Fig. 481.
The Sancris cup or chalice[984] might legitimately be termed a cruse: Christ’s first miracle was the conversion of a cruse or can of water into wine, and the site of this miracle was Cana. The souterrain of St. Sulpice le Donseil is situated in a district known as La Creuse, and the solitary pillar in the heart of this grotto, as also that in the Margate grotto, and that in the souterrain at Tinwell, were probably symbols of what the British Bard describes as “Christ the concealed pillar of peace”. The Celtic Christs here reproduced from an article in The Open Court by Dr. Paul Carus are probably developments of ancient Prestons or Jupiter Stones: the connection between these crude Christs and Cres, the Son of Jupiter, by the nymph Idea, is probably continuous and unbroken.
A cruse corresponds symbolically to a cauldron or a cup: according to Herbert, “The Cauldron of the Bards was connected by them with Mary in that particular capacity which forms the portentous feature in St. Brighid (viz., her being Christ’s Mother) to the verge of identification. The reason was that divine objects considered by them essentially, and, as it were, sacramentally as being Christ, were prepared within and produced out of that sacred and womb-like receptacle.” He then quotes two bardic extracts to the following effect:—
(1) The One Man and our Cauldron,
And our deed, and our word,
With the bright pure Mary daughter of Anne.
(2) Christ, Creator, Emperor and our Mead,
Christ the Concealed, pillar of peace,
Christ, Son of Mary and of my Cauldron, a pure pedigree![985]
The likelihood is that the solitary great Jasper stone in the roof of the four-columned hall at Edrei, the Capital of King Og, was similarly a symbol of the ideal Corner Stone or the Concealed Pillar of Peace.