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object:1.12 - The Sacred Marriage
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter


XII. The Sacred Marriage



1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility

WE have seen that according to a widespread belief, which is not
without a foundation in fact, plants reproduce their kinds through
the sexual union of male and female elements, and that on the
principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic this reproduction is
supposed to be stimulated by the real or mock marriage of men and
women, who masquerade for the time being as spirits of vegetation.
Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular
festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude
conception of natural law, it is clear that they must have been
handed down from a remote antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err
in assuming that they date from a time when the forefathers of the
civilised nations of Europe were still barbarians, herding their
cattle and cultivating patches of corn in the clearings of the vast
forests, which then covered the greater part of the continent, from
the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells and
enchantments for the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and
flowers and fruit, have lingered down to our own time in the shape
of pastoral plays and popular merry-makings, is it not reasonable to
suppose that they survived in less attenuated forms some two
thousand years ago among the civilised peoples of antiquity? Or, to
put it otherwise, is it not likely that in certain festivals of the
ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of our May Day,
Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference, that
in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows
and pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which
the actors consciously supported the high parts of gods and
goddesses? Now in the first chapter of this book we found reason to
believe that the priest who bore the title of King of the Wood at
Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the grove, Diana herself. May
not he and she, as King and Queen of the Wood, have been serious
counterparts of the merry mummers who play the King and Queen of
May, the Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in modern Europe? and may
not their union have been yearly celebrated in a _theogamy_ or
divine marriage? Such dramatic weddings of gods and goddesses, as we
shall see presently, were carried out as solemn religious rites in
many parts of the ancient world; hence there is no intrinsic
improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove at Nemi may
have been the scene of an annual ceremony of this sort. Direct
evidence that it was so there is none, but analogy pleads in favour
of the view, as I shall now endeavour to show.

Diana was essentially a goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a
goddess of the corn and Bacchus a god of the vine. Her sanctuaries
were commonly in groves, indeed every grove was sacred to her, and
she is often associated with the forest god Silvanus in dedications.
But whatever her origin may have been, Diana was not always a mere
goddess of trees. Like her Greek sister Artemis, she appears to have
developed into a personification of the teeming life of nature, both
animal and vegetable. As mistress of the greenwood she would
naturally be thought to own the beasts, whether wild or tame, that
ranged through it, lurking for their prey in its gloomy depths,
munching the fresh leaves and shoots among the boughs, or cropping
the herbage in the open glades and dells. Thus she might come to be
the patron goddess both of hunters and herdsmen, just as Silvanus
was the god not only of woods, but of cattle. Similarly in Finland
the wild beasts of the forest were regarded as the herds of the
woodland god Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife. No man
might slay one of these animals without the gracious permission of
their divine owners. Hence the hunter prayed to the sylvan deities,
and vowed rich offerings to them if they would drive the game across
his path. And cattle also seem to have enjoyed the protection of
those spirits of the woods, both when they were in their stalls and
while they strayed in the forest. Before the Gayos of Sumatra hunt
deer, wild goats, or wild pigs with hounds in the woods, they deem
it necessary to obtain the leave of the unseen Lord of the forest.
This is done according to a prescribed form by a man who has special
skill in woodcraft. He lays down a quid of betel before a stake
which is cut in a particular way to represent the Lord of the Wood,
and having done so he prays to the spirit to signify his consent or
refusal. In his treatise on hunting, Arrian tells us that the Celts
used to offer an annual sacrifice to Artemis on her birthday,
purchasing the sacrificial victim with the fines which they had paid
into her treasury for every fox, hare, and roe that they had killed
in the course of the year. The custom clearly implied that the wild
beasts belonged to the goddess, and that she must be compensated for
their slaughter.

But Diana was not merely a patroness of wild beasts, a mistress of
woods and hills, of lonely glades and sounding rivers; conceived as
the moon, and especially, it would seem, as the yellow harvest moon,
she filled the farmer's grange with goodly fruits, and heard the
prayers of women in travail. In her sacred grove at Nemi, as we have
seen, she was especially worshipped as a goddess of childbirth, who
bestowed offspring on men and women. Thus Diana, like the Greek
Artemis, with whom she was constantly identified, may be described
as a goddess of nature in general and of fertility in particular. We
need not wonder, therefore, that in her sanctuary on the Aventine
she was represented by an image copied from the many-breasted idol
of the Ephesian Artemis, with all its crowded emblems of exuberant
fecundity. Hence too we can understand why an ancient Roman law,
attributed to King Tullus Hostilius, prescribed that, when incest
had been committed, an expiatory sacrifice should be offered by the
pontiffs in the grove of Diana. For we know that the crime of incest
is commonly supposed to cause a dearth; hence it would be meet that
atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of
fertility.

