It will be convenient next to glance at the records of the other great branches of the ancient Aryan world, the Vedic Indians and the Iranians. One does not read long in the sacred books of India without attaining the conviction that the highest religion of the Vedas was deeply penetrated with sacerdotal magic; which was so far from losing its hold in the later period that it imprisoned the religious thought, and the later Brahmanism was capable of the belief that without the spell of the sacrifice the sun could not run his course in heaven. And the recital of spells forms a great part of the Vedic ritual. Thus the hymns say of the fire-god Agni, “The thoughtful men find Agni when they have recited the spells”; and the gods themselves, like the Norse divinities, work by spells: “Agni upholds the sky by his efficacious spells.”208.1 Yet the early record gives us also copious illustration of real prayer, and occasionally of a very exalted tone. It is true, as we should expect, that material and temporal advantages are by far the predominant objects of the petition: the head of the household prays for wealth, offspring, victory in battle or the races; with rare exceptions, the prayers are personal and private rather than political, and are thus in marked contrast to the Hellenic; yet we have a few that are evidently proffered for the community,209.1 and at times the deity is petitioned to grant an abundant supply of valiant men. But even in the few prayers that reflect the political life of the State, the individualistic spirit is apt to appear. We have a curious example of a petition to Indra to make a man powerful in the political assembly: “In this entire gathering render, O Indra, me successful,” and this is combined with a naïve spell whereby the politician endeavours to mesmerise the whole meeting: he names the assembly—as our Speaker might name a recalcitrant member—“We know thy name, oh assembly.… Of them that are sitting together I take to myself the power and the understanding”: and again, “With my mind do I seize your minds.”210.1 But even when the prayer is personal and materialistic a real fervour and a genial poetic freshness is often to be found. Here is a beautiful prelude to a prayer for long life proffered to the ancient heaven-god: “Many dawns have not yet dawned: grant me to live in them, O Varuna.” And often the worshipper rises above mere material aspirations, as in such appeals to Agni as the following: “May we be well-doers before the gods.”210.2 “Give us not up, oh Agni, to want of thought.”210.3 “Mayest thou bestow splendour, renown, and (wise) mind upon such mortals as satisfy thee with refreshment, oh Agni.”210.4 “Drive far from us senselessness and anguish: drive far all ill-will from whom thou attendest.”210.5 At times also the hymns reveal a deep consciousness of sin and a desire for divine forgiveness. “Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone astray. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!”211.1 “Agni, drive away from us sin, which leads us astray.”211.2 “By the earth’s greatness, oh Agni, forgive us even committed sin, that we may be great.”211.3 “Whatever sin we have committed against thee in thoughtlessness, men as we are, make thou us sinless before Aditi.”211.4 Yet we may suspect that the term sin is not always used in these prayers in its modern ethical sense, not for instance in the prayer, “From the sins which knowingly or unknowingly we have committed, do ye, all gods, of one accord release us”;211.5 and the primitive concept on which the old magic of sin-transference was based survives in such passages as the following: “Pass far away, oh sin of the mind: why dost thou utter things not to be uttered? Pass away, I love thee not: to the trees and the forests go on!”212.1 “Enter into the rays, into smoke, oh sin; go into the vapours, and into the fog.”212.2 The context discloses only an indirect appeal to a personal deity, though the term sin in the former passage is clearly applied to what we should call moral offences.
In the Vedic ritual, then, we find a pure and spiritual form of prayer; yet a certain spell-power may attach even to the highest types, for we find not infrequently the conception that not only the power of the worshipper but the power of the deity also is nourished and strengthened by prayer;212.3 and the prayer itself is usually accompanied by a potent act. With this aspect of Vedic prayers we may associate the fact that Agni, the fire-god, appears as the chief divinity to whom they are addressed; for his ritual is purificatory, and the prayers are thus based on a liturgy of purification which stimulates the mental or spiritual force of the worshipper.
