Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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In the Chinese Encyclopædia of the Emperor Kang-hi, 1662, we are told:

"In traveling from the shores of the Eastern Sea toward Che-lu,
neither brooks nor ponds are met with in the country, although it is
intersected by mountains and valleys. Nevertheless, there are found
in the sand, very far away from the sea, oyster-shells and the
shields of crabs. The tradition of the Mongols who inhabit the
country is, that it has been said from time immemorial that in a

[1. Tyler's "Early Mankind," p. 224.

2. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 197.

3. Ibid., p. 197.

4. Ibid., p. 198.]

{p. 260}

remote antiquity the waters of the deluge flooded the district, and
when they retired the places where they had been made their
appearance covered with sand. . . . This is why these deserts are
called the 'Sandy Sea,' which indicates that they were not always
covered with sand and gravel."[1]

In the Russian legends, a "golden ship sails across the heavenly sea;
it breaks into fragments, which neither princes nor people can put
together again,"--reminding one of Humpty-Dumpty, in the
nursery-song, who, when he fell from his elevated position on the
wall--

"Not all the king's horses,
Nor all the king's men,
Can ever make whole again."

In another Russian legend, Perun, the thunder-god, destroys the
devils with _stone_ hammers. On Ilya's day, the peasants offer him a
roasted animal, which is cut up and _scattered over the fields_,[2]
just as we have seen the great dragon or serpent cut to pieces and
scattered over the world.

Mr. Christy found at Bou-Merzoug, on the plateau of the Atlas, in
Northern Africa, in a bare, deserted, stony place among the
mountains, a collection of fifteen hundred tombs, made of rude
limestone slabs, set up with one slab to form a roof, so as to make
perfect dolmens--closed chambers--where the bodies were packed in.

"Tradition says that a wicked people lived there, and for their sins
_stones were rained upon them from heaven;_ so they built these
chambers to creep into."[3]

In addition to the legend of "Phaëton," already given, Ovid derived
from the legends of his race another story,

[1. Tylor's "Early Mankind," p. 328.

2. Poor, "Sanskrit Literature," p. 400.

3. Tylor's "Early Mankind," p. 222.]

{p. 261}

which seems to have had reference to the same event. He says (Fable
XI):

"After the men who came from the Tyrian nation had touched this grove
with ill-fated steps, and the urn let down into the water made a
splash, the _azure dragon_ stretched forth his head from the deep
cave, and uttered dreadful hissings."

We are reminded of the flying monster of Hesiod, which roared and
hissed so terribly.

Ovid continues:

"The urns dropped from their hands, and the blood left their bodies,
and a sudden trembling seized their astonished limbs. He wreathes his
scaly orbs in rolling spirals, and, with a spring, becomes twisted
into mighty folds; and, uprearing himself from below the middle into
the light air, he looks down upon all the grove, and is of" (as)
"large size, as, if you were to look on him entire, the _serpent_
which separates the two Bears" (the constellations).

He slays the Phœnicians; "some he kills with his sting, some
with his long folds, some breathed upon by the venom of his baleful
poison."

Cadmus casts a huge stone, as big as a millstone, against him, but it
falls harmless upon his scales, "that were like a coat-of-mail"; then
Cadmus pierced him with his spear. In his fall he crushes the
forests; the blood flows from his poisonous palate and changes the
color of the grass. He is slain.

Then, under the advice of Pallas, Cadmus _sows the earth with the
dragon's teeth,_ "_under the earth turned up_, as the seeds of a
future people." Afterward, the earth begins to move, and armed men
rise up; they slay Cadmus, and then fight with and slay each other.

This seems to be a recollection of the comet, and the stones falling
from heaven; and upon the land so afflicted

{p. 262}

subsequently a warlike and aggressive and quarrelsome race of men
springs up.

