In direct personal nature-worship like that of Siberian nomades of our day, the solar cultus of the ancient pastoral Aryans had its source. The Vedic bards sing of the great god Sûrya, knower of beings, the all-revealer before whom the stars depart with the nights like thieves. We approach Sûrya (they say) shining god among the gods, light most glorious. He shines on the eight regions, the three worlds, the seven rivers; the golden-handed Savitar, all-seeing, goes between heaven and earth. To him they pray, ‘On thy ancient paths, O Savitar, dustless, well made, in the air, on those good-going paths this day preserve us and bless us, O God!’ Modern Hinduism is full of the ancient Sun-worship, in offerings and prostrations, in daily rites and appointed festivals, and it is Savitar the Sun who is invoked in the ‘gâyatrî,’ the time-honoured formula repeated day by day since long-past ages by every Brahman: ‘Tat Savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhîmahi dhiyo yo nah prakodayât.—Let us meditate on the desirable light of the divine Sun; may he rouse our minds!’ Every morning the Brahman worships the sun, standing on one foot and resting the other against his ankle or heel, looking towards the east, holding his hands open before him in a hollow form, and repeating to himself these prayers: ‘The rays of light announce the splendid fiery sun, beautifully rising to illumine the universe.’—‘He rises, wonderful, the eye of the sun, of water, and of fire, collective power of gods; he fills heaven, earth, and sky with his luminous net; he is the soul of all that is fixed or locomotive.’—‘That eye, supremely beneficial, rises pure from the east; may we see him a hundred years; may we live a hundred years; may we hear a hundred years.’—‘May we, preserved by the divine power, contemplating heaven above the region of darkness, approach the deity, most splendid of luminaries!’[[701]] A Vedic celestial deity, Mitra the Friend, came to be developed in the Persian religion into that great ruling divinity of light, the victorious Mithra, lord of life and head of all created beings. The ancient Persian Mihr-Yasht invokes him in the character of the sun-light, Mithra with wide pastures, whom the lords of the regions praise at early dawn, who as the first heavenly Yazata rises over Hara-berezaiti before the sun, the immortal with swift steeds, who first with golden form seizes the fair summits, then surrounds the whole Aryan region. Mithra came to be regarded as the very Sun, as where Dionysos addresses the Tyrian Bel, ‘εἴτε σὺ Μίθρης Ηέλιος Βαβυλῶνος.’ His worship spread from the East across the Roman empire, and in Europe he takes rank among the great solar gods absolutely identified with the personal Sun, as in this inscription on a Roman altar dating from Trajan’s time—‘Deo Soli Mithræ.’[[702]] The earlier Sun-worship of Europe, upon which this new Oriental variety was intruded, in certain of its developments shows the same clear personality. The Greek Helios, to whom horses were sacrificed on the mountain-top of Taugetos, was that same personal Sun to whom Sokrates, when he had staid rapt in thought till daybreak, offered a prayer before he departed (ἔπειτ’ ὤχετ’ ἀπιὼν προσευξάμενος τῷ ἡλιῳ).[[703]] Cæsar devotes to the German theology of his time three lines of his Commentaries. They reckon in the number of the gods, he says, those only whom they perceive and whose benefits they openly enjoy, Sun and Vulcan and Moon, the rest they know not even by report.[[704]] It is true that Cæsar’s short summary does no justice to the real number and quality of the deities of the German pantheon, yet his forcible description of nature-worship in its most primitive stage may probably be true of the direct adoration of the sun and moon, and possibly of fire. On the other hand, European sun-worship leads into the most perplexing problems of mythology. Well might Cicero exclaim, ‘How many suns are set forth by the theologians!’[[705]] The modern student who shall undertake to discriminate among the Sun-gods of European lands, to separate the solar and non-solar elements of the Greek Apollo and Herakles, or of the Slavonic Swatowit, has a task before him complicate with that all but hopeless difficulty which besets the study of myth, the moment that the clue of direct comparison with nature falls away.
