Heavenly Bridegrooms (1918)/August 1916
HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOMS[1]
By Theodore Schroeder
and Ida C.
"The Sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose.'
Genesis 6:2.
IN one of the oldest of the Vedas—those books which contain the legends of the Aryans before they split up into fragmentary races—we find a similar story about Urvasi and Pururavas.
These two stories are usually explained as myths which show how the dawn vanishes as soon as it looks upon the sun. In solar myths, the dawn is often typified as a maiden, the sun-god being her lover who pursues her vanishing form through the heavens—an idea picturesquely brought out in the myth of Cinderella. If these two stories really are a bit of sun and dawn folklore then, Urvasi and Psyche must each be the dawn-maiden, and Pururavas and Cupid must be the sun-god on whose glorious form, unveiled by any clouds, the dawn-maiden dare not look, for, as she looks, the two lovers become separated—i.e., the dawn vanishes before the rising sun. But it is a little curious that in one story, the maiden disappears, while in the other it is the lover himself who flees. Obviously there is some other myth than a purely solar one involved in these two stories,—stories so strikingly similar and yet so strikingly at variance in the one feature in which they should agree, if true sun and dawn myths.
May not their likeness be due to their being memorials of the belief in Borderland marriages and in the self-control which is obligatory upon the earthly partner in such marriages? May not their unlikeness as to the sex of the partner who disappears when that self-control is violated, be due to there being heavenly brides, as well as heavenly bridegrooms?
To these same myths, I take it, belong all those fairy stories of which Beauty and the Beast is the type. Here, a maiden noted as a rule, for her amiability and gentleness, is served each day by invisible hands, and at night receives her lover, in the form of a handsome prince. By the ordinary light of day, he is a monster, appalling to behold, or, in some of the stories, he is invisible; but night and the marriage couch cause him to materialize in his true shape. Finally, her family and friends themselves quite outsiders as to these experiences work upon her feelings and make her believe that this union is evil (in occult parlance, it would be termed diabolical) and she breaks off her connection with him. In the end, true love triumphs, and the lovers are reunited under happier auspices, that is, in the fairy story; in actual life, it too often happens that Beauty and the Beast are permanently separated by meddling outsiders who ignorantly assume that everything which they cannot understand comes from the Devil. The poor earthly psychic has so constantly dinned into her ears the fact that her mediumship has revealed glimpses of monstrosities and deceptions, that she comes at last to fear lest her invisible visitor be in truth the evil demon which at times, by the sober light of day, he seems to be. All unaware of the law by which her own failures and peccadilloes bring about subjective hallucinations which mislead, she ascribes to her angelic briedgroom a tendency to evil which he does not possess, and finally comes to shrink from him as demoniacal. And the laws of Borderland forbid his undeceiving her so long as she hold fast to her prejudice as if it were gospel truth. Thus Beauty too often turns away from her princely lover forever, so far as this earth-life is concerned, as Beautyin the fairy story did from the husband whom ignorant outsiders had led her to look upon as Beast.
Pyramus and Thisbe, the lovers who, separated by a huge wall, were fain to satisfy themselves with kisses exchanged through a hole therein, are a euphemistic expression for those marital unions one of the parties to which is invisible and his earthly love impalpable to the physical senses. In this story a bloodthirsty lion puts an end to the lovemaking. This is probably the solar lion, the meaning being that the ancient faith is superseded by the later and (in some respects) purer Sun Worship which seems to have been a reform movement of the science and materialism of the time against the Borderland sensuality which obtained in the declining age of Sex Worship.
Isis and Osiris are also types of the husband and wife who unite upon the Borderland. Egyptian sacred traditions were wont to relate that Osiris was killed by the Typhon, who then cut up his victim's body into fourteen pieces, enclosed it in an ark, and set adrift upon the River Nile. Isis, the Virgin-Mother, sought far and wide for these remnants of her husband's body. One legend states that she found all, except the phallus; another, that she found nothing except the phallus, and from that solitary fragment, she reconstructed her husband, entire. Here we evidently have two sides of the same esoteric idea that the loss of sex power constitutes the true death of the soul (not, of course, the spirit) and that in the finding of one's marital partner on the Borderland the ghost may be gradually materialized into substantiality by beginning at the same starting-point as did Isis.
Heavenly bridegrooms it will be noticed, predominate over heavenly brides in Borderland traditions. The reason, I take it, is that women, because of their social environment, usually lead a more self-controlled and temperate life than men do, and thus are in most (though not all) respects more worthy of marital union with an angel. Custom allows men more freedom a privilege which the masculine sex is not slow to avail itself of, especially in the direction of wine, women and tobacco. These three dissipations not onlyexhaust the nerve force of men, but blunt both their physical and their moral sensibilities; so that the man for whom, in all possibility, his angel mate may be waiting upon the Borderland, may find himself handicapped at the outset, should he ever essay an adventure into Borderland romance while still on the earth. In this connection, we may remark that in India, where the attempt to obtain a spirit wife is said to be of common occurrence (and it would appear often rewarded with success) we find a nation singularly gentle and peaceable in disposition, unaccustomed to drunkenness until taught it by outside peoples (there is a proverbial saying among the Hindus "as drunk as a Christian") and endowed by nature with a tendency to aspire to union with God. Last, but not least, it is a nation whose religions, for the most part, recognize the truth that sex is holy; and in this it is in strong contrast with our Western "civilization where the most sacred function of humanity is looked upon as vile. We occidentals have a whole life's teaching to unlearn, before we can approach the subject of marital relations on the Borderland from a natural and pure-minded standpoint.
