Pagan and Christian Creeds: VIII. Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth

PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH

We have suggested in the last chapter how the conceptions of Sin and Sacrifice coming down to us from an extremely remote past, and embodied among the various peoples of the world sometimes in crude and bloodthirsty rites, sometimes in symbols and rituals of a gentler and more gracious character, descended at last into Christianity and became a part of its creed and of the creed of the modern world. On the whole perhaps we may trace a slow amelioration in this process and may flatter ourselves that the Christian centuries exhibit a more philosophical understanding of what Sin is, and a more humane conception of what Sacrifice should be, than the centuries preceding. But I fear that any very decided statement or sweeping generalization to that effect would be--to say the least--rash. Perhaps there is a very slow amelioration; but the briefest glance at the history of the Christian churches--the horrible rancours and revenges of the clergy and the sects against each other in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. the heresy-hunting crusades at Beziers and other places and the massacres of the Albigenses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the witch-findings and burnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the hideous science-urged and bishop-blessed warfare of the twentieth--horrors fully as great as any we can charge to the account

1 honored by the yearly sacrifice of a perfect boy and girl, but later it was deemed sufficient to draw a knife across their throats as a symbol, with the result of spilling only a few drops f their blood, or to flog the boys (with the same result) upon her altar. Among the Khonds in old days many victims (meriahs) were sacrificed to the gods, "but in time the man was replaced by a horse, the horse by a bull, the bull by a ram, the ram by a kid, the kid by fowls, and the fowls by many flowers." 2 At one time, according to the Yajur-Veda, there was a festival at which one hundred and twenty-five victims, men and women, boys and girls, were sacrificed; "but reform supervened, and now the victims were bound as before to the stake, but afterwards amid litanies to the immolated (god) Narayana, the sacrificing priest brandished a knife and--severed the bonds of the captives." 3 At the Athenian festival of the Thargelia, to which I referred in the last chapter, it appears that the victims, in later times, instead of being slain, were tossed from a height into the sea, and after being rescued were then simply banished; while at Leucatas a similar festival the fall of the victim was graciously broken by tying feathers and even living birds to his body. 4

With the lapse of time and the general progress of mankind,

But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined are clearly the exact correspondence and parallel

1 "is widespread, universal, over half the savage world. With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By his first birth he comes into the world; by his second he is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the warriors of his tribe." . . . "These rites are very various, but they all point to one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the new-born man has entered upon a new life. Simplest of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East Africa, who require that every boy, just before circumcision, must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed." 2

Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one who "enters in." He enters into the Tribe; he enters into the revelation of certain Mysteries; he becomes an associate of a certain Totem, a certain God; a member of a new Society, or Church--a church of Mithra, or Dionysus or Christ. To do any of these things he must be born again; be must die to the old life; he must pass through ceremonials which symbolize the change. One of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and as by primitive man (and not without reason) blood was considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first

1 or 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' as in the Christian phraseology. Finally, with a growing sense of decency and aesthetic perception among the various peoples, washing with pure water came in the initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our baptismal service has reduced the ceremony to a mere sprinkling with water. 2

To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More often the new birth is stimulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy bark-fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and more, and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave."

Strange in our own Baptismal Service and just before the actual christening we read these words, "Then shall the Priest say: O merciful God, grant that old Adam in this child may be so buried that the new man may be raised up in him: grant that all carnal affections may

enter into the life of the tribe, the life of the Spirit of the tribe." "In totemistic societies," to quote Miss Harrison again, "and in the animal secret societies that seem to grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus among the Carrier Indians 1 when a man wants to become a Lulem or 'Bear,' however cold the season he tears off his clothes, puts on a bear-skin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to find him. They cry out Yi! Kelulem (come on, Bear), and he answers with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself. He is met, and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and there in company with the rest of the Bears dances solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in initiation as stimulated killing and resurrection, and has the same object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one to another." In the Christian ceremonies the boy or girl puts away childish things and puts on the new man, but instead of putting on a bear-skin he puts on Christ. There is not so much difference as may appear on the surface. To be identified with your Totem is to be identified with the

1 By so doing one puts off the old childish things, and qualifies oneself by firmness and courage to become a worthy member of the society

