which the priest alone can lawfully touch. At particular seasons the god- CHAP 1 dess is supposed to be present in this sanctuary: she is then reverentially drawn in her car by heifers, and is followed by the priest. During this period unbounded festivity prevails, and all wars are at an end; until the priest restores the deity to the temple, satiated with the conversation of mortals. Immediately the chariot, the garments, and even the goddess herself, are plunged beneath the waters of a secret lake' Here we have the precise ceremonial of Egypt and Hindostan, associated with the holy island, the symbolical heifer, and the small lake which in the Mysteries was employed to typify the deluge.

(2.) Equally is the continuance of the Ark in the great deep shadowed out to us in the character of the principal goddess of Paganism...

- Isi or Lachsmi is said to be Narayani or she that floats upon the surface of the waters: and she is described, as remaining for a season concealed like a jewel in the recesses of the ocean3. This is that mysterious concealment; which is alluded to in the history of Saturn, and which conferred the name of Leto or Latona upon her who securely lay hid in the floating island of Delós or Chemmis. In a similar manner Proserpine is described by Homer as sporting with the sea nymphs; while Isis is represented as taking a long and wearisome voyage by seat. As for Venus, she

Tacit. de mor. Germ. c. 40.

2 Since this islet is declared by Tacitus to be in the open ocean and not in the Baltic, I think it almost certain, that it must have been the modern Heligoland. The island exactly answers to the description of Tacitus: and its name, which signifies in the German Holy Island, seems to intimate the religious purposes to which it was devoted. It was one of the many sacred islands of the Moon, which were used for celebrating the Mysteries of the ship-goddess. We have another of them on the coast of Northumber land, which still also retains the appellation of Holy Island. By a very common transfer, when Christianity prevailed over Paganism, this sacred ground, once the sanctuary of the navicular Isi or Ceridwen, became the scite of the first cathedral church of our northern diocese of Durham. Hence we may account for the close resemblance between the legend of St. Cuthbert and the mythologic history of Osiris or Bacchus. I shall therefore take occasion to notice it. Vide infra book v. c. 8. §. II. 7..”

i

3 Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 74, 134 Asiat. Res.. vol. v. p.. 297.:

Hom. Hymn. in Cer. apud Paus, Messen. p. 273. Hyg. Fab. 277.

BOOK V.

on all occasions very eminently appears as a maritime goddess. In the various medals of this deity which have come down to us, we sometimes find her sitting upon a dolphin and holding a dove in her lap; sometimes rising out of the sea in a shell supported by two Tritons; sometimes seated in a chariot drawn by two sea-horses; sometimes riding upon a sea-goat, and attended by Nereids and Cupids mounted upon dolphins; and sometimes borne by a single Triton, while she holds in her hand what has usually been called a shield on which is depicted a head, but what is really the sacred Argha exhibiting the head of Osiris. Sometimes again her float ing chariot is drawn by doves: and sometimes, mounted upon sea-horses, she seems to skim over the waves of the ocean, her head covered with a veil which swells like a sail in the wind, a Cupid swimming at her side, and an oar placed at her foot. Agreeably to these modes of representing her, she is celebrated by the poets as the regent of the sea, and is distinguished by titles expressive either of her existence in the sea or her attitude of floating upon its surface. Such also is the character of Diana; who, as an infernal goddess, identifies herself with Proserpine seated in the navicular Moon of the river Styx. Artemidorus, Pausanias, and Strabo, all concur in bestowing upon her the appellation of Limnatis or the mari time deity in an ancient inscription preserved by Gruter, she is called the queen of the waves: and Apollonius describes Orpheus as invoking her under the name of Neossous or the preserver of ships3,

(3.) Nor is the emerging of the Ark out of the ocean, or its mystical birth at the close of the deluge, left unnoticed in the fabulous history of the great mother.

The Indian Isi or Lacshmi is represented as being the daughter of Samudr or Oceanus: Venus is said to have been born out of the sea: and Isis is described by Apuleius as emerging out of the sea, when she ap

'Banier. Mythol. vol. ii. p. 335, 336.

Lucret. de rer. nat. lib. i. ver. 3, 8, 9. Mus. Her. et Leand. ver. 250. She is denominated Pontia, Epipontia, Pelagia, and the like.

'Artemid. Oniroc. lib. ii. c. 42. Paus. Corinth. p. 98. Lacon. p. 208. Messen. p. 222. Strab. Geog. lib. viii. p. 361. Gruter. Inscrip. p. 37. Apoll. Argon. lib. i. ver. 570.

peared to him previous to his initiation into the Orgies'. This last parti- CHAP. II. cular seems to intimate to us, that the figure of the goddess was thus exhi bited to the aspirants when about to be admitted to the regeneration of the Mysteries. Gradually rising out of a mimic representation of the sea, her shining image, decorated with the lunar boat, gleamed in pantomime before the dazzled eyes of her enraptured devotees.

2. The Ark was born out of the retiring deluge on the lofty summit of mount Ararat, which was thence esteemed a mountain of the Moon and which was the prototype of the various lunar mountains that occur in so many different parts of the world: and the period of its mystic nativity was specially marked by the emission of the dove.

