Saturn; Musteri, Jupiter; Muret (Meryt), Mars; Samsi (Shems), the Sun; Alligasir (the brilliant), Venus; Kitr (Kedr, the obscure), Mercury; Kamer (Kæmer), the Moon. Whether the name of Parcifal be taken from the Arabic Parsé or Parseh Fal, the pure or the poor dummling, as conjectured by Mr. Görres, must be left to the decision of the Oriental scholar: but the narrative already given affords a strong corroboration of his opinion, that Flegetanis is a corruption of Felek-daneh, an astronomer. The Breton and Provençal fictions, as we have seen, unite in bringing this mysterious vessel from the East, a quarter of the globe whose earliest records present us with a marvellous cup, as extraordinary in its powers as any thing attributed to the Graal. Such a cup is well known to have occupied a conspicuous place among the traditions of the Jews, and from the Patriarch Joseph", the chaste and provident minister of Pharaoh, to have descended to the great object of Hebrew veneration and glory, the illustrious king Solomon". It will, therefore, be no matter of surprise to those who remember the ta 116 Is not this it in which my lord drinketh? And whereby indeed he divineth? Gen. xliv. 5. In Norden's time the custom of divining by a cup was still continued. "Je sais," dit Baram Cashef de Derri au Juif, qui servoit d'entremetteur aux voyageurs Européens, "quelles gens vous etes; j'ai consulté ma coupe, et j'y ai trouvé, que vous etiez ceux, dont un de nos prophêtes a dit, qu'il viendroit des Francs travestis, qui feraient enfin venir un grand nombre d'autres Francs, qui feroient la conquête du pays, et examineroient tout." Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, iii. 68. The lecanomanty of the Greeks is well known. The Clavicula Salomonis contains a singular variation of this fiction. The supernatural knowledge of Solomon was recorded in a volume, which Rehoboam inclosed in an ivory ewer, and deposited in his father's tomb. On repairing the royal sepulchre, some wise men of Baby lon discovered the cup, and having extracted the volume, an angel revealed the key to its mysterious writing to one Troes a Greek: and hence the stream of occult science, which has so beneficially unfolded the destinies of the West. A parallel fable is found in Messenian story. When the Lacedæmonians stormed the fortress on mount Ira, Aristomenes, warned by the Delphic oracle, secreted in the earth some unknown article, which was to be a future talisman of security to his unfortunate countrymen. After the battle of Leuctra, the Argive commander Epiteles was directed in a dream to exhume this mysterious deposit. It was then discovered to be a brazen ewer, containing a roll of finely beaten tin, on which were inscribed the mysteries of the great divinities (Tv μsya tav.... TIT. Paus. iv. c. 20. 26.) lismanic effect of a name in the general history of fiction, that a descendant of this distinguished sovereign should be found to write its history; or that another Joseph should be made the instrument of conveying it to the kingdoms of Western Europe. In Persian fable, the same miraculous vessel has been bestowed upon the great Jemshid, the pattern of perfect kings, in whose reign the golden age was realized in Iran, and under whose mild and beneficent sway it became a land of undisturbed felicity. On digging the foundations of Estakar (Persepolis), this favourite of Ormuzd, and his legitimate representative upon earth, discovered the goblet of the Sun; and hence the cause of all those blessings which attended his prosperous reign, and his unbounded knowledge of both terrestrial and celestial affairs. From the founder of the Persian monarchy it passed into the hands of Alexander the Great 19, the hero of all later Oriental fiction; and Ferdusi introduces the Macedonian conqueror addressing this sacred cup as "the ruling prince of the heavenly bodies, and as the auspicious emblem of his victorious career." By other Eastern poets it has been referred to as a symbol of the world, and the fecundating powers of Nature; while others again have considered it as the source of all true divination and augury, of the 119 Giam en Perse signifie un coupe ou verre à boire et un miroir. Les Orientaux, qui fabriquent cette espèce de vases ou ustensiles de toutes sortes des metaux aussi bien que de verre ou de crystal, et en plusieurs figures differentes, mais qui approchent toutes de spherique, donnent aussi ce nom à un globe celeste. Ils disent, que l'ancien roi Gianschid, qui est le Salomon des Perses, et Alexandre le Grand, avoient de ces