object:1.29 - The Myth of Adonis
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
XXIX. The Myth of Adonis
THE SPECTACLE of the great changes which annually pass over the face
of the earth has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages,
and stirred them to meditate on the causes of transformations so
vast and wonderful. Their curiosity has not been purely
disinterested; for even the savage cannot fail to perceive how
intimately his own life is bound up with the life of nature, and how
the same processes which freeze the stream and strip the earth of
vegetation menace him with extinction. At a certain stage of
development men seem to have imagined that the means of averting the
threatened calamity were in their own hands, and that they could
hasten or retard the flight of the seasons by magic art. Accordingly
they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to
fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the
earth to grow. In course of time the slow advance of knowledge,
which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least
the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of
summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result
of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some
mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.
They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation,
the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing or
waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were
born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of
human life.
Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather
supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now attributed
the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in
their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magical
rites they could aid the god who was the principle of life, in his
struggle with the opposing principle of death. They imagined that
they could recruit his failing energies and even raise him from the
dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose were in
substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which
they wished to facilitate; for it is a familiar tenet of magic that
you can produce any desired effect by merely imitating it. And as
they now explained the fluctuations of growth and decay, of
reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage, the death, and the
rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious or rather magical
dramas turned in great measure on these themes. They set forth the
fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of one at
least of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection. Thus a
religious theory was blended with a magical practice. The
combination is familiar in history. Indeed, few religions have ever
succeeded in wholly extricating themselves from the old trammels of
magic. The inconsistency of acting on two opposite principles,
however it may vex the soul of the philosopher, rarely troubles the
common man; indeed he is seldom even aware of it. His affair is to
act, not to analyse the motives of his action. If mankind had always
been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of
folly and crime.
Of the changes which the seasons bring with them, the most striking
within the temperate zone are those which affect vegetation. The
influence of the seasons on animals, though great, is not nearly so
manifest. Hence it is natural that in the magical dramas designed to
dispel winter and bring back spring the emphasis should be laid on
vegetation, and that trees and plants should figure in them more
prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two sides of life, the
vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in the minds of those
who observed the ceremonies. Indeed they commonly believed that the
tie between the animal and the vegetable world was even closer than
it really is; hence they often combined the dramatic representation
of reviving plants with a real or a dramatic union of the sexes for
the purpose of furthering at the same time and by the same act the
multiplication of fruits, of animals, and of men. To them the
principle of life and fertility, whether animal or vegetable, was
one and indivisible. To live and to cause to live, to eat food and
to beget children, these were the primary wants of men in the past,
and they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as
the world lasts. Other things may be added to enrich and beautify
human life, but unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity
itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, food and
children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance
of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons.
Nowhere, apparently, have these rites been more widely and solemnly
celebrated than in the lands which border the Eastern Mediterranean.
Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of
Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of
life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god
who annually died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail
the rites varied from place to place: in substance they were the
same. The supposed death and resurrection of this oriental deity, a
god of many names but of essentially one nature, is now to be
examined. We begin with Tammuz or Adonis.
The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of
Babylonia and Syria, and the Greeks borrowed it from them as early
as the seventh century before Christ. The true name of the deity was
Tammuz: the appellation of Adonis is merely the Semitic _Adon,_
"lord," a title of honour by which his worshippers addressed him.
But the Greeks through a misunderstanding converted the title of
honour into a proper name. In the religious literature of Babylonia
Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great
mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of
nature. The references to their connexion with each other in myth
and ritual are both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them
that every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the
cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that every year
his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him "to the land from
which there is no returning, to the house of darkness, where dust
lies on door and bolt." During her absence the passion of love
ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their
kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound
up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal
kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged. A
messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly despatched to rescue
the goddess on whom so much depended. The stern queen of the
infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name, reluctantly allowed
Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to depart, in
company probably with her lover Tammuz, that the two might return
together to the upper world, and that with their return all nature
might revive.
Laments for the departed Tammuz are contained in several Babylonian
hymns, which liken him to plants that quickly fade. He is
"A tamarisk that in the garden has drunk no water,
Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom.
A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse,
A willow whose roots were torn up.
A herb that in the garden had drunk no water."
His death appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill music
of flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month named after
him, the month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly chanted over an
effigy of the dead god, which was washed with pure water, anointed
with oil, and clad in a red robe, while the fumes of incense rose
into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses by their pungent
fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death. In one of these
dirges, inscribed _Lament of the Flutes for Tammuz,_ we seem still
to hear the voices of the singers chanting the sad refrain and to
catch, like far-away music, the wailing notes of the flutes:
"At his vanishing away she lifts up a lament,
'Oh my child!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament;
'My Damu!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament.
'My enchanter and priest!' at his vanishing away
she lifts up a lament,
At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious place,
In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a lament.
Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master,
lifts she up a lament,
Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord,
lifts she up a lament.
Her lament is the lament for a herb that grows not in the bed,
Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the ear.
Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a possession,
A weary woman, a weary child, forspent.
Her lament is for a great river, where no willows grow,
Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow not.
Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow not.
Her lament is for a thickest of reeds, where no reeds grow.
Her lament is for woods, where tamarisks grow not.
Her lament is for a wilderness where no cypresses (?) grow.
Her lament is for the depth of a garden of trees,
where honey and wine grow not.
Her lament is for meadows, where no plants grow.
Her lament is for a palace, where length of life grows not."
The tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better
known to us from the descriptions of Greek writers than from the
fragments of Babylonian literature or the brief reference of the
prophet Ezekiel, who saw the women of Jerusalem weeping for Tammuz
at the north gate of the temple. Mirrored in the glass of Greek
mythology, the oriental deity appears as a comely youth beloved by
Aphrodite. In his infancy the goddess hid him in a chest, which she
gave in charge to Persephone, queen of the nether world. But when
Persephone opened the chest and beheld the beauty of the babe, she
refused to give him back to Aphrodite, though the goddess of love
went down herself to hell to ransom her dear one from the power of
the grave. The dispute between the two goddesses of love and death
was settled by Zeus, who decreed that Adonis should abide with
Persephone in the under world for one part of the year, and with
Aphrodite in the upper world for another part. At last the fair
youth was killed in hunting by a wild boar, or by the jealous Ares,
who turned himself into the likeness of a boar in order to compass
the death of his rival. Bitterly did Aphrodite lament her loved and
lost Adonis. In this form of the myth, the contest between Aphrodite
and Persephone for the possession of Adonis clearly reflects the
struggle between Ishtar and Allatu in the land of the dead, while
the decision of Zeus that Adonis is to spend one part of the year
under ground and another part above ground is merely a Greek version
of the annual disappearance and reappearance of Tammuz.
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