Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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"With great toil and weariness they scrape together enough for each
day, _going by mountain and wilderness seeking their food_; so faint
and enfeebled are they that their bowels cleave to their ribs, and
all their body reechoes with hollowness, and they walk as people
affrighted, the face and body in likeness of death. If they be
merchants, they now sell only cakes of salt and broken

{p. 230}

pepper; the people that have something despise their wares, so that
they go out to sell from door to door, and from house to house; and
when they sell nothing they sit down sadly by some fence or wall, or
in some corner, licking their lips and gnawing the nails of their
hands for the hunger that is in them; they look on the one side and
on the other at the mouths of those that pass by, hoping peradventure
that one may speak some word to them.

"O compassionate God, the bed on which they lie down is not a thing
to rest upon, but to endure torment in; they draw a rag over them at
night, and so sleep; there they throw down their bodies, and the
bodies of children that thou hast given them. For the misery that
they grow up in, for the filth of their food, for the lack of
covering, their faces are yellow, and all their bodies of the color
of earth. They _tremble with cold_, and for leaness they stagger in
walking. They go weeping and sighing, and full of sadness, and all
misfortunes are joined to them; _though they stay by afire, they find
little heat_."[1]

The prayer continues in the same strain, supplicating God to give the
people "some days of prosperity and tranquillity, so that they may
sleep and know repose"; it concludes:

"If thou answerest my petition it will be only of thy liberality and
magnificence, for no one is worthy to receive thy bounty for any
merit of his, but only through thy grace. _Search below the
dung-hills_ and in the mountains for thy servants, friends, and
acquaintance, and raise them to riches and dignities." . . .

"Where am I? Lo, I speak with thee, O King; well do I know that I
stand in an eminent place, and that I talk with one of great majesty,
before whose presence flows a river through a chasm, a gulf sheer
down of awful depth; this, also, is a slippery place, whence many
precipitate themselves, for there shall not be found one without
error before thy majesty. I myself, a man of little understanding and
lacking speech, dare to address

[1. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 204.]

{p. 231}

my words to thee; I put myself in peril of falling into the gorge and
cavern of this river. I, Lord, have come to take with my hands,
_blindness to mine eyes_, rottenness and shriveling to my members,
poverty and affliction to my body; for my meanness and rudeness this
it is that I merit to receive. Live and rule for ever in all
quietness and tranquillity, O thou that art our lord, our shelter,
our protector, most compassionate, most pitiful, invisible,
impalpable."

It is true that much of all this would apply to any great period of
famine, but it appears that these events occurred when there was
great cold in the country, when the people gathered around fires and
could not get warm, a remarkable state of things in a country
possessing as tropical a climate as Mexico. Moreover, these people
were wanderers, "going by mountain and wilderness," seeking food, a
whole nation of poverty-stricken, homeless, wandering paupers. And
when we recur to the part where the priest tells the Lord to seek his
friends and servants in the mountains, "below the dung-hills," and
raise them to riches, it is difficult to understand it otherwise than
as an allusion to those who had been buried under the falling slime,
clay, and stones. Even poor men do not dwell under dung-hills, nor
are they usually buried under them, and it is very possible that in
transmission from generation to generation the original meaning was
lost sight of. I should understand it to mean, "Go, O Lord, and
search and bring back to life and comfort and wealth the millions
thou hast slaughtered on the mountains, covering them with hills of
slime and refuse."

And when we turn to the traditions of the kindred and more ancient
race, the Toltecs,[1] we find that, after the fall of the fire from
heaven, the people, emerging from the

[1. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 240.]

{p. 232}

seven caves, wandered _one hundred and four years_, "suffering from
nakedness, hunger, and cold, over many lands, across expanses of sea,
and through untold hardships," precisely as narrated in the foregoing
pathetic prayer.

It tells of the migration of a race, over the desolated world, during
the Age of Darkness. And we will find something, hereafter, very much
like it, in the Book of Job.

{p. 233}

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SUN.

A GREAT solar-myth underlies all the ancient mythologies. It
commemorates the death and resurrection of the sun. It signifies the
destruction of the light by the clouds, the darkness, and the
eventual return of the great luminary of the world.

The Syrian Adonis, the sun-god, the Hebrew Tamheur, and the Assyrian
Du-Zu, all suffered a sudden and violent death, disappeared for a
time from the sight of men, and were at last raised from the dead.

The myth is the primeval form of the resurrection.

All through the Gothic legends runs this thought--the battle of the
Light with the Darkness; the temporary death of the Light, and its
final triumph over the grave. Sometimes we have but a fragment of the
story.

