Avenue New York
NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE
TRENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
THE BOOK OF
EARTHS
Map of the World, by Petrus A planus, printed 1330. From the original in the British Museum.
(From Periplus; A. E. Nordenskiold, 1897, Plate XLIV)
Plate xxxvi
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THE ^ op EA*j, /j *\ GM**1* VaV*?1^ V/ By EDNA KENTON M C M X X V 1 1 I |
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AW Yflr& : William Morrow & Company |
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COPYRIGHT, 1928 BY EDNA KENTON
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PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY QUINN A BODEN COMPANY. INC. RAHWAY. N. J.
To
M. R. K. R
113565
K 4- 4* 'A
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T T 7* ithout the roused interest and cordial co- operation of many people this collection of representations of the Earth and its relation to the Uni¬ verse would have been impossible. For permission to use copyright material I am indebted to D. Appleton and Company, the Clarendon Press, the Cambridge University Press, Cassell & Co., Ltd., Gall and Inglis, the Guiding Star Publishing House, the Kosmon Press, Luzac & Co., Marshall Jones Company, Macmillan & Co., Ltd., Popular Astronomy, Frederick A. Stokes Company, Edward Stan¬ ford, Ltd., and the New York World; and also to Col. James Churchward, Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, Dr. William
Fairfield Warren, Mr. Marshall B. Gardner, Miss Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, Mrs. Richard Folkard, and Mrs. Daniel G. Brinton. For assistance in tracing material I owe thanks to various members of the staffs of the Metro¬ politan Museum, the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, the Museum of the Hispanic Society of America, the Museum of the University of Pennsyl¬ vania, the American Geographical Society, the Sweden¬ borg Library of the Church of the New Jerusalem, Brooklyn, the New York Society Library, and the New York Public Library. In various translations I was aided by Dr. Arthur Livingston of Columbia University, and by an unknown member of the staff of the Biblioteca Nacional de Habana. Mr. Andrew Dasberg gave valuable
Vll
Acknowledgments
suggestions in the choice and arrangement of various figures and plates. Special thanks are due Mrs. Mabel Reber without whose researches through numberless vol¬ umes this book would have lacked many of the repre¬ sentations it contains. Special thanks are also due many members of the staff of the New York Public Library in which most of these figures of Earth and the Universe were collected.
EDNA KENTON
September, 1928 New York
Vlll
CONTENTS
Man’s Quest in Space, i
Figures of Earth, 6
The Creation of the World, 22
Upholders of the World, 38
The Primaeval Earth, 5 1
The Babylonian Universe, 54
The Egyptian Universe, 63
The Earth Moon Catastrophe, 66
The Deluge, 77
The Lost Atlantis, 80
The Lost Land of the West, 83
Trees of the World, 89
Mountains of the World, 122
The Wheel of Life, 134
Earth the Mundane Egg, 145
Systems of the Universe, 160
The Square Earth of Cosmas Indicopleutes, 179
The Peruvian Universe, 185
The Aztec Universe, 189
Tartar-Mongol Worlds, 193
Maps of the Earth, 199
The Earth of Columbus, 208
IX
Contents
Dante’s Universe, 2 1 1
Earth the Heart of the Cosmos, 214
Saint Hildegard’s Universe, 217
The Earths in the Universe, 226
Wheels upon Wheels, 228
The World Octaves, 234
Earth a Hollow Sphere, 238
The Tetrahedral Earth, 256
Bibliography, 263
Index, 269
x
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
Plate Facing page
I Stages of Creation. From Haggadah
von Sarajevo. Fourteenth century. 32
II Sustainers of the Earth.
A. Quetzalcoatl Upholding the
Heavens. From an original Mexican painting preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Reproduced from Kingsbor- ough’s Antiquities of Mexico ,
Vol. II, 1831.
B. Atlas Upholding the Earth. From
Engravings after Stothard; a collection in the New York Public Library.
C. A Hindu Earth. From Flam-
mar ion’s Astronomical Myths.
1877. 3 8
III Atlas Supporting the Universe. From
Margarita philosophica. 1517. 42
IV A very clear demonstration of the
three kinds of vision in the Microcosm (or soul of Man) , of the location of their objects, and of the manner of discerning them. From Fludd’s Mi- crocosmi Historia. 1 619. 46
xi
Illustrations
Plate Facing page
V Another demonstration showing how the soul rises in a spiral ascent from the sensible things of the world to Unity. From Fludd’s Microcosmi Historia. 1619. 50
VI The Primordial Earth and Sea. From Muenster’s Cosmographia Universa¬ lis. 1559. 54
VII A. A kufa laden with stones and manned by a crew of four men. Drawn by Faucher- Gudin from a bas-relief at Koyunjik. From Maspero’s The Dawn of Civilization.
18 94.
B. Construction of the Akkadian, Chaldean and Babylonian Uni¬ verse. From Myer’s Qabbalah.
1888. 58
VIII The Babylonian Universe. From War¬ ren’s The Universe as Pictured in Milton’s Paradise Lost. 1915. 62
IX The Sky Goddess Nut Bending over the Earth. From the Sarcophagus of Uresh-Nofer, Priest of the Goddess Mut ( XXXth dynasty, 37 8-3 41
B.C.). In the Metropolitan Mu¬ seum of the City of New York. 6 4
X A. The Heavenly Goose. From Bry¬ ant’s Ancient Mythology, Vol.
II. 1774. 66
B. The Sky Goddess Nut represented double. From Lockyer’s The Dawn of Astronomy. 1S94. 66
xii
Illustrations
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Plate |
Facing page |
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XI |
Omnia Per Ipsum Facta Sunt. From |
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Merian’s Bybel Printen. 1650. |
70 |
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XII |
The Earth after the Earth-Moon Catas¬ trophe. Drawn by George D. Swa- zey for Popular Astronomy, Aug.- |
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Sept., 1907. |
72 |
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XIII |
One of the oldest drawings of the Moon, by Pere Capucin Marie de Rheita (1645). From Kir cher’s Iter exsta- |
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ticum coeleste. 1660. |
76 |
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XIV |
"And Again He Sent Forth the Dove Out of the Ark.” From Burnet’s |
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The Theory of the Earth. 1697. |
80 |
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XV |
Situation of the Island of Atlantis, ac¬ cording to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians and the description of Plato. From Kircher’s Mundus Sub- |
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terraneus . 1678. |
82 |
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XVI |
The Subterranean Bridge. From Kir¬ |
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cher’s Mundus Subterraneus. 1678. |
84 |
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XVII |
A Conjectural Geography of the Trans¬ lation of the Earth after the Deluge. |
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From Kircher’s Area Noe. 1665. |
88 |
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XVIII |
Yggdrasil, the World Tree of the Norsemen. After Finn Magnusen’s "Eddalasren.” From Folkard’s Plant |
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Lore, Legends and Lyrics. 1 8 84. |
92 |
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XIX |
The Wak Wak Tree. From Ta’rikh al- Hind al-Gharbi. Constantinople. |
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1729. |
104 |
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XX |
The World Tree of the Mayas. From Cogolludo’s Historia de Yucathan. |
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1640. |
1 10 |
xm
Illustrations
Plate Facing page
XXI Arber Sephirotheca. From Fludd’s
U triusque Cosmi. Vol.ll.1621. 114
XXII Dionysos in the Ship. A black-figured kylix by Exekias (6th cen. B.C.), in Munich (Furtwangler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, No. 42).
From Mythology of All Races, Vol. I,
Plate XLIX. 1 916. 118
XXIII "And God said, Let there be Light, and
there was Light.” From Fludd’s Medicina Catholica. 1629. 120
XXIV The Rose Tree of the Rosicrucians.
From Fludd’s Summum Bonum.
1629. 122
XXV The Universe of the Lamas. From Waddell’s The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism. 1899. 128
XXVI Creatio Universi. From Scheuchzer’s
Physic a Sacra. Vol. 7. 1731. 134
XXVII The Wheel of Life. From Du Bose’s
Dragon, Image and Demon. 1887. 138
XXVIII The Wheel of Life. From Waddell’s The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism.
1899. 142
XXIX A. Deus Lunus.
B. Ophis et Ovum Mundanum. From Bryant’s Ancient Mythology.
Vol. II. 1774.
C. Earth as a floating Egg. From Flammarion’s Astronomical Myths. 1877. 152
XXX "A Divided Egg, or Earth.” From Bur¬ net’s T he T heory of the Earth. 1697. 154
xiv
Plate
XXXI
Illustrations
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
1 56
160
Facing page
"The Whole Earth is an Egg.” From Burnet’s The Theory of the Earth.
Frontispiece to "Almagestum No- vum 5 Ioannes Riccioh, 1561. From the original.
A World-Picture of the Aztecs. First page of the Codex Ferjervary-Mayer, representing the five regions of the world, and their tutelary deities. Reproduced from Mythology of All Races. Vol. XI, Plate VI. 1920.
The Osma Beatus 'World-Map, 1203.
From Miller’s Map pa Mundi: Die dl- testen Vfeltkarten, Vol. I. 1895.
The Earth of the Mystics — The Heart of God. From Pordage’s Theologica Mystica, or The Archetypous Globe 1683.
Map of the World, by Petrus Apianus, printed 1530. From the original in the British Museum. Reproduced from Nordenskiold’s Peri plus, Plate XLIV. 1 897. Frontispiece
Nous pervaded by the Godhead em¬ bracing the Macrocosm with the Mi-
190
200
214
crocosm. From The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard, by Charles Singer. In Studies in the Flis- tory and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer. Vol. I. 1917.
Integra^ Naturae Speculum Artisque imago. From Fludd’s JJ triusque Cosmi. Vol. I. 1621.
xv
224
Illustrations
Plate Facing page
XXXIX Kepler’s diagram of "The Law connect¬ ing the relative distances of the plan¬ ets.” From Kepler’s Harmonices Mundi. 1619. 228
XL The Mundane Monochord. From Fludd’s U triusque Cosmi. Vol. 1.
1621. 234
XLI Man the World Octave. From Fludd’s
U triusque Cosmi. Vol. I. 1621. 236
XL1I The Three World Octaves. From Fludd’s U triusque Cosmi. Vol. 1.
1621. 238
XLI1I The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres. From the cover design of The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres, compiled by Americus Symmes. 1878. 240
XLIV Gardner’s Diagram of Symmes’s Earth.
From Gardner’s A Journey to the Earth’s Interior. 1 920. 242
XLV Chart of the Koreshan Cosmogony.
From T eed’s The Cellidar Cosmogony.
1905. 246
XLV I The Earth according to Gardner. From Gardner’s A Journey to the Earth’s Interior. 1920. 250
XLV II Tetrahedral Collapse of the Earth’s Crust in the Southern Hemisphere.
From Green’s Vestiges of the Molten Globe. 1875. 25 6
XLV I II The Tetrahedral Earth. From the Sun¬ day Magazine, New York "World,”
Oct. 24, 1926. 260
xvi
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
Figure Page
1. The Stupa. From Ramusat’s translation of
Fa-heen’s Foe koue ki. 1848. 6
2. The Tetrahedron. From an old print. 7
3. The Octahedron. From an old print. 7
4. The Icosahedron. From an old print. 8
5. The Cube. From an old print. 8
6. The Dodecahedron. From an old print. 9
7. A "rygge forme” or three-sided tablet. From
Recordc’s The Castle of Knowledge. 1556. 10
8. The five-sided tablet. From an old print. 10
9. The Cone. From an old print. 10
10. The three-sided pyramid. From an old print. 10
11. The four-sided pyramid. From an old print. 10
12. The Sphere. From Pbysiologia Kircheriana
Experimentalis. 1680. 10
13. The Cylinder. From an old print. 10
14. Spiral forms. From old prints. 12
15. "Halfe a Sphaere.” From Recorde’s The Cas¬
tle of Knowledge. 1556. 14
1 6. "Hollow lyke a bolle.” From Recorde’s The
Castle of Knoivledge. 1556. 14
17. "A playne Flatte.” From Recorde’s The Cas¬
tle of Knowledge. 1556. 15
18. "Square like a box.” From an old print. 16
XVII
Illustrations
Figure Page
19. Squares, or "stages,” within circles. From an
old print. 17
20. The six-faced Tetrahedron. From Green’s
Vestiges of the Molten Globe. 1875. 18
21. The Oval, or "The Mundane Egg.” From an
old print. 19
22. "Circles within the Oval.” From an old
print. 19
23. "Parallel Circles.” From an old print. 19
24. "A whole circle,” "A portion of a circle.”
From an old print. 20
25. "Convex, concave.” From an old print. 20
2 6. "Right, Crooked, Mixt.” From an old print. 21
27. Glyph 8 from The Walam Olum of the Len-
ape. 31
28. Glyph 7 from The Walam Olum of the Ten-
ape. 3 1
29. Glyph 1 6 from The Walam Olum of the Len-
ape , Part II. 31
30. The Earth Floating. From Flammar ion’s As¬
tronomical Myths. 1877. 38
31. The Earth with Roots. From Flammarion’s
Astronomical Myths. 1877. 40
32. The Earth of the Vedic Priests. From Flam¬
marion’s Astronomical Myths. 1877. 41
33. A Figure of the Universe. From Nichol’s The
System of the World. 1848. 48
34. The Primaeval Earth, with its Zones or greater
Climates, and the general order and tracts of its Rivers. From Burnet’s The Theory of the Earth. 1697. 5 2
xviii
Illustrations
Figure Page
3 4 a. Zones or Climates of the Earth, with the Zo¬ diac. From Sacro Bosco’s Sphcera ernen- data, 1601. 5^
35. Babylonian "Mappa Mundi.” From Cunei¬
form Texts from Babylonian Tablets etc. in the British Museum, Ft. XXII, Plate 48.
1906. 59
36. Lunar and Solar Eclipses. From Sacro Bosco’s
Sphcera Mundi. 1482. 67
37. The Figure of the Dragon: the Lunar Nodes.
From Blundeville His Exercises. 1606. 68
38. "When the Moone is betwixt the Sunne and
the Earth.” From Blundeville His Exer¬ cises. 1606. 68
39. The first drawing of the Moon, by Galileo,
1610. From Wilkins’s The Discovery of a World in the Moone. 1638. 70
40. Frontispiece and Title-page of "The Discov¬
ery of a World in the Moone”; John Wil¬ kins, 1638. From the original. 71
41. The Comet of 1680 and the marvellous Egg.
From Manestrier’s Lettre d’un gentil- hovime de province a une dame de qualite sur le sujet de la Comete. 1681. 78
42. Outline map showing the locality of Pan, the
submerged continent. From Newbrough’s Oahspe, A New Bible in the Words of Je- hovih. 1891. 85
43. The geographical position of Mu. From
Churchward’s The Lost Continent of Mu.
1926. 86
44. Yggdrasil, the Cosmic Ash. From Fhilpot’s
The Sacred Tree. 1897. 94
xix
Illustrations
Figure Page
45. Diagram of the Nine Worlds, supported by
the World Tree Yggdrasil. From Litch¬ field’s The Nine Worlds. 1890. 96
4 6. Diagram of the Scandinavian Cosmos. From
Litchfield’s The Nine Worlds. 1890. 97
47. Sketch of the World, by a Thompson River
Indian. From Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 11.
1900. 100
48. The Tree of Judas. From Maundevile’s
Voiage and Travailes. 18)9 reprint. 105
49. Osage Chart of the Universe, drawn by Red
Corn. From Mallery’s Picture -Writing of the American Indians. 1894. 10 6
50. Our First Parents. From the Codex Cortesi-
anus. Reproduced from Brinton’s A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics. 1894. 112
51. The "Tree of Life.” From the Codex Peresi-
anus. Reproduced from Brinton’s A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics. 1894. 113
52. The Sacred Tree of the Egyptians. From
Sharpe’s Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity. 1863. 114
53. The Antipodal Polar Mountains. From War¬
ren’s Paradise Found. 1883. 122
54. The Theory of Two Centres. Spherical
Earth with no Antipodes. (After Rai- naud.) From Mill’s The Siege of the South Pole. 1903. 124
55. "Feet to Feet.” From Physiologia Kircheriana
Experimentalis. 1680. 126
5 6. A Kalmuck World-picture. From Mythol¬ ogy of All Races, Vol. IV. 1927. 13 1
xx
Illustrations
Figure Page
37. Mount Su-Meru of the Chinese. From Du
Bose’s Dragon, Image and Demon. 1887. 133
58. An ancient Arabic Celestial Sphere. North¬
ern Hemisphere. From Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 1830. 13 6
59. An ancient Arabic Celestial Sphere. South¬
ern Hemisphere. From T ransactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 1830. 137
60. Key to the Tibetan Wheel of Life. From
Waddell’s The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lama- ism. 1899. 139
6 1. The Great Monad. From Du Bose’s Dragon,
Image and Demon. 1887. 146
62. The Mitsu Tomoe of the Japanese. From In¬
ternationales Archiv fur Ethnographie, Bd.IX,S.265. 1896. 147
6 3. Chinese Conception of the Creation. From
M’Clatchie’s Confucian Cosmogony. 1874. 149
6 4. The Chinese Zodiac. From a Mirror of the
Tang Dynasty. Reproduced from Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Bri¬ tain and Ireland. 1833. 151
63. Gnostic Diagram of the Universe. 2nd cen.
A.D. Front Matter’s Histoire critique du Gnosticisme, Vol. III. 1826. 159
66. The Systems of the Universe. From Kircher’s
Iter exstaticum coeleste. 1660. 162
67. The Universe according to Anaximander. 6th
cen. B. C. From Evershed’s Dante and the Early Astronomers. 1913. 163
xxi
Illustrations
Pigure Page
68. The Universe of Leucippus. 5th cen. B.C.
From Evershed’s Dante and the Early As¬ tronomers. 1913. 165
69. The Universe of Democritus. 5 th cen. B.C.
From Evershed’s Dante and the Early As¬ tronomers. 1913. 1 66
jo. The Universe of Pythagoras. 6th cen. B.C.
From Evershed’s Dante and the Early As¬ tronomers. 1913. 168
71. The Five Great Elements. From Oran tins
Fineus’s Sphcera Mundi. 1342. 170
72. "A Figure of the Whole World.” From
Blundeville His Exercises. 1606. 17 1
73. System of the diverse spheres. From Apianus’s
Cosmo graphia. 1660. 172
74. The System of Philolaus. From Evershed’s
Dante and the Early Astronomers. 1913. 175
75. Pomponius Mela’s Map of the World, with
Antichthones. 1st cen. A.D. From Fom- ponius Mela’s De situ Or bis. 13 36. 177
76. World Map of Claudius Ptolemy. 2nd cen.
A.D. From Margarita philosophica. 1303. 178
77. The Square Earth of Cosmas Indicopleustes.
6th cen. A.D. From Flammarion’s Astro¬ nomical Myths. i8jj. 180
78. The Square Earth. Its habitable plane. From
Flammarion’s Astronomical Myths. i8jj. 18 1
79. World-picture of the ancient Peruvians. In
"Relacion de antiguedades desta Reyno del Piru,” by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayha (c. 1620), a manu¬ script in the Biblioteca National de Madrid.
