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Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage.
1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility
We have seen that according to a widespread belief, which is not without a
foundation in fact, plants reproduce their kinds through the sexual union of
male and female elements, and that on the principle of homoeopathic or
imitative magic this reproduction is supposed to be stimulated by the real or
mock marriage of men and women, who masquerade for the time being as spirits
of vegetation. Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular
festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude conception of
natural law, it is clear that they must have been handed down from a remote
antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err in assuming that they date from a
time when the forefathers of the civilised nations of Europe were still
barbarians, herding their cattle and cultivating patches of corn in the
clearings of the vast forests, which then covered the greater part of the
continent, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells
and enchantments for the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and flowers
and fruit, have lingered down to our own time in the shape of pastoral plays
and popular merry-makings, is it not reasonable to suppose that they survived
in less attenuated forms some two thousand years ago among the civilised
peoples of antiquity? Or, to put it otherwise, is it not likely that in
certain festivals of the ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of
our May Day, Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference,
that in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows and
pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which the actors
consciously supported the high parts of gods and goddesses? Now in the first
chapter of this book we found reason to believe that the priest who bore the
title of King of the Wood at Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the grove,
Diana herself. May not he and she, as King and Queen of the Wood, have been
serious counterparts of the merry mummers who play the King and Queen of May,
the Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in modern Europe? and may not their union
have been yearly celebrated in a theogamy or divine marriage? Such dramatic
weddings of gods and goddesses, as we shall see presently, were carried out as
solemn religious rites in many parts of the ancient world; hence there is no
intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove at Nemi may
have been the scene of an annual ceremony of this sort. Direct evidence that
it was so there is none, but analogy pleads in favour of the view, as I shall
now endeavour to show.
Diana was essentially a goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a goddess
of the corn and Bacchus a god of the vine. Her sanctuaries were commonly in
groves, indeed every grove was sacred to her, and she is often associated with
the forest god Silvanus in dedications. But whatever her origin may have been,
Diana was not always a mere goddess of trees. Like her Greek sister Artemis,
she appears to have developed into a personification of the teeming life of
nature, both animal and vegetable. As mistress of the greenwood she would
naturally be thought to own the beasts, whether wild or tame, that ranged
through it, lurking for their prey in its gloomy depths, munching the fresh
leaves and shoots among the boughs, or cropping the herbage in the open glades
and dells. Thus she might come to be the patron goddess both of hunters and
herdsmen, just as Silvanus was the god not only of woods, but of cattle.
Similarly in Finland the wild beasts of the forest were regarded as the herds
of the woodland god Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife. No man might
slay one of these animals without the gracious permission of their divine
owners. Hence the hunter prayed to the sylvan deities, and vowed rich
offerings to them if they would drive the game across his path. And cattle
also seem to have enjoyed the protection of those spirits of the woods, both
when they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the forest. Before
the Gayos of Sumatra hunt deer, wild goats, or wild pigs with hounds in the
woods, they deem it necessary to obtain the leave of the unseen Lord of the
forest. This is done according to a prescribed form by a man who has special
skill in woodcraft. He lays down a quid of betel before a stake which is cut
in a particular way to represent the Lord of the Wood, and having done so he
prays to the spirit to signify his consent or refusal. In his treatise on
hunting, Arrian tells us that the Celts used to offer an annual sacrifice to
Artemis on her birthday, purchasing the sacrificial victim with the fines
which they had paid into her treasury for every fox, hare, and roe that they
had killed in the course of the year. The custom clearly implied that the wild
beasts belonged to the goddess, and that she must be compensated for their
slaughter.
But Diana was not merely a patroness of wild beasts, a mistress of woods
and hills, of lonely glades and sounding rivers; conceived as the moon, and
especially, it would seem, as the yellow harvest moon, she filled the farmer's
grange with goodly fruits, and heard the prayers of women in travail. In her
sacred grove at Nemi, as we have seen, she was especially worshipped as a
goddess of childbirth, who bestowed offspring on men and women. Thus Diana,
like the Greek Artemis, with whom she was constantly identified, may be
described as a goddess of nature in general and of fertility in particular. We
need not wonder, therefore, that in her sanctuary on the Aventine she was
represented by an image copied from the many-breasted idol of the Ephesian
Artemis, with all its crowded emblems of exuberant fecundity. Hence too we can
understand why an ancient Roman law, attributed to King Tullus Hostilius,
prescribed that, when incest had been committed, an expiatory sacrifice should
be offered by the pontiffs in the grove of Diana. For we know that the crime
of incest is commonly supposed to cause a dearth; hence it would be meet that
atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of fertility.
