Many unprejudiced scholars are now unwilling to admit the rulings of the Church Councils which determined what was orthodox and what heretical doctrines among the Gnostic-Christians, because many of their dogmatic decisions were based upon the unscholarlyRefutation of Irenaeusand upon other equally unreliable evidence. The data which have accumulated in the hands of scholars about early Christian thought and Gnosticism are now much more complete and trustworthy than the similar data were upon which the Council of Constantinople in 553 based its decision with respect to the doctrine of re-birth; and the truth coming to be recognized seems to be that the Gnostics rather than the Church Fathers, who adopted from them what doctrines they liked, condemning those they did not like, should henceforth be regarded as the first Christian theologians, and mystics. If this view of the very difficult and complex matter be accepted, then modern Christianity itself ought to be allowed to resume what thus appears to have been its original position—so long obscured by the well-meaning, but, nevertheless, ill-advised ecclesiastical councils—as the synthesizer of pagan religions and philosophies. Some such view has been accepted by many eminent Christian theologians since Origen: i. e. the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, openly advocated the re-birth doctrine in the seventeenth century; and in later times it has been preached from Christian pulpits by such men as Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks.
[370]See A. Bertrand,La Religion des Gaulois, les Druides et le Druidisme(Paris, 1897); H. Jennings,The Rosicrucians(London, 1887); the Work of Paracelsus; H. Cornelius Agrippa,De Occulta Philosophia(Paris, 1567); H. P. Blavatsky’sIsis Unveiled, and theSecret Doctrine(London, 1888); andHermetic Works, by Anna Kingsford and E. Maitland (London, 1885).
[371]Cf. Bergier,Purgatoire, inDict. de Théol., v. 409. A Celt, a professed faithful and fervent adherent of the Church of Rome, whom I met in the Morbihan where he now lives, told me that he believes thoroughly in the doctrine of re-birth, and that it is according to his opinion the proper and logical interpretation of the doctrine of Purgatory; and he added that there are priests in his Church who have told him that their personal interpretation of the purgatorial doctrine is the same. Thus some Roman Catholics do not deny the re-birth doctrine. And such conversations as this with Catholic Celts in Ireland and Brittany lead me to believe that to a larger extent than has been suspected the old Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth may have been one of the chief foundations for the modern Roman Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory, whose origin is not clearly indicated in any theological works. For us this probability is important as well as interesting, and especially so when we remember the profound influence which the Celtic St. Patrick’s Purgatory certainly exerted on the Church during the Middle Ages when the doctrine of Purgatory was taking definite shape (see ourchapter x).
[372]Barddas(Llandovery, 1862) is ‘a collection (by Iolo Morganwg, a Bard) of original documents, illustrative of the theology, wisdom, and usage of the Bardo-Druidic System of the Isle of Britain’. The original manuscripts are said to have been in the possession of Llywelyn Sion, a Bard of Glamorgan, about 1560.Barddasshows considerable Christian influence, yet in its essential teachings is sufficiently distinct. Though of late composition,Barddasseems to represent the traditional bardic doctrines as they had been handed down orally for an unknown period of time, it having been forbidden in earlier times to commit such doctrines to writing. We are well aware also of the adverse criticisms passed upon these documents; but since no one questions their Celtic origin—whether it be ancient or more modern—we are content to use them.
[373]Barddas, i, 189-91.
[374]Barddas, i, 177.
[375]Preface toBarddas, xlii.
[376]One of the greatest errors formerly made by European Sanskrit scholars and published broadcast throughout the West, so that now it is popularly accepted there as true, is that Nirvana, the goal of Indian philosophy and religion, means annihilation. It does mean annihilation (evolutionary transmutation of lower into higher), but only of all those forces or elements which constitute man as an animal. The error arose from interpreting exoterically instead of esoterically, and was a natural result of that system of western scholarship which sees and often cares only to examine external aspects. Native Indian scholars who have advised us in this difficult problem prefer to translateNirvanaas ‘Self-realization’, i. e. a state of supernormal consciousness (to be acquired through the evolution of the individual), as much superior to the normal human consciousness as the normal human consciousness is superior to the consciousness existing in the brute kingdom.
[377]De Bel. Gal., lib. vi. 14. 5; vi. 18. 1.
[378]Book V, 31. 4.
[379]De Situ Orbis, iii. c. 2: ‘One point alone of the Druids’ teaching has become generally known among the common people (in order that they should be braver in war), that souls are eternal and there is a second life among the shades.’
[380]i. 449-62.
[381]Lucan, i. 457-8; i. 458-62.
[382]Cf.Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 345, 347 ff.
[383]Folk-Lore, xii. 64, &c.; also cf. Eleanor Hull,The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature(London, 1898), Intro., p. 23, &c.
[384]What is probably the oldest form of a tale concerning Conchobhar’s birth makes Conchobhar ‘the son of a god who incarnated himself in the same way as did Lug and Etain’ (cf.Voy. of Bran, ii. 73).
[385]SeeLeabhar na h-Uidhre, 101b; andBook of Leinster, 123b:—‘Cúchulainn mc dea dechtiri.’
[386]We have already mentioned the belief that gods having their abode in the sun could leave it to assume bodies here on earth and become culture heroes and great teachers (see p.309).