Now on the principle that the goddess of fertility must herself be
fertile, it behoved Diana to have a male partner. Her mate, if the
testimony of Servius may be trusted, was that Virbius who had his
representative, or perhaps rather his embodiment, in the King of the
Wood at Nemi. The aim of their union would be to promote the
fruitfulness of the earth, of animals, and of mankind; and it might
naturally be thought that this object would be more surely attained
if the sacred nuptials were celebrated every year, the parts of the
divine bride and bridegroom being played either by their images or
by living persons. No ancient writer mentions that this was done in
the grove at Nemi; but our knowledge of the Arician ritual is so
scanty that the want of information on this head can hardly count as
a fatal objection to the theory. That theory, in the absence of
direct evidence, must necessarily be based on the analogy of similar
customs practised elsewhere. Some modern examples of such customs,
more or less degenerate, were described in the last chapter. Here we
shall consider their ancient counterparts.



2. The Marriage of the Gods

AT BABYLON the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above
the city in a series of eight towers or stories, planted one on the
top of the other. On the highest tower, reached by an ascent which
wound about all the rest, there stood a spacious temple, and in the
temple a great bed, magnificently draped and cushioned, with a
golden table beside it. In the temple no image was to be seen, and
no human being passed the night there, save a single woman, whom,
according to the Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all the
women of Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the
temple at night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a
consort of the god, might have no intercourse with mortal man.

At Thebes in Egypt a woman slept in the temple of Ammon as the
consort of the god, and, like the human wife of Bel at Babylon, she
was said to have no commerce with a man. In Egyptian texts she is
often mentioned as "the divine consort," and usually she was no less
a personage than the Queen of Egypt herself. For, according to the
Egyptians, their monarchs were actually begotten by the god Ammon,
who assumed for the time being the form of the reigning king, and in
that disguise had intercourse with the queen. The divine procreation
is carved and painted in great detail on the walls of two of the
oldest temples in Egypt, those of Deir el Bahari and Luxor; and the
inscriptions attached to the paintings leave no doubt as to the
meaning of the scenes.

At Athens the god of the vine, Dionysus, was annually married to the
Queen, and it appears that the consummation of the divine union, as
well as the espousals, was enacted at the ceremony; but whether the
part of the god was played by a man or an image we do not know. We
learn from Aristotle that the ceremony took place in the old
official residence of the King, known as the Cattle-stall, which
stood near the Prytaneum or Town-hall on the north-eastern slope of
the Acropolis. The object of the marriage can hardly have been any
other than that of ensuring the fertility of the vines and other
fruit-trees of which Dionysus was the god. Thus both in form and in
meaning the ceremony would answer to the nuptials of the King and
Queen of May.

