Chapter IV: Magic and Religion (2)

It is, perhaps, scarcely going too far to assert that a very considerable part of the decorative and glyptic art of many primitive peoples has been inspired by totemism; but it must be remembered that we have no positive evidence of totemism among a very considerable number of peoples. As animals are the most frequent totems, so zoomorphs and their derivatives are as constantly in evidence in the art of these people.

The artistic representations become modified as totemism itself becomes modified. I can only very briefly allude to some of the probable stages in the later evolution of totemism. The attribution of human qualities to the totem is the essence of totemism, and the tribal totem tends to pass into an anthropomorphic god. Mr. Frazer points out that there are often numerous sub-totems associated with each of the main totems, and suggests that there is a sort of life-history of totems, “as sub-totems they are growing; as clan totems they are grown; as sub-phratric and phratric totems they are in successive stages of decay.” He also puts forward the view that these subordinate totems are regarded as incarnations of the gods or god in process of evolution, and as the latter rise more and more into human form, so the former “sink from the dignity of incarnations into the humbler character of favourites and clients; until, at a later age, the links which bound them to the god having wholly faded from memory, a generation of mythologists arises who seek to patch up the broken chain by the cheap method of symbolism. But symbolism is only the decorous though transparent veil which a refined age loves to throw over its own ignorance of the past.”

So far I have mainly referred to the employment of the representation of totem animals as badges, but they are also made use of to indicate descent. Ancestor worship is an important element in the religion of many peoples, and the art which illustrates this naturally varies according to the plane of culture at which a given people have arrived. When a people are in a totemistic plane of culture their ancestors will usually be represented as animals, the same holds good for those that have but recently emerged from this phase. This we know is the explanation of some of the well-known totem-posts and animal carvings of the natives of British Columbia, and it probably holds good for many of the intricate grotesque carvings from New Ireland.

When the totem has been evolved into an anthropomorphic god, human (_i.e._ god) forms are represented in the genealogy, as occurs on the decorated adzes of the Hervey Islands (pp. 270-274).

It is incorrect to term all worship of or attention paid to animals as “Totemism.” In a great number of cases this may have been the origin of a cult, but it is a mistake to apply the lower term when the cult is sublimated into a higher form of religion. That a considerable part of the religion of ancient Greece had its origin in Totemism is generally admitted; but the animal attributes of most of their deities would not characterise the religion of the most cultured Greeks as totemistic.[158] The ox, the bear, the mouse, wild beasts and birds, and similar associates of the Olympian hierarchy, whatever they were to the ancients, are to us milestones which marked the road traversed by Hellenic religion; the Egyptian had been petrified at an earlier phase.

[158] Cf. A. B. Cook, “Animal Worship in the Mycenæan Age,”
_Journ. Hellenic Studies_, xiv., 1894, p. 81. Mr. Cook says:
“On the whole, I gather that the Mycenæan worshippers were not
totemists pure and simple, but that the mode of the worship
points to its having been developed out of still earlier
totemism” (p. 158).

In the sacred bird of Western Oceania, we can probably trace the commencement of totemistic sublimation.

The cult of the frigate-bird is characteristic of Melanesia, and apparently also extends to the Pelew Islands. Dr. Codrington (_The Melanesians_, 1891, p. 145) informs us that at Florida in the Solomon Group they pray as follows to “Daula, a _tindalo_ generally known and connected with the frigate-bird [a _tindalo_ is the ghost or spirit of a man endowed with _mana_, that is superhuman power or influence]: ‘Do thou draw the canoe, that it may reach the land; speed my canoe, grandfather, that I may quickly reach the shore whither I am bound,’ etc. Daula is invoked to aid in fishing ... after a good catch he is praised.” On p. 180 we read, “The sacred character of the frigate-bird is certain; the figure of it, however conventional, is the most common ornament employed in the Solomon Islands, and is even cut upon the hands of the Bugotu people; the oath by its name of _daula_ is solemn and binding in Florida; where Daula is a _tindalo_, many and powerful to aid at sea are the ghosts which abide in these birds.” Who Daula was, when he was a living man, has “passed far away from any historical remembrance” (p. 126).

In his interesting little book on _The Evolution of Decorative Art_, Mr. H. Balfour gives illustrations of conventional representations of the frigate-bird in the Solomon Islands (Figs. 11, 26). In Figs. 26, 27, 25, he shows a gradation between a “bird-like canoe charm,” through a “human-headed bird canoe-charm,” to a “canoe fetich,” the latter having a very prognathous human head.[159] The mergence of a frigate-bird’s into a human head may be due, as Mr. Balfour suggests, to one design acting upon the other, or it may be the artistic expression of the cult described by Dr. Codrington.

[159] In a letter Dr. Codrington writes: “I do not think that
the very prognathous human head has anything to do with a
bird. If you look at the very excellent coloured frontispiece
to Brenchley’s _Voyage of the Curaçoa_, representing a canoe
on a voyage, you will see that all the men are excessively
prognathous. The original is in the Maidstone Museum. I have
looked at my few Solomon Island things—a common bowl supported
by two human figures, which are just the same. A carved bit of
soft stone and the head of a betel lime stick, things just cut
for amusement, have the same prognathism. In fact I believe
that the ordinary representation of the human head is such, the
more prognathous the better it is liked.”

The canoes of the Solomon Islands often have as a figure-head the carved representation of the upper part of a man who holds in his hands another human head.[160] The human figure is possibly an image of the _tindalo_ in Daula. (Dr. Codrington states that a _tindalo_ is always the spirit of a real deceased man.[160]) The carvings of birds on the bow of a canoe are practically invocations to the sacred and powerful frigate-bird.

