Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/299

Rh representative of domestic and social order Like her in name and origin, but not altogether in development, is Vesta with her ancient Roman cultus, and her retinue of virgins to keep up her pure eternal fire in her temple, needing no image, for she herself dwelt within: —

'Esse diu stultus Vestæ simulacra putavi: Mox didici curvo nulla subesse tholo. Ignis inextinctus templo celatur in illo. Effigiem nullam Vesta nec ignis habet.'

The last lingering relics of fire-worship in Europe reach us, as usual, both through Turanian and Aryan channels of folklore. The Esthonian bride consecrates her new hearth and home by an offering of money cast into the fire, or laid on the oven for Tule-ema, Fire-mother. The Carinthian peasant will 'fodder' the fire to make it kindly, and throw lard or dripping to it, that it may not burn his house. To the Bohemian it is a godless thing to spit into the fire, 'God's fire' as he calls it. It is not right to throw away the crumbs after a meal, for they belong to the fire. Of every kind of dish some should be given to the fire, and if some runs over it is wrong to scold, for it belongs to the fire. It is because these rites are now so neglected that harmful fires so often break out.

What the Sea is to Water-worship, in some measure the Sun is to Fire-worship. From the doctrines and rites of earthly fire, various and ambiguous in character, generalized from many phenomena, applied to many purposes, we pass to the religion of heavenly fire, whose great deity has a perfect definiteness from his embodiment in one great individual fetish, the Sun.

Rivalling in power and glory the all-encompassing Heaven, the Sun moves eminent among the deities of nature, no mere cosmic globe affecting distant material worlds by force