XXII
Illustrations
Figure page
From a transcript of the original manu¬ script in the MSS. Division of the New Y ork Public Library. 1 8 6
So. Painted Tartar and Mongol drums. From Mallery, Picture-Writing of the American Indians. 1894. 194
81. Painted Tartar and Mongol drums. From
Mallery’ s Picture-Writing of the American Indians. 1894. 196
82. Painted Tartar and Mongol drums. From
Mallery’ s Picture-Writing of the American Indians. 1894. 198
83. Monsters of the Antipodes. From Margarita
philosophica. 1517. zoo
84. A T-O map of the Xllth century. In "Imago
Mundi.” Reproduced from Santarem’s Atlas. 1849. 201
85. The Turin Beatus World -map, c. 1150. Re¬
produced from Santarem’s Atlas. 1849. 202
8 6. The World-map of Marco Polo. From one of his manuscripts in the Library at Stock¬ holm. Reproduced from Santarem’s Atlas.
1849. 204
87. Title-page of "Globus Mundi,” originally
printed at Strassburg, 1509, showing a trace of the Americas. From the Milan reprint, n.d. 205
88. "This device proves the Earth to be a Globe.”
From Apianus’s Cosmographia. 1640. 207
89. The pear-shaped Earth of Columbus. From
Warren’s Paradise Found. 1885. 208
90. The Earth of Dante. From Warren’s Para¬
dise Found. 188 5. 21 1
XXlll
Illustrations
Figure Page
91. Dante’s Scheme of the Universe. Slightly
modified from Caetani’s diagram. Repro¬ duced from Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer,
Vol. I. 1917. 212
92. Hildegard’s first scheme of the Universe.
Slightly simplified from the Wiesbaden Codex B, folio 14 r. Reproduced from The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hilde- gard, by Charles Singer. (In Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer, Vol. 1. 1917 .) 219
93. The excentric sphere of Mahmud ibn Muham-
med ibn Omar al Jagmini, c. 13 th cen.
A.D. From Dreyer’s The History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler.
1906. 229
94. The "Guiding Spheres” of Nasir-Eddin At-
tusi, 13 th cen. A.D. From Dreyer’s The History of the Planetary Systems from
Thales to Kepler. 1906. 230
95. The movement described by Mars, 1580-1596.
From Kepler’s Astronomia Nova. 1609. 231
96. Theory of three centres and the movement of
Venus. From Peurbach’s Theories Novce.
1581. 232
97. The relation of the harmony of the Micro¬
cosmos to the Macrocosmos. From Fludd’s Microcosmi Historia. 1621. 233
98. The Balance. From Kircher’s Mundus Sub-
terraneus. 1678. 234
xxiv
Illustrations
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Figure |
Page |
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99- |
"All things shew great through vapoures or myste.” From Recorded The Castle of |
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Knowledge. 1556. |
247 |
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IOO. |
Diagram showing the Earth as a hollow sphere with its polar openings and central Sun. From Gardner's A Journey to the Earth's |
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Interior. 1920. |
253 |
XXV
THE BOOK OF
EARTHS
THE BOOK OF EARTHS
y^His book of earths began years ago, with a single
~L little figure of Earth taken from what old book I do not know. For a long time it lay by itself; then another, come upon by chance, was laid beside it; and still others as I happened on them, always by chance. Old odd maps joined the casual collection — maps of the Earth, the Moon, the heavens. It was never a collection in the usual sense of the word, because it was so casual; but, such as it was, it is the origin of this book. For it occurred to me, not long ago, that it would be "fun” to put them all together, and many others with them, chosen to fill in the gaps of the original group.
Luckily for the fun of it, the search about to begin would not be limited to what we know about the Earth, else it would have ended before it began; for we live in a universe of which we know little, and on a planet of which we know perhaps less. It would include not only what we know, or think to-day we know, but also any¬ thing that has been believed or felt or no more than "guessed” to be the picture of the Earth and its place in the universe. It would include not only science, modern and ancient, but tradition, the older the better; diagrams or pictures based on little more than folk-lore; cosmogonies of religions great and small; cosmogonies of philosophers, of poets, and of savages. It would gather together pic¬ tured theories, guesses, hypotheses, or merely flights of
i
' The B ook of Earths
pure imagination, whether "true” or "false” to-day; since history teaches us nothing if it does not teach us that one century’s false doctrine is another century’s truth, and that the mistakes of any age or race are quite as illuminat¬ ing as any "truth” by which it lived.
This collection of pictures, therefore, would not be "scientific,” not "selected” to prove one thing or to dis¬ prove another, not prejudged by any standard but that of a record told in pictures and diagrams of what man has guessed this Earth to be ever since he first began to wonder what the figure of the body was on which he lived. It would be free play through sources, once those sources were discovered; play unhampered by any neces¬ sity for judgment or criticism, since what was sought was the record only.
And so the search began, and the story of the search is personally as interesting as what it uncovered. It would be endless — that was clear from the beginning, and so it must be made deliberately brief. It could not include everything, even if "everything” came promptly to the surface. But there were high lights in the record, and these began to show dimly from the first. The rest was a matter of blazing an unpathed trail that would lead to the goal — the record; but that must allow for twists and turns, by-paths, now and then blind alleys in which often, as it proved, lurked the "tip” that had been lacking when one turned into them.
More and more, as the search went on, and one figure of Earth was added to another, it seemed worth while to bring a large number of them together. Inevitably, in
2
M an’s Quest in Space
such a collection of man’s attempts to draw the planet on which we live £nd its relations to the heavenly bodies by which it is surrounded, there would be surprising simili¬ tudes, identifications, recognitions, even a queer unity. There would be, too, in such a collection, enormous dif¬ ferences, opportunity for endless comparison and endless wondering over the figures imaged by those supremely courageous men, the questioners of Space.
They are the men — anywhere, at any time — who have looked up at the unanswering heavens, and asked, "What and whence and why are those lights in the sky?” who have looked down at the unanswering Earth, and asked, "What is this land that forever gives everything — even to me my life, and forever takes everything — even from me my life? What are these waters around it that sustain its life and mine? this fire within it that pours through its mountain tops and heats its boiling springs, whose spark lies still within the rock and wood from which my father’s fathers first struck out their own first fire? What is this air I breathe that is around the Earth and within it, in its secret caves? What is Earth? And what am I?”
They are the men who have questioned not idly but un¬ ceasingly; knowing all the while that to the tiny ques¬ tioner below there is no great Answerer above; that any answer to the questions born of the speck in space that is man, must be born in its turn of just his questions; nothing more — but nothing less. There is no equipment for this lonely quest; there is only man the questioner and the universe — the Great Question; the answer lies within man
3
T he B oo k of 'Earths
himself. If ever we once realise this, we can never call them anything but supreme adventurers — those men curious enough to wonder enough to question enough to guess at last boldly enough to say, "Perhaps it is like this,” and set down the image, even though it is no more than a small triangular peak of land rising from a watery waste, with the arch of the heavens above it, and between it and heaven the Sun and Moon and stars.
For guesswork is the beginning and the end of knowl¬ edge — man’s own answers to his own questions. They may be right or wrong, but they are his. To-day we give scientific "guesses” a statelier title; we call them hypoth¬ eses; they are nothing more than guesses shot into still un¬ answering Space. The "hypothesis,” for instance, that the Earth is an island, plain, mountain, or whatever, was first advanced when the first man of the first race drew the first figure of Earth. The "guess” — only that — that the figure of Earth is an oblate spheroid is of our own era. Our hypotheses are continually changing; one supplants another, and is in its turn discarded for a new — or an old — one; and this has been the history of knowledge ever since that remote and notable day when the first brain, by sheer pressure of questioning, focused in a point that ex¬ ploded into a "guess.” It is the process of induced think¬ ing that has carried man on; the heavens and the Earth have continued to revolve whether his answers are right or wrong.
Man could not equip himself for this quest in Space. But he had been equipped, after a fashion. He had a few resources, a few means.
4
M an’s Quest in Space
First of all, long before science told him that he had within his body vestiges of all the life-strata of the world, he had a vague knowledge that he is an integral part of the universe. And, because he is a part of the universe, he had a vague knowledge of truth, or of segments of truth. He had numbers, he had signs, he had characters, he had symbols, all of these drawn in the heavens before he drew them on Earth. He had words. He had the capacity to be curious, the capacity to wonder, the ca¬ pacity to draw analogies between seemingly unrelated things. From this scant handful of means, his faculty for guesswork developed. This is the whole story of all his perceptions of the universe and of his planet. For he has continuously dared the great adventure, and has returned sometimes with pure gold.
ri the belief that the universe is composed of five JL Great Elements is untraceably old. Even the savage knows very well four of these elements, Water, Air, Fire, and Earth, and has a vague sense of the fifth, Ether, or Space. From varying combinations of these five elemental substances, the ancients believed, all of the phenomena of Nature were formed. Earth itself was composed, in the last analysis, of these five. Man also, they believed, was a unique compound of these elements, and was, at death, resolved back into them. Each of these great "Creatures,” as they were called, was symbolised by a certain shape, and the total figure of the five different forms, superimposed on
5
T he B ook of 'Earths
one another in a regular order, is the stupa of China and India, the sotoha or go-rin of Japan, the "Five-circle” or "Five-zone” or "Five-blossom” funeral stone to be found everywhere in the Orient. The cube represents the Earth or stable foundation on which all builds; the sphere repre¬ sents water; the pyramid or triangular tongue, fire or the elements in motion; the crescent or inverted vault of the
Figure i. The Stupa.
(From Foe koue ki, by Fa-heen.)
sky, air or wind; the acuminated sphere or body-pyri- form, ether tapering into Space.
Of course the old philosophers assigned particular places or grades to these five elements. Plato gave the first place to fire, the second to ether, then followed air, water, and lastly Earth. But Aristotle placed ether first, "as that which is impassable, it being a kind of fifth body,” and after it he placed those elements "that are passable,” in the order of fire, air, water, and Earth.
Sit down with pencil and paper, or, as the first mathe¬ maticians did, sit down on the sea shore and draw with a
6
Figures of Earth
shell on the sands the simple or the complex geometrical figures, whatever you will. It will be a rather remarkable accident if you happen to put down a single figure that has not at some time represented either the figure of Earth directly, or a direct relation of the Earth to the universe.
Figure 2. The Tetrahedron.
Take the five regular solids, for instance: the tetra¬ hedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron, the cube, and the dodecahedron. The Earth has been a tetrahedron, and it has been, many, many times, a cube. It has been con¬ ceived of as an eight-sided figure — one of the Siberian
Figure 3. The Octahedron.
tribes believes to-day that the octahedron is the true figure of Earth. It was by way of the "five regular solids,” "the five mathematical bodies,” that Kepler, as we shall see later on, sought to solve the mystery of "distances” in the heavens. Seeking for some fixed relation of distances be-
7
T he B oo k of Earths
tween the six planets and the Sun, he found, or believed he found, that the five regular solids fitted between the six spheres in a very curious order, and he elaborated on
Figure 4. The Icosahedron.
the nature of these solids and their relation to our solar system all of his life. The "nature” of the tetrahedron
Figure j: The Cube.
was of fire. The nature of the octahedron was of "flying birds.” The nature of the icosahedron was of water. The nature of the cube was of Earth, even though it fitted into
8
Figures of Earth
place between Saturn and Jupiter, and the nature of the dodecahedron was that of the celestial vault, or ether.
Figure 6. The Dodecahedron.
Earth has been given, also, at one time or another and in one way or another, all of the pyramidal forms. It has been figured as a three-sided and as a four-sided pyramid, and likewise as a cone. It has been a cylinder, filled with compressed air and balanced in the centre of the universe. It has been, at one time, a "rygge forme,” — "a three-cor¬ nered forme,” says Recorde’s The Castle of Knowledge (1556) , "like the rygge of an house where one syde lyeth flatte, and the other two leane a slope. And thys forme they judged better for twoo causes. Firste they thought that it was more steddy than a cube forme, because it hath a broader foote, and a lesser toppe; and secondly for that they thought it a more apte forme to walke on and more agreeable to the nature of the earthe, where sometimes there risyth highe hils, and sometimes again men may see greate vales descendyng. . . . Againe they thinke this Rygge forme meetest for the standing of the sea and for the running of rivers, for in the first forme [a cube] if the sea should rest on the outermost plaine, then wolde it
9
Figure 7. A " rygge forme ” or three-sided tablet.
Figure 8. Five-sided tablet. Figure ii. Four-sided pyramid
Figure 9. Cone. Figure 12. Sphere.
Figure 10. Three-sided pyramid. Figure 13. Cylinder.
Figures of Earth
over runne all that plaine, and so flow over all the earthe; where as in this seconde forme it mighter reste about the foote of the earthe, and yet the slope risyng wyll not per¬ mit it to over run all the earthe. And so for rivers if there is no slopenes (as in a cube there is none) then cannot the rivers runne well.”
Already in these dozen geometrical figures we have col¬ lected two groups, one of which, the five regular solids, has been noted. The other one is that group from which all the known crystalline mineral forms — except radium and helium — can be constructed — "the eight basic elemental geometrical magnitudes,” with eight definite bounding surfaces that compose a perfect series.
The first is the sphere with its one and only surface.
The second is the cone with its two surfaces.
The third is the cylinder with its three surfaces.
The fourth is the tetrahedron with its four surfaces.
The fifth is the three-sided tablet with its five surfaces.
The sixth is the cube with its six surfaces.
The seventh is the five-sided tablet with its seven sur¬ faces.
The eighth is the octahedron with its eight surfaces.
And then again the Earth has been represented by a figure quite outside the angular figures. The sphere, for instance, as a figure of Earth, appears to be as old as any of the others, and, like all the others, has undergone the test of recurrence. But an even more curious form has been ascribed to this still mysterious planet of ours — a spiral. The beginning, or the end, that is, of a spiral form, like the vine, or like a watch-spring, which, stretched, or
Figure 14. Spiral forms.
Figures of Earth
sprung, may reach from Earth to Heaven, along which all that lives in the universe may descend and ascend — a sort of Jacob’s ladder without rungs. Before man had the watch-spring, his own creation, he had before him the vine — Nature’s handiwork, and he used it to symbolise that for which he was always seeking, the connecting link, the path of communication between Earth and Heaven.
Of the spiral forms given in Fig. 14 the two small ones in the centre are modern drawings of radium and helium atoms, but their duplicates are to be found in the oldest, crudest pictographs of the cosmos — man’s attempt to rep¬ resent by a line either Earth’s creative power and strength and energy, or the mysterious, potent force of Nature it¬ self. The lower spiral is the ordinary right-handed (or dextral) curve found everywhere in Nature. The upper left-handed (or sinistral) spiral with its flying birds in opposition is a curious little drawing taken from Physiol- ogia Kircheriana Experimentalis (1680), perhaps sug¬ gested by Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook on "The Flight of Birds,” written nearly two centuries earlier, while he was making his marvellous studies of spiral formations.
For the great struggle of one element against another, suggested in this sinistral spiral, was itself to Leonardo the very secret of the mysterious force which shapes the struc¬ ture of waves, of reeds, of animals, of man, of shells and horns and flowers and climbing vines. The force itself he could not define, but its movement he could trace; and its path was not a line or a closed circle but a spiral "twist,” which might take the right-handed or the rarer left- handed way. There came to him what might be called a
13
T he B ook of TLarths
revelation of spirality; and he found the coil of a worm, the curve of the humblest shell, the wreathing smoke of a candle, the tiny whirl of street dust, the budding of a fern or a cyclamen, of an onion or a rose, just as significant as the spiral-like flight of birds or the spiral formations of water. But thousands of years before him, ancient temples and tombs and sacred rocks had been engraved with sig¬ nificant "studies” in spiral forms — many of those of the Eastern world based beyond all doubt on the struggle of the lotus with the elements and on the analogy of the lotus to the Earth — even to the cosmos itself. The ancient Stupa (Fig. i) was not only a symbol of the five great elements, but it was also, for the Orient, an almost literal drawing of the lotus plant, rooted in Earth, climbing through water, by grace of its inner fire, to air, lifting there its acuminated spherical bud, and blossoming with a spiral twist into Space. To the ancient mind the secret path of Nature’s immortal force was always most signifi¬ cantly symbolised by a spiral line, and it was suggested in a thousand ways.
A sphere or a hemisphere may be a solid body, or it may be merely a shell — and Earth has been again many times imagined as a half shell, swimming like an upturned basket
Figure ij. "Halfe a Sphaere.” Figure i 6. "Hollow lyke a bolle.’
14
Figures of Earth
or boat, on the surface of limitless waters, not sinking be¬ cause its concavity was filled with air which, pressing on the water, balanced the hollow shell. Or, again, Earth has been, and is still to-day believed by some to be, "a playne Flatte.” “They fantasied,” wrote old Recorde, “that it wold reste most steddily, and so it was very easy to walke on. We are,” he adds, “more beholdynge to those men, for devising our easy walkynge, than we are
Figure 17. "A playne Flatte
bound to them for their wise doctrine. The fourthe secte, fearyng least by this opinion they should loose the sea and all other waters, imagined the forme of the earthe more apte to hold water, and devised it hollow lyke a bolle.”
It was always a problem for the early designers of the figure of Earth to account for the support of the heavens, and this idea of the habitable Earth “hollow lyke a bolle,” was much more clearly and generally expressed by figur¬ ing the Earth as a flat disc or plain surrounded by a con¬ tinuous mountain wall on which the heavens rested. Only fourteen hundred years ago, with the theory of the spher¬ ical Earth the prevailing scientific one, but with all its vexing by-problems unsolved — not only that of an un-
15
T he B ook of Earths
supported sky, but of men forced to walk like flies on the opposite ceiling of the Earth, one cosmogonist, Cosmas Indicopleustes, disposed of the whole matter by simply enclosing the entire visible universe in a hollow rectan¬ gular box and shutting down the lid. Man lived inside his box, like a squirrel in a cage.
Figure 18. " Square like a box ”
The Cosmasian idea was a simpler scheme of world¬ making than the model offered in Fig. 19, but it happens that this simple geometric figure is very similar to the Babylonian conception of the universe — Earth as a series of "stages” or steps, pyramidal in structure, enclosed within a series of concentric spheres. For the idea that Heaven is round and that Earth is square is very old, as old perhaps as the square and the circle — the foundation of measure. "Heaven is round like an opened umbrella,” say the Chinese; "Earth is square like a chessboard.” Or, "Earth is square like a box; heaven is round like the awn¬ ing of a carriage.”
Yet on what, if the Earth is square, may the dome of
1 6
Figures of Earth
Heaven rest, not only that it may have firm support, but also that it may be tightly joined to the Earth? For the ancients greatly feared that Heaven, illy supported, might
collapse and destroy its foundation; they feared also that, if Heaven and Earth were not hermetically cemented or glued together, untold horrors might creep into this uni¬ verse from some fabulous "outside.” For instance, the circular edge of the heavenly dome might find support
17
lihe Book of Barths
firm enough by resting on the four quarters of the square Earth, in spite of the intervening arcs of water it must span. But there would be the open quarters; and un¬ known and unimaginable monsters might succeed in swimming through the depths of water under Heaven’s unguarded edge, and so insinuate themselves into the Earth-waters, with the very probable result of the de¬ struction of the world. Therefore, said some, Heaven’s edge might very well begin as a square joined tightly to the Earth-square, and then melt insensibly into the rounded firmament. But, said others, Heaven is immeasurably high, Earth immeasurably deep; each covers the other, and both fit tightly together. Whether square or round, both must be one or the other.
