Many of the mythological poems, indeed, most of them, and great part of the less sacred literature of the tablets, are so obscure and unintelligible that for their understanding a “key” was necessary, and the priests held the key. Of special interest are the fragments containing portions of the Babylonian cosmogony; and as our Bible (Gen. xi., 31) tells that Abraham was of Ur in Chaldaea, his descendants would inherit from him (supposing him to have been an historical personage) some portions of the ancient traditions and folklore of the Chaldaeans. Here is a fragment of the Babylonian story of the Creation:
The Chaldee Noah, called Samas-Napishtim (sun of life), tells the story of the deluge in this form: The god Ea having made known to him the punishment decreed for mankind on account of their sins, he built a great ship at the god’s command, and into it brought all his possessions, his kinsmen, his servants, also domestic and wild animals. Then the gods let a great tempest loose, and with the spirits entered the combat to destroy all living things. But the flood rose up to the sky and threatened even the lower gods, who had to take refuge with the higher gods. The gods, therefore, repented of what they had done. But after seven days the storm was quieted, and the waters were abated; Samas-Napishtim opened the window of his ship, now resting on the mountain Nizir, and after other seven days freed a dove, but the dove found no resting place. Then a swallow, which did in like manner; then a raven, which preyed on the bodies of the drowned. It was now possible for Samas-Napishtim to let the animals out; he erected an altar and offered sacrifice, whereto the gods gathered “like masses of flies.” Then the god Bel, who had ordered the flood, became reconciled with the other gods, who were angry with him on that account; he led Samas-Napishtim forth with his wife, and made a covenant with them and the people. But the pair were taken afar to live for evermore.
This Chaldaic history of the deluge is but one section of a great poem, an epos contained in twelve earthen tablets, wherein are recounted the fortunes and exploits of a hero, apparently the Nimrod of the Hebrew Bible. This poem is reputed to date from the twenty-third century, B. C. The deeds of this hero, Gishdubarra, or Namrassit, as he is called, forcibly recall the story of the Hellenic Herakles, and the Heraclean myth, perhaps, had its origin in the Chaldaean epos. Gishdubarra is a descendant of Samas-Napishtim, whom he seeks out in his retreat to obtain a cure of his disease, and who takes that occasion to narrate to him the history of the flood. Now, his disease was a visitation of the goddess Anatu, because that he had spurned the love of the goddess Istar. A short poem graphically and effectively tells of how Istar in her distress over this repulse sought help in the netherworld. “Istar’s Descent into Hell” impresses one like Dante’s “Inferno”; indeed, in the opening verses it employs nearly the same words as the great Florentine. Istar goes, says the poet,
In the netherworld the goddess Allatu reigns as queen. She is Istar’s counterpart: as Istar (daughter of the moon-god) is the rising moon, or the morning-star, so is Allatu the setting moon, or the evening star. The two are the mutually conflicting opposite sides of one being; and here, perhaps, we have an intimation of a deeper ethical interpretation, according to the secret doctrine of the Chaldaeans. The hell of the Chaldaean theology is divided into seven compartments separated by gates. At each gate Istar must surrender to its keeper some portion of her paraphernalia; at the first the crown, at the second the earrings, at the third the necklace, at the fourth the mantle, at the fifth the girdle, crusted with precious stones, at the sixth the armlets and anklets, and at the seventh the last vesture. Possibly, we have here a symbolic allusion to the Chaldaean mystic teaching, which may have had seven degrees of initiation into as many orders of mysteries, till all were disclosed. The queen of the nether world not only renders to Istar no assistance, but, contrariwise, treats her as an enemy, and heaps bodily injuries upon her. Meanwhile on earth, Istar being the goddess of love, all union of the sexes, whether among men or animals, ceases, and at last the gods request of Allatu the liberation of Istar. Reluctantly she consents. Istar is made whole and set free, and at each gate gets back again what had been taken from her. The poem was intended to be recited by the priest at the obsequies of the dead, to give assurance to the mourning survivors that the gates of the netherworld are not unconquerable, but that there is still a possibility for the shades to reach the land of the blest, the abode of Istar.
