1. The Celestial Bodies.—The first group that I shall mention is that of the Celestial Bodies, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The traits which connected them with the ideas of the divine are almost too obvious to require mention. They are bringers of light and warmth, they define the momentous change of day and night, their motions usher in the seasons and mark the progress of time. They are remote, aloft, inscrutable, dwellers in a realm which man may distantly perceive but never enter.
So much has been written of solar myths and star worship that every reader is aware of their practical universality among early nations. It is probable that the division of our week into seven days arose either from the dedication of one to each of the seven greatest luminaries or to a division of the moon’s apparent course into four parts. Judicial astrology, which is not yet wholly dead, always maintained that the nativities were decided by the position of the stars.
All such survivals carry us back to primitive religions in which the astral bodies were prominent figures in the cult. Many writers have maintained that the American Indians from north to south were always and mainly sun-worshippers. Though this is too hasty a statement, everyone will acknowledge that the sun is ever a conspicuous figure in their myths and rites. So it is among the Polynesians and Africans, and so we find it in the early forms of Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian belief.
It is at first sight strange that in many mythologies the moon plays a more important rôle than the sun. But if we reflect that the night is the time when spirits walk abroad; when sounds strike the ear with mysterious notes; when nocturnal birds and beasts stir the senses with strange cries; when, on the other hand, the cooling zephyrs and soft moonlight bring sweet ease, and the gentle dews refresh the parched leaves; then we can understand why, both in modern folk-lore[163] and in primitive myths, the moon and the stars are often far more conspicuous than the flaming sun. The night, in fact, draws the veil from the spiritual world; as has been said so beautifully by Shelley:
“As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.”
A few examples will illustrate this: The Dieyeris of Australia believe that man and all other beings were created by the moon. In many American languages the moon is regarded as male and the sun is referred to as “his companion.” The Ipurinas, a Brazilian tribe, address the orb as “Our Father,” and imagine him a little old man who was their ancestor and still watches over their prosperity. In like manner the eastern Eskimos say that their ancestors came from the moon to the earth. With the rude tribes of southern Borneo it is stated that the veneration of the moon forms the chief basis of their worship and myths.[164]
I can but refer to the lesser luminaries of the night. The stars have at all times been associated with religious meditations. The various constellations are familiar to most primitive peoples and are personified under living forms. Widely in South America and Polynesia the Pleiades enjoyed an especial homage, as marking the advent of the seasons and as connected with the production of vegetable life. In Peru they were styled the gods of rains; and the natives of the Gulf of California venerated them to that degree that even to look at them heedlessly was deemed calamitous; while some Australians held that it was from them that fire first descended to the world.[165] In such remote districts as Australia and Greenland the Milky-way was regarded as the path by which the souls ascended to their homes in the sky. In the one land the Aurora Australis, in the other the Aurora Borealis, was looked upon as the dance of the gods across the star-lit vault. Indeed, the study of the stellar bodies and the definition of their periodical appearance date directly to the veneration they excited in religious minds.
2. The Four Elements.—The simple theory that the world is composed of four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, is one which presents itself so naturally to primitive thought that traces of it can be seen in most mythologies which have passed beyond the rudimentary forms.