In the contest of Hercules with the Lygians, on the road from
Caucasus _to the Hesperides_, "there is an attempt to explain
mythically the origin of the round quartz blocks in the Lygian field
of stones, at the mouth of the Rhône."[1]

In the "Prometheus Delivered" of Æsechylus, Jupiter draws together a
cloud, and causes "the district round about to be _covered with a
shower of round stones_."[2]

The legends of Europe refer to a race buried under sand and earth:

"The inhabitants of Central Europe and Teutonic races who came late
to England, place their mythical heroes _under ground in caves_, in
vaults beneath enchanted castles, or in _mounds_ which open and show
their buried inhabitants alive and busy about the avocations of
earthly men. . . . In Morayshire _the buried race are supposed to
have been buried under the sand-hills_, as they are in some parts of
Brittany."[3]

Turning again to America, we find, in the great prayer of the Aztecs
to Tezcalipoca, {_Tezcatlipoca--jbh_} given on page 186, _ante_, many
references to some material substances falling from heaven; we read:

"Thine anger and indignation has _descended upon us_ in these days, .
. . coming down even as _stones, spears, and darts upon the wretches
that inhabit_ the earth; this is the pestilence by which we are
afflicted and _almost destroyed_." The children die, "broken and
dashed to pieces _as against stones_ and a wall. . . . Thine anger
and thy indignation does it delight in _hurling the stone and arrow
and spear_. The _grinders of thy teeth_" (the dragon's teeth of
Ovid?) "are employed, and thy bitter whips upon the miserable of

[1. "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 115.

2. Ibid., p. 115.

3. "Frost and Fire," vol. ii, p. 190.]

{p. 263}

thy people.... Hast thou verily determined that it utterly perish; .
. . that the peopled place become a wooded hill and _a wilderness of
stones?_ . . . Is there to be no mercy nor pity for us until the
_arrows of thy fury are spent?_ . . . Thine arrows and _stones have
sorely hurt this poor people_."

In the legend of the Indians of Lake Tahoe (see page 168, _ante_), we
are told that the stars were melted by the great conflagration, and
they rained down molten metal upon the earth.

In the Hindoo legend (see page 171, _ante_) of the great battle
between Rama, the sun-god, and Ravana, the evil one, Rama persuaded
the monkeys to help him build a bridge to the Island of Lanka, "and
_the stones which crop out through Southern India are said to have
been dropped by the monkey builders_."

In the legend of the Tupi Indians (see page 175, _ante_), we are told
that God "swept about the fire in such way that in _some places he
raised mountains and in others dug valleys_."

In the Bible we have distinct references to the fall of matter from
heaven. In Deuteronomy (chap. xxviii), among the consequences which
are to follow disobedience of God's will, we have the following:

"22. The Lord shall smite thee . . . with an extreme burning, and
with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall
pursue thee until thou perish.

"23. And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the
earth that is under thee shall be iron.

"24. _The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from.
heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed_. . . .

"29. And thou shalt _grope at noonday_, as the blind gropeth in
darkness."

And even that marvelous event, so much mocked at by modern thought,
the standing-still of the sun, at the

{p. 264}

command of Joshua, may be, after all, a reminiscence of the
catastrophe of the Drift. In the American legends, we read that the
sun stood still, and Ovid tells us that "a day was lost." Who shall
say what circumstances accompanied an event great enough to crack the
globe itself into immense fissures? It is, at least, a curious fact
that in Joshua (chap. x) the standing-still of the sun was
accompanied by a fall of stones from heaven by which multitudes were
slain.

Here is the record

"11. And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were
in the going down to Beth-horon, that _the Lord cast down great
stones from heaven upon them_ unto Azekah, and they died: there were
more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel
slew with the sword."

"13. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people
had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the
book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down _about a whole day_.

"14. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the
Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for
Israel."

The "book of Jasher" was, we are told, a very ancient work, long
since lost. Is it not possible that a great, dim memory of a terrible
event was applied by tradition to the mighty captain of the Jews,
just as the doings of Zeus have been attributed, in the folk-lore of
Europe, to Charlemagne and Barbarossa?

If the contact of Lexell's comet with the earth would, as shown on
page 84, _ante_, have increased the length of the sidereal year three
hours, what effect might not a comet, many times larger than the mass
of the earth, have had upon the revolution of the earth? Were the
heat,

{p. 265}

the conflagrations, and the tearing up of the earth's surface caused
by such an arrestment or partial slowing-up of the earth's revolution
on its axis?

I do not propound these questions as any part of my theory, but
merely as suggestions. The American and Polynesian legends represent
that the catastrophe increased the length of the days. This may mean
nothing, or a great deal. At least, Joshua's legend may yet take its
place among the scientific possibilities.

