THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

The Primal Earth

"BECAUSE IT PLEASETH more and makes a greater impression upon us," wrote the old English Platonist Thomas Burnet, "to see things represented to the Eye, than to read their description in words, we have ventured to give a model of the Primal Earth, with its Zones or greater Climates, and the general order and tracts of its Rivers. Not that we believe things to have been in the very same form as here exhibited, but this may serve as a general Idea of that Earth, which may be wrought into more exactness, according as we are able to enlarge or correct our thoughts hereafter . . . . The Rivers of that Earth, you see, were in most respects different, and in some respects contrary to ours, and if you could turn our Rivers backwards, to run from the Sea towards their Fountain-heads, they would more resemble the course of these Antediluvian Rivers; for they were greatest at their first setting out; and the Current thereafter, when it was more weak, and the Chanel more shallow, was divided into many branches, and little Rivers, like the Arteries in our Body, that carry the Blood, they are greatest at first, and the further they go from the Heart, their Source, the less they grow and divide into a multitude of little branches, which lose themselves insensibly in the habit of the flesh as these little Floods did in the Sands of the Earth." This is a very curious conception of the counter-course of "primal" rivers; it is exactly as if we conceived of the Missouri-Mississippi system, for instance, as rising in the Gulf of Mexico and flowing north until it begins to divide and subdivide into dozens of lesser streams, all of which finally dwindle away into the Earth instead of rising from it.

FIGURE 34. The Primal Earth, with its Zones or greater Climates, and the general order and tracts of its Rivers.
(From The Theory of the Earth; Thomas Burnet, 1697.)


FIGURE 34A. Zones or Climates of the Earth, with the Zodiac.
(From Spha emendata; Joannes Sacro Bosco, Cologne, 1601.)What was the state of the primal Earth before man appeared, and with him, trouble? All the Creation stories give a common answer--harmony; harmony of all the spheres. It is in the song to Mahat, with its ordered account of the separation of the five great Elements from Chaos, and their recombinings into the bodies of the universe. "He made them all to move evenly," says the Creation legend of the Lenape, after the Great Manito had formed land and sky and moon and stars; and in the pictograph the even movement is a spiral line. In Sebastien Muenster's Cosmographia Universalis(1559), at the beginning of the chapter on "The creation and disposing of the primordial Earth and Sea," is an old drawing evidently intended to show the paradisaical state of terrestrial affairs at the end of the Fifth Day of Creation, with the great stage built and the great scene set and lighted for the entrance of man and the beginning of his drama (Plate VI ). It is a picture in successive planes of the Genesis story, with a charming addition--the boat with sails, floating in the foreground; and, on it, a little three-storied house--the Ark, perhaps, whose part in the coming drama had been already foreseen by the Creator, and which was to become, of all the vanished treasures of a drowned and broken Earth, man's single precious possession.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

Creation of the World

And yet he has tried to determine it, with that handful of working means left him when the gods departed; his vague knowledge of truth--which has served him better for determining what is not truth than what is truth; his numbers, his signs, his characters, his symbols, his words, his capacity to be curious, to wonder, and to draw analogies between strange things. This was his equipment when he first began to question Space, and from this tiny handful of resources all the Creation stories of the world arose. Their outlines are remarkably the same. First of all a primordial substance and a Former to mould it--they sometimes called these two first forces the Maker and the Moulder, each contained within the other, but at rest. Then out of stillness came motion; out of motion light, out of light all created things; after Creation, evil; and, after evil, the deluge; out of the deluge the mountain top; and out of the ruins of the Old Earth, the New. Many of the Creation stories are familiar, but here are two which are almost unknown to the western world, though one of them is of that very world itself.

The first comes from Asia, land of the oldest recorded thought we have--at least nothing older is recognised as coming from any other source. The second is of America, youngest historically of all the continents, with all her prehistoric past practically stripped of records. The first is in words, one of man's most magnificent guesses at the original combining of the Great Elements which produced the Earth. The second is told in glyphs or pictographs. The first is taken from the Sanscrit Mahabharata; the second from the Walam Olumof the Lenape or Delaware Indians, a branch of the great Algonkin stock which roamed from east to west and west to east in North America, and styled itself the Sacred People," "the Mound Builders."

Bhrgu, in the Sanscrit epic, is answering the question, "By whom was this world with its oceans, its firmament, its mountains, its clouds, its lands, its fire, and its winds created? He replies that, first of all, the Primal Being Manasa created a Divine Being Mahat.

