Heathen mythology Part 48

Balder, another son of Odin and Frigga, is described as the finest and the best of their race. He was distinguished no less for his {280} eloquence than for his kindness and wisdom. It was his doom to meet with a premature death. Aware, from her knowledge of the future, of the destiny which awaited him, Frigga yet sought to avert it: and administered an oath to all the objects of nature, not to injure her beautiful and beloved Balder. The stones, the trees, the fish, the very diseases were sworn to respect his life.

No sooner had this been done, than his brothers determined to see, if indeed, he had a charmed life, and essayed successively the various means of death on the unhappy Balder, who fell a victim to their folly; aided by the cunning of Loke, who, through a stratagem which proved successful, showed how impossible it is to avert destiny.[1]

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His body was placed upon a funeral pile, and his wife was burned with him.

No sooner was the funeral terminated, than a fellow-G.o.d, leading a fleet steed, went to demand the body of Balder from the {281} dark G.o.ddess Hel, who replied that he should be returned if all created beings would shed a tear for him. One only refused, and Balder was doomed, to the great grief of his mother, to rest in the infernal regions.

Among the amus.e.m.e.nts of Odin, hunting forms a very important and prominent part; when the bows, arrows, and javelins were prepared by one deity; while another gilded the heavens with stars; a third protected and guided the steps of the hunters in the sacred wood; and the most successful of them received from Odin the gift of immortality.

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Each of the three superior deities had their respective priests, who exercised absolute authority over all that was connected with their religion, as well as presided over their sacrifices. Nor was it unusual to blend the priestly and the princely character, as in the case of Odin.

Frigga was attended upon by king's daughters, who were ent.i.tled G.o.ddesses and prophetesses. They uttered oracles, devoted themselves to a lasting virginity, and like the vestals of the Greek and Roman mythology, kept a perpetual fire in the temple of their G.o.ddess.

"The power of inflicting pains and penalties," says Mr. Howitt, "of striking and binding a criminal, was vested in the priests alone; {282} and men so haughty that they thought themselves dishonoured if they did not revenge the slightest offence, would tremblingly submit to blows, and even death itself, from the hand of a pontiff, whom they took for the instrument of an angry deity."

The councils of the divinities were held beneath the branches of an ancient oak, whose roots spread below over a fountain of water, remarkable for the number of serpents which it harboured.

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Teutates, the most celebrated of their minor deities, was the vital and acting principle of the world; to whom was attributed many of the functions which were supposed to belong to Mars, to Hercules, and to Mercury. They wors.h.i.+pped him under the form of a dart, when they sought his aid in battle, and under that of an oak, when they endeavoured to inspire themselves with his advice; and his fetes were kept at the hour of night, in high places, or in solemn forests, by the rays of the moon, and the flas.h.i.+ng of torches. The field where his holy ceremonies had been celebrated, was sown with stones, and from thenceforth doomed to know no more the voice of the sower, the song of the reaper, or the gladness of harvest time.

Under very important circ.u.mstances, it was by no means unusual to sacrifice human victims to this G.o.d, which were accompanied by flas.h.i.+ng eyes, wild cries, and fierce gestures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Sacrifice to Teutates.]

{283} "But the general cause which regulated these sacrifices," says Mr.

Howitt, (again to quote from his admiral work on priestcraft) "was a superst.i.tious opinion, which made the Northern nations regard the number three as sacred and peculiarly dear to the G.o.ds. Thus every ninth month they renewed this b.l.o.o.d.y ceremony, which was to last nine days, and every day they offered up nine victims, whether men or animals. But the most solemn sacrifices were those which were offered at Upsal, in Sweden, every ninth year. Then they chose from among the captives, in time of war, and amongst the slaves in time of peace, nine persons to be sacrificed. The choice was partly regulated by the opinion of bystanders, and partly by lot. The wretches upon whom it fell were then treated with such honours by all the a.s.sembly; they were so overwhelmed with caresses for the present, and promises for the life to come, that they sometimes congratulated themselves in their destiny. But they did not always sacrifice such mean persons. In great calamities, in oppressive famine, for instance, if the people thought they had a sure pretext to impute the cause of it to the king, they sacrificed him without hesitation, as the highest price they could pay for the divine favour. In this manner the first King of Vermland was burned in honour of Odin, to put away a great dearth. The ancient history of the North abounds in similar examples.

