The idea of Diana, Herodias, and Bezezia as a magic trinity, or, rather, as a triform manifestation of one deity, Latin, Jewish, and barbarian, was no unnatural outcome of a mixed race such as peopled Gaul and North Italy in the first centuries of the Christian era, and to such an idea the common image of the triple Hecate, "Tergeminamque Hecaten tria Virginis ora Dianæ," easily lent itself. Dr. Döllinger says: "Hecate was represented with three bodies or with three heads, as the goddess of the star of night, energizing in three spheres of action—in heaven, and earth, and sea—and at the same time in allusion to the three phases of the moon."[111] As Ben Jonson's witch sings:
"And thou three-formed star that on these nights
Art only powerful, to whose triple name
Thus we incline once, twice, and thrice the same."[112]
The extraordinary way in which polytheism has sought by an amalgamation of rites, and so of properties and personalities, to regain that unity of worship of which it is the formal negation, is a great distraction to antiquarians, who would fain distinguish precisely the various cults of paganism. Almost all the female deities occasionally interchange offices. Diana is especially a central figure, in which they all meet. Venus, Juno, Minerva, ordinarily representative of such opposite functions, are, under certain aspects, identified with Diana. Of Isis Dr. Döllinger says: "She often stepped into the place of Demeter, Persephone, Artemis, and Hecate, and became dispensatrix of food, mistress of the lower world and of the sea, and goddess of navigation. In some inscriptions she is pantheistically called 'the one who is all.'"[113]
"Fables," Sir Francis Palgrave says, truly enough, "have radiated from a common centre, and their universal consent does not prove their subsequent reaction upon each other, but their common derivation from a common origin."[114] None the less, however, the "subsequent reaction" is in many cases most real and important; itself testifying, doubtless, to a common origin, but at the same time productive of results of a distinctly conglomerate character. Often, too, properties which belonged to the original parent cultus, and which have been lost, or have fallen into abeyance in a derivative, have been restored to this last by amalgamation with another cult. For instance, the Ephesian Artemis, the parent, as is generally supposed, of the Latian Diana, was always associated with the practice of magic. Her garments were covered with mystic sentences, which obtained the name of "Ephesian Letters," and which were supposed to be potent charms. The deciphering and application of these sentences was a regular art in Ephesus; hence the magic books which the Ephesians burned in such numbers under the influence of S. Paul's preaching. On the other hand, the Latian Diana seems to have derived the most part of her magic properties from her amalgamation with Hecate.
Evidence is not wanting to show that the mediæval magical cultus owes its conglomerate character to something more than the accidental mingling of races, or the spontaneous action of polytheism which I have noticed.
The Gnostic heretics, and especially the disciples of Basilides, have left numerous records of their teaching and practice in the shape of engraved gems called abraxi, which have been discovered in great numbers throughout North Italy, Gaul, and Spain. If we look through the pages devoted to the illustration of these extraordinary relics in Montfaucon, we shall find almost all the peculiar emblems of mediæval magic, such as cocks and serpents, abracadabra, the triple Hecate, etc. But beyond this there is conspicuous the medley, so characteristic of mediæval magic, of sacred and profane, Christian and pagan, divine and diabolical; the names of God and of our Lord mixed with those of Latin and Egyptian deities, Old Testament prophets and local genii, piety and lewdness, grace and brutishness—loathsomely incongruous, one should fancy, even to unchristian eyes, as some royal banquet which harpies have defiled with blood and ordure.
Basilides himself (A.D. 125) seems hardly to have been responsible for these indecencies. He was an eclectic of the Hebrew-Alexandrian school, and, if we are to believe Neander, meant to teach a not unrefined monotheism by means of a vocabulary of symbols gathered from all quarters. But he had prepared a powerful machinery for evil, of which his unscrupulous disciples were not slow to avail themselves. The diabolical guild spread with extraordinary rapidity, and struck deep root on all sides. S. Irenæus writes against it and the kindred sect of the Valentinians in the IId century, and S. Jerome in the Vth century testifies to its influence in Gaul and Spain.
These Gnostics seem to have gradually identified themselves with another and even darker sect of the same family—the Ophites, or worshippers of the serpent; witness the vast number of serpent gems amongst the abraxi. With these Ophites, as with the Cainites, who closely resemble them, the demiurge, creator, or world-god, is not merely subordinate, but imperfect and evil, and hostile to the everlasting wisdom symbolized by the serpent. The malignant creator, jealous of his creature, throws about him the net of the law, restraining him from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and from out of this net, the eternal wisdom, by the serpent as its intermediary and symbol, delivers him. And so it is that, in this perverse system, man's fall becomes his triumph, and the devil his redeemer. This principle was only carried out by the Cainites when they upheld Cain and Judas as the representatives of the higher wisdom and examples of heroic resistance to the tyranny of the demiurge. It must be admitted that it would be quite in keeping with their usual manner if they are responsible for the deification of Herodias. Of the Ophites, Origen reports that they admitted none to their assemblies who did not curse Christ.[115] This systematic, detailed perversion of Christianity is so perfectly in accord with what we are told of the mediæval Sabbath, where Christ was renounced and the Blessed Trinity reviled as a three-headed Cerberus, that, loath as are such historians as Neander and Gieseler to entertain anything so bizarre as devil-worship, they hardly know what else to call it. Amongst many special indications of a connection between Gnosticism and mediæval diablerie, I would remark the following: Alvernus speaks of the magic book in use in his day, entitled Circulus Major, wherein are instructions how to form the greater circle for the evocation of demons; also of a "greater" and "lesser" circle, and of other figures called "Mandal" and "Aliandet," wherein convene the four kings of the East, West, North, and South, with other demons beside.[116] Now, Origen speaks of the "greater and lesser circles" as rites of the Ophites. It is true that in Origen's description we do not hear of four kings, but of seven, who are styled the "seven princes," "lords of the seven gates"[117] "of the seven heavens"; but the number does not seem to be marked with any great precision; for Origen (cap. 31) reduced them to six, and it is the worship of the six angels that S. Boniface is said to have abolished in Germany in the VIIIth century.[118] Again, Alvernus admitted that his circles contained other demons besides the four kings.
The four kings are identified as a Gnostic subdivision of the seven spirits by Feuerardentius,[119] who says that, according to the Rabbins, Zamael was one of the four kings of evil spirits, and reigned in the East, and also one of the seven planetary spirits, and presided over Mars. He was the accuser of the Jews, as Michael was the defender. The Jews are said to pray in their synagogues, "Remember not, O Lord, the accusation of Zamael, but remember the defence of Michael." Michael is another of the seven planetary spirits, ruling, according to some, in Mercury, according to others, in the sun, and wielding the east wind. The Ophites, with their instinct for desecration, blended Michael and Zamael into one, calling them the "Serpens projectibilis," with two names.[120] Of Adalbert, the heretical worshipper of the six angels, who was discomfited by S. Boniface, we are told that "he pretended to hold intercourse with S. Michael."
It would seem that something very much like the ancient rites for evoking the four kings is still in use in Africa. Alvernus' account is: "The master smites the ground in front of him, toward the eastern quarter, with outstretched sword, and saith these words: 'Let the great king of the East come forth'"; and so on with the others. In the description of a modern incantation in Algiers, related in Experiences with Home, p. 158, we are told, "Loud thrusts and blows were heard on the ground, and several forms became visible, apparently issuing from the earth."