The religion of ancient Egypt is one of which we know much, yet little—much of its temples, rites, names of deities, liturgical formulas, but little of the esoteric religious ideas which lay hidden within these outer manifestations. Yet it is clear that central solar conceptions as it were radiate through the Egyptian theology. Ra, who traverses in his boat the upper and lower regions of the universe, is the Sun himself in plain cosmic personality. And to take two obvious instances of solar characters in other deities, Osiris the manifester of good and truth, who dies by the powers of darkness and becomes judge of the dead in the west-land of Amenti, is solar in his divine nature, as is also his son Horus, smiter of the monster Set.[[706]] In the religions of the Semitic race, the place of the Sun is marked through a long range of centuries. The warning to the Israelites lest they should worship and serve sun, moon, and stars, and the mention of Josiah taking away the horses that the Kings of Judah had given to the sun, and burning the chariots of the sun with fire,[[707]] agree with the place given in other Semitic religions to the Sun-god, Shamas of Assyria, or Baal, even expressly qualified as Baal-Shemesh or Lord Sun. Syrian religion, like Persian, introduced a new phase of Sun-worship into Rome, the cultus of Elagabal, and the vile priest emperor who bore this divine name made it more intelligible to classic ears as Heliogabalus.[[708]] Eusebius is a late writer as regards Semitic religion, but with such facts as these before us we need not withhold our confidence from him when he describes the Phœnicians and Egyptians as holding Sun, Moon, and Stars to be gods, sole causes of the generation and destruction of all things.[[709]]
The widely spread and deeply rooted religion of the Sun naturally offered strenuous resistance to the invasion of Christianity, and it was one of the great signs of the religious change of the civilized world when Constantine, that ardent votary of the Sun, abandoned the faith of Apollo for that of Christ. Amalgamation even proved possible between the doctrines of Sabæism and Christianity, and in and near Armenia a sect of Sun-worshippers have lasted on into modern times under the profession of Jacobite Christians;[[710]] a parallel case within the limits of Mohammedanism being that of Beduin Arabs who still continue the old adoration of the rising sun, in spite of the Prophet’s expressed command not to bow before the sun or moon, and in spite of the good Moslem’s dictum, that ‘the sun rises between the devil’s horns.’[[711]] Actual worship of the sun in Christendom soon shrank to the stage of survival. In Lucian’s time the Greeks kissed their hands as an act of worship to the rising sun; and Tertullian had still to complain of many Christians that with an affectation of adoring the heavenly bodies they would move their lips toward the sunrise (Sed et plerique vestrum affectatione aliquando et cœlestia adorandi ad solis ortum labia vibratis).[[712]] In the 5th century, Leo the Great complains of certain Christians who, before entering the Basilica of St. Peter, or from the top of a hill, would turn and bow to the rising sun; this comes, he says, partly of ignorance and partly of the spirit of paganism.[[713]] To this day, in the Upper Palatinate, the peasant takes off his hat to the rising sun; and in Pomerania, the fever-stricken patient is to pray thrice turning toward the sun at sunrise, ‘Dear Sun, come soon down, and take the seventy-seven fevers from me. In the name of God the Father, &c.’[[714]]
For the most part, the ancient rites of solar worship are represented in modern Christendom in two ways; by the ceremonies connected with turning to the east, of which an account is given in an ensuing chapter under the heading of Orientation; and in the continuance of the great sun-festivals, countenanced by or incorporated in Christianity. Spring-tide, reckoned by so many peoples as New-Year, has in great measure had its solar characteristics transferred to the Paschal festival. The Easter bonfires with which the North German hills used to be ablaze mile after mile, are not altogether given up by local custom. On Easter morning in Saxony and Brandenburg, the peasants still climb the hill-tops before dawn, to see the rising sun give his three joyful leaps, as our forefathers used to do in England in the days when Sir Thomas Browne so quaintly apologized for declaring that ‘the sun doth not dance on Easter Day.’ The solar rite of the New Fire, adopted by the Roman Church as a Paschal ceremony, may still be witnessed in Europe, with its solemn curfew on Easter Eve, and the ceremonial striking of the new holy fire. On Easter Eve, under the solemn auspices of the Greek Church, a mob of howling fanatics crush and trample to death the victims who faint and fall in their struggles to approach the most shameless imposture of modern Christendom, the miraculous fire from heaven which descends into the Holy Sepulchre.[[715]] Two other Christian festivals have not merely had solar rites transferred to them, but seem distinctly themselves of solar origin. The Roman winter-solstice festival, as celebrated on December 25 (VIII. Kal. Jan.) in connexion with the worship of the Sun-god Mithra, appears to have been instituted in this special form after the Eastern campaign of Aurelian A.D. 273, and to this festival the day owes its apposite name of Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, ‘Dies Natalis Solis invicti.’ With full symbolic appropriateness, though not with historical justification, the day was adopted in the Western Church, where it appears to have been generally introduced by the 4th century, and whence in time it passed to the Eastern Church, as the solemn anniversary of the birth of Christ, the Christian Dies Natalis, Christmas Day. Attempts have been made to ratify this date as matter of history, but no valid nor even consistent early Christian tradition vouches for it. The real solar origin of the festival is clear from the writings of the Fathers after its institution. In religious symbolism of the material and spiritual sun, Augustine and Gregory of Nyassa discourse on the glowing light and dwindling darkness that follow the Nativity, while Leo the Great, among whose people the earlier solar meaning of the festival evidently remained in strong remembrance, rebukes in a sermon the pestiferous persuasion, as he calls it, that this solemn day is to be honoured not for the birth of Christ, but for the rising, as they say, of the new sun.[[716]] As for modern memory of the sun-rites of mid-winter, Europe recognizes Christmas as a primitive solar festival by bonfires which our ‘yule-log,’ the ‘souche de Noël,’ still keeps in mind; while the adaptation of ancient solar thought to Christian allegory is as plain as ever in the Christmas service chant, ‘Sol novus oritur.’[[717]] The solar Christmas festival has its pendant at Midsummer. The summer solstice was the great season of fire-festivals throughout Europe, of bonfires on the heights, of dancing round and leaping through the fires, of sending blazing fire-wheels to roll down from the hills into the valleys in sign of the sun’s descending course. These ancient rites attached themselves in Christendom to St. John’s Eve.[[718]] It seems as though the same train of symbolism which had adapted the midwinter festival to the Nativity, may have suggested the dedication of the midsummer festival to John the Baptist, in clear allusion to his words, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’
Moon-worship, naturally ranking below Sun-worship in importance, ranges through nearly the same district of culture. There are remarkable cases in which the Moon is recognized as a great deity by tribes who take less account, or none at all, of the Sun. The rude savages of Brazil seem especially to worship or respect the moon, by which they regulate their time and festivals, and draw their omens. They would lift up their hands to the moon with wonder-struck exclamations of teh! teh! they would have children smoked by the sorcerers to preserve them from moon-given sickness, or the women would hold up their babes to the luminary. The Botocudos are said to give the highest rank among the heavenly bodies to Taru the Moon, as causing thunder and lightning and the failure of vegetables and fruits, and as even sometimes falling to the earth, whereby many men die.[[719]] An old account of the Caribs describes them as esteeming the Moon more than the Sun, and at new moon coming out of their houses crying ‘Behold the Moon!’[[720]] The Ahts of Vancouver’s Island, it is stated, worship the Sun and Moon, particularly the full moon and the sun ascending to the zenith. Regarding the Moon as husband and the Sun as wife, their prayers are more generally addressed to the Moon as the superior deity; he is the highest object of their worship, and they speak of him as ‘looking down upon the earth in answer to prayer, and seeing everybody.’[[721]] With a somewhat different turn of mythic fancy, the Hurons seem to have considered Ataentsic the Moon as maker of the earth and man, and grandmother of Iouskeha the Sun, with whom she governs the world.[[722]] In Africa, Moon-worship is prominent in an immense district where Sun-worship is unknown or insignificant. Among south-central tribes, men will watch for the first glimpses of the new Moon, which they hail with shouts of kua! and vociferate prayers to it; on such an occasion Dr. Livingstone’s Makololo prayed, ‘Let our journey with the white man be prosperous!’ &c.[[723]] These people keep holiday at new-moon, as indeed in many countries her worship is connected with the settlement of periodic festival. Negro tribes seem almost universally to greet the new Moon, whether in delight or disgust. The Guinea people fling themselves about with droll gestures, and pretend to throw firebrands at it; the Ashango men behold it with superstitious fear; the Fetu negroes jumped thrice into the air with hands together and gave thanks.[[724]] The Congo people fell on their knees, or stood and clapped their hands, crying, ‘So may I renew my life as thou art renewed!’[[725]] The Hottentots are described early in the last century as dancing and singing all night at new and full moon, calling the Moon the Great Captain, and crying to him ‘Be greeted!’ ‘Let us get much honey!’ ‘May our cattle get much to eat and give much milk!’ With the same thought as that just noticed in the district north-west of them, the Hottentots connect the Moon in legend with that fatal message sent to Man, which ought to have promised to the human race a moon-like renewal of life, but which was perverted into a doom of death like that of the beast who brought it.[[726]]
The more usual status of the Moon in the religions of the world is, as nature suggests, that of a subordinate companion deity to the Sun, such a position as is acknowledged in the precedence of Sunday to Monday. Their various mutual relations as brother and sister, husband and wife, have already been noticed here as matter of mythology. As wide-lying rude races who place them thus side by side in their theology, it is enough to mention the Delawares of North America,[[727]] the Ainos of Yesso,[[728]] the Bodos of North-East-India,[[729]] the Tunguz of Siberia.[[730]] This is the state of things which continues at higher levels of systematic civilization. Beside the Mexican Tonatiuh the Sun, Metztli the Moon had a smaller pyramid and temple;[[731]] in Bogota, the Moon, identified in local myth with the Evil Deity, had her place and figure in the temple beside the Sun her husband;[[732]] the Peruvian Mother-Moon, Mama-Quilla, had her silver disc-face to match the golden one of her brother and husband the Sun, whose companion she had been in the legendary civilizing of the land.[[733]] In the ancient Kami-religion of Japan, the supreme Sun-god ranks high above the Moon-god, who was worshipped under the form of a fox.