In the Saxon Beowulf we have Grendel, a terrible monster, who comes
to the palace-hall at midnight, and drags out the sleepers and sucks
their blood. Beowulf assails him. A ghastly struggle follows in the
darkness. Grendel is killed. But his fearful mother, the devil's
clam, comes to avenge his death; she attacks Beowulf, and is
slain.[1] There comes a third dragon, which Beowulf kills, but is
stifled with the breath of the monster and dies, rejoicing, however,
that the dragon has brought with him a great treasure of gold, which
will make his people rich.[2]

[1. Poor, "Sanskrit and Kindred Literatures," p. 315.

2. Ibid.]

{p. 234}

Here, again, are the three comets, the wolf, the snake, and the dog
of Ragnarok; the three arrows of the American legends; the three
monsters of Hesiod.

When we turn to Egypt we find that their whole religion was
constructed upon legends relating to the ages of fire and ice, and
the victory of the sun-god over the evil-one. We find everywhere a
recollection of the days of cloud, "when darkness dwelt upon the face
of the deep."

Osiris, their great god, represented the sun in his darkened or
nocturnal or ruined condition, before the coming of day. M.
Mariette-Bey says:

"Originally, Osiris is the nocturnal sun; he is _the primordial night
of chaos_; he is consequently anterior to Ra, the Sun of Day."[1]

Mr. Miller says:

"As nocturnal sun, Osiris was also regarded as a type of the sun
_before its first rising_, or of the primordial night of chaos, and
as such, according to M. Mariette, his first rising--his original
birth to the light under the form of Ra--symbolized the birth of
humanity itself in the person of the first man."[2]

M. F. Chabas says:

"These forms represented the same god at different hours of the day.
. . . the nocturnal sun and the daily sun, which, succeeding to the
first, dissipated the darkness on the morning of each day, and
renewed the triumph of Horus over Set; that is to say, _the cosmical
victory which determined the first rising of the sun_--the
organization of the universe at the commencement of time. Ra is the
god who, after _having marked the commencement of time_, continues
each day to govern his work. . . . He succeeds

[1. "Musée de Boulaq," etc., pp. 20, 21, 100, 101.

2. Rev. O. D. Miller, "Solar Symbolism," "American Antiquarian,"
April, 1881, p. 219.]

{p. 235}

to a primordial form, Osiris, the nocturnal sun, or better, _the sun
before its first rising_."[1]

"_The suffering and death of Osiris_," says Sir G. Wilkinson, "_were
the great mystery of the Egyptian religion_, and some traces of it
are perceptible among other people of antiquity. His being the divine
goodness, and the abstract idea of good; his _manifestation upon
earth_, his _death_ and _resurrection_, and his office as judge of
the dead in a future state, look like the early revelation of a
future manifestation of the Deity, converted into a mythological
fable."[2]

Osiris--the sun--had a war with Seb, or Typho, or Typhon, and was
killed in the battle; he was subsequently restored to life, and
became the judge of the under-world.[3]

Seb, his destroyer, was a son of Ra, the ancient sun-god, in the
sense, perhaps, that the comets, and all other planetary bodies, were
originally thrown out from the mass of the sun. Seb, or Typho, was
"the personification of all evil." He was the destroyer, the enemy,
the evil-one.

Isis, the consort of Osiris, learns of his death, slain by the great
serpent, and ransacks the world in search of his body. She finds it
mutilated by Typhon. This is the same mutilation which we find
elsewhere, and which covered the earth with fragments of the sun.

Isis was the wife of Osiris (the dead sun) and the mother of Horus,
the new or returned sun; she seems to represent a civilized people;
she taught the art of cultivating wheat and barley, which were always
carried in her festal processions.

When we turn to the Greek legends, we shall find

[1. "Revue Archæologique," tome xxv, 1873, p. 393.

2. Notes to Rawlinson's "Herodotus," American edition, vol. ii,
p.:219.

3. Murray's "Mythology," p. 347.]

{p. 236}

Typhon described in a manner that clearly identifies him with the
destroying comet. (See page 140, _ante_.)

The entire religion of the Egyptians was based upon a solar-myth, and
referred to the great catastrophe in the history of the earth when
the sun was for a time obscured in dense clouds.