"These abominable sacrifices were accompanied with various ceremonies. When the victim was chosen, they conducted him towards the altar on which the sacred fire was kept burning night and day. It was surrounded by all sorts of iron and brazen vessels. Among them was one distinguished by its superior size; in this they received the blood of their victim.

"When they offered up animals, they speedily killed them at the foot of the altar; then they opened their entrails, and drew auguries from them, as among the Romans: but when they sacrificed men, those they pitched on were laid upon a large stone, and quickly strangled or knocked on the head."

Irminsul was another, and not the least celebrated of the G.o.ds adored by the Germans; he had a magnificent temple, and a statue, which represented him in the figure of a warrior, was placed upon a column of marble. A great number of priests of both s.e.xes served in the temple. Women acted as prophetesses, while the men employed themselves in sacrifices, and the choice of victims. The priests of this G.o.d possessed great importance in public affairs. During certain solemnities, armed warriors performed their evolutions around the idol, and in his sanctuary was placed immense treasure, both in arms and in precious stones.

The temple was however destroyed by Charlemagne, who broke {284} the statue, and with poetical justice, slaughtered the priests on the threshold of the very place which they had so often deluged with human blood.

One column however remained standing, which was to the eyes of the Saxons, holier and dearer in its melancholy reminiscences, than if it had still possessed the statue of the G.o.d, which the emperor threw in the depths of the sea.

The sacrifices to these deities were sometimes varied; there was a deep well in the neighbourhood of the temple at Upsal, where the chosen person was thrown in headlong, in honour of the deity representing the earth. If the body fell to the bottom, the G.o.ddess was supposed to accept it; if not, she refused it, and it was hung up in a sacred place. Near this place was a forest, named Odin's grove, every leaf of which was regarded as sacred, and was filled with the bodies of those who had been sacrificed.

Occasionally the blood of their children was not spared even by the monarchs of the land--Hacon of Norway, shed the blood of his son on the altar to secure a viceroy; and Aune of Sweden, in an attempt to obtain a continuance of life, sacrificed the lives of nine of his offspring; examples which could not fail to produce an effect upon their people.

But not only did they delight in the sacrifices of human life, they also gave way in their orgies to unbounded licentiousness. While at Uulel, at the feast of Thor, the license was carried to such a pitch as to become merely baccha.n.a.lian meetings, where, amidst shouts, dancing, and indecent gestures, so many unseemly actions were committed, as to disgust the wiser part of the community.

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{285}

AMERICA.

The greater part of the American nations were abandoned to Polytheism, and allowed a crowd of divinities: and nearly all adored the Sun, as the best representation of the Eternal.

In Peru, at the time of its discovery by Pizarro, Viracocha was supposed to be the creator of the G.o.ds, and below him, they believed in two triads; the first was Chuquilla, Catuilla, and Intyllapa; and the second Apomti, Churunti, and Inti-quaoqui.

The creator of the world, according to the Mexicans, was Mexitli, who was seated on an azure coloured stool, placed on a litter; his hand grasped an azure staff, in the shape of a serpent, and to crown all, he was of an azure complexion. Tlaloc was their second, and Tezcallipuca their third deity. This last was considered the G.o.d of repentance: and it was by the direction of the first, that they built the magnificent city of Mexico in the midst of a lake.

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They had, besides these, Tangatanga, an idol which was, according to them, three-in-one and one-in-three. They possessed also a Venus, who, with her three sisters, presided over love. It is not unusual to represent her reclining on a couch, while the favoured lover is shewn sitting by her side, hand in hand, as an emblem of mutual affection. {286}

The Mexicans also had a G.o.ddess of old age, to whom they rendered honours of the highest character. They immolated on her altar once every year a female, whom they forced to dance in presence of the idol to whom she was to be sacrificed: while in the evening, the priests ran wildly in the streets, striking children and females with small bundles of hay.