We may now turn to another great Aryan stock, the Iranian, whose earlier religion culminated in the Zarathustrian system. The relation of spell to prayer is, on the whole, the same in the Zend-Avesta as we find it in the Vedic hymns, a real spell can accompany a real prayer, and the text of the prayer itself becomes a most potent charm. The “sacerdotal” physician, who, as we have seen, occupied a higher rank in the Zarathustrian estimate than the scientific practitioner, offers first a genuine prayer to Ahura-Mazda for spiritual strength to deal with the disease—“Give us, Ahura, that powerful sovereignty by the strength of which we may smite down the drug (the demon).” Fraught with this mesmeric power he then directs his spell against the sickness-demon: “To thee, oh Sickness, I say—Avaunt! To thee, oh Death, I say—Avaunt!”214.1 And in the ritual of purification, which closely resembles the system of therapeutics, the formulæ of prayers of the most exalted type in the sacred books are used, not as prayers, but as cathartic spells.214.2 It is not hard to discern the steps that lead from this grade of thought to the highest at which the religious speculation of the Zarathustrian arrived. The uttered Word of God is given a supernatural cosmic force; and the prophet pronounces that this utterance of the “Holy Word is of such a nature that if all the corporeal and living world should learn it, and learning hold fast to it, they should be redeemed from their mortality.”214.3 And we can understand why a large part of the Zarathustrian liturgy should be devoted to the recital of formulæ which are statements of the Mazdean faith. Before rising in the morning and retiring at night, the pious Persian was recommended to say, “All good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds I do willingly: all evil thoughts, all evil words, all evil deeds I do unwillingly.”215.1 It is interesting to compare with our own creed the following Mazdean confession: “I confess myself a Mazdayasnian of Zarathustra’s order: I celebrate my praises for good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.… With chanting praises I present all good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, and with rejection I repudiate all evil thoughts and words and deeds. Here I give to you, oh ye Bountiful Immortals, sacrifice and homage with the mind,215.2 with words, deeds, and my entire person, yea, I offer to you the flesh of my very body.”215.3 The formulæ of confession, as well as other parts of this liturgy, are penetrated with the idea of a moral-theological dualism to which our Christian theology has been indirectly deeply indebted. The Mazdean proclaims his detestation of the Daevas, and of Angra-Mainyu, the evil god. “Taught by Ahura, I drive away Angra-Mainyu from this house, this borough”; such words are “victorious, most healing,”216.1 and could be used as the recitation of our creed and paternoster have been used, as veritable spells against the evil power or demon. But in comparing the spell-prayers of the Persian with the Vedic, we are struck with the superiority of the former liturgy in one respect, that here the spell is only brought to bear on the demon, not on the highest god; the prayer increases the spiritual force of the worshipper but does not constrain Ahura.
And the Iranian prayers appear to rise above the Vedic in the enthusiasm of the idea of righteousness that pervades them, and in the conviction that the believer can aid Ahura-Mazda in the continual struggle against the power of evil and in helping towards the final establishment of the righteous kingdom. He prays that, “Through the good thought and the holiness of him who offers thee the due meed of praise thou mayest, oh Lord, make the world of Resurrection appear at thy will, under thy sovereign rule.”217.1 “May we be such as those who bring on this great Renovation.”217.2 “May we help to bring on the good government of Ahura, which is the best for us at every present hour.”217.3 “Be righteousness life-strong and clothed with body. In that realm which shines with splendour as the sun, let piety be present, and may she, through the indwelling of thy good mind, give us blessings in reward for deeds.”217.4 In fact the greater number of the prayers are strikingly spiritual, and for spiritual, not material blessings. The prophet asks Ahura, “How man may become most like unto thee?”217.5 and prays for “aids of grace, beseeching what in accordance with thy wished-for aim is best.”218.1 And the prayer is sometimes directed to abstract moral powers, emanations of Ahura: “If the Mazda-Ahura and Righteousness and Pious Concord be invokable, I implore through the good mind a kingdom for myself, through whose increase we may conquer the Lie.” The kingdom is here the “Desirable Kingdom of Righteousness.”218.2 Certainly the Mazdean kingdom was not of this world, and the Zarathustrian religion is one of the least materialistic that the world has known; its chief moral weakness being, as we have seen, its bondage to ritualistic purity. We may note in conclusion, as showing the continuity of the national spirit, the pronouncement of a Persian Christian, Bishop Aphrahat of East Syria, that the only valid object of prayer was purity of heart.218.3