[387]FromWooing of EmerinLeabhar na h-Uidhre; cf.Voy. of Bran, ii. 97.
[388]L’Épopée celt. en Irl., p. 11.
[389]Cf.Voy. of Bran, ii. p. 74 ff.
[390]In theLeabhar na h-Uidhre, 133a-134b; cf.Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 336-43; cf.Voy. of Bran, i. 49-52; cf. O’Curry,Manners and Customs, iii. 175.
[391]Cf. Stokes’s ed.Annals of Tigernach, Third Frag.inRev. Celt.xvii. 178. In the piece calledTucait baile Mongâinin theLeabhar na h-Uidhre, p. 134, col. 2, ‘Mongan is seen living with his wife the year of the death of Ciaran mac int Shair, and of Tuathal Mael-Garb, that is to say in 544,’ following theChronicum Scotorum, Hennessy’s ed., pp. 48-9. As D’Arbois de Jubainville adds, the Irish chronicles of this epoch are only approximate in their dates. Thus, while theFour Masters(i. 243) makes the death of Mongan A. D. 620, theAnnals of Ulstermakes itA. D.625, theChronicum ScotorumA. D. 625, theAnnals of Clonmacnoise,A. D.624, andEgerton MS.1782A. D.615 (cf.Voy. of Bran, i. 137-9).
[392]J. O’Donovan,Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters(Dublin, 1856), i. 121.
[393]Cf.Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 336-43; O’Curry,Manners and Customsiii. 175;L. U., 133a-134b; andVoy. of Bran, i. 52.
[394]Voy. of Bran, i. 44-5; fromThe Conception of Mongan.
[395]Meyer’s version,Voy. of Bran, i. 73-4.
[396]Cf.Voy. of Bran, i. 137.
[397]Voy. of Bran, i. 22-8, quatrains 48-59, &c.
[398]InL. U.; cf.Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 311-22; andVoy. of Bran, ii. 47-53.
[399]In the Irish conception of re-birth there is no change of sex: Lug is re-born as a boy, in Cuchulainn; Finn as Mongan; Etain as a girl. But it seems that Etain as a mortal had no consciousness of her previous divine existence, while Cuchulainn and Mongan knew their non-human origin and pre-existence.
[400]Some time after this, according to one part of the tale, Eochaid stormed Midir’s fairy palace—for the purpose localized in Ireland—and won Etain back, but the fairies cast a curse on his race for this, and Conaire, his grandson, fell a victim to it. Such a recovering of Etain by Eochaid may vaguely suggest a re-birth of Etain, through the power exerted by Eochaid, who, being a king, is to be regarded in his non-human nature as one of the Tuatha De Danann himself, like Midir his rival.
[401]Cf.The Gilla decair, inSilva Gadelica, pp. 300-3.
[402]Cf.Voy. of Bran, ii. 76 ff. The Christian scribe’s version fills up the space between Tuan’s death and re-birth by making him pass eighty years as a stag, twenty as a wild boar, one hundred as an eagle, and twenty as a salmon (ib., p. 79). In this particular example, the uninitiated scribe (evidently having failed to grasp an important aspect of the re-birth doctrine as this was esoterically explained in the Mysteries, namely, that between death and re-birth, while the conscious Ego is resident in the Otherworld, the physical atoms of the discarded human body may transmigrate through various plant and animal bodies) appears to set forth as Celtic an erroneous doctrine of the transmigration of the conscious Ego itself (see p.513 n.). In other texts, for example in the song which Amairgen (considered the Gaelic equivalent or even original of the Brythonic Taliessin) sang as he, with the conquering Sons of Mil, set foot on Ireland, there are similar transformations, attributed to certain heroes like Taliessin (see theMabinogion) and Tuan mac Cairill during their disembodied states after death and until re-birth. But these transformations seem to echo poetically, and often rationally, a very mystical Celtic pantheism, in which Man, regarded as having evolved upwards through all forms and conditions of existence, is at one with all creation:—
I am the wind which blows o’er the sea;I am the wave of the deep;I am the bull of seven battles;I am the eagle on the rock;I am a tear of the sun;I am the fairest of plants;I am a boar for courage;I am a salmon in the water;I am a lake in the plain;I am the world of knowledge;I am the head of the battle-dealing spear;I am the god who fashions fire in the head;Who spreads light in the gathering on the mountain?Who foretells the ages of the moon?Who teaches the spot where the sun rests?
And Amairgen also says:—‘I am,’ [Taliessin] ‘I have been’ (Book of Invasions; cf.Voy. of Bran, ii. 91-2; cf. Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., p. 549; cf. Skene,Four Ancient Books, i. 276 ff.).
In later times, especially among non-bardic poets, there has been a similar tendency to misinterpret this primitive mystical Celtic pantheism into the corrupt form of the re-birth doctrine, namely transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies. Dr. Douglas Hyde has sent to me the following evidence:—‘I have a poem, consisting of nearly one hundred stanzas, about a pig who ate an Irish manuscript, and who by eating it recovered human speech for twenty-four hours and gave his master an account of his previous embodiments. He had been a right-hand man of Cromwell, a weaver in France, a subject of the Grand Signor, &c. The poem might be about one hundred or one hundred and fifty years old.’ It is probable that the poet who composed this poem intended to add a touch of modern Irish humour by making use of the pig. We should, nevertheless, bear in mind that the pig (or, as is more commonly the rule, the wild boar) holds a very curious and prominent position in the ancient mythology of Ireland, and of Wales as well. It was regarded as a magical animal (cf. p.451 n.); and, apparently, was also a Druid symbol, whose meaning we have lost. Possibly the poet may have been aware of this. If so, he does not necessarily imply transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies; but is merely employing symbolism.
