Mythical creature

“ The resemblance of the lightning flash to the sharp, sudden, zigzag movements of the serpent, a creature so mysterious to barbaric man in its unlikeness to the beasts of the field, accounts for a myth the influence of which as a terrorising agent on human conduct is in course of rapid decay. ”

“ It is admitted that Greeks, Romans, Aryans of India in the age of the Sanskrit commentators, and Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and earlier ages, were as much puzzled as we are by the mythical adventures of their gods. But is there any known stage of the human intellect in which similar adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into animals, trees, stars, and all else that puzzles us in the civilised mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life? ”

“ At this time, too, it is likely that the worship of animals arose, for almost every tribe of savages had a sacred animal which, except in rare instances, it was never allowed to kill and from which it often imagined itself descended.
After many ages, mankind began to till the ground, and to raise grain and vegetables, then plants and trees were more especially observed by them, and the mythical stories have, in consequence, more about plants and trees in them; and, as they had sacred animals, they had also sacred trees or plants, and worshipped them or imagined themselves descended from them. ”

“ When the day or the summer dies, the mythical serpent shows himself (in absolute contradiction to what we are taught by Natural History, one would almost say that when the serpent ceases to creep along the ground and to devour the animals of the earth, it goes to creep and to devour the animals of the sky) ; then the north winds begin to whistle,—and the serpent, particularly the mythical serpent, is a famous whistler. ”

“ The true source of mystic zoology is not in mythology, but in the Bible, which classifies beasts as clean and unclean, makes them symbolize virtues and vices, some species being allegorical of heavenly personages, and other embodying the Devil. ”

“ All these alternative variations of a mythical representation become each in turn a legend by itself, as we shall see again more in detail, when the study of the different animals that take part in them shall furnish us with opportunities of doing so. ”

“ Among the fancies embodied in the myths was noted the theory that the world, or various parts of it, had been formed out of the body of some huge non-natural being, a god, or giant, or a member of some ancient mysterious race. ”

“ The most ancient people denominated the sensual nature the serpent, because as serpents live close to the earth, so does the sensual principle cling closely to the world, to nature, and things of sense. ”

“ I have had to prove in mythology its most humble aspect, that is to say, the god enclosed in the animal; and inasmuch as amongst the various mythical animals which I have endeavoured to describe, several preserve the propitious character and resplendent form of the god, they are generally considered as the form which the deity assumes either to feed secretly upon the forbidden fruit or to fulfil a term of punishment for some former fault of his ”

“ The stars, again, in mythology, are mixed up with beasts, planets and men in the same embroglio of fantastic opinion. The dead and the living, men, beasts and gods, trees and stars, and rivers, and sun, and moon, dance through the region of myths in a burlesque ballet of Priapus, where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and imagination no limits. ”

“ In the infancy of mankind almost every system of mythology included the worship or veneration of animals. In one land the deity was a bull, in another it was a serpent, in yet another it was a bird; and in lands like India and Egypt almost every known animal was either an incarnated deity or demon. The same reasons that caused the animal to be deified and worshiped would, in a short time, surround its worship with numberless myths and legends, that would be remembered long after the occasion that called them into existence had been forgotten. ”

“ Inasmuch, moreover, as from the monster serpent, the cloud and the darkness, come forth flashes of lightning, thunder-bolts, sunbeams, tongues of fire, even serpents sometimes assume a divine nature in the Vedic hymns. ”

“ It will become probable that the animal actually was mythically identified with the goddess at an extremely remote period, or, at all events, that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient worship of the animal. ”

“ It was not till the real world had been so thoroughly explored as to leave little room in it for the monsters, that about the beginning of the present century science banished them to the ideal world of mythology. Having had to glance here at two of the principal species in this amazing semi-human menagerie, it may be worth while to look among the rest for more hints as to the sources of mythic fancy. ”

“ In the mythologies of all peoples, of the Greeks and Hindus and Norsemen, as well as of the North American Indians and the dwellers in the South Sea islands, we find the sun personified as an archer or wanderer, the clouds as [Pg 66] gigantic birds, the tempest as a devouring dragon; and the tales of gods and heroes, as well as of trolls and fairies, are made up of scattered and distorted fragments of nature-myths, of which the primitive meaning had long been forgotten when the ingenuity of modern scholarship laid it bare. ”

“ The Serpent having ascrib’d its Reason, and Speech to the eating of that Fruit, the Woman might infer, If this Fruit did turn a Serpent into a rational Creature, why may it not transform a rational Creature into a God, and a Woman into a Goddess? ”

“ It is a plausible opinion that such scenes from the great nature-drama of the conflict of light and darkness are, generally speaking, the simple facts, which in many lands and ages have been told in mythic shape, as legends of a Hero or maiden devoured by a Monster, and hacked out again or disgorged. The myths just displayed show with absolute distinctness, that myth can describe eclipse as the devouring and setting free of the personal sun and moon by a monster. ”

“ In whatever way it originated, and however the huge wonder may have behaved itself at any period, quietly or tremendously, nobody can doubt that the creature is a benevolent creature,—one of the securities of the peaceful and profitable existence of the far greater and more mysterious creature rolling in the shape of an orb round the sun in midst of its countless like, and carrying us all along with it in our respective busy inattentions. ”

“ The symbolical representation of the solar year in the form of a serpent biting his tail is equivalent to the myth of the monster-serpent who dies when his eggs are broken, that is, when the light comes out of its tenebrous envelope. ”

“ Here, on the other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude of mythical elements may combine to build up in course of time a single enormous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and fancy have co-operated in keeping the superstition from falling. In the first place the worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion of the transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves ”

“ Thus, in the course of time, the serpent became an endless writing on the wall, so full was it of mysterious significance and dread to the ancient races of the world. In fact, serpents play an important part in the mythology of every nation of the earth. ”

“ Hence not only the bigness attributed to the mythical birds we have 211sketched but their supernatural abilities, and also—in accordance with constant experience of the general antagonism between nature and human purposes—the malignancy characterizing most of them. ”

“ ANIMALS IN CULTURE MYTHS
All the stories so far have reflected primitive man’s way of thinking and acting. Passing now to more developed phases of life, we are confronted in myths by such an array of animals—definite personifications of natural phenomena—that no possible ark would hold these cosmical monsters. ”

“ But by the side of divine serpents, essentially benign in character, protective, prophetic, linked with gods of health, life, and healing, we do find in all mythologies a gigantic serpent, who personifies a hostile and nocturnal power, a wicked principle, material darkness, and moral evil. ”

“ To examine the origin of these tales is not more ‘superstitious’ than to examine the origin of the religious and heroic mythologies of the world. It is, of course, easy to give both mythology, and ‘the science of spectres,’ the go by. But antiquaries will be inquiring, and these pursuits are more than mere ‘antiquarian old womanries’. We follow the stream of fable, as we track a burn to its head, and it leads us into shy, and strange scenes of human life, haunted by very fearful wild-fowl, and rarely visited save by the credulous. ”

“ If the beauty of a creature fascinates you, remember that the serpent of Hell lies hidden beneath it, anxious and ready to kill or at least wound you, and say to him—"Ah, accursed serpent, with what subtlety dost thou lay wait to devour me!" ”

“ Wisdom, cunning, skill, and prowess are attributed to the real animals to a degree often greater than to man; and there are mythic animals as well as mythic men--monsters dwelling in the mountains and caves or hiding in the waters, who make themselves invisible as they pass over the land. Not only are there great monsters, beasts, and reptiles in their mythology, but there are wonderful insects and worms. All life is miraculous and is worshiped as divine. The heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars, are mythic animals, and all of the phenomena of nature are attributed to these zoic beings. ”

“ Among the slender intellectual capital of which they stood possessed was the common mythology of their savage ancestors, in which, as we have seen, sun and moon, storm and thunder-cloud, and all other natural phenomena, were credited with personal life and will. But that mythology had certainly advanced beyond the crude primitive form and entered the heroic stage, wherein the powers of nature were half human, half divine. ”

“ Uniformity of tradition can alone satisfactorily explain uniformity of superstition, where local circumstances are so discordant.
“The serpent is the symbol which most generally enters into the mythology of the world. ”

“ If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal—the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness of an immense power. ”

“ These animals carry out the designs of the culture-hero, and punish initiated Zunis who are careless of their religious duties and ritual. The myths of the sacred beasts are long and dismal, chiefly ætiological, or attempts to account by a fictitious narrative for the distribution and habits of the various creatures. ”

“ Stars, fishes, gods, heroes, men, trees, clouds, and animals, all play their equal part in the confused dramas of savage thought and savage mythology. Even in practical life the change of a sorcerer into an animal is accepted as a familiar phenomenon, and the power of soaring among the stars is one on which the Australian Biraark, or the Eskimo Shaman, most plumes himself. It is not wonderful that things which are held possible in daily practice should be frequent features of mythology. ”

“ Indeed, the serpent has almost universally been regarded as a symbol of immortal life, and especially, as frequently presented in ancient sculptures, with its tail in its mouth, thus forming an endless circle. ”

“ In all the ancient mysteries, the serpent was more or less conspicuously introduced, and always as a symbol of the invigorating or active power of nature. The serpent was an emblem of the sun. Solar, Phallic, and Serpent worship, are all forms of a single worship. [8] The Hindu Boodh, Chinese Fo, Egyptian Osiris, Northern Woden, Mexican Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) , are one and the same. ”

“ A proper study of the evolution of the gods of myth will lead us up from beings more frequently bestial than human in form to the half-anthropomorphic deities of Egypt after the ancient Empire, and finally to the gods, usually anthropomorphic, of Greece and India. To the very last, however, the old stuff of savage fancy,—fancy like that of Bushmen and of Murri of Australia,—will be found persistently surviving in the temple legends, mysteries, and rites even of Greece. ”

“ When the origin of the entire myth had been lost or forgotten, when perhaps it had drifted away from the shore, and where no hideous sea monsters existed to keep it alive, it was natural enough that the snake-like tentacles should be represented as real snakes, and having taken that form in a firmly established convention of art, it was necessary to invent a story to account for them—a story to be found in the classic writers upon Mythology. ”

“ The creation of myths has its explanation in the nature of human imagination—this is the subjective factor. We can not deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon and stars, winds and storms, have their effect also, we may suppose, on monkeys, elephants, and other animals supposedly the most intelligent. ”

“ I only point out, as I proceed, interpretations which I think come near the truth; but the objects embodied in mythology are so mobile and multiform, that, if grasped too tightly, they easily evaporate and disappear. Their richness consists in their very mobility and uncertainty. If the sun and moon were always seen in the same place, there would be no myths. The myths which originated the greatest number of legends are those which are founded upon the most fleeting phenomena of the sky. ”