It was natural that such
experiences should find expression in his systems of
mythology. The general form they assume is that of springs and
rivers in the underworld, the best known of which appear in the
Graeco-Roman conceptions of Hades. Homer makes Circe
direct Odysseus thus. He is to beach his ship by deep-eddying
Oceanus, in the gloomy Cimmerian land. "But go thyself
to the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flow
Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx,
and there is a rock and the meeting of the two roaring waters."
Such were the materials which, with many additions and
modifications, developed into the Hades of Virgil's sixth
AEneid, with its lakes, and swamps and dismal streams. The
subterranean waters figured also in the Greek mysteries, and are
elaborated with much detail in Plato's great Phaedo Myth--in all
these cases with increasing fullness of mystical meaning. In the
popular mind they were incrusted with layers of incongruous
notions and crude superstitions. But, as Plato, for one, so clearly
saw, there is always at their core a group of intuitions which
have their bearing on the deepest problems of human life, and
are capable of moulding spiritual concepts.
Still more obviously suffused with mystic meaning and
influence are the Teutonic myths concerning the waters of the
underworld. The central notion is that of Yggdrasil, the tree of
the universe--the tree of time and life. Its boughs stretched up
into heaven; its topmost branch overshadowed Walhalla, the
hall of the heroes.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126