THE
HISTORY OF THE TWO PILLARS.
W. L. Fawcette, Atlantic
Monthly - 1874
According to
tradition, Melcarthus, a Tyrian
navigator and
explorer, sailing in search of
fabled Atlantis
or dimly rumored Britain, had
paused in a bay
at the western extremity of
the land beyond
the straits, and set up there
two pillars as a
memorial, building over them
the temple of
Hercules. A colony of Tyre was
established
there, and the place grew into
the ancient Gades,
the modern Cadiz. As the
temple increased
in wealth, through the
votive offerings
of passing voyagers, it
became more
splendid, and the first rude
pillars of stone
were replaced by others made
of precious
metals. As late as the second
century this
temple existed in its greatest
splendor. Flavius
Philostratus, who visited
it, testifies to
its magnificence, and in his
Life of
Apollonius of Tyana gives the
following
description of the pillars:
"The pillars in
the temple were composed of
gold and silver,
and so nicely blended were
the metals as to
form but one color. They
were more than a
cubit high, of a
quadrangular
form, like anvils, whose
capitals were
inscribed with characters
neither Indian
nor Egyptian, nor such as
could be
deciphered. These pillars are the
chains which bind
together the earth and sea.
The inscriptions
on them were executed by
Hercules in the
house of the Parcae, to
prevent discord
arising among the elements
and that
friendship being disturbed which
they have for
each other."
These pillars
were the nucleus of the ancient
Gades, and
naturally became the metropolitan
emblem of the
modern city, as the horse's
head was of
Carthage.
The tradition of
the Freemasons in regard to
the two pillars,
which are a prominent emblem
of their Craft,
is, that they represent the
pillars Jachin
and Boz which Hiram of Tyre
made for Solomon,
and set one on either side
of the entrance
to the Temple, to commemorate
the pillar of
cloud by day and of fire by
night which
guided the Israelites in their
forty years'
wanderings in the wilderness.
Whatever
significance the Hebrews may have
attached to these
pillars, there is good
reason for
believing that they received the
material emblem
from the Tyrians at the time
of the building
of the Temple. The Scriptures
give a minute
account of the dimensions and
designs of the
pillars, (2 Kings, vii, and 2
Chronicles, iii,)
but are silent as to their
significance; and
there is nothing in the
whole Scriptural
account of them to forbid
the conclusion
that the ideas symbolized by
them were as much
Tyrian as Jewish. Tyre had
been a rich and
prosperous city for over two
hundred years,
when Solomon undertook the
building of the
Temple. The Tyrians had been
skilled in
architecture and other arts to a
degree that
implied a high state of mental
culture, while
the Hebrews were yet nomadic
tribes living in
tents. The tabernacle was
only a tent, and
in this first Hebrew
endeavor to give
it a more enduring structure
of wood and
stone, Solomon naturally appealed
to the greater
skill of the subjects of the
friendly Hiram,
King of Tyre. When the
Hebrews began to
build the Temple, they
ceased their
wanderings, they became
permanently
established, and, as a memorial
of this fact,
they embodied in the
architectural
design of the Temple a symbol
which, by the
Tyrians and many other nations
descended from
the ancient Aryan stock, was
considered
emblematic of a divine leadership
that had
conducted them to a new and
permanent home;
this was the true
significance of
the two pillars.
As long as the
Hebrews were wanderers, the
pillars of cloud
by day and of fire by night
were merely a
metaphor, to express their
belief in a
divine direction of their
movements. When
they came at last to the
promised land,
the figurative pillars of
cloud and fire
became the two pillars in the
porch of the
Temple, as the symbol of the
establishment of
the nation.
Having thus
traced the story of the emblems
back through two
lines of descent to a common
point in Tyre, we
must take a look into the
remoter past to
find the origin of the symbol
in the earliest
recorded ideas of the human
race in
connection with the Deity, and from
that point we may
follow its descent again
through the two
independent routes of Greek
and Scandinavian
mythology.
The ancient
Aryans who composed the Vedas had
not then arrived
at the stage of intellectual
development in
which they could entertain the
idea of an
abstract principle as the one
universal law, or
of any god except a risible
one. To them it
seemed impossible that there
could be a
spiritual essence without some
material form.
Fire, the most inexplicable
and striking of
the agencies of nature, was
accepted by them
as this first and
all-pervading
force which controlled the
universe; and the
sun, the grandest and most
brilliant mass of
fire, as the embodiment of
the Deity.
Here are two
verses of the Vedas, as
translated by Max
Muller, which may be called
the Genesis of
the Brahmins, and in them are
two words around
which have crystallized
fancies growing.
into myths, and myths
growing into
monuments of wood and stone, and
again into ideal
beings, until the original
conceptions. have
been almost lost. Yet
through all these
changes some
characteristics
of the original meaning have
been so stamped
upon each new form, that the
thread of
connection, from those ancient days
when the first
peoples of the human race
worshiped the sun
on the plains of Central
Asia, down
through all the ages to the
comparatively
modern symbol of the Pillars of
Hercules, is
unmistakable:
1. "In the
beginning there arose the golden
Child. He was one
born lord of all that is.