coupes, globes, ou miroirs, par le moyen desquels ils connoissoient toutes les choses naturels, et quelquefois même les surnaturelles. La coupe qui servoit à Joseph le Patriarche pour deviner, et celle de Nestor dans Homère, où toute la nature étoit répresentée symboliquement, ont pu fournir aux Orientaux le sujet de cette fiction. Un poete Turc dit, Lorsque j'aurai été éclairé des lumières du ciel, mon ame deviendra le miroir du monde, dans lequel je decouvrai les se crets les plus cachés. Herbelot Biblioth. Orient. s. v. Giam. 119 Quum Alexander pervenisset in palatium suum, gyrantes exierunt Græci locis suis, et læti non viderunt noctem regis, (viderunt autem) quatuor pocula. Gyrantibus ita locutus est (Alexander): Salvi estote, lætamini hoc fausto omíne nostro, hic enim scyphus in pugna est salus nostra, princeps siderum est in po testate nostra.' Shahnameh, as quoted in Wilkins's Persian Chrestomathia, p. 171, and Creuzer's Dionysus, p. 62. mysterious arts of chemistry, and the genuine philosopher's stone 10. A goblet of the Sun also forms a favourite object in Grecian fable. On approaching the shores of the Western Ocean, this divinity was supposed to abandon his chariot, and, placing himself in a cup, to be borne through the centre of the earth. Having visited (according to Stesichorus) his mother, wife and children, he then proceeded to the opposite point of the hemisphere, where another car awaited his arrival, with which he resumed his diurnal course. The Theban Hercules, the original type of all erratic champions, once ventured to attack the son of Hyperion; but on being reproved for his temerity he withheld his hand, and received as a reward for his obedience the golden chalice of the god. This he now ascended; and during a furious storm, excited for the purpose of putting his courage to the test, he traversed the ocean in it till he reached the western island of Erythæa. The Pla 120 In the article already referred to, Herbelot says, The Persian poets make of this cup, "tantot le symbole de la nature et du monde, tantot celui du vin, quelquefois celui de la divination et des augures, et enfin de la chymie, et de la pierre philosophale." 121 See the fragments of this mythos, as variously related in Athenæus, lib. xi. p. 469-70. Mimnermus calls it the couch of the Sun, in allusion, as Athenæus observes, to the concave form of the cup. This seems to have been a common metonymy; for in the passage already cited from Pausanias, the brazen ewer deposited by Aristomenes, is termed a brazen bed by the old man who appeared to Epiteles in his dream. 122 From the Grecian terminology of their drinking-vessels, it is clear that a cup and a ship were originally correlative ideas; and the catalogue of Athenæus (lib. xi.) recites several words indiscriminately implying either the one or the other. The twofold import of these terms will tend to explain an apparent deviation on the part of the Greeks and Romans, from the general type adopted by other nations in the form of their re ceptacles for the dead. The vase or urn of the former, the larnax of Egypt, the ship or boat of Western Europe, and the canoe of the American savage, are all connected with the same primitive idea expressed in the Welsh apophthegm: "Pawb a ddaw i'r Ddavar Long-Every one will come into the ship of the earth.' By whatever steps the Greek proceeded from his simple bowl or boat, to all the luxury of form displayed in his cinereal urns, the larnax, ship, or coffin, of other nations was by no means a needful accommodation to the doctrine, which forbade the incremation of the dead. The ashes of Balldur (Dæmesaga, c. 43.) were deposited in the ship Hringhorne, the body of Scyld (Beowulf, c. 1.) in a bark laden with arms and raiment, and committed to the guidance of the ocean. The varying language of the Iliad seems to countenance a similar distinction between Greek and Phrygian rites. The ashes of Patroclus are consigned to a golden cup (is xguríny Qiáλnv, xxiii. 