<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">CELESTIAL ORIGIN OF CHARMS.
region, serpent-worship was associated with fire-worship
and river-worship, which have a wide representation in
both Aryan and Semitic symbolism. To this day the
orthodox Israelites set beside their dead, before burial,
the lighted candle and a basin of pure water. These have
been associated in rabbinical mythology with the angels
Michael (genius of Water) and Gabriel (genius of Fire) ;
but they refer both to the phenomenal glories and the
purifying effects of the two elements as reverenced by the
Africans in one direction and the Parsees in another.
Not less significant are the facts which were attested at
the witch-trials. It was shown that for their pretended
divinations they used plants — as rue and vervain — well
known in the ancient Northern religions, and often recog-
nised as examples of tree-worship ; but it also appeared
that around the cauldron, a mock zodiacal circle was
drawn, and that every herb employed was alleged to have
derived its potency from having been gathered at a certain
hour of the night or day, a particular quarter of the moon,
or from some spot where sun or moon did or did not shine
upon it. Ancient planet-worship is, indeed, still reflected
in the habit of village herbalists, who gather their simples
at certain phases of the moon, or at certain of those holy
periods of the year which conform more or less to the
pre-christian festivals.
These are a few out of many indications that the
small and senseless things which have become almost or
quite fetishes were by no means such at first, but were
mystically connected with the heavenly elements and
splendours, like the animal forms in the zodiac. In one
of the earliest hymns of the Rig- Veda it is said — * This
earth belongs to Varuna (Ovpaiwi) the king, and the wide
sky : he is contained also in this drop of water.' As the
sky was seen reflected in the shining curve of a dew-drop,
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<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">PRIMITIVE PANTHEISM.
even so in the shape or colour of a leaf or flower, the
transformation of a chrysalis, or the burial and resurrection
of a scarabaeus' egg, some sign could be detected making
it answer in place of the typical image which could not
yet be painted or carved.
The necessities of expression would, of course, operate
to invest the primitive conceptions and interpretations of
celestial phenomena with those pictorial images drawn
from earthly objects of which the early languages are
chiefly composed. In many cases that are met in the
most ancient hymns, the designations of exalted objects
are so little descriptive of them, that we may refer them to
a period anterior to the formation of that refined and com-
plex symbolism by which primitive religions have acquired
a representation in definite characters. The Vedic compari-
sons of the various colours of the dawn to horses, or the
rain-clouds to cows, denotes a much less mature develop-
ment of thought than the fine observation implied in the
connection of the forked lightning with the forked serpent-
tongue and forked mistletoe, or symbolisation of the uni-
verse in the concentric folds of an onion. It is the presence
of these more mystical and complex ideas in religions which
indicate a progress of the human mind from the large and
obvious to the more delicate and occult, and the growth
of the higher vision which can see small things in their
large relationships. Although the exaltation in the Vedas
of Varuna as king of heaven, and as contained also in a
drop of water, is in one verse, we may well recognise an
immense distance in time between the two ideas there
embodied. The first represents that primitive pantheism
which is the counterpart of ignorance. An unclassified
outward universe is the reflection of a mind without form
and void : it is while all within is as yet undiscriminating
wonder that the religious vesture of nature will be this
undefined pantheism. The fruit of the tree of the know- </pre>