[403]SeeTaliessinin theMabinogion, and theBook of Taliessinin Skene’sFour Ancient Books, i. 523 ff.; cf. Nutt,Voy. of Bran, ii. 84, and Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 548, 551.
[404]Cf. Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 548-50.
[405]Cf. Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., p. 259; andArth. Leg., p. 252.
[406]Loth,Les Mabinogion, Kulhwch et Olwen, p. 187 n.
[407]Le Morte D’Arthur, Book XXI, c. vii.
[408]See works on Egyptian mythology and religion, by Maspero; also Lenormant,Chaldean Magic, p. 84, &c.
[409]F. L. Griffith,Stories of the High-priests of Memphis(Oxford, 1900), c. iii. The text of this story is written on the back of two Greek documents, bearing the date of the seventh year of the Emperor Claudius (A. D.46-7), not before published.
[410]It is interesting to compare with this episode the episodes of how the magic of St. Patrick prevailed over the magic of the Druids when the old and the new religions met in warfare on the Hill of Tara, in the presence of the high king of Ireland and his court.
[411]E. A. Wallis Budge,The Gods of the Egyptians(London, 1904), p. 3.
[412]Prescott,Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru.
[413]W. Crooke,The Legends of Krishna, inFolk-Lore, xi. 2-3 ff.
[414]Laws of Manu, vii. 8, trans, by G. Bühler.
[415]A. B. Cook,European Sky-God, inFolk-Lore, xv. 301-4.
[416]Cf. Lucian,Somn., 17, &c. See Tylor,Prim. Cult.,4ii. 13; also Tertullian,De Anima, c. xxviii, where Pythagoras is described as having previously been Aethalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus.
[417]Cf. Huc,Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet, i. 279 ff.
[418]The doctrine of kingly rule by divine right was substituted after the conversion of the Roman Empire for the very ancient belief that the emperor was a god incarnate (not necessarily reincarnate); and the same christianized aspect of a pre-Christian doctrine stands behind the English kingship at the present day.
[419]A curious parallel to this Irish doctrine that through re-birth one suffers for the sins committed in a previous earth-life is found in the Christian scriptures, where in asking Jesus about a man born blind, ‘Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?’ the disciple exhibits what must have been a popular Jewish belief in re-birth quite like the Celtic one. See St. John ix. 1-2. Though the Rabbis admitted the possibility of ante-natal sin in thought, this passage seems to point unmistakably to a Jewish re-birth doctrine.
[420]It is interesting to note in connexion with these two complementary ideas what has been written by Mr. Standish O’Grady concerning strange phenomena witnessed at the time of Charles Parnell’s funeral:—‘While his followers were committing Charles Parnell’s remains to the earth, the sky was bright with strange lights and flames. Only a coincidence possibly; and yet persons not superstitious have maintained that there is some mysterious sympathy between the human soul and the elements.... Those strange flames recalled to my memory what is told of similar phenomena said to have been witnessed when tidings of the death of the great Christian Saint, Columba, overran the north-west of Europe, as perhaps truer than I had imagined.’—Ireland: Her Story, pp. 211-12.
[421]Cf. M. Lenihan,Limerick; its History and Antiquities(Dublin, 1866), p. 725.
[422]I take this to mean, somewhat as in the similar case of Dechtire, the mother of Cuchulainn (see p.369, above), that the kind of soul or character which will be reincarnated in the child is determined by the psychic prenatal conditions which a mother consciously or unconsciously may set up. If this interpretation, as it seems to be, is correct, we have in this Welsh belief a surprising comprehension of scientific laws on the part of the ancient Welsh Druids—from whom the doctrine comes—which equals, and surpasses in its subtlety, the latest discoveries of our own psychological embryology, criminology, and so-called laws of heredity.
[423]The reader is referred to the Rev. T. M. Morgan’s latest publication,The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Newchurch, Carmarthenshire(Carmarthen, 1910), pp. 155-6.
[424]I found, however, that the original re-birth doctrine has been either misinterpreted or else corrupted—after Dr. Tylor’s theory—into transmigration into animal bodies among certain Cornish miners in the St. Just region.
[425]The primitive character of the Incarnation doctrine is clear: Origen, in refuting a Jewish accusation against Christians, apparently the natural outgrowth of deep-seated hatred and religious prejudice on the part of the Jews, that Jesus Christ was born through the adultery of the Virgin with a certain soldier named Panthera, argues ‘that every soul, for certain mysterious reasons (I speak now according to the opinions of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus frequently names), is introduced into a body, and introduced according to its deserts and former actions’. And, according to Origen’s argument, to assign to Jesus Christ a birth more disgraceful than any other is absurd, because ‘He who sends souls down into the bodies of men’ would not have thus ‘degraded Him who was to dare such mighty acts, and to teach so many men, and to reform so many from the mass of wickedness in the world’. And Origen adds:—‘It is probable, therefore, that this soul also which conferred more benefit by its residence in the flesh than that of many men (to avoid prejudice, I do not say “all”), stood in need of a body not only superior to others, but invested with all excellence’ (Origen against Celsus, Book I, c. xxxii).