253); those of Hector to a golden ark or coffer (xgursinv is λágvaxa, xxiv. 795. Compare Thucydides ii. 34); for it is by no means clear, that the latter term ever tonists have dwelt at large upon Hercules thus completing his labours in the West; and connecting this circumstance with the fancied position of the islands of the blest, have implied that it was here he overcame the vain illusions of a terrestrial life, and that henceforth he resided in the realms of truth and eternal light. With them, as in the school from whence their leading dogmas were derived—the mysteries of Paganism—a cup is the constant symbol of "vivific power;" and this goblet of the Sun becomes the same type of regeneration and a return to a better life, with the Graal of romantic fiction. Another version of the contest between Hercules and the Sun, or Apollo, transfers the scene of action to Delphi, and makes the object of strife between these heaven-born kinsmen the celebrated tripod of the oracle. But in the symbolical language of Greece, a tripod and a goblet (crater) were synonymous terms: and the grammarians have informed us, that from this combat between the brothers, and their subsequent reconciliation, arose the prophetic powers of Hercules. It will however be remembered, that the translators of the Septuagint, in their version of the Hebrew text, have rendered the divining cup of Joseph by the Greek term "Condy." Of this vessel Athenæus has preserved the following account from Nicomachus. The name of this cup is Persian. It originally meant the celestial lantern of Hermes, which in form resem implied an urn, however much such an interpretation might be justified by analogy. We are not, however, to infer, that either of these utensils was the emblem of death or annihilation, or that this application to funereal purposes was in any way at variance with the Platonic doctrine of the text. For as the cup or vase was the symbol of vivific power, of generation, or an earthly existence, so also it was the type of regeneration, or a continued life in a happier and more exalted state. The savage is buried in his canoe, that he may be conveyed to the residence of departed souls; the Greek was taught in the mysteries, that the Dionysic vase would be a passport to the Elysian fields; and the religion of Egypt enjoined, that every worshipper of Osiris should appear before his subterranean judge in the same kind of receptacle as that which had inclosed the mortal frame of this divinity. It only remains to observe, that a boat of glass was the symbol of initiation into the Druidical mysteries. Davies's Celtic Mythology, p. 211. 183 Καὶ τὸ νικητήριον ἐν Διονύσου, τρίπους δεῖ δὲ νοεῖν τρίποδα τοῦ Διονύσου, τὸν garga. Athenæus ii, 143. .... bled the world, and was at once the source of the divine marvels, and all the fruits that abound upon earth. On this account it is used in libations 124" The reader of Plato will have no difficulty in connecting this mundane cup with the first crater, in which the Demiurgus of the universe mixed the materials of his future creation; in which the soul of the world was tempered to its due consistency, and from whence the souls that animate corporeal substances were dispersed among the stars 125. The mention of this primary bowl gave rise among the Platonists to a second or distributive cup of souls, which they bestowed upon Dionysus, as lord of the sensitive universe; and hence the Nymphs, as ministrants and followers of this divinity, as the authorized inspectors of generation, were said to be supplied with the same symbol. According to some authorities, these goblets are placed at opposite points of the firmament, and are respectively the types of generation, or the soul's descent into this realm of sensual pleasure, and of palingenesy, or the soul's return to those celestial regions from whence it sprang 16. The former stands between the signs of Cancer and Leo, immediately before the human tal; and a draught of the oblivious beverage it contains occasions forgetfulness of those pure delights in which the soul had previously lived, and excites a turbulent propensity towards a material and earthly existence. The latter is placed at one por 124 Athenæus xi. 478. The present scattered notices of Proclus and Plotiversion is founded on the correction of nus on the subject. Compare also PorMr. Creuzer, who has at length render-phyry's interesting tract De Antro Nymed this passage intelligible by reading pharum, and Macrobius's Somnium Sci"Equo vos, where both Casaubon and pionis. Schweighauser have "Euros. The latter critic has acknowledged the advantage of this emendation. See Dionysus, &c. p. 26 et seq. Nicomachus has used the term applied by Plato (Leg. i. 644.) to the whole animal creation, rav tv τὰ θαύματα. 197 See Macrobius S. Scip. i. c. 12. The cauldron of Ceridwen, if founded on a genuine record, appears to occupy the same place in Celtic mythology. (See the Hanes Taliessin in Mr. Davies's Celtic Mythology.) Ceridwen, we are told, was "the goddess of various seeds," from whose cauldron was derived every thing sacred, pure and primitive. Gwyon the Little sits watch |