He established
the earth and this sky;- Who
is the God to
whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?
2. "He who gives
life, he who gives strength,
whose command all
the bright gods revere,
whose shadow is
immortality; whose shadow is
death; Who is the
God to whom we shall offer
our sacrifice?"
If there were
nothing but the coincidence of
the two words
italicized in the foregoing
verses, with the
names of the two pillars in
Solomon's Temple
- Boaz meaning strength,
and Jachin to
establish - if there were nothing
but this to
establish the connection of the
two pillars as
well as the Pillars of
Hercules and also
the Greek myth of Castor
and Pollux, with
these ancient expressions,
the identity or
all these myths and symbols
might be more
doubtful than it is; but there
is more.
In the Vedas the
sun is called the "runner,"
the "quick
racer;" he is called Arvat, the
horse; Agni, the
fire; Arusha, the red one,
the strong one,
the son of Heaven and Earth;
Indra, the god of
all gods. He is represented
as drawn in a
chariot over his daily course
through the
heavens by "the harits," "the
rohits," and "the
arushas," i.e., the
gleaming, the
ruddy, and the gold-colored
horses of the
dawn, which are the first rays
of the morning
sun.
The flexibility
of the idea, within a certain
range of
expressions seems to be acknowledged
by the poets of
the Vedas in the following
verse:
"Hear thou, the
brilliant Agni, my prayer,
whether the two
black horses bring thy car,
or the two ruddy,
or the two red horses."
Notwithstanding
all the interchanging of
names, numbers,
and genders, and the changing
of forms from
animal to human, and vice
versa, there is
an adherence to the idea of
beings endowed
with supernatural strength and
brightness, and
of a contest between, and
alternating
supremacy of, light and darkness!
It requires no
great stretch of the
imagination to
conceive how, in the Greek
modification of
this many-sided plastic myth
of the sun-god,
Indra should be the prototype
of Jove, and
Arusha of Apollo, and also of
Heracles. Indeed,
it seems probable that, out
of the numerous
names of this one object of
adoration, the
sun, grew nearly all the
wonderful and
fantastic system of both Greek
and Scandinavian
mythology.
In the Vedic
myths, the phenomena which
attended the
rising and setting of the sun,
the clouds, same
black, some ruddy, and some
shining like
molten gold or silver, and also
his first and
last beams darting through,
were spoken of as
horses or cattle, or beings
with human forms,
almost invariably in pair.
In some places
the ruddy clouds that precede
his rising are
called the bright cows." The
two horses which
the sun is said to harness
to his car are
called the "Arusha," the red
ones; in other
places they are called the
"two Asvins," the
shining mares; and in
others the idea
is modified still more, and
they are called
the "two sisters," and, at
last, we find,
are named Day and Night, the
"daughters of
Arusha," the one gleaming with
the brightness of
her father, and the other
decked with
stars. Professor Whitney, in his
Essay on the
Vedas, introduces the "two
Asvins" as
"enigmatical divinities," whose
vocation or
province in Aryan mythology he
does not
discover, though, at the same time
he intimates the
probability that they may be
identical with
the Dioscuri of the Greeks;
and Professor
Muller hints at the same
identity, but
with no more reference to their
true character of
divine forerunners or
guides for
families, tribes, or races of men
wandering about
the world in search of new
homes. It is
related of the Dioscuri that,
when Castor for
was killed, Pollux,
inconsolable for
his loss, besought Jove to
let him give his
own life for that of his
brother. To this
Jove so far consented as to
allow the two
brothers to each pass alternate
days under the
earth pad in the celestial
abodes, their
alternate daily deaths and
ascensions to the
heavens being only another
version of the
story of Day and Night, the
daughters of
Arusha. The twin brothers,
Castor and Pollux,
are represented as always
clad in shining
armor, and mounted on snow-
white steeds,
thus reproducing the chief
characteristics
of the "two Asvins," the
shining mares of
the Vedas, and showing that
all these
metamorphoses are only variations
of the same idea.
The Hebrew
metaphor of the pillar of cloud by
day and of fire
by night, to express the idea
of a divine
leadership, points to the same
natural objects -
clouds and fire - that to
the earlier
Aryans were symbols of the
presence of the
Deity; and the whole idea
might seem a
reproduction or elaboration of
that expressed in
the following verses of the
Rig-Veda, written
a thousand years before:
Wherever the
mighty water-clouds went, where
they placed the
seed and lit the fire, thence
arose He who is
the sole life of the bright
gods; - Who is
the God to whom we shall offer
our sacrifice?