It is interesting to compare with Origen’s theology the following passage from thePistis Sophia, wherein Jesus in the alleged esoteric discourse to his disciples refers to the pre-existence of their souls:—‘I took them from the hands of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light, according to the command of the first mystery. These powers, therefore, I cast into the wombs of your mothers, when I came into the world, and they are those which are in your bodies this day’ (Pistis Sophia, i. II, Mead’s translation).
[426]Cf. Nutt,Voy. of Bran, ii. 27 ff., 45 ff., 54 ff., 98-102.
[427]Cf. ib., p. 105.
[428]In this chapter, largely the result of my own special research and observations in Celtic archaeology, I wish to acknowledge the very valuable suggestions offered to me by Professor J. Loth, both in his lectures and personally.
[429]See David MacRitchie,Fians, Fairies, and Picts; also hisTestimony of Tradition.
[430]Myers, in theSurvival of the Human Personality(ii. 55-6), shows that ‘the departed spirit, long after death, seems pre-occupied with the spot where his bones are laid’. Among contemporary uncultured races there exists a theory parallel to this one arrived at through careful scientific research, namely, that ghosts haunt graves and monuments connected with the dead: according to the Australian Arunta the ‘double’ hovers near its body until the body is reduced to dust, the spirit or soul of the deceased having separated from this ‘double’ or ghost at the time of death or soon afterwards (Spenser and Gillen,Nat. Tribes of Cent. Aust.).
[431]SeeLes Grottes, t. i;Les Menhirs, Les Dolmens, Les Tumulus, andCultes et observances mégalithiques, t. iv.
[432]On April 17, 1909, at Carnac, in a natural fissure in the body of the finest menhir at the head of the Alignement of Kermario, I found quite by chance, while making a very careful examination of the geological structure of the menhir, a Roman Catholic coin (or medal) of St. Peter. The place in the menhir where this coin was discovered is on the south side about fifteen inches above the surface of the ground. The menhir is very tall and smoothly rounded, and there is no possible way for the coin to have fallen into the fissure by accident. Nor is there any probability that the coin was placed there without a serious purpose; and it is an object such as only an adult would possess. An examination of the link remaining on the coin, which no doubt formerly connected it with a necklace or string of prayer-beads, shows that it has been purposely opened so as to free it at the time it was deposited in the stone. Had the coin been accidentally torn away from a chain or string of prayer-beads the link would have presented a different sort of opening. But it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that by any sort of chance the coin could have reached the place where I found it. I showed the coin to M. Z. Le Rouzic, of the Carnac Museum, and he considers it, as I do, as evidence or proof of a cult rendered to stones here in Brittany. The coin must have been secretly placed in the menhir by some pious peasant as a directex votofor some favour received or demanded. The coin is somewhat discoloured, and has probably been some years in the stone, though it cannot be very old. And the offering of a coin to the spirit residing in a menhir is parallel to throwing coins, pins, or other objects into sacred fountains, which, as we know, is an undisputed practice.
[433]Cf. A. C. Kruijt,Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel; quoted in Crawley’sIdea of the Soul, p. 133.
[434]Cf. Weidemann,Ancient Egyptian Doct. Immortality, p. 21.
[435]Cf. Mahé,Essai.
[436]Tylor,Prim. Cult.,4ii. 143 ff., 169, 172.
[437]Marett,The Threshold of Religion, c. i.
[438]Mahé,Essai, p. 230.
[439]A famous controversy exists as to whether the Coronation Stone now in Westminster Abbey is theLia Fáil, or whether the pillar-stone still at Tara is theLia Fáil. See article by E. S. Hartland inFolk-Lore, xiv. 28-60.
[440]These ‘idols’ probably were not true images, but simply unshaped stone pillars planted on end in the earth; and ought, therefore, more properly to be designated fetishes.
[441]Stokes, inRev. Celt., i. 260; Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 200-1.
[442]Very much first-class evidence suggests that the menhir was regarded by the primitive Celts both as an abode of a god or as a seat of divine power, and as a phallic symbol (cf. Jubainville,Le culte des menhirs dans le monde celtique, inRev. Celt., xxvii. 313). As a phallic symbol, the menhir must have been inseparably related to a Celtic sun-cult; because among all ancient peoples where phallic worship has prevailed, the sun has been venerated as the supreme masculine force in external nature from which all life proceeds, while the phallus has been venerated as the corresponding force in human nature.
[443]Silva Gadelica, ii. 137.
[444]Professor J. Loth says:—‘Étymologiquement, le mot est composé deCROM,courbe, arque, formant creux, convexe, et deLLECH,pierre plate’ (Rev. Celt., xv. 223,Dolmen,Leach-Derch,Peulvan,Menhir,Cromlech). In Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland, instead of the peculiarly Breton worddolmen(composed ofdol[fortol == tavl], meaningtable, and ofmen[Middle Bretonmaen], meaningstone) the wordcromlechis used.Cromlechis the Welsh equivalent for the Bretondolmen, but Breton archaeologists usecromlechto describe a circle formed by menhirs.
