Nature Mysticism Part 7

Moving water, then, has the power of stimulating emotion and prompting intuition; and this power is manifested in exceptional degree when the source from which the water issues, and the goal to which it flows, are unknown. These conditions are best satisfied in the case of streams that flow in volume through subterranean caverns. The darkness contributes its element of undefined dread, and the hollow rumblings make the darkness to be felt. What more calculated to fill the mind of the child of nature with a sense of life and will behind the phenomena? The weird reverberations are interpreted by him as significant utterances of mighty, unseen powers, and the caves and chasms are invested with the awe due to entrances into the gloomy regions where reign the monarchs of the dead.

True, it may be said, for the child of nature. But are such experiences possible for the modern mind? Yes, if we can pierce through the varied disguises which the intuitional material a.s.sumes as times and manners change. Coleridge, for instance, is thrown into a deep sleep by an anodyne. His imagination takes wings to itself; images rise up before him, and, without conscious effort, find verbal equivalents. The enduring substance of the vision is embodied in the fragment, "Kubla Khan," the glamour of which depends chiefly on the mystical appeal of subterranean waters. We are transported to where

"Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."

These three lines make a deeper impression than any others in the poem, and form its main theme.

Nor is the feeling of the supernatural unrecognised. Spirits are near with prophetic promptings. From a deep chasm the sacred river throws up a mighty fountain, and for a short s.p.a.ce wanders through wood and dale, only to plunge again into its measureless caverns, and sink in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

"And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war."

Thus when Coleridge's imagination was set free, the mode of feeling declared itself which had persisted down the ages to the present. The primitive experience is there in its essentials, enriched by the aesthetic and intellectual gains of the intervening centuries. Doubtless there is a living idea, or rather a group of living ideas, behind the phenomena of subterranean waters.

Wordsworth has described a more personal experience which chimes in with all that has been said.

"Through a rift Not distant from the sh.o.r.e on which we stood, A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing place-- Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice!

Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour, For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens."

If the modern poet could be thus affected, how much more the primitive man who looked down on water falling into chasms, or rus.h.i.+ng through their depths. It was natural that such experiences should find expression in his systems of mythology. The general form they a.s.sume 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 s.h.i.+p by deep-eddying Ocea.n.u.s, 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 superst.i.tions. 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. Its three roots reach down into the dark regions beneath the earth; they pierce through three subterranean fountains, and hold together the universal structure in their mighty clasp. These three roots stretch in a line from north to south. The northernmost overarches the Hvergelmer fountain with its ice-cold waters. The middle one overarches Mimur's well with its stores of creative force. The southernmost overarches Urd's well with its warmer flow. They are gnawed down below by the dragon Nidhogg and innumerable worms; but water from the fountain of Urd keeps the world-ash ever green.

Hvergelmer is the mother fountain of all the rivers of the world-- below, on the surface of the earth, and in the heaven above.

From this vast reservoir issue all the waters, and thither they return. On their outward journey they are sucked up and lifted aloft by the northern root of the world tree, and there blend into the sap which supplies the tree with its imperishable strength and life. Rising through the trunk, they spread out into the branches and evaporate from its crown. In the upper region, thus attained, is a huge reservoir, the thunder-cloud, which receives the liquid and pours it forth again in two diverse streams. The one is the stream of fire-mist, the lightning, which with its "terror-gleam" flows as a barrier round Asgard, the home of the G.o.ds; the other falls in fructifying shower upon the earth, to return to its original source in the underworld. The famous maelstrom is the storm-centre, so to speak, of the down-tending flood. The fountain Hvergelmer may therefore be regarded as embodying impressions made on the Teuton mind by the physical forces of the universe in the grand activities of their eternal circulation. But their source was hidden.

The southernmost well has the warmer water of the sunny climes--the fountain of Urd. The Norns, the three sisters who made known the decrees of fate, come out of the unknown distance, enveloped in a dark veil, to the world tree, and sprinkle it daily with water from this fountain, that its foliage may be ever green and vigorous. Urd is the eldest of the three, and gazes thoughtfully into the past; Werdandi gazes at the present; and Skuld gazes into the future. For out of the past and present is the future born. The fountain of Urd may be regarded as the embodiment of impressions of a spiritual force which upholds and renews the universe.