But it is in the legend of the Toltecs of Central America, as
preserved in one of the sacred books of the race, the "Codex
Chimalpopoca," that we find the clearest and most indisputable
references to the fall of gravel (see page 166, _ante_):

"'The third sun' (or era) 'is called Quia-Tonatiuh, sun of rain,
because there fell a rain of fire; all which existed burned; _and
there fell a rain of gravel_.'

"'They also narrate that while _the sandstone which we now see
scattered about_, and the tetzontli' (_amygdaloide poreuse_, basalt,
trap-rocks) 'boiled with great tumult, there also arose the rocks of
vermilion color.'

"'Now this was in the year Ce Tecpatl, One _Flint_, it was the day
_Nahui-Quiahuitl_, Fourth Rain. Now, in this day in which men were
lost and destroyed _in a rain of fire_, they were transformed into
goslings.'"[1]

We find also many allusions in the legends to the clay.

When the Navajos climbed up from their cave they found the earth
covered with clay into which they sank mid-leg deep; and when the
water ran off it left the whole world full of mud.

In the Creek and Seminole legends the Great Spirit made the first
man, in the primeval cave, "from the clay around him."

[1. "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 499.]

{p. 266}

Sanchoniathon, from the other side of the world, tells us, in the
Phœnician legends (see page 209, _ante_), that first came
chaos, and out of chaos was generated _môt_ or mud.

In the Miztec (American) legends (see page 214, _ante_), we are told
that in the Age of Darkness there was "nothing but _mud and slime_ on
all the face of the earth."

In the Quiche legends we are told that the first men were destroyed
by fire and _pitch_ from heaven.

In the Quiche legends we also have many allusions to the wet and
muddy condition of the earth before the returning sun dried it up.

In the legends of the North American Indians we read that the earth
was covered with great heaps of ashes; doubtless the fine, dry powder
of the clay looked like ashes before the water fell upon it.

There is another curious fact to be considered in connection with
these legends--that the calamity seems to have brought with it some
compensating wealth.

Thus we find Beowulf, when destroyed by the midnight monster,
rejoicing to think that his people would receive a treasure, a
fortune by the monster's death.

Hence we have a whole mass of legends wherein a dragon or great
serpent is associated with a precious horde of gold or jewels.

"The Scythians had a saga of the sacred gold which fell _burning_
from heaven. The ancients had also some strange fictions of silver
which fell from heaven, and with which it had been attempted, under
the Emperor Severus, to cover bronze coins."[1]

"In Peru the god of riches was worshiped under the image of a
rattlesnake, horned and hairy, _with a tail of gold_. It was said to
_have descended from the heavens in_

[1. "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 115.]

{p. 267}

_the sight of all the people_, and to have been seen by the whole
army of the Inca."[1]

The Peruvians--probably in reference to this event--chose as their
arms two serpents with their tails interlaced.

Among the Greeks and ancient Germans the fiery dragon was _the
dispenser of riches_, and "_watches a treasure in the earth_."[2]

These legends may be explained by the fact that in the Ural
Mountains, on the east of Europe, in South America, in South Africa,
and in other localities, the Drift gravels contain gold and precious
stones.

The diamond is found in drift-gravels alone. It is pure carbon
crystallized. Man has been unable to reproduce it, except in minute
particles; nor can he tell in what laboratory of nature it has been
fabricated. It is not found _in situ_ in any of the rocks of an
earth-origin. Has it been formed in space? Is it an outcome of that
pure carbon which the spectroscope has revealed to us as burning in
some of the comets?

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 125.

2. Ibid., p. 125.]

{p. 268}

CHAPTER XI.

THE ARABIAN MYTHS.

AND when we turn to the Arabian tales, we not only see, by their
identity with the Hindoo and Slavonic legends, that they are of great
antiquity, dating back to the time when these widely diverse races,
Aryan and Semitic, were one, but we find in them many allusions to
the battle between good and evil, between God and the serpent.

Abou Mohammed the Lazy, who is a very great magician, with power over
the forces of the air and the Afrites, beholds a battle between two
great snakes, one tawny-colored, the other white. The tawny serpent
is overcoming the white one; but Abou Mohammed kills it with a rock.
"The white serpent" (the sun) "departed and was _absent for a while_,
but returned"; and the tawny serpent was torn to pieces and scattered
over the land, and nothing remained of her but her head.