The chief tradition regarding spirit brides relates to Lilith or Lilis or Lilot and is mostly Rabbinical. As in the case of the angelic bridegrooms, she is supposed to be demoniacal. Lilith is said to have been Adam's first wife, one tradition says that and by her he begat only demons, another says that she rebelled when Adam assumed authority over her and fled from him to the evil angel Samall; to whom she bore a demon progeny. Another legend has it that being jealous of Eve she slipped back into Eden behind the particeps criminis in the temptation.
Another says that Adam kept himself apart from Eve for a hundred years in order not to fill hell with their offspring; but that in a weak moment a female devil, called Lilith, seduced him and became his wife, and from their union arose devils, ghosts and evil night dreams; and Eve in like manner became the wife of a demon. [The Serpent in Paradise. London.] Of a similar tenor is the tradition about the Zoroastrian Yeina, who fell from astate of innocence by means of a great serpent, the AzisDahaka.
"For a long period Yiena and his subjects were in the power of this evil serpent, Azis Dahaka, the demons * * * * Yiena himself in order to oblige his masters, had to abandon his own wife, who was also his sister, and to take a female devil for his wife, and to consent to the union of his former wife with a demon. From these unions were produced apes, bears, and black men. During this evil period women much preferred young devils to young men for husbands, and men married young seductive "Paris," or "female devils."
[The Serpent in Paradise: The Serpent in Mythology.]
The psychic who can sustain marital relation on the Borderland must above all be sensitive at the extremities of the nerves of touch. Neither blind people nor deaf people are hindered by their respective infirmities from marrying in this earth-life and on the Borderland a psychic may be clairvoyant and clairaudient to only a limited extent, and yet be a partaker in connubial joys. For the Borderland husband must materialize more or less fully to enable her to understand the relation clearly upon the physical side: Whereas for most men this is unnecessary, and the spirit bride may remain in all save a few essentials, invisible, inaudible, intangible a veritable "woman of air."
Hence her ghostliness and her philological connection with the idea of pale blue or pale purple the color of air and the mist.
Lilith is said to come to young men's bedsides at night to seduce them, under the aspect of a beautiful and finely dressed woman with golden hair. And, afterwards she strangled them, and they are known to be Lilith's victims because one of her golden hairs is found tightly wound around the victim's heart. In the Zoroastrian legends, she is much connected with night and night-dreams; and men are cautioned not to sleep alone for fear of the evils of Lilith. She also lies in wait for children to kill them if they are not protected by "Amulets."
"Herodotus says that the Arabians called the moon 'Alilat the Assyrian word for night is Lilat,' and Talbotsupposes that the Arabians really called the moon 'Sarrat ha Lilat,' the queen of night. ******
"Mr. Talbot also says 'Alilat' may also mean the star Venus.
"The Greeks considered Lilith evidently to be the moon, as with them she is Ilithyia, the sister of Apollo, one of the birth goddesses. Night in Helrewis layelah.
"That the moon should be selected to represent the feminine principle is readily accounted for by her waxing and waning propensities, to say nothing of her controlling or coinciding with the feminine periods."
[The Serpent in Paradise, etc.]
Summing up these varying traditions we find the following incidents prominent:
1. A woman who is not of the earth but evidently from an unknown world enters upon relations with Adam or with the men of later generations.
2. The relation is in most cases that of husband and wife and not a mere liaison.
3. [In those cases where the relation is illicit, the earthly partner comes to an unfortunate end.]
4. This woman from the unseen world is credited with being a seducer and a devil.
5. She bears no children save demons and is reputed to destroy children.
6. She causes men to dream evil dreams at night. Lilith is evidently the complement of the tradition
about angelic bridegrooms. That the typical spirit bride should have so much more unsavory a reputation than has the typical spirit bridegroom of nowaday. The masculine nature is proverbial for its lack of self-control where women are concerned: and in this it has usually contrasted unfavorably with the self-control of women in similar cases. On the other hand, the men of our Western civilization are mostly superior to our women (of the virtuous classes) in the ardent, dramatic and artistic expression of love for the opposite sex a desirable qualification in the romance and uncertainties and trying ordeals of Borderland wedlock. If, therefore, the propositions which I have laid down as to the necessity for self-control in occult investigations be correct we need not be surprised that the spirit bride is ere long denounced as demoniacal and seducing. But it is to the ignorance or the wilful wrong-doing of her earthly lover that is to blame, and not the spirit-bride unless in some rare instance, where the celestial visitor is exceptionally careless. In that case, her superiors in the invisible world interfere and remove her. The connection with her earthly partner is snapped never to be resumed until he passes over to her world at death. But such failures on the part of the heavenly visitor are rare; and if the resulting phenomena are diabolical, it is the earthly medium's own fault.