A "six-faced tetrahedron,” a solid giving the maximum of surface for the minimum of volume, represents, ac¬ cording to one theory, the figure of Earth. This par-
Figure 20. The six- faced tetrahedron.
(From Vestiges of the Molten Globe; William Lowthian Green, 1875, Plate I.)
ticular theory — a theory, by the way, of the latter nine¬ teenth century — would seem to argue for the existence of an "economical” universe, with the Earth modelled on a plan designed to produce the greatest possible surface from the least possible substance.
18
Figure 23. "Parallel Circles .”
Figure 22. "Circles within the Oval.”
Figure 21. The Oval, or "The Mundane Egg.”
T he B ook of Earths
And Earth is also the Mundane Egg, or an Oval form.
"There is another thing in Antiquity,” wrote Thomas Burnet in his The Theory of the Earth (1697), "relating to the form and construction of the Earth, which is very remarkable, and hath obtained throughout all learned Nations and Ages. And that is the comparison or re- semblence of the Earth to an Egg . . . this notion of the Mundane Egg, or that the World was Oviform, hath been the sence and Language of all Antiquity, Latins , Greeks , Persians, Egyptians, and others.”
Burnet did not overstate his case, for this was his theory also. The concept of the Earth as the Mundane Egg or
of the universe as the Cosmic Egg is one of the ancient of ancient figures of Earth. It appears everywhere, in the mythologies, cosmogonies, traditions, and folklore of all races and of all times. Heaven encloses the Earth from without as the shell encloses the yolk. Or the Earth’s
crust is the shell of the Mundane Egg; Burnet’s whole theory of the Earth was built on this idea. There is no
20
figures of Earth
end to the analogy between the egg and the universe, or to the concept of the Earth as the Egg of the World.
These are some of the geometrical figures by which the Earth and the universe have been represented. But "shapes” also have been used to describe it. Shapes are irregular things compared with geometrical figures, but they may be accurate nevertheless. "Pear-shaped,” for
AAh
Figure 2 6. "Right, Crooked, Mixt”
instance, is for descriptive purposes just as exact as "tri¬ angular” or "round.” And so the Earth has been de¬ scribed and drawn, not only as "pear-shaped,” but as "boat-shaped,” as "heart-shaped,” as "egg-shaped,” as "tomato-shaped,” as "turnip-shaped,” "gourd-shaped,” "onion-shaped,” "lotus-shaped,” "rose-shaped,” It has been — many times — a tree; a great island-leaf with roots; a flower; a mountain; an octave in the cosmic series, or a note in the cosmic scale; or the living body of the "God of Heaven,” the "Universal Man,” spanning the space be¬ tween the highest heaven and the lowest Earth.
And for the last few hundred years it has been an "oblate spheroid.”
But ask science to-day, What is the figure of Earth? and science will reply not with the geometrical figure of an oblate spheroid, nor with any definite "shape” drawn for the eye to see, but with a word:
21
T he B ook of 'Earths
Earth is a geoid.
Ask, What is a geoid? and science will reply:
An Earth-shaped body.
Ask, What is an Earth-shaped body? and science will answer:
A geoid. A shape, that is, expressed by a word, but not yet by an image. The mysterious figure of the Earth, the shape peculiar to itself, has not yet been determined, with all of man’s questionings and guesses.
And yet he has tried to determine it, with that handful of working means left him when the gods departed; his vague knowledge of truth — which has served him better for determining what is not truth than what is truth; his numbers, his signs, his characters, his symbols, his words, his capacity to be curious, to wonder, and to draw anal¬ ogies between strange things. This was his equipment when he first began to question Space, and from this tiny handful of resources all the Creation stories of the world arose. Their outlines are remarkably the same. First of all a primordial substance and a Former to mould it — they sometimes called these two first forces the Maker and the Moulder, each contained within the other, but at rest. Then out of stillness came motion; out of motion light, out of light all created things; after Creation, evil; and, after evil, the deluge; out of the deluge the mountain top; and out of the ruins of the Old Earth, the New. Many of the Creation stories are familiar, but here are two which are almost unknown to the western world, though one of them is of that very world itself.
The first comes from Asia, land of the oldest recorded
22
Creation of the 'World
thought we have — at least nothing older is recognised as coming from any other source. The second is of America, youngest historically of all the continents, with all her prehistoric past practically stripped of records. The first is in words, one of man’s most magnificent guesses at the original combining of the Great Elements which pro¬ duced the Earth. The second is told in glyphs or picto- graphs. The first is taken from the Sanscrit Mahabharata; the second from the Walam Olum of the Lenape or Dela¬ ware Indians, a branch of the great Algonkin stock which roamed from east to west and west to east in North America, and styled itself "the Sacred People,” "the Mound Builders.”
Bhrgu, in the Sanscrit epic, is answering the question, "By whom was this world with its oceans, its firmament, its mountains, its clouds, its lands, its fire, and its winds created? Ele replies that, first of all, the Primaeval Being Manasa created a Divine Being Mahat.
Mahat created Consciousness.
That Divine Being created Space.
From Space was born Water, and from Water were born Fire and Wind.
Through the union of Fire and Wind was born the Earth.
Then follows a song to Mahat.
The Mountains are His bones.
The Earth is His fat and flesh.
23
T he B ook of 'Earths
The Oceans are His blood.
Space is His stomach.
The Wind is His breath.
Fire is His energy.
The Rivers are His arteries and veins.
Agni and Soma, otherwise the Sun and the Moon, are called His eyes.
The firmament above is His head.
The Earth is His two feet.
The Cardinal and subsidiary points of the horizon are His arms.
Without doubt He is incapable of being known and His Soul is inconceivable.
Of the extent of the firmament, of the surface of the Earth, and of the Wind:
Bhrgu said: The Sky thou seest above is infinite.
The Sun and the Moon cannot see, above or below, be¬ yond the range of their own rays. There where the rays of the Sun and the Moon cannot reach are luminaries which are self -effulgent and which possess splendour like that of the Sun or of Fire.
This Space which the very gods cannot measure is full of many blazing and self-luminous worlds each above the other.
Beyond the limits of land are oceans of water.
Beyond water is darkness.
Beyond darkness is water again, and beyond the last is fire.
24
Creation of the World
Downwards, beyond the nether regions, is water.
Beyond water is the region belonging to the great snakes.
Beyond that is sky once more, and beyond the sky is water again.
Ever thus there is water and sky alternately without end. . . .
Formerly there was only Infinite Space, perfectly mo¬ tionless and immovable. Without sun, moon, stars, and wind, it seemed to be asleep.
Then Water sprang into existence, like something darker within darkness.
Then from the pressure of Water arose Wind. As when an empty vessel without a hole appears at first to be without any sound, but when filled with Water, Air appears and makes a great noise, even so when Infinite Space was filled with Water, the Wind arose with a great noise, penetrating through the Water.
That Wind, thus generated by the pressure of the Ocean of Water, still moveth. Coming into unobstructed Space, its motion is never stopped.
Then, in consequence of the friction of Wind and Water, Fire possessed of great might and blazing energy sprang into existence with flames directed upwards.
That Fire dispelled the darkness that covered Space.
Assisted by the Wind, Fire drew Space and Water to¬ gether.
Indeed, combining with the Wind, Fire became solidi¬ fied.
While falling from the Sky, the liquid portion of Fire
^5
T he B ook of Earths
solidified again, and became what is known as the Earth.
The Earth or land, in which everything is born, is the origin of all kinds of taste, of all kinds of scent, of all kinds of liquids, and of all kinds of animals.
The Walam Olum (or "Red Score”) of the Lenape d
i
1. At first, in that place, at all times, above the earth,
2. On the earth, [was] an extended fog, and there the
great Manito was.
3. At first, forever, lost in space, everywhere, the great Manito was.
4. He made the extended land and the sky.
5-
He made the sun, the moon, the stars.
1 This Creation and Deluge story of the Lenape or Delaware In¬ dians is taken from Dr. Daniel G. Brinton’s The Lenape and Their Legends (The Library of Aboriginal American Literature, Vol. V, 1885). Since "walam” means "painted,” particularly "painted red,” and "olum” signifies the scores or marks or notches or figures used on tally-sticks or record-boards, the sense of 'Walam Olum is vari¬ ously rendered by "Red Score” (Dr. Brinton’s choice), "Painted-en- graved Tradition” (the translation left by Constantine Rafinesque, original copyist of these Algonkin pictographs) , or "Painted Bark- Record.” The pictographs or glyphs or signs were "notches” de¬ signed to keep the long chant in memory. The very beautiful transla¬ tion is Dr. Brinton’s.
2 6
Creation of the World
z\ X-
m
m
6. He made them all to move evenly.
j Then the wind blew violently, and it cleared, and the water flowed off far and strong.
8. And groups of islands grew newly, and there re¬
mained.
9. Anew spoke the great Manito, a manito to manitos,
10. To beings, mortals, souls and all.
II. And ever after he was a manito to men, and their grandfather
12. He gave the first mother, the mother of beings.
1 3. He gave the fish, he gave the turtles, he gave the beasts, he gave the birds.
14. But an evil Manito made evil beings only, monsters,
V
T he B oo k of Earths
C A ?
♦
^4AA_<
~W
15. He made the flies, he made the gnats.
16. All beings were then friendly.
17. Truly the manitos were active and kindly
1 8. To those very first men, and to those first mothers , fetched them wives.
19. And fetched them food, when first they desired it.
20. All had cheerful knowledge, all had leisure, all thought in gladness.
21. But very secretly an evil being, a mighty magician, came on earth,
22. And with him brought badness, quarreling, unhap¬ piness.
23. Brought bad weather, brought sickness, brought
death.
24. All this took place of old on the earth, beyond the
great tide-water, at the first.
28
C reation of the 'World
ii.
I. Long ago there was a mighty snake and beings evil to men.
2. This mighty snake hated those who were there (and) greatly disquieted those whom he hated.
3. They both did harm, they both injured each other, both were not in peace.
4. Driven from their homes they fought with this mur¬ derer.
5. The mighty snake firmly resolved to harm die men.
6. He brought three persons, he brought a monster, he brought a rushing water.
7. Between the hills the water rushed and rushed, dash¬ ing through and through, destroying much.
8. Nanabush, the Strong White One, grandfather of beings, grandfather of men, was on the Turtle Island.
29
T he B oo k of YLarths
9. There he was walking and creating, as he passed by and created the turtle.
IO. Beings and men all go forth, they walk in the floods and shallow waters, down stream thither to the Turtle Island.
II. There were many monster fishes, which ate some of them.
12. The Manito daughter, coming, helped with her canoe, helped all, as they came and came.
13. [And also] Nanabush, Nanabush, the grandfather of all, the grandfather of beings, the grandfather of men, the grandfather of the turtle.
14. The men then were together on the turtle, like to turtles.
15
. Frightened on the turtle, they prayed on the turtle that what was spoiled should be restored.
16. The water ran off, the earth dried, the lakes were at rest, all was silent, and the mighty snake departed.
Let us extract several of these primitive world-pic¬ tures from the Walam Olum and set them side by side for comparison. Quite apart from any meaning attached to them in the legend of the Lenape, these three signs il¬ lustrate very well indeed what were probably the first
30
Creation of the World
two world-concepts of man; either that the Earth was an island in a watery waste on whose waves the sky rested
Figure 27. Figure 28. Figure 29.
as best it might, or that it was a vast plain overarched by the solid vault of heaven and tightly enclosed within it. The first of the three needs only a writhing sea serpent in¬ scribed beneath it to illustrate that heavy fear of primitive man, that portentous monsters, slipping through the deep¬ est depth of the ocean, might creep under the edge of the firmament to work evil on Earth. So little has ever been done with these Lenape pictographs, as Dr. Brinton him¬ self admits, that it is impossible to speak with certainty about the real meaning of any of them; and it is only a hazardous guess to suggest that Fig. 29, the last sign of the Deluge story — "The water ran off, the earth dried, the lakes were at rest, all was silent, and the mighty snake de¬ parted” — may represent the ocean surrounding the Earth as barred, perhaps forever, against the "mighty snake which had wrought such desolation. The oblique lines would serve here, instead of an Earth-surrounding moun¬ tain wall, or a circular continental ring beyond the "River Ocean,” to guard the Earth against invasion from with¬ out. In any case, here are primitive representations of "mountains of the world” — the first Earth before and
31
T he B oo k of 'Earths
the "first Earth” after the Deluge — and of that other "first” concept of the Earth as a vast plain, overarched by the solid vault of heaven.
There is another Creation story that we might glance at here, because it contains so many notions of the be¬ ginnings of things that are extraordinarily similar to other ideas we shall meet later on. It is the Creation story of the Maidus, an Indian tribe of northern California.
"When this world was filled with water,” so Dixon translates the tradition,1 Earth-Maker floated upon it, kept floating about. Nowhere in the world could he see even a tiny bit of earth. No persons of any kind flew about. He went about in this world, the world itself being invisible, transparent like the sky.
"He was troubled. 'I wonder how, I wonder where, I wonder in what place, in what country, we shall find a world!’ he said. 'You are a very strong man, to be think¬ ing of this world,’ said Coyote. 'I am guessing in what direction the world is, then to that distant land let us float!’ said Earth-Maker.
"In this world they kept floating along, kept floating along, hungry, having nothing to eat. 'You will die of hunger,’ said Coyote. Then he thought. 'No, I cannot think of anything,’ he said. 'Well,’ said Earth-Maker, 'the world is large, a great world. If somewhere I find a tiny world, I can fix it up.*
"Then he sang, 'Where, little world, art thou?’ It is said he sang, kept singing, sang all the time. 'Enough!’ he said, and stopped singing. 'Well, I don’t know many
1 Maidu Texts: Roland B. Dixon. Leyden, 1912.
32
:-"^s
fSk *>*
^ ...
Ql
rv ’ "'»
5 °Q
-^,^s
r>
•*^ ^ .^O <-> *•4
v« _ *-i
* S
^S
■^4
N ^
(From Haggadah von Sarajevo of the 14th century)
Creation of the 'World
songs (?),’ he said. Then Coyote sang again, kept sing¬ ing, asking for the world, singing, 'Where, O world, art thou?’ He sang, kept singing; then 'Enough!’ he said. 'I am tired. You try again.’
"So Earth-Maker sang. 'Where are you, my great mountains, my world mountains?’ he said. He sang, and all the time kept saying, 'Where are you?’ He stopped singing. 'Enough!’ he said. 'You try also.’ Coyote tried, kept singing. 'My foggy mountains, where one goes about,’ he said. 'Well, we shall see nothing at all. I guess there never was a world anywhere,’ said he. 'I think, if we find a little world, I can fix it very well,’ said Earth- Maker.
"As they floated along, they saw something like a bird’s nest. 'Well, that is very small,’ said Earth-Maker. 'It is small. If it were larger I could fix it. But it is too small,’ he said. 'I wonder how I can stretch it a little.’ He kept saying, 'What is the best way! How shall I make it larger!’ So saying, he prepared it. He extended a rope to the east, to the south he extended a rope, to the west, to the northwest, and to the north he extended ropes.
"When all were stretched, he said, 'Well, sing, you who were the finder of this earth, this mud! "In the long, long ago, Robin-Man made the world, stuck earth to¬ gether, making this world.” Thus mortal man shall say of you, in myth-telling.’ Then Robin sang, and his world¬ making song sounded sweet. After the ropes were all stretched, he kept singing; then, after a time, he ceased.
"Then Earth-Maker spoke to Coyote also. 'Do you sing, too,’ he said. So he sang, singing, 'My world where
33
T he B oo k of HLarths
one travels by the valley-edge; my world of many foggy mountains; my world where one goes zigzagging hither and thither; range after range/ he said, 'I sing of the country I shall travel in. In such a world I shall wander/ he said.
"Then Earth-Maker sang — sang of the world he had made, kept singing, until by and by he ceased. 'Now/ he said, 'it would be well if the world were a little larger. Let us stretch it/ — 'Stop!’ said Coyote. 'I speak wisely. This world ought to be painted with something so that it may look pretty. What do ye two think?’
"Then Robin-Man said, 'I am one who knows noth¬ ing. Ye two are clever men, making this world, talking it over; if ye find anything evil, ye will make it good.’ 'Very well/ said Coyote, 'I will paint it with blood. There shall be blood in the world; and people shall be born there, having blood. There shall be birds born who shall have blood. Everything — deer, all kinds of game, all sorts of men without any exception — all things shall have blood that are to be created in this world. And in another place, making it red, there shall be red rocks. It will be as if blood were mixed up with the world, and thus the world will be beautiful,’ he said. 'What do you think about it?’ 'Your words are good/ he said, 'I know nothing/ So Robin-Man went off. As he went, he said, 'I shall be a person who travels only in this way/ and he flew away.”
Only after all this was accomplished did Earth-Maker, commanding Coyote to lie down on his face, begin to stretch the world. With his foot he extended it to the east, to the south, to the west, to the northwest, and to
34
Qreation of the 'World
the north. And yet again, saying to Coyote, "Do not look up. You must not,” he stretched it again, as far as it would go in the five directions. Then Coyote, rising, began to walk to the eastward side, and Earth-Maker, after describing the entire circuit of the world, returned to the spot from whence he had set out, and began to pre¬ pare things. He made men, of different colours, two of each kind only, and as he made them in pairs, he counted them. "Then he counted all the countries, and, as he counted them, assigned them, gave them to the countries. 'You are a country having this name, you shall have this people,’ he said. 'This sort of people, naming you, shall own the country. These people shall grow, shall keep on growing through many winters, through many dawns. They shall continue to grow until, their appointed winters being past, their dawns being over, this people having finished growing, shall be born,’ he said.”
So Earth-Maker created, to each country a name and a people with a name and speech, each different; until he arrived at the middle of the world, where he made two others and left them, saying, " 'Ye here, growing steadily, when so many winters shall have passed, very many winters, many days, ye shall be fully grown,’ he said. 'Then ye shall be mortal men, ye shall be born full grown. ... Ye shall not be born soon,’ he said.”
Continuing on his way to the uttermost limit where mortal men were to live, he stopped, and created, first two, whom he laid down, and two more, and still another pair. " 'Ye shall remain here,’ he said, 'and your country shall have a name. Although living in a small country, in
35
T he B oo k of Earths
one that is not large, it shall be sufficient for you. This I leave; and growing continually ... ye, being fully grown, shall be born,’ he said. 'Then your food will grow — different sorts of food, all kinds of food; and ye, being born with sufficient intelligence, will survive,’ said he. Then he pushed them down under a gopher-hill.
"He spoke again. 'Ye, too, shall possess a small country. "Come now, leave this country!” (this ye must not say to others wishing to take this land) . Ye shall be people who will not drive others away, driving them off to an¬ other country. Ye shall be different, ye shall name your country.’ ”
To still another pair he spoke, saying, " 'Ye shall have children, and when your children shall have grown larger, then, looking all over this country, ye must tell them about it, teach them about it, naming the country and places, showing them and naming them to your children. "That is such and such a place, and that is such and such a mountain.” So when ye have caused them to learn this, teaching them, they shall understand even as ye do your¬ selves.’ Then, placing them between his thumb and finger, he snapped them away.
