Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

301. The character assigned to images varies with stages of culture. In low communities they are themselves divine—the gods have entered into them and they are not thought of as different from their divine indwellers. In such cases they are sometimes chained to prevent their getting away; if they are obstinate, not listening to prayers, they are cuffed, scourged, or reviled.563 This conception lingers still among the peasants of Southern Europe, who treat a saint (a rechristened old god) as if he were a man to be won by threats or cajolements. In a more refined age the image becomes simply a symbol, a visible representation serving to fix the attention and recall divine things. Different races also differ in the extent of their demand for such representations of deity.

302. Stones and rocks, like other natural objects, are starting-points for folk-stories and myths. All over the world they lie on the ground or rise in the shape of hills, and, being mysterious, require explanation. The explanations given, and handed down from generation to generation, are always connected with superhuman or with extraordinary persons, ancestors, heroes, spirits. To each stone or rock a story is attached, a creation of the fancy suggested by the surroundings and by the popular traditions; and each story forms an episode in the history of the hero or spirit. The stones and rocks thus come to constitute a book chronicling the history of the tribe and the deeds of its great men—a book quite legible to the man who has been taught the stories. These grow with every generation, receiving such additions as fancy and reflection dictate, and gradually taking on literary form. In the territory of the Australian Arunta every stone is connected with some incident in the careers of the mythical ancestors, and the stories taken together form the legendary history of the origin of customs.564 In Samoa and New Guinea many stones are pointed out as having been set in place by local heroes. In North America innumerable rocks and stones are connected with the mythical ancestors and creators of the tribes.

303. Mountains have everywhere been regarded as abodes of spirits or deities, and therefore sacred. Their height and massiveness invested them with dignity (even as now they appeal mightily to the imagination), and their lofty summits and rugged sides were full of danger and mystery. Sacred mountains are found in North America, Bengal, Africa, and elsewhere. Naturally they are often abodes of gods of rain; they are feared on account of the spirits inhabiting them, but they are also resorted to as places where divine revelations may be obtained.565 The Semitic, Hindu, and Greek examples are familiar: the Hebrew and Canaanite Sinai (or Horeb), Nebo, Carmel, Hermon; the Arabian Arafat, near Mecca; the Babylonian Ekur; in India, Meru, Mandara, Himavat, and other mountains; in Greece