"He who by His
might looked even over the
water clouds, the
clouds which gave strength
and lit the
sacrifice; He who alone is God
above all gods."
The fact that
nearly every manifestation of
the presence of
the Deity recorded in Hebrew
history down to
the time of the building of
the Temple was in
a cloud, shows at least a
remarkable
resemblance to the Aryan
conceptions of
the divine presence.
The further
elaboration of the idea in
symbolizing the
presence of the Deity by two
pillars of wood
or stone, and particularly of
such presence in
the character of a leader
through long
wanderings to a place of
permanent
establishment, was not exclusive
with the Hebrews.
Other races with whom the
Hebrews could not
have come in contact had
precisely the
same symbol of two pillars of
wood or stone, a
fact which makes it a
reasonable
presumption that the two pillars,
one of cloud, one
of fire, which were their
prototypes, were
not more exclusively a
Hebrew idea.
In Sparta the
twin Dioscuri are said to have
been represented
by two pillars of stone,
which were
sometimes joined by a smaller
horizons bar to
represent their twinship.
Frequently the
top of one of these posts was
carved in the
semblance of a human head. The
Spartans may have
borrowed the emblem from
the Tyrians; the
fact that the ancient
Northmen employed
the two pillars to
symbolize
precisely the same ideas as those
connected with
them by the Hebrews and
Greeks, makes it
quite likely that the
Spartans derived
the symbol from the same
original source
as the Tyrians.
A column of stone
was in fact a common symbol
of the Deity
among many ancient nations.
Venus was
worshiped at Paphos under the fond
of a stone. Juno
of the Thespians and Diana
of the Icarians
were worshiped under the same
form. The most
famous of the Syrian deities
was El Gabal,
(the stone,) a name to which is
akin the modern
Arabic gebel, a mountain, or
a rock. The very
name of Gibraltar, one of
the mountains to
which poetry has transferred
the title of
Pillars of Hercules, is from
Gebel Tarik, the
mountain, or the rock, of
Tarik, one of the
first Moors who set foot on
the northern side
of the straits, and after
whom came those
who established in Spain the
brilliant and
romantic empire of these
successors of the
ancient Phoenicians.
There is good
ground for the presumption that
Heracles of the
Greeks was only another
version of the
myth of the Dioscuri. The
Hebrews gave each
of the pillars a name,
though they
received the emblem from the
Tyrians, who
employed them as the emblem of
one deity; and as
the Tyrians were earlier
than the Greeks,
this phrase of the
monotheistic
significance of the pillars must
have come down
from the same ancient source
as the myth of
the Dioscuri.
With both Greeks
and Tyrians "Heracles,"
transformed by
the Latins into "Hercules,"
seemed to be a
transferable honorary title.
The proper name
of the Tyrian Heracles was
Melcarthus, whose
mother was said to be
Asteria, the
starry heavens; while the proper
name of the Greek
Heracles was Alcaeus, who
was said to be
the son of Jove by a mortal
mother, Alcmena,
as the Dioscuri were said to
be the twin sons
of Jove by a mortal mother
Leda. The
Heracles of the Tyriaus and the
Castor and Pollux
of the Greeks were the
patron deities of
seamen and navigators, as
well as of feats
of strength and agility.
Turning now to
the mythology of the
Scandinavians, we
find in the character of
Thor one which
corresponds in all these
particulars. He
was said to he the son of
Odin, the eldest
of the gods by Jord, (the
earth.) Not only
do the stories of his feats
of strength with
his hammer correspond to
those of Heracles
with his club, but he was
the patron deity
of the early Norse
navigators, who
were as daring as even the
Phoenicians.
The "sacred
columns" of the Norse mythology
were two high
wooden posts, or pillars,
fashioned by
hewing. These stood on either
aide of the "high
seat" of the master of the
household, and
hence were called "the pillars
of the high
seat," and were a sort of
household symbol
of Thor. The upper end of
one of the
pillars being, like the Spartan
symbol, carved in
the semblance of a human
head, the setting
up of these pillars was the
sign of the
establishment of the household on
that spot. When a
Northman moved, no matter
how far, he took
his sacred pillars with him;
and where these
were set up, there was his
home until he
made a formal change of
domicile by
moving them to some new spot.
When the Northmen
discovered Iceland, and
began to emigrate
there, the sacred pillars
of each Norse
family were thrown overboard
when the ship
came near the land, and on the
nearest habitable
spot to where they ere cast
ashore by the
waves, they were set up, by
planting the ends
in the ground, as a symbol
of possession,
being in some respect a formal
act of "entry,"
having something of the same
significance as
the act of the emigrant in
the Western
States who has "staked out a
claim."