"And when he had given countries thus to all that he had counted out, there was one pair left. 'Ye, also, ye shall be a people speaking differently. There will be a little too many of you for you to have the same sort of a country also. So ye shall have that kind of a country, a great country,’ he said.
" 'Now, wherever I have passed along, there shall never be a lack of anything,’ he said, and made motions in all
36
C re at ion of the World
directions. 'The country where I have been shall be one where nothing is ever lacking. I have finished talking to you, and I say to you that ye shall remain where ye are to be born. Ye are the last people; and while ye are to re¬ main where ye are created, I shall return and stay there. When this world becomes bad, I will make it over again; and after I make it, ye shall be born,’ he said. Long ago Coyote suspected this, they say.
" 'This world will shake,’ he said. 'This world is spread out flat, the world is not stable. After this world is all made, by and by, after a long time, I will pull this rope a little, then the world shall be firm. I, pulling on my rope, shall make it shake. And now,’ he said, 'there shall be songs, they shall not be lacking, ye shall have them.’ And he sang, and kept on singing until he ceased singing. 'Ye mortal men shall have this song,’ he said, and then he sang another; and singing many different songs, he walked along, kept walking until he reached the middle of the world; and there, sitting down over across from it, he remained.
"But in making the world, Robin-Man sang that which was pleasant to hear. He, they say, was the first created person — a man whose song passed across the valleys, a man who found the world, a man who in the olden time sang very beautifully — sounding songs. And Earth- Maker, going along, and having passed by the middle of the world, made a house for himself, and remained there. That is as far as he went. That is all, they say.”
37
T he B ook of 'Earths
W. ''lammarion’s old drawing of The Earth Floating JL 1 is a peculiarly desolate rendering of the ancient idea that the Earth was nothing more than an island in a sea. This idea would of course have its probable origin among races living near great seas or oceans whose other side they
Figure 30. The Earth Floating.
(From Flammarion’s Astronomical Myths, 1877.)
had tried in vain to reach. The mind of men likes sym¬ metry; if water stretching endlessly away bounded one side of their “island,” even though that island were a con¬ tinent whose other edge they did not know, water must lie also on its other sides. If the Sun rose from their east¬ ern waters, say, at dawn, it must sink in some unknown western waves at night, if for no other reason than, by swimming through them, to arrive again by the next dawn, in the eastern sky. We may smile at this childish notion if we will, but it may very well be that no great “system” of the harmonious orbits of Sun and Moon and
38
B C
SUSTAINERS OF THE EARTH
A. Quetzalcoatl upholding the Heavens. From an original Mexican painting preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna.
(From Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, 1831, Vol. II)
B. Atlas upholding the Earth.
(From Engravings after Stoddard; a collection in The New York Public Library)
C. A Hindu Earth.
(From Elammarion' s Astronomical Myths, 1877)
Plate ii
Upholders of the 'World
Earth explain the mystery of the '‘rising and the setting of the Sun” any more or any better than the primitive idea that darkness came when the Sun was submerged in the sea, and that light came when the Sun sprang out of the sea. Perhaps all that we know to-day — really know — is that in the hour of dawn the Sun appears, and in the hour of twilight the Sun has vanished.
The precise nature of the element in which the Earth- island floated came to be a matter of concern and much speculation. At first it was assumed to be simply water; later it was defined as "water or some other liquid,” and finally it was believed to be a liquid not unlike the compo¬ sition of the waters directly under the firmament or lower heaven, which were supposed to be a crystalline, congealed water, specially combined to resist the flame of the Sun, Moon, and galaxy of stars, to be itself full of fire, and yet not to burn. It was water, yet not water, air yet not air, fire, yet not fire. Probably this was an attempt to de¬ scribe the medium in which the Island Moon floated, all sustaining, yet clear.
Doubtless too the roundness of the Sun and Moon, their discs so broad, yet thin enough to float in space, or aethereal waters, had as much to do with giving men the idea that the Earth’s shape might also be flat and round, as the circular defining line of the horizon. Again, if the Moon was like a leaf, floating in the heavenly water, the Earth, like a leaf, floated on the world water, and like a leaf in water would develop roots. Ages ago, as we have already noted (p. 14), the ancient world, India, China,
39
T he Book of Barths
Egypt, made the lotus the water-flower that symbolises Earth and Heaven and all that lies between. For as a tree, rooted in the Earth, is a part of it, so Earth, rooted in the universal waters, must be a part of the universe from which it derives life and nourishment. And again, though the roots of an Earth-island might not be as firm as the
roots of a great Earth-tree might, that is, be as supple and flexible as those of water plants, nevertheless it was an anchorage of the Earth to something outside itself.
Naturally evolving from this would rise an Earth set on solid pillars, an established, firmly founded disc. Fig. 32 is an old picture of just such an Earth — "the Earth of the Vedic priests.” Its upper side is its only habitable side; its under side rests on twelve columns, these columns resting in turn on the Twelve Great Sacrifices of the Virtuous, — the aimful deeds, that is, of men aware of duty. Without this subterranean foundation, said the
40
Upholders of the "World
ancient priests, the pillars of the Earth would dry up, and the Earth would fall down. These pillars, says Flam- marion, accounted more reasonably for the rising and the setting of the Sun, than the rather lazy guess that it swam through water from west to east every night; though there was another speculation that it might reach the
Figure 32. The Earth of the Vedic Priests.
(From Flammarion’s Astronomical Myths, 1877.)
eastern heavens by traversing a complicated system of tunnels, like great connecting caves, which pierced the Earth-disc from Occident to orient.
But the twelve pillars, quite as little as the roots of the Earth-island leaf, failed to satisfy man’s wonderings over the problem of what supported the Earth, or on what the Earth rested. One of the old familiar figures of Earth is that hemispherical Earth of the Hindus (Plate II, C) supported on the backs of four elephants, which stand on the hemispherical shell of a gigantic tortoise floating on
41
T he B ook of YLarths
the surface of the world-waters. Sometimes, in addition to these three supports, there is a fourth, the coiled ring of the great world-serpent on which the tortoise rests — four foundations for Earth, and five for Heaven which must rest on the Earth.
But the elephant, the tortoise and the serpent are only three of the great animals which folk-lore and tradition say may support this planet. The Altaic people of North¬ ern Siberia affirm that their mighty Ulgen created the Earth on the waters, and placed under its disc, to support it, three great fish, one in the centre and one on either side. The head of the middle fish being placed towards the north, floods occur there when it presses its head down; and, should it ever sink too low, the whole Earth will be deluged again. They believe that these fish are attached to heaven by a rope through their gills, whereby their heads can be lowered or raised, and that at the three posts of heaven to which these ropes are tied, the Bodhis- atta Mandishire, or guardian of Earth, always watches. According to another tradition, only one great fish sup¬ ports the Earth; when he changes his position earthquakes occur. In Hebrew myths, this mighty animal is the "fish¬ shaped Leviathan.” Where the turtle or the tortoise is unknown, as in far northern lands, the "world-supporting Frog” will take its place; if its finger ever moves, the Earth shivers. Among Tartars and many of the tribes of Asia-Europe, the Earth is believed to be supported by a great bull; sometimes the Earth rests on its back, some¬ times it is held aloft on the horns. Or, another variation,
42
Atlas Supporting the Universe (From Margarita Philosophica, 1517)
Plate hi
Upholders of the 'World
in the world-ocean there is a great fish, and, upon the fish, a bull which bears the Earth. Or again, in the world-ocean there is a giant-crab which gives support to the Earth-bearing bull. Some say that the terrible weight of the Earth has already broken one of the great horns, and that when the other breaks the world will come to an end. Another of the Tartar tribes says that after the Great Mammoth was created, it was found that the Earth was not strong enough to bear its weight, and so, to avoid a waste of creation in the universe, the Great Ruler solved the difficulty by commanding the Great Mammoth to bear the Earth.
On what did the Earth rest? Not only on literal water, and great beasts. On a whirlwind, said Empedocles; on roots rooted in the Infinite, said Xenophanes; on a Soul of the World, said Plato and his school; on Twelve Pillars, said the Vedic priests, which must have for their founda¬ tion the “sacrifices of the virtuous.” Earth, that is, de¬ pended ultimately on man for its support. And sooner or later, in all cosmologies and mythologies, we come upon some lurking or developed concept that the burden of supporting both Earth and Heaven rests on the shoulders of man. In countries as widely separated by race and by oceans as Greece and Mexico, we find an “Atlas of the World,” a sustainer of the universe (Plate II, A and B) . In Greece it is Atlas the "Endurer,” brother of Prome¬ theus the rebel bringer-of-fire, who supports the globe. Son of Poseidon, he knew the depths of the whole Ocean- world; it was his task to guard the pillars which held Heaven and Earth apart. According to one story, it was
43
T he B ook of 'Earths
because he had attempted to storm the heavens that he was condemned to carry its vault on his head and hands. According to another version, it was only after the loss of his great Island realm Atlantis, that he was forced to become the sustainer of the sky.
Mexico appears to have had four — at least — heaven¬ bearing gods, and each of these appears to have exercised a number of functions other than the sufficiently onerous one of supporting the universe. Quetzalcoatl, although a Sun god and an earthquake god, was also, like Atlas, a water god. If Atlas, interpreted, means the Endurer, Quetzalcoatl, interpreted, means Heart of the Sea. God of the Sun, of the earthquake, and the water, he also up¬ held the heavens of the Mexicans. In the eastern world and in the western, thousands of years ago, these different races believed alike that some great force never to be understood and never to be overcome had wrenched the heavens from the Earth, but that, at the same time it separated them, it united them by another force, which each race represented by a human figure, a great man-god. Explain it as we will, call it naive or arrogant, it expressed one of man’s few entirely admirable qualities, his lonely necessity to share, or to believe that he shared in the work of carrying on the universe. And it found expression in countless ways.
A curious old drawing of the Middle Ages (Plate III) shows how the Atlas-myth persisted even into modern time. The Earth still occupies the centre of the universe, with all the other heavenly bodies revolving about it. From pole to pole of the firmament — his head marking
44
Upholders of the 'World
the "Polus Arctic” and his two feet the "Polus Antarctic,” stretches Atlas, or the Macrocosm, or the Great Man, or Adam Kadmon, whichever you will. To mediaeval Eu¬ rope Atlas represented the Macrocosm, or the long great world, in contrast to the Microcosm or man — little, but the epitome of all that had combined to produce him. Very often, in such circular designs, the two lower corners will be filled each with a toiling figure, the burden-bearer man, with his shoulders bent to the wheel. Only by his microcosmic, microscopic effort, they seem to say over and over again, may the Wheel of Life be kept revolving. Not only does the Earth — the pillared Earth of the Vedic priests — rest on the sacrifices of man, but, since Heaven itself leans on the Earth, without man’s aid the whole uni¬ verse must collapse.
It is easy to see how this ancient image of the Great Man rose before the eyes of the "little men” of the Earth. This was a being infinitely stronger, infinitely better, almost yet not quite a god because he was Man, who somehow stood or moved between the two worlds and kept them in touch with one another. He came to be called by many names, to be pictured under many disguises. He was the Being praised in the Creation chant of the Mahabharata; he was the "manitou to men and their grandfather” of the Lenape Creation story. He was the cosmic P’an Ku of the Chinese, who came into being "in the midst of the cosmic egg,” whose very name P’an means "the shell of an egg,” and who was hatched out of the cosmos. He created in the middle, out of the pure ele¬ ments, Heaven; out of the mixed elements, Earth. Every
45
T he B ook of Earths
day Heaven grew ten feet higher, Earth ten feet deeper and he ten feet taller, for 18,000 years. When he died, his breath became wind, his voice thunder, his four limbs the four directions, his five extremities the five sacred mountains, his left eye the sun, his right eye the moon, his blood the rivers, his beard the stars, his hair the trees and plants, his flesh the soil, his teeth metals, his bones rocks, his marrow precious stones, his perspiration rain, and his parasites men. The old Chaldeans drew a Great Man across the sky in such a way that the signs of their zodiac corresponded to the parts of his body. And, proof once again that the ancient peoples separated by the Earth’s diameter from each other were inexplicably one in many of their fancies, the Tewa Indians regarded Opa — the world, the universe — as a living being, and worshipped it as the "Universal Man,” whose backbone, they said, is the Milky Way. And the old Norse sagas have in their giant Ymir almost the facsimile — or it may be the original, who may say? — of the Chinese P’an Ku; for from Ymir’s body was made the world, from his flesh the Earth, from his blood the rivers and oceans, from his bones the mountains, from his eyebrows the "encompassing” of Mitgard the Earth. From his skull was shaped Heaven, and his brains were changed into floating clouds and fogs.
What is interesting about all this is the fact that primi¬ tive man arrived without the aid of science at the tre¬ mendous idea that definite figure is an attribute of the heavens. It was the idea that so fascinated Herschel, dis¬ coverer of Uranus, and curious inquirer into the mysteries of the Milky Way. He was possessed by the "guess” that
46
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/) m) clear demonstration of the three kinds of vision in the Microcosm (or soul of Man) of the location of their objects, and of the manner of discerning them.
(From Microcosm/ Historia; Robert Fludd, 1619)
Plate iv
'
Upholders of the 'World
not only is our galaxy a stratum or confined bed of stars, but that this stratum is measurable, and that by com¬ parison of his gauging or sounding lines, he might act¬ ually draw a chart of it. He "guessed” again that in the main — and this guess was wrong — the stars are scattered equably throughout our immediate Space, which would mean that, seeing as far in one direction as another, the figure of the heavens would tend towards a circular form. In an old book of 1848, Thoughts on Some Important Points Relating to the System of the World, by John Nichol, there is a very odd "Figure of the Universe,” based on Herschel’s gauging system, which illustrates as well as any other the method employed (Fig. 33).
If, says Nichol, we were in the centre of a circular group, it would mean that whether we looked through the line C A or the line C B, the number of stars that could be counted would be the same. But if the group were an irregular one, the number of stars in the direction of C A would be much less than that along the line C B, and the proportions of their numbers would give the pro¬ portions of the two lines C A and C B. Supposing S (lower figure) the place of our Sun, "or,” says Nichol, "what is the same thing, of the Earth, on which the ob¬ servations are recorded,” let a number of lines be drawn answering in direction to the position of Herschel’s tele¬ scope, and in length to the number of stars revealed in that direction. Then, if the extremities of these lines were joined, the result would be "a figure which, however strange, must approximate to a section of our vast and dazzling vault.” He goes on to imagine one with the
47
(From The System of the World; John Nichol, 1848.)
Upholders of the 'World
power to depart from Earth, proceeding through Space towards the Milky Way, leaving behind the constellations which we know, coming upon new configurations, pass¬ ing even through the Milky Way, until, looking back, he sees this universe so dwindled away as to present the ap¬ pearance of nothing but a speck in Space, shining with a faint, irregularly diffused illumination corresponding in its rays to the outlined figure.
71 T ATURALLY MOST OF THE EARLY STORIES of the -A. V "Great Man” of the heavens are odd mixtures of perception and fancy, of clumsy literalness and real im¬ agination. All too often this Opa Being was more earthly than heavenly, much more man than god, but, whatever his guise or disguise, he was always much more than man, and in some of his incarnations he was very close to divine. As Adam Kadmon he has meant not only the First Man created in the true image of God, but something more, "the divine man-forming power” capable of transforming a questioning little man cut off from wisdom into a divin¬ ing Great Man who could know. Precisely such a con¬ ception of Adam Kadmon has been lying in Robert Fludd’s Microcosmi Historia since 1619 (Plate IV), "A very clear demonstration of the three kinds of vision in the Microcosm (or soul of man) ; of the location of their objects, and of the manner of discerning them.” Surely no figure of "Earth” was ever drawn before or since so lightly poised, so aethereally supported.
4 9
T he B ook of 'Earths
Unless it is the tiny figure of Earth as the end and the beginning of the Spiral World (Plate V) which imme¬ diately follows in the Microcosmi Historia: "Another demonstration showing how the soul rises in a spiral ascent from the sensible things of the world to unity, through twenty-two stages, beginning with the Earth, and ascend¬ ing upwards to God; that is, from multiplicity to unity.” This is drawn in twenty-two whorls or "grades,” begin¬ ning, by numbers, with "Terra” and ending with "Deus.” Or, by the order of the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with "Deus” and ending in "Terra.” These spiral grades or stages have each four signs to mark them; first, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with the outer whorl and winding continuously inward to the centre. (The Hebrew alphabet, according to the Kabbala, is based on the primitive alphabet in which Gods were Letters, Letters were Ideas, Ideas were Numbers, and Numbers were per¬ fect Signs.) Second, the names of the procession of grades, from the first manifestation of the Godhead, Mens or Mind, to its final expression in Terra or Earth. Third, numbers, from i to 22. Fourth, the tiny winged heads common to each completed whorl. The spiral, reaching from Heaven to Earth, is shown here as lying in a flat coil, like a spring. But it may be re-imaged as the wind¬ ing line described about a sphere that tapers irresistibly out to a point. It is just that line, says this figure, de¬ scribed by a point moving in space, beginning in Heaven and ending in Earth, which at once separates and unites them. Beyond Earth there is nothing. But in Earth there is everything — even the power to make the descending
50
Another demonstration showing how the sold rises in a spiral ascent from the sensible things of the world to Unity.
(From Microcosm i Historia: Robert Fludd, 1619)
Plate v
T he Vrimceval TLarth
spiral an ascending one. It can be re-imaged as an as¬ cending vine, climbing back by way of the great World- tree. For life, said the ancients, flows never in one way. Rooted in Heaven, it descends to Earth, and rooted in Earth it may ascend to Heaven.
B
Because it pleaseth more and makes a greater im¬ pression upon us,” wrote the old English Plato- nist Thomas Burnet, "to see things represented to the Eye, than to read their description in words, we have ventured to give a model of the Primeval Earth, with its Zones or greater Climates, and the general order and tracts of its Rivers. Not that we believe things to have been in the very same form as here exhibited, but this may serve as a general Idea of that Earth, which may be wrought into more exactness, according as we are able to enlarge or correct our thoughts hereafter. . . . The Rivers of that Earth, you see, were in most respects different, and in some respects contrary to ours, and if you could turn our Rivers backwards, to run from the Sea towards their Fountain¬ heads, they would more resemble the course of these Ante¬ diluvian Rivers; for they were greatest at their first set¬ ting out; and the Current thereafter, when it was more weak, and the Chanel more shallow, was divided into many branches, and little Rivers, like the Arteries in our Body, that carry the Blood, they are greatest at first, and the further they go from the Heart, their Source, the less they grow and divide into a multitude of little
51
T he B oo k of "Earths
branches, which lose themselves insensibly in the habit of the flesh as these little Floods did in the Sands of the
Figure 34. The Primeval Earth, with its Zones or greater Climates, and the general order and tracts of its Rivers.
(From The Theory of the Earth; Thomas Burnet, 1697.)
Earthe.” This is a very curious conception of the counter¬ course of "primaeval” rivers; it is exactly as if we con¬ ceived of the Missouri-Mississippi system, for instance, as rising in the Gulf of Mexico and flowing north until it
52
T he Vrimceval \Larth
begins to divide and subdivide into dozens of lesser streams, all of which finally dwindle away into the Earth instead of rising from it.
What was the state of the primaeval Earth before man appeared, and with him, trouble? All the Creation stories
Figure 3 4 A. 2 ones or Climates of the Earth, with the Zodiac.