[445]Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 193-4.
[446]Ib., p. 192; from Sans-Marte’s edition, pp. 108-9, 361.
[447]Ib., p. 193.
[448]Ib., pp. 194-5; cf.Bibliothecaof Diodorus Siculus, ii. c. 47.
[449]Edith F. Carey,Channel Island Folklore(Guernsey, 1909).
[450]Mahé,Essai, p. 198.
[451]Mahé,Essai, pp. 287-9.
[452]The place for holding agorseddfor modern Welsh initiations, under the authority of which the Eisteddfod is conducted, must also be within a circle of stones, ‘face to face with the sun and the eye of light, as there is no power to hold agorseddunder cover or at night, but only where and as long as the sun is visible in the heavens’ (Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 208-9; fromIoloMSS., p. 50).
[453]Recently before the Oxford Anthropological Society, Dr. Murray argued that the satyrs of Greek drama may originally have been masked initiators in Greek initiations. (Cf.The Oxford Magazine, February 3, 1910, p. 173.)
[454]Edith F. Carey, op. cit.
[455]Mahé,Essai, pp. 126-9.
[456]Mahé,Essai, pp. 126-9.
[457]Rhŷs,Arth. Leg., p. 339.
[458]Edith F. Carey, op. cit.
[459]Montelius’Les Temps préhistoriques en Suède, par S. Reinach, p. 126. (Paris, 1895).
[460]H. Schliemann,Mycenae(London, 1878), p. 213.
[461]Walhouse, inJourn. Anthrop. Inst., vii. 21. These Dravidians are slightly taller than the pure Negritos, their probable ancestors; and Indian tradition considers them to be the builders of the Indian dolmens, just as Celtic tradition considers fairies andcorrigans(often described as dark or even black-skinned dwarfs) to be the builders of dolmens and megaliths among the Celts. Apparently, in such folk-traditions, which correctly or incorrectly regard fairies,corrigans, or Dravidians as the builders of ancient stone monuments, there has been preserved a folk-memory of early races of men who may have been Negritos (pygmy blacks). These races, through a natural anthropomorphic process, came to be identified with the spirits of the dead and with other spiritual beings to whom the monuments were dedicated and at which they were worshipped. Here, again, the Pygmy Theory is seen at its true relative value: it is subordinate to the fundamental animism of the Fairy-Faith.
[462]J. Déchelette,Manuel d’Archéologie préhistorique(Paris, 1908), i. 468, 302, 308, 311, 576, 610, &c.
[463]This famous chambered tumulus ‘measures nearly 700 feet in circumference, or about 225 feet in diameter, and between 40 and 50 feet in height’ (G. Coffey, inRl. Ir. Acad. Trans.[Dublin, 1892], xxx. 68).
[464]G. Coffey, inRl. Ir. Acad. Trans., xxx. 73-92.
[465]Fol. 190 b; trans. O’Curry,Lectures, p. 505.
[466]Mr. Coffey quotes from theSenchus-na-Relec, inL. U., this significant passage:—‘The nobles of the Tuatha De Danann were used to bury at Brugh (i. e. the Dagda with his three sons; also Lugaidh, and Oe, and Ollam, and Ogma, and Etan the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of Etan)’ (G. Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 77). The manuscript, however, being late and directly under Christian influence, echoes but imperfectly very ancient Celtic tradition: the immortal god-race are therein rationalized by the transcribers, and made subject to death.
[467]W. C. Borlase,Dolmens of Ireland(London, 1897), ii. 346 n.
[468]As translated in theSilva Gadelica, ii. 109-11.
[469]Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.
[470]Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.
[471]Ib., ii. 347 n.
[472]A good example of a saint’s stone bed can be seen now at Glendalough, the stone bed of St. Kevin, high above a rocky shore of the lake.
[473]Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS., by Michael O’Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and translated by Douglas Hyde.
[474]Coffey, op. cit., xxv. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS. by Michael O’Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and trans. by Douglas Hyde.
[475]Borlase, op. cit., ii. 347 n.
[476]O’Donovan,Four Masters, i. 22 n.
[477]Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 148-50.
[478]Cf. O’Curry,Manners and Customs, ii. 122; iii. 5, 74, 122; Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., pp. 150, 150 n.; Jubainville,Essai d’un Catalogue, p. 244.
[479]Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., p. 194.
[480]Math ab Mathonwy’s Irish counterpart is Math mac Umóir, the magician (Book of Leinster, f. 9b; cf. Rhŷs,Trans. Third Inter. Cong. Hist. Religions, Oxford, 1908, ii. 211).
[481]Rhŷs, ib., pp. 225-6; cf. R. B.Mabinogion, p. 60;Triads, i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90. A fortified hill-top now known as Pen y Gaer, or ‘Hill of the Fortress’, on the western side of the Conway, on a mountain within sight of the railway station of Tal y Cafn, Carnarvonshire, is regarded by Sir John Rhŷs as the site of a long-forgotten cult of Math the Ancient. (Rhŷs, ib., p. 225).