When the pillars
were set up, the house was
built around
them, and, though the pillars
and the domicile
might be moved to new
locations, the
place where the pillars were
first cast ashore
always retained a peculiar
significance and
sacredness to the family.
Thus it is
related of Throd Hrappsson, that
his pillars, when
cast overboard, were
carried away by
the waves and currents and
apparently lost.
He settled, however, on the
eastern side of
Iceland, and had been living
there ten or
fifteen years when it was
discovered that
his pillars had been cast
ashore on the
western coast, upon which he
straightway sold
his estate, and moved to the
locality where
his pillars had been found.
Many other
instances of the casting of the
sacred columns
into the sea, in order that
they might guide
Northmen in their selection
of homes in
Iceland, are related in Rudolph
Keyser's Religion
of the Northmen.
Of Eirik the Red
it is told, that, having
loaned his posts
of honor (possibly as a
pledge of some
promise to be fulfilled) to
another
Icelander, he could not get them
back, which gave
occasion for a long feud,
into which many
other families were drawn,
and many of the
adherents of both parties
were slain.
"When the Norse
chieftain Thorolf
Mostrarskegg left
Norway to settle in
Iceland, he tore
down the temple of Thor,
over which he had
presided, in which he
seemed to have
some kind of proprietary right
from having built
it chiefly at his own
expense for the
use of the worshipers of
Thor, and took
with him the most of the
timber, together
with the earth beneath the
platform on which
Thor's statue had been
seated."
When he came in
view of Iceland, the two
sacred columns of
the temple were thrown into
the sea; and
where these were cast on shore
by the waves, he
called the place Thorsnes,
and built the
temple of Thor, placing the two
sacred columns,
one on either side, just
within the
doorway.
The incidents in
which the two columns thus
appear in the
earliest history of the Norse
people are, it is
true, of modern date, when
compared with
their appearance at the
building of
Solomon's Temple, of the erection
of the Pillars of
Hercules by Melcarthus,
near the straits
of Gibraltar; but their
later appearance
in history as the "Pillars
of Thor" does not
argue that they were copied
from the Pillars
of Hercules, but only that
written history,
or even chronology of any
kind, was not
known in Scandinavia until a
much later period
than in Syria and Greece.
The Germanic
race, however, of which the
Northmen were a
branch, had its origin in the
centre of Asia
near the Caspian Sea. From
there they had
brought the same tradition as
the Syrians and
Greeks; and the religious
myths, out of
which the Greeks afterwards
elaborated their
fanciful system of
mythology, were
by the Northmen, whose rude
climate gave
imagination a gloomier turn,
fashioned into
the more barbarous, grotesque,
and sanguinary "Asa
faith." The cosmogony of
the Greeks and
the Northmen corresponds so
nearly as to
leave no doubt of a common
origin, and yet
the details were so different
as to show that
for ages the ancient stories
must have been
handed down from one
generation to
another by people possessed of
a vastly
different degree of refinement, and
surrounded by a
different aspect of nature.
The Asa faith was
as ancient as the cosmogony
of the
Phoenicians and the Greeks, and the
sacred columns of
Thor were not an idea
borrowed from the
Pillars of Heracles, but an
independent
perpetuation of the same mystic
symbol.
The facts that
the two pillars were a sacred
symbol in three
ancient and contemporaneous
religions, and
that they occupied the same
position and
significance in the temples of
Thor of the
Scandinavians, Heracles of the
Tyrians, and
Jehovah of the Hebrews, help to
confirm the
theory of a common mythology as
the foundation
and the source of the ideas of
all the later
faiths. The fervid spirit of
the Hebrews gave
to their version of this and
other ancient
conceptions a diviner mould. As
the solar ray of
light, split up by the
prism, yields
three groups of rays, one of
which carries
with it the main portion of the
heat, another the
greater part of all the
light, and
another nearly all the actinic
qualities, and
each of these groups embracing
two or more of
the seven prismatic colors, so
the rays of that
ancient Aryan sun, the first
and most natural
emblem of the Deity, falling
on the human
mind, have been elaborated to a
great variety of
faiths, each carrying with
it some of the
divine light, but in other
characteristics
as different as the groups in
the spectrum of
the analyzed solar ray. With
one race the
predominant traits of religious
thought are
brilliant, but merely sentimental
corruscations of
poetic fancy; with another,
cold, practical
maxims of thrift; with
another, the
fervid, but sombre, enthusiasm,
the zealous
dogmatism that overturns empires.
But in all there
is the acknowledgment that
the regular
alternation of day and night is
the work of God,
the phenomena indicating his
presence to guide
man around the habitable
portion of the
world.
"Sun and moon go
in regular succession, that
we may see Indra
and believe," writes one of
the poets of the
Rig-Veda.
"The day is thine,
the night also is thine:
thou hast
prepared the light and the sun,"
sings the poet of
Israel.