(From Sphara emendata; Joannes Sacro Bosco, Cologne, 1601.)
give a common answer — harmony; harmony of all the spheres. It is in the song to Mahat, with its ordered ac¬ count of the separation of the five great Elements from Chaos, and their recombinings into the bodies of the uni¬ verse. "He made them all to move evenly,” says the Creation legend of the Lenape, after the Great Manito had formed land and sky and moon and stars; and in the pictograph the even movement is a spiral line. In Sebas- tien Muenster’s Cosmographia Universalis (1559), at the beginning of the chapter on "The creation and disposing of the primordial Earth and Sea,” is an old drawing evi¬ dently intended to show the paradisaical state of terrestrial affairs at the end of the Fifth Day of Creation, with the
53
T he B ook of "Earths
great stage built and the great scene set and lighted for the entrance of man and the beginning of his drama (Plate VI). It is a picture in successive planes of the Genesis story, with a charming addition — the boat with sails, floating in the foreground; and, on it, a little three¬ storied house — the Ark, perhaps, whose part in the coming drama had been already foreseen by the Creator, and which was to become, of all the vanished treasures of a drowned and broken Earth, man’s single precious posses¬ sion.
7f/T/r hat people at what time first imagined the r r Earth as a hollow hemispherical shell floating on the world-waters we cannot know. But it is another of the "oldest figures of Earth.” This idea of the Earth as "boat-shaped” had its origin probably in the almost universal myth of the Deluge; the transition from an Ark floating right side up, to the Earth, itself a boat, floating upside down, is an easy one. But "boat-shaped” is a word which, thanks to our modern patterns, has lost its early significance. The ancient world had, however, among a certain people, a boat built on exactly such an hemi¬ spherical model. To-day, on the Euphrates River, these same kufas float — the round boats of the ancient Chal¬ deans, made of skins, stretched and sewed into a hollow hemisphere. And to-day, likewise, on the same river, fishermen ride at ease on the same inflated cushions or air-boats of skin that were in use thousands of years ago. Nothing skimmed the waters more swiftly than these cir-
54
The Primordial Earth and Sea (From Cosmographia Universalis; Sebastien Muenster, 1559)
T he Babylonian Universe
cular boats, and nothing floated more safely than these hollow hemispheres of stretched skin upturned on the waters.
There is a curious relation between the ancient boats and the Assyrian story of the Creation. If these boats were hemispheres of stretched skin, so were the Heavens and the Earth. Merodach, the world-maker of this legend, lay for a long time helpless like the other gods under the blind rule of Chaos-Tiemat, from whom sprang every¬ thing and who created unceasingly, but who had yet created neither Heaven nor Earth. From her issued spon¬ taneously monstrous animals and figures, men with two wings and others with four, with two faces or four, with goats’ legs and horns, or with the hindparts of a horse and the foreparts of a man; animals with human heads or fishes’ tails; other forms in which every sort of animal shape was united in confusion, and this confusion of crea¬ tion run mad never ceased.
But finally Merodach arose, alone of all the gods, to meet her, and then it was that Space witnessed its most terrific combat. He finally slew her, but matters were hardly bettered, for Tiemat’s great dead body stretched throughout all Space. "He placed his foot upon her,” reads the Assyrian story, and with his unerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut the blood vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind to the hidden places. . . . He contemplated the great corpse, raised it and wrought marvels. He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one of the halves on high, which became the heavens.” The
55
T he B ook of HLarths
other half he spread out under his feet to form the Earth, and immediately all the creatures that were in her disap¬ peared. Merodach again surveyed the empty world; then he cut off his own head, and, having kneaded the blood flowing from it with the Earth, formed men, who were thus endowed with a surviving particle of understanding and with a surviving particle of divine thought.
This odd conception of the heavens as made of "skin” is found over and over among primitive races. The Yakuts say that the sky is made of several skins, tightly stretched and overlapping. The Buriats call the Milky Way a "stitched seam” in the sky, and they speak with awe of a "certain being” who murmurs from time to time, "Long, long ago, when I was young, I sewed the sky to¬ gether.”
The picture of the knfa (Plate VII, A) is given to make clearer what most of the writers on the old Akkadian cosmogony mean when they say, "The Akkadians or Chaldeans considered the Earth to be hollow and boat¬ shaped.” For "boat-shaped” meant to them no elongated oval figure, but distinctly a hollow hemisphere, a round shell, even a "stretched skin.” Plate VII, B shows Myer’s construction of their world on just this model, and his in¬ terpretation is followed below.1
Briefly, E is the convex side of the hollow Earth shell. From C to E stretches the Lower Firmament, or zone of the atmosphere — winds, storms and clouds; this zone rests firmly upon the convex Earth shell. From C to A is the Upper Firmament, divided into two layers; from A to B
1 Qabbalah; Isaac Myer, 1888, pp. 448-450.
56
T he Babylonian Universe
is the zone of the spirit of the heavens; and from B to C is the zone of the planets — "sheep,” or "wanderers,” or "watchers.” This is the zone also of lightning and of thunder. A, in this diagram, represents the Zodiac, which is "in Space and the Great Celestial Ocean,” called also the "Deep” and the "Abyss.” T’hom, the Great Dragon of this Great Sea, was also called Tiemat, and it was really looked upon as the Primordial Abyss out of which every¬ thing in the Universe, including Heaven and Earth, came. The arrangement of the seven planets, between B and C, are, according to Myer, a. Saturn, b. Jupiter, c. Mars, d. Sun, e. Venus, /. Mercury, g. Moon, and Earth the centre.
F F is the concave side of the Earth shell, with seven zones described, "answering,” says Myer, "as shadows, to the orbits of the seven planets.” This was the realm of the king of the ghost-world, the king of the dead. Curi¬ ously enough, it was believed to have been ruled over at one time by Ea, deity of Wisdom. G was the Nadir, and I was the mountain of the East, or the mountain of the world, which supported the Upper Firmament and the Great Celestial Ocean. II is the Great Chaotic Crystal¬ line Sea, extending to an unknown distance beyond the Zodiacal zone. Ill is the pivot of the Star zone, on the top of the World mountain, upon which the firmament re¬ volves. IV are the guarded gates to the Underworld, abode of the dead, or home of the dark spirits, or a place for punishment. Yet in it are concealed the waters of life, and through this region of the Underworld the nightly journey of the Sun takes place, from west to east.
Disregarding any number of merely technical differ-
57
\
T he Book of Barths
ences between them, this diagram of Myer’s will serve as a fair picture of any cosmogony based on the idea that the Earth is a hollow hemisphere with an underworld. But there is sharp disagreement over whether after all the ancient Assyrian people — certainly the Chaldeans and Babylonians — believed that the Earth was a hemispherical shell, or whether they believed that it was something quite other than that.
Babylon was mighty, and it perished utterly. Of all its wisdom, only battered fragments of texts remain; which present-day scholars have worked for years to in¬ terpret. Within a period of just twenty years, from 1888 to 1908, eight different diagrams of the supposed figure of this Babylonian Universe were offered by eight different men, of which Myer’s diagram was the first. The last of these is Dr. William Fairfield Warren’s, first published in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1908. As he points out, no two of the other seven agree; certainly no one of the other seven bears any likeness to this beautiful construction of eight crystalline spheres surrounding a cubical, pyramidal, antipodal Earth-figure (Plate VIII) .
"For the reconstruction of the Babylonian universe,” he says, "we have no less than twelve most valuable data derived from the study of ancient Babylonian texts.” Following is an abstract of the twelve data on which he modelled this translucent universe.1
1. In the Babylonian conception of the universe the
1 Journal Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1908, pp. 977-983*
58
A
A. A kufa laden ivith stones and manned by a crew of four men. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a bas-relief at Koyunjik.
(From The Dawn of Civilization; Gaston Maspero, 1894)
B
B. Construction of the Akkadian, Chaldean and Babylonian Universe.
(From Qaballab; Isaac Myer, 1888)
Plate vii
Figure 3 5. Babylonian "Map pa Mundi” inscribed on a Babylonian geographical tablet in the British Museum, No. 92,687. Showing the ocean stirrounding the world, and marking the position of Babylon on the Euphrates as its centre. It shows also the mountains at the source of the river, the land of Assyria, Bit-lakinu, and the swamps at the mouth of the Euphrates.
(From Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets t etc., in the British Museum , 1906: Part XXII, Plate 48. The reading is taken from The Babylonian Legends of the Creation. Brit. Mus. Pubs., 1921, p. 3.)
T he B oo k of 'Earths
earth occupied the central place. It was the accepted centre of their planetary system.
2. The northern half of the earth was called the upper, associated with life and light. The southern half was called the under, associated with darkness and death. The South and the Underworld are identical.
3. The upper or northern half of the earth was re¬ garded as consisting of seven stages (tupukati) , ranged one above the other in the form of a staged pyramid. The staged Temple of Nippur, according to Sayce, was a model of the Earth according to the belief of those who built it.
4. Correspondingly, the antarctic or under half of the Earth was supposed to consist of seven similar stages. The seven tupukati of the underworld are a facsimile of the seven tupukati of the over world.
5. Like the quadrilateral temple modelled after it, the Earth of the Babylonians was four-cornered. In this particular it agreed with the conception ascribed to the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, Chinese, and to the Indo- Aryans of the Rig-Veda period.
6. In Babylonian thought there were seven heavens and seven hells. This belief is one of untraceable antiq¬ uity.
7. Above the seventh heaven was another, the "high¬ est heaven,” that of the fixed stars, called by the Babylo¬ nians the "heaven of Anu,” after the name of one of their oldest and highest gods.
8. This eighth heaven was divided by the Zodiac into two corresponding portions, an upper, or Arctic, and an
60
T he Babylonian Universe
under, or Antarctic. At the upper pole Anu had his palace and throne.
9. In Babylonian thought, the north pole of the heavens was the true zenith of the cosmic system, and the axis of the system upright; consequently the diurnal movements of the sun and moon were regarded as oc¬ curring in a horizontal plane.
10. Proceeding outward from the central Earth, the order of the seven known planets was as follows: Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. That their respective distances from the Earth were not uniform was already known.
11. In order to pass from the upper half of the Earth to its under half, that is, from the abode of living men to the abode of the dead, it was necessary to cross a body of water which on every side separated the two abodes.
12. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Babylonians considered that the twelve designated stars south of the Zodiac stood in the same relation to the dead as do the twelve corresponding stars north of the Zodiac to men in the land of the living. This representation clearly makes the living and the dead the residents respectively of antipodal surfaces of one and the same heaven-enclosed Earth. According to the Babylonian Creation Tablets (V, line 8) Anu and Ea are antipodally located gods, Anu being enthroned at the north pole of the heavens, and Ea at the south pole.
These twelve propositions, says Dr. Warren, are the fundamental features of the ancient Babylonian world- concept, and each of the twelve requirements is met by
6 1
T he B oo k of Earths
this figure. The upright central line represents the polar axis of the heavens and Earth in perpendicular position. The two central seven-staged pyramids represent the upper and lower halves of e-kur, the Earth; the upper is the abode of living men, the lower the abode of the dead. The separating waters are the four seas. The seven dotted half circles above the Earth represent the "seven heavens,” and the corresponding seven hemispheres below the earth, the "seven hells.” The seven inner concentric spheres are respectively the domains and abodes of Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk, and Ninib, each being a "world-ruler” in his own planetary sphere. (The order of these spheres has been given above as Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.) The outer¬ most sphere (with its upper half cut away, as are the upper seven heavens, to show better the interior of the system) is the sphere of the antipodal gods, Anu and Ea, and the heaven of the fixed stars. It is to be noted fur¬ ther, Dr. Warren explains, that the spaces between the spheres widen rapidly at each remove from the Earth, so rapidly that in a world-view the size of this, they cannot be represented other than as in this plate.
Dr. Warren calls this "The Babylonian Universe” prin¬ cipally because Babylonia is almost the limit of our back¬ ward reach to the wisdom of the past, and our retracing of the persistent recurrences of so many of these princi¬ ples — the "four-cornered Earth,” or the cubical Earth, the "seven heavens,” "Earth and counter-Earth,” the "crystalline spheres,” the "mountains of the world,” and so on — must end there. But its origin, he says, was among
62
The Babylonian Universe
(From T he Universe as pictured in Milton's Paradise Lost; William Fairfield Warren, 1915)
Plate vm
The Egyptian Universe
a people antedating the Babylonians. "A truer name therefore for the system would be the Pre-Babylonian. The East-Semites received it from their predecessors in the possession of the Euphratean valley, the Akkado- Sumarians. At least such is the opinion and the teach¬ ing of our highest experts. Did the system originate among those non-Semitic predecessors in the valley? This has been assumed, but no man can pretend to know.”
n the Metropolitan Museum of the City of New
York, rests the grey diorite sarcophagus of Uresh- Nofer, one time priest of the "watery” goddess Mut, in Egypt. On the upper half of the sarcophagus lid is en¬ graved the figure of the Sky goddess Nut "bending over the Earth,” a marvellous picture of the Egyptian Universe.
"The Sky Goddess Nut bending over the Earth,” and the succeeding Plate, "The Goddess Nut represented Double,” bring up so clearly the first of the major tradi¬ tional catastrophes of the Earth, that it would be timely just now to consider them briefly. There have been five, one so dimly related that it shall be left till the last. But there are four great timeless traditions of great disasters. The first is the violent separation of Earth from Heaven. The second is the appalling Earth-Moon catastrophe. The third is the Deluge, and the fourth is the sinking of Atlan¬ tis. Or, it may be, the third in point of "time” is the sink¬ ing of Atlantis, and the fourth is the Deluge. Or, again, it may be that these two catastrophes, though individual,
63
T he B oo k of Earths
were coincident with each other. Tradition however is, happily, not logic, and so, even in a disorderly order, we may take up the outstanding afflictions of the planet we call Earth.
First, then, the violent separation of Earth from Heaven, which these Egyptian world-pictures illustrate so beautifully.
Nut was goddess of the starry sky. Sometimes she is represented as powdered with stars; sometimes, as here, with but a line of them along her spine; once at least, on the sarcophagus lid of Uresh-Nofer, with the three discs or spheres of universal significance — body, spirit, soul — connected by eight stars and by six. Sometimes the band of stars was accompanied by a band of water flowing over her spine — the celestial Nile, as the Egyptians called the mysterious heavenly waters that covered the world. Sometimes the path of the celestial Nile is called the path of the Milky Way; and often the path of the Milky Way is called "the path of souls.” Through her husband, Seb, she gave birth to the Sun, which was ever after re-born each morning: daily it made its journey from east to west beneath her body until, sinking below the western hori¬ zon, it passed into the mouth of Nut, traversed her body during the night, to be born again at dawn. Nut also gave birth to the Moon, which came forth from her breasts as milk. And to countless other heavenly bodies as well whose genealogy would take us too far.
This is the story of Nut or Heaven and of Seb or Earth.
In the beginning — that stirless rest in which all myths of the original Creation begin — Heaven and Earth were
64
The Sky Goddess Nut Bending Over the Earth
From the Sarcophagus of Uresh-Nofer, Priest of the Goddess Mut (XXXth dynasty, 378-341 B.C.)
(In the Metropolitan Museum of the City of New York)
Plate ix
T he Egyptian Universe
together, wedded gods, from whom was to spring all that has been, is, and shall ever be. Time was not yet, sings one of the old world-hymns, nor Universal Mind, nor Thought, nor Word. Bliss was not. Misery was not. Darkness alone filled the boundless All, for Father-Mother- Son were once more one, and the Son had not yet awak¬ ened for the new Wheel and his new Pilgrimage. The Universe was still concealed in the Divine Thought and the Divine Bosom.
But the day of Creation came, and a new god, Shu, god of Air or of Sunlight, sprang out of the primordial waters. He slipped between the two, and tearing Nut with force from the body of Seb her husband, raised her to the sky. Her star-spangled body marked the extent of the firmament; and her hands and feet hanging down were the four pillars of the firmament and the four quar¬ ters of the Earth. There ever since she has remained, bending over the Earth, eternally watching the Earth and the children of Earth.
Of Seb the Earth it is related that he did not endure the violent separation from Nut without a struggle. He sought to rise, that he might fight and overcome the newly created god. But as he struggled, just roused from deep dreamless sleep, he was arrested and held in the curious position he has ever since maintained (Plate X, B), with¬ out power to change it. He has been veiled each spring with plants and herbs and grasses; and winter has wrapped him in ice and snow; while along his back has passed the endless panorama of the generations of animals and men. Through him is given to them all they have; he gives and
6$
T he B oo k of Earths
they ungratefully take, never asking if he has a need they might supply, a sorrow they might soothe. Often he sleeps, and, sleeping, dreams of Nut, forgetting for a time his grief and pain; forgetting for a time that be¬ tween him and his mate, forever separating them, stands Shu, god of Air or of Sunlight. But he may never again sink into dreamless sleep; sooner or later the circle of his dreams rounds on itself, and he is roused by pain to his state of suffering again. This is why Earth eternally ques¬ tions Heaven until, wearied with waiting for answers that never come, he sinks again into slumber. Some say that Heaven answers Earth when he dreams, but because the path of his dreaming is a circle, he has forgotten most of Heaven’s answers when he awakes.
And some have quite another story of Seb the Earth; namely, that Seb is concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still lays it every day. Or again there is another story of Shu, which is that as the divine Son, he had later in his turn begotten Seb and Nut, the two deities he had separated.
Such then is the first catastrophe — every religion has recognised it; that the Earth is cut off, disinherited, a troubled, troublesome, perturbed, perturbating, turbu¬ lent, storm-swept, dream-sodden, staggering, breathless, complaining planet; and that all of its children have in¬ herited its qualities.
The second catastrophe to afflict the Earth in the begin¬ ning of things was the Earth-Moon catastrophe; and this, by the way, is not only one of the most ancient of tradi¬ tions, but it is also a modern theory of causes with which
66
B
A. The Heavenly Goose.
(From Ancient Mythology; Jacob Bryant, 1774, Vol. II)
B. The Sky Goddess Nut represented double.
(From The Da tin of Astronomy; J. Norman Lockyer, 1894)
Plate x
'Earth-'M.oon Catastrophe
science has been flirting for half a century. So difficult is it to find anything new, even a new theory, which can-
Figure 3 6. Lunar and Solar Eclipses.
(From Sphcera Mundi; Joannes Sacro Bosco, Venice, 1482.)
not be traced back along some old tangled thread of folk¬ lore. It is difficult, however, to find anything older in man’s consciousness than the riddle of the Moon. What is it, that changeless, ever-changing, flat-faced disc in the sky, forever turning about the Earth, yet never turning
67
T he B oo k of HLarths
its other face to the Earth? What mysterious other- world, under-world, over-world, dead or alive, lies on its secret side? What is the relation of the Moon to the
The head
Figure 37. The Figure of the Dragon: the Lunar Nodes.
(From Blundeville His Exercises; London, 1606.)
Earth and to man? what the relation of the hidden life of the Earth and of man to the Moon? Tradition had
Figure 38. "When the Moone is betwixt the Suntie and the Earth.”