Speaking of the legend of "the dying sun-god," Rev. O. D. Miller says:

"The wide prevalence of this legend, and its extreme antiquity, are
facts familiar to all Orientalists. There was the Egyptian Osiris,
the Syrian Adonis, the Hebrew Tamheur, the Assyrian _Du-Zu_, all
regarded as solar deities, vet as having lived a mortal life,
_suffered a violent death_, being subsequently _raised from, the
dead_. . . . How was it possible _to conceive the solar orb as dying
and rising from the dead_, if it had not already been taken for a
mortal being, as a type of mortal man? . . . We repeat the
proposition: it was impossible to conceive the sun _as dying and
descending into hades_ until it had been assumed as a type and
representative of man. . . . The reign of Osiris in Egypt, his war
with Typhon, his death and resurrection, were events appertaining to
the divine dynasties. We can only say, then, that the origin of these
symbolical ideas was _extremely ancient_, without attempting to fix
its chronology."

But when, we realize the fact that these ancient religions were built
upon the memory of an event which had really happened--an event of
awful significance to the human race--the difficulty which perplexed
Mr. Miller and other scholars disappears. The sun had, apparently,
been slain by an evil thing; for a long period it returned not, it
was dead; at length, amid the rejoicings of the world, it arose from
the dead, and came in glory to rule mankind.

And these events, as I have shown, are perpetuated in the sun-worship
which still exists in the world in many

{p. 237}

forms. Even the Christian peasant of Europe still lifts his hat to
the rising sun.

The religion of the Hindoos was also based on the same great cosmical
event.

Indra was the great god, the sun. He has a long and dreadful contest
with Vritra, "the throttling snake." Indra is "the cloud-compeller";
he "shatters the cloud with his bolt and releases the imprisoned
waters";[1] that is to say, he slays the snake Vritra, the comet, and
thereafter the rain pours down and extinguishes the flames which
consume the world.

"He goes in search of the cattle, the clouds, which the evil powers
have driven away."[2]

That is to say, as the great heat disappears, the moisture condenses
and the clouds form. Doubtless mankind remembered vividly that awful
period when no cloud appeared in the blazing heavens to intercept the
terrible heat.

"He who fixed firm the _moving earth_; who tranquillized _the
incensed mountains_; who spread the spacious firmament; who
consolidated the heavens--he, men, is Indra.

"He who having destroyed Ahi (Vritra, Typhon,) set free the seven
rivers, who, _recovered the cows_, (the clouds,) _detained by Bal_;
who generated fire in the clouds; who is invincible in battle--he,
men, is Indra."

In the first part of the "Vendidad," first chapter, the author gives
an account of the beautiful land, the Aryana Vaejo, which was a land
of delights, created by Ahura Mazda (Ormaz). Then "an evil being,
Angra-Manyus, (Ahriman,) pill of death, created _a mighty serpent_,
and _winter_, the work of the Devas."

"_Ten months of winter are there_, and two months of summer."

[1. Murray's "Mythology," p. 330.

2. Ibid.]

{p. 238}

Then follows this statement:

"Seven months of summer are there; five months of winter were there.
The latter are cold as to water, cold as to earth, cold as to trees.
There is the heart of winter; then all around _falls deep snow_.
There is the worst of evils."

This signifies that once the people dwelled in a fair and pleasant
land. The evil-one sent a mighty serpent; the serpent brought a great
winter; there were but two months of summer; gradually this
ameliorated, until the winter was five months long and the summer
seven months long. The climate is still severe, cold and wet; deep
snows fell everywhere. It is an evil time.

The demonology of the Hindoos turns on the battles between the
Asuras, the irrational demons of the air, the comets, and the gods:

"They dwell beneath the three-pronged root of the world-mountain,
occupying the nadir, while their great enemy Indra," (the sun;) "the
highest Buddhist god, sits upon the pinnacle of the mountain, in the
zenith. The Meru, which stands between the earth and the heavens,
around which the heavenly bodies revolve, is the battlefield of the
Asuras and the Devas."[1]

That is to say, the land Meru--the same as the island Mero of the
ancient Egyptians, from which Egypt was first colonized; the Merou of
the Greeks, on which the Meropes, the first men, dwelt--was the scene
where this battle between the fiends of the air on one side, and the
heavenly bodies and earth on the other, was fought.

The Asuras are painted as "gigantic opponents of the gods, terrible
ogres, with bloody tongues and long tusks, eager to devour human
flesh and blood."[2]

And we find the same thoughts underlying the myths

[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. v, p. 793.

2. Ibid.]

{p. 239}

of nations the most remote from these great peoples of antiquity.

The Esquimaux of Greenland have this myth:

"In the beginning were two brothers, one of whom said, 'There shall
be night and there shall be day, and men shall die, one after
another.' But the second said, 'There shall be no day, but only night
all the time, and men shall live for ever.' They had a long struggle,
but here once more he who loved darkness rather than light was
worsted, and the day triumphed."

