Symbol-psychology, a new interpretation of race-traditions

Contents

CHAP • PAGE

Foreword iii

I. Introductory i

Foreword

THERE is but little to say in placing this book before its readers. The author has started from the premises that there is an infinite God, who can by infinite means reveal Himself to His children, and that He has done so; that we are all His children, and that we have always been; that Greek and Roman, Jew and Gentile, are His children, and that He tells unto them all the wonderful story of the birth and growth of their souls, and to each child in his own sweet mother-tongue, and by symbols intelligible to him and conveying to him, either consciously or subconsciously, the same manner of instruction.

FOREWORD

A few of the symbols known to the race have been gathered together here, and an effort has been made to show their intrinsic coherence — with what success the reader will judge. And if the author has failed to impress upon the reader the value of this symbol or of that, it will be a source of regret to him for his lack of ability to express what was in his mind; but if he has failed to impress upon the mind of his reader the fundamental thought of the unity of the race and of the Fatherhood of God, then will he have failed in the actual purpose of the book — failed in showing that God talks to all His children and tells them all the same sweet story of His fatherhood to them, and of their childhood to Him — unto each as he can comprehend, and unto each in the tender accents of his own native mother-tongue.

May the little book be a help to those who vi

FOREWORD

are studying the Works and the Word of God, and may the Wonder Book indeed be a "Lamp unto their feet and a Light unto their path.''

Adolph Roeder.

Orange, N. J.,

In the summer, 1903.

INTRODUCTORY

AT the outset, the question arises: "What jl\ is Symbol -Psychology?" In the first place, we are aware that every force in Nature leaves behind it certain traces of its work. The forces which have helped in the formation of the earth's surface — wind, water, heat, light, gravitation, the vegetative and the animal forces — have written the story of the world's creation in legible lines all over the face and substance of the globe. Line upon line, precept upon precept, the attentive student is learning to read more and more of the history of the life of the globe from the traces which the forces of life have written into rock and tree, into sea-shore and crag, into bone and muscle, into hair and skin. Each line, each cluster of lichen, each group of hairs, each dent in tooth or bone, symbolizes a physical process. It tells the story of physical forces at work upon physical structures, and the progress made and the design involved.

In the same way, in the world of mental things, a series of forces has been at work, and has left distinct traces of itself. The forces of the mental world are not yet as familiar as those of its physical counterpart ; they are more obscure, more occult, more intimately related to and interwoven with man's own mentality, and they therefore escape his notice, growing elusive from sheer familiarity. Yet there are direct lines of force growing as legitimately from a dual centre, as all known physical forces grow from their dual centre — heat and light. Radiating out from volition and intellection, or from the potentialities called Will and Understanding (whether posited in the sense of Schopenhauer and Spencer or of Berkeley and Swedenborg), are distinct sets of forces called reason, imagination, habit, language, custom, tradition, art, science, logic. They are as distinct and legitimate a series as are magnetism, electricity, gravitation, etc., their physical confreres and shadows, and as subject to law.

In whatever sense mental and physical forces are granted, the facts required for our present purpose remain the same — namely, that mental forces leave traces of their work behind, which traces resemble and correspond to traces left on physical structures by physical forces.

Every student of language knows that he is investigating certain definite forces and their habits as soon as he scrutinizes at all 3 closely the habits of words and of letters. For instance, let us assume that a student is comparing two languages, say German and English. He has found out the fact that the two languages are closely related, and has devised a theory to cover that relationship to his satisfaction. In his further investigation he encounters a law familiar to him from previous study of other languages — namely, the law of persistence. He finds that the forces active in creating the thing called language show undeniable tokens of persistence in somewhat the same way as matter in general shows tokens of a common factor called resistance. That is to say, he has noted that the root-form selected by the race-mind for certain elementary words does not alter. That the Shemite, for instance, establishes the letter B or P as the basis of the word Father, and the letter M as the basic element of the word Mother, 4 and that upon this radical there has gradually been built a persistent word which shows in Greek as Pater, in Latin as Pater, in German as Vater, and in English as Father, while the other shows in Greek as Meter, in Latin as Mater, in German as Mutter, and in English as Mother. Putting this side by side with about twenty-five or thirty such persistent roots, the student has reason to think that the forces active in the creation of the thing called language have certain elements of persistence about them. He now proceeds to note in what way the force called persistence becomes subject to modification, and he proposes to trace this in a comparison of the two languages, German and English. He notes, first, that certain words are exactly alike:

Hand hand

Land land

Band band, etc. ;