In the great mysteries solemnised at Eleusis in the month of
September the union of the sky-god Zeus with the corn-goddess
Demeter appears to have been represented by the union of the
hierophant with the priestess of Demeter, who acted the parts of god
and goddess. But their intercourse was only dramatic or symbolical,
for the hierophant had temporarily deprived himself of his virility
by an application of hemlock. The torches having been extinguished,
the pair descended into a murky place, while the throng of
worshippers awaited in anxious suspense the result of the mystic
congress, on which they believed their own salvation to depend.
After a time the hierophant reappeared, and in a blaze of light
silently exhibited to the assembly a reaped ear of corn, the fruit
of the divine marriage. Then in a loud voice he proclaimed, "Queen
Brimo has brought forth a sacred boy Brimos," by which he meant,
"The Mighty One has brought forth the Mighty." The corn-mother in
fact had given birth to her child, the corn, and her travail-pangs
were enacted in the sacred drama. This revelation of the reaped corn
appears to have been the crowning act of the mysteries. Thus through
the glamour shed round these rites by the poetry and philosophy of
later ages there still looms, like a distant landscape through a
sunlit haze, a simple rustic festival designed to cover the wide
Eleusinian plain with a plenteous harvest by wedding the goddess of
the corn to the sky-god, who fertilised the bare earth with genial
showers. Every few years the people of Plataea, in Boeotia, held a
festival called the Little Daedala, at which they felled an oak-tree
in an ancient oak forest. Out of the tree they carved an image, and
having dressed it as a bride, they set it on a bullock-cart with a
bridesmaid beside it. The image seems then to have been drawn to the
bank of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a piping
and dancing crowd. Every sixty years the festival of the Great
Daedala was celebrated by all the people of Boeotia; and at it all
the images, fourteen in number, which had accumulated at the lesser
festivals, were dragged on wains in procession to the river Asopus
and then to the top of Mount Cithaeron, where they were burnt on a
great pyre. The story told to explain the festivals suggests that
they celebrated the marriage of Zeus to Hera, represented by the
oaken image in bridal array. In Sweden every year a life-size image
of Frey, the god of fertility, both animal and vegetable, was drawn
about the country in a waggon attended by a beautiful girl who was
called the god's wife. She acted also as his priestess in his great
temple at Upsala. Wherever the waggon came with the image of the god
and his blooming young bride, the people crowded to meet them and
offered sacrifices for a fruitful year.

Thus the custom of marrying gods either to images or to human beings
was widespread among the nations of antiquity. The ideas on which
such a custom is based are too crude to allow us to doubt that the
civilised Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks inherited it from their
barbarous or savage forefathers. This presumption is strengthened
when we find rites of a similar kind in vogue among the lower races.
Thus, for example, we are told that once upon a time the Wotyaks of
the Malmyz district in Russia were distressed by a series of bad
harvests. They did not know what to do, but at last concluded that
their powerful but mischievious god Keremet must be angry at being
unmarried. So a deputation of elders visited the Wotyaks of Cura and
came to an understanding with them on the subject. Then they
returned home, laid in a large stock of brandy, and having made
ready a gaily decked waggon and horses, they drove in procession
with bells ringing, as they do when they are fetching home a bride,
to the sacred grove at Cura. There they ate and drank merrily all
night, and next morning they cut a square piece of turf in the grove
and took it home with them. After that, though it fared well with
the people of Malmyz, it fared ill with the people of Cura; for in
Malmyz the bread was good, but in Cura it was bad. Hence the men of
Cura who had consented to the marriage were blamed and roughly
handled by their indignant fellow-villagers. "What they meant by
this marriage ceremony," says the writer who reports it, "it is not
easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry
Keremet to the kindly and fruitful Mukylcin, the Earth-wife, in
order that she might influence him for good." When wells are dug in
Bengal, a wooden image of a god is made and married to the goddess
of water.

Often the bride destined for the god is not a log or a cloud, but a
living woman of flesh and blood. The Indians of a village in Peru
have been known to marry a beautiful girl, about fourteen years of
age, to a stone shaped like a human being, which they regarded as a
god (_huaca_). All the villagers took part in the marriage ceremony,
which lasted three days, and was attended with much revelry. The
girl thereafter remained a virgin and sacrificed to the idol for the
people. They showed her the utmost reverence and deemed her divine.
Every year about the middle of March, when the season for fishing
with the dragnet began, the Algonquins and Hurons married their nets
to two young girls, aged six or seven. At the wedding feast the net
was placed between the two maidens, and was exhorted to take courage
and catch many fish. The reason for choosing the brides so young was
to make sure that they were virgins. The origin of the custom is
said to have been this. One year, when the fishing season came
round, the Algonquins cast their nets as usual, but took nothing.
Surprised at their want of success, they did not know what to make
of it, till the soul or genius (_oki_) of the net appeared to them
in the likeness of a tall well-built man, who said to them in a
great passion, "I have lost my wife and I cannot find one who has
known no other man but me; that is why you do not succeed, and why
you never will succeed till you give me satisfaction on this head."
So the Algonquins held a council and resolved to appease the spirit
of the net by marrying him to two such very young girls that he
could have no ground of complaint on that score for the future. They
did so, and the fishing turned out all that could be wished. The
thing got wind among their neighbours the Hurons, and they adopted
the custom. A share of the catch was always given to the families of
the two girls who acted as brides of the net for the year.

