The purgatorial lore now Christianized and associated with St. Patrick in the originally pagan St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland, the whole cycle of Otherworld and Rebirth legends of the Celtic peoples connected with their Fairy-Faith, and similar Proserpine lore recorded in the Sacred Books of mankind the world over, as well as the Semitic doctrines of heaven and hell and judgement, and of resurrection as the Christianized corruption of a pre-Christian and Jewish rebirth doctrine, as also the passage in Plato, all testify to beliefs universal among mankind, probably far older than the oldest of ancient records from Babylon or from Egypt.[1]
The painting of the Tibetan Judgement Scene as reproduced herein (see opposite p. 166) was made, in strict accord with monastic tradition, in Gangtok, Sikkim, during the year 1919, by Lharipa-Pempa-Tendup-La, a Tibetan artist then sojourning there. An early prototype of it was, until quite recently, preserved as one of the old frescoes contained within the pictorial Wheel of Life of the Tashiding temple-picture in Sikkim, which Dr. L. A. Waddell has described as follows: ‘The judgement is in every case meted out by the impartial Shinje-chho-gyal or “Religious King of the Dead” [Dharma-Rāja], a form of Yama, the Hindu god of the dead, who holds a mirror in which the naked soul is reflected, while his servant Shinje weighs out in scales the good as opposed to the bad deeds; the former being represented by white pebbles, and the latter by black.’[2] And Dr. Waddell has traced back
- ↑ In my Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (Oxford, 1911), Chapter X, I have suggested how very probable it is that the purgatorial lore which centred about the cavern for mystic pagan initiations formerly existing on an island in Loch Derg, Ireland, at what is now the famous place of Catholic pilgrimage called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, gave rise to the doctrine of Purgatory in the Roman Church. The original purgatorial cavern was demolished, by order of the English Government in Ireland, to destroy, as was said, pagan superstition.
Furthermore, the subterranean places of worship and initiation, dedicated to the Sun-God Mithras, still preserved as ancient remains throughout the Southern European countries, bear such close resemblance to the original Irish Purgatory—as to other underground places of initiation in Celtic countries like New Grange in Ireland and Gavrinis in Brittany—as to indicate a common prehistoric origin, essentially religious and connected with a cult of the Bardo-world and its inhabitants.
- ↑ Cf. The Gazetteer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, p. 269.