SYMBOL-PSYCHOLOGY that in certain others there are slight changes,

Hut hat

Hund hound

that is, vowel changes, and he delights in noting that his irregular English nouns, such as mice, oxen, feet, geese, etc., were "Made in Germany." But this, although sufficient to prove the element of persistence, is not sufficient to show a law of modification. He now takes up such words as these:

Tisch dish

Fabrik fabric

They are evidently the same word, but when the German says Tisch, he means the table, and when the Englishman says dish, he means the thing on the table; when the German says Fabrik, he means the factory; when the Anglo-Saxon says fabric, he means the thing that comes from the factory. This 6 discovery, fortified by a dozen or more similar ones, confirms the student in the statement that "Where the German leaves off, the Anglo-Saxon begins " ; and he has found, actually stumbled upon, a law in language, the exact counterpart of a psychological law of ethnology, for the German does carry a thing theoretically up to a certain point, and there he drops it, and right at this point the Anglo-Saxon gathers it up and starts in with it. Witness the whole history of Philosophy, of Religion, of Literature, and it will bear out this point and establish the law of persistence of mental forces and the manner in which ethnic cells — for each nation is but a set of cells in the giant unit called Race — will receive and transmit a thought-impulse and leave permanent traces of this fact in the structure of language as permanent as are traces of fire in lava and of erosion in a deserted river-bed.

Again, the student becomes interested in the general law of inversion. He has traced that law through a number of instances, some of them merely pleasant pastime, such as these:

Live Evil

Nebel Leben

and therefore easily and properly set aside. But he has reached others, made of sterner and more real word fabric. Thus he has noted that the Shemitic and Sanscrit root T B, which means ''good," is inverted in several language-families into B T or bd- (as in bad, bose, etc.), and means the opposite of good; that the Aryan root K- B-R, which refers to cover, or to raise a mound, when inverted to K-R-B- refers to uncovering, or to depressing, or digging a grave (grab, grave, grube, Cerberus, grapho, and a multitude of other words growing 8 from this root), and that another inversion of the root, B-R-K-, refers to the fact that a thing, once covered, may break forth (or uncover itself) ; and in noting this and similar series, the student has been mentally prepared to see that, there is a law of inversion, and that if he chooses to follow that law along, he will find it to be as true (and true for the same reasons) as is the law in Mathematics that a quantity changes its sign in crossing the equator; thus, 4 + 6 = 10 is the same as 4=10 — 6. He may discover a natural factor through which this law manifests itself. He may, on due investigation, ascertain this series of facts: the word folio (leaf) or the root F-L in Latin, turns about to L-F (or leaf) in English. In doing so, it passes through a process common among the uncultured classes — that is to say, a certain stratum of human society turns words about. Thus, in the South the 9 word "ask" is frequently turned to "aks" on the lips of the unlettered, and the word "thief" is with equal frequency pronounced "fieth" (so "ossifer" for "officer," "anenome" for "anemone"). But the fact that the means whereby the turn is made are known does not explain its psychological origin. Why do the uneducated classes turn words around? Why not do some one of the many other things with them which are within the reach of possibility? The fact remains that, by this means or that, words turn around, just as the entire structure of language turned around at one period of the world's history, and there arose a great branch of the human family that wrote from left to right, whereas all writing up to that time had been from right to left. The fact that the world, at the period of time when this change took place, had sunk to the lowest dregs of vulgarity and degra- 10 dation simply confirms the law that when people are uncultured they say things backward. The point to be established is that there is a law of inversion in language, as there is in Mathematics, in Light (the eye inverts the image), in Music, and in every department of human activity, mental and volitional, and this law is here simply introduced to serve as a specimen of a series of laws in every way coinciding with and corresponding to specific series of laws as discoverable in and applicable to physical substances, forces, and phenomena.

There is evidently a law of persistence, of transmission, of inversion, etc., in language, as evidently as there is a law of gravitation, of capillarity, of cohesion, etc., in physical substances.

Having established this point, the student is prepared to realize that there are laws and that he can trace these laws in the makii ings and markings of words, as he can trace the laws governing matter in the makings and markings of rocks.

It is but natural that the student should pass from the consideration of single words and letters to the construction of stories and tales from these letters and words, just as he would pass from the consideration of single rocks to the study of stratification and from the consideration of a single tree to the study of the botanical and geographical distribution of that type of tree.

He is urged to this particular view of the case by various incidents, the most prominent of which is the recurrence of certain typical stories in all countries and among all nations. As a student of geology, finding cobbles at the foot of a mountain-range in North America, and again in South America, and again in Switzerland, will naturally conclude that the mountain-range and the cobble - stone stand in some fixed relationship to each other, so the student who finds in a series of two hundred and fifty odd stories gathered from all countries a Twin Brother Idea, and a Captive Maiden Idea, and an Impostor Idea, and a Witch Idea, etc., all given in almost unchanging sequence, will come to the conclusion that there is some intrinsic nexus in the sequence, and that the mind of the Race has submissively recognized that nexus and tacitly admitted it.

