An Introduction to Mythology

by Lewis Spence

The mother of Persephone, or Kore, was Demeter—i.e., 'corn-mother,' Persephone was carried off and wed by Hades, king of the dead, was sought for in his dark country by her mother, and was restored, with the proviso that she must spend so many months every year underground with her husband. Many circumstances in the myth of Osiris point to the same corn-spirit origin. The wanderings of Isis in search of her dismembered husband Osiris throughout the length and breadth of Egypt, the passing of the son of the King of Byblos through the magic flame, as well as other incidents, well illustrate the similarity.

Why do Demeter and Isis wander up and down, the one seeking for her daughter, the other for her husband? Persephone and Osiris in one of his many forms—probably his original form—both represent the sown seed of the wheat, lying dormant for so long, but later resurrected and recovered. Who or what then are Demeter and Isis? It is one of the tenets of animism that the animistic spirit must, as spiritualists would say, 'materialize' in some natural object, and the wandering spirit may thus be enticed by the sorcery of the shaman into the fetish object. When the corn is cut down, whither does the corn-spirit betake itself? It must of necessity become a wanderer on the face of the earth until once more the corn sprouts to give it house-room. If our conclusions are correct, the myths of Demeter and Isis are late and elaborated versions of an early animistic belief that the corn-spirit was driven from its shelter until the green shoots attracted it once more. The myth is most surely an animistic one, and perhaps one of the oldest myths in the world. Demeter and Isis are deified corn-spirits seeking the corn (Persephone and Osiris) for the purpose of rematerializing it. Persephone and Osiris represent the corn-seed as well as the corn-spirit, as is obvious from their sojourn underground.

FIRE-GODS

Fire-gods are usually associated with the sun, but later achieve a certain domestic and mechanical significance. Undoubtedly fire with its movement and appearance of life would be regarded in animistic times as informed by spirit. In later times there is a departmental god of fire who is often an artificer in metals. This idea could not, of course, have arisen before the discovery of the uses of metals, so that departmental deities of this type must be of comparatively recent origin.

In India the great god of fire was Agni, who ruled not only over the lightning and other fires of Heaven, but over those of earth as well. He is occasionally confounded with Indra and Varuna, but in the earlier hymns he is the fire which men prize as an indispensable boon. He bears up sacrifices from men to the gods under the dark canopy of the smoke which arises from the sacred fires below. He is occasionally credited with the wisdom of the sun-god himself. He is 'black-backed' and 'many-limbed'; like the serpent, he is laid hold of with difficulty; he is the regulator of sacrifices, and is regarded as the guide of souls in the unseen world.

Among the Greeks, Hephæstus was regarded as the youngest of the gods. He was a lame and ugly dwarf, the son of Zeus and Hera, who was so displeased with his appearance that she wished to cast him out of Olympus. He took her part in a quarrel with Zeus, however, and thereupon the king of Heaven cast him from the heights to the island of Lemnos, where he fell maimed and wounded. He was the great artificer of the gods, an incomparable worker in metal. He raised the shining palaces of Olympus, forged the marvellous armour of Achilles, and made the necklace of Harmonia. Strangely enough, in Norse myth and English legend, Regin, the smith of the Volsunga Saga, and Wieland the Smith are stunted, lame, or limping, and forge arms for heroes, as did Hephæstus for Achilles. In his Latin shape of Vulcan Hephæstus is pre-eminently a god of fire, the conception becoming associated with volcanic districts, especially with Mount Etna in Sicily, where, with the Cyclops for his assistants, he laboured in the bowels of the volcano.

Among the Scandinavian peoples, Loki appears to be the god of fire. He also is limping and misshapen, but one does not espy in him the mechanical ability of the Greek god. He sides now with the gods, now with the giants, thus typifying the twofold nature of fire as a friend and an enemy. He was probably grafted on to an older fire-demon.

In ancient Mexico Xiuhtecutli, the fire-god, was known as Huehueteotl, eldest of the gods, not youngest, as in Greece and India. His body was flame-coloured, and his face black and surmounted by a head-dress of green feathers. A yellow serpent sprawling across his back typified the serpentine nature of fire. He was also the god of the domestic hearth, and on rising in the morning all Mexican families offered him an oblation of food and drink.

From the examples given above it will be seen that although in one instance, that of Hephæstus, the possession of the thunderbolt is assumed, most fire-gods are truly departmental in character, and do not appear to have any connexion with the lightning. They arise from a purely animistic conception of fire, and later become personified. Occasionally we find them, as in the case of Agni, and Yibil, the Babylonian fire-god, partially absorbed by, or having the attributes of, the sun-god.