[482]This stone basin, now in the centre of the inner chamber, seems originally to have stood in the east recess, the largest and most richly inscribed. It is 4 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches across, and 1 foot thick. (Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 14, 21).
[483]Cf. W. M. Flinders Petrie,The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh(London, 1883), p. 201.
[484]All of the chief megaliths of this type, together with the chief alignements, which I have personally inspected—with the aid of a compass—in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, are definitely aligned east and west. It cannot be said, however, thatallmegalithic monuments throughout Celtic countries show definite orientation (see Déchelette’sManuel d’Archéologie).
[485]L. P. McCarty,The Great Pyramid Jeezeh(San Francisco, 1907), p. 402.
[486]Jubainville,Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 28.
[487]Maspero,Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne,3p. 74 n.
[488]Tylor,Prim. Cult.,4ii. 426.
[489]W. H. Prescott,Conquest of Peru, i, c. 3.
[490]Rochefort,Iles Antilles, p. 365; cf. Tylor,P. C.,4ii. 424.
[491]Colebrooke,Essays, vols. i, iv, v; cf. Tylor,P. C.,4425.
[492]Illus. Hist. and Pract. of Thugs(London, 1837), p. 46; cf. Tylor,P. C.,4ii. 425.
[493]Augustin,de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii. 5; cf. Tylor,P. C.,4ii. 427-8.
[494]Ezek. viii. 16. The popular opinion that Christians face the east in prayer, or have altars eastward because Jerusalem is eastward, does not fit in with facts.
[495]Cf. Lenormant,Chaldean Magic, p. 88; also Tylor,Prim. Cult.,4ii. 48-9.
[496]Though not a Mason, the writer draws his knowledge from Masons of the highest rank, and from published works by Masons like Mr. Carty’sThe Great Pyramid Jeezeh.
[497]Cf. Borlase,Dolmens of Ireland, ii. 347 n.
[498]C. Piazzi Smyth,Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid(London, 1890).
[499]Flinders Petrie,The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, pp. 169, 222.
[500]C. Piazzi Smyth, op. cit.
[501]In 1770, when New Grange apparently was not covered with a growth of trees as now, Governor Pownall visited it and described it as like a pyramid in general outline: ‘The pyramid in its present state’ is ‘but a ruin of what it was’ (Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 13).
[502]Le Dr. G. de C.,Locmariaquer et Gavr’inis(Vannes, 1876), p. 18.
[503]According to Le Dr. G. de C., op. cit., p. 18.
[504]Mr. Coffey says of similar details in Irish tumuli:—‘In the construction of such chambers it is usual to find a sort of sill or low stone placed across the entrance into the main chamber, and at the openings into the smaller chambers or recesses; such stones also occur laid at intervals across the bottom of the passages. This forms a marked feature in the construction at Dowth, and in the cairns on the Loughcrew Hills, but is wholly absent at New Grange’ (op. cit., xxx. 15). New Grange, however, has suffered more or less from vandalism, and originally may have contained similar stone sills.
[505]Flinders Petrie,The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 216.
[506]Maspero, op. cit., p. 69 n., &c. The world-wide anthropomorphic tendency to construct tombs for the gods and for the dead after the plan of earthly dwellings is as evident in the excavations at Mycenae as in ancient Egypt and in Celtic lands.
[507]Cf. Bruns,Canones apostolorum et conciliorum saeculorum, ii. 133.
[508]Cf. F. Maassen,Concilia aevi merovingici, p. 133.
[509]Cf. Boretius,Capitularia regum Francorum, i. 59; for each of the above references cf. Jubainville,Le culte des menhirs dans le monde celtique, inRev. Celt., xxvii. 317.
[510]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 427.
[511]See Villemarquésur Bretagne.
[512]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 326; quoted fromDe Glor. Conf., c. 2.
[513]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 326; quoted fromDe Glor. Conf., c. 2.
[514]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 326; quoted fromGoth., lib. ii.
[515]A. W. Moore, inFolk-Lore, v. 212-29.
[516]Cf. Rhŷs,Arthurian Legend, p. 247.
[517]Borlase,Dolmens of Ireland, iii. 729.
[518]Stokes,Tripartite Life of Patrick, pp. 99-101.
[519]Ib., text, pp. 123, 323, and Intro., p. 159.
[520]Book II, 69-70; see our study, p.267.
[521]RennesDinnshenchas, Stokes’s trans. inRev. Celt., xv. 457.
[522]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 323.
[523]The Celts may have viewed the mistletoe on the sacred oak as the seat of the tree’s life, because in the winter sleep of the leafless oak the mistletoe still maintains its own foliage and fruit, and like the heart of a sleeper continues pulsing with vitality. The mistletoe thus being regarded as the heart-centre of the divine spirit in the oak-tree was cut with a golden sickle by the arch-druid clad in pure white robes, amid great religious solemnity, and became a vicarious sacrifice or atonement for the worshippers of the tree god. (Cf. Frazer,G. B.,2iii. 447 ff.)
[524]Pliny,Nat. Hist., xvi. 95; cf. Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., p. 218.
[525]Dissert., viii; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219.
[526]Meineke’s ed., xii. 5, 1; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219. The oak-tree is pre-eminently the holy tree of Europe. Not only Celts, but Slavs, worshipped amid its groves. To the Germans it was their chief god; the ancient Italians honoured it above all other trees; the original image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been a natural oak-tree. So at Dodona, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in a sacred oak. Cf. Frazer,G. B.,2iii. 346 ff.