1 The rules of social life are taught--the duty to one's tribe, and to oneself, truth-speaking, defence of women and children, the care of cattle, the meaning of sex and marriage, and even the mysteries of such religious ideas and rudimentary science as the tribe possesses. And by so doing one really enters into a new life. Things of the spiritual world begin to dawn. Julius Firmicus, in describing the mysteries of the resurrection of Osiris, 2 says that when the worshipers had satiated themselves with lamentations over the death of the god then the priest would go round anointing them with oil and whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the new-arisen God, for to us too from our pains shall come salvation." 3

It would seem that at some very early time in the history of tribal and priestly initiations an attempt was made to impress upon the neophytes the existence and over-shadowing presence of spiritual and ghostly beings. Perhaps the pains endured in the various ordeals, the long fastings, the silences in the depth of the forests or on the mountains or among the ice-floes, helped to rouse the visionary faculty. The developments of this faculty among the black and colored peoples--East-Indian, Burmese, African, American-Indian, etc.--are well known. Miss Alice Fletcher, who lived among the Omaha Indians for thirty years, gives a most interesting account 4 of the general philosophy of that people and their rites of initiation. "The Omahas regard all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous with and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in

1 Thus an Omaha novice might at any time seek to obtain Wakonda by what was called the rite of the vision. He would go out alone, fast, chant incantations, and finally fall into a trance (much resembling what in modern times has been called cosmic consciousness) in which he would perceive the inner relations of all things and the solidarity of the least object with the rest of the universe.

Another rite in connection with initiation, and common all over the pagan world--in Greece, America, Africa, Australia, New Mexico, etc.--was the daubing of the novice all over with clay or chalk or even dung, and then after a while removing the same. 2 The novice must have looked a sufficiently ugly and uncomfortable object in this state; but later, when he was thoroughly washed, the ceremony must have afforded a thrilling illustration of the idea of a new birth, and one which would dwell in the minds of the spectators. When the daubing was done as not infrequently happened with white clay or gypsum, and the ritual took place at night, it can easily be imagined that the figures of young men and boys moving about in the darkness would lend support to the idea that they were spirits belonging to some intermediate world--who had already passed through death and were now waiting for their second birth on earth (or into the tribe) which would be signalized by their thorough and ceremonial washing. It will be remembered that Herodotus (viii) gives a circumstantial account of how the Phocians in

1 The most modern science, I need hardly say, in biology as well as in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature, supports t at view. The savage in earliest times felt the truth of some things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually to perceive and analyze.

Christianity adopted and absorbed--as it was bound to do--this world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Passing over its physiological and biological applications, it gave to it a fine spiritual significance--or rather it insisted

Christ shall all be made alive." The Universal Spirit which can give rebirth and salvation to every child of man to whom it comes, was offered only under a very special form--that of Jesus Christ. 1 In this respect it was no better than the religions which preceded it. In some respects--that is, where it was especially fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to other sects--it was worse. But to those who perceive that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and salvation to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form of a Siberian totem-Bear equally as to others under the form of Osiris, these questionings and narrowings fall away as of no importance. We in this latter day can see the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding its scope, but whose chief attitudes and orientations have been the same through the centuries.

Many other illustrations might be taken of the truth of this view, but I will confine myself to two or three more. There is the instance of the Eucharist and its exceedingly widespread celebration (under very various forms) among the pagans all over the world--as well as among Christians. I have already said enough on this subject, and need not delay over it. By partaking of the sacramental meal, even in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the

Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one on which I need not add much to what has been said already. The number of pagan deities (mostly virgin-born and done to death in some way or other in their efforts to save mankind) is so great 2 as to be difficult to keep account of. The god Krishna in India, the god Indra in Nepaul and Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation of men; Buddha said, according to Max Müller, 3 "Let all the sins that were in the world fall on me, that the world may be delivered"; the Chinese Tien, the Holy One--"one with God and existing with him from all eternity"--died to save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour, so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was the Greek Hercules who overcame Death though his body was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out of which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian Attis called Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis likewise--both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterward rose again from their biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest benefactor of the human race, was nailed by the hands and feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mount Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus, born of the virgin Semele

1 In Peru and among the American Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar legends are, or were, to be found.

Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line with regard to pre-Christian saviours; 2 and in later times the same policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary--to whose work I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts of Sahagun's Historia and scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated

1 "I am the sacrifice, I the ancestral offering." "In the truly orthodox conception of sacrifice," says Elie Reclus, 2 "the consecrated offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or heifer, cock or dove, represents the deity himself. . . . Brahma is the 'imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari and the other gods, became incarnate in animals to the sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals, and from his substance were born the birds of the air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of butter and curds. The world, declared the Rishis, is a series of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them

It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson, paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse of his:--

If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I take, and pass, and turn again.

I say it is an astonishing thing to think and realize that this profound and mystic doctrine of the eternal sacrifice of Himself, ordained by the Great Spirit for the creation and salvation of the world--a doctrine which has attracted and fascinated many of the great thinkers and nobler minds of Europe, which has also inspired the religious teachings of the Indian sages and to a less philosophical degree the writings of the Christian Saints--should have been seized in its general outline and essence by rude and primitive people before the dawn of history, and embodied in their rites and ceremonials. What is the explanation of this fact?

It is very puzzling. The whole subject is puzzling. The world-wide adoption of similar creeds and rituals (and, we may add, legends and fairy tales) among early peoples, and in far-sundered places and times is so remarkable that it has given the students of these subjects 'furiously to think' 1--yet for the most part without great success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and

1--overspread the world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why, then we are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents being then all more or less conjoined) and at a period when it is doubtful if any religious rites and customs at all existed; not to mention the further difficulty of supposing all the four or five hundred languages now existing to be descended from one common source. The far tradition of the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible explanation of the community of rites and customs between the Old and New World, and this without assuming in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the original and sole cradle of the human race. 2 Anyhow it is clear that these origins of human culture must be of extreme antiquity, and that it would not be wise to be put off the track of the investigation of a possible common source merely by that fact of antiquity.

A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various

Footnotes

118:1 vii. 19, and iii. 8, 16.

118:2 Primitive Folk, by Elie Reclus (Contemp. Science Series), p. 330.

118:3 Ibid.

118:4 Muller's Dorians Book II, ch. ii, par. 10.

120:1 Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.

120:2 See also Themis, p. 21.

121:1 See supra, ch. iii. p. 43.

121:2 For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see Westermarck's Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.

122:1 Golden Bough², III, p. 438.

123:1 According to accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western Australia, in their initiations, the lads were frightened by a large fire being lighted near them, and hearing the awful sound of the bull-roarers, while they were told that Dhuramoolan was about to burn them; the legend being that Dhuramoolan, a powerful being, whose voice sounded like thunder, would take the boys into the bush and instruct them in all the laws, traditions and customs of the community. So he pretended that he always killed the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to ashes, after which he moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored them to life as new beings. (See R. H. Matthews, "The Wiradthuri tribes," Journal Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv, 1896, pp. 297 sq.)

124:1 See Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i, for initiations and ordeals among the Mandans.

124:2 De Errore, c. 22.

124:3

Θαρρεῖτε, μυσται το̃ν θεο̃υ σεσωσμένου,
Εσται γὰρ ἡμῖν εκ πονῶν σωτηρία.

124:4 Summarized in Themis, pp. 68-71.

125:1 A. C. Fletcher, The Significance of the Scalp-lock, Journal of Anthropological Studies, xxvii (1897-8), p. 436.

125:2 See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 274 sq.

127:1 The fervent and widespread belief in animal metamorphoses among early peoples is well known.

128:1 The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine (to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these things, as the common and possible heritage of every man, the Christians only allowed themselves to entertain the idea in the special and unique instance of the Transfiguration of Christ.

129:1 Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I. 401, says:--"Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is called the Giver of Life and Health. . . . He became incarnate among men, was taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar [a god of corn and wine apparently]. But he rose in flame to heaven to be `the Benefactor of the World' and the 'Mediator between God and Man.' Through communion with him in his sacrifice, man (who partook of this god) has an assurance of immortality, for by that sacrament he obtains union with his divinity."

129:2 See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.

129:3 Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.

130:1 See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.

130:2 See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.

132:1 Ch. ix, v. 16.

132:2 Primitive Folk, ch. vi.

133:1 See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.

134:1 See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."

134:2 E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i, p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared." Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge'" between Siberia and the New World.

Pagan and Christian Creeds: VIII. Pagan Initiations and the Second Birth

PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH

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