CHAPTER XVI.
“Woman, the poetry of Nature,” says an elegant writer of the present day, “has ever been the theme of the minstrel, and the idol of the poet’s devotion. The only ideas we entertain of a celestial nature are associated with her; in her praise the world has been exhausted of its beauties, and she is linked with the stars and the glories of the universe, as if, though dwelling in a lowlier sphere, she belonged to a superior world.”
This deification of the female character was the true substance of those imaginary goddesses, so sadly disfigured by the circumscribed stupidity of Greek and Roman mythologists. Juno, Baaltis, Diana, Babia, Venus, Aphrodite, Derceto, Militta, Butsee, Semiramis, Astarte, Io, Luna, Rimmon, Lucina, Genitalis, Ourania, Atargatis, etc. etc., were all but fictitious and ideal forms, resolving themselves into one and the same representation of that sweetest ornament of the creation, woman; and the same terms being applied to the moon, with the same symbolic force and the same typical significance, illustrates the aptitude of that tributary quotation, with which this chapter has commenced, and to the beauty of which the heart of every “man that is born of woman” must feelingly respond.
Europa itself, now geographically appropriated, as a denomination, to one of the quarters of the globe, was originally synonymous with any of the above-mentioned names; and partook in the acquiescence paid by adoring millions to the all-fascinating object of so refined an allegory.
Of all those various epithets, however vitiated by time, or injured by accommodation to different climates and languages, the import—intact and undamaged—is still preserved in the primitive Irish tongue, and in that alone; and with the fertility of conception whereby it engendered all myths, and kept the human intellect suspended by its verbal phantasmagoria, we shall find the drift and the design, the type and the thing typified, united in the ligature of one appellative chord, which to the enlightened and the few presented a chastened yet sublime and microscopic moral delineation; but to the profane and the many was an impenetrable night producing submission the most slavish, and mental prostration the most abject; or, whenever a ray of the equivoque did happen to reach their eyes—perverted, with that propensity which we all have to the depraved, into the most reckless indulgence and the most profligate licentiousness.
In the limits here prescribed for the development of our outline—which even the most heedless must have observed, instead of being compressed, as intended within the compass of one volume could more easily have been dilated to the magnitude of four—it cannot be supposed that I could dwell, with much minuteness, upon the several collateral particulars to which I may incidentally refer. As, however, that twofold tenour to which I have above alluded, may require something more in the way of illustration, I shall take any two of the aggregate of names there collected, and in them exemplify what has been said.
Suppose them to be Militta and Astarte. Of these, then, the first means appetency, such as is natural between the sexes; and the second dalliance, of the same mutual sort; and while both alike typify the delights of love, they both equally personate the mistress of the starry firmament whose influence was courted for the maturity of all such connection, as the season of her splendour is the most suitable for its gratification.
From Astarte (Ασταρτη), the Greeks formed Aster (Αστηρ) a star, thereby retaining but one branch of this duplicity. The Irish deduced from it the well-known endearment, Astore; and I believe I do not exaggerate when I affirm that, in the whole circuit of dialectal enunciations, there exists not another sound calculated to convey to a native of this country so many commingling ideas of tender pathos, and of exalted adventure, as this syllabic representation of the lunar deity.[234]
Such was Sabaism,—composed of love, religion, and astrology: such too was Budhism, as I have already shown; and Phallism being but another name, equivalent with this latter, it follows that the whole three—Sabaism, Budhism, and Phallism—are, to all intents and purposes, but identically one.
This being about to be demonstrated, a few pages forwards, as the oldest species of worship recognised upon earth, it were needless, one would hope, to enter into a comparison in point of antiquity between it and any of its living derivatives. But as many learned men, misled by that cloud which heretofore enveloped the subject, have promulgated the belief that Brahminism was the parent stock, whence Budhism, with its adjuncts, diverged as a scion, I shall, omitting others, address myself to the consideration of Mr. Colebrooke’s arguments, which I select from the mass in deference to a character so honourably interwoven with the revival of Eastern literature.