Here we have the same great battle between Light and Darkness. The
Darkness proposes to be perpetual; it says, "There shall be no more
day." After a long struggle the Light triumphed, the sun returned,
and the earth was saved.

Among the Tupis of Brazil we have the same story of the battle of
light and darkness. They have a myth of Timandonar and Ariconte:

"They were brothers, one of fair complexion, the other dark. They
were constantly struggling, and Ariconte, which means _the stormy or
cloudy day_, came out worst."

Again the myth reappears; this time among the Norsemen:

Balder, the bright sun, (Baal?) is slain by the god Hodur, the blind
one; to wit, the Darkness. But Vali, Odin's son, slew Hodur, the
Darkness, and avenged Balder. Vali is the son of Rind--the rind--the
frozen earth. That is to say, Darkness devours the sun; frost rules
the earth; Vali, the new sun, is born of the frost, and kills the
Darkness. It is light again. Balder returns after Ragnarok.

And Nana, Balder's wife, the lovely spring-time, died of grief during
Balder's absence.

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 200.]

{p. 240}

We have seen that one of the great events of the Egyptian mythology
was the search made by Isis, the wife of Osiris, for the dead sun-god
in the dark nether world. In the same way, the search for the dead
Balder was an important part of the Norse myths. Hermod, mounted on
Odin's horse, Sleifner, the slippery-one, (the ice?) set out to find
Balder. He rode nine days and nine nights through deep valleys, _so
dark that he could see nothing_;[1] at last he reaches the barred
gates of Hel's (death's) dominions. There he found Balder, seated on
a throne: he told Hel that all things in the world were grieving for
the absence of Balder, the sun. At last, after some delays and
obstructions, Balder returns, and the whole world rejoices.

And what more is needed to prove the original unity of the human
race, and the vast antiquity of these legends, than the fact that we
find the same story, and almost the same names, occurring among the
white-haired races of Arctic Europe, and the dark-skinned people of
Egypt, Phœnicia, and India. The demon Set, or Seb, of one,
comes to us as the Surt of another; the Baal of one is the Balder of
another; Isis finds Osiris ruling the underworld as Hermod found
Balder on a throne in Hel, the realm of death.

The celebration of the May-day, with its ceremonies, the May-pole,
its May-queen, etc., is a survival of the primeval thanksgiving with
which afflicted mankind welcomed the return of the sun from his long
sleep of death. In Norway,[2] during the middle ages, the whole scene
was represented in these May-day festivals: One man represents
summer, he is clad in green leaves the other represents winter; he is
clad in straw, fit picture of the

[1. "Nome Mythology," p. 288.

2. Ibid., p. 291.]

{p. 241}

misery of the Drift Age. They have each a large company of attendants
armed with staves; they fight with each other until winter (the age
of darkness and cold) is subdued. They pretend to pluck his eyes out
and throw him in the water. Winter is slain.

Here we have the victory of Osiris over Seb; of Adonis over Typhon,
of Balder over Hodur, of Indra over Vritra, of Timandonar over
Ariconte, brought down to almost our own time. To a late period, in
England, the rejoicing over the great event survived.

Says Horatio Smith:

"It was the custom, both here and in Italy, for the youth of both
sexes to proceed before daybreak to some neighboring wood,
accompanied with music and horns, about sunrise to deck their doors
and windows with garlands, and to spend the afternoon dancing around
the May-pole."

Stow tells us, in his "Survey of London":

"Every man would walk into the sweet meddowes and green woods, there
to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers,
and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kindes."[2]

Stubbs, a Puritan of Queen Elizabeth's days, describing the May-day
feasts, says:

"And then they fall to banquet and feast, to leape and dance about
it," (the May-pole), "as the heathen people did at the dedication of
their idolles, whereof this is a perfect picture, or rather the thing
itself."[3]

Stubbs was right: the people of England in the year 1550 A. D., and
for years afterward, were celebrating the end of the Drift Age, the
disappearance of the darkness and the victory of the sun.

[1. "Festivals, Games," etc., p. 126.

2. Ibid., p. 127.

3. Ibid.]

{p. 242}

The myth of Hercules recovering his cows from Cacus is the same story
told in another form:

A strange monster, Cacus, (the comet,) stole the cows of Hercules,
(the clouds,) and dragged them backward by their tails into a cave,
and vomited smoke and flame when Hercules attacked him. But Hercules
killed Cacus with his unerring arrows, and released the cows.