And then we have the legend of "the City of Brass," or bronze. It
relates to "an ancient age and period in the olden time." One of the
caliphs, Abdelmelik, the son of Marwan, has heard from antiquity that
Solomon, (Solomon is, in Arabic, like Charlemagne in the middle-age
myths of Europe, the synonym for everything venerable and powerful,)
had imprisoned genii in bottles of brass, and the Caliph desired to
procure some of these bottles.

{p. 269}

Then Talib (the son of Sahl) tells the Caliph that a man once voyaged
to the Island of Sicily, but a wind arose and blew him away "to one
of the lands of God."

"This happened during the black darkness of night."

It was a remote, unfrequented land; the people were black and lived
in caves, and were naked and of strange speech. They cast their nets
for Talib and brought up a bottle of brass or bronze, containing one
of the imprisoned genii, who came out of it, as a blue smoke, and
cried in a horrible voice, "Repentance, repentance, O prophet of God!"

All this was in a Western land. And Abdelmelik sent Talib to find
this land. It was "a journey of two years and some months going, and
the like returning." It was in a far country. They first reach a
deserted palace in a desolate land, the palace of "Kosh the son of
Sheddad the son of Ad, the greater." He read an inscription:

"Here was a people, whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over
for their lost dominion.

"And in this palace is the last information respecting lords
collected in the dust.

"Death hath destroyed them and disunited them, and in the dust they
have lost what they amassed."

Talib goes on with his troops, until they come to a great pillar of
black stone, sunk into which, to his armpits, was a mighty creature;
"he had two wings and four arms; two of them like those of the sons
of Adam, and two like the fore-legs of lions with claws. He had hair
upon his head like the tails of horses, and two eyes like two burning
coals, and he had a third eye in his forehead, like the eye of the
lynx, from which there appeared sparks of fire."

He was the imprisoned comet-monster, and these

{p. 270}

arms and eyes, darting fire, remind us of the description given of
the apostate angel in the other legends:

###

THE AFRITE IN THE PILLAR.

"He was tall and black; and he was crying out 'Extolled be the
perfection of my Lord, who hath appointed me this severe affliction
and painful torture until the day of resurrection!'"

{p. 271}

The party of Talib were stupefied at the sight and retreated in
fright. And the wise man, the Sheik Abdelsamad, one of the party,
drew near and asked the imprisoned monster his history. And he
replied:

"I am an Afrite of the genii, and my name is Dahish, the son of
Elamash, and I am restrained here by the majesty of God.

"There belonged to one of the sons of Eblis an idol of red carnelian,
of which I was made guardian; and there used to worship it one of the
kings of the sea, of illustrious dignity, of great glory, leading,
among his troops of the genii, a million warriors who smote with
swords before him, and who answered his prayer in cases of
difficulty. These genii, who obeyed him, were under my command and
authority, following my words when I ordered them: all of them were
in rebellion against Solomon the son of David (on both of whom be
peace!), and I used to enter the body of the idol, to command them
and to forbid them."

Solomon sent word to this king of the sea that he must give up the
worship of the idol of red carnelian; the king consulted the idol,
and this Afrite, speaking through the idol, encouraged the king to
refuse. What,--he said to him,--can Solomon do to thee, "when thou
art in the midst of this great sea?" And so Solomon came to compel
the island-race to worship the true God; he surrounded his island,
and filled the land with his troops, assisted by birds and wild
beasts, and a dreadful battle followed in the air:

"After this they came upon us all together, and we contended with him
in a wide tract _for a period of two days_; and calamity befell us on
the third day, and the decree of God (whose name be exalted!) was
executed among us. The first who charged upon Solomon were I and my
troops: and I said to my companions, 'Keep in your places in the
battle-field while I go forth to them and challenge _Dimiriat_."'
(Dimiriat was the Sun, the

{p. 272}

bright one.) "And lo, _he came forth, like a great mountain, his
fires flaming and his smoke ascending;_ and he approached and _smote
me with a flaming fire; and his arrow prevailed over my fire_. He
cried out at me _with a prodigious cry_, so that I imagined the
_heaven had fallen_ and closed over me, and the mountains shook at
his voice.

###

DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY DIMIRIAT.

Then he commanded his companions, and they charged upon us all
together: we also charged upon them, and we cried out one to another:
_the fires rose and the smoke ascended_, the hearts of the combatants
were almost cleft asunder, and the battle raged. The birds fought in
the air, and the wild _beasts in the dust_; and I contended with
Dimiriat until he wearied me and I wearied him;

{p. 273}

after which I became weak, and my companions and troops were
enervated and my tribes were routed."

