Nature Mysticism

by John Edward Mercer

Wordsworth has described a more personal experience which chimes in with all that has been said.

"Through a rift
Not distant from the shore on which we stood,
A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing place—
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
Innumerable, roaring with one voice!
Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens."

If the modern poet could be thus affected, how much more the primitive man who looked down on water falling into chasms, or rushing through their depths. It was natural that such experiences should find expression in his systems of mythology. The general form they assume is that of springs and rivers in the underworld, the best known of which appear in the Graeco-Roman conceptions of Hades. Homer makes Circe direct Odysseus thus. He is to beach his ship by deep-eddying Oceanus, in the gloomy Cimmerian land. "But go thyself to the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock and the meeting of the two roaring waters."

Such were the materials which, with many additions and modifications, developed into the Hades of Virgil's sixth AEneid, with its lakes, and swamps and dismal streams. The subterranean waters figured also in the Greek mysteries, and are elaborated with much detail in Plato's great Phaedo Myth—in all these cases with increasing fullness of mystical meaning. In the popular mind they were incrusted with layers of incongruous notions and crude superstitions. But, as Plato, for one, so clearly saw, there is always at their core a group of intuitions which have their bearing on the deepest problems of human life, and are capable of moulding spiritual concepts.

Still more obviously suffused with mystic meaning and influence are the Teutonic myths concerning the waters of the underworld. The central notion is that of Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe—the tree of time and life. Its boughs stretched up into heaven; its topmost branch overshadowed Walhalla, the hall of the heroes. Its three roots reach down into the dark regions beneath the earth; they pierce through three subterranean fountains, and hold together the universal structure in their mighty clasp. These three roots stretch in a line from north to south. The northernmost overarches the Hvergelmer fountain with its ice-cold waters. The middle one overarches Mimur's well with its stores of creative force. The southernmost overarches Urd's well with its warmer flow. They are gnawed down below by the dragon Nidhögg and innumerable worms; but water from the fountain of Urd keeps the world-ash ever green.

Hvergelmer is the mother fountain of all the rivers of the world—below, on the surface of the earth, and in the heaven above. From this vast reservoir issue all the waters, and thither they return. On their outward journey they are sucked up and lifted aloft by the northern root of the world tree, and there blend into the sap which supplies the tree with its imperishable strength and life. Rising through the trunk, they spread out into the branches and evaporate from its crown. In the upper region, thus attained, is a huge reservoir, the thunder-cloud, which receives the liquid and pours it forth again in two diverse streams. The one is the stream of fire-mist, the lightning, which with its "terror-gleam" flows as a barrier round Asgard, the home of the gods; the other falls in fructifying shower upon the earth, to return to its original source in the underworld. The famous maelstrom is the storm-centre, so to speak, of the down-tending flood. The fountain Hvergelmer may therefore be regarded as embodying impressions made on the Teuton mind by the physical forces of the universe in the grand activities of their eternal circulation. But their source was hidden.

The southernmost well has the warmer water of the sunny climes—the fountain of Urd. The Norns, the three sisters who made known the decrees of fate, come out of the unknown distance, enveloped in a dark veil, to the world tree, and sprinkle it daily with water from this fountain, that its foliage may be ever green and vigorous. Urd is the eldest of the three, and gazes thoughtfully into the past; Werdandi gazes at the present; and Skuld gazes into the future. For out of the past and present is the future born. The fountain of Urd may be regarded as the embodiment of impressions of a spiritual force which upholds and renews the universe.

Mimur, the king of the lower world, is the warder of the central fountain, and round its waters are ranged his golden halls. The fountain itself is seven times overlaid with gold, and above it the holy tree spreads its sheltering branches. It is the source of the precious liquid, the mead, which belongs to Mimur alone, and rises from an unknown depth to water the central root. In its purity, it gives the gods their wisdom and power. But the mead which rises in the sap is not entirely pure; it is mixed with the liquids from the other fountains. Thus earth is not like heaven. Nevertheless, though thus diluted, it is a fructifying blessing to whomsoever may obtain it. Around it grow delightful beds of reeds and bulrushes; and bordering it are the Glittering Fields, in which grow flowers that never fade and harvests that are never reaped; in which grow also the seeds of poetry. In short, Mimur's well is the source of inspiration and creative power.

These Teutonic notions of the waters under the earth have been dwelt upon somewhat fully, partly because they are not so well known as the classical myths—partly because they present such a decided contrast to the classical myths—but mainly because of their wealth of mystic suggestiveness. Let it not be thought that they form a group of elaborate symbols—were that the case their interest for the natural mystic would be vastly decreased. They are almost wholly the spontaneous product of the mythopoeic faculty; they were genuinely believed as presentations of realities. They are primitive intuitions embodied to form a primitive philosophy of life. They glow with mystic insight. Under the forms of subterranean fountains that well forth life, physical, aesthetic, spiritual, is mirrored the life of the universe, which wells from unknown depths, and returns to the deeps from which it emanated. And inasmuch as these ideas were largely suggested by the circulation of the waters of the globe, the Teutonic child of nature joins hands with the nature-philosopher Thales. The Reality is ultimately the same for both; the substance of the universe is living movement.

Yet another type of the mystic influence of subterranean watercourses will serve to illustrate the deepening processes to which all concrete forms, derived from intuitions, must be subjected. Near to Banias in Northern Palestine, at the base of an extensive cup-shaped mound, afar from human habitations, is one of the two chief sources of the Jordan. The rushing waters pour out of the ground in sufficient volume to form at once a river. The roar and tumult are strikingly impressive. Peters, on whose description of the place I have largely drawn, presumes that this was the site of an ancient temple of Dan. The worship at this temple was of the primitive sort, "such as was befitting the worship of the God who exhibited himself in such nature forces." We are therefore carried back to the mythological stage, for which the gushing forth, in volume, of subterranean waters was a manifestation of the life in, or behind, the natural phenomenon, and roused a peculiar kind of emotion.