(From Blundeville Mis Exercises; London, 1606.)
doubled these two bodies as a pair acted upon by the Sun, long before astronomers had given us the image of Earth- Moon as a beautiful double planet moving among the
68
Tarth-Nloon Catastrophe
stars; long before mathematicians had constructed from the interrelated "pull” of Sun and Moon and Earth the baffling "problem of three bodies,” before which many a wise man has fallen.
Here is the ancient story of the genesis of the Moon.
Long after the separation of Heaven and Earth, and while Earth was still in process of being made ready for human life, but before man had been yet created, it chanced that the line of its course in the heavens was crossed by that of a great Comet, and that by some heavenly accident, the two enormous bodies collided. The terrific impact resulted in the cracking of the Earth’s hard shell, and a huge fragment — some traditions say two — was torn away as violently as Nut was torn, in the Egyptian myth, from the body of Seb. This fragment of Earth promptly went into space, and became known as the Moon; and ever since that time Earth and Moon, Mother and Daughter, have been following each other through the heavens. As to which is the pursued, which the pursuer, old accounts vary. But there is always the stable myth of Ceres and Proserpina to fall back on.
Very soon after Galileo made the first drawing of the Moon, in 1610, John Wilkins, Lord Bishop of Chester, devised a highly curious little book, entitled The Dis¬ covery of a New World in the Moone, or, A Discourse tending to Prove that ’tis probable there may be another habitable World in that Planet. Wilkins bulwarks his "guess” with similar ones of 'the ancients: "Pythagoreans in general did affirm,” he says, "that the Moone also was Terrestrial, and that she was inhabited as this lower World.
69
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in the Moone”; John Wilkins, 1 6)8.
T he B oo k of HLarths
attain a Place in Proserpina, the Moon or Heaven,” and he held that " ’tis possible for some of our Posterity to find out a Conveyance to this other World; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have Commerce with them.”
Buffon seems to have been the first of modern scientists to voice the modern theory of the genesis of the Moon from this then moonless planet. He followed the push of tradition and made a Comet responsible for the split. This was in the eighteenth century. But in 1879, George H. Darwin lifted tradition to the dignity of an hypotheti¬ cal guess, and suggested, as a part of his theory of Tidal Evolutions, that the Moon was formerly a part of the Earth; that it was originally much nearer the Earth than it is at present, and is now slowly receding from it; that at the time of the separation of the Earth into Earth and Moon, the planet was hardly larger than it is to-day; that it was hot, solid, ellipsoidical, with an interior more or less liquid, revolving on its axis once every four or five hours, its density increasing and its volume diminishing as it cooled; that, as its volume lessened, its speed of rotation increased, until by centrifugal force, the Moon was born, carrying with it, in its flight into Space, three-quarters of the Earth’s crust.
A good deal of interesting discussion followed this new type of Darwinian theory, and a number of scientists began to speculate on the precise place of the origin of the Moon, granted that Darwin was right. Of course — and here again tradition guided them — or had at least preceded them — they chose the Pacific Ocean basin that holds apart the scarred coast lines of western North and
7*
The Earth after the Earth-Moon Catastrophe
(Drawn by George D. Swazey for Popular Astronomy, Aug.-Sept., 1907.)
Plate XII
¥.arth-W[oon Catastrophe
South America, and eastern Asia, the East Indies, New Zealand, and the Antarctics. One of these speculators amused himself to good purpose: Plate XII, shows George D. Swazey’s extraordinarily imaginative “quarter Earth” which remained after the Moon had flown, cracked by great lines of cleavage that were to slowly split the plastic floating crust into two major continental masses.
Among the old drawings of the Moon, it is difficult to choose — they are all so beautiful. One drawing, however, must always stand for an example of the miracles man has wrought in this quest of his — the first drawing of the Moon (Fig. 39) , made in 1610 by Galileo through his "Glasse.” That tiny lens, compared to the gigantic tele¬ scopes of to-day, amounted to considerably less than a child’s toy. But it magnified a surface three times, and with it Galileo essayed to prove or disprove Aristotle’s theory that “the form and images of the Ocean appear in the Moon as in a Mirror.” "Leaving aside these ter¬ restrial things,” he said, "I have directed my researches towards the heavens, beginning with the Moon.” He de¬ cided very quickly that the Moon had no mirror-like sur¬ face, for he discovered mountains, circular hollows, and many bright spots which he compared to the eyes in a peacock’s tail. Before he died, he had succeeded in mak¬ ing a glass which magnified surfaces thirty-two times, and it was not long before the surface of the Moon was mapped out and named. It was a world so similar in many of its formations to those of the Earth, that its first map-maker, Hevelius, simply transferred to the Moon the names of the cities and seas and mountains of the
75
T he B ook of 'Earths
Earth. But Riccioli, in 1651, renamed its mountains and craters and supposed lakes and seas, not after places of the Earth, but after the learned men of the Earth, choos¬ ing rather to place their names in the sky. Instead of lunar Alps or Apennines, there arose on the Moon great mountain ranges, or plains, or craters bearing the names of Plato, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho; instead of lunar seas called Caspian, Mediterranean, and the like, there were instead the Seas of Storms, of Clouds, of Rains: the Seas of Tranquillity, of Serenity, and the Lake of Dreams — enchanting names which linger to this day.
The third and fourth catastrophes of the Earth are the Deluge, and the sinking of Atlantis — Atlantis the fabu¬ lous continent, not the little Island remnant. Their time sequence in the old traditions is a little mixed, not that it matters. Suppose we take first the Deluge.
The Comet, that blazing terror of the skies, that erratic wanderer of the heavens, has always been given more than its probable share of blame for terrestrial bad luck. It has been called the cause of the birth of the Moon; it has also been held responsible for the universal Deluge. This is another of those untraceably old traditions, but we begin with the Comet of 1680, and the remarkable egg laid at Rome on December 4 of the Comet-year; because this Comet and this egg are responsible for two "Theories of Earth” written within the next twenty years, both by Englishmen. William Whiston worked out a complete theory of a deluged, because Comet-riven, Earth, and Thomas Burnet developed his theory of Earth as the Mun-
76
One of the oldest drawings of the Moon, by Pere Capucin Marie de Rheita (1645). At the top Tycho is seen in full view, with its diverging rays.
(From Iter Exstaticurn Coeleste; Athanasius Kircher, 1660)
Plate xiii
T he Deluge
dane Egg whose broken shell unlocked the "waters of the deep.”
The evidence in the case is at hand in the shape of the elaborate frontispiece to Lettre d’un gentil-homme de province a une dame de qualite sur le sujet de la Comete, a brief little labour of informative love published anony¬ mously in 1 68 1, but known now to have been written by Claude Francois Manestrier. "An extraordinary freak of nature,” it reads, "occurred in Rome, at the time of the appearance of the Comet, in the Palace of the Maximi, which was seen by His Holiness, by the Queen of Sweden, and by all persons of the first rank in Rome. The design of it was sent to Paris, as an entirely new thing, by a per¬ son greatly interested and worthy of confidence. On the 4th of December, 1680, in the Palace of the Maximi, a hen laid an egg, on which could be discerned the figure of the Comet, accompanied by other markings such as are here represented. All the most skilled naturalists of Rome saw and examined it, and found it to be a freak of nature unique and unparalleled. It is left to the curious gentle¬ men of Paris to make profitable use of it and to seek the cause.”
Now it has always been extremely difficult for the ex¬ tremely exact among the theorists to account for the sources of waters great enough to bring about a universal Deluge. No rains of forty days and nights explain it, even when these rains from heaven are united with all the external waters of the Earth. There were, to be sure, the "fountains of the great deep,” but how were they to be
77
PRODIGE EXTRAORDINAIRE arrive dans Rome , at* temps de /’ ap¬ parition de la Comete , dans le Pa¬ lau de Ale ffleurs de ALaxtmi Qtti a eflc veu de Sa Saint etc, de la R erne de Suede , (5* de toutes les performes de la premiere ejualtte de Rome. La figure en a ejle envoy ie a Pans, comme une chofie toute nouvelle » d une pcrfonnc curieuje digue de foy.
Le 4' Decern Ire 1680.
Dans le Palais de ALaximi, une Poule pondit un Oeuf , fur lecjuel on ap- perceut la figure de la Comete , ac- compagnie d autres marques , telles quelles font icy reprefentees. Tout let plus habile t Naturalifies de Rome Pont veu & examine, ont trouve ce prodige tout nouveau & fans exemple. On laijfe a Aief- fieurs les curieux de Paris (Ten faire leur profit, & den chercher la caufie.
Ljon , Che £ ANTOINE IVLLIERONl fenl tmfrimtir (jr Lite lire ordinoirt eURoj,d» Cterge , dr del* ViHe , * l* fUce de C effort. ICtl. Avee Pertmfn*.
POPR LA COMETE.
Comete i apparue dans Rome , au mo is de Decembre mil fix cent quatre-vingt , dans le Signe de la Fierge , de 1 j degrezj d efiendui.
Figure 41. The Comet of 1680 and the marvellous Egg.
(Frontispiece of Lettre dJun gentil-homme de province d une dame de qualite sur le sujct de la Comete; Claude Francois Manestrier, 1681.)
T he Deluge
broken up! And it is said that the Comet-Egg of this Comet-year gave good Will Whiston the idea he needed for solving the mystery of the Deluge. He published, in 1690, A New Theory of Earth, in which he set forth "the other main Cause of the Deluge, the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep,” by the deadly weight of the waters in the tail of a Comet active in the heavens while Noah was building the Ark. "For when the near ap¬ proach of the Comet to the Earth had rendered the Shape of that internal dense Fluid, on which its upper Crust rested, so very oblong and oval, and its Surface so much larger than before, as to occasion the opening of its per¬ pendicular Fissures, which are visible at this day, . . . the vast weight of the additional Waters from the Comet would attempt to press this upper Earth deeper into the dense Fluid below . . . and so join the subterraneous to the cometical waters, for the supply of a Quantity suf¬ ficient for so vast a Purpose as that of a universal Deluge.”
Whiston went even farther in his "cometical” theory; he supposed the Earth to have been originally a Comet; to have had a lop-sided form without beauty or propor¬ tion; subject to all the misfortunes of Comets, "sometimes a thousand times hotter than melted iron; at other times a thousand times colder than ice.” These alternations of hot and cold were "Chaos,” a dense though fluid atmos¬ phere which surrounded the solid contents of the Earth, and which was in a state of continuous agitation and shock from its unharmoniously mingled substances. It was the Comet’s atmosphere or tail, filled with water, which "struck” the Earth and broke its surface; and Whiston
79
T he B ook of "Earths
describes minutely just how the antediluvian Comet in¬ volved the antediluvian Earth in its tail, until all of Earth, even the mountain of the world, was submerged.
Burnet’s theory of the Earth as the Mundane Egg will come farther on, but no better place could be found in this collection of world-pictures than just here, for one of his beautiful drawings of the Deluge, the second Chaos, when, "upon this Chaos rid the distrest Ark that bore the small remains of Mankind,” a ship whose cargo was no less than a whole world (Plate XIV). It is at once a picture of the Deluge after the dove was sent forth from the Ark, and a "Roughe Globe”; a delicate tracery of the broken Earth seen through water, as one looks down into a clear lake. There are vague glinting hints of lost or sunken continents that never emerged when the Earth dried and the waters ran off; a misty figuration of the new Earth, its pattern defined long before the Ark of Noah came to rest on Ararat; with some lost Lemuria, some sunk Atlantis, some shattered Pan or Mu still lingering along the declining edges of the continents about to be. Many of the modern "maps” of the Atlantean and Lemurian lands resemble very much this drawing of Burnet’s, where continent seems to overlay continent until the oceans seem little more than spring floods in mountain valleys. Burnet speaks of Plato, who "supposeth his At¬ lantis to have been greater than Asia and Africa together, and yet to have sunk all into the Sea,” and he concludes that great alterations in the face of the land and the sea would take place for a long time after the Deluge; that many of the fragments of land would change their pos-
80
"And Again He Sent Forth the Dove Out of the Ark” (From The Theory oj the Earth; Thomas Burnet, 1697)
Plate xiv
T he Lost Atlantis
ture, and that there would be a succession of sinkings and eruptions and lesser floods until all became poised and settled once again.
The fourth — or the third — catastrophe of the world- tradition is the sinking of Atlantis, the great prehistoric continent. A generation ago scientists would have smiled at the idea of taking this particular tradition seriously. But they do not smile to-day; they give the theory the Scotch verdict — "not proven.” Even that conservative storehouse of factual knowledge, the Encyclopedia Bri- tannica , says of this tradition, "It is impossible to decide how far this legend is due to Plato’s invention, and how far it is based on facts of which no record remains.” Fortunately for us, however, world-pictures are not based on proven facts, or they would never have been drawn, and Plato’s story of the lost Atlantis, even if eventually proved "true,” will always remain one of the most charm¬ ing of fantasies. If you have not read it, in the Timaeus and the Critias, read it — his story of a golden world, when men were sons of gods and had not lost their heritage; of a civilisation that soared to heights of knowledge ours has never known — and sank. A few escaped this con¬ tinental Deluge — Atlas escaped, says the old story, to sup¬ port Heaven and Earth, in order that the Universe might not sink also.
Every one has seen somewhere Kircher’s drawing of the Island of Atlantis — this was the last remnant of the con¬ tinent, which tradition says sank 12,000 years ago — but it is doubtful that any one has ever seen it reproduced as it appeared in his Mnndus Subterraneus of 1678 (Plate
81
T he B ook of Earths
XV. It is always reversed, relettered, and made to con¬ form to the right geography. The ship in the upper right-hand corner is turned bottom side up, and made to lie at anchor in the lower left-hand corner. Let the old mistake stand, if mistake it was — and mistake it was surely. Turning it upside down will put everything into right relation with modern geography. Only the ship will be wrong, like a mirage in the waters. Plate XVI is Kircher’s accompanying illustration of ''Ocean moun¬ tains,” whose highest peaks may be island remnants of sunken continents, a little ground plan of the ocean floor.
Kircher, whose bold "guesses” on things he could not prove brought him less fame than blame, guessed again on the combined problems of the Deluge and lost continents, and in his Area Noe, 1665, presented, in a world-map, a "conjectural geography of the Earth’s translation after the Flood, from the opinions of various geographers, to which the author subscribes” (Plate XVII) . This is a very odd map, by the way, and one evidently little known to modern geographers. Imagine a little German scholar, sitting in Rome under the shadow of St. Peter’s during the Thirty Years’ War, and guessing simply, not only at the form and extent of the then discovered but by no means explored Americas, and not only at the form and extent of the still unknown Arctic and Antarctic "con¬ tinents,” but also at the conformation and extent of the "ocean-mountains,” and of the sunken antediluvian con¬ tinents. To say he guessed wrong is to say a little less than nothing. This map represents more clearly than his little drawing of Atlantis, his then novel theory that the
82
Situation of the Island of Atlantis, according to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians and the description of Plato.
(From Mundus Subterraneus; Athanasius Kircher, 1678)
L ost 'Land of the 'West
Lost Island had been situated west of Gibraltar, and that the Canaries and the Azores are to-day its only remnants. But what it really does, of course, is to send the conjec¬ tural Atlantean continent straight west into the Americas, and almost across them. Who knows? We are still guess¬ ing, and the Mayan excavations are furnishing golden material for further guesses. It may very well be that half a century from now this old "guess-map” of Kircher’s will be even more interesting than it is to-day.
According to the beautiful maps of W. Scott-Elliot 1 — Kircher’s map may serve as a guide for Scott-Elliot’s slightly different theory — the Atlantean continent ex¬ tended from a point a few degrees east of Iceland to, ap¬ proximately, the site of Rio de Janeiro in South America, and across the ocean to the African Gold Coast. It took in Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, the southern and east¬ ern States of America up to and including Labrador, and stretched across the Atlantic to the British Isles, embrac¬ ing Scotland, Ireland, and part of northern England. Atlantis is, by this assumption, the parent land of America a great continent surrounded by water at a time so far away as that in which the Sahara Desert was an ocean floor.
But there is another obscure tradition of a fifth catas¬ trophe which seems to have antedated the sinking of Atlantis. This concerns another lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, a great catastrophe in the western waters. Old records are riddled with allusions to vanished "Lands —and peoples — of the West.” Old Aztec and Mayan 1 The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria: W. Scott-Elliot. 1925.
83
T he B ook of Earths
records, that is; the Asiatic records speak of the vanished lands and peoples "of the East.” This old tradition ap¬ peared first in modern times through the assumption of Sclater, an Englishman seeking for some "lost links,” that long, long ago a great southern continent lay stretched about the South Pole very much as the continental land to-day surrounds the arctic zone. He named this conti¬ nent Lemuria, to fix more firmly thereby his supposition that on such a continent animals of the Lemuroid type must have been developed. It is a curious instance in sci¬ entific history that when Ernst Haeckel, most material of materialistic scientists, came upon this Lemurian hypoth¬ esis, he promptly incorporated it into his own working scheme, and in his The History of Creation and The Evo¬ lution of Man he speaks of Lemurian creatures and Lemu¬ rian traces as if the existence of such a land had been al¬ ready scientifically proved. His explanation, which failed to satisfy all scientists, was that the Lemurian time-cycle was the only supposable thing that explained certain other¬ wise inexplicable gaps in the evolutionary theory.
This prehistoric, pre-Atlantean continent, existing — if it existed — hundreds of thousands of years ago, has also been called the Continent of Pan. In Oahspe, A New Bible in the Words of Jehovih, published by John Ballou Newbrough in 1882, there is a world-map showing the location of this lost Pan in the Pacific Ocean. Oahspe makes its sinking coincident with the Deluge. The sacred people of Pan, the Thins — otherwise the Algon- kins — had been warned of the coming flood, and were building ships in which to escape — 138 Arks of the Del-
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Lost Land of the 'West
uge set out from this Continent of Pan. ". . . in the same day the gates of heaven and Earth were opened. And the Earth rocked to and fro, as a ship at sea, and the rains fell in torrents, and loud thunderings came up from be¬ neath the floor of the world. . . . And the vortex of the
Figure 42. Outline map showing the locality of Pan, the submerged continent.
(From Oahspe, A New Bible in the Words of Jehozih; John Ballou Newbrough,
1891, Plate 62.)
Earth closed in from the extreme, and lo, the Earth was broken! A mighty continent was cut loose from its fastenings, and the fires of the Earth came forth in flames and clouds with loud roarings. And the land rocked to and fro like a ship at sea. And again the vortex of the Earth closed in about on all sides, and by the pressure the land sank down beneath the water, to rise no more.” The Algonkins, oddly enough, have a fascinating word with
85
T he B oo k of 'Earths
a fascinating meaning for just such shadowy fables as these. "It is only Nitatahak.au” they say; which is to say, "I relate a fable. I am telling an old story invented for amusement.”
This dim continent has also been called the Continent of Mu. And by "this dim continent” I do not mean to say that Lemuria and Pan and Mu, or even that conjec¬ tural "western crust” of the Earth from which the Moon
Figure 43. The geographical position of Mu.