Many of the phenomena that we have been noting among the Aryan races confront us again when we turn to the Chaldæan-Babylonian liturgies. Here also there appears no real antagonism between spell and prayer, magic and religion.219.1 Spell-formulæ are used and accompanied with a ritual of purification to drive out the evil spirits of sickness; and the highest hymns containing real prayers can be employed as texts for magic purposes; even the gods themselves work by magic, and Marduk himself is invoked as the arch-magician.219.2 And the idea that the prayer could in some sense exercise compulsion on the god appears in an anecdote told by Porphyry about a Chaldæan who was an expert in “purifications of the soul: but found his efforts thwarted because another man who was powerful in the same art had, by means of mystic prayers, bound over the powers he had invoked not to grant his demands.”219.3 Yet by the side of all this we find often an exalted type of prayer, with spiritual and fervent expressions of homage; and the religious law that “prayer absolves from sin” is given as part of Marduk’s revelation to man.220.1 A large number of the records contain the liturgies used by the kings, and while victory, health, and long life, the permanence of the dynasty are the more usual objects of the petition, the deeper ethical tone is often heard. The following are a few examples of the higher aspirations of the Babylonian religion. The founder of the new Babylonian kingdom has recorded his convictions for the guidance of his successor: “Marduk sees through the lips, sees the heart: he who keeps true to Bel and the son of Bel will last for ever.”220.2 One of the greatest prayers in this or any other liturgical collection is that which Nebukadnezar made to Marduk on his accession:220.3 “Oh Eternal Ruler, Lord of All… lead the King by the right way… I am… the work of thy hand: after thy great mercy which thou showest to all, oh Lord, grant that thy high majesty may show compassion upon me: set in my heart the fear of thy Godhead: grant me what thou deemest best: for thou it is that hast created my life.” This is scarcely the Nebukadnezar whom we once thought we knew. There is also a pathetic interest attaching to the prayer of Nabonnedos to the god Schamasch for his son Belsazar:221.1 “Prolong the days of Belsazar, my first-born son—may he commit no sin.” The king Nabonnedos prays also to Marduk: “May I rule as king according to thy wish… let me not in my pride lose knowledge of thee, for it is thou that hast chosen me out.”221.2 The following phrases in a prayer to Marduk of an unknown ruler are still more striking: “Oh Marduk, great Lord… let me behold thy Godhead, let me attain my heart’s desire: set righteousness on my lips and grace in my heart.”221.3 Among the attributes of the gods there is a fervent recognition of their mercy and compassionateness: Marduk is “the god full of mercy, who loves to quicken that which is dead”;222.1 and Ischtar, the goddess, is invoked as “the helper of the oppressed, oh thou endowed with majesty; thou who raisest the fallen and exaltest the trodden under foot.”222.2 And the same idea reappears in a hymn to another goddess of like character with Ischtar, in which we catch the tones of a high religious poetry of homage:222.3 “Oh strong and majestic, highest of the goddesses, radiant star… strongest of the goddesses whose robe is the light: thou who dost course through heaven and engirdle the earth… dealing punishment and pleading for men, rewarding the just, leading the wanderer, overthrowing the enemy who feareth not thy Godhead, protecting the captive, taking the weak by the hand—be gracious unto thy servant, who calls upon thy name with grace.”
This brief illustrative selection may close with the quotation of a prayer or hymn of praise to Marduk, perhaps the most remarkable among those that have as yet been translated:223.1 “The Lord, peerless in might, the King of grace, the Ruler of the lands, that bringeth peace in heaven, that through his glance overthroweth the mighty. Lord, thy seat is Babylon, thy crown Borsippa. Thy thought, oh Lord, passeth over the wide heavens, and with thine eyes thou beholdest the affliction of men, through the anger of thy countenance thou spreadest lamentation, and thou takest him captive who regardeth thee not and setteth himself up against thee. Through thy gracious countenance thou showest men favour, thou lettest them see the light and they proclaim thy Righteousness. Oh Lord of the lands, Light of Izizi, thou who proclaimest grace, who is it whose mouth doth not tell of thy Righteousness, who doth not praise thy majesty, and glorify thy lordship?… Look down upon the hands raised in prayer to thee. Grant favour to thy city Babylon… and turn thy countenance upon thy house, and give help to the sons of Babylon and all thy people.”
