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THE SANGREAL.

and preserved them in perpetual youth. As such, it differs in no way from the horn of Amaltheia, or any other of the oval vessels which can be traced back to the emblem of the Hindu Sacti. We should be prepared, therefore, to find in the many forms assumed by the Arthurian myth some traces of its connexion with the symbol of the fecundating power in nature; nor is this expectation disappointed. The symbol of the sun has already appeared as a lance, spear, or trident in the myths of Abaris and Poseidôn; and in this form it is seen again in the story of the Holy Grail, when Sir Galahad is to depart with it from the Lcgrian land. As with his comrades he sups in the palace of King Pelles, he sees a great light, in which he beheld four angels supporting an aged man clad in pontifical garb, whom they placed before a table on which lay the Sangreal. This aged prelate was Joseph of Arimathæa, "the first bishop of Christendom." Then the other angels appeared bearing candles and a spear, from which fell drops of blood, and these drops were collected by angels in a box. Then the angels set the candles upon the table, and "the fourth set the holy speare even upright upon the vessel," as represented on an ancient churchyard crucifix, in rude sculpture, at Sancreed in Cornwall.'' This mysterious spear is constantly seen throughout the legend. When Sir Bors had seen the Sangreal in the house of Pelles, he was led into a fair chamber, where he laid himself in full armour on the bed. And right as he saw come in a light that he might wel see a speare great and long which come straight upon him point-long.' Indeed the whole myth exhibits that unconscious repetition and reproduction of the same forms and incidents which is the special characteristic of the Greek dynastic legends. Perceval, in the episode of Pecheur, the Fisher-king, answers to Sir Galahad in the quest of the Sangreal. In both cases the work can be done only by a pure-minded knight, and Perceval as well as Galahad goes in search of a goblet, which has been stolen from the king's table. The sick king, whom he finds lying on his couch, has been wounded while trying to mend a sword broken

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2

1 Mr. Gould, from whom these words are quoted, gives a drawing of this

emblem. Curious Myths, ii. 348.

2 Morte d'Arthure. Gould, ib. 340.

123

CHAP.

II.

BOOK

II.

Graduall refinement of the myth.

by his enemy Pertinax, and Perceval alone can make it sound, as Theseus only can recover the sword and sandals of his father Aigeus. The title of the Fisher-king suggests a comparison with that of Bhekî in the Hindu legend and the Frog-prince of the German story. The latter denotes the sun as it rests upon the water; and as Bhekî cannot reappear in her former beauty until the night is spent, so the Fisherking cannot regain his health until Pertinax has been slain. He is avenged by Perceval, who bears away the holy vessel and the bleeding lance as the reward of his prowess. An earlier heathen version of this story is found in the legend of Pheredur, in which the boat-shaped vessel appears with the head of a man swimming in blood-a form which carries us to the repulsive Maha Kali of later Hindu mythology.

In the myth of Erichthonios we have a crucial instance of a coarse and unseemly story produced by translating into the language of human life phrases which described most innocently and most vividly some phenomena of nature. In the myth of the Sangreal we see in the fullest degree the working of the opposite principle. For those who first sought to frame for themselves some idea of the great mystery of their existence, and who thought that they had found it in the visible media of reproduction, there was doubtless far less of a degrading influence in the cultus of the signs of the male and female powers and the exhibition of their symbols than we might be disposed to imagine. But that the developement of the idea might lead to the most wretched results, there could be no question. No degradation could well be greater than that of the throngs who hurried to the temples of the Babylonian Mylitta. But we have seen the myth, starting from its crude and undisguised forms, assume the more harmless shape of goblets or horns of plenty and fertility, of rings and crosses, of rods and spears, of mirrors and lamps. It has brought before us the mysterious ships endowed with the powers of thought and speech, beautiful cups in which the wearied sun sinks to rest, the staff of wealth and plenty with which Hermes guides the cattle of Helios across the blue pastures of heaven, the cup of Dêmêtêr into which the ripe fruit casts itself by

MYSTERIES.

125

II.

an irresistible impulse. We have seen the symbols assume CHAP. the character of talismanic tests, by which the refreshing draught is dashed from the lips of the guilty; and, finally, in the exquisite legend of the Sangreal the symbols have become a sacred thing, which only the pure in heart may see and touch. To Lancelot who tempts Guenevere to be faithless to Arthur, as Helen was unfaithful to Menelaos, it either remains invisible, or is seen only to leave him stretched senseless on the earth for his presumption. The myth which corrupted the worshippers of Tammuz in the Jewish temple has supplied the beautiful picture of unselfish devotion which sheds a marvellous glory on the career of the pure Sir Galahad.1

Semitic

mysteries.