To the study of these common factors in the myths, sagas, legends, and folk-lore of the peoples does this work address itself. In doing so, the author has found the following common factors which enter into the construction of the traditions, and has divided them into three cycles, which may in general be called :

I. The Creative Cycle.

II. The Constructive Cycle.

III. The Reconstructive Cycle.

Under the heading of the first cycle there are to be grouped the following common factors :

i. Creation Stories.

2. Garden (Paradise, Hesperides) Stories.

3. Flood Tales.

4. Fratricide.

5. The Building of a Tower or City.

6. The Tale of Restoration.

7. The Story of Captivity.

The second cycle, called the Constructive, may be arranged under the following heads :

1. The Twin Brother Story.

2. The Man-Animal Story.

3. The Life-Token.

4. Journeyings and Combats.

5. The Captive Maiden and the Sleeper Story.

6. God, Heroes, Dwarfs, and Giants.

7. The Architecture of Souls.

The third, or Reconstructive Cycle, most naturally falls under these heads: 14 i. The Hero or Savior.

2. Miracles attending the Hero or Savior.

3. Transfiguration.

4. Sacrifice and Death.

5. Resurrection and Ascension.

6. Overthrow of the Enemy.

7. The New Order of Things.

Equal interest attaches to all three of these cycles, but the second is the one that has received least attention at the hands of writers hitherto. It is to this, therefore, that it is proposed to confine the present work. We, therefore, take up the second cycle in its order.

II The Twin Brother Story

IN order that the method of interpretation, whereby this work will endeavor to solve a few of the problems presented by myths and symbols may come clearly before the reader, a word on the idea of Dualism is essential as preliminary to the introduction of the facts in hand. If we persist in the method of tracing Laws and Forces and Conditions pointed out in the first chapter, the student of things mental, who follows the general method of analogy or correspondence, will first investigate the Law of Duality as set forth and demonstrated in things physical. He opens his investigation at the foot of the ladder and calls to mind that at the bot- 16 torn of things there is a primal duality — the duality of Substance and Force. Whatever theory or school of philosophy may be used in interpreting the origins, causes, and interrelations of these two entities, they two remain in the end as an ultimate analysis — there is a thing (or series of things) called force, and there is a thing (or series of things) called substance. Philosophically, we reduce this idea to the ultimate analysis of a thing acting or an agent, and a thing being acted upon or a recipient (reagent). In all cases, and under all known conditions, there is an agent and a reagent. The existence of this duality has begotten and warranted a second duality, since in considering these two things, Force and Substance, the thinker may reason on and emphasize the operation of Force upon substance or the reaction of substance against force. If he reasons predominantly in the one way, we call his reasoning and his 17 method of procedure synthetic; if he proceeds in the second way, we call it analytic. Stepping from this fundamental rung of the ladder to the next one, the student is immediately impressed with the fact that Force is dual in its presentation, in that it has a positive and a negative manifestation. So distinct is this duality that we readily recognize it in attraction and repulsion, in condensation and evaporation, in the peculiar duality of magnetism and electricity, which we have called positive and negative for want of a different (and possibly a better) term. And as he passes upward into the study of structure in substance, he has unfolded before him a peculiarly striking manifestation of duality in sexuality; whether he looks upon it in its lowest form of cast and matrix, or in a higher form of pollen and pistil, or in the highest form of male and female, there is the definite idea of agent and reagent, of 18 actor and recipient elaborated in kaleidoscopic multiplicity and in bewildering and fascinating detail.

And passing from this second rung of the ladder, he ascends the third ; he passes from physical things to things metaphysical, from things material to things spiritual, from body to mind, and instantly mind presents the same phenomena which the body presented — he is faced by what the philosophers have been impelled to call the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real, the interior and the exterior, the Atma and the Linga, or any other duality that may serve in the particular system of philosophy to which he has chosen to subscribe. There is a world within man and a world without ; there is a side to man that turns to the inner world, and there is a side that turns to the outer. And here is the elementary form of dualism from which we wish to set out. 19

