Aswatha; THE MUNDANE-TREE. 153 den the flower of next summer, was developed in the capsule of its parent-flower; the parent may be but slightly different, but it still differs from its future progeny. The antediluvian ancestors of the present ele phant and lizard were, perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the progenitors of our human race have been the “giants" of the Vedas, the Võluspa, and the Book of Genesis? While it is posi tively absurd to believe the "transformation of species" to have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views of the evolutionists, it is but natural to think that each genus, beginning with the mollusks and ending with monkey-man, has modified from its own primordial and distinctive form. Supposing that we concede that "animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors; "'* and that even à la rigueur "all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form;"† still no one but a stone-blind materialist, one utterly devoid of intuitiveness, can seriously expect to see "in the distant future .. psychology based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.” ‡ Physical man, as a product of evolution, may be left in the hands of the man of exact science. None but he can throw light upon the physical origin of the race. But, we must positively deny the materialist the same privilege as to the question of man's psychical and spiritual evolution, for he and his highest faculties cannot be proved on any conclusive evidence to be "as much products of evolution as the humblest plant or the lowest worm."§ Having said so much, we will now proceed to show the evolutionhypothesis of the old Brahmans, as embodied by them in the allegory of the mundane tree. The Hindus represent their mythical tree, which they call Aswatha, in a way which differs from that of the Scandinavians. It is described by them as growing in a reversed position, the branches extending downward and the roots upward; the former typifying the external world of sense, i.e., the visible cosmical universe, and the latter the invisible world of spirit, because the roots have their genesis in the heavenly regions where, from the world's creation, humanity has placed its invisible deity. The creative energy having originated in the primordial point, the religious symbols of every people are so many illustrations of this metaphysical hypothesis expounded by Pythagoras, Plato, and other • "Origin of Species," p. 484. Ibid. Which latter word we cannot accept unless that "primordial form" is con ceded to be the primal concrete form that spirit assumed as the revealed Deity. Ibid., p. 488. § Lecture by T. II. Huxley, F. R. S.: "Darwin and Haeckel."' philosophers. "These Chaldeans," says Philo, * "were of opinion that the Kosmos, among the things that exist, is a single point, either being itself God (Theos) or that in it is God, comprehending the soul of all the things." The Egyptian Pyramid also symbolically represents this idea of the mundane tree. Its apex is the mystic link between heaven and earth, and stands for the root, while the base represents the spreading branches, extending to the four cardinal points of the universe of matter. It conveys the idea that all things had their origin in spirit-evolution having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at this period we will find it easier to understand Haeckel's Anthropogeny, which traces the pedigree of man "from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited," according to Professor Huxley's exposition. We may believe man evolved "by gradual modification of a mammal of ape-like organization" still easier when we remember that (though in a more condensed and less elegant, but still as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory was said by Berosus to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia.† We may add, as a fact of interest, that this ancient theory of evolution is not only embalmed in allegory and legend, but also depicted upon the walls of certain temples in India, and, in a fragmentary form, has been found in those of Egypt and on the slabs of Nimroud and Nineveh. excavated by Layard. But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is concerned nothing but "unverifiable hypotheses." For, as he puts it, he views all beings "as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." He does not attempt to show us who these "few beings" were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for in the admission of their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation. With all the changes that our globe has passed through as regards temperature, climate, soil, andif we may be pardoned, in view of recent developments-its electromagnetic condition, he would be bold indeed who dare say that anything "Migration of Abraham," § 32. + Cory: "Ancient Fragments." THE FROST-GIANTS OF THE VÖLUSpa. 155 in present science contradicts the ancient hypothesis of ante-Silurian man. The flint-axes first found by Boucher de Perthes, in the valley of the Somme, prove that men must have existed at a period so remote as tc be beyond calculation. If we believe Büchner, man must have lived even during and before the glacial epoch, a subdivision of the quaternary or diluvial period probably extending very far back in it. But who can tell what the next discovery has in store for us? 66 Now, if we have indisputable proof that man has existed so long as this, there must have been wonderful modifications of his physical system, corresponding with the changes of climate and atmosphere. Does not this seem to show by analogy that, tracing backward, there may have been other modifications, which fitted the most remote progenitors of the "frost-giants" to live even contemporaneously with the Devonian fishes or the Silurian mollusks? True, they left no flint-hatchets behind them, nor any bones or cave-deposits; but, if the ancients are correct, the races at that time were composed not only of giants, or mighty men of renown," but also of "sons of God." If those who believe in the evolution of spirit as firmly as the materialists believe in that of matter are charged with teaching "unverifiable hypotheses," how readily can they retort upon their accusers by saying that, by their own confession, their physical evolution is still "an unverified, if not actually an unverifiable hypothesis." The former have at least the inferential proof of legendary myth, the vast antiquity of which is admitted by both philolo gists and archæologists; while their antagonists have nothing of a similar nature, unless they help themselves to a portion of the ancient picturewritings, and suppress the rest. It is more than fortunate that, while the works of some men of science -who have justly won their great reputations-will flatly contradict our hypotheses, the researches and labors of others not less eminent seem to fully confirm our views. In the recent work of Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, we find the author seriously favoring the idea of "some slow process of development" of the pres ent species from others which have preceded them, his idea extending back over an innumerable series of cycles. And if animals, why not animal man, preceded still farther back by a thoroughly "spiritual" one-a "son of God?" And now, we may once more return to the symbolology of the olden times, and their physico-religious myths. Before we close this work, we hope to demonstrate more or less successfully how closely the conceptions of the latter were allied with many of the achievements of modern science * Huxley: "Darwin and Haeckel,” in physics and natural philosophy. Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the priesthood of old lie latent hints of sciences as yet undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the picture-writing he is examining fits, to a line, certain fixed geometrical figures which are the hidden keys to such records, before he ventures on an interpretation. But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we may include the double-sexed first creators, of every cosmogony. The Greek Zeus-Zen (æther), and Chthonia (the chaotic earth) and Metis (the water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona-the former god representing also ether— the first emanation of the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of light; the goddess earth and water again; Mithras,* the rock-born god, the symbol of the male mundane-fire, or the personified primordial light, and Mithra, the fire-goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of fire (the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with earth and water, or matter (female or passive elements of cosmical generation). Mithras is the son of Bordj, the Persian mundane mountain,† from which he flashes out as a radiant ray of light. Brahma, the fire-god, and his prolific consort; and the Hindu Unghi, the refulgent deity, from whose body issue a thousand streams of glory and seven tongues of flame, and in whose honor the Sagniku Brahmans preserve to this day a perpetual fire; Siva, personated by the mundane mountain of the Hindus-the Meru (Himalaya). This terrific fire-god, who is said in the legend to have descended from heaven, like the Jewish Jehovah, in a pillar of fire, and a dozen of other archaic, double sexed deities, all loudly proclaim their hidden meaning. And what can these dual myths mean but the physico-chemical principle of primordial creation? The first revelation of the Supreme Cause in its triple manifestation of spirit, force, and matter; the divine correlation, at its starting-point of evolution, allegorized as the marriage of fire and water, products of elec trifying spirit, union of the male active principle with the female passive element, which become the parents of their tellurian child, cosmic matter, the prima materia, whose spirit is ether, the ASTRAL LIGHT! Thus all the world-mountains and mundane eggs, the mundane trees, and the mundane snakes and pillars, may be shown to embody scientifi * Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ek petros—god of the rock. ↑ Bordj is called a fire-mountain—a volcano; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth, and water-the male and active, and the female or passive elements. The myth is sug gestive. THE SACRED SOMA DRINK. 157 cally demonstrated truths of natural philosophy. All of these mountains contain, with very trifling variations, the allegorically-expressed descrip. tion of primal cosmogony; the mundane trees, that of subsequent evolution of spirit and matter; the mundane snakes and pillars, symbolical memorials of the various attributes of this double evolution in its endless correlation of cosmic forces. Within the mysterious recesses of the mountain-the matrix of the universe-the gods (powers) prepare the atomic germs of organic life, and at the same time the life-drink, which, when tasted, awakens in man-matter the man-spirit. The soma, the sacrificial drink of the Hindus, is that sacred beverage. For, at the creation of the prima materia, while the grossest portions of it were used for the physical embryo-world, the more divine essence of it pervaded the universe, invisibly permeating and enclosing within its ethereal waves the newlyborn infant, developing and stimulating it to activity as it slowly evolved out of the eternal chaos. From the poetry of abstract conception, these mundane myths gradually passed into the concrete images of cosmic symbols, as archæology now finds them. The snake, which plays such a prominent part in the imagery of the ancients, was degraded by the absurd interpretation of the serpent of the Book of Genesis into a synonym of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, whereas it is the most ingenious of all the myths in its various symbolisms. For one, as agathodaimon, it is the emblem of the healing art and of the immortality of man. It encircles the images of most of the sanitary or hygienic gods. The cup of health, in the Egyptian Mysteries, was entwined by serpents. As evil can only arise from an extreme in good, the serpent, under some other aspects, became typical of matter; which, the more it recedes from its primal spiritual source, the more it becomes subject of evil. In the oldest Egyptian imagery, as in the cosmogonic allegories of Kneph, the mundane snake, when typifying matter, is usually represented as contained within a circle; he lies straight across its equator, thus indicating that the universe of astral light, out of which the physical world evolved, while bounding the latter, is itself bound by Emepht, or the Supreme First Cause. Phtha producing Ra, and the myriad forms to which he gives life, are shown as creeping out of the mundane egg, because it is the most familiar form of that in which is deposited and developed the germ of every living being. When the serpent represents eternity and immortality, it encircles the world, biting its tail, and thus offering no solution of continuity. It then becomes the astral light. The disciples of the school of Pherecydes taught that ether (Zeus or Zen) is the highest empyrean heaven, which encloses the supernal world, and its light (the astral) is the concentrated primordial element. Such is the origin of the serpent, metamorphosed in Christian ages. |