The birds tore out the eyes of the demons, and cut them in pieces
until _the earth was covered with the fragments_, like the trunks of
palm-trees. "As for me, I flew from before Dimiriat, but he followed
me a journey of three months until he overtook me." And Solomon
hollowed out the black pillar, and sealed him in it with his signet,
and chained him until the day of resurrection.

And Talib and his party go on still farther, and find "the City of
Brass," a weird, mysterious, lost city, in a desolate land; silent,
and all its people dead; a city once of high civilization, with
mighty, brazen walls and vast machinery and great mysteries; a city
whose inhabitants had perished suddenly in some great calamity. And
on the walls were tablets, and on one of them were inscribed these
solemn words:

"'Where are the kings and the peoples of the earth? They have quitted
that which they have built and peopled. And in the grave they are
pledged for their past actions. There, after destruction, they have
become putrid corpses. Where are the troops? They repelled not nor
profited. And where is that which they collected and boarded? The
decree of the Lord of the Throne _surprised them_. Neither riches nor
refuge saved them from it.'

"And they saw the merchants dead in their shops; their skins were
dried, and their bones were carious, and they had become examples to
him who would be admonished."

Everywhere were the dead, "lying upon skins, and appearing almost as
if they would speak."

Their death seems to have been due to a long period of terrible heat
and drought.

On a couch was a damsel more beautiful than all the daughters of
Adam; she was embalmed, so as to preserve all her charms. Her eyes
were of glass, filled with quick

{p. 274}

silver, which seemed to follow the beholder's every motion. Near her
was a tablet of gold, on which was inscribed:

"In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.... the Lord of
lords, the Cause of causes; the Everlasting, the Eternal. . . . Where
are the kings of the regions of the earth" Where are the Amalekites?
Where are the mighty monarchs? The mansions are void of their
presence, and they have quitted their families and homes. Where are
the kings of the foreigners and the Arabs? They have all died and
become rotten bones. Where are the lords of high degree? They have
all died. Where are Korah and Haman? Where is Sheddad, the son of
Add? Where are Canaan and Pharaoh? God hath _cut them off_, and it is
he who cutteth short the lives of mankind, and he hath made the
mansions to be void for their presence. . . . I am Tadmor, the
daughter of the king of the Amalekites, of those who ruled the
countries with equity: I possessed what none of the kings possessed,"
(i. e., in extent of dominion,) "and ruled with justice, and acted
impartially toward my subjects; I gave and bestowed; and I lived a
longtime in the enjoyment of happiness and an easy life, and
emancipated both female and male slaves. Thus I did until _the
summoner of death came, and disasters occurred before me_. And the
cause was this: _Seven years_ in succession came upon us, _during
which no water descended on us from heaven, nor did any grass grow
for us on the face of the earth_. So we ate what food we had in our
dwellings, and after that we fell upon the beasts and ate, and there
remained nothing. Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be
brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it, by trusty men, who
went about with it through _all regions_, not leaving unvisited a
single large city, to seek for some food. _But they found it not_,
and they returned to us with the wealth after a long absence. So,
thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the
gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the
decrees of our Lord; and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and
left what we had built and what we had treasured."

{p. 275}

And this strange tale has relations to all the other legends.

Here we have the great demon, darting fire, blazing, smoking, the
destructive one; the rebel against the good God. He is overthrown by
the bright-shining one, Dimiriat, the same as the Dev-Mrityu of the
Hindoos; he and his forces are cut to pieces, and scattered over the
land, and he, after being chased for months through space, is
captured and chained. Associated with all this is a people of the
Bronze Age--a highly civilized people; a people living on an island
in the Western Sea, who perished by a calamity which came on them
suddenly; "a summoner of death" came and brought disasters; and then
followed a long period of terrible heat and drought, in which not
they alone, but all nations and cities, were starved by the drying up
of the earth. The demon had devoured the cows-the clouds; like Cacus,
he had dragged them backward into his den, and no Hercules, no Indra,
had arisen to hurl the electric bolt that was to kill the heat,
restore the clouds, and bring upon the parched earth the grateful
rain. And so this Bronze-Age race spread out their useless treasures
to the sun, and, despite their miseries, they praise the God of gods,
the Cause of causes, the merciful, the compassionate, and lie down to
die.

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