The Oraons of Bengal worship the Earth as a goddess, and annually
celebrate her marriage with the Sun-god Dharme at the time when the
_sal_ tree is in blossom. The ceremony is as follows. All bathe,
then the men repair to the sacred grove (_sarna_), while the women
assemble at the house of the village priest. After sacrificing some
fowls to the Sun-god and the demon of the grove, the men eat and
drink. "The priest is then carried back to the village on the
shoulders of a strong man. Near the village the women meet the men
and wash their feet. With beating of drums and singing, dancing, and
jumping, all proceed to the priest's house, which has been decorated
with leaves and flowers. Then the usual form of marriage is
performed between the priest and his wife, symbolising the supposed
union between Sun and Earth. After the ceremony all eat and drink
and make merry; they dance and sing obscene songs, and finally
indulge in the vilest orgies. The object is to move the mother earth
to become fruitful." Thus the Sacred Marriage of the Sun and Earth,
personated by the priest and his wife, is celebrated as a charm to
ensure the fertility of the ground; and for the same purpose, on the
principle of homoeopathic magic, the people indulge in licentious
orgy.

It deserves to be remarked that the supernatural being to whom women
are married is often a god or spirit of water. Thus Mukasa, the god
of the Victoria Nyanza lake, who was propitiated by the Baganda
every time they undertook a long voyage, had virgins provided for
him to serve as his wives. Like the Vestals they were bound to
chastity, but unlike the Vestals they seem to have been often
unfaithful. The custom lasted until Mwanga was converted to
Christianity. The Akikuyu of British East Africa worship the snake
of a certain river, and at intervals of several years they marry the
snake-god to women, but especially to young girls. For this purpose
huts are built by order of the medicine-men, who there consummate
the sacred marriage with the credulous female devotees. If the girls
do not repair to the huts of their own accord in sufficient numbers,
they are seized and dragged thither to the embraces of the deity.
The offspring of these mystic unions appears to be fathered on God
(_ngai_); certainly there are children among the Akikuyu who pass
for children of God. It is said that once, when the inhabitants of
Cayeli in Buru--an East Indian island--were threatened with
destruction by a swarm of crocodiles, they ascribed the misfortune
to a passion which the prince of the crocodiles had conceived for a
certain girl. Accordingly, they compelled the damsel's father to
dress her in bridal array and deliver her over to the clutches of
her crocodile lover.

A usage of the same sort is reported to have prevailed in the
Maldive Islands before the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam.
The famous Arab traveller Ibn Batutah has described the custom and
the manner in which it came to an end. He was assured by several
trustworthy natives, whose names he gives, that when the people of
the islands were idolaters there appeared to them every month an
evil spirit among the jinn, who came from across the sea in the
likeness of a ship full of burning lamps. The wont of the
inhabitants, as soon as they perceived him, was to take a young
virgin, and, having adorned her, to lead her to a heathen temple
that stood on the shore, with a window looking out to sea. There
they left the damsel for the night, and when they came back in the
morning they found her a maid no more, and dead. Every month they
drew lots, and he upon whom the lot fell gave up his daughter to the
jinnee of the sea. The last of the maidens thus offered to the demon
was rescued by a pious Berber, who by reciting the Koran succeeded
in driving the jinnee back into the sea.

Ibn Batutah's narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides
closely resembles a well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions
have been found from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia,
Scandinavia, and Scotland in the West. The story varies in details
from people to people, but as commonly told it runs thus. A certain
country is infested by a many-headed serpent, dragon, or other
monster, which would destroy the whole people if a human victim,
generally a virgin, were not delivered up to him periodically. Many
victims have perished, and at last it has fallen to the lot of the
king's own daughter to be sacrificed. She is exposed to the monster,
but the hero of the tale, generally a young man of humble birth,
interposes in her behalf, slays the monster, and receives the hand
of the princess as his reward. In many of the tales the monster, who
is sometimes described as a serpent, inhabits the water of a sea, a
lake, or a fountain. In other versions he is a serpent or dragon who
takes possession of the springs of water, and only allows the water
to flow or the people to make use of it on condition of receiving a
human victim.

It would probably be a mistake to dismiss all these tales as pure
inventions of the story-teller. Rather we may suppose that they
reflect a real custom of sacrificing girls or women to be the wives
of waterspirits, who are very often conceived as great serpents or
dragons.






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