This signifies that the comet, breathing fire and smoke, so rarefied
the air that the clouds disappeared and there followed an age of
awful heat. Hercules smites the monster with his lightnings, and
electrical phenomena on a vast scale accompany the recondensation of
the moisture and the return of the clouds.

"Cacus is the same as Vritra in Sanskrit, Azbidihaka in Zend, Python
in Greek, and the worm Fafnir in Norse."[1]

The cows everywhere are the clouds; they are white and soft; they
move in herds across the fields of heaven; they give down their milk
in grateful rains and showers to refresh the thirsty earth.

We find the same event narrated in the folk-lore of the modern
European nations.

Says the Russian fairy-tale:

"Once there was an old couple who had three sons."

Here we are reminded of Shem, Ham, and Japheth; of Zeus, Pluto, and
Neptune; of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; of the three-pronged trident of
Poseidon; of the three roots of the tree Ygdrasil.

"Two of them," continues the legend, "had their wits about them, but
the third, Ivan, was a simpleton.

"Now, in the lands in which Ivan lived _there was never any day, but
always night_. This was a _snake's doings_. Well, Ivan undertook to
kill the snake."

[1. Poor, "Sanskrit Literature," p. 236.]

{p. 243}

This is the same old serpent, the dragon, the apostate, the leviathan.

"Then came a _third_ snake with twelve heads. Ivan killed it, and
destroyed the heads, and immediately there was _a bright light_
throughout the whole land."[1]

Here we have the same series of monsters found in Hesiod, in
Ragnarok, and in the legends of different nations; and the killing of
the third serpent is followed by a bright light throughout the whole
land--the conflagration.

And the Russians have the legend in another form. They tell of Ilia,
the peasant, the servant of Vladimir, _Fair Sun_. He meets the
brigand Soloveï, a monster, a gigantic bird, called the nightingale;
his claws extend for seven versts over the country. Like the dragon
of Hesiod, he was full of sounds--"he roared like a wild beast,
bowled like a dog, and whistled like a nightingale." Ilia bits him
with an arrow in the right eye, and he _tumbles_ headlong from his
lofty nest _to the earth_. The wife of the monster follows Ilia, who
has attached him to his saddle, and is dragging him away; she offers
cupfuls of gold, silver, and pearls--an allusion probably to the
precious metals and stones which were said to have fallen from the
heavens. The Sun (Vladimir) welcomes Ilia, and requests the monster
to howl, roar, and whistle for his entertainment; he contemptuously
refuses; Ilia then commands him and he obeys: the noise is so
terrible that the roof of the palace falls off, and the courtiers
_drop dead with fear_. Ilia, indignant at such an uproar, "cuts up
the monster into little pieces, which _he scatters over the
fields_"--(the Drift).[2]

Subsequently Ilia _hides away in a cave_, unfed by

[1. Poor, "Sanskrit and Kindred Literatures," p. 390.

2. Ibid., p. .281.]

{p. 244}

Vladimir--that is to say, without the light of the sun. At length the
sun goes to seek him, expecting to find him starved to death; but the
king's daughter has sent him food every day for _three years_, and he
comes out of the cave hale and hearty, and ready to fight again for
Vladimir, the Fair Sun.[1] These three years are the three years of
the "Fimbul-winter" of the Norse legends.

I have already quoted (see chapter viii, Part Ill, page 216, _ante_)
the legends of the Central American race, the Quiches, preserved in
the "Popul Vuh," their sacred book, in which they describe the Age of
Darkness and cold. I quote again, from the same work, a graphic and
wonderful picture of the return of the sun

"They determined to leave Tulan, and the greater part of them, under
the guardianship and direction of Tohil, set out to see where they
would take up their abode. They continued on their way amid the most
extreme hardships for the want of food; sustaining themselves at one
time upon the mere smell of their staves, and by imagining they were
eating, when in verity and truth they ate nothing. Their heart,
indeed, it is again and again said, was almost broken by affliction.
Poor wanderers! they had a cruel way to go, many forests to pierce,
many stern mountains to overpass, and a long passage to make through
the sea, along _the shingle and pebbles and drifted sand_--the sea
being, however, parted for their passage. At last they came to a
mountain, that they named Hacavitz, after one of their gods, and here
they rested--for here they were by some means given to understand
that _they should see the sun_. Then, indeed, was filled with an
exceeding joy the heart of Balam-Quitzé, of Balam-Agab of Mahucutah,
and of Iqui-Balam. It seemed to them that even the face of the
morning star caught a new and more resplendent brightness.

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