The White Goddess (19 page)
Authors: Robert Graves
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Mythology, #Literature, #20th Century, #Britain, #Literary Studies, #Amazon.com, #Mysticism, #Retail
The Latins worshipped the White Goddess as Cardea, and Ovid tells a muddled story about her in his
Fasti
,
connecting her with the word
cardo
, a hinge. He says that she was the mistress of Janus, the two-headed god of doors and of the first month of the year, and had charge over door-hinges. She also protected infants against witches disguised as formidable night-birds who snatched children from their cradles and sucked their blood. He says that she exercised this power first at Alba (‘the white city’), which was colonized by emigrants from the Peloponnese at the time of the great dispersal, and from which Rome was colonized, and that her principal prophylactic instrument was the hawthorn. Ovid’s story is inside out: Cardea was Alphito, the White Goddess who destroyed children after disguising herself in bird or beast form, and the hawthorn which was sacred to her might not be introduced into a house lest she destroyed the children inside. It was Janus, ‘the stout guardian of the oak door’, who kept out Cardea and her witches, for Janus was really the oak-god Dianus who was incarnate in the King of Rome and afterwards in the Flamen Dialis, his spiritual successor; and his wife Jana was Diana (Dione) the goddess of the woods and of the moon. Janus and Jana were in fact a rustic
form of Jupiter and Juno. The reduplicated
p
in Juppiter represents an elided n: he was Jun-pater – father Dianus. But before Janus, or Dianus, or Juppiter, married Jana or Diana or Juno, and put her under subjection, he was her son, and she was the White Goddess Cardea. And though he became the Door, the national guardian, she became the hinge which connected him with the door-post; the importance of this relationship will be explained in Chapter Ten.
Cardo
,
the hinge, is the same word as
cerdo
, craftsman – in Irish myth the god of craftsmen who specialized in hinges, locks and rivets was called
Credne
– the craftsman who originally claimed the goddess Cerdo or Cardea as his patroness. Thus as Janus’s mistress, Cardea was given the task of keeping from the door the nursery bogey who in matriarchal times was her own august self and who was propitiated at Roman weddings with torches of hawthorn. Ovid says of Cardea, apparently quoting a religious formula: ‘Her power is to open what is shut; to shut what is open.’
Ovid identifies Cardea with the goddess Carnea who had a feast at Rome on June 1, when pig’s flesh and beans were offered to her. This is helpful in so far as it connects the White Goddess with pigs, though the Roman explanation that Carnea was so called
quod
carnem
offerunt
(‘because they offer her flesh’) is nonsense. Moreover, as has already been noted in the
Câd
Goddeu
context, beans were used in Classical times as a homoeopathic charm against witches and spectres: one put a bean in one’s mouth and spat it at the visitant; and at the Roman feast of the
Lemuria
each householder threw black beans behind his back for the
Lemures
,
or ghosts, saying: ‘With these I redeem myself and my family.’ The Pythagorean mystics, who derived their doctrine from Pelasgian sources,
1
were bound by a strong taboo against the eating of beans and quoted a verse attributed to Orpheus, to the effect that to eat beans was to eat one’s parents’ heads.
2
The flower of the bean is white, and it blooms at the same season as the hawthorn. The bean is the White Goddess’s – hence its connexion with the Scottish witch cult; in primitive times only her priestesses might either plant or cook it. The men of Pheneus in Arcadia had a tradition that the Goddess Demeter, coming there in her wanderings,
gave them permission to plant all grains and pulses except only beans. It seems, then, that the reason for the Orphic taboo was that the bean grows spirally up its prop, portending resurrection, and that ghosts contrived to be reborn as humans by entering into beans – Pliny mentions this – and being eaten by women; thus, for a man to eat a bean might be an impious frustration of his dead parents’ designs. Beans were tossed to ghosts by Roman householders at the Zemuraz to give them a chance of rebirth; and offered to the Goddess Carnea at her festival because she held the keys of the Underworld.
Carnea is generally identified with the Roman goddess Cranaë, who was really Cranaea, ‘the harsh or stony one’, a Greek surname of the Goddess Artemis whose hostility to children had constantly to be appeased. Cranaea owned a hill-temple near Delphi in which the office of priest was always held by a boy, for a five-year term; and a cypress-grove, the Cranaeum, just outside Corinth, where Bellerophon had a hero-shrine. Cranaë means ‘rock’ and is etymologically connected with the Gaelic ‘cairn’ – which has come to mean a pile of stones erected on a mountain-top.