[527]Cf. Mahé,Essai, pp. 333-4; quotation fromHist. du Maine, i. 17.
[528]Cf. Mahé,Essai, p. 334; quoted fromLib.VII,indict.i,epist.5.
[529]Stokes,Tripartite Life, p. 409.
[530]Cf. Wood-Martin,Traces of the Older Faiths in Ireland, i. 305.
[531]W. Gregor,Notes on Beltene Cakes, inFolk-Lore, vi. 5.
[532]Temple,Legends of the Panjab, inFolk-Lore, x. 406.
[533]Lefèvre,Le Culte des Morts chez les Latins, inRev. Trad. Pop., ix. 195-209.
[534]SeeFolk-Lore, vi. 192.
[535]The term ‘People of Peace’ seems, however, to have originated from confoundingsid, ‘fairy abode,’ andsíd, ‘peace.’
[536]Cf.Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 102.
[537]The crocodile as the mystic symbol of Sîtou provides one key to unlock the mysteries of what eminent Egyptologists have erroneously called animal worship, erroneously because they have interpreted literally what can only be interpreted symbolically. The crocodile is called the ‘son of Sîtou’ in thePapyrus magique, Harris, pl. vi, ll. 8-9 (cf. Maspero,Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne,[539]Intro., p. 56); and as the waters seem to swallow the sun as it sinks below the horizon, so the crocodile, as Sîtou representing the waters, swallows the Children of Osiris, as the Egyptians called themselves. On the other hand, Osiris is typified by the white bull, in many nations the sun emblem, white being the emblem of purity and light, while the powers of the bull represent the masculinity of the sun, which impregnates all nature, always thought of as feminine, with life germs.
[538]Cf. Maspero, op. cit., Intro., p. 49.
[539]Cf. Borlase,Dolmens of Ireland, iii. 854.
[540]Cf. Lefèvre,Rev. Trad. Pop., ix. 195-209.
[541]J. G. Campbell collected in Scotland two versions of a parallel episode, but concerning Loch Lurgan. In both versions the flight begins by Fionn’s foster-mother carrying Fionn, and in both, when she is tired, Fionn carries her and runs so fast that when the loch is reached only her shanks are left. These he throws out on the loch, and hence its name Loch Lurgan, ‘Lake of the Shanks.’ (The Fians, pp. 18-19).
[542]During the seventeenth century, the English government, acting through its Dublin representatives, ordered this original Cave or Purgatory to be demolished; and with the temporary suppression of the ceremonies which resulted and the consequent abandonment of the island, the Cave, which may have been filled up, has been lost.
[543]Thomas Wright,St. Patrick’s Purgatory(London, 1844), pp. 67-8.
[544]Wright, op. cit., p. 69.
[545]In the face of all the legends told of pilgrims who have been in Patrick’s Purgatory, it seems that either through religious frenzy like that produced in Protestant revivals, or else through some strange influence due to the cave itself after the preliminary disciplines, some of the pilgrims have had most unusual psychic experiences. Those who have experienced fasting and a rigorous life for a prescribed period affirm that there results a changed condition, physical, mental, and spiritual, so that it is very probable that the Christian pilgrims to the Purgatory, like the pagan pilgrims who ‘fasted on’ the Tuatha De Danann in New Grange, were in good condition to receive impressions of a psychical nature such as the Society for Psychical Research is beginning to believe are by no means rare to people susceptible to them. Neophytes seeking initiation among the ancients had to undergo even more rigorous preparations than these; for they were expected while entranced to leave their physical bodies and in reality enter the purgatorial state, as we shall presently have occasion to point out.
[546]Wright,St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 62 ff.
[547]L. R. Farnell,Cults of the Greek States(Oxford, 1907), iii. 126-98, &c.
[548]Cf. Athenaeus, 614 A; Aristoph.,Nubes, 508; and Harper’sDict. Class. Lit. and Antiq., p. 1615.
[549]Cf. O. Seyffert,Dict. Class. Antiquities, trans. (London, 1895),Mithras.
[550]Brasseur,Mexique, iii. 20, &c.; Tylor,P. C.,4ii. 45.
[551]Cf. Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies(New York, 1908), p. 38, andpassim.
[552]In the ancient Greek world the annual celebration of the Mysteries drew great concourses of people from all regions round the Mediterranean; to the modern Breton world the chief religious Pardons are annual events of such supreme importance that, after preparing plenty of food for the pilgrimage, the whole family of a pious peasant of Lower Brittany will desert farm and work dressed in their beautiful and best costumes for one of these Pardons, the most picturesque, the most inspiring, and the highest folk-festivals still preserved by the Roman Church; while to Roman Catholics in all countries a pilgrimage to Lough Derg is the sacred event of a lifetime.
