WHITHER, LORD SUN? And after the Message of Ishtar, When the sun declines to September. Still follow we Thee to the Scorpion Men, The flaming Cherubim of Shamash, Who guard the gate of the mountain, The mighty mountain of Mashu, Still follow we Thee, pale Dumuzi, Who daily approachest thy cavern. Through the month of the Clouds, then, thou leadest, Of clouds and increasing darkness, That shadow the way to the Islands, And still do we follow Gilgamish, Through the Cavern of the Setting Sun, Nor turn we back from thy footsteps, Near the Fountain of Youth that springs ever, In the west, on the Isles of the Blessed. O Sun, Thou who givest us light, warmth and power, Who dost glow in the fire, Sparkle in the lightning, And muscle the mighty river; From whom cometh all joy, All songs that the mummer knows, All perfumes that the flowered meadow spreads, All colors of the jewels of Ishtar, The grace of all loved and lovers, And Eabani's bull-like might; Toward whose elusive abode, In thy golden sunset palace, The steps of men have pressed, westward, Seeking the secrets of Thy glory As their aureate hoard of promise Beneath the bow of Ishtar's necklace: CHAPTER XX. THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE The fundamental fact of the apparent universe is darkness. Night dominates space. Only about the hearthstone of each little star is there radiance and warmth. Even near the suns some of the planets share but slightly in the light. Neptune, for example, enjoys only 1900th of the amount of light and heat that we enjoy, and a traveller through interstellar space need go but a single light-year before he knows himself to have reached the outer darkness. There the most brilliant light visible would be scarcely more radiant than our own Sirius or Capella. Throughout the universe night is the law, day is the exception. Early man seems to have been more conscious of this fact than his sophisticated descendants of today. To him it was a vital thing that the sun should rise, nor was he any too sure of its continued beneficence. The one great idea which conquered his imagination and dominated his thought was that of the solar radiance. That is the reason why, in all early religions, light is divine. Ilu, El, Allah, Elohim, all of these are derived from the Into the abysses of space Past the Isles of the Blest, That lie at the mouth of the great rivers; To the far, far west We follow Thee, Whither, lord Sun? O far borne wanderer, Gilgames, Thou face of the hope eternal, Thou stricken and ever resurgent; By all of the faith of the ancients, The sun-sacrificed of all ages, May we, with the fishes of Ea, Who mark the last stage of Thy journey, Come forth with thee, strong and triumphant, Exalted, aglow, resurrected, As after the storm shines the sun comes forth, As after the darkness comes morning, As after the winter the spring wakes! Into the light of the morning, Into the joys of spring, From Flammarion's Sizes of the sun as seen from the planets. Semitic root which means to shine, and our own Aryan tongues tell the same story. Div, Deva, Dyaus, Deus, Zeus, Theos, even Tues-day and perhaps also Odin, Goudan, Gott, God, go back to the same sanskrit root that means to shine. Even the ex-gods remind us of their former glory. When the negro mammy warns her little boy that the "boogerman" (bogie-man) will get him, our students of language explain to us that the root-stem of bogie leads us directly back to Bog, Bhaga, Bagaios, holy symbols again, of the divine light. The very daemons testify, similarly to their royal descent, for they also once were gods before monotheistic Zarathustra deposed them. The very devil, himself, as we all know, was once an angel of light as his name signifies. Jupiter, himself, is but a combination of Zeuspater, Dyaus-pitar, the great father of the radiant heaven. It is quite evident to those who know most of the subject that the shining firmament, the life and light of day, was the fundamental religious idea of all nations. See how completely the world is girdled with this thought. When the Indo-European travellers reached this country they brought with them one of the most beautiful of all the myths of the sun-illumined sky. It was the story of Oedipus, the sun, whose father, Laios, the night, had been warned that he would die by the hand of his son. In order to avoid this terrible catastrophe, the little babe was exposed on the hillside, just as the early rays of the rising sun are always exposed on meadow and mountain. A kindly fate, however, rescued him from death just as Romulus and Remus and a score of other solar divinities were rescued. On his way to the city of Thebes, in his later days, he met an old man, and after he had slain him discovered that he was his own father, Laios. At Thebes he was told of the sphinx whose terrible riddles none could answer and who was destroying the land by drought. Oedipus interpreted the riddle and was crowned king. He took as his bride Iokaste (the beautiful violettinted clouds at dawn and sunset), his own mother. Death came to Iokaste in her bridal chamber and Oedipus who had blinded his eyes "fled to the grove of the Eumenides where, amid flashing lightning and peals of thunder, he died." This story would have been understood by all white peoples of the world as the daily journey of the sun through the heavens, bound under the orders of fate, like Herakles, to perform his predestined task; to slay his own father, the night; and to wed again in the evening the beautiful sunset colors that had borne him in the morning. Now when they reached America these Aryans met a people probably of Mongolian descent who had circled the remainder of the world and had established themselves upon the Atlantic seaboard. In the western mountains of North Carolina, in the land of the Cherokees, they found a mountain named Attacoa. Concerning its name they heard this beautiful Indian legend; that many, many aeons ago, before there were any rivers to run quietly to the sea or green grass to grow, while the earth was yet a watery waste, a woman named Ataensic looked down from a rift in the clouds. Touched by the desolation that she saw, she leaped through the rift to make with her own hands a pleasure spot on the face of this watery chaos. Little by little she built the earth and it became an abiding place for her children. There was given her a daughter surpassing fair. The Dawn she was, and her name was Attacoa. The Sons of Attacoa were Ioskeha, the Fair One, and Tawiskara, the Dark One. Ioskeha was kind and good. Around the earth he travelled, calling forth the joyous springs and the green grass, planting the beautiful trees and herbs and giving light and life to all he looked upon. Tawiskara, the Dark One, tried always to undo the deeds of his brother. He made his home on the crest of Attacoa and from thence sent forth his storm clouds and hurled his thunderbolts. Even when he slept his hoarse voice could be heard, muttering and rumbling in the depths of the cavernous rock. When he issued forth he covered his giant form with a mantle of darkness which spread over all the earth. In the heart of Attacoa Tawiskara built castles for his demons of darkness and the ruins of some may still be seen, rising like towers from the south side of the rock, so that men call them the Chimneys. One morning, borne on the wings of his mother Attacoa Ioskeha came speeding toward the crest of the great rock. There the conflict between the two brothers joined. Fast and furiously they fought. The storm clouds gathered and the lightnings played around their heads. Gods and demons came to witness the contest. At last when the battle raged fiercest and each brother was sore wounded and bleeding, the mother heart of Attacoa (the Dawn) could bear no longer to watch the fierce passions of her sons wreaking ruin each upon the other, and her own white breast she bared and interposed between them. This was the undoing of the peaceful Dawn, for the fury of the combatants compassed her about and, mortally wounded, she fell, expiring, into the arms of Ioskeha (The Morning |