily imaged as the meeting of the fresh and the barren earth.
All the elements of nature were personified by the spirit of Aryan poetry, and it would be a hopeless task—wearisome and useless to the reader—to give a mere category of the nature-gods in each system. Those which had most influence upon their religious thought were they who have been mentioned, the gods of the sky and sun and mother-earth. The other elemental divinities were (as a rule) more strictly bound within the circle of their own dominions. It is curious to trace the difference between these strictly polytheistic deities—coequal in their several spheres—and those others who arose in obedience to a wider ideal of a godhead. We have seen that the Indians had a strictly elemental heaven or sky, as well as their god Dyâus, and that they called him Varuna, a word which corresponds etymologically to the Greek Ouranos, the heaven. In the later Indian mythology Varuna came to stand, not for the sky, but for the wide expanse of ocean, and so corresponds to the Greek Poseidon, the Latin Neptune, and the Norse Œgir. All these were the gods of the sea and of all waters. The wind, as we saw, combined in the person of Odin with the character of a highest god; but in the Greek the part was played by an inferior divinity, Hermes. In India there is a wind-god (called Vaja); but the character is likewise divided among a plurality of minor divinities, the Maruts. Of Agni, the god of fire, corresponding to Hephæstus and Vulcan, we have spoken; and in the North Fire is not a god at all, but an evil being called Loki. This is enough to show that the worship of Agni rose into fervour after the separation of the Aryan folk.
We postpone to the next chapter the mention of the gods of the under-world.
The Zend
religion.
The religions of which we have been giving this slight sketch have been what we may call ‘natural’ religions, that is to say, the thoughts about God and the Unseen world which without help of any special vision seem to spring up simultaneously in the minds of the different Aryan peoples. But one among the Aryan religions still in pre-historic times broke off abruptly from its relation with the others, and, under a teacher whom we may fairly call god-taught, in beauty and moral purity passed far beyond the rest.
This was the Zoroastrian, the faith of the Iranian (ancient Persian) branch, or, as it is perhaps better called, the Zend or Mazdean religion; a creed which holds a pre-eminence among all the religions of antiquity, excepting alone that of the Hebrews. And that there is no exaggeration in such a claim is sufficiently witnessed by the inspired writings themselves, in which the Persian kings are frequently spoken of as if they as much as the Hebrews were worshippers of Jehovah. ‘Cyrus the servant of God,’ ‘The Lord said unto my lord (Cyrus),’ are constantly recurring expressions in Isaiah.
In some respects this Zoroastrianism seems to stand in violent opposition to the Aryan religion. Nevertheless, at the back of the religion of the Zend Avesta, which is the sacred book of the Iranian creed, we can (as was before hinted) trace the outline of an earlier natural religion essentially the same—so far as we can judge—with the religion of the Vedas. And upon the whole we should be disposed to say that Zoroastrianism appears to be not much else than a higher development of that earlier system. At any rate, we may feel sure that the older system was before the coming of the ‘gold bright’[88] reformer, essentially a polytheism with only some yearnings towards monotheism, and that Zoroaster settled it upon a firmly monotheistic basis. This very fact leaves us little to say about the Iranian system considered strictly as a religion. For when once nations have risen to the height of a monotheism there can be little essential difference in their beliefs; such difference as there is will be in the conception they have of the character of their gods, whether it be a high, a relatively high, or relatively low one; and this again is more perhaps a question of moral development than of religion. Their one god, since he made all things and rules all things, cannot partake of the exclusive nature of any natural phenomenon; he cannot be a god of wind or water, of sun or sky. The Zoroastrian creed did afterwards introduce (then for the first time in the world’s history) a very important element of belief, namely, of the distinct origin, and almost if not quite equal powers, of the good and evil principles. But this was later than the time of Zarathustra.
The name which Zarathustra taught the people to give to the one god was unconnected with Aryan nature-names, Dyâus, or Varuna, or Indra. He simply called him the ‘Great Spirit,’ or, in the Zend, Ahura-mazda;[89] in later Persian, Hormuzd or Ormuzd. He is the all-perfect, all-wise, all-powerful, all-beautiful. He is the creator of all things. And—still nearer to the Christian belief—before the creation of the world, by means whereof the world itself was made, existed the Word. Some trace of this same doctrine of the pre-existing Word (Hanover, in the Zoroastrian religion) is to be found in the Vedas, where he is called Vach. It would be here impossible to enter into an examination of the question how far these early religions seem to shadow forth the mystical doctrine of the Logos. The evil principle opposed to Ormuzd is Angra-Mainyus (Ahrimanes), but in the true doctrine he is by no means the equal of God, no more so than is Satan. The successive corruption of pure Zoroastrianism after the time of its founder is marked by a constant exaggeration of the power of the evil principle (suggested, perhaps, by intercourse with devil-worshipping nations of a lower type) until Ahrimanes becomes the rival of Ormuzd, coequal and co-eternal with him.
Such is the simple creed of the Persians, accompanied of course by rites and ceremonies, part invented by the reformer, part inherited from the common Aryan parentage. It is well known that the Persians built no temples, but worshipped Ormuzd chiefly upon the mountain-tops; that they paid great respect to all the elements—that is to air, water, and fire, the latter most of all—a belief which they shared with their Indian brethren, but stopped far short of worshipping any. That they held very strongly the separate idea of the soul, so that when once a body had lost its life, they considered it to be a thing wholly corrupt and evil; a doctrine which carried in the germ that of the inherent evil of matter, as the philosophical reader will discern.