9. ZOROASTER AND THE PERSIANS.
If in Chaldaea the traces of actual secret teaching seem faint and indistinct, they quite disappear the further we go from the centres of ancient culture in Northern Africa and Western Asia, though analogies are found everywhere. In Persia, whose culture for the rest was an offshoot of that of Chaldaea, the priests (athravan) of Zarathustra’s, or Zoroaster’s, religion were the highest of the three classes of the population, and the priestly class was considered further removed from the other two (warriors and farmers) than they from each other. Sprung originally from a Median stock, the priests married only women of their own race, and alone of the population possessed high culture. As in Egypt, the King was adopted into the priestly class. The priests went about the country as teachers, but gave religious instruction only to those of their class. The chief priest was styled Zarathustrotema, i. e., the one nearest to Zarathustra, and had his see in the holy city Ragha (now Rai), whose inhabitants, like those of modern Rome, had the name of being unbelievers. The priests alone held rule in Ragha, and no secular power had right to give orders. Even elsewhere throughout the kingdom the priests regarded themselves as subject only to the commands of the Zarathustrotema.
Further, they were physicians, astrologers, interpreters of dreams, scribes, judges, officers of state, etc. The duties they sought to impress upon the minds of the people were these exclusively: That they should reverence the holy fire, listen to the reading of passages from the sacred books, and perform no end of ceremonies of purification on account of their sins against the precepts of their religion. All this points to the existence of a mystic gild of the priests, which withheld the real teachings of their religion from the uninitiated, and the members of which alone understood what was the original of the strife between the good world of Ormuzd and the evil of Ahriman, namely, in all probability, the alternation of night and day, Summer and Winter.
10. BRAHMANS AND BUDDHISTS.
The case was much the same in India. There the priests, then as now, the highest caste (Brahmans), were separated from the people by even a deeper gulf than in Persia. They can have no communication with people of any other caste, and can take nothing from any one not belonging to their own caste. They stand outside of the state and its laws, and have laws of their own. By the people they are regarded as gods: they and their pupils, the Bramatsharin, as is said in the “Atharva-Beda” (book of ceremonial laws), give life to both worlds; nay, they it is that made sky and earth fast on their foundations, that introduced religion, the gods, and immortality, that produced the world, that brought the daemons into subjection. Thus they indoctrinated the people; but as they themselves of course knew that things were not so, a secret doctrine naturally sprung up among them, and so they instituted a mystic society, whose members alone knew how the matter really stood, and that the people were hoodwinked. Accordingly, the basis of religion was totally different for the Brahmans from what it was for the rest of the people. The latter were idolaters, the former pantheists. This pantheism is taught in all their sacred books; but these books the second and third castes (warriors and farmers) did not understand, and the fourth caste, the servile (which was also the most numerous), durst not read them at all.
According to this doctrine, all gods and the whole creation are sprung from Eternity (Aditi). Penitents and solitaries were esteemed by the Brahmans above kings and heroes, even above gods. But the life of a hermit was not perfect enough for them, for that was attained by the next two castes. Therefore, as their own peculiar specialty, they concocted the idea of a sort of a soul of the universe, the Atman-Brahman (the All-Me, or Me-All). This dogma was originated by the Brahman Yadshnavalkya: but Brahmans themselves say that no man can comprehend it, and that no man can instruct another in it. Thus, despairing of a solution of life’s enigma, the Brahmans hit upon the idea that the universe is only a phantasm, a Dream of the Soul of the Universe, and as a consequence that the earth, with all that it contains, is nothing: this is pessimism. They imagined enormous aeons of time, in the lapse of which the world grew ever worse and creatures were born only to suffer, to die, and either to awaken to suffering in the soul’s migration, or to do penance in the unspeakable torments of hell. Now, as of all this the people could understand only what was said about the hell torments, the Brahmans contrived for them also a supreme deity under the same name as their own Soul of the Universe, Brahma, and for Brahma they provided a wife, Sarasvati. Brahma they made the creator, but the part played by him was only passive and the people, not content with such a do-nothing, paid more attention to other gods, specially to resplendent Vishnu and dread Siva. Long afterward the three gods were united in a sort of trinity, or, rather, were represented by a three-headed figure, which had neither temple nor sacrificial worship. Thus the Brahmans went on refining and refining in their theological speculations, while the people became divided into parties, Vishnuites and Sivaites, and the religion of the Hindus reached at last the state of debasement in which we find it to-day.