Mahat created Consciousness.

That Divine Being created Space.

From Space was born Water, and from Water were born Fire and Wind.

Through the union of Fire and Wind was born the Earth.

Then follows a song to Mahat.

The Mountains are His bones.
The Earth is His fat and flesh.
The Oceans are His blood.
Space is His stomach.
The Wind is His breath.
Fire is His energy.
The Rivers are His arteries and veins.
Agni and Soma, otherwise the Sun and the Moon, are called His eyes.
The firmament above is His head.
The Earth is His two feet.
The Cardinal and subsidiary points of the horizon are His arms.
Without doubt He is incapable of being known and His Soul is inconceivable.

Of the extent of the firmament, of the surface of the Earth, and of the Wind:

Bhrgu said: The Sky thou seest above is infinite.

The Sun and the Moon cannot see, above or below, beyond the range of their own rays. There where the rays of the Sun and the Moon cannot reach are luminaries which are self-effulgent and which possess splendour like that of the Sun or of Fire.

This Space which the very gods cannot measure is full of many blazing and self-luminous worlds each above the other.

Beyond the limits of land are oceans of water. Beyond water is darkness.

Beyond darkness is water again, and beyond the last is fire.

Downwards, beyond the nether regions, is water. Beyond water is the region belonging to the great snakes.

Beyond that is sky once more, and beyond the sky is water again.

Ever thus there is water and sky alternately without end. . . .

Formerly there was only Infinite Space, perfectly motionless and immovable. Without sun, moon, stars, and wind, it seemed to be asleep.

Then Water sprang into existence, like something darker within darkness.

Then from the pressure of Water arose Wind. As when an empty vessel without a hole appears at first to be without any sound, but when filled with Water, Air appears and makes a great noise, even so when Infinite Space was filled with Water, the Wind arose with a great noise, penetrating through the Water.

That Wind, thus generated by the pressure of the Ocean of Water, still moveth. Coming into unobstructed Space, its motion is never stopped.

Then, in consequence of the friction of Wind and Water, Fire possessed of great might and blazing energy sprang into existence with flames directed upwards.

That Fire dispelled the darkness that covered Space.

Assisted by the Wind, Fire drew Space and Water together.

Indeed, combining with the Wind, Fire became solidified.

While falling from the Sky, the liquid portion of Fire solidified again, and became what is known as the Earth.

The Earth or land, in which everything is born, is the origin of all kinds of taste, of all kinds of scent, of all kinds of liquids, and of all kinds of animals.

The Walam Olum(or "Red Score") of the Lenape. 1

	1. At first, in that place, at all times, above the earth,
	2. On the earth, [was] an extended fog, and there the great Manito was.
	3. At first, forever, lost in space, everywhere, the great Manito was.
	4. He made the extended land and the sky.
	5. He made the sun, the moon, the stars.
	6. He made them all to move evenly.
	7. Then the wind blew violently, and it cleared, and the water flowed off far and strong.
	8. And groups of islands grew newly, and there remained.
	9. Anew spoke the great Manito, a manito to manitos,
	10. To beings, mortals, souls and all,
	11. And ever after he was a manito to men, and their grandfather
	12. He gave the first mother, the mother of beings.
	13. He gave the fish, he gave the turtles, he gave the beasts, he gave the birds.
	14. But an evil Manito made evil beings only, monsters,
	15. He made the flies, he made the gnats.
	16. All beings were then friendly.
	17. Truly the manitos were active and kindly
	18. To those very first men, and to those first mothers, fetched them wives,
	19. And fetched them food, when first they desired it.
	20. All had cheerful knowledge, all had leisure, all thought in gladness.
	21. But very secretly an evil being, a mighty magician, came on earth,
	22. And with him brought badness, quarreling, unhappiness,
	23. Brought bad weather, brought sickness, brought death.
	24. All this took place of old on the earth, beyond the great tide-water, at the first.
	II.
	1. Long ago there was a mighty snake and beings evil to men.
	2. This mighty snake hated those who were there (and) greatly disquieted those whom he hated.
	3. They both did harm, they both injured each other, both were not in peace.
	4. Driven from their homes they fought with this murderer.
	5. The mighty snake firmly resolved to harm the men.
	6. He brought three persons, he brought a monster, he brought a rushing water.
	7. Between the hills the water rushed and rushed, dashing through and through, destroying much.
	8. Nanabush, the Strong White One, grandfather of beings, grandfather of men, was on the Turtle Island.
	9. There he was walking and creating, as he passed by and created the turtle.
	10. Beings and men all go forth, they walk in the floods and shallow waters, down stream thither to the Turtle Island.
	11. There were many monster fishes, which ate some of them.
	12. The Manito daughter, coming, helped with her canoe, helped all, as they came and came.
	13. [And also] Nanabush, Nanabush, the grandfather of all, the grandfather of beings, the grandfather of men, the grandfather of the turtle.
	14. The men then were together on the turtle, like to turtles.
	15. Frightened on the turtle, they prayed on the turtle that what was spoiled should be restored.
	16. The water ran off, the earth dried, the lakes were at rest, all was silent, and the mighty snake departed.