[160] “It is certain that, according to the Florida people (and
their neighbours who use the word), a _tindalo_ was once a man;
but there are some whose names they know and of whom they know
nothing as men. I am by no means of opinion that there was once
a man named Daula. The name of the frigate-bird being _kaula_
in Ulawa is against that (k=t=d). Rather daula is the name
of the bird, and the birds are vehicles of _tindalos_. So as
every _tindalo_ who takes up his abode in a shark is Bagea in
Florida (a common shark being _bagea_), so every _tindalo_ in
a frigate-bird is Daula.”—DR. CODRINGTON _in a letter to the
author_.

The face or head carried in the hands of the human figure-heads (“canoe god,” “charm,” or “fetich”) “represents that taken when the canoe was first used.” A canoe of importance “required a life for its inauguration.” Dr. Codrington (_loc. cit._, p. 296) alludes to other adjuncts to the bow of canoes which give protection and success.

3. _Religion._

The opening remarks in the section dealing with sympathetic magic were largely borrowed from Dr. Frazer, and I again have recourse to that author for the following sketch of the incipient religion of primitive folk.

The savage fails to recognise those limitations to his power over nature which seem so obvious to us. In a society where every man is supposed to be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural, it is plain that the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has scarcely emerged.

The conception of gods as supernatural beings entirely distinct from and superior to man, and wielding powers to which he possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind, has been slowly evolved in the course of history.

At first the world is regarded as a great democracy; but with the growth of his knowledge man realises more clearly the vastness of nature and his own feebleness; this, however, enhances his conception of the power of those supernatural beings with which his imagination peoples the universe. If he feels himself to be so frail and slight, how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the gigantic machinery of nature!

Thus, as his old sense of equality with gods slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of directing the course of nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them.

With the first advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic, which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background, and sinks to the level of a black art. It is now regarded as an encroachment, at once vain and impious, on the domain of the gods, and as such encounters the steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and influence gain or lose with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged, we find that sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion of the community, while magic is the refuge of the superstitious and ignorant.

Throughout the whole of this slow evolution ornamental art has attempted to visualise the religious conceptions of the period. It would probably be more correct to regard the pictorial representations of religion as usually illustrating a past rather than a present aspect of belief. For a drawing, like a creed, fixes a type, and the form has a tendency to be repeated unconscious of the fact that the spirit may have burst its bonds and soared into a higher region.

Not only does the motive of religious art vary according to the stage of evolution of the religion which it illustrates, but the art itself is subject to modification as it enters into new phases of what I have termed its life-history.

Totemism is one phase of religion, but owing to its great importance in the economy of primitive peoples I have treated it in an independent section. As totemism gradually shades off into god-worship so its artistic symbolism is merged into that of divinities, but it often persists to an unexpected extent.

It is only possible for me to touch lightly on a few of the aspects of religious art from the anthropologist’s point of view.

As the gods were being evolved it was very important for men to retain the remembrance of those family ties between them and mankind which were in danger of being snapped through the length to which they were drawn and the degree of attenuation which consequently ensued.

The statements of tradition as to the descent of mortals from gods are re-enforced by the representations of artists of the unlettered races, just as they are enshrined in the written cosmogonies of more cultured folk; the main difference being that any one may understand the one if he knows the written characters, whereas the other is practically a pictograph, and requires the interpretation of the natives who have the traditional knowledge of the symbols.

We are probably justified in assuming that very early in time (and it is still widely spread among backward peoples) was the custom of carving or painting the pedigree of the man from the god—of the human from the divine. As the god is lost down the ages in the totem so too his eikon is merged into the resemblance of some animal-form. In the intermediary stage we have those monstrous forms which the enlightened pagans endeavoured to rationalise and even to spiritualise. “Yet half a beast is the great god Pan.”

The beautiful wood-carving formerly executed by the natives of the Hervey Group in the South Pacific affords an excellent example of the relation of religion to decorative art.

The Rev. Dr. W. Wyatt Gill states that a significance is “invariably attached to ancient Polynesian carving,” and he and a few other missionaries have given suggestive hints, but without reference to the actual designs.

Dr. H. Stolpe, of Stockholm, was the first ethnographer to study Polynesian art from a scientific point of view, and his paper[161] on Evolution in the Ornamental Art of Savages is a model of this particular kind of research. He asserts “That the carved ornament in Polynesia _always_ had a meaning.... Polynesians cling tenaciously to ancient customs, though often they are no longer capable of accounting for their original meaning.... If one asks the reason of a device or a custom, one usually gets no satisfactory information.... Should any one, therefore, to-day, ask a native of these islands whether the ornamentation here delineated has any significance, and the reply should be ‘no,’ I could not recognise in it any decisive evidence. Our previous investigations suffice of themselves to prove that the forms of development of the old primitive images, highly conventionalised, _must_ have a symbolic significance. They symbolise, they stand in place of, the primitive image. They are to be considered as a sort of cryptograph. By means of perpetual reiteration of certain ornamental elements, they suggest the divinity to whose service the decorated implement was in some way dedicated.” A dozen years ago Dr. Stolpe stated that the linear ornaments on the carved Mangaian adzes were for the most part to be regarded as transformed figures of human beings, or especially as divine beings. (Fig. 124.)

[161] H. Stolpe, _Utvecklingsföreteelser i Naturfolkens
Ornamentik_. Ymer, 1890. Translated into English by Mrs. March,
“Evolution in the Ornamental Art of Savage People,” _Trans.
Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc._, 1892; and into German, _Mittheil.
Anth. Gesell._ Wien, 1892, xxii. p. 43.