No idea is, however, more prominent in most of the shapes Aryan and which the myths connected with the Linga and Yoni have assumed than that of a mysterious knowledge; nor has any feature in the ancient world attracted more attention than the great Mysteries in which a knowledge hidden from the profane was supposed to be imparted to the initiated. Is the knowledge to which the myths refer the sum and substance of the knowledge conveyed in the mysteries? That it has been and is so throughout India, no one probably will deny or dispute. The wailing of the Hebrew women at the death of Tammuz, the crucifixion and resurrection of Osiris, the adoration of the Babylonian Mylitta, the Sacti ministers of Hindu temples, the cross and crescent of Isis, the rites of the Jewish altar of Baal-Peor, wholly preclude all doubt of the real nature of the great festivals and mysteries of Phenicians, Jews, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hindus. Have we any reason for supposing that the case was essentially different in more western countries, and that the mysteries of

In the Arabian story the part of Sir Galahad is played by Allah-ud-deen, who is told by the magician that no one in the whole world but he can be permitted to touch or lift up the stone and go beneath it. The Eastern storytellers were not very careful about the consistency of their legends. The magician, it is true, singles out the boy for his simplicity and artlessness;' but the portrait drawn of the child at the outset of the tale is rather that of

Boots or Cinderella. The treasure is
a lamp in which burns a liquid which
is not oil; with the possession of it
are bound up wealth, happiness, and
splendour: it is, in short, the Sangreal.
The ring which the magician places on
his finger is the ring of Gyges. Plato,
Polit. 359. If it does not make himself
invisible, the visibility of the minister
of the ring depends upon the way in
which it is handled, this being in both
stories the same.

BOOK
II.

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the Hellenic tribes were not substantially identical with those of other Aryan and Semitic tribes? Bishop Thirlwall is contented to express a doubt whether the Greek mysteries were ever used for the exposition of theological doctrines differing from the popular creed.' Mr. Grote's conclusion is more definite. In his judgment it is to the last degree improbable that any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was attached to the mysteries, or contained in the holy stories' of any priesthood of the ancient world. If by this recondite teaching be meant doctrines relating to the nature of God and the Divine government of the world, their judgments may perhaps be in accordance with fact; but it can scarcely be denied that the thoughts aroused by the recognition of the difference between man and woman are among the most mysterious stirrings of the human heart, and that a philosophy which professed to reconcile the natural impulses of the worshippers with the sense of right and duty would carry with it a strange and almost irresistible fascination. The Corinthian Aphroditê had her Hierodouloi, the pure Gerairai ministered to the goddess of the Parthenon, and the altar of the Latin Vesta was tended by her chosen virgins. A system which could justify these inconsistencies in the eyes of the initiated, and lead them to discern different forms of the same sacrifice in the purity of the one and the abandonment of the other, might well be said to be based on a recondite, though not a wholesome, doctrine. Nor, indeed, is it supposed that the character of the Hellenic mysteries was less dramatic than those of Egypt or Hindustan. Every act of the great Eleusinian festival reproduced the incidents of the myth of Dêmêtêr, and the processions of Athênê and Dionysos exhibited precisely the same symbols which marked the worship of Vishnu and Sacti, of the Egyptian Isis and the Teutonic Hertha. The substantial identity of the rites justifies the inference of a substantial identity of doctrines.'

In den Eleusinischen Mysterien wurde ein Phallus entblösst und den Eingeweihten gezeigt (Tert. ad Valent. p. 289): und Demeter wird dadurch, dass Banbo ihre Kreis entblösst, zur Heiterkeit gestimmt. Clem. Al. Protr. p. 16; Arnob. adv. Gent. v. p. 218.

Dies lässt voraussetzen, dass desgleichen in den Eleusinien wirklich geschah, was mann also τὰ ἱερὰ δείκνυσθαι nanute. Vgl. Lobek. Aglaoph. p. 49.'- Nork, iv. 53. The form of dismissal at the Eleusinian mysteries, když μnat, has been identified by some with the

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.

II.

127 It is no accident which has given to Iswara Arghanautha, CHAP. the Hindu Dionysos, an epithet which makes him the lord of that divine ship which bore the Achaian warriors from the land of darkness to the land of the morning. The testimony of Theodoret, Arnobios, and Clement of Alexandria, that an emblem similar to the Yoni was worshipped in the mysteries of Eleusis needs no confirmation, when we remember that the same emblem was openly carried in procession at Athens. The vases in the Hamiltonian collection at the British Museum leave us as little in doubt that the purification of women in the Hellenic mysteries agreed closely with that of the Sacti in the mysteries of the Hindus. That ornaments in the shape of a vesica have been popular in all countries as preservatives against dangers, and especially from evil spirits, can as little be questioned as the fact that they still retain some measure of their ancient popularity in England, where horse-shoes are nailed to walls as a safeguard against unknown perils, where a shoe is thrown by way of good-luck after newly married couples, and where the villagers have not yet ceased to dance round the Maypole on the green.

tree and

It may be confidently said that the facts now stated Real furnish a clue which will explain all the phenomena of tree meaning of and serpent worship. The whole question is indeed one of serpent fact, and it is useless to build on hypothesis. If there is worship. any one point more certain than another, it is that, wherever tree and serpent worship has been found, the cultus of the Phallos and the Ship, of the Linga and the Yoni, in connection with the worship of the sun, has been found also. It is impossible to dispute the fact; and no explanation can be accepted for one part of the cultus which fails to explain the other. It is unnecessary, therefore, to analyse theories which profess to see in it the worship of the creeping brute or the wide-branched tree. A religion based on the worship of the venomous reptile must have been a religion of terror; in the earliest glimpses which we have of it, the serpent is a symbol of life and of love. Nor is the Phallic cultus in any respect a

'Cansha Om Pacsha,' with which the Brahmans close their religious services.Nork, i. vii.

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