Among the gewgaws found in the sacred shrines of Juktas are numerous bijou gigs, or coaches, all no doubt once very juju, or sacred.
To appreciate the outlook of the “half-supernatural” Idaeans one may find a partial key in the words of Aratus: “Let us begin with Zeus, let us always call upon and laud his name; all the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of Zeus, and all the paths and fair havens of the sea, and everwhere our hope is in Zeus for we are also his children”.[529]
Stow mentions the firmly-rooted tradition that the Cathedral of St. Paul stands upon the site of an ancient shrine to Jupiter. It may be merely coincidence that close to St. Paul’s once stood an Ypres Hall:[530] in the immediate vicinity of Old St. Paul’s used also to exist a so-called Pardon Churchyard, perhaps an implication that Ludgate Hill was once known as Par dun or Par Hill. That “Pardon” was equivalent to “Pradon” is evident from the fact that modern Dumbarton was originally Dun Brettan, or the Briton’s Fort. The slope leading from the Southern side of St. Paul’s or Pardon Churchyard, is still named Peter’s Hill, and in view of the Jupiter tradition it is not altogether unlikely that Peter’s Hill was originally eu Peter’s Hill, synonymously Pere dun. The surname Pardon may still be found in this Godliman Street neighbourhood, where in Stow’s time stood not only Burley House, but likewise Blacksmiths Hall. A funeral pyre is a fire; a phare is a lighthouse, and the intense purity of Bride’s fire, phare, or pyre is implied by the fact that it was not suffered to be blown by human breath but by bellows only. From time immemorial the Fire of Bride was tended by nineteen holy maids, each of whom had the care of the Fire for one night in turn: on the twentieth night the nineteenth maid, having piled wood upon the fire, said: “Brigit, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you”. The tale ends that ever on the twentieth morning the fire had been miraculously preserved.[531]
The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget’s pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow. The words mead and meadow are the same as maid and maida, whence it seems to follow that all meadows were dedicated to Bride, the pretty Lady of the Kine. Homer’s “fertile vale of Hyde,” and the Londoner’s Hyde Park, were alike probably idealised and sacred meadows corresponding to the Irish Mag-Ithe or Plains of Ith; it is not unlikely that all heaths were dedicated to Ith. To the Scandinavian Ith or Ida Plains we find an ancient poet thus referring: “I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ... the Anses meet on Ida Plain, they talk of the mighty earth serpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of the unknown God”. After foretelling a time when “All sorrows shall be healed and Balder shall come back,” the poet continues: “Then shall Hœni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the Twin Brethren shall inhabit the wide world of the winds”.[532]
Fig. 266.—Etruscan Bucket, Offida, Picenum. From A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age, p. 17.
In Fig. 266—an Etrurian bucket—two diminutive Twin Brethren are being held by the Bona Dea—a winged Ange or Anse—who is surmounted by the symbolic cockle or coquille. The fact that this bucket was found at Offida renders it possible that the mother here represented was known to the craftsman who portrayed her as Offi divine, otherwise Hipha, Eve, or Good Iva. It will be noticed that the child on the right is white, that on the left black, and I have elsewhere drawn attention to many other emblems in which two A’s, Alphas, Alifs, or Elves were similarly portrayed, the one as white, the other as black.[533] The intention of the artist seems to have been to express the current philosophy of a Prime or Supreme supervising both good and evil, light and dark, or day and night. Pliny says that British women used to attend certain religious festivals with their nude bodies painted black like Ethiopians, and there is probably some close connection between this obscure function, and the fact that Diana of the Ephesians, the many-breasted All-mother of Life, was portrayed at times as white, at times as black. There must be a further connection between this black and white Bona Dea, and the fact that in the Lady Godiva processions near Coventry, which took place at the opening of the Great May Fair festival, there were two Godivas, one of whom was the natural colour but the other was dyed black.[534]
The Bona Dea of Egypt, like the figure on the Etrurian bucket, was represented holding in her arms two children, one white and one black; and the two circles at Avebury, lying within the larger Avereberie or periphery, were probably representative of Day and Night circled by all-embracing and eternal Time.
The Twin Brethren or Gemini are most popularly known as Castor and Pollux, and the propitious figures of these heavenly Twins were carved frequently upon the prows of ancient ships. The phosphorescent stars or Will-o-the-wisps, which during storms sometimes light upon the masts of ships, used to be known as St. Elmo’s Fires: St. Elmo is obviously St. Alma or St. All Mother, and the St. Helen with whom she is identified is seemingly St. Alone. It was believed that two stars were propitious, but that a solitary one boded bad luck; according to Pliny a single St. Elmo’s fire was called Helen, “but the two they call Castor and Pollux, and invoke them as gods”.