Mr. C. H. Read, of the British Museum, independently[162] arrived at a similar conclusion to Dr. Stolpe’s, and Dr. March[163] has carried the argument a step further. Dr. Stolpe proved that a design generally known as the =K= pattern, but which it is better to call the _tiki-tiki_ pattern, sometimes interrupted, but generally continuous, is in reality a string of human figures, the two horizontal zigzags being limbs, and the vertical bars that join them being the headless bodies. (Fig. 125, A.)

[162] C. H. Read, “On the Origin and Sacred Character of
certain Ornaments of the S.E. Pacific,” _Jour. Anth. Inst._,
xxi., 1891, p. 139.

[163] H. Colley March, “Polynesian Ornament a Mythography; or a
Symbolism of Origin and Descent,” _Jour. Anth. Inst._, xxii.,
1893, p. 307.

These figures, which almost cover the handle of a Mangaian paddle or adze, are obviously related to the female forms that are carved on the terminal of its shaft (Figs. 127, 128), and are morphologically derived from them by a process of evolution.

The headless figures are quite recognisable in Fig. 125, A, but the fore-arms and shanks of each of them are absent, their places being taken by the upper arms and thighs of the contiguous figures. In B the serial individuals are separated by narrow vertical clefts; the latter persist in C, but the two boundary lines between the rows of figures are fused into a single line.

In Fig. 126 we have a large area (the blade of a paddle) divided into a number of parallel lines between which are diamonds, which may or may not be connected by horizontal lines. A careful inspection will show that the vertical lines are continuous body-lines; the horizontal lines are the same as those in Fig. 125, A, but the two lines are fused into one; the zigzags are clearly limbs. The absence of the horizontal lines simplifies the pattern, and so each diamond consists in its upper part of the leg, and in its lower part of the arms of human figures whose bodies are represented by the vertical lines.

The pattern in the lower half of Fig. 127 can be derived from the last by the introduction of an intermediate series of vertical lines.

Curvilinear patterns, as in the lower part of Fig. 128, are common on objects from these islands; they are evidently derived from the thighs of serial human forms, as in Fig. 127, and Plate VI., Fig. 13.

“It is abundantly certain,” adds Dr. March, “that the forms that crown the shaft are those of women, for they are invariably distinguished by pendant-pointed breasts. The solitary exception that Dr. Stolpe has been able to find is one in appearance only, for in his Fig. 23 the breasts are really fused into a single cone, exactly as are the legs in his Fig. 24” (p. 322).

Dr. March’s contribution is that these carved shafts of sacred paddles and adzes were pedigree-sticks. Descent is traced through the male line as a rule among the Polynesians, but it is certain that some tribes traced their descent through the female line. Dr. Gill states that this was in some places simply a matter of arrangement. Dr. Gill tells us that the designs on these shafts were called “_tiki-tiki-tangata_;” _tangata_ means a man, or in this combination connotes human, for in a Polynesian word compounded of two nouns, that which comes last has a secondary, explanatory, or adjectival force. _Tiki_ was the first man, and when he died, ruled the entrance of the under-world. The name signifies a “fetched” soul; the spirit of a dead man the frequentative or plural _tiki-tiki_ must mean spirits in succession, or “ancestors.” “The conclusion now drawn is that _tiki-tiki-tangata_ were the multitudinous human links between the divine ancestor and the chief of the living tribe. But to what ancestry did these pedigrees of female lineage assert a claim? From what goddess was it the pride of Mangaians to be descended, unless from the mother, the wife and the daughter-wife of Rongo—from Tu-metua, Taka, and Tavake.

“In Mangaia all the gods were called the children of Vatea, and of these Tane was one. His name indicates the generative principle in Nature. In Mangaia he was especially the drum-god and the axe[164]-god; he presided over the erotic dance as well as over the war-dances. Gill observes[165] that ‘_Tane mata ariki_,’ Tane with the royal face, was enshrined in a sacred triple axe,[164] which symbolised the three priestly families on the island of Mangaia. This axe was buried in a cave, and has disappeared. The =K= pattern which covers the shafts of the sacred Mangaian axe,[164] is an assertion of a Tane pedigree, the _tiki-tiki-tangata_ of the clan. ‘Awake Tane!’ was the invocation,[166] ‘Awake unnumbered progeny of Tane!’” (March, p. 331).

[164] Probably an _adze_, not an _axe_.

[165] W. Wyatt Gill, _Jottings from the Pacific_, 1885, p. 224.

[166] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, 1840, i. p. 343.

4. _Religious Symbolism._

The study of religious symbols[167] is not only a very extensive and extremely attractive undertaking, but it is one of peculiar difficulty, for with it is combined, not a danger, but a certainty of falling into errors. There is hardly a subject upon which such diverse views can be proposed and even maintained with a fair amount of presumptive evidence.

[167] Cf. pp. 119, 122, 213.

The danger of making mistakes is, however, considerably lessened if a scientific method of study is adopted, and if speculation is reduced to a minimum. No better example of the method of such a study is to be found than in Count Goblet d’Alviella’s book on _The Migration of Symbols_.[168] It is upon this valuable book that I have largely drawn in compiling the following account.

[168] _The Migration of Symbols_, 1894.

The meaning of the term Symbol, like the objects we connote by it, has undergone a transformation from a concrete reality to an abstraction. Originally applied amongst the Greeks to the two halves of the tablet they divided between themselves as a pledge of hospitality, in the manner of our contract form, detached along a line of perforations from the counterfoil record, it was gradually extended to the engraved shells by which those initiated in the mysteries made themselves known to each other, and even to the more or less esoteric formulas and sacramental rites that may be said to have constituted the visible bond of their fellowship. Then the meaning became amplified, and “the term came to gradually mean everything that, whether by general agreement or by analogy, conventionally represented something or somebody.”[169]

[169] _Loc. cit._, p. 1.