Now on the principle that the goddess of fertility must herself be
fertile, it behoved Diana to have a male partner. Her mate, if the testimony
of Servius may be trusted, was that Virbius who had his representative, or
perhaps rather his embodiment, in the King of the Wood at Nemi. The aim of
their union would be to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of animals, and
of mankind; and it might naturally be thought that this object would be more
surely attained if the sacred nuptials were celebrated every year, the parts
of the divine bride and bridegroom being played either by their images or by
living persons. No ancient writer mentions that this was done in the grove at
Nemi; but our knowledge of the Arician ritual is so scanty that the want of
information on this head can hardly count as a fatal objection to the theory.
That theory, in the absence of direct evidence, must necessarily be based on
the analogy of similar customs practised elsewhere. Some modern examples of
such customs, more or less degenerate, were described in the last chapter.
Here we shall consider their ancient counterparts.
2. The Marriage of the Gods
At Babylon the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above the city
in a series of eight towers or stories, planted one on the top of the other.
On the highest tower, reached by an ascent which wound about all the rest,
there stood a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed, magnificently
draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. In the temple no image
was to be seen, and no human being passed the night there, save a single
woman, whom, according to the Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all
the women of Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the temple at
night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a consort of the god,
might have no intercourse with mortal man.
At Thebes in Egypt a woman slept in the temple of Ammon as the consort of
the god, and, like the human wife of Bel at Babylon, she was said to have no
commerce with a man. In Egyptian texts she is often mentioned as the divine
consort, and usually she was no less a personage than the Queen of Egypt
herself. For, according to the Egyptians, their monarchs were actually
begotten by the god Ammon, who assumed for the time being the form of the
reigning king, and in that disguise had intercourse with the queen. The divine
procreation is carved and painted in great detail on the walls of two of the
oldest temples in Egypt, those of Deir el Bahari and Luxor; and the
inscriptions attached to the paintings leave no doubt as to the meaning of the
scenes.
At Athens the god of the vine, Dionysus, was annually married to the
Queen, and it appears that the consummation of the divine union, as well as
the espousals, was enacted at the ceremony; but whether the part of the god
was played by a man or an image we do not know. We learn from Aristotle that
the ceremony took place in the old official residence of the King, known as
the Cattle-stall, which stood near the Prytaneum or Town-hall on the
north-eastern slope of the Acropolis. The object of the marriage can hardly
have been any other than that of ensuring the fertility of the vines and other
fruit-trees of which Dionysus was the god. Thus both in form and in meaning
the ceremony would answer to the nuptials of the King and Queen of May.
In the great mysteries solemnised at Eleusis in the month of September the
union of the sky-god Zeus with the corn-goddess Demeter appears to have been
represented by the union of the hierophant with the priestess of Demeter, who
acted the parts of god and goddess. But their intercourse was only dramatic or
symbolical, for the hierophant had temporarily deprived himself of his
virility by an application of hemlock. The torches having been extinguished,
the pair descended into a murky place, while the throng of worshippers awaited
in anxious suspense the result of the mystic congress, on which they believed
their own salvation to depend. After a time the hierophant reappeared, and in
a blaze of light silently exhibited to the assembly a reaped ear of corn, the
fruit of the divine marriage. Then in a loud voice he proclaimed, Queen Brimo
has brought forth a sacred boy Brimos, by which he meant, The Mighty One has
brought forth the Mighty. The corn-mother in fact had given birth to her
child, the corn, and her travail-pangs were enacted in the sacred drama. This
revelation of the reaped corn appears to have been the crowning act of the
mysteries. Thus through the glamour shed round these rites by the poetry and
philosophy of later ages there still looms, like a distant landscape through a
sunlit haze, a simple rustic festival designed to cover the wide Eleusinian
plain with a plenteous harvest by wedding the goddess of the corn to the
sky-god, who fertilised the bare earth with genial showers. Every few years
the people of Plataea, in Boeotia, held a festival called the Little Daedala,
at which they felled an oak-tree in an ancient oak forest. Out of the tree
they carved an image, and having dressed it as a bride, they set it on a
bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. The image seems then to have been
drawn to the bank of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a
piping and dancing crowd. Every sixty years the festival of the Great Daedala
was celebrated by all the people of Boeotia; and at it all the images,
fourteen in number, which had accumulated at the lesser festivals, were
dragged on wains in procession to the river Asopus and then to the top of
Mount Cithaeron, where they were burnt on a great pyre. The story told to
explain the festivals suggests that they celebrated the marriage of Zeus to
Hera, represented by the oaken image in bridal array. In Sweden every year a
life-size image of Frey, the god of fertility, both animal and vegetable, was
drawn about the country in a waggon attended by a beautiful girl who was
called the god's wife. She acted also as his priestess in his great temple at
Upsala. Wherever the waggon came with the image of the god and his blooming
young bride, the people crowded to meet them and offered sacrifices for a
fruitful year.