Let us extract several of these primitive world-pictures from the Walam Olumand set them side by side for comparison. Quite apart from any meaning attached to them in the legend of the Lenape, these three signs illustrate very well indeed what were probably the first two world-concepts of man; either that the Earth was an island in a watery waste on whose waves the sky rested as best it might, or that it was a vast plain overarched by the solid vault of heaven and tightly enclosed within it. The first of the three needs only a writhing sea serpent inscribed beneath it to illustrate that heavy fear of primitive man, that portentous monsters, slipping through the deepest depth of the ocean, might creep under the edge of the firmament to work evil on Earth.

FIGURE 27.

FIGURE 28.

FIGURE 29.

So little has ever been done with these Lenape pictographs, as Dr. Brinton himself admits, that it is impossible to speak with certainty about the real meaning of any of them; and it is only a hazardous guess to suggest that Fig. 29 , the last "sign" of the Deluge story--"The water ran off, the earth dried, the lakes were at rest, all was silent, and the mighty snake departed"--may represent the ocean surrounding the Earth as barred, perhaps forever, against the "mighty snake" which had wrought such desolation. The oblique lines would serve here, instead of an Earth-surrounding mountain wall, or a circular continental ring beyond the "River Ocean," to guard the Earth against invasion from without. In any case, here are primitive representations of "mountains of the world"--the "first Earth" before and the "first Earth" after the Deluge--and of that other "first" concept of the Earth as a vast plain, overarched by the solid vault of heaven.

There is another Creation story that we might glance at here, because it contains so many notions of the beginnings of things that are extraordinarily similar to other ideas we shall meet later on. It is the Creation story of the Maidus, an Indian tribe of northern California.

"When this world was filled with water," so Dixon translates the tradition, 1 Earth-Maker floated upon it, kept floating about. Nowhere in the world could he see even a tiny bit of earth. No persons of any kind flew about. He went about in this world, the world itself being invisible, transparent like the sky.

"He was troubled. 'I wonder how, I wonder where, I wonder in what place, in what country, we shall find a world!' he said. You are a very strong man, to be thinking of this world,' said Coyote. 'I am guessing in what direction the world is, then to that distant land let us float!' said Earth-Maker.

"In this world they kept floating along, kept floating along, hungry, having nothing to eat. You will die of hunger,' said Coyote. Then he thought. No, I cannot think of anything,' he said. 'Well,' said Earth-Maker, the world is large, a great world. If somewhere I find a tiny world, I can fix it up.'

Plate I: STAGES OF CREATION
From right to left: I. Chaos: Division of Light from Darkness: Separation of Earth and Water. Vegetation. II. Sun, Moon, and Stars: Fishes and Birds: Animals and Man; Sabbath Rest.
(From Haggadah von Sarajevoof the 14th century)
"Then he sang, 'Where, little world, art thou?' It is said he sang, kept singing, sang all the time. 'Enough!' he said, and stopped singing. Well, I don't know many songs (?),' he said. Then Coyote sang again, kept singing, asking for the world, singing, 'Where, O world, art thou?' He sang, kept singing; then 'Enough!' he said. 'I am tired. You try again.'

"So Earth-Maker sang. 'Where are you, my great mountains, my world mountains?' he said. He sang, and all the time kept saying, 'Where are you?' He stopped singing. 'Enough!' he said. 'You try also.' Coyote tried, kept singing. 'My foggy mountains, where one goes about,' he said. 'Well, we shall see nothing at all. I guess there never was a world anywhere,' said he. 'I think, if we find a little world, I can fix it very well,' said Earth-Maker.