Mimur, the king of the lower world, is the warder of the central fountain, and round its waters are ranged his golden halls. The fountain itself is seven times overlaid with gold, and above it the holy tree spreads its sheltering branches. It is the source of the precious liquid, the mead, which belongs to Mimur alone, and rises from an unknown depth to water the central root. In its purity, it gives the G.o.ds their wisdom and power. But the mead which rises in the sap is not entirely pure; it is mixed with the liquids from the other fountains. Thus earth is not like heaven.

Nevertheless, though thus diluted, it is a fructifying blessing to whomsoever may obtain it. Around it grow delightful beds of reeds and bulrushes; and bordering it are the Glittering Fields, in which grow flowers that never fade and harvests that are never reaped; in which grow also the seeds of poetry. In short, Mimur's well is the source of inspiration and creative power.

These Teutonic notions of the waters under the earth have been dwelt upon somewhat fully, partly because they are not so well known as the cla.s.sical myths--partly because they present such a decided contrast to the cla.s.sical myths--but mainly because of their wealth of mystic suggestiveness. Let it not be thought that they form a group of elaborate symbols--were that the case their interest for the natural mystic would be vastly decreased. They are almost wholly the spontaneous product of the mythopoeic faculty; they were genuinely believed as presentations of realities. They are primitive intuitions embodied to form a primitive philosophy of life. They glow with mystic insight.

Under the forms of subterranean fountains that well forth life, physical, aesthetic, spiritual, is mirrored the life of the universe, which wells from unknown depths, and returns to the deeps from which it emanated. And inasmuch as these ideas were largely suggested by the circulation of the waters of the globe, the Teutonic child of nature joins hands with the nature-philosopher Thales. The Reality is ultimately the same for both; the substance of the universe is living movement.

Yet another type of the mystic influence of subterranean watercourses will serve to ill.u.s.trate the deepening processes to which all concrete forms, derived from intuitions, must be subjected. Near to Banias in Northern Palestine, at the base of an extensive cup-shaped mound, afar from human habitations, is one of the two chief sources of the Jordan. The rus.h.i.+ng waters pour out of the ground in sufficient volume to form at once a river. The roar and tumult are strikingly impressive. Peters, on whose description of the place I have largely drawn, presumes that this was the site of an ancient temple of Dan. The wors.h.i.+p at this temple was of the primitive sort, "such as was befitting the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.d who exhibited himself in such nature forces." We are therefore carried back to the mythological stage, for which the gus.h.i.+ng forth, in volume, of subterranean waters was a manifestation of the life in, or behind, the natural phenomenon, and roused a peculiar kind of emotion.

We are carried on to a much more advanced stage when we come to the feelings represented in the 42nd Psalm. Peters argues that this Psalm, which so vividly describes the roaring of the waters was, "in its original form, a liturgical hymn sung at the great autumnal festival by wors.h.i.+ppers at this shrine, where served, according to tradition, the descendants of Moses." On this supposition how pregnant with historical import become the well-known words: "One deep calleth another because of the noise of the water-pipes; all thy waves and billows are gone over me." It is no mere a.n.a.logy or symbol that is here employed (though such elements may be mingled in the complex whole) but an intuition yearning to express itself that life's burden would be lightened if the secret of the gus.h.i.+ng waters could be read.

And it is thus that we arrive at the fundamental intuition common to the various modes of experience just reviewed. The subterranean waters spring from an unknown source, or fall into an unknown abyss. In both cases there is a sense of having reached the limits of the knowable, combined with a sense of inexhaustible power. The beyond is vague and insubstantial, but it is instinct with life and purpose. Man's spirit may shrink before the unknown--but he fills the empty regions with forms and objects which rob them of much of their strangeness and aloofness, and bring them within the range of his hopes and fears. There, as here (he feels), there must be interpenetration of spirit by spirit.

CHAPTER XVIII

SPRINGS AND WELLS

Milton, in his n.o.ble "Ode on the Nativity," sings that, with the advent of the Saviour,

"From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplars pale, The parting genius is with sighing sent."