In the Breton Pardons, as in the purgatorial rites, we seem to see the survivals of very ancient Celtic Mysteries strikingly like the Mysteries of Eleusis. The greatest of the Pardons, the Pardon of St. Anne d’Auray, will serve as a basis for comparison; and while in some respects it has had a recent and definitely historical origin (or revival), this origin seems on the evidence of archaeology to have been a restoration, an expansion, and chiefly a Christianization of prehistoric rites then already partly fallen into decay. Such rites remained latent in the folk-memory, and were originally celebrated in honour of the sacred fountain, and probably also of Isis and the child, whose terra-cotta image was ploughed up in a neighbouring field by the famous peasant Nicolas, and naturally regarded by him and all who saw it as of St. Anne and the Holy Child. Thus, in the Pardon of St. Anne d’Auray, which extends over three days, there is a torch-light procession at night under ecclesiastical sanction; as in the Ceres Mysteries, wherein the neophytes with torches kindled sought all night long for Proserpine. There are purification rites, not especially under ecclesiastical sanction, at the holy fountain now dedicated to St. Anne, like the purification rites of the Eleusinian worshippers at the sea-shore and their visit to a holy well. There are mystery plays, recently instituted, as in Greek initiation ceremonies; sacred processions, led by priests, bearing the image of St. Anne and other images, comparable to Greek sacred processions in which the god Iacchos was borne on the way to Eleusis. The all-night services in the dimly-lighted church of St. Anne, with the special masses in honour of the Christian saints and for the dead, are parallel to the midnight ceremonies of the Greeks in their caves of initiation and to the libations to the gods and to the spirits of the departed at Greek initiations. Finally, in the Greek mysteries there seems to have been some sort of expository sermon or exhortation to the assembled neophytes quite comparable to the special appeal made to the faithful Catholics assembled in the magnificent church of St. Anne d’Auray by the bishops and high ecclesiastics of Brittany. (For these Classical parallels compare Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, iii,passim.)
[553]Cf. Rhŷs,Hib. Lect., p. 411, &c.
[554]O’Curry,Lectures, pp. 586-7.
[555]There is this very significant legend on record about the Cave of Cruachan:—‘Magh Mucrime, now, pigs of magic came out of the cave of Cruachain, and that is Ireland’s gate of Hell.’ And ‘Out of it, also, came the Red Birds that withered up everything in Erin that their breath would touch, till the Ulstermen slew them with their slings.’ (B. of Leinster, p. 288a; Stokes’s trans., inRev. Celt., xiii. 449; cf.Silva Gadelica, ii. 353.)
[556]Forbes,Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern(Edinburgh, 1874), pp. 285, 345.
[557]Cf. Wright,St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 81-2.
[558]Cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 24; also Bergier,Dict. de Théol., v. 405.
[559]Cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 32. But there is some disagreement in this matter of dates: Petrus Damianus,Vita S. Odilonis, in the BollandistActa Sanctorum, January 1, records a legend of how the Abbot Odilon decreed that November 2, the day after All Saints’ Day, should be set apart for services for the departed (cf. Tylor,Prim. Cult.,4ii. 37 n.).
[560]Cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 1 n.
[561]Part II, sec. 4; c. 4, par. 8; cf. Bergier,Dict. de Théol., iv. 322.
[562]P. 11a, l. 19; in Stokes’sTripartite Life, Intro., p. 194.
[563]Enchiridion, chap. cx;Testament of St. Ephrem(ed. Vatican), ii. 230, 236; Euseb.,de Vita Constant., liv. iv, c. lx. 556, c. lxx. 562; cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 30-1.
[564]St. Ambroise,de Obitu Theodosii, ii. 1197; cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 31 n.
[565]Cf. Godescard,Vies des Saints, xi. 31-2.
[566]I am indebted to Mr. William McDougall, M.A., Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford, for having read through and criticized the first draft of this section; and while he is in no way responsible for the views set forth herein, nevertheless his suggestions for the improvement of their scientific framework have been of very great value. I must also express my obligation to him for having suggested through his Oxford lectures a good share of the important material interwoven intochapter xiitouching the vitalistic view of evolution.
[567]Cf. C. Du Prel,Philosophy of Mysticism(London, 1889), i. 7, 11.
[568]T. Ribot,The Diseases of Personality; cf. J. L. Nevius,Demon Possession(London, 1897), pp. 234-5.
[569]Proc. S. P. R.(London), v. 167; cf. A. Lang,Making of Religion, p. 64.
[570]W. James,Confidences of a ‘Psychical Researcher’, inAmerican Magazine(October 1909).
[571]A. Lang,Cock Lane and Common Sense(London, 1896), p. 35.
[572]According to Professor Freud, the well-known neurologist of Vienna, external stimuli are not admitted to the dream-consciousness in the same manner that they would be admitted to the waking-consciousness, but they are disguised and altered in particular ways (cf. S. Freud,Die Traumdeutung, 2nd ed., Vienna, 1909; and S. Ferenczi,The Psychological Analysis of Dreams, inAmer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 318, &c.).
[573]Du Prel, op. cit., i. 135.
[574]G. F. Stout,Mr. F. W. Myers on ‘Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death’, inHibbert Journal, ii, No. 1 (London, October 1903), p. 56.
[575]F. W. H. Myers,Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death(London, 1903), i. 131.
[576]R. L. Stevenson,Across the Plains, chapter on Dreams.
[577]Stout, op. cit., p. 54.
[578]Freud, op. cit.; Ferenczi, op. cit.; E. Jones,Freud’s Theory of Dreams, inAmer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 283-308.