"As they floated along, they saw something like a bird's nest. 'Well, that is very small,' said Earth-Maker. 'It is small. If it were larger I could fix it. But it is too small,' he said. 'I wonder how I can stretch it a little.' He kept saying, 'What is the best way! How shall I make it larger!' So saying, he prepared it. He extended a rope to the east, to the south he extended a rope, to the west, to the northwest, and to the north he extended ropes.

"When all were stretched, he said, 'Well, sing, you who were the finder of this earth, this mud! "In the long, long ago, Robin-Man made the world, stuck earth together, making this world." Thus mortal man shall say of you, in myth-telling.' Then Robin sang, and his world-making song sounded sweet. After the ropes were all stretched, he kept singing; then, after a time, he ceased.

"Then Earth-Maker spoke to Coyote also. 'Do you sing, too,' he said. So he sang, singing, 'My world where one travels by the valley-edge; my world of many foggy mountains; my world where one goes zigzagging hither and thither; range after range,' he said, 'I sing of the country I shall travel in. In such a world I shall wander,' he said.

"Then Earth-Maker sang--sang of the world he had made, kept singing, until by and by he ceased. 'Now,' he said, it would be well if the world were a little larger. Let us stretch it.'--'Stop!' said Coyote. 'I speak wisely. This world ought to be painted with something so that it may look pretty. What do ye two think?'

"Then Robin-Man said, 'I am one who knows nothing. Ye two are clever men, making this world, talking it over; if ye find anything evil, ye will make it good.' 'Very well,' said Coyote, 'I will paint it with blood. There shall be blood in the world; and people shall be born there, having blood. There shall be birds born who shall have blood. Everything--deer, all kinds of game, all sorts of men without any exception--all things shall have blood that are to be created in this world. And in another place, making it red, there shall be red rocks. It will be as if blood were mixed up with the world, and thus the world will be beautiful,' he said. 'What do you think about it?' Your words are good,' he said, 'I know nothing.' So Robin-Man went off. As he went, he said, 'I shall be a person who travels only in this way,' and he flew away."

Only after all this was accomplished did Earth-Maker, commanding Coyote to lie down on his face, begin to stretch the world. With his foot he extended it to the east, to the south, to the west, to the northwest, and to the north. And yet again, saying to Coyote, "Do not look up. You must not," he stretched it again, as far as it would go in the five directions. Then Coyote, rising, began to walk to the eastward side, and Earth-Maker, after describing the entire circuit of the world, returned to the spot from whence he had set out, and began to prepare things. He made men, of different colours, two of each kind only, and as he made them in pairs, he counted them. "Then he counted all the countries, and, as he counted them, assigned them, gave them to the countries. 'You are a country having this name, you shall have this people,' he said. This sort of people, naming you, shall own the country. These people shall grow, shall keep on growing through many winters, through many dawns. They shall continue to grow until, their appointed winters being past, their dawns being over, this people having finished growing, shall be born,' he said."

So Earth-Maker created, to each country a name and a people with a name and speech, each different; until he arrived at the middle of the world, where he made two others and left them, saying, "'Ye here, growing steadily, when so many winters shall have passed, very many winters, many days, ye shall be fully grown,' he said. 'Then ye shall be mortal men, ye shall be born full grown. . . . Ye shall not be born soon,' he said."

Continuing on his way to the uttermost limit where mortal men were to live, he stopped, and created, first two, whom he laid down, and two more, and still another pair. "'Ye shall remain here,' he said, 'and your country shall have a name. Although living in a small country, in one that is not large, it shall be sufficient for you. This I leave; and growing continually . . . ye, being fully grown, shall be born,' he said. 'Then your food will grow--different sorts of food, all kinds of food; and ye, being born with sufficient intelligence, will survive,' said he. Then he pushed them down under a gopher-hill.

"He spoke again. 'Ye, too, shall possess a small country. "Come now, leave this country!" (this ye must not say to others wishing to take this land). Ye shall be people who will not drive others away, driving them off to another country. Ye shall be different, ye shall name your country.'"

To still another pair he spoke, saying, "'Ye shall have children, and when your children shall have grown larger, then, looking all over this country, ye must tell them about it, teach them about it, naming the country and places, showing them and naming them to your children. "That is such and such a place, and that is such and such a mountain." So when ye have caused them to learn this, teaching them, they shall understand even as ye do yourselves.' Then, placing them between his thumb and finger, he snapped them away.