Is this a statement of fact? Largely so, if the reference is to the river G.o.ds, the Naiads, and water sprites, of cla.s.sical mythology. But not true if the vaguer belief in spirits who preside over mossy wells and bubbling springs be taken into account, or if the faith in the healing or other virtues of the waters that issue from them be included in the underlying idea.

No, not even in the most Christian countries of to-day is such faith extinct. One has but to remember the famous well at Auray, or the sacred fountain in the crypt of the church at St.

Melars, to which whole crowds of pilgrims still resort, to realise how far this is from being the case. Scotland herself, for all her centuries of Puritanism, has not wiped her slate quite clean; still less the countries like Ireland and Brittany, which are so retentive of the past. Nay, the present age is not content with its liberal supply of sacred springs, it must be adding new ones of its own! Let Lourdes be witness. And who shall say how many more are yet to come?

Very remarkable, both as ill.u.s.trating Milton's Ode, and also the persistency of this particular form of superst.i.tion, is the story of the only real spring close to Jerusalem--Enrogel. It is identified by high authorities with the Dragon's Well, mentioned in a romantic pa.s.sage of the book of the patriot, Nehemiah.

a.s.suming the validity of this identification, we have a glimpse of times far earlier than the Hebrew occupation of the land.

Primitive peoples often a.s.sociated serpents with springs and wells, as incarnations of the spirit of the waters. A link is thus supplied which carries back the history to the animistic and mythological periods, in this case, prehistoric.

Retracing our course, we arrive at the time of the Hebrew occupation of the country. A purer form of religion has rejected most of the mythological material. But the old name of the spring remains, and, what is still more pertinent, the old belief in its healing power. We have evidence of this belief in St.

John's Gospel, which contains the peculiar story of the healing at the pool of Bethesda, most probably connected with this same spring. The popular view that at times an angel came to trouble the water is perhaps an attempted explanation of its intermittent action.

Now should have come the time, according to Milton, for the departure of the sighing genius--the dying out of the superst.i.tion. But those who antic.i.p.ate such a _denouement_ will be grievously disappointed. For the Jews still bathe in its waters, at the times of overflow, for cure of various maladies.

And on the Christian side of the history, it has gained the name of the Virgin's Pool!

Similar stories might be found in any part of the globe where tradition is sufficiently continuous to preserve them, testifying to the almost astounding persistency of belief in the power of springing water. No doubt simple faith healing has played its part--but that part is very subsidiary; the strongest influence has been that exercised by the movement of the water itself, suggesting as it does the idea of spontaneous life. Not less surprising is the hold such springs retain upon the imagination and affections. Pathetic proof of this meets the traveller at every turn on the west coast of Ireland. As he tramps the byways and unfrequented paths of County Clare, his eye is caught from time to time by an artless array of shelves on the sloping banks of some meadow spring. On the shelves are scanty votive offerings, piteous to see. Piteous, not on the score of the superst.i.tion which prompts them--that is a matter to be dealt with in a spirit of broad sympathy, on its historic and social merits--but because of the dire poverty they reveal. Even its of broken crockery are held worthy of a place at these little shrines; so bereft are the peasantry of the simplest accompaniments of civilised life.

How thoroughly natural is the growth of such sentiments and beliefs! Jefferies felt the charm. "There was a secluded spring"

(he writes) "to which I sometimes went to drink the pure water, lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water, clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed the beauty and the purity of it. I drank the thought of the element; I desired soul-nature pure and limpid."

Nor has the charm ceased to be potent for the new man in the new world. Walt Whitman knew it. Here is a delightful paragraph from his notes of "Specimen Days": "So, still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical and soft as clinking gla.s.ses--pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown s.h.a.ggy eyebrow or mouth roof--gurgling, gurgling ceaselessly--meaning, saying something of course (if one could only translate it)--always gurgling there, the whole year through--never going out--oceans of mint, blackberries in summer--choice of light and shade--just the place for my July sun-baths and water-baths too--but mainly the inimitable soft sound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot afternoons. How they and all grow into me, day after day--everything in keeping--the wild, just palpable, perfume, and the dapple of leaf-shadows, and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the spot."