(From The Lost Continent of Mu; James Churchward, 1926.)
hypothetically sprang, are identical except in this way; that they all hang together on the same thread of tradi¬ tion, that something at some far distant time happened in the centre of the space that is now called the Pacific basin. We have already seen that a serious modern scien¬ tific theory assigns the origin of the Moon to this planet,
86
Lost Land of the West
and that a supplementary theory suggests the Pacific basin as the place of the split. We have seen too that a southern continent, antipodal to Atlantis, has been assumed by evolutionists because something like it had to be assumed. Col. James Churchward’s recent book on The Lost Con¬ tinent of Mu is a unique and serious study of this tradi¬ tional catastrophe in the western waters, carried on over a period of fifty years, during which time he collected all the collectable evidence on this theme, that once upon a time in the western ocean a great continent went down to rise no more.
His material is very interesting. Long-forgotten sacred tablets of India describe, he says, among other things, the creation of man in the land of Mu, the mother country of humanity — which land was not the land of Asia. Records of later date describe the destruction of the land, "when the earth’s crust was broken up by earthquakes, and then sank into a fiery abyss. Then the waters of the Pacific rolled in over her, leaving only water where a mighty civi¬ lisation had existed.” He finds the land of Mu mentioned by Plato; he finds "the Land of Mu,” or "Lands of the West” in the Troano Manuscript, an ancient Mayan book, and in the Codex Cortesianus, another Mayan book; he finds it in the Lhasa record, and in hundreds of other writ¬ ings in all parts of the world, including India, Egypt, Greece, Central America, and Mexico.
He says that this continent was a vast one, extending from the north of Hawaii down towards the south. A line between Easter Island — with its massive sculptured stones for which no man has ever accounted — and the
87
T he B ook of JLarths
Fijis formed its southern boundary. It measured over 5,000 miles from east to west, and over 3,000 miles from north to south. The continent consisted of three areas of land, separated from each other by narrow seas or chan¬ nels, and on it dwelt 64,000,000 people divided into "ten tribes” or "peoples.” It was called the "Empire of the Sun,” and it was the centre of the whole Earth’s civilisa¬ tion, of its learning, its art, and its commerce. Its great cities were seven, and its people, being skilled navigators, had sent out colonists to all parts of the Earth.
But the final one of a series of earthquakes came to Mu, and Col. Churchward quotes from old records: " r The whole continent heaved and rolled like the ocean’s waves. The land trembled and shook like the leaves of a tree in a storm. Temples and palaces came crashing to the ground and monuments and statues were overturned. The cities became heaps of ruins.’ As the land rose and fell, quivered and shook, the fires of the underneath burst forth, pierc¬ ing the clouds in roaring flames three miles in diameter. There they were met by lightning shafts which filled the heavens. A thick black pall of smoke overshadowed the land. 'Huge cataclysmic waves rolled in over the shores and extended themselves over the plains.’ Cities and all things living went down to destruction before them. 'Agonizing cries of the multitude filled the air. The peo¬ ple sought refuge in their temples and citadels only to be driven out by fire and smoke, and the women and the men in their shining garments and precious stones cried: "Mu, save us!”’ . . . 'During the night’ the land was torn asunder and rent to pieces. With thunderous roar-
88
A Conjectural Geography of the Translation of the Earth after the Delug, (From Area Noe; Athanasius Kircher, 1665)
Plate xvii
Trees of the 'World
ings the doomed land sank. Down, down, down she went, into the mouth of hell, ‘a tank of fire.’ As the broken land fell into that great abyss of fire, 'flames shot up around and enveloped her.’ The fires claimed their victim. 'Mu and her 64,000,000 people were sacrificed.’ ” 1
These are the five great traditional catastrophes of the Earth. After each one of them, according to tradition, the generation of man began again. Again he began to rebuild his world; again began the quest for the knowl¬ edge — even for the crafts — that he had lost. Almost like the first men of Earth, he questioned the silent heavens, with no knowledge or wisdom of his own to aid him in his questions or their answers — nothing but vague old tales of something that had happened in a recordless past which had robbed his fathers of a heritage, and had put him where he was, ignorant and alone. What? and how? and why?
T HERE ARE TWO UNIVERSAL WORLD-FIGURES, found -L everywhere, among all races — the World Tree, and the World Mountain. For man could draw analogies — his traditions prove it almost better than his written rec¬ ords. He knew that he had been born, that he was living, that he must die; yet of birth he remembered nothing, and death he would not know until too late. But in the animal world — above all in the vegetable world, he could watch the recurrent miracles of life and death, rebirth and 1 The Lost Continent of Mu: James Churchward, 1926, pp. 29-30.
89
T he B ook of Earths
growth, sleeping and waking states more easily than he could note the same miracles in his own sphere. And so he came very early and easily to see a correspondence be¬ tween humanity, greatest of the animal world, and the Tree, mightiest of its kingdom. It is true that in every great cosmological system and in great and lesser cos¬ mogonies, there stands the figure of the World Tree, with its seed, its roots, its trunk, its resting perches, its knitting knots, its pith, its main branch, its leaves, its flowers and their sweet smell, its refreshing shade, its immortal sap, and the spot where it grows, all brought into close and exquisite analogy with man and his universe.
"Without doubt,” sings one of the greatest of the Vedic poets, "though possessed of density, trees have space within them. The putting forth of flowers and fruits is always taking place in them. They have heat within them in consequence of which leaf, bark, fruit and flower are seen to droop. They sicken and dry up. That shows they have perception of touch. Through sound of wind and fire and thunder, their fruits and flowers drop down. Sound is perceived through the ear. Trees have, there¬ fore, ears, and do hear. A creeper winds round a tree and goes all about its sides. A blind thing cannot find its way. For this reason it is evident that trees have vision. Then again trees recover vigour and put forth flowers in consequence of odours good and bad, of the sacred per¬ fume of various kinds of dhupas. It is plain that trees have scent. They drink water by their roots. They catch diseases of divers kinds. Those diseases again are cured by different operations. From this it is evident that trees
90
Trees of the 'World
have perception of taste. As one can suck up water through a bent lotus stalk, trees also, with the aid of the wind, drink through their roots. They are susceptible of pleasure or pain, and grow when cut or lopped off. From these circumstances I see that trees have life. They are not inanimate. Fire and wind cause the water thus sucked up to be digested. Accordingly again, to the quan¬ tity of water taken up, the tree advances in growth and becomes humid. In the bodies of all subtile things the five elements occur. In each the proportions are differ¬ ent.”
According again to the races of men, the type of the World Tree varied. The Date-palm was the sacred Asherah of the Assyrians. To the Greeks, and to the Norsemen, the cosmic Ash was the World Tree. But also to the Greeks, and to the Germans, the Oak was the life- giver and the life-sustainer. And the Greeks made the vine the "sacred tree” of Dionysos. Persian legends centre about the haoma tree, and the Egyptians had a mythical golden gem-bearing tree of the heavens, where the Sky goddess Nut had her abode. The Japanese believed that a great metal-pine grew far to the north at the centre of the world, and the Russians have a legend of an Iron Tree whose root "is the power of God,” and whose head sus¬ tains the three worlds — the heavenly ocean of air, the Earth, and Hell with its burning fire. To the branches of the Jambu or Rose Apple tree, the Hindu dead clung and climbed to immortality. India has also her incredible banyan tree, declared to be more like man than man him¬ self. Unlike plants, man can move at will over the sur-
The B oo k of TLarths
face of the Earth, but this sacred Indian Fig Tree bears the name of the Tree of Many Feet, because its seed, rarely rooting in the ground, ordinarily sends down its hanging garden of roots from its nest in the crown of palms, where it has been deposited by birds. These aerial roots, touch¬ ing the Earth, sink into it, glide through it and from it spring upward again to send down other drooping branches that root themselves, and so, over and over, until the prodigious grove — myriad parts of a single tree sprung from one air-nested seed — eventually destroys the Palm that cradled it.
Countless books have been written about the origin of the myth of the Cosmic Tree, but the gist of them all can be stated very briefly. First of all, Heaven and Earth are separated. They must be, therefore, at one and the same time held apart — lest the heavens fall down and crush the Earth — and they must be also united by some subtle path of communication, some bridge over the mon¬ strous interval. If a mushroom, delicate as a butterfly, can work a miracle in a night and raise a rock, a tree rooted in the Earth may support the sky. But no tree of Earth could reach to heaven unless it were itself divine, born somehow of the gods; and so we find a host of literal "parent trees,” said to be produced from the body mois¬ ture of deities, and capable therefore, in their turn, of producing man. In its more developed form, this parent tree became the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, offering men immortality and the wisdom of the gods. There is a Tibetan tree called Tar ay ana or the Way of Safety which grows by the side of the great river separat-
92
Yggdrasil, the World Tree of the Norsemen. After Finn Mag¬ na sen’s "Eddalaeren.
(From Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics; Richard Folkard Jr., 1884)
Plate xviii
Trees of the World
ing the worlds, and only by grace of its overhanging branches may men pass from the mortal to the immortal bank.
The oldest World Tree? who shall say? When in search of the "oldest” we always think of the ancient East; but no one can assert — and prove — that Yggdrasil, the Cosmic Ash, the World Tree of the Norsemen, had its origin in the Orient, however remarkably its ideas coincide with the sacred trees of Asia. Let us begin for a change with the Occident and Yggdrasil.
"The chief and most holy seat of the gods,” say the Eddas, "is by the Ash Yggdrasil. There the gods meet in council every day. It is the greatest and best of all trees. Its branches spread over the world and reach above heaven. Three roots sustain the tree and stand wide apart; one is with Asa; the second is with the Frost giants; the third reaches into Niflheim, and under it is Hvergelmar, where Nidhug gnaws the roots from below. But under the sec¬ ond root, which extends to the Frost giants, is the well of Mimir, wherein knowledge and wisdom are concealed. The third root of the Ash is in Heaven, and beneath it is the most sacred fountain of Urd. Here the gods have their doomstead. The Asa ride thither every day over the Bi-frost, which is also called Asa-bridge. There stands a beautiful hall near the fountain beneath the Ash. Out of it come three maids. These maids shape the lives of men, and we call them the Norns. On the boughs of the Ash sits an eagle, who knows many things. Between his eyes, sits the hawk, called Vedfolner. A squirrel, by name Ratatosk, springs up and down the tree and bears words
93
T he B oo k of Earths
of hate between the eagle and Nidhug. Four stags leap about in the branches of the Ash and bite the buds. The Norns that dwell by the fountain of Urd every day take
Figure 44. Yggdrasil, the Cosmic Ash ( From Finn Magnusen's
" Eddalceren .”)
(From The Sacred Tree, or The Tree in Religion and Myth; Mrs. J. H. Philpot, 1897.)
water from the fountain, and clay that lies around the fountain, and sprinkle therewith the Ash, in order that its branches may not wither or decay.” 1
There are a number of interesting things to note here, *The Prose of Younger Edda, translated by G. W. Dasent, p. 16.
94
Trees of the World
because of their constant recurrence in other world-con¬ cepts widely separated in time and race. One is the close association of the World Tree with the World Mountain; one springs from the other, take them in what order we will. Another is the division of the Universe into nine worlds. Another, for the sake of comparison with a Mayan World Tree farther on, is the squirrel Ratatosk. Another is the Bi-frost or Asa-bridge.
In the beginning of all things, says the Norse story of the Creation, there were two worlds, Niflheim, the world of ice in the north, and Muspelheim, the world of fire in the south, with all the space between an empty abyss, called Ginungagap. The fierce flames in Muspelheim blew constantly over into the abyss many sparks which con¬ fronted only nothingness, until, from the ice-bound Nifl¬ heim, a great spring opened and sent down twelve rivers, some of which flowed into the abyss and formed great layers of frozen vapour. At last the sparks of fire met the frozen air, and Ymir the giant was created, and then, in turn,
From Ymir’s flesh the earth was formed, and from his bones the hills, the heaven from the skull of that ice-cold giant and from his blood the sea.
Of the nine worlds Asgard was the highest and was the world of the gods. Below it was Mitgard or Earth, the world of men, a flat disc surrounded by the River Ocean.
95
T he B oo k of 'Earths
Beyond the River Ocean, but surrounding Mitgard, was Jotunheim, the upper giant world, and, beneath the Earth plane, was the great underworld divided into four worlds. In the North was the lower giant world of Niflheim; at the South Urd and her two sisters ruled over the kingdom of the dead, and between North and South was Mimir’s
(NORTH)
(SOUTH)
REGION or TORT'JRC BElOw MFlmEC
• URT*8 DEEP FIERV DALES BELOW URD 8 REALM
Figure 45. Diagram of the Nine Worlds, supported by the World
Tree Yggdrasil.
(From The Nine Worlds; Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, 1890.)
land, where dwelt the wisest of the gods, and, with him, Day, Night, Dawn and the Sun and Moon. Below Nifl¬ heim again was the world of torture, and below Urd’s realm of the dead, the land of subterranean fire.
Just two things bound these worlds together, the tree Yggdrasil, and the Asa-bridge, or Bi-frost. And a third — the spirit of heaven, the great Energiser, passing ever to and fro, guiding, controlling all the universe, from the first world to the ninth; at home everywhere, abiding no¬ where, stirless when moving and moving when still; that
96
Trees of the 'World
without which there would be nothing — here shown as merely a tiny timid nimble squirrel.
But what was the binding and the separating bridge, the Bi-frost?
NORTH
Figure 4 6. Diagram of the Scandinavian Cosmos.
1 Spring Hvergelmir, in Niflhel or Niflheim, under Yggdrasil’s north¬ ern root.
2 Well of Wisdom in Mimir’s Realm, under Yggdrasil’s middle root.
3 Urd’s Well in her Realm, under Yggdrasil’s southern root.
4 Home of the Vanir.
5 Home of the Elves in Mimir’s Realm.
6 Castle where Baldur dwelt with the Asmegir.
7 Northern End of Bifrost, guarded by Heimdall.
8 Southern End of Bifrost, near Urd’s Well.
(From The Nine Worlds; Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, 1890.)
Again, who knows? Its arch was over Asgard, world of the gods; its northern tip resting upon the mountains of the ice-girt Niflheim; its southern end in the realm of the dead, where Urd and her sisters ruled. Some say the
97
T he B oo k of YLarths
Milky Way is the original of Bi-frost or the Trembling Bridge, as some say the Milky Way is the very trunk of the Celestial Tree. Others believe that the Rainbow is the prototype for Bi-frost and all the "bridges of the world.” For the World bridges are as universal as the "trees” and "mountains” of the world. Earth was cut off from Heaven — yet somewhere, if man could only find it, there was a path that might lead back home. The Bi-frost at its northern end was inviolately guarded by the great Heimdall, "World- Judge” or "World-Divider,” "whose ears were so good that he could hear the grass pushing up through the ground, and the wool growing on the backs of sheep, and he needed less sleep than a bird.” The gods crossed it every day on their way to the judgment hall in the realm of Urd, but the way was barred against all others, lest some thief in the night should find his way into Heaven. Yet it was the bridge also on which the souls of all the dead began their passage to the land of Urd.
The Persians had their Chinvat bridge, which is to say also, the Bridge of the Judge, over which all souls, good and evil, passed — "that bridge,” says one of their sacred books, "like a beam of many sides, of whose edges there are some which are broad, and there are some which are thin and sharp; its broad sides are so large that its width is of twenty-seven reeds, and its sharp sides are so contracted that in thinness it is just like the edge of a razor.” Mo¬ hammed too placed a way over the middle of hell, "which is sharper than a sword and finer than a hair, over which all must pass.”
Certainly the North American Indians considered the
98
Trees of the ~World
Milky Way to be the "bridge” to the Land of Souls — a great village situated "where the Sun sets.” "They call the milky way Tchipai meskenau, the path of souls, be¬ cause they think that the souls raise themselves through this way in going to that great village,” wrote Paul Le Jeune in 1634 of the Montagnais. One hundred years later Pierre Aulneau wrote of the Crees of upper Lake Superior, that they believed in a paradise of feasts and great hunts for the immortal souls of the dead. "But, be¬ fore reaching it, there is a spot of extreme peril — the souls have to cross a wide ditch. One side of the way it is full of muddy water, offensive to the smell and covered with scum; while on the other the pit is filled with fire, which rises in fierce tongues of flame. The only means of cross¬ ing it is on a fir tree, the ends of which rest on either bank. Its bark is ever freshly moistened and besmeared with a substance which makes it as slippery as ice. If the souls who wish to cross to the enchanting plains have the misfortune to fall at this dangerous passage, there is no help left; they are doomed forever to drink of the foul stagnant water or to burn in the flames, according to the side on which they fall.” Sometimes the "bridge-build¬ ing fiend” made the bridging spar a snake or a swinging log.
A "Sketch of the World,” by a Thompson River Indian, illustrates this exactly. They believe that the Earth is square, level in the centre and rising towards the north from whence comes the cold, that it rises also in great mountain ranges about its borders, and that these moun¬ tains or lands are topped by mountains of air — the clouds
99
T he B ook of JLarths
E
Figure 47. Sketch of the World, by a Thompson River Indian.
a. Trail leading from the earth to the land of the ghosts, with tracks of the souls; b. River and log on which the souls cross; c. Land of the ghosts and dancing souls; d. Lake surrounding the earth; e. Earth, with rivers and villages; N. S. E. W. points of the compass.
(From Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. II, 1900, p. 343-)
and mists rising from the encircling lake of the world. All the rivers of the world rise in the north and flow south.
This trail to the soul-world has been minutely described
100
Trees of the 'World
by James Teit in bis The Thompson River Indians of Brit¬ ish Columbia.1 According to him, the country of souls is underneath us, towards the sunset, and its path is one of perils, storms, narrow bridges, and gaping chasms. The trail leads through a dim twilight; along it are always visible the tracks of the people who last went over it, and also the tracks of their dogs, if they had any with them. It winds along until it meets another road, which the shamans, or medicine-men (their nearest approach to priests) use as a short cut when trying to intercept a soul. From here on, the trail is much smoother and straighter, and is painted red with ochre. Farther on it winds to the westward, descends a long gentle slope, and ends at a wide shallow stream of very clear mirror-like water. This stream is spanned by a long slender log, on which the tracks of souls may be seen again. After crossing the "bridge,” if the traveller is fortunate enough to hold his footing on the slippery edge between the worlds, he finds himself again on the trail, which is now an ascending one. At a certain height is heaped a great pile of clothes; this marks the spot on the journey where the souls must leave behind them all that they have brought from the other world. And from here on the trail not only seems level, but little by little the dimness and twilight confusion dis¬ appear.
Three guardians are stationed along the trail of the souls — one on each side of the river that must be crossed, and the third at the very end of the trail of the ghosts.
1 Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. II, 1900, pp. 342-43.
IOI
T he B ook of 'Earths
The first of these, on the hither side of the stream, has built for himself a sweat house where he spends most of his time. It is the duty of all three to send back to the land of the living any soul not yet ready to enter the land of the dead, even though he may have by some miracle of accident crossed the bridge. For sometimes it happens that a soul succeeds in passing the first two guardians, only to be turned back by the third, who is the chief of the three, and who now and then, being a great orator, sends back messages to the world of the living through the medium of souls who, having survived all other tests of courage and merit, fail in the final test of being judged worthy by the guardian of the gate of life to pass through.