"And when he had given countries thus to all that he had counted out, there was one pair left. 'Ye, also, ye shall be a people speaking differently. There will be a little too many of you for you to have the same sort of a country also. So ye shall have that kind of a country, a great country,' he said.

"'Now, wherever I have passed along, there shall never be a lack of anything,' he said, and made motions in all directions. 'The country where I have been shall be one where nothing is ever lacking. I have finished talking to you, and I say to you that ye shall remain where ye are to be born. Ye are the last people; and while ye are to remain where ye are created, I shall return and stay there. When this world becomes bad, I will make it over again; and after I make it, ye shall be born,' he said. Long ago Coyote suspected this, they say.

"'This world will shake,' he said. 'This world is spread out flat, the world is not stable. After this world is all made, by and by, after a long time, I will pull this rope a little, then the world shall be firm. I, pulling on my rope, shall make it shake. And now,' he said, 'there shall be songs, they shall not be lacking, ye shall have them.' And he sang, and kept on singing until he ceased singing. 'Ye mortal men shall have this song,' he said, and then he sang another; and singing many different songs, he walked along, kept walking until he reached the middle of the world; and there, sitting down over across from it, he remained.

"But in making the world, Robin-Man sang that which was pleasant to hear. He, they say, was the first created person--a man whose song passed across the valleys, a man who found the world, a man who in the olden time sang very beautifully--sounding songs. And Earth-Maker, going along, and having passed by the middle of the world, made a house for himself, and remained there. That is as far as he went. That is all, they say."

Footnotes

26:1 This Creation and Deluge story of the Lenape or Delaware Indians is taken from Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's The Lenape and Their Legends(The Library of Aboriginal American Literature, Vol. V, 1885). Since "walam" means "painted," particularly "painted red," and "olum" signifies the scores or marks or notches or figures used on tally-sticks or record-boards, the sense of Walam Olumis variously rendered by "Red Score" (Dr. Brinton's choice), "Painted-engraved Tradition" (the translation left by Constantine Rafinesque, original copyist of these Algonkin pictographs), or "Painted Bark-Record." The pictographs or glyphs or signs were "notches" designed to keep the long chant in memory. The very beautiful translation is Dr. Brinton's.
32:1 Maidu Texts: Roland B. Dixon. Leyden, 1912.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

Upholders of the World

FLAMMARION'S OLD DRAWING of The Earth Floatingis a peculiarly desolate rendering of the ancient idea that the Earth was nothing more than an island in a sea. This idea would of course have its probable origin among races living near great seas or oceans whose other side they had tried in vain to reach.

FIGURE 30. The Earth Floating.
(From Flammarion's Astronomical Myths, 1877.)The mind of men likes symmetry; if water stretching endlessly away bounded one side of their "island," even though that island were a continent whose other edge they did not know, water must lie also on its other sides. If the Sun rose from their eastern waters, say, at dawn, it must sink in some unknown western waves at night, if for no other reason than, by swimming through them, to arrive again by the next dawn, in the eastern sky. We may smile at this childish notion if we will, but it may very well be that no great "system" of the harmonious orbits of Sun and Moon and Earth explainthe mystery of the "rising and the setting of the Sun" any more or any better than the primitive idea that darkness came when the Sun was submerged in the sea, and that light came when the Sun sprang out of the sea. Perhaps all that we know to-day--really know--is that in the hour of dawn the Sun appears, and in the hour of twilight the Sun has vanished.

PLATE II: SUSTAINERS OF THE EARTH

The precise nature of the element in which the Earth-island floated came to be a matter of concern and much speculation. At first it was assumed to be simply water; later it was defined as "water or some other liquid," and finally it was believed to be a liquid not unlike the composition of the waters directly under the firmament or lower heaven, which were supposed to be a crystalline, congealed water, specially combined to resist the flame of the Sun, Moon, and galaxy of stars, to be itself full of fire, and yet not to burn. It was water, yet not water, air yet not air, fire, yet not fire. Probably this was an attempt to describe the medium in which the Island Moon floated, all sustaining, yet clear.

Doubtless too the roundness of the Sun and Moon, their discs so broad, yet thin enough to float in space, or aethereal waters, had as much to do with giving men the idea that the Earth's shape might also be flat and round, as the circular defining line of the horizon. Again, if the Moon was like a leaf, floating in the heavenly water, the Earth, like a leaf, floated on the world water, and like a leaf in water would develop roots. Ages ago, as we have already noted (p. 14 ), the ancient world, India, China, Egypt, made the lotus the water-flower that symbolises Earth and Heaven and all that lies between. For as a tree, rooted in the Earth, is a part of it, so Earth, rooted in the universal waters, must be a part of the universe from which it derives life and nourishment. And again, though the roots of an Earth-island might not be as firm as the roots of a great Earth-tree might, that is, be as supple and flexible as those of water plants, nevertheless it was an anchorage of the Earth to something outside itself.

