Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/395

Rh CHAP, 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 cultus of the full-grown and branching tree. In its earliest form the symbol is everywhere a mere stauros, or pole ; and although this stock or rod budded in the shape of the thyrsos and the shepherd's staff, yet even in its latest developements the worship is confined to small bushes and shrubs and diminutive plants of a particular kind. Nor is it possible again to dispute the fact, that every nation at some stage or other of its history has attached to this cultus precisely that meaning which the Brahman now attaches to the Linga and the Yoni. That the Jews clung to it in this special sense with vehement tenacity is the bitter complaint of the prophets ; and the crucified serpent, adored for its healing powers, stood untouched in the temple until it was removed and destroyed by Hezekiah. This worship of serpents "void of reason," condemned in the Wisdom of Solomon, probably survived even the Babylonish captivity. Certainly it was adopted by the Christians who were known as Ophites, Gnostics, and Nicolaitans. In Athenian mythology the serpent and the tree are singularly promi- nent. Kekrops, Erechtheus, and Erichthonios, are each and all serpentine in the lower portion of their bodies. The sacred snake of Athene had its abode in the Akropolis, and her olive-tree secured for her the victory in her rivalry with Poseidon. The health-giving serpent lay at the feet of Asklepios, and snakes were fed in his temple at Epidauros and elsewhere.^ That the ideas of mere terror and death, suggested by the venomous or the crushing reptile, could never have given way thus completely before those of life, healing, and safety, is obvious enough ; and the latter ideas alone are associated with the

• It is, in fact, the healer, under the was practically identical with that of many names, lason, lasion, &c., which the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis. The bear the equivocal meaning of saving or epithet Sabazios, which, like the words destroying life, as they are referred to Adonai and Melkarth, was imported i6s, poison, or lionai, to heal. It is the into Greek mythology, is applied not means by which the waste caused by less to Dionysos than to Zeus; but the death is repaired. " Daher die Phallus- stories told of this deity remained vague schlange, auch die Heilschlange 'A7O0O- and shadowy. Sometimes he is a son Saifj-aiu : daher der mit Schlangen um- of Zeus and Persephone, and is nursed giirtete Phallusstab in der Hand dcs by the nymph Nyssa, whose name re- Hermes iei;(^aAA.<Kdy, und des Aesculap, appears in Dionysos: sometimes Dio- dessen weiLliche Halfte Hygiea ihm nysos is himself the father of Sabazios, die Schale entgegen tragt, welche ein who is, again, a child also of Kabeiros Symbol des Mutterbeckensist." — Nork, or of Kronos. Mr. I5rown {Great s.v. "Arzt." This shell is the shell of Diouysiak Myth, ii. 32) speaks of the Aphrodite. word Sabos as becoming an equivalent It is scarcely necessary to add that for madman, and so explains the serpents played a prominent part in the witches' Sabbat, rites of Zeus Sabazios, whose worship