But, having been permitted by him to pass, the soul at last reaches a large lodge at the end of the trail. It is made of a hard white material, like limestone or white clay. It extends a long distance from east to west, and is much shorter from north to south. Its top is "like a round mound or ant-hill.” The doors to this white lodge are at the east and west, and the trail leads up to the eastern door, which is very small, barely large enough to let a soul pass through. But the western door, through which the soul passes to the land of ghosts, is much higher and wider. Through the entire length of the lodge there is a double row of fires, for when the deceased friends of a person expect his soul to arrive, they go in a body to this lodge to talk about his death and prepare to welcome him. As the newly arrived soul reaches the entrance to the lodge of the dead, he finds some one standing at the door to greet him and call him by name, while others sing, dance, and
102
Trees of the 'World
beat upon drums. The air is always pleasant and still, and it is always light and warm. There are sweet smells of flowers, an abundance of grass, and berry-bushes laden with ripe fruit. The rest is hunting, feasting, and dancing through eternity, for the dancing, or immortal, souls.
The Wak wak Tree is a fabulous tree growing on a fabulous island somewhere in the Southern Ocean — or somewhere near Japan, or near the western (or the east¬ ern) coast of Africa — it all depends on the traveller who tells the legend. It appears to have had nothing to do with America or the American Indians; yet here is a curi¬ ous bit of Sioux lore, which, in connection with one of the legends of the lost continent of the Pacific, has an odd interest here.
The Sioux Indians have a special reverence for what they call the waka da cedar. W aka da, according to W. J. McGee,1 who has made a special study of the word in his The Sioaan Indians, is a very curious word indeed. It has, he says, as many connotations as the Sanscrit word Karma, and, like Karma, is not to be translated by any single Eng¬ lish word. The Sun, for instance, is not "the” or "a” waka da, but simply waka da. So is thunder, so is light¬ ning, the stars, the winds, and especially waka da cedar, by which they mean precisely the state of being which makes a cedar human and more than human. Even a man might be waka da. The term, he says, may be translated by "mystery” more satisfactorily than by any other single English word; nevertheless, with its vague implications of "power,” "sacred,” "ancient,” "grandeur,” "animate,”
1 U. S. Bur. Ethnol. Rep., 1893-94, P* 182.
io3
T he B oo k of Earths
"immortal,” "not even an English sentence of ordinary length could quite convey the sum total of the aboriginal idea expressed by the term waka da.” Perhaps all its meaning is conveyed when, applied to the cedar, they say it is that state of being which makes a cedar human and more than human.
Now of the Wak wak tree which bore human fruit, Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and India all had a tradition; that in the Southern Ocean — or some other unexplored waste of waters — was an island called Wak wak — or a great mountain called Wak wak — because on it grew a tree which produced fruit with a human head, or fruit in the form of a human body, or even in the form of animals, and these beings, at dawn and at sunset, cried aloud, so that all might know the passage of the Sun, "Wak! wak!” The island and the mountain are mentioned in The Thou¬ sand and One Nights — Hasan al-Basri went there to find his wife and children. The tree is described without being named by Friar Odorico of Pordenone who in the four¬ teenth century left Italy to make the grand tour of the East. Arrived at Malabar, he wrote thus: "And here I heard tell that there be trees which bear men and women like fruit upon them. They are about a cubit in measure¬ ment, and are fixed in the tree up to the navel, and there they be; and when the wind blows they be fresh, but when it does not blow they are all dried up. This I saw not in sooth, but I heard it told by people who had seen it.” Plate XIX gives a drawing of the Wak wak tree, taken from an old Turkish History of Western India and Its Wonders, published at Constantinople in 1729. It repre-
104
The Wak Wak Tree
(From Ta’rikh al-Hind al-Gharbi. Constantinople, 1729)
Plate xix
Trees of the "World
sents the fruit of this fabulous tree not by human heads but by seven pendent bodies. The two great birds at the foot of the tree are as fabulous as the rest of it.
Sometimes these souls were imagined as suspended with their heads downwards, alive, but clinging and climbing
Figure 48. The Tree of Judas.
(From Maundevile’s Voiage and Travailes, 1839 reprint.)
on a reversed path back to heaven. In an old Hindu legend it is related that Garuda, lord of all birds, coursing one day towards a gigantic banyan tree, with the fleetness of the mind, to sit thereon and "eat the elephant and the tortoise,” in alighting broke one of the branches. As it broke he caught it and saw to his wonder that a tribe of Rishis called Valikhilyas were hanging from it head down¬ wards, engaged in "ascetic penances.” And gathering to-
105
T he B oo k of 'Earths
gether all of his strength, the lord of birds soared high into the heavens with his burden of hanging men, and saved
Figure 49. Osage Chart of the Universe, drawn by Red Corn.
(From Picture-Writing of the American Indians; Garrick Mallery, 1894, p. 251.)
them. Sometimes, when the air is quiet, trees will move and their leaves rustle — this very common phenomenon
106
Trees of the World
had for the ancients a mystic meaning; at such times the invisible souls were talking to each other of their trials and triumphs on the journey back to heaven.
In their "Sketch of the World,” the Thompson River Indians incorporated one form of the World Tree, in the bridge between the worlds, literally, "the path of life.” The Osage Indians, in their chart of the universe, have another. Few world-pictures can be found more simply and beautifully drawn than this by Red Corn, with its Earth plane, its "stages” or heavens, and its Tree of Life. Like the Lenape pictograph, it is the "score” of a tradi¬ tion chanted by members of a secret society of his tribe. It is explained by J. Owen Dorsey as follows: 1
The tree at the top represents the tree of life. By this flows a river. The tree and the river are described later in the degrees. When a woman is initiated, she is required by the head of her gens to take four sips of water (symbolising the river) , then he rubs cedar on the palms of his hands, with which he rubs her from head to foot. If she belongs to a gens on the left side of a tribal circle, her chief begins on the left side of her head, making three passes, and pronouncing the sacred name three times. Then he repeats the process from her forehead down; then on the right side of her head; then at the back of her head; four times three times, or twelve passes in all.
Beneath the river are the following objects: The Watse /uAa, male slaying animal (?), or morning star, which is a red star. 2. Six stars called the "Elm rod”
1 Picture Writing of the American Indians: Garrick Mallery, 1894,
pp. 2JI-2J2.
IQ/
T he B ook of 'Ear t Jos
by the white people in the Indian Territory. 3. The evening star. 4. The little star. Beneath this are the moon, seven stars, and sun. Under the seven stars are the peace pipe and war hatchet; the latter is close to the sun, and the former and the moon are on the same side of the chart. Four parallel lines extending across the chart represent four heavens or upper worlds through which the ancestors of the Tsicu people passed before they came to this earth. The lowest heaven rests on an oak tree; the ends of the others appear to be supported by pillars or ladders. The tradition begins below the lowest heaven, on the left side of the chart, under the peace pipe. Each space on the pillar cor¬ responds with a line of the chant; and each stanza (at the opening of the tradition) contains four lines. The first stanza precedes the arrival of the first heaven, pointing to a time when the children of the "former end” of the race were without human bodies as well as human souls. The bird hovering over the arch denotes an advance in the condition of the people; then they had human souls in the bodies of birds. Then followed the progress from the fourth to the first heaven, fol¬ lowed by the descent to earth. The ascent to our heaven, and the descent to three, makes up the number seven.
When they alighted, it was on a beautiful day, when the earth was covered with luxuriant vegetation. From that time the paths of the Osages separated; some marched to the right, being the war gentes, while those on the left were peace gentes, including the Tsicu whose chart this is.
Then the Tsicu met the black bear, called in the tradition Kaxe-wahii-san' (Crow-bone-white), in the distance. Fie offered to become their messenger, so they sent him to the different stars for aid. According to
108
Trees of the "World
the chart, he went to them in the following order: Morning star, sun, moon, seven stars, evening star, little star.
Then the black bear went to the Wacin&a-cu/se, a female red bird sitting on her nest. This grandmother granted his request. She gave them human bodies, making them out of her own body.
The earth-lodge at the end of the chart denotes the village of Hank utakan /si, who were a very war-like people. Buffalo skulls were on the tops of the lodges, and the bones of the animals on which they subsisted whitened on the ground. The very air was rendered offensive by the decaying bodies and offal.
The whole of the chart was used mnemonically. Parts of it, such as the four heavens, and the four ladders, were tattooed on the throat and chest of the men be¬ longing to the order.
Another Siouan tribe, the Sia Indians of New Mexico, believe that in each of the six regions of the world — they name these as the four quarters, zenith and nadir — there was a giant mountain bearing a giant tree, at whose foot was a spring, in which dwelt one of the ''cloud-rulers,” each attended by one of the six primal priestesses of the Sia, who interceded constantly with the six cloud rulers to send rain to the Sia. The six varieties of their World Trees were the spruce, the pine, the aspen, the cedar, and two varieties of the oak.
It would be a brave, not to say a reckless scientist, who would say to-day how young or how old the Mayan civi¬ lisation is. Thirty years ago, answers would have come easily enough; but that was before the excavations of the
109
T he Book of Barths
great buried cities in Central America began, which may very well result in the uncovering of records which ante¬ date the oldest we have. Already we know that America, youngest of the continents historically, is older prehis- torically than we yet dare to say. And, although we never knew more than a little about the Mayas and their beliefs, we know to-day how fragmentary and isolated those bits of knowledge are, and how untrustworthy the conclusions we have drawn from them.
Nevertheless, under the date of 1640, there has come down to us a picture of the Mayan Universe, copied by Father Cogolludo from the central design of the Chilam Balam, or Sacred Book, of Mani, and inserted in his His- toria de Yucathan, written at the end of twenty-one years spent among the Mayas (Plate XX) .
At the bottom of the "universe” lies a cube, which has long been recognised as representing in the Mayan cos¬ mogony the Earth. Above the Earth cube, resting on four legs which rest in turn on the four quarters of the Earth, is the heavenly vase, Cum, which holds the celestial waters — the treasures of the snow and of the hail, of the rains and the showers, on which all life, vegetable, animal and human, depends. Above this vase hang the rain clouds, and within it grows the Y ax che, the Green Tree or the Tree of Life, its upper branches bearing on their tips the flowers or fruits of life on Earth, ol or yol; that is to say, the soul or immortal principle of man. Under the Green Tree Yax che, the souls who have passed through Mitna or the underworld, dwell in happiness, while the others sink into a region where they suffer
1 10
The World Tree of the Mayas
(From Historic! de Yucathan; Diez Lopez Cogolludo, 1640)
Plate xx
Trees of the 'World
eternal cold and hunger. In Brinton’s V rimer of Mayan Hieroglyphics, the inner figure of the cube, the vase, the clouds and the tree, is reproduced, lettered according to readings from other of the Sacred Books. The Earth cube in that picture is not lettered ium, Earth, but tem, the Altar. "The Earth signifies the great Altar of the gods, and the offering upon it is Life.”
The thirteen heads surrounding the World Tree signify, according to Brinton, the thirteen ahaii hatuna, or greater cycles of years. They also may signify the thirteen pos¬ sible directions of Space. That is, the complete terres¬ trial globe is symbolised by the four cardinal points, zenith, and nadir, with man in the centre making the seventh, and the complete celestial sphere is symbolised by adding the six directions, with man, the focal point, remaining the same. "The border therefore,” says Brin¬ ton, "expresses the totality of Time and Space, and the design itself symbolises Life within Time and Space.”
Another Mayan world-picture is shown in Fig. 50, which is the central design of the Tableau of the Bacabs. Instead of the thirteen ahau hatuna or greater cycles of years, this design is surrounded by "the signs of the twenty days,” which extend in the original design, beyond the figure here given, to the four cardinal points and to the gods and time-cycles connected with them. "Again,” says Brinton, "it is Life within Time and Space.”
Here, sitting beneath the shade of the Green Tree, at its root, are the divine First Pair, Cuculcan, the feathered or winged serpent god, and Xmucane his spouse, — "the Cre¬ ator and the Former,” says the Popol Vuh, "Grandfather
ill
T he B oo k of Earths
and Grandmother of the race . . . two-fold grand¬ mother, two-fold grandfather . . . the Maker, the Former, the Ruler, the Serpent clothed in feathers, they
Figure jo. Our First Parents. From the Codex Cortesianus.
(From A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics ; Daniel G. Brinton, 1894.)
who beget, they who impart life, they rest upon the waters like a glowing light, they are clothed in colour green and blue, therefore their name is Gucumatz, 'Feathered Ser¬ pent.’ ”
The resemblances between the divisions of this Mayan
1 12
Trees of the World
tree and the Norse tree Yggdrasil are obvious, but here is a correspondence in ideas that is very curious. Between the nine Norse worlds, it will be recalled, from the roots of the tree to its topmost branch, ran Ratatosk, scamperer between men and gods, matter and spirit, Space and Time — the great Energiser under the guise of a tiny squirrel. It is rather interesting to discover that under the green cosmic tree Yax che of Yucatan sits a figure whose name, Cuculcan , is derived from a Mayan verb, cucul, meaning
Figure 51. The " Tree of Life.” From the Codex Peresianus.
(From A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics ; Daniel G. Brinton, 1894.)
to "revolve,” "to move round and round,” as they moved their great calendar wheels to accomplish the rotation of time; and that this rotation itself is called cuceb, "the squirrel,” derived directly from the same verb cucul, "to revolve, to move round and round.”
One more Mayan Tree of Life, too beautiful not to be included in any group of "Cosmic Trees,” particularly as it shows the mystery of metamorphosis almost in the act of transmutation from one form to another is given in Fig. 51. In the original drawing the god of the north star rests upon it, as it rises from the heavenly vase that holds the heavenly waters. And, to show that Egypt and Yucatan were not separated in fancy at least by oceans
113
T he B ook of Earths
Atlantic or Pacific, here is a little drawing of the Sacred Tree of the Egyptians, with Heaven, or the Sky goddess Nut, bestowing knowledge on man and his soul.
Figure 52. Sacred Tree of the Egyptians.
(From Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity ; Samuel Sharpe, 1863.)
“ r t yHE whole world,” says an old Hebrew writing, JL "is like a gigantic tree full of branches and leaves, the root of which is the spiritual world of the Sph’roth; or it is like a firmly united chain the last link of which is attached to the upper world; or like an immense sea, which is constantly filled by a spring, everlastingly gush¬ ing forth its streams.”
When we take up the Kabbala, to interpret anything in it, we touch a book on which literally thousands of in¬ terpretative books have been written. The Arber Seph- irotheca is perhaps its keystone figure, and the interpre-
114
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Arber Sephirotheca
(From Utriusque Cosmi; Robert Fludd, 1621. Vol. II)
Plate xxi
Trees of the World
tations of the relation and meaning of the ten Sephiroth which compose the "tree” differ so that any summary of them is not only hopeless but useless here. It is possible, however, to sketch largely and with no detail, a general explanation of this Hebrew World Tree.
First of all, what are the ten Sephiroth? First of all then, they are indicated by the first ten letters of the primitive alphabet in which, as we have noted before, Gods were Letters, Letters were Ideas, Ideas were Num¬ bers, and Numbers were perfect Signs. They may mean either "to count” (that is, they may mean "numbers”) , or "brilliance” or "spheres.” Or they may mean "qualities,” standing for the several grades or stages of wisdom. Or they may mean "emanations.”
The Arher Sephirotheca (Plate XXI) shows the Hebrew scheme of Creation — the esoteric side of the Genesis story, beginning with the assumption that Creation began, not from the act of God, but from the emanation of God, due to his voluntary self-withdrawal in order that the universe might be created. "When the Holy Aged, the concealed of all concealed,” says the Zohar, "assumed a form, he produced everything in the form of male and female, for Wisdom expanded, and Intelligence, the third Sephirah, proceeded from it, and thus were obtained male and female, viz., Wisdom the father, and Intelligence the mother, from whose union other pairs of Sephiroth suc¬ cessively emanated.” The first Triad, then, which is rep¬ resented, is Hochma or Wisdom, Binah, or Intelligence, and Cheter the Crown or the equilibrising force. These three in one are the Balance of forces, otherwise the Rea-
*The B ook of Earths
son of the Universe. This Reason is not represented sep¬ arately. It is held to be inherent in the relation existing between and in the first group of three.
Then, from this first group of three forces, or its result, Reason, came the second group of three, Chesed or Mercy, the father, Geburah or Justice, the mother, which together produce Tipherets, or Beauty. This sixth again represents Balance or equilibrium in forms about to be materialised, the mediator between the Crown or Creator and the King¬ dom or Creation.
The third triad consists of Netzeth or Victory, the father (explained sometimes as the eternal triumph of Intelligence and Justice, the two mothers) , Hod or Glory, the mother, from which two springs Iesod, the Foundation, the Absolute.
The three triads, three forms each of the intellectual, the spiritual, and the material qualities, combine to form the tenth Sephirah, Malcuth or the Kingdom — or Sover¬ eignty over the Kingdom or universe, manifested in the ten branching leaves. These branching leaves manifest, in turn, the direct relation existing between the ten Sephiroth and Adam Kadmon, the primordial, heavenly, incorrupti¬ ble man, created in this way only "in the image of God.” Adam Kadmon is the branching fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and holds the middle place between the En Soph or All in All and the ten emanations; holds, that is, the point of Balance or equilibrium. In this sense Adam Kadmon here, as in Plate IV, is regarded as the supporter and upholder of the universe. Nothing could be at first sight more unlike than these two images of the three
ii 6
Trees of the 'World
worlds, but there are enormous likenesses between them.
Another way of expressing this interrelation between the ten emanations is that the first Sephirah, by virtue of its equilibrising power, unites the second and third — Wisdom and Intelligence; that the sixth Sephirah, Beauty, by the same virtue, unites the fourth and fifth — Mercy and Justice; that the ninth Sephirah, Foundation or Abso¬ lute, unites the seventh and eighth — Victory and Glory, and by union with all, sends forth the tenth Sephirah, the Kingdom or the Universe. Again, the first three Sephiroth form the world of Reason; the second three, the world of Spirit; the last four, the world of the Body.
A tree must have a soil in which to grow; soul and spirit must have a body; moving energy must take a form. And a very beautiful and subtle interpretation of the World Tree myth may be found in an old black-figured kylix by Exekias, dating from the sixth century B. C. It is called "Dionysos in the Ship,” and its reading depends entirely on an understanding of what the story of Dionysos meant to the Greeks and all the peoples who came under their influence (Plate XXII) .
The story of Dionysos is always the story of Dionysos- and-Apollo. There is not such a thing as even half of this story; one without the other does not exist. It veiled one of the greatest of the Greek mysteries, this conflict be¬ tween these two gods, and the final reconciling of their struggle. It symbolised the conflict between light and darkness, between spirit and form — quite literally, the conflict between spirit and body. It was a mythological drama based on the old cry of man, "I feel two natures
T he B oo k of 'Earths
struggling within me.” The first impulse of antagonism is to defeat, even to destroy; it seldom occurs to two oppo¬ nents that there is a middle point, an equilibrium or bal¬ ance, where peace abides. The story of Dionysos-Apollo is not one of destruction, but of final reconcilement be¬ tween two opposing forces. Neither was to be rightly judged on the basis of "good” or of "evil,” but on the basis of incompleteness only. Each needed the complementary force of the other; without the other neither was whole. It was not Dionysos alone, nor Apollo alone, but the two reconciled and united that solved the struggle. In this kylix, Dionysos-Apollo floats on the aethereal ocean. The body or boat — a great fish — carries the unified god. The two are one, and from them united spring two great vines laden with fruit and leaves. About the living boat seven dolphins, "spies of the sea,” keep guard to forecast storms and to warn the pilot. In this