FIGURE 31. The Earth with Roots.
(From Flammarion's Astronomical Myths, 1877.)Naturally evolving from this would rise an Earth set on solid pillars, an established, firmly founded disc. Fig. 32 is an old picture of just such an Earth--"the Earth of the Vedic priests." Its upper side is its only habitable side; its under side rests on twelve columns, these columns resting in turn on the Twelve Great Sacrifices of the Virtuous,--the aimful deeds, that is, of men aware of duty. Without this subterranean foundation, said the ancient priests, the pillars of the Earth would dry up, and the Earth would fall down. These pillars, says Flammarion, accounted more reasonably for the rising and the setting of the Sun, than the rather lazy guess that it swam through water from west to east every night; though there was another speculation that it might reach the eastern heavens by traversing a complicated system of tunnels, like great connecting caves, which pierced the Earth-disc from occident to orient.

FIGURE 32. The Earth of the Vedic Priests.
(From Flammarion's Astronomical Myths, 1877.)But the twelve pillars, quite as little as the roots of the Earth-island leaf, failed to satisfy man's wonderings over the problem of what supported the Earth, or on what the Earth rested. One of the old familiar figures of Earth is that hemispherical Earth of the Hindus (Plate II, C ) supported on the backs of four elephants, which stand on the hemispherical shell of a gigantic tortoise floating on the surface of the world-waters. Sometimes, in addition to these three supports, there is a fourth, the coiled ring of the great world-serpent on which the tortoise rests--four foundations for Earth, and five for Heaven which must rest on the Earth.

But the elephant, the tortoise and the serpent are only three of the great animals which folk-lore and tradition say may support this planet. The Altaic people of Northern Siberia affirm that their mighty Ulgen created the Earth on the waters, and placed under its disc, to support it, three great fish, one in the centre and one on either side. The head of the middle fish being placed towards the north, floods occur there when it presses its head down; and, should it ever sink too low, the whole Earth will be deluged again. They believe that these fish are attached to heaven by a rope through their gills, whereby their heads can be lowered or raised, and that at the three posts of heaven to which these ropes are tied, the Bodhisatta Mandishire, or guardian of Earth, always watches. According to another tradition, only one great fish supports the Earth; when he changes his position earthquakes occur. In Hebrew myths, this mighty animal is the "fish-shaped Leviathan." Where the turtle or the tortoise is unknown, as in far northern lands, the "world-supporting Frog" will take its place; if its finger ever moves, the Earth shivers. Among Tartars and many of the tribes of Asia-Europe, the Earth is believed to be supported by a great bull; sometimes the Earth rests on its back, sometimes it is held aloft on the horns. Or, another variation, in the world-ocean there is a great fish, and, upon the fish, a bull which bears the Earth. Or again, in the world-ocean there is a giant-crab which gives support to the Earth-bearing bull. Some say that the terrible weight of the Earth has already broken one of the great horns, and that when the other breaks the world will come to an end. Another of the Tartar tribes says that after the Great Mammoth was created, it was found that the Earth was not strong enough to bear its weight, and so, to avoid a waste of creation in the universe, the Great Ruler solved the difficulty by commanding the Great Mammoth to bear the Earth.

PLATE III. ATLAS SUPPORTING THE UNIVERSE
(From Margarita Philosophica, 1517)
On what did the Earth rest? Not only on literal water, and great beasts. On a whirlwind, said Empedocles; on roots rooted in the Infinite, said Xenophanes; on a Soul of the World, said Plato and his school; on Twelve Pillars, said the Vedic priests, which must have for their foundation the "sacrifices of the virtuous." Earth, that is, depended ultimately on man for its support. And sooner or later, in all cosmologies and mythologies, we come upon some lurking or developed concept that the burden of supporting both Earth and Heaven rests on the shoulders of man. In countries as widely separated by race and by oceans as Greece and Mexico, we find an "Atlas of the World," a sustainer of the universe (Plate II , A and B). In Greece it is Atlas the "Endurer," brother of Prometheus the rebel bringer-of-fire, who supports the globe. Son of Poseidon, he knew the depths of the whole Ocean-world; it was his task to guard the pillars which held Heaven and Earth apart. According to one story, it was because he had attempted to storm the heavens that he was condemned to carry its vault on his head and hands. According to another version, it was only after the loss of his great Island realm Atlantis, that he was forced to become the sustainer of the sky.