I write of her as the White Goddess because white is her principal colour, the colour of the first member of her moon-trinity, but when Suidas the Byzantine records that Io was a cow that changed her colour from white to rose and then to black he means that the New Moon is the white goddess of birth and growth; the Full Moon, the red goddess of love and battle; the Old Moon, the black goddess of death and divination. Suidas’s myth is supported by Hyginus’s fable of a heifer-calf born to Minos and Pasiphaë which changed its colours thrice daily in the same way. In response to a challenge from an oracle one Polyidus son of Coeranus correctly compared it to a mulberry – a fruit sacred to the Triple Goddess. The three standing stones thrown down from Moeltre Hill near Dwygyfylchi in Wales in the iconoclastic seventeenth century may well have represented the Io trinity. One was white, one red, one dark blue, and they were known as the three women. The local monkish legend was that three women dressed in those colours were petrified as a punishment for winnowing corn on a Sunday.
The most comprehensive and inspired account of the Goddess in all ancient literature is contained in Apuleius’s
Golden
Ass
,
where Lucius invokes her from the depth of misery and spiritual degradation and she appears in answer to his plea; incidentally it suggests that the Goddess was once worshipped at Moeltre in her triple capacity of white raiser, red reaper and dark winnower of grain. The translation is by William Adlington (1566):
About the first watch of the night when as I had slept my first sleep, I awaked with sudden fear and saw the moon shining bright as when
she is at the full and seeming as though she leaped out of the sea. Then I thought with myself that this was the most secret time, when that goddess had most puissance and force, considering that all human things be governed by her providence; and that not only all beasts private and tame, wild and savage, be made strong by the governance of her light and godhead, but also things inanimate and without life; and I considered that all bodies in the heavens, the earth, and the seas be by her increasing motions increased, and by her diminishing motions diminished: then as weary of all my cruel fortune and calamity, I found good hope and sovereign remedy, though it were very late, to be delivered from my misery, by invocation and prayer to the excellent beauty of this powerful goddess. Wherefore, shaking off my drowsy sleep I arose with a joyful face, and moved by a great affection to purify myself, I plunged my head seven times into the water of the sea; which number seven is convenable and agreeable to holy and divine things, as the worthy and sage philosopher Pythagoras hath declared. Then very lively and joyfully, though with a weeping countenance, I made this oration to the puissant goddess.‘O blessed Queen of Heaven, whether thou be the Dame Ceres which art the original and motherly source of all fruitful things on the earth, who after the finding of thy daughter Proserpine, through the great joy which thou didst presently conceive, didst utterly take away and abolish the food of them of old time, the acorn, and madest the barren and unfruitful ground of Eleusis to be ploughed and sown, and now givest men a more better and milder food; or whether thou be the celestial Venus, who, at the beginning of the world, didst couple together male and female with an engendered love, and didst so make an eternal propagation of human kind, being now worshipped within the temples of the Isle Paphos; or whether thou be the sister of the God Phoebus, who hast saved so many people by lightening and lessening with thy medicines the pangs of travail and art now adored at the sacred places of Ephesus; or whether thou be called terrible Proserpine by reason of the deadly howlings which thou yieldest, that hast power with triple face to stop and put away the invasion of hags and ghosts which appear unto men, and to keep them down in the closures of the Earth, which dost wander in sundry groves and art worshipped in divers manners; thou, which dost illuminate all the cities of the earth by thy feminine light; thou, which nourishest all the seeds of the world by thy damp heat, giving thy changing light according to the wanderings, near or far, of the sun: by whatsoever name or fashion or shape it is lawful to call upon thee, I pray thee to end my great travail and misery and raise up my fallen hopes, and deliver me