That she should bear no children except demons points to the proposition which I have already advanced that children cannot be begotten from Borderland marriage unions. If the earthly husband still insists on doing all he can to beget such children he breaks the law of Borderland, and will be led deeper and deeper into the mire of sensuality, and at last, perhaps be deceived by a subjective hallucination of devils whom he will be told are his children. If he presses for information, he will probably receive a more explicit truthful statement; i. e., that his spirit bride is unable to bear children on the Borderland of two worlds. But should he fail about this time in some detail of moral duty, or clear-headedness, and especially should he insist in sowing seed where no harvest can be reaped, he will most certainly be misled by all sorts of fantastic excuses. For such is the occult law. The psychic who, whether ignorantly or wilfully, is unworthy, loses his grip on the lines of communication, and his own ill-regulated sub-liminal consciousness then steps in with its ingenious excuses such as, perhaps, that his celestial partner is abnormally constituted as a woman, or that she kills their children as fast as they are begotten, etc, etc. And thus, through the failure of the earthly husband to observe the laws of marital self-control on the Borderland, one more tradition is launched upon the world about the devil-bride who seduces men and begets demons and kills children.
That she should be credited with being the author 01 "Evil night-dreams" shows how prone the partners of spirit brides have been to subjective hallucinations. We do not find any such wholsesale charge brought against spirit husbands of portraying evil dreams as is brought against Lilith. The imaginations of men's hearts must indeed have been evil in those days and their brains beclouded or the difference between a materialized spirit bride and the subjective phantasm of an amorous dream would have been more sharply defined. The psychic who conforms two separate planes of existence has forsaken the path of selfcontrol and clear-headedness, and has entered upon the path whose end is insane delusion.
In the supplement of Littre's Dictionary, (French), 1877, occurs a suggestive etymology of the word lilac (or as it is in French, lilas.) The writer connects the root of this word with the Persian nil, indigo, and calls attention to the various Persian words, nilah, niladj, liladj, lilandj, lilang, all relating to indigo. He connects the word lilas (French for lilac) with these words and also with the diminutive lilak (bluish, as fingers blued by the cold) a tint which perfectly characterizes the flowers of the lilac of Persia which are of a pale purple. May there be some philosophical connection between this palely purple flower "lilas" and the ghostly "Lilis" or "Lilat" or "Lilith?"
Lilith figures in a text of Isaiah: but we have to go both to Mohammedan and to Ancient Greek folklore to find the connecting link between this text and the Lilith of Rabbinical traditions. The text refers to the destruction which the Lord threatens will befall Eden, and reads:
"And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and thistles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be an habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches and the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves [or howling creatures]: and the saytr [or he-goat J shall cry to his fellow: yea, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest." Isaiah XXXIV. 13, 14, Revised Version.
The word "night-monster" is in Hebrew, "Lilith," The King James version translates this word "screech-owl;" the Vulgate, "Lamia;*' in Luther's Bible, "Kobold." Lamia or Lamya is found in the Great Bible, and in Coverdale's, Matthew's, Beck's and the Bishop's Bible.
Now a lamia is a mythical serpent-woman of a demoniacal character. Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, gives a memorable instance. A young man on the road near Corinth met a charming woman who invited him to her house in the suburbs of the city, and said that if he would remain with her, "he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; and she being fair and lovely would live and die with him." The young man was, as Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, puts it in giving the account, "a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love," and he "tarried with her awhile to his great content." At last he married her. To the wedding came Apollonius, and he at once recognized her as a lamia, and declared that all her furniture was but illusion. She wept and begged Apollonius to be silent, but he persisted in exposing her, whereupon she, her house and its content vanished.
This is probably a Beauty and the Beast myth on the masculine side, Apollonius playing the part of the outsider who separates the lovers by harping on the things which are illusory and monstrous in the young man's psychic manifestations. It is worth noticing in this connection, that the young man had been living a temperate and self-controlled life when he was first approached by this Lamia or Lilith, so that he was evidently found worthy to taste the joys of affectionate connubial intercourse with his mysterious bride. Here evidently, the young man is not strong enough to endure the training required to consummate Borderland wedlock. He also, evidently, does not have his sub-consciousness well under control, but allows it to run away with him. Mastery of self in every possible aspect, physically, intellectually, morally, affectionally is one of two requisites for sustained marital relations on the Borderland; the other requisite being steadfast aspiration to personal communion with the Divine.
- ↑ Continued from May, 1916.