With all their spells and their magic, the higher minds of the Babylonians knew how to pray, and the fervent and exalted tones of such liturgies remind us of the religious poetry of Israel. And it is interesting to note that among the few deities of Babylon whose ideal reached to such a point of ethical development, the moon-god Sin appears, who gave his name to Sinai, and who has been thought by some to have had some original affinity with the God of Israel.224.1
As regards the liturgies of Egypt, so far as I have been able with very limited opportunities to examine them, the superstition of the spell lay so heavy on the Egyptian mind, that prayer does not seem able to extricate itself from its prepossession. Not only do the deities work by means of spells and the magic of their names, but the worshipper uses the same means to work upon them; and the prayer that accompanies the spell seems usually to savour of self-confidence and command. At least this is the impression one gathers from what is published concerning the Book of the Dead and the ritual practised to secure the happiness of the deceased. By utterance of words of enchantment over pictures, the soul of the dead becomes divine.225.1 The magic word helps to transfer the power of the deity into the fetich, and this with the word written upon it is placed on the body of the dead: for instance, an amulet with the words, “May the blood of Isis… and the word of power of Isis be mighty to protect this mighty one”;225.2 a terra-cotta lamp of the Greco-Roman period, carved with the symbol of the frog-headed goddess Heqt, and bearing the words, “I am the Resurrection.”226.1 On an object placed under the head of the deceased to maintain the warmth of the body, we find the following words, supposed to be addressed by the spirit to Amen:226.2 “I am a perfect spirit among the companions of Ra, and I have gone in and come forth among the perfect souls… grant thou unto me the things which my body needeth, and heaven for my soul and a hidden place for my mummy.” “May the god who himself is hidden and whose face is concealed, who shineth upon the world in his forms of existence and in the underworld, grant that my soul may live for ever.”226.3 Here we have the statement of a conviction that gains its assurance from magic, followed by prayer. It seems that the Egyptian prayed to the gods, as if by such prayer he might gain immortality, but that he trusted equally to magical means, to pictures and words of power from the sacred texts, and employed at once the methods of religion and of enchantment.227.1
Looking at the Christian religion, we should find it hard to give a succinct and accurate account of these phenomena in the various stages of its history. We may be able to set forth the theories and ritual-practices of the various churches and compare them with what we find elsewhere; but it is more difficult to analyse accurately the religious psychology, the thought and feeling which accompanies the ritual: the quality of the mental state would depend partly on the ancestral conditions and the strength of the ancestral instincts of the individual. And the teaching of the most spiritual Christian philosophy has not been able to prevent some touches of the old-world magic from contaminating the worship. The theory of the leading thinkers among the early Christian fathers agreed, as we have seen, with the pronouncement of later Greek philosophy. Both for Clemens, who gives us the earliest theory of Christian prayer, without finding, however, a clear logical system, and for Origen, the final justification of prayer was communion with God, τὸ ἀνακραθῆναι τῷ πνεύματι,228.1 ὁμιλία πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἡ εὐχή.228.2 And Clemens maintains that the true gnostic, he who has the true knowledge of God, “works himself with God in his prayer so as to attain perfection.”228.3 The gnostic of Clemens, then, is not purely petitionary in his prayer; by his spontaneous self-projection he contributes something himself to the attainment of the end he prays for; and, as I have ventured to suggest above, we may discern in this theory the meeting-point of the more primitive and the more exalted religious views.
Meantime the actual heretic sect of the gnostics were applying much of the old magic under new names and new texts, and did not even care to discard wholly the old spell-nomenclature.229.1 And even in the orthodox churches, as we have seen, the mystic power and liturgical use of the name has continued, being the inheritance of a different religious world from that with which we are familiar or of which we are conscious. We may also legitimately compare many of the ritual acts which accompany prayer, for instance in the earlier and later Roman Church, with the suggestive or mimetic religious actions of less advanced cults. One of the most interesting examples that may be quoted is the description of the blessing of the baptismal water on the eve of the Epiphany, a custom prevalent in the earlier Church of Rome:229.2 the priest, while praying to God to sanctify the water, dipped a crucifix thrice into it, recalling in his prayer the miracle described in Exodus, the sweetening of the bitter water with wood; then followed antiphonal singing describing Christ’s baptism in Jordan, which sanctified the water. We appear to have here a combination of the great typical forms of the immemorial religious energy, prayer pure and simple, the potent use of the spiritually charged object, the fetich (in this case the crucifix), and an intoned or chanted narrative which has the spell-value of suggestion.230.1
What maintained the use of the spell-prayer in full vigour throughout the earlier and medieval epochs of Christendom, even in the orthodox ritual, was chiefly the practice of exorcism and the belief in demons and demoniac possession; and the legal institution of the ordeal contributed also to its maintenance. As modern society has abandoned such institutions, and the modern mind is no longer possessed with demonology, so in the modern worship prayer has become more and more purified from the associations of the spell; the traces that remain of the latter are faint and usually unintelligible to the modern worshipper. And on the other side there is a progressive tendency beginning to be felt, making for a reform of our liturgy in respect of the objects for which prayer should be proffered. But in this respect, as the comparison has shown, we cannot be said to have advanced as yet beyond many of the old-world religions.