Agreeably to this part of its history, the Indian Isi or Parvati, though the offspring of the ocean, is yet venerated as the mountain-born goddess: and the mountain, which is said to be the place of her nativity, is the sacred hill Meru or Cailasa. Here she sits sublime, either enthroned with her consort the navicular Siva, or surrounded by the hero-gods in the act of adoration'. But Meru, as we have already seen, coincides geographically with that lofty region, where the Hindoo mythologists place the garden of Paradise, and where they believe the ark of Menu to have rested after the deluge. Meru therefore is clearly the local Ararat of the Brahmens: whence the ocean-born ship-goddess on its summit must inevitably, so far as I can judge, be the Ark on the top of Ararat.

The same ideas were entertained respecting the Phrygian Cybelè; whose consecrated abode was thought to be the highest peak of Ida, just as the favourite seat of Isi is the Ida-vratta which crowns mount Meru. This goddess, according to Diodorus, was exposed when an infant on the summit of the mountain whence she derived her future appellation: and, from this circumstance, in addition to her name of Cybele, she was likewise called the montane mother or the mother on the mountain3. The fable of her infancy relates to her mystic birth, which necessarily caused her to be

Asiat. Res. vol. v. p. 297. Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 10, 141. Orph. Hymn. liv. Mus. Her. et Leand. ver. 249. Apul. Metam. lib. xi.

2 Moor's Hind. Panth. p. 151, 161. Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 252. vol. xi. p. 111, 112. ' Ogesar untipa. Diod. Bibl. lib. iii. p. 191, 192.

3

BOOK V. represented as a child: and her exposure on the mountain is the resting of the Ark on the top of Ararat.

It was with a similar reference to the Armenian mountain, that the seaborn Venus was worshipped on the Phenician Lebanon and the Sicilian Eryx. Lebanon signifies the mountain of the Moon: and on the summit of this hill, the local Ararat of the country, Venus, under the name of Architis or the goddess of the Argha, was adored in conjunction with the diluvian Adonis or Osiris'. Eryx was another of her high places, distinguished by a very famous temple of the goddess, and noted for the celebration of two most extraordinary festivals. These were denominated the feast of the sending out, and the feast of the return. During the first, Venus was thought to fly away over the sea: during the second, she was believed to return to her mountain sanctuary. I think it evident, that the two festivals related to the history of the Noëtic dove: for that bird, as we may collect from the Hindoo fable of the Argha and the dove, was deemed a form of the ship-goddess. But the point does not rest solely upon mythologic analogy: it is established beyond a doubt by the external part of the ceremony. In the region of mount Eryx, as in those of Palestine and Syria, doves were accounted sacred: and, at the time when Venus was fabled to take her departure, some of these holy birds were let loose and suffered to fly away from the island; but one of them was always observed, at the proper season, to come back from the sea and to fly to the temple of the goddess. The bird was of course properly trained to perform its part with all due decorum; and we have no reason to disbelieve the literal circumstance of its return: but, when we recollect the navicular character of Venus, and when we call to mind that Isi and Juno and Proserpine and Semiramis were all either changed into a dove or connected with one, we can have little difficulty in comprehending the purport of these remarkable Sicilian festivals.

Juno on the summit either of mount Ida or mount Olympus is another example of the ship-goddess resting on the top of Ararat: for Ida and

• Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. c. 21.

Athen. Deipnos. lib. ix. p. 395. Ælian. Var. Hist. lib. i. c. 15.

Olympus are the Indian Ida and Ilapu; whence Sir William Jones rightly CHAP. III. compares the mountain-born Parvati to the Olympian queen of the immortals'.

3. The Ark was for a season the common receptacle of those, who afterwards became the hero-gods of the Gentiles: and, since both they and all the rudiments of a new order of things were produced out of its womb, it was figuratively the universal mother of gods and of men and of the whole world.

Such exactly is the character of the ship-goddess. Plutarch tells us, that the Egyptians esteemed Isis the great receptacle: and he speaks of her as being in their opinion the mundane house or habitation of Horus, the seat of generation, the nurse of the world, the universal recipient *. Simplicius ascribes the same functions to the Syrian mermaid goddess Derceto or Atargatis. He represents her as being the place or habitation of the gods: and he adds, that, like the Egyptian Isis, she contained inclosed within her (what he calls) the specialities or proper natures of many deities3. In a similar manner, the Orphic poet styles Vesta the house of the blessed gods and the firm support of mortals: and, in another of his hymns, he celebrates Night or the black Venus, as the mother both of gods and of men, as the generative source of all things. Rhea or Cybelè was also accounted the mother of the gods: and Venus and Ceres were equally deemed the nurses or recipients of that ancient personage, who is literally described as having been exposed at sea in an ark'. The same ideas have likewise prevailed among the Celts, the Goths, the Japanese, and the Hindoos. Ceridwen is represented as a personification of the generative powers, or as the being from which all things are produced. Frea, the consort of Odin, was denominated the mother of the gods". Quanwon is venerated by the Japanese as the happy mother of many a deified hero, and as an emblematical representation of the birth of the gods