Thus the custom of marrying gods either to images or to human beings was
widespread among the nations of antiquity. The ideas on which such a custom is
based are too crude to allow us to doubt that the civilised Babylonians,
Egyptians, and Greeks inherited it from their barbarous or savage forefathers.
This presumption is strengthened when we find rites of a similar kind in vogue
among the lower races. Thus, for example, we are told that once upon a time
the Wotyaks of the Malmyz district in Russia were distressed by a series of
bad harvests. They did not know what to do, but at last concluded that their
powerful but mischievious god Keremet must be angry at being unmarried. So a
deputation of elders visited the Wotyaks of Cura and came to an understanding
with them on the subject. Then they returned home, laid in a large stock of
brandy, and having made ready a gaily decked waggon and horses, they drove in
procession with bells ringing, as they do when they are fetching home a bride,
to the sacred grove at Cura. There they ate and drank merrily all night, and
next morning they cut a square piece of turf in the grove and took it home
with them. After that, though it fared well with the people of Malmyz, it
fared ill with the people of Cura; for in Malmyz the bread was good, but in
Cura it was bad. Hence the men of Cura who had consented to the marriage were
blamed and roughly handled by their indignant fellow-villagers. What they
meant by this marriage ceremony, says the writer who reports it, it is not
easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry Keremet to
the kindly and fruitful Mukylcin, the Earth-wife, in order that she might
influence him for good. When wells are dug in Bengal, a wooden image of a god
is made and married to the goddess of water.
Often the bride destined for the god is not a log or a cloud, but a living
woman of flesh and blood. The Indians of a village in Peru have been known to
marry a beautiful girl, about fourteen years of age, to a stone shaped like a
human being, which they regarded as a god (huaca). All the villagers took
part in the marriage ceremony, which lasted three days, and was attended with
much revelry. The girl thereafter remained a virgin and sacrificed to the idol
for the people. They showed her the utmost reverence and deemed her divine.
Every year about the middle of March, when the season for fishing with the
dragnet began, the Algonquins and Hurons married their nets to two young
girls, aged six or seven. At the wedding feast the net was placed between the
two maidens, and was exhorted to take courage and catch many fish. The reason
for choosing the brides so young was to make sure that they were virgins. The
origin of the custom is said to have been this. One year, when the fishing
season came round, the Algonquins cast their nets as usual, but took nothing.
Surprised at their want of success, they did not know what to make of it, till
the soul or genius (oki) of the net appeared to them in the likeness of a
tall well-built man, who said to them in a great passion, I have lost my wife
and I cannot find one who has known no other man but me; that is why you do
not succeed, and why you never will succeed till you give me satisfaction on
this head. So the Algonquins held a council and resolved to appease the
spirit of the net by marrying him to two such very young girls that he could
have no ground of complaint on that score for the future. They did so, and the
fishing turned out all that could be wished. The thing got wind among their
neighbours the Hurons, and they adopted the custom. A share of the catch was
always given to the families of the two girls who acted as brides of the net
for the year.