If these two pa.s.sages be taken together, there will be few elements of mystic influence left unnoted. And how deeply significant the fact that each author instinctively and spontaneously a.s.sociates with the limpid flow of the water the ideas of life and health! Were the old mythologists so very far from the truth? Is it so very hard to understand why wells and springs have had their thousands of years of trust and affection?

Was it mere caprice that led our Teutonic fathers to place under the roots of the world-tree the three wells of force and life and inspiration?

A fine example of a more definitely mystic use of the ideas prompted by the sight of springing water, is found in Dante's "Earthly Paradise"--an example the more interesting because of its retention of what may be called the "nature-elements" in the experience.

"The water, thou behold'st, springs not from vein, Restored by vapour, that the cold converts; As stream that intermittently repairs And spends his pulse of life; but issues forth From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure: And, by the will omnific, full supply Feeds whatsoe'er on either side it pours; On this, devolved with power to take away Remembrance of offence; on that, to bring Remembrance back of every good deed done.

From whence its name of Lethe on this part; On the other, Eunoe: both of which must first Be tasted, ere it work; the last exceeding All flavours else."

This pa.s.sage, say the authorities, is linked on to the old Proserpine mystery, and is parallel to the Teutonic conceptions described in the last chapter. Of quite exceptional character, yet best treated in the present connection, are the "wells" of eastern lands. Where the sources of springing water are rare and far distant from one another, the supply of water has to be supplemented by that from artificial pits, sunk with hard toil, often into the solid rock, and valued accordingly. Such "wells,"

in the stricter sense, are too directly a.s.sociated with human labour in historic times, to allow much mythical material to acc.u.mulate around them. Still, from the simple fact of their dispensing water in arid and thirsty lands, they possess not unfrequently a rich store of family and tribal legends. And further, by reason of their very freedom from the cruder superst.i.tions, the intuitions they prompted were from the first transparent and spiritual. Under such conditions the water is literally "life." And as the conception of life deepened, so did intuition become more delicate.

We have the early freshness of the feeling stimulated in an ancient strain, delightful in its naive spontaneity.

"Then sang Israel this song: Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it: The well which the princes digged, Which the n.o.bles of the people delved, With the sceptre and with their staves."

The deepening of the feeling came rapidly, and took exquisite form in the prophet's a.s.surance that his people should "draw water out of the wells of salvation." But here mysticism was beginning to blend with symbolism, and the later developments of the idea pa.s.s over almost wholly into the sphere of reflective a.n.a.logy.

So far as the nature-mystic is concerned, he emphasises the continuity of the feeling, from the earliest ages to the present, that in the phenomena of water gus.h.i.+ng from a source we have a manifestation of self-activity, as immanent Idea and concrete will. And convinced of the validity of his contention, he is not surprised, as some may be, at the influence which wells and springs have wielded, and still do wield, over the human soul.

CHAPTER XIX

BROOKS AND STREAMS

There is a striking pa.s.sage in Tylor's "Primitive Culture" which will admirably serve as an introduction to this chapter and the one which is to follow, on "Rivers and Waterfalls." "In those moments of the civilised man's life when he casts off hard dull science, and returns to childhood's fancy, the world-old book of nature is open to him anew. Then the well-worn thoughts come back fresh to him, of the stream's life that is so like his own; once more he can see the rill leap down the hill-side like a child, to wander playing among the flowers; or can follow it as, grown to a river, it rushes through a mountain gorge, henceforth in sluggish strength to carry heavy burdens across the plain. In all that the water does, the poet's fancy can discern its personality of life. It gives fish to the fisher, and crops to the husbandman; it swells in fury and lays waste the land; it grips the bather with chill and cramp, and holds with inexorable grasp its drowning victim. . . . What ethnography has to teach of that great element of the religion of mankind, the wors.h.i.+p of well and lake, brook and river, is simply this--that what is poetry to us was philosophy to early man; that to his mind water acted not by laws of force, but by life and will; that the water-spirits of primeval mythology are as souls which cause the water's rush and rest, its kindness and its cruelty; that lastly man finds, in the beings with such power to work him weal or woe, deities with a wider influence over his life, deities to be feared and loved, to be prayed to and praised and propitiated with sacrificial gifts."