Hades;[1] and it unequivocally belongs to the destroying serpent of the Zarathustrians, Azhi Dahâka,[2] a figure which bears so remarkable a relation to that of the Semitic serpent of Eden, which may possibly stand in historical connexion with it. A wondrous blending of the ancient rites of Ophiolatry with mystic conceptions of Gnosticism appears in the cultus which tradition (in truth or slander) declares the semi-Christian sect of Ophites to have rendered to their tame snake, enticing it out of its chest to coil round the sacramental bread, and worshipping it as representing the great king from heaven who in the beginning gave to the man and woman the knowledge of the mysteries.[3] Thus the extreme types of religious veneration, from the soberest matter-of-fact to the dreamiest mysticism, find their places in the worship of animals.[4]
Hitherto in the study of animistic doctrine, our attention has been turned especially to those minor spirits whose functions concern the closer and narrower detail of man's life and its surroundings. In passing thence to the consideration of divine beings whose functions have a wider scope, the transition may be well made through a special group. An acute remark of Auguste Comte's calls attention to an important process of theological thought, which we may here endeavour to bring as clearly as possible before our minds. In his 'Philosophie Positive,' he defines deities proper as differing by their general and abstract character from pure fetishes (i.e., animated objects), the humble fetish governing but a single object from which it is inseparable, while the gods administer a special order of phenomena at once in different bodies. When, he con-
- ↑ Lepsius, 'Todtenbuch,' and Birch's transl. in Bunsen's 'Egypt,' vol. v.
- ↑ Spiegel, 'Avesta,' vol. i. p. 66, vol. iii. p. lix.
- ↑ Epiphan. Adv. Hæres. xxxvii. Tertullian. De Præscript. contra Hæreticos, 47.
- ↑ Further collections of evidence relating to Zoolatry in general may be found in Bastian, 'Das Thier in seiner mythologischen Bedeutung,' in Bastian and Hartmann's 'Zeitschrift für Ethnologie,' vol. i., Meiners, 'Geschichte der Religionen,' vol. i.