At an early day in the development of expression the Race- Brain (for the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts, and the Totality of a Race- Brain soon shapes and forms expressions for the aggregate thoughtprocesses of individual brains) projected the concept of Dualism into its statements of mentality. Into its religious atmosphere it projected the Dualism ultimately set forth in the Christian mythology as God and the Devil, or in the Persian as Ormuzd (Ahuramazda) and Ahriman, or in other mythologies under other names. Into traditional symbolism this thought was transmitted by the Twin Brother or the Two Brother Idea. In all lands and under all skies men tell the story of the Brothers, in most cases of the Twin Brothers. Into the Fairy Tale these brothers came usually without a name, simply as the Two Brothers — the Elder Brother and the Younger Brother, 20 but in some cases they have names. A German Fairy Tale calls them Water-Peter and Water -Paul, and, again, John Waterspring and Caspar Waterspring. The Swedish folktale calls them Silverwhite and Littlewarder ; in East Gothland they appear as Lillekort and Lavring; in Lithuania as Strong-Hans and Strong-Peter; in a French tale, transmitted from an Italian source, they are called Carmelovo and Fonzo (probably Alphonso), and under a variety of other names in folktales, ranging from the extreme northern boundary of Russia to the southernmost boundaries of Abyssinia, and from the Western Pyrenees to the Cliff Dwellings of the Zuni Indians in Arizona. Roman mythology furnishes the twins Romulus and Remus; Greece, Castor and Pollux; the Anglo-Saxon stock supplies Hengist and Horsa ; the Navajo Indian submits the twins Hasjelti and Hostjogon; our own revelation gives us Cain and

Abel, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Aharon, Peter and Andrew, Jacob (James) 1 and John. 2

Remarkable as is the fact of this dual

1 The name James in the New Testament (the brother of John, and also the other two men, so called), is given in the Greek as Jacob, and the writer sees no reason why a precedent established in 1611 should be adhered to in 1903, since King James, who reigned in 161 1, and whom the translators of the Present Authorized Version may have had reason to thus honor, has long since passed beyond the necessity of such honors. We, therefore, revert to the original form. In every case (in the New Testament), where James is spoken of, the Greek name is Jacob.

2 The writer realizes that the insertion of this last list of names in the same catalogue with the Twin Brothers or the Two Brothers of Saga, or Maehrchen, or Folk-lore, militates strongly against the historic sense, and the reader may feel a sense of hesitation about Peter and Andrew, Jacob and Esau, Jacob and John, and Moses and Aharon, which he may not feel with Romulus and Remus, and but faintly with Hengist and Horsa. Yet it is well to remember that an epic like our Old and New Testament weaves so much legend and tradition about the actual historic figure, that that figure becomes less and less reliable. The representation itself, the fact that in the narratives involving the Two Brothers, or the Twin Brother idea, there appear again series of common factors is yet more recentral historic verity of Moses, and of the fact that he led a handful of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, would better be gleamed from Herodotus or Josephus, and that thread held as a background for the story of the Exodus, against which the miracles and marvels, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies, and the brother Aharon and other details, can be held as traditional symbolism, rather than an effort of a ruthless Deity to thrust incredible things upon His children as history. When the symbols are properly read, the Divinity of them and of Race-Intuition will become apparent, while if they be improperly read, they become incongruous. Read our modern American historically fashioned records of Uncle Sam, John Bull, the Russian Bear, Tammany Tiger, and other types correctly, according to Race-Intuition, and you have instructive history; read them with too much literalness, and you have rather serious historic and ethnologic results.

Limit the consideration to the particular case of Peter and Andrew, Jacob and John, a quartette of two dual types. Take them as legendary reiteration, and they become intelligible types in the drama of the Christ Life; but agonize over them as markable. If we examine the Twin Brother stories closely we will find in them a series of factors common to almost all of them, and singly absent from but few. Let me recall to the reader the familiar stories of historic figures, and your results will be simply chronologic nightmares. For the historian it suffices that the Saviour selected some plain, simple fishermen on the shores of Galilee, to help Him preach His Doctrine, and the historian " submits as names these twelve," and then he may select twelve names from the conflicting lists. But the symbolist drops the historic thread and takes the two sets of brothers and classifies them with other sets created by the Race- Brain in its effort to solve the mystery of Dualism, and the Peter of whom he speaks can go to the sea and gather up a fish and take a bit of silver from its mouth and can perform other miracles, which the historic Peter may lay no claim to, and he can perform them with the same ease wherewith Wasserpeter and Wasserpaul perform them, as will be seen when we get to the stories proper. And the German Wasserpeter and Wasserpaul are not as far distant from the Peter and Paul of symbolic history as might be supposed, from historic association and historic appearances.

Romulus and Remus, of Castor and Pollux, of Hodur and Baldur, of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, of Fafner and Fasolt.