[[734]] Among the historic nations of the Old World, documents of Semitic culture show Sun and Moon side by side. For one, we may take the Jewish law, to stone with stones till they died the man or woman who ‘hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven.’ For another, let us glance over the curious record of the treaty-oath between Philip of Macedon and the general of the Carthaginian and Libyan army, which so well shows how the original identity of nature-deities may be forgotten in their different local shapes, so that the same divinity may come twice or even three times over in as many national names and forms. Herakles and Apollo stand in company with the personal Sun, and as well as the personal Moon is to be seen the ‘Carthaginian deity,’ whom there is reason to look on as Astarte, a goddess latterly of lunar nature. This is the list of deities invoked: ‘Before Zeus and Hera and Apollo; before the goddess of the Carthaginians (δαίμονος Καρχηδονίων) and Herakles and Iolaos; before Ares, Triton, Poseidon; before the gods who fought with the armies, and Sun and Moon and Earth; before the rivers and meadows and waters; before all the gods who rule Macedonia and the rest of Greece; before all the gods who were at the war, they who have presided over this oath.’[[735]] When Lucian visited the famous temple of Hierapolis in Syria, he saw the images of the other gods, ‘but only of the Sun and Moon they show no images.’ And when he asked why, they told him that the forms of other gods were not seen by all, but Sun and Moon are altogether clear, and all men see them.[[736]] In Egyptian theology, not to discuss other divine beings to whom a lunar nature has been ascribed, it is at least certain that Khonsu is the Moon in absolute personal divinity.[[737]] In Aryan theology, the personal Moon stands as Selēnē beside the more anthropomorphic forms of Hekatē and Artemis,[[738]] as Luna beside the less understood Lucina, and Diana with her borrowed attributes,[[739]] while our Teutonic forefathers were content with his plain name of Moon.[[740]] As for lunar survivals in the higher religions, they are much like the solar. Monotheist as he is, the Moslem still claps his hands at sight of the new moon, and says a prayer.[[741]] In Europe in the 15th century it was matter of complaint that some still adored the new moon with bended knee, or hood or hat removed, and to this day we may still see a hat raised or a curtsey dropped to her, half in conservatism and half in jest. It is with reference to silver as the lunar metal, that money is turned when the act of adoration is performed, while practical peasant wit dwells on the ill-luck of having no piece of silver when the new moon is first seen.[[742]]
Thus, in tracing the development of Nature-Worship, it appears that though Fire, Air, Earth, and Water are not yet among the lower races systematized into a quaternion of elements, their adoration, with that of Sun and Moon, shows already arising in primitive culture the familiar types of those great divinities, who received their further development in the higher Polytheism.
CHAPTER XVII.
ANIMISM (continued).
Polytheism comprises a class of Great Deities, ruling the course of Nature and the life of Man—Childbirth-god—Agriculture-god—War-god—God of the Dead—First Man as Divine Ancestor—Dualism; its rudimentary and unethical nature among low races; its development through the course of culture—Good and Evil Deity—Doctrine of Divine Supremacy, distinct from, while tending towards, the doctrine of Monotheism—Idea of a Highest or Supreme Deity evolved in various forms; its place as completion of the Polytheistic system and outcome of the Animistic philosophy; its continuance and development among higher nations—General survey of Animism as a Philosophy of Religion—Recapitulation of the theory advanced as to its development through successive stages of culture; its primary phases best represented among the lower races, while survivals of these among the higher races mark the transition from savage through barbaric to civilized faiths—Transition of Animism in the History of Religion; its earlier and later stages as a Philosophy of the Universe; its later stages as the principle of a Moral Institution.
Polytheism acknowledges, beside great fetish-deities like Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, another class of great gods whose importance lies not in visible presence, but in the performance of certain great offices in the course of Nature and the life of Man. The lower races can furnish themselves with such deities, either by giving the recognized gods special duties to perform, or by attributing these functions to beings invented in divine personality for the purpose. The creation of such divinities is however carried to a much greater extent in the complex systems of the higher polytheism. For a compact group of examples showing to what different ideas men will resort for a deity to answer a special end, let us take the deity presiding over Childbirth. In the West Indies, a special divinity occupied with this function took rank as one of the great indigenous fetish-gods;[[743]] in the Samoan group, the household god of the father’s or mother’s family was appealed to;[[744]] in Peru the Moon takes to this office,[[745]] and the same natural idea recurs in Mexico;[[746]] in Esthonian religion the productive Earth-mother appropriately becomes patroness of human birth;[[747]] in the classic theology of Greece and Italy, the divine spouse of the Heaven-king, Hera,[[748]] Juno,[[749]] favours and protects on earth marriage and the birth of children; and to conclude the list, the Chinese work out the problem from the manes-worshipper’s point of view, for the goddess whom they call ‘Mother’ and propitiate with many a ceremony and sacrifice to save and prosper their children, is held to have been in human life a skilful midwife.[[750]]