Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/234

226 in Greece a sacred marriage was celebrated between Pan, as a tree-spirit, and Selene, as a goddess influencing the growth of vegetation ; and in this rite the person who represented Pan played the part in the dress appropriate to a goat-god. That Selene did figure in Greece in a sacred marriage is proved by Proclus ad Hes., O. et D., 780 : the Athenians united Selene and Helios in such a marriage. In Athens this "theogamy" took place at the time of the new moon, and the new moon is regarded by the folk as a good time for marrying, in many places (e.g. the Highlands, Kirkmichael, Statistical Account of Scotland, xii, 457). Again, that such ceremonies took a dramatic form in Greece appears from Euseb., ''Praep. Ev''., iii, xii, 3, where it is stated that in the mysteries at Eleusis one celebrant got into the image of Helios and another into that of Selene. If the myth of Pan and Selene may be explained from ritual, then the myths of two moon-heroines, Europa and Pasiphaë, may be explained in the same way. The kernel of both myths is the union of the moon-spirit (in human shape) with a bull. Both myths, then, have to do with a sacred marriage ; the only question is, what spirit was represented in the rite as a bull ? On the one hand we know both that Selene was united at Athens to Helios, and that the victim offered to (and therefore representative of) Helios was a bull. On the other hand, Selene marries Pan, a spirit of vegetation ; and such spirits frequently manifest themselves as bull, cow, or ox. Of course, if Zeus turns out to be the spirit of the oak-tree, as Mr. Frazer wishes, the question would be settled as regards Europa. Meanwhile, it seems probable that the sacred marriage was in both cases between the Moon-spirit and the Sun-spirit. Perhaps I may add that the Moon-spirit not unfrequently appeared to primitive man in the shape of a cow, and the Sun-spirit in human shape. The sacred marriages in which both spirits were human, or both oxen,