from the wretched fortune which so long time pursued me. Grant peace and rest, if it please thee, to my adversities, for I have endured enough labour and peril….’When I had ended this oration, discovering my plaints to the goddess, I fortuned to fall again asleep upon that same bed; and by and by (for mine eyes were but newly closed) appeared to me from the midst of the sea a divine and venerable face, worshipped even of the gods themselves. Then, little by little, I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, bright and mounting out of the sea and standing before me: wherefore I purpose to describe her divine semblance, if the poverty of my human speech will suffer me, or the divine power give me a power of eloquence rich enough to express it. First, she had a great abundance of hair, flowing and curling, dispersed and scattered about her divine neck; on the crown of her head she bare many garlands interlaced with flowers, and in the middle of her forehead was a plain circlet in fashion of a mirror, or rather resembling the moon by the light it gave forth; and this was borne up on either side by serpents that seemed to rise from the furrows of the earth, and above it were blades of corn set out. Her vestment was of finest linen yielding diverse colours, somewhere white and shining, somewhere yellow like the crocus flower, somewhere rosy red, somewhere flaming; and (which troubled my sight and spirit sore) her cloak was utterly dark and obscure covered with shining black, and being wrapped round her from under her left arm to her right shoulder in manner of a shield, part of it fell down, pleated in most subtle fashion, to the skirts of her garment so that the welts appeared comely. Here and there upon the edge thereof and throughout its surface the stars glimpsed, and in the middle of them was placed the moon in mid-month, which shone like a flame of fire; and round about the whole length of the border of that goodly robe was a crown or garland wreathing unbroken, made with all flowers and all fruits. Things quite diverse did she bear: for in her right hand she had a timbrel of brass [
sistrum
],
a flat piece of metal carved in manner of a girdle, wherein passed not many rods through the periphery of it; and when with her arm she moved these triple chords, they gave forth a shrill and clear sound. In her left hand she bare a cup of gold like unto a boat, upon the handle whereof, in the upper part which is best seen, an asp lifted up his head with a wide-swelling throat. Her odoriferous feet were covered with shoes interlaced and wrought with victorious palm. Thus the divine shape, breathing out the pleasant spice of fertile Arabia, disdained not with her holy voice to utter these words to me:‘Behold, Lucius, I am come; thy weeping and prayer hath moved me to succour thee. I am she that is the natural mother of all things,
mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, queen of all that are in Hell, the principal of them that dwell in Heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the gods and goddesses [
deorum
dearum-que
facies
uniformis
]
.
At my will the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the seas, and the lamentable silences of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout the world, in divers manners, in variable customs, and by many names. For the Phrygians that are the first of all men call me The Mother of the Gods at Pessinus; the Athenians, which are sprung from their own soil, Cecropian Minerva; the Cyprians, which are girt about by the sea, Paphian Venus; the Cretans which bear arrows, Dictynnian Diana; the Sicilians, which speak three tongues, Infernal Proserpine; the Eleusinians, their ancient goddess Ceres; some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate, other Rhamnusia, and principally both sort of the Ethiopians which dwell in the Orient and are enlightened by the morning rays of the sun, and the Egyptians, which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine and by their proper ceremonies accustom to worship me, do call me by my true name, Queen Isis. Behold, I am come to take pity of thy fortune and turbulation; behold I am present to favour and aid thee; leave off thy weeping, and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthful day which is ordained by my providence.’
Much the same prayer is found in Latin in a twelfth-century English herbal (
Brit.
Mus.
MS.
Harley,
1585,
ff
12v–13
r
):
Earth, divine goddess, Mother Nature, who dost generate all things and bringest forth ever anew the sun which thou hast given to the nations; Guardian of sky and sea and of all Gods and powers; through thy influence all nature is hushed and sinks to sleep….Again, when it pleases thee, thou sendest forth the glad daylight and nurturest life with thine eternal surety; and when the spirit of man passes, to thee it returns. Thou indeed art rightly named Great Mother of the Gods; Victory is in thy divine name. Thou art the source of the strength of peoples and gods; without thee nothing can either be born or made perfect; thou art mighty, Queen of the Gods. Goddess, I adore thee as divine, I invoke thy name; vouchsafe to grant that which I ask of thee, so shall I return thanks to thy godhead, with the faith that is thy due….
Now also I make intercession to you, all ye powers and herbs, and to your majesty: I beseech you, whom Earth the universal parent hath borne and given as a medicine of health to all peoples and hath put majesty upon, be now of the most benefit to
humankind. This I pray and beseech you: be present here with your virtues, for she who created you hath herself undertaken that I may call you with the good will of him on whom the art of medicine was bestowed; therefore grant for health’s sake good medicine by grace of these powers aforesaid….