The Oraons of Bengal worship the Earth as a goddess, and annually
celebrate her marriage with the Sun-god DharmeŻ at the time when the saŻl
tree is in blossom. The ceremony is as follows. All bathe, then the men repair
to the sacred grove (sarna), while the women assemble at the house of the
village priest. After sacrificing some fowls to the Sun-god and the demon of
the grove, the men eat and drink. The priest is then carried back to the
village on the shoulders of a strong man. Near the village the women meet the
men and wash their feet. With beating of drums and singing, dancing, and
jumping, all proceed to the priest's house, which has been decorated with
leaves and flowers. Then the usual form of marriage is performed between the
priest and his wife, symbolising the supposed union between Sun and Earth.
After the ceremony all eat and drink and make merry; they dance and sing
obscene songs, and finally indulge in the vilest orgies. The object is to move
the mother earth to become fruitful. Thus the Sacred Marriage of the Sun and
Earth, personated by the priest and his wife, is celebrated as a charm to
ensure the fertility of the ground; and for the same purpose, on the principle
of homoeopathic magic, the people indulge in licentious orgy.
It deserves to be remarked that the supernatural being to whom women are
married is often a god or spirit of water. Thus Mukasa, the god of the
Victoria Nyanza lake, who was propitiated by the Baganda every time they
undertook a long voyage, had virgins provided for him to serve as his wives.
Like the Vestals they were bound to chastity, but unlike the Vestals they seem
to have been often unfaithful. The custom lasted until Mwanga was converted to
Christianity. The Akikuyu of British East Africa worship the snake of a
certain river, and at intervals of several years they marry the snake-god to
women, but especially to young girls. For this purpose huts are built by order
of the medicine-men, who there consummate the sacred marriage with the
credulous female devotees. If the girls do not repair to the huts of their own
accord in sufficient numbers, they are seized and dragged thither to the
embraces of the deity. The offspring of these mystic unions appears to be
fathered on God (ngai); certainly there are children among the Akikuyu who
pass for children of God. It is said that once, when the inhabitants of Cayeli
in Buruan East Indian islandwere threatened with destruction by a swarm of
crocodiles, they ascribed the misfortune to a passion which the prince of the
crocodiles had conceived for a certain girl. Accordingly, they compelled the
damsel's father to dress her in bridal array and deliver her over to the
clutches of her crocodile lover.
A usage of the same sort is reported to have prevailed in the Maldive
Islands before the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam. The famous Arab
traveller Ibn Batutah has described the custom and the manner in which it came
to an end. He was assured by several trustworthy natives, whose names he
gives, that when the people of the islands were idolaters there appeared to
them every month an evil spirit among the jinn, who came from across the sea
in the likeness of a ship full of burning lamps. The wont of the inhabitants,
as soon as they perceived him, was to take a young virgin, and, having adorned
her, to lead her to a heathen temple that stood on the shore, with a window
looking out to sea. There they left the damsel for the night, and when they
came back in the morning they found her a maid no more, and dead. Every month
they drew lots, and he upon whom the lot fell gave up his daughter to the
jinnee of the sea. The last of the maidens thus offered to the demon was
rescued by a pious Berber, who by reciting the Koran succeeded in driving the
jinnee back into the sea.
Ibn Batutah's narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides closely
resembles a well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions have been found
from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia, Scandinavia, and Scotland in
the West. The story varies in details from people to people, but as commonly
told it runs thus. A certain country is infested by a many-headed serpent,
dragon, or other monster, which would destroy the whole people if a human
victim, generally a virgin, were not delivered up to him periodically. Many
victims have perished, and at last it has fallen to the lot of the king's own
daughter to be sacrificed. She is exposed to the monster, but the hero of the
tale, generally a young man of humble birth, interposes in her behalf, slays
the monster, and receives the hand of the princess as his reward. In many of
the tales the monster, who is sometimes described as a serpent, inhabits the
water of a sea, a lake, or a fountain. In other versions he is a serpent or
dragon who takes possession of the springs of water, and only allows the water
to flow or the people to make use of it on condition of receiving a human
victim.
It would probably be a mistake to dismiss all these tales as pure
inventions of the story-teller. Rather we may suppose that they reflect a real
custom of sacrificing girls or women to be the wives of waterspirits, who are
very often conceived as great serpents or dragons.
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