Mexico appears to have had four--at least--heaven-bearing gods, and each of these appears to have exercised a number of functions other than the sufficiently onerous one of supporting the universe. Quetzalcoatl, although a Sun god and an earthquake god, was also, like Atlas, a water god. If Atlas, interpreted, means the Endurer, Quetzalcoatl, interpreted, means Heart of the Sea. God of the Sun, of the earthquake, and the water, he also up-held the heavens of the Mexicans. In the eastern world and in the western, thousands of years ago, these different races believed alike that some great force never to be understood and never to be overcome had wrenched the heavens from the Earth, but that, at the same time it separated them, it united them by another force, which each race represented by a human figure, a great man-god. Explain it as we will, call it nae or arrogant, it expressed one of man's few entirely admirable qualities, his lonely necessity to share, or to believe that he shared in the work of carrying on the universe. And it found expression in countless ways.

A curious old drawing of the Middle Ages (Plate III ) shows how the Atlas-myth persisted even into modern time. The Earth still occupies the centre of the universe, with all the other heavenly bodies revolving about it. From pole to pole of the firmament--his head marking the "Polus Arctic" and his two feet the "Polus Antarctic," stretches Atlas, or the Macrocosm, or the Great Man, or Adam Kadmon, whichever you will. To medial Europe Atlas represented the Macrocosm, or the long great world, in contrast to the Microcosm or man--little, but the epitome of all that had combined to produce him. Very often, in such circular designs, the two lower corners will be filled each with a toiling figure, the burden-bearer man, with his shoulders bent to the wheel. Only by his microcosmic, microscopic effort, they seem to say over and over again, may the Wheel of Life be kept revolving. Not only does the Earth--the pillared Earth of the Vedic priests--rest on the sacrifices of man, but, since Heaven itself leans on the Earth, without man's aid the whole universe must collapse.

It is easy to see how this ancient image of the Great Man rose before the eyes of the "little men" of the Earth. This was a being infinitely stronger, infinitely better, almost yet not quite a god because he was Man, who somehow stood or moved between the two worlds and kept them in touch with one another. He came to be called by many names, to be pictured under many disguises. He was the Being praised in the Creation chant of the Mahabharata; he was the "manitou to men and their grandfather" of the Lenape Creation story. He was the cosmic Pan Ku of the Chinese, who came into being "in the midst of the cosmic egg," whose very name Pan means "the shell of an egg," and who was hatched out of the cosmos. He created in the middle, out of the pure elements, Heaven; out of the mixed elements, Earth. Every day Heaven grew ten feet higher, Earth ten feet deeper and he ten feet taller, for 18,000 years. When he died, his breath became wind, his voice thunder, his four limbs the four directions, his five extremities the five sacred mountains, his left eye the sun, his right eye the moon, his blood the rivers, his beard the stars, his hair the trees and plants, his flesh the soil, his teeth metals, his bones rocks, his marrow precious stones, his perspiration rain, and his parasites men. The old Chaldeans drew a Great Man across the sky in such a way that the signs of their zodiac corresponded to the parts of his body. And, proof once again that the ancient peoples separated by the Earth's diameter from each other were inexplicably one in many of their fancies, the Tewa Indians regarded Opa--the world, the universe--as a living being, and worshipped it as the "Universal Man," whose backbone, they said, is the Milky Way. And the old Norse sagas have in their giant Ymir almost the facsimile--or it may be the original, who may say?--of the Chinese Pan Ku; for from Ymir's body was made the world, from his flesh the Earth, from his blood the rivers and oceans, from his bones the mountains, from his eyebrows the "encompassing" of Mitgard the Earth. From his skull was shaped Heaven, and his brains were changed into floating clouds and fogs.