Romulus and Remus are born of a Vestal Virgin, Rhea Sylvia. The God of War, Mars, is their father. They are exposed to die. A she-wolf mothers them and they grow up to be mighty warriors, the founders of Rome. When Rome is built and its wall finished, Remus criticises the height of the wall. He says it is not sufficiently high: " I can leap over it."

"Do so," replies the angered Romulus. Remus does so.

" Leap back," comes the voice of Romulus from behind the wall. Remus does so, and leaps upon his brother's sword.

Now take the story of the Dioscuri, the

twins, Castor and Pollux. They are born

of the virgin Leda, to whom Jove has come

in the form of a swan. Those who have followed the symbolism of antiquity have noted the frequent amours of Jove, and many of our modern writers have made unkind comment on them. But this comment is due to the fact that the investigator of to-day is inclined to take things literally in an anomalous way. It is quite common for the student to find a dissertation on the lack of conjugal fidelity on the part of Jove, as though the writer actually believed the various stories of Leda, Danae, Semele, and many others, for he treats them as though they were historic facts. But, surely, no modern writer would for a moment admit the fact that Jupiter loves Danae as a golden rain, Leda as a swan, etc. And if he does not admit the fact, why base a deduction of faithlessness on an unaccredited fact? If Perseus was not really born of Danae, the carefully guarded virgin by reason of a golden rain; if Castor and Pollux were not 26 really born of Leda, why accuse Jove of infidelity and talk absurd vacillation about him? Why not understand these things as men like Socrates, or Plato, or Seneca understand them? The Greeks and Romans, who devised and believed these stories, were the men who gave the world of to-day its geometry, its art, its music, its laws, and its roads. Will any one seriously maintain that these people of brilliant and keen intellect actually believed that Leda gave birth to twins, that the twins were born of eggs, that Jupiter was changed into a swan? Would not every intelligent Greek know that the root Kygnos (cygnus, Swan) is the same as the root gignomai and gignosko, and that it is a root involving intuitive knowledge in exactly the same way as the word Swan (Schwan) in German is an old root from Schwanen, to have premonitions, to know intuitively, and would not every intelligent 27

Greek know that the Deity touches men's souls, the virgin soil of men's souls, in various ways ; that with some the Divine comes as a sense of stern and unflinching justice, that punishes, avenges, destroys, and that hence the virgin Vestal bears sons of Mars, the God of War ; and that with others God comes as an intuition, as an intuitive Something, and the story of Leda and the Swan is born ; and, again, with others, God comes by a " still, small voice," by a perception of what is true and beautiful, and that perception comes to the innermost and most deeply hidden recesses of the soul, and some one writes the story of Jove and Danae and the golden rain. If these stories be read from the view-point of the men who wrote them, the many relations of Jove to virgins will become symbols of the varying influx of the Divine Life into virgin human soul-soil, and they will cease to be exegeses of questionable morality, such 28 as minds steeped in an atmosphere of indifferent aesthetics have read into them.

But to return. Leda gives birth to two eggs, and from these are born Castor and Pollux, also great warriors. They presently give battle to their enemies, and so attached are they to each other that the surviving twin grieves sorely over the death of. his brother, so sorely that the Gods in pity allow him to give his life for his brother, not always, but at intervals, so that Castor and Pollux live at alternate periods, in some of the stories, alternate days.

Take Hodur and Baldur. They, too, are twins. They are the sons of Odin. Baldur is Baldur the Beautiful ; Hodur is Hodur the Blind. Far in the recesses of the Norse Raceconsciousness the inevitable death of the one brother is known and felt. And the Scandinavian thus weaves the myth:

"When it had been made known that 29 nothing in the world would harm Baldur, it became a favorite pastime of the Gods at their meetings to get Baldur to stand up and serve them as a mark, some hurling darts at him, some stones, while others hewed at him with their swords and battle-axes; for, whatever they did, none of them could harm him, and this was regarded by all as a great honor shown to Baldur. But when Loke- Lanfeyarson beheld this scene, he was sorely vexed that Baldur was not hurt. Assuming the guise of a woman, he went to Fensal, the mansion of Frigg. That goddess, seeing the pretended woman, inquired of her whether she knew what the Gods were doing at their meetings. The woman, Loke, replied that they were throwing darts and stones at Baldur, without being able to hurt him.

"Aye/ said Frigg, 'neither metal nor wood can hurt Baldur, for I have exacted an oath from all of them.' 3°

" 'What!' exclaimed the woman, 'have all things sworn to spare Baldur?'

"'All things,' replied Frigg, 'except one little shrub that grows on the eastern side of Valhal, and is called mistletoe, and which I thought too young and feeble to crave an oath from.'