I have previously (p. 212) given Colonel Garrick Mallery’s definition of the word, which sufficiently indicates the meaning generally applied to it.

A pictorial symbol has the following life-history:—

First, it is simply a representation of an object or a phenomenon, that is, a pictograph. Thus the zigzag was the mark or sign of lightning.

Secondly, “the sign of the concrete grew to be the symbol of the abstract. The zigzag of lightning, for example, became the emblem of power, as in the thunderbolts grasped by Jupiter; or it stood alone for the supreme God; and thus the sign developed into the ideograph.”[170]

[170] H. Colley March, “The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir,”
_Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Ant. Soc._, 1886.

Thirdly, retrogression set in when new religions and new ideas had sapped the vitality of the old conceptions, and the ideograph came to have no more than a mystical meaning. A religious or sacred savour, so to speak, still clung about it, but it was not a living force within it; the difference is as great as between the dried petals of a rose and the blooming flower itself. “The zigzag, for instance, was no longer used as a symbol of the deity, but was applied auspiciously, or as we should say, for luck.”[170]

The last stage is reached when a sign ceases to have even a mystical or auspicious significance, and is applied to an object as a merely ornamental device.

“By symbolism,” writes Count Goblet d’Alviella, “the simplest, the commonest objects are transformed, idealised, and acquire a new and, so to say, an illimitable value. In the Eleusinian mysteries, the author of _Philosophoumena_ relates that, at the initiation to the higher degree, ‘there was exhibited as the great, the admirable, the most perfect object of mystic contemplation, an ear of corn that had been reaped in silence; and two crossed lines suffice to recall to millions of Christians the redemption of the world by the voluntary sacrifice of a god.’”

As that author points out, “We live in the midst of symbolic representations, from the ceremonies celebrating a birth to the funeral emblems adorning the tomb; from the shaking of hands all round of a morning to the applause with which we gratify the actor, or lecturer, of the evening. We write as we speak in symbols.

“It is sentiment, and above all, religious sentiment, that resorts largely to symbolism; and in order to place itself in more intimate communication with the being, or abstraction, it desires to approach. To that end men are everywhere seen either choosing natural or artificial objects to remind them of the Great Hidden One, or themselves imitating in a systematic manner the acts and deeds they attribute to Him—which is a way of participating in His life.” The symbols with which we will here occupy ourselves are not those of acts or rites, but those of objects or emblems.

In all but the last stages of its career a symbol is a living sign, now this vitality is very real, and by virtue of it, strange modifications take place.

For example, when a nation that employed a particular symbol came into contact with another nation that had a somewhat similar symbol, the two symbols, if quite alike, were indistinguishable, and one passed for the other; but if there were slight differences between the symbols a process of amalgamation took place, and they approximated more and more towards one another. In either case the meanings of both would doubtless commingle, and a more energetic vitality would ensue from the cross-fertilisation.

St. Anthony’s cross, =T= (_croix potencée_, “gibbet-cross”), is found, with almost the same symbolic signification, in Palestine, in Gaul, and in ancient Germany, in the Christian Catacombs, and amongst the ancient inhabitants of Central America.

Among the Phœnicians and kindred peoples this cross was an alphabetical sign, _tau_, and it was also used separately as a symbol. From a passage in Ezekiel[171] we learn that it was accounted a sign of preservation, and was marked upon the forehead, like its corresponding Indian symbol.[172] The symbolic signification of the _tau_ is explained by its resemblance to the Key of Life, or _crux ansata_ of Egypt, so widely diffused throughout all Western Asia.

[171] Ezekiel ix. 4-6.

[172] Schliemann, _Ilios_, p. 350.

“This _tau_ was unquestionably the emblem of life, and, therefore, of the greatest virtue. M. Letronne, in his researches on the Christian monuments of Egypt, has shown in the most conclusive manner that the first Christians of that country adopted this sign, possibly to establish that Christ was pre-eminently the source of life, or as a prophetic sign. All the gods of the ancient Egyptian mythology bore in their hand the sign of Christianity, the monogram of Christ; they were, according to the first Christians of Egypt, supposed to announce the coming of Jesus.”[173]

[173] G. Ferrero, _Les Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme_,
1895, p. 142.

The Double Hammer of the Celtic Tarann and of the Teutonic and Scandinavian Thor is a symbol of the lightning. “Thor was the sun-god proper; god of the sun in its active aspect; the thunder-god likewise, and thus the wielder of the hammer or axe (named Mjolnir, ‘the crusher’) representative of the thunderbolt, rendered in the form =T=. Thor was also lord of the Under-World, and guardian against the monsters that infested its precincts; he was likewise a protector against sickness, and was much worshipped by the franklin and peasant classes.”[174]

[174] The Earl of Southesk, _Origins of Pictish Symbolism_,
1893, p. 12.

“To this day a representation of the hammer of the God of Thunder may be found on the barns and stable-doors of some German villages. It is stated that in the northern, midland, and eastern counties of this country—wherever, in fact, the Teutonic element has made its strongest imprint—some old church bells still bear the same sign as a charm against the tempest.

“As applied to Thor, this tree-shaped cross symbol sustains his double quality as the fiery Cleaver of the Clouds, who even as such represents the principle of fertility and the Sanctifier of the fruitful union of hearts.”[175]

[175] Karl Blind, “Discovery of Odinic Songs in Shetland,”
_Nineteenth Century_, June 1879, pp. 1097, 1098.