The special subjects of these last two lectures, the history of purification and prayer, have only been presented in an inadequate sketch. The full and exhaustive treatment of either would serviceably fill a gap in the library of comparative religion. But they have served my present purpose, if they have been able to illustrate and to some extent test the value of the comparative study of the various theologies of mankind.
[The End]
INDEX
Anthropology, value of, 5: occasional defects in its method of treating religious problems, 12-17: suggested improvements in method, 17-23.
Babylonian spells and prayers, 218-224.
Baptism, a cathartic ritual, 156-158: of infants, 56-57.
Buddhism, ideas concerning purity, 107.
Celibacy of priesthood, 154-156.
Christianity, comparison with earlier “Mediterranean” religions in mythology, 25-30; in terminology, 30-39; external symbols, 39-48; institutions and organisation, 48-58; in dogma and belief, 59-75: vide Prayer.
Collideriani, 72.
Comparative religion, method of study, 81-85: short survey of its growth, 1-6.
Cursing-ritual, a form of spell, 196-198.
Eschatological beliefs, 63-64.
Fasting, a cathartic ritual, 153-154.
Festivals, influence of pagan on Christian, 58.
Fetichism, 44-47: in Hellas, 44-45: in Christianity, 45-47.
Hellenism, influence on Christianity, 23.
Hilaria, 62.
Homicide, cathartic origin of law concerning, 140-152.
Human incarnation of divinity, 59-60.
Human sacrifice, legends concerning, 27-28.
Indo-Germanic spell, 193.
Ischtar, legend of, 29.
Kore, 33: gnostic-pagan worship of, 34-35, 65.
Mexican religion, 3.
Montanism, 67.
Names, religious influence of, 32, 184-192.
Parthenos, 37-38: cf. 65, 69, 70.
Peruvian religion, 3.
Phrygian religion, 24, 62, 66-68.
Prayer (vide Spell) definition of, 165: distinction between prayer and spell, 167-169: antagonism between them, 193-194: objects of prayer, progress from material to spiritual, 173-174: prayer a form of communion with the deity, 174: Christian theory of prayer, 227-228: survival of spell in Christian liturgy, 228-230: Egyptian prayer, 188; dominated by spell, 224-227: English, earliest example of spell-prayer, 194: Eleusinian spell-prayer, 194: Hellenic prayer, 187, 200-205, 207; Hellenic spells, 196; spell prayer, 199-200; theory of prayer in Hellenic philosophy, 206: Iranian liturgical magic, 199; prayers and spells in Zarathustrian ritual, 213-218: Latin prayer, 185: Roman spell-prayer, 195: Peruvian prayer, 183 n. 3: savage examples of real prayer, 182-183: Umbrian prayer, 186: Vedic spell-formulæ combined with prayer, 208-213.
Purification: primitive ideas concerning pure and impure substances, 89-91: analysis of primitive sensation of impurity, 92-98: purification after battle, 94; after funerals, 96: logical development of idea of purity, 98-101: psychological effect of impure contact, 102-103: purity connected with belief in spirits, 103-104; dualism of good and evil spirits, 105: with belief in gods, 106: earliest concept non-moral, 110-111: evolution of idea of “pure heart,” 111-115: cathartic sacrifice, 120-122: opposition between spiritual and ritualistic purity, 123: Iranian ideas, 97, 101, 107, 115, 127-132: Jewish, 124, 126: Hellenic, 132-139; influence on Hellenic law, 140-152: influence of idea of purity on religious institutions, 152-160.
Rebirth, mystic sense of, 57.
Resurrection, belief in, 60-62: resurrection of divinity, 68.
Saint-worship, 77.
Savagery, survival of, in higher religion, 10, 11, 15, 17.
Scapegoat, cathartic use of, 119, 120.
Spell, examples of spell-prayer, 169, 170, 175, 180: spell-value of the name in lower and higher religions, 184-192: use of narrative as a spell-form of suggestion (Navajo prayer), 181-182: knowledge of origin of person or substance useful for spell-purposes, 190-193: progress from spell to prayer, 171-173.
Teutonic religion, 41, 51, 53, 55, 57, 78-80: ideas of purity, 107-109.