PLATE IV. A very clear demonstration of the three kinds of vision in the Microcosm(or soul of Man) of the location of their objects, and of the manner of discerning them.
(From Microcosmi Historia; Robert Fludd, 1619)What is interesting about all this is the fact that primitive man arrived without the aid of science at the tremendous idea that definite figureis an attribute of the heavens. It was the idea that so fascinated Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, and curious inquirer into the mysteries of the Milky Way. He was possessed by the "guess" that not only is our galaxy a stratum or confined bed of stars, but that this stratum is measurable, and that by comparison of his gauging or sounding lines, he might actually draw a chart of it. He "guessed" again that in the main--and this guess was wrong--the stars are scattered equably throughout our immediate Space, which would mean that, seeing as far in one direction as another, the figure of the heavens would tend towards a circular form. In an old book of 1848, Thoughts on Some Important Points Relating to the System of the World, by John Nichol, there is a very odd "Figure of the Universe," based on Herschel's gauging system, which illustrates as well as any other the method employed (Fig. 33 )

If, says Nichol, we were in the centre of a circular group, it would mean that whether we looked through the line C A or the line C B, the number of stars that could be counted would be the same. But if the group were an irregular one, the number of stars in the direction of C A would be much less than that along the line C B, and the proportions of their numbers would give the pro-portions of the two lines C A and C B. Supposing S (lower figure) the place of our Sun, "or," says Nichol, "what is the same thing, of the Earth, on which the observations are recorded," let a number of lines be drawn answering in direction to the position of Herschel's telescope, and in length to the number of stars revealed in that direction.

FIGURE 33. A Figure of the Universe.
(From The System of the World; John Nichol, 1848.)

Then, if the extremities of these lines were joined, the result would be "a figure which, however strange, must approximate to a sectionof our vast and dazzling vault." He goes on to imagine one with the power to depart from Earth, proceeding through Space towards the Milky Way, leaving behind the constellations which we know, coming upon new configurations, passing even through the Milky Way, until, looking back, he sees this universe so dwindled away as to present the appearance of nothing but a speck in Space, shining with a faint, irregularly diffused illumination corresponding in its rays to the outlined figure.

NATURALLY MOST OF THE EARLY STORIES of the "Great Man" of the heavens are odd mixtures of perception and fancy, of clumsy literalness and real imagination. All too often this OpaBeing was more earthly than heavenly, much more man than god, but, whatever his guise or disguise, he was always much more than man, and in some of his incarnations he was very close to divine. As Adam Kadmon he has meant not only the First Man created in the true image of God, but something more, "the divine man-forming power" capable of transforming a questioning little man cut off from wisdom into a divining Great Man who could know. Precisely such a conception of Adam Kadmon has been lying in Robert Fludd's Microcosmi Historiasince 1619 (), "A very clear demonstration of the three kinds of vision in the Microcosm (or soul of man); of the location of their objects, and of the manner of discerning them." Surely no figure of "Earth" was ever drawn before or since so lightly poised, so aethereally supported.

Unless it is the tiny figure of Earth as the end and the beginning of the Spiral World (Plate V ) which immediately follows in the Microcosmi Historia: "Another demonstration showing how the soul rises in a spiral ascent from the sensible things of the world to unity, through twenty-two stages, beginning with the Earth, and ascending upwards to God; that is, from multiplicity to unity." This is drawn in twenty-two whorls or "grades," beginning, by numbers, with "Terra" and ending with "Deus." Or, by the order of the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with "Deus" and ending in "Terra." These spiral grades or stages have each four signs to mark them; first, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with the outer whorl and winding continuously inward to the centre. (The Hebrew alphabet, according to the Kabbala, is based on the primitive alphabet in which Gods were Letters, Letters were Ideas, Ideas were Numbers, and Numbers were perfect Signs.) Second, the names of the procession of grades, from the first manifestation of the Godhead, Mens or Mind, to its final expression in Terra or Earth. Third, numbers, from 1 to 22. Fourth, the tiny winged heads common to each completed whorl. The spiral, reaching from Heaven to Earth, is shown here as lying in a flat coil, like a spring. But it may be re-imaged as the winding line described about a sphere that tapers irresistibly out to a point. It is just that line, says this figure, described by a point moving in space, beginning in Heaven and ending in Earth, which at once separates and unites them.

PLATE V. Another demonstration showing how the soul rises in a spiral ascent from the sensible things of the world to Unity.
(From Microcosmi Historia: Robert Fludd, 1619)

Beyond Earth there is nothing. But in Earth there is everything--even the power to make the descending spiral an ascending one. It can be re-imaged as an ascending vine, climbing back by way of the great World-tree. For life, said the ancients, flows never in one way. Rooted in Heaven, it descends to Earth, and rooted in Earth it may ascend to Heaven.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

FIGURES