When any solemn feast was in preparation, they made choice of a young and beautiful slave, whom, after bathing in the lake dedicated to their G.o.ds, they clothed in the richest costume, offering to him the highest honour for a s.p.a.ce of forty days; all that could tend to allure the mind to earth, or render life desirable, was showered upon the victim, his wishes were antic.i.p.ated, and his desires fulfilled. Nine days, however, before the sacrifice took place, the priest, prostrating himself, uttered this brief sentence,

"You have yet nine days to live!"

Intoxicating liquors were then given him, to sustain his courage until the day of the solemnity arrived, when he paid the penalty, by death; his heart was torn from his body, which was afterwards precipitated from the platform of the temple, mid the wild cries of the priests, and the yet more savage greetings of the mult.i.tude.

The religious orgies of the Mexicans were of a gloomy and frightful character; to enable them to go through which, their priests anointed themselves with a particular ointment, and used various fantastic ceremonies to deprive themselves of timidity. They then would rush forth to celebrate their rites, during which their vestal-virgins, and the priests were wont frantically to cut themselves with knives.

Quetsalocatl was the deity to whom the highest honours were paid in the valley of Cholula.

The air, commerce, war, and divination were under his control; and it was through him that the remarkable prophecy was supposed to originate, which prepared the Mexicans for the coming of the Spaniards into their territory.

The ceremonials attached to his faith were of an inhuman nature, they sacrificed to him an enormous number of human victims. Cholula, was, indeed, the Mecca of this false divinity, and in order to receive the crowd of pilgrims, who day by day a.s.sembled, it was found necessary to maintain as many temples as there are days in the year. {287}

The princ.i.p.al one of these was an immense pyramid of thirteen hundred and fifty-five feet round its base, and about one hundred and seventy in height.

Of all the offerings which could be given to their G.o.d, human sacrifices were considered most acceptable: a belief, which, with a superst.i.tious and warlike people, necessarily produced an enormous number of victims; as every prisoner taken in war soon came to be considered a fitting subject for the cruelties of the temple, and the wors.h.i.+p of their G.o.ds.

It has been suggested, that some navigators of Phoenicia might have been thrown upon the then unknown sh.o.r.e of America, from which place they did not return, but gave to their descendants their religion, which in the lapse of ages became lost; because in some things it bears a resemblance that cannot fail to bring that of Egypt to the mind, an idea, which the vestiges of monuments of gigantic proportions, with forms and hieroglyphics, strongly tend to aid.

"Pyramids," says an able writer of the present day, "not inferior to the Egyptian, exist in many parts of the Mexican Territories and of new Spain.

Some of these pyramids are of larger base than the Egyptian, and composed of equally durable materials; vestiges of n.o.ble architecture are visible at Cholula, Otumba, Oaxica, Mitlan, and Tlascola.

"The ancient town of Palenque, exhibits not only excellent workmans.h.i.+p in the temples, palaces, private houses, and baths, but a boldness of design in the architect, as well as skill in the execution, which will not shrink from a comparison with the works, at least, of the earlier ages of Egyptian power. In the sanctuaries of Palenque, are found sculptured representations of Idols, which resemble the most ancient G.o.ds of Egypt and Syria; Planispheres and Zodiacs exist, which exhibit a superior astronomical and chronological system to that which was possessed by the Egyptians.

"Statues, sculptured in a purely cla.s.sical style, have been found; and vases, agreeing both in shape and ornament with the earliest specimens of Egyptian and Etruscan pottery, have been found in their sepulchral excavations.

"Evidences also exist in Mexico, of two great branches of hieroglyphical language, both having striking affinities with the Egyptians, and yet distinguished from it by characteristics perfectly American." {288}

The same authority says, "The G.o.ds of the Tultecans, appear sculptured in bas relief, in the dark inner rooms of extant temples.

We will take one, as an instance of the a.n.a.logy to which we allude.

Pourtrayed on the inner wall of the Adytum of one of the sanctuaries belonging to the great temple of Palenque, appears the chief G.o.d of the Tultecan people. Our opinion is, that he is strongly identifiable with the Osiris of Egypt, and the Adonis of Syria; or rather, that he is the ancient G.o.d, called Adoni-Siris, a well known cla.s.sical combination, therefore an identification, of both divinities.