Totemism, 13.
Virginity, exaltation of, 70-71.
ENDNOTES
LECTURES I AND II NOTES
3.1 Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentary of the Incas (Hakluyt Society): Sahagun—transl. Jourdanet et Siméon.
3.2 Jacob Laskowski, vide Usener, Götternamen, p. 82, etc.
6.1 Golden Bough, 2nd ed., vol. iii. p. 186.
13.1 For instance, an ancestor may for certain reasons be worshipped in the form of a snake, and yet this need not imply a snake-tribe or any tribal worship of snakes in general.
26.1 Vide infra, pp. 192, 193.
26.2 E.g. De Civ. Dei., bk. 2, ch. 6: deos paganorum nunquam bene vivendi sanxisse doctrinam.
27.1 Plutarch, Parallela, 35. Vide my Cults of Greek States, vol. i. p. 93.
28.1 Servius, Æn. iii. 121.
28.2 Ibid., ii. 801.
29.1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv. (ed. Mills), p. 211.
29.2 Vide account of these in Revue des Études grecques, xiii. (1900), p. 233, and Annuaire de l’Association pour l’encouragement des Études grecques, 1871, p. 92.
31.1 Protrept., 12, § 120 (p. 92 P).
33.1 I have noticed the evidence of this in my forthcoming third volume of the Cults of the Greek States.
34.1 C.I.G., 4697.
34.2 Haeres. 51, 22; Dindorf, vol. ii. p. 483, 12-29: vide Philologus, 16, p. 354. I find that the view I have taken of this important text agrees on the whole with that of Usener in his Untersuchungen, p. 27.
37.1 That Aion was a real figure of Mithraic religion has been finally proved by the Mithras-Liturgie, published by Dieterich, p. 4, l. 21.
37.2 Usener quotes a few examples from the liturgy of the Greek Church and one or two from patristic literature, Religionsgesch. Untersuchungen, 1, p. 28, n. 5: some of these are poetical.
38.1 Vide Artemis R. 37, in my Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii. p. 567.
38.2 Paus. 4, 33, 4: inscription in Dittenberger, Sylloge(2), 653.
38.3 Vide Report of American School at Athens, vol. i., inscr. No. xxvi.
39.1 Vide chapter on Cybele in the forthcoming third volume of my Cults of the Greek States.
42.1 Anth. Pal. xi. 269, “I am Heracles, the triumphant son of Zeus; I am not Luke, but they compel me.”
42.2 Ephemeris Archaiologiké, 1900, πίν. 5.
43.1 Theocritus, Id. 7, 106.
43.2 Cults of Greek States, vol. ii. p. 735: R. 25b.
44.1 Cf. the method of Greco-Egyptian magic of strangling birds before the idol of Eros, in order that their breath may animate it, mentioned in an Abraxas papyrus, Class. Rev. 1896, p. 409.
45.1 Vide Schrader, Real-Lexikon, s.v. Eid.
45.2 Ad Nat. i. 12.
47.1 The Tatu, Tat, or Ded pillar erected in the ritual of Osiris, perhaps as a symbol of the resurrection of the god, had the form of a cross: vide Frazer, Golden Bough(2), ii. p. 141.
48.1 Vide Palace of Knossos: Provisional Report for year 1903, p. 92: the writer quotes Babylonian and Assyrian examples.
49.1 Epist. 395: the doctrines of the Orphic sects from the fourth century B.C. onwards also emphasised the kinship of man with God, as the well-known Orphic tablets, found in South Italy and Crete, reveal (Hell. Journ. 3, p. 112: Miss J. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion: Appendix by Prof. Murray, p. 660). In the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus, p. 371 D, the sick man is assured of salvation as being “of the family of God” γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν.
50.1 E.g. a priest of Megalopolis, a hierophantes of the Great Goddesses, is spoken of as descended from “those who first established the mystic worship of the Great Goddesses among the Arcadians,” Eph. Archaiol. 1896, p. 122: the priests of Poseidon at Halikarnassos traced their descent from those who brought his cult from Troezen at the foundation of the city, C.I.G. 2655.
50.2 At Cos, vide Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos, No. 103 (Roman Imperial period).
51.1 E.g. the priest of Cybele at Pessinus, and the priest of Ma in the two Comanas.
52.1 Vide Golther, Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie, p. 612, 617.
53.1 Vide my paper in the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 1904, on “The Position of Women in Ancient Religion.”