Before degeneration had gone so far Buddha, in the sixth century, B. C, endeavored to save the Hindu religion. Buddhism was not a new religion, only a reform of Brahmanism. Though it failed to strike root deep in its native soil, the more westerly countries of India, on the other hand it won a great following in farther India, Tibet, China, and Japan: it has since assumed a peculiar composite character by fusion with the ancient religions of those countries. It grew out of a monastic society founded by Siddhartha, afterward Buddha, surnamed the Perfect One. His doctrine was wholly ethical, and its profoundest principle was that only in complete renunciation of all things can man find safety and peace. Buddha himself was rather strict with postulants for admission to the society, so that in his time the teaching was in many respects a secret doctrine. But after the death of Buddha, when first himself, then several other Buddhas believed to have lived before him, and expected to come after him, had been raised to the rank of gods; and when to these had been added the Hindu gods and the gods of other peoples; the religion of the founder having thus degenerated into a polytheism, the learned began to interpret the original doctrine now in one sense, again in another, opinions differing on the question whether the Nirvana (literally, extinguishment) preached by Buddha meant Death and Nothingness, or a Blest State. Thus the Buddhism of the priests assumed a strong likeness to a secret doctrine, though we know not of any formal organization to that end.
11. SECRET LEAGUES OF BARBAROUS PEOPLES.
Even among Savages so-called are found secret doctrines and secret societies of priests analogous to those of more cultured peoples. The priests of Hawaii, who in this respect perhaps rank highest among savage races, had a theory of their own regarding creation which shows great elevation of thought. The sorcerers, or priests, of savage races wherever they still remain, are banded in secret societies, which withhold from the people all knowledge of their tricks. The Angekoks of the Eskimos, the Medicine Men of the North American aboriginals, the Shamans of Siberia, as well as the sorcerers, however named, of African and other races, nearly all form close castes, hand down their pretended arts of weather-making, of healing disease, discovering thieves, counteracting spells, etc., to their successors, and prepare themselves for their office by undergoing strange tests and performing outlandish rites; they also wear fantastic togs. Among the Zulu Kaffirs the one who desires to become a sorcerer (usually a descendant of a sorcerer) gives up the customary mode of life, has strange dreams, seeks solitude, hops and jumps about, utters cries, handles serpents that other Kaffirs will not touch, at last receives instruction from some aged sorcerer, and is formally admitted by the assembly of those charlatans. There are also witches, or sorceresses, who go through a like form of consecration.
There exist also among savages other species of secret societies. In the Society Islands the chiefs, called Areoi or Erih, form an association, the origin of which they trace to Oros, god of war. They are divided into twelve classes under as many grandmasters, each class distinguished by a peculiar tattoo, the members are united by the firmest ties, show unbounded hospitality to one another, live without marriage, kill their own children, and refrain from all work. There are similar societies in Micronesia, called Klobbergoll, which assemble in special houses, and serve their chiefs in war as bodyguard. On the isle of New Britain (now a German possession, and named New Pomerania) there exists a secret society called the Duk-Duk, whose members, wearing frightful masks, care for the execution of the laws, collect fines, and inflict punishment on incendiaries and homicides. They are known to each other by secret signs, and outsiders are denied admission to their festivals under pain of death. In West Africa there are many secret societies whose members are distinguished by a chalk line, with which they are marked at their initiation. Their office is to pursue and punish criminals, and to collect the tribute. In each locality these associations possess houses for their special use, and their members are bound to the strictest secrecy. Thus even savages have their secret police and their privy tribunals.