Karl Blind has also drawn attention to a mediæval German church legend which affords a good example of the persistence of pagan ideas and of the pagan-christian overlap. “Thus Trauenlob makes the Virgin Mary say of God the Father—‘The Smith from the Upper-Land (Heaven) threw his hammer into my lap (_schôz_).’”[176]

[176] Karl Blind, “Troy found again,” _Antiquary_, 1884, p. 200.

Amongst the early Christians it was a form sometimes given to the Cross of Christ, itself called the Tree of Life; but if they made of it a symbol of life, it was spiritual life that it typified to them; and if they sometimes gave it the form of the _patibulum_ (gallows), it was because such was the instrument employed among the Romans in the punishment by crucifixion.

In Central America, where, according to M. Albert Réville, the Cross was surnamed the Tree of Plenty, it assumed also the form of the _tau_. This pre-Columbian American Cross, =T=, was a symbol of fertility because it represented the rain-god; it is, in fact, an abbreviated rain-shower (as will be seen on reference to Figs. 62-64). Similarly the four-rayed cross represented the four quarters whence comes the rain, or rather the four main winds which bring rain, and it thus became the symbol of the Tlaloc, god of rain and waters, fertiliser of earth and lord of paradise, and lastly, of the mythical personage known by the name of Quetzacoatl. From North to South America the Latin cross symbolises “the Father of the four winds” (Argentine Republic), “the old man in the sun who rules the winds” (Blackfeet Indians), or similar personages. But all crosses are not the four quarters of the wind, as will be seen on reference to Figs. 100 D, E, 102 A. For an account of the American cross, Colonel Mallery should be consulted, _Tenth Ann. Rep._, p. 724.

Mr. Beal, in the same number of the _Indian Antiquary_, which contains Mr. Thomas’s remarks on the Svastika (March 1880), has shown that in Chinese 毌 is the symbol for an enclosed space of earth, and that the simple cross + occurs as a sign for earth in certain ideographic groups.[177]

[177] Max Müller in Schliemann, _Ilios_, 1880, Eng. edn.,
p. 349.

The four-rayed cross, separate or inscribed within a circle, is a very common symbol of the sun in prehistoric Europe.

As different waves of culture drifted across Europe, as new religions permeated the mass of the people, the stream-borne symbols found physical and spiritual analogues among the indigenous symbolism, and union naturally took place. In some cases, at all events, the cross fertilisation, as I have termed it, resulted in a higher or more spiritual meaning animating the old symbols; thus the symbol of the Avenger, the crushing Hammer of God, became that of the God Redeemer of the world.

When symbols become merely the dry-bones of defunct religions they may retain a certain magical quality, but then they pass out of religion and enter the domain of magic, where in fulness of time they may be born anew and start a fresh career as the symbols of modern science.

Besides this natural approximation of analogous symbols and symbolism, there is a more conscious and complex amalgamation, a heteromorphism. As Count Goblet d’Alviella says,[178] “At other times the symbolic syncretism is intentional and premeditated; whether it be in the desire to unite for the sake of greater efficacy, the attributes of several divinities in a single figure, as is shown in certain pantheistic figures of Gnostic origin; or a wish to state, by the fusion of symbols, the unity of the gods and the identity of creeds, as in the mystic monogram wherein the Brahmaists of contemporary India have testified to their religious eclecticism by interweaving the _Om_ of the Hindus with the Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross.

[178] _Loc. cit._, p. 264.

“Sometimes, too, the sacerdotal interest must have tended towards accentuating the analogies rather than the dissimilarities of symbols, in order to assist the absorption or unification of the doctrines which they represented. Finally, we must take into consideration the popular tendency towards syncretism, which, when not held in check by a rigorous orthodoxy, acts upon symbols, as well as upon creeds, by introducing into the new form of worship the images consecrated by a long veneration. Or else it is the innovators themselves who take advantage of symbolism in order to disguise, through borrowing from antique forms, the newness of their doctrine and, if need be, to transform into allies the emblems or traditions which they are unable to boldly extirpate.

“Need I recall to mind Constantine choosing as a standard that _labarum_ which might be claimed both by the religion of Christ and the worship of the sun? The Abbé Ansault has shown, firstly, that heathen nations used as religious emblems Greek, Latin, Maltese, _pattées_, _gammées_, _potencées_, _ansées_, _trêflées_, and other crosses; and, secondly, that the Christian Church has always accepted these different forms of the cross as the representation of its own symbol.

“Buddhism was even less scrupulous. In some of its sanctuaries it did not hesitate to preserve the images of the worship paid by the natives of India to the sun, to fire, or to serpents, whilst ascribing these rites to its own traditions. The Solar Wheel thus became easily the Wheel of the Law; the Cosmic Tree represented the Tree of Knowledge, under which Sakya Muni attained the perfect illumination; the seven-headed serpent Naga was transformed into the guardian of the impression left by the Feet of Vishnu, itself to be attributed henceforth to Buddha, and so on.”

The learned author from whom I have borrowed so much gives numerous examples of this process of the transference and amalgamation of symbols, and I must refer the reader for these details to the book itself.

A. _The Meaning and Distribution of the Fylfot._

The fylfot, or “fully- or many-footed” cross, is the Anglo-Saxon name for that form of cross whose extremities are bent back at right angles (Fig. 130). It is otherwise known as the “gammadion,” “tetraskele,” “croix gammée,” “croix cramponnée,” not to mention various other names, and in India “svastika”; but when the feet are turned to the left it is called “sauvastika”; both these words have much the same meaning, and signify “it is well.” At the present day in Asia, this “mystical mark made on persons or things to denote good-luck” (as Monier Williams describes it in his Sanscrit dictionary) is clearly in the third stage of its life-history, and its meaning must have been introduced after its primary significance was lost.