54.2 See King, Babylonian Religion, p. 211.
55.1 Vide chapter on “Apollo Cult” in my forthcoming fourth volume of Cults.
55.2 Plutarch, Apophtheg. Lacon. p. 229 D: Lysander is told by the priest that before initiation he must confess his worst sin: he asks if this was the gods’ command or the priests’, and on hearing that it was the gods who enjoined it, he replied, “Then do you stand aside and I will tell the gods if they ask me.”
55.3 Opp. Ep. 96.
55.4 Vide Herzog, Real-Encyclopädie, s.v. Beichte.
56.1 Jourdanet et Siméon, p. 24.
57.1 Heszch, s.v. Ἀμφιδρόμια.
57.2 Vide Golther, op. cit. p. 555.
57.3 Polit. p. 1336 B.
57.4 In the Attis Mysteries the reborn and initiated were fed on milk—Sallustius, De Diis et Mundo, 4: for a careful treatment of the whole question, vide Dieterich, Eine Mithras-Liturgie, pp. 157-178: for various savage parallels showing the prevalence in primitive societies of the idea of death and rebirth at initiation, vide Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. iii. pp. 424-446.
58.1 Vide Herzog, Real-Encycl., xii. p. 319.
58.2 Vide Trede, Das Heidenthum in der römischen Kirche, vol. i. p. 280, “Neue und alte Fest-Lust.”
60.1 Vide Frazer’s Golden Bough, passim, especially vol. ii. pp. 115-168 (death and resurrection in rites of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysos), and vol. iii. pp. 138-200: cf. articles by Bernard Cook in Classical Review, 1903, 1904, on “Zeus Jupiter and the Oak”: we must distinguish between the simulated death of the divine effigy, and the simulated or real death of the human representative of divinity. In Hellenic religion we can trace the idea in the worship of Pan, in the legends and ritual of Artemis-Iphigenia and Aphrodite, vide Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii. pp. 440-442, 650-652, and in the Cretan worship of Zeus, vol. i. pp. 36-38: but it had lost its vitality in the purely Hellenic cults of the classical period, and was only real and energetic in the legends and ritual of Adonis and Dionysos.
61.1 Vide Dio Chrys., vol. ii. p. 16 (Dindorf), and K. O. Müller’s Sardon und Sardanapal (Kleine Schriften, vol. ii. p. 100): on a coin published in British Museum Catalogue, “Lycaonia,” etc., pl. xxxiii. 2, p. 180, we see the god on his lion standing on what may be his pyre.
62.1 Vide especially Hippol., Ref. Haeres. 5, p. 118 (Miller): Macrob., Saturn. 1, 21, 7: Arnobius, Adv. Gent. 5, 7, 16; 7, 49: Julian, Or. 5, 168 C.
62.2 De error. c. 22.
63.1 For the Greek origin of the Christian apocalyptical literature, vide Dieterich, Beitrage zur Erklärung der neu-entdeckten Petrus Apokalypse, Leipzig, 1893. The clearest trace of Orphic influence on historic Christianity is the doctrine of purgatory, which was popularised for the later ages by Vergil’s VIth Æneid: vide especially the purgatorial theory in Servius’ Commentary, Æn. vi. 741.
65.1 Hibbert Journal, January 1904.
66.1 Alexis in Stobæus, Florileg. (Meineke), vol. iii. p. 83.
67.1 Vide Herzog, Real-Encycl., s.v. “Montanismus”: cf. the article there on “Maria” and the chapter in Trede, op. cit. vol. ii., “Die grosse Mutter.”
68.1 Euseb. v. Const., iii. 43, 2.
69.1 Vide Cults of the Greek States, pp. 650-652.
69.2 One of the Babylonian goddesses is addressed in the same hymn as “Mother, wife, and maid,” Jastrow, Relig. Babyl. Assyr., p. 459.
70.1 Vide Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii., Artemis, R 133: cf. Paus. 8, 13, 1.
70.2 I am treating this question in an appendix to the Cybele chapter in vol. iii. of my Cults, etc.
71.1 E.g. fragment of Naumachius in Stobæus, op. cit., vol. iii. pp. 16-17.
72.1 Vide specially Trede, Das Heidenthum in der römischen Kirche: Renan, Les origines du christianisme, vol. vii. 572-573. The resemblances are particularly striking between the Catholic and the Isiac sacerdotalism.
72.2 Hæres., 79.