Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

BOOK
II.
MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
expect, this myth was transferred to the Virgin Mary, and
the knight whose ring- she refuses to surrender looks upon
himself as betrothed to the mother of God, and dedicates
himself to her by taking the monastic vows. In the older
Saga of the Faroese this ring appears as that of Thorgerda,
who allows Earl Hakon to draw it from her statue after he
had besought her for it with many tears. This ring Hakon
gives to Sigmund Brestesson, bidding him never to part with
it. When Sigmund afterwards refused to yield it to Olaf,
the Norwegian warned him that it should be his bane, and
the prediction was fulfilled when, for the sake of this ring,
Sigmund was murdered in his sleep. 1
Finally, the symbol
of the Phallos in its physical characteristics suggested the
form of the serpent, which thus became the emblem of life
and healing, and as such appears by the side of the Hellenic
Asklepios, and in the brazen crucified serpent venerated by
the Jewish people until it was destroyed by Hezekiah. 2
Here then we have the key to that tree and serpent wor-
ship which has given rise to much ingenious and not alto-
> This ring is the ' teterrima causa ' of
the war of Troy (Horace, Sat. i. 3, 107),
and carries with it the same doom
which the marriage of Brynhild brought
to Sigurd the Volsung. With these
legends may be compared the story of
the crown of the hero Astrabakos (Herodotos,
vi. 69), the counterpart of the
Scottish myth of Tamlane. Sir W.
Scott (Border Minstrelsy, li. 266) cites
from Gervase of Tilbury an account of
the Dracae, a sort of water spirits, who
inveigled women and children into the
recesses which they inhabit, beneath
lakes and rivers, by floating past them
on the surface of the water, in the shape
of gold rings or cups ; and remarks that
'this story in almost all its parts is
current in both the Highlands and Lowlands
of Scotland, with no other varia-
tion than the substitution of Fairies for
Dracse, and the cavern of a hill [the
Horselbcrg] for that of a river.'
2 This symbol of the serpent reappears
in the narrative of the temptation
and fall of Eve, the only difference
being that the writer, far from sharing
the feelings of the devotees of Baal-
peor, regarded their notions and their
practices with the utmost horror; and
thus his narrative exhibits the animal
indulgence inseparable from those
idolatrous rites, as destructive alike to
the body and the mind of man. The
serpent is therefore doomed to perpetual
contempt, and invested with some of the
characteristics of Vritra, the snakeenemy
of Indra. But Vritra is strictly
the biting snake of darkness ; and it
is scarcely necessary to say, that the
Egyptian serpent is the result of the same
kind of metaphor which has given to the
elephant the epithet of anguimanus.
The phallic tree is also introduced into
the narrative of the book of Genesis
but it is here called a tree not of life
but of the knowledge of good and evil,
that knowledge which dawns in the
mind with the first consciousness of
difference between man and woman.
In contrast with this tree of carnal
indulgence tending to death is the tree
of life, denoting the higher existence
for which man was designed, and which
would bring with it the happiness and
the freedom of the children of God. In
the brazen serpent of the Pentateuch
the two emblems of the cross and
serpent, the quiescent and energising
Phallos, are united.
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