At the risk of being somewhat tedious I will give a brief account of the distribution of this ancient symbol, than which there are very few others so widely distributed.

Dr. Schliemann found it represented exceeding numerously on objects (Fig. 130, A, E) from the “second” or “burnt city” of the mound at Hissarlik.

In Greece, as in Cyprus and at Rhodes, it first appears on pottery with painted “geometrical” ornamentation (Fig. 130, F), that is in the second period of Greek ceramics. Later it is found on the vases, with decorations taken from living objects (Fig. G) which appear to coincide with the development of Phœnician influences on the shores of Greece. Lastly, it became a favourite symbol on coins not only of Greece proper and the Archipelago, but also of Macedon, Thrace, Crete (Fig. 130, M), Lycia (Fig. 130, I), and Paphlagonia (Fig. 130, H).

From Corinth, where it figures amongst the most ancient mint marks, it passed to Syracuse under Timoleon, to be afterwards spread abroad on the coins of Sicily and of Magna Græcia.

In Northern Italy it was known even before the advent of the Etruscans, for it has been met with on pottery dating from the terramara civilisation. It appears also on the roof of some of those ossuaries in the form of a hut (Pl. I., Fig. C), which reproduce on a small scale the wicker huts of the people of that epoch. In the Villanova period it adorns vases with geometrical decoration found at Cære, Chiusi, Albano, and at Cumæ. Finally, it appears in Roman mosaics.

It is singular that at Rome itself it has not been met with, so Count Goblet d’Alviella informs us, on any monument prior to the third, or perhaps the fourth century of our era. About that period the Christians of the Catacombs had no hesitation in including it amongst their representations of the Cross of Christ, and they used it to ornament priestly garments. At Milan it forms a row of curved crosses round the pulpit of St. Ambrose.

It was widely distributed throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire (Fig. 130, S, T), especially among the Celts, from the Danubian countries to the West of Ireland (Fig. 130, K, U); but in many cases it is difficult to decide whether it is connected with imported civilisation or with indigenous tradition.

In England it not unfrequently occurs on Roman votive altars. In Ireland, however, and in Scotland, the fylfot seems to have marked Christian sepulchres. For example, a fylfot occurs on either side of an arrow on an ogham stone (Fig. 130, W) in an abandoned graveyard at Aglish, County Kerry, which is believed to belong to the sixth century.

In Pagan Scandinavia it occurs with other symbols (Fig. 130, X), but it there ended by combining with, doubtless (as Count Goblet d’Alviella points out) under the influence of Christianity, the Latin Cross. It ornaments early Danish baptismal fonts, and according to Mr. J. A. Hjaltalin, it “was still used a few years since as a magic sign, but with an obscured or corrupted meaning,” in Iceland. It arrived in that island in the ninth century, A.D.[179]

[179] Karl Blind, “Discovery of Odinic Songs in Shetland,”
_Nineteenth Century_, June 1879, p. 1098.

“Amongst the Slavs and Fins it has not yet been found save in a sporadic state, and about the period of their conversion to Christianity only. We may remark, by the way, that it is very difficult to determine the age and nationality of the terra-cotta or bronze objects on which it has been observed in countries of mixed or superposed races, such as Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, and Bohemia.

“In the Caucasus, M. Chantre has met with it on ear-drops, ornamental plates, sword-hilts, and other objects found in burial-places dating back to the bronze period and the first iron age.

“Amongst the Persians its presence has been pointed out on some Arsacian and Sassanian coins only.

“The Phœnicians do not seem to have known, or, at least, to have used it, except on some of the coins which they struck in Sicily in imitation of Greek pieces.

“It is not met with either in Egypt, in Assyria, or in Chaldæa.”[180]

[180] Goblet d’Alviella, _loc. cit._, p. 40.

The svastika is of common occurrence in India, and is employed alike by Hindus and Buddhists. It was used for ear-marking cattle, appears on the oldest known Indian coin (Fig. 130, N), on which are other interesting symbols, and occurs frequently at the beginning and the end of the most ancient Buddhist inscriptions; similarly it initials the legend SCA. MA. RIA. O.P.N. at Appleby, in Lincolnshire; and at Hathersage, Derbyshire, a fylfot occurs on a church bell in the initial G of the legend Gloria in Excelsis Deo, 1617. (Fig. 130, Y.) The svastika represents, according to Buddhist tradition, the first of the sixty-five marks which distinguished the Master’s feet, and the sauvastika is the fourth and the third, a kind of labyrinth which is akin to the latter. It is inscribed thrice on each sole and on each digit of the famous sculptured footprints of Gautama at Amarávati. (Fig. 130, P.)

“Even at the present day, according to Mr. Taylor, the Hindus, at the time of the new year, paint a svastika in red at the commencement of their account books, and in their weddings and other ceremonies they sketch it in flour on the floors of their houses. It also figures at the end of manuscripts of a recent period—at least under a form which, according to M. Kern, is a development of the tetraskele”[181] (_i.e._, a variety with rounded angles).

[181] _Loc. cit._, p. 42.

The Buddhist women of Thibet ornament their skirts with it, and it is placed on the breast of the dead. A Thibetian form is seen in Fig. 130, R.

The Buddhists introduced it into China (Fig. 130, L) and Japan, where it adorns vases, caskets, and the representations of divinities; it is even figured upon the breasts of certain statues of Buddha. According to M. G. Dumoutier, it is nothing else than the ancient Chinese character _che_, which implies the idea of perfection, of excellence, and would seem to signify the renewal and the endless duration of life. This suggests that the symbol was brought by the Chinese across Asia in their wandering from the West to their present home; but against this view must be put the fact of its absence in Chaldea and Assyria; and we know it has been introduced by the Buddhist missionaries. In Japan, according to M. de Milloué, it represents the number 10,000, which symbolises that which is infinite, perfect, excellent, and is employed as a sign of felicity.

Schliemann[182] also records the fylfot in Africa, on bronzes brought from Coomassie by the English Ashantee expedition in 1874. It is known from South America, on a calabash from the Lenguas tribe; in North America, on pottery from the mounds; and from Yucatan, on Zuñi pottery, as also on the rattles made from a gourd which the Pueblos Indians use in their religious dances. I have heard that bronze representations of the fylfot have been obtained from excavations in Ohio, the details of which will shortly be published.

[182] _Ilios_, 1880, Eng. edn., p. 353.

There can be no doubt that the fylfot throughout Eur-Asia had a symbolic significance, which in many places it still retains. Its longevity is due to this cause alone; occasionally, when it was copied by peoples who did not understand or appreciate its symbolism, it degenerated into a mere ornamental device.

Although all phases of symbolic meaning are interesting, I must restrict myself to origins and to a few of the later developments of this particular symbol.

The interpretations of the fylfot have been particularly varied, and these have been further complicated by this sign having been confounded with the _crux ansata_ of the Egyptians, the _tau_ of the Phœnicians, the _vajra_ of India, the Hammer of Thor, or the Arrow of Perkun. All these have a clearly defined form and meaning, and even if the fylfot “ever replaced one of them—as in the catacombs it sometimes takes the place of the Cross of Christ—it only did so as a substitute, as the symbol of a symbol.”[183]

[183] Goblet d’Alviella, _loc. cit._, p. 45.

Some archæologists have ascribed a phallic import to the fylfot, others recognise in it the symbol of the female sex; “but it may very well have furnished a symbol of fecundity, as elsewhere a common symbol of prosperity and of salvation, without therefore being necessarily a phallic sign.”[184] These are probably secondary meanings superadded to a primitive and less abstract conception.

[184] _Loc. cit._, p. 45.

It has been held to indicate water, storm, lightning, fire, or even the Indian fire-drill, the “mystic double arani,” mentioned in one of the Vedic hymns to Agni, the fire-god. These views have been combated by Greg,[185] Colley March,[186] and Goblet d’Alviella.[187] Mr. Greg contends that the fylfot is a symbol of the air or sky, or rather of the god who rules the phenomena of the atmosphere, by whatever name men may call him. Dr. March’s theory is that it symbolises axial rotation, and not merely gyratory motion; in fact, the axis of the heavens, the celestial pole, round which revolve all the stars of the firmament once in twenty-four hours. This appearance of rotation is especially impressive in the Great Bear, the largest and brightest of the Northern constellations.... About four thousand years ago, the apparent pivot of rotation was not where it is now, but occupied a point at a _Draconis_ much nearer to the Great Bear, whose rapid circular sweep must then have been far more striking than it is at present. In addition to the name Ursa Major, the Latins called this constellation Septentriones, ‘the seven ploughing oxen’ that dragged the stars round the pole, and the Greeks called it ἕλικη, from its vast spiral movement.”[188]

[185] R.P. Greg, “The Fylfot and the Swastika,” _Archæologia_,
1885, p. 293.

[186] H. Colley March, “The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir,”
_Trans. Lanc. and Ches. Ant. Soc._, 1886.

[187] _Loc. cit._, pp. 44 _et seq._

[188] We read in the fifth book of the _Odyssey_ (v. 270)
how Odysseus “sate and cunningly guided the craft with the
helm, nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he viewed the
Pleiads and Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they
likewise call the Wain, which turneth ever in one place, and
keepeth watch upon Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths
of Ocean.”

There is no need to follow Dr. March in his explanation, and we must now turn to the view which has been supported by the greatest number of investigators, who “have succeeded, by their studies of Hindu, Greek, Celtic, and ancient German monuments, in establishing the fact that the gammadion has been, among all these nations, a symbolic representation of the sun or of a solar god.” Count Goblet d’Alviella reinforces this theory by the following considerations:—

1. _The form of the fylfot._—To be convinced that _the branches of the fylfot are rays in motion_ it is only necessary to cast one’s eyes on the manner in which, at all times, the idea of solar movement has been graphically expressed. Thus on a whorl from Troy, crooked rays, turned towards the right, alternate with straight and undulating rays, all of which proceed from the same disc (Fig. 130, E).

2. _The triskele, formed by the same process as the tetraskele, was an undeniable representation of the solar movement._—On coins from Asia Minor the triskele is frequently represented as three legs, and on Celtiberian coins (Fig. 130, K) the face of the sun appears between the legs. On the coins of Aspendus in Pamphylia the three legs are combined with animal representations of the sun, the eagle, the wild boar, and the lion; and on certain coins of Syracuse the triskele permutes with the solar disc above the quadriga and the winged horse. In various places transition occur between the tetraskele and triskele (Fig. 130, I). I have already (p. 213) referred to the ultimate fate of the triskele.

3. _The images oftenest associated with the fylfot are representations of the sun and the solar divinities._—The fylfot and the solar disc are, in a way, counterparts, not only amongst the Greeks, the Romans, and the Celts, but also with the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Japanese. The two are often combined into one figure, and the rays have been converted into horses’ heads, as on Gallo-Belgic coins, or into cocks’ heads and lions’ busts which take the place of the rays of the triskele on Lycian coins. Professor Goodyear points out that the fylfot is associated on Cyprian and Rhodian pottery with the goose (Fig. 130, G), deer, antelope, ibex, ram, horse, lion, etc. All of these are solar animals. It is associated with the lotus (Fig. 130, F), which is also a solar symbol.

4. _In certain symbolic combinations the fylfot alternates with the representation of the sun._—Among the Jains of modern India, a considerable Hindoo sect, the sun appears to be represented by the svastika, and this symbol and the solar disc constantly replace each other on the ancient coins of Ujjain in Central India (Fig. 130, O), and Andhra in the Deccan. Another proof of the equivalence between the fylfot and the sun, or, at least, the light of the sun, is found amongst the coins of the ancient city of Mesembria in Thrace. Professor Percy Gardner states, “Mesembria, as it stands, is simply the Greek word for “noon” or mid-day (μεσημβρία); and there can be no doubt that the Greek inhabitants would suppose their city to be the place of noon; and among the coins of Mesembria occurs ΜΕΣ卐.” Five-rayed and three-rayed (triskele) sun symbols were associated with Apollo on coins of Megara, now Mesembria was founded by a colony of Megarians.

Sometimes three solar discs or three fylfots, or combinations of both, occur (Figs. 130, B, C), and in these Count Goblet d’Alviella sees a symbolic representation of the three diurnal positions of the sun, and suggests that when four symbols occur crosswise, as frequently happens (Fig. 130, D), they “relate to four different positions of the luminary, which would, perhaps, suggest no longer its daily course, but its annual revolution marked by the solstices and equinoxes.”[189]

[189] The importance of astronomical lore in the cults of
ancient civilisations is being more forcibly brought home to
us as the remains of antiquity are being more critically and
sympathetically investigated. Professor D’Arcy W. Thompson,
Junr., has recently published a suggestive paper (“On Bird
and Beast in Ancient Symbolism,” _Trans. Roy. Soc., Edin._,
xxxviii., Pt. 1, 1895, p. 179) in which he suggests that
many of the Greek representations of animals on monument or
coin indicate not the creatures themselves but their stellar
namesakes. M. J. Svoronos (“Sur la signification des types
monétaires des anciens,” _Bull. Correspondance Hellénique_,
1894) had simultaneously and independently arrived at a similar
conclusion, but D’Arcy Thompson carries the argument a step
further, and attempts to show that the associated emblems
correspond to the positions relative to one another of the
heavenly bodies, in some cases to the configuration of the sky
at critical periods of the year, or at the festival seasons of
the cities to which the coins belong.

“The stellar symbolism that I here advocate is, I maintain,
a different thing from the sun-myths, dawn-myths, and so
forth, which are now to a large extent deservedly repudiated.
We cannot ascribe to the civilised nations of antiquity the
puerile conceptions of nature that are congruent with a
stage of awakening intelligence and with the crude results
of untrained observation. Rather are we dealing with the
elaborated gain of ages of scientific knowledge, with the
thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented to
particular stars, or to critical points in the journey of the
sun; whose representations of Art, on frieze and pediment, in
tragedy and epic, were governed by what would at first appear
to be a tyrannical convention, which convention, however, so
far from hampering their genius, seems, under the influence
of a wholesome restraint, to have moulded their art into more
beautiful, more poetic, and more sanctified forms.... The
dominant priesthood, whose domain was knowledge, holding the
keys of treasured learning opened the lock with chary hand, and
veiled plain speech in fantastic allegory. In such allegory
Egyptian priests spoke to Greek travellers, who came to them as
Dervish-pilgrims or Wandelnde Studenten.... At Olympia, in the
beginning of each Leap-year cycle, the noblest youth of Greece
raced, round the symbolic pillars, their horses emblematic of
the Horses of the Sun; thereby glorifying a God whom they thus
ignorantly worshipped. Even so, we read in the Second Book
of Kings [xvii. 16; xxi. 3, 5; xxiii. 5] how their Phœnician
cousins worshipped with like ceremony the same God. And all the
while, in the evening and the morning, priests and πρόσπολοι
watched, measured, and compared the rising and setting of sun
and stars, in temples that were astronomical observatories, to
the glory of a religion whose mystery was astronomic science.”

The fylfot would seem to occasionally replace the moon. On coins of Cnossus, in Crete (Fig. 130, M), the Lunar Crescent takes the place of the solar disc in the centre of the fylfot; in such instances it may have been applied to the revolutions or even the phases of the moon.

Various suggestions have been made with regard to the reversed fylfot or sauvastika, but it is still uncertain whether this is of primary (Max Müller, Birdwood, Colley March) or secondary importance (Greg, d’Alviella).[190]

[190] P. Gardner, “Ares as a Sun-god,” _Numismatic Chronicle_,
xx., N.S., 1880, p. 59.

The last theory of the origin of the fylfot that I need mention is that propounded by Professor Goodyear[191] in the following words:—“There is no proposition in archæology which can be so easily demonstrated as the assertion that the swastika is originally a fragment of the Egyptian meander, provided Greek geometric vases are called in evidence.” Professor A.S. Murray long since suggested that the “crosses which Dr. Schliemann calls _svastikas_, but which, in fact, appear to be only the simplest form or element of the meander pattern.”[192] Sir G. Birdwood says: “I believe the Buddhist swastika to be the origin of the key-pattern ornament of Chinese decorative art.”[193] Professor Goodyear makes him say that of Greek decorative art as well.

[191] _The Grammar of the Lotus_, p. 352.

[192] “On the Pottery of Cyprus,” Appendix to General L. P. di
Cesnola’s _Cyprus_, 1877, p. 410.

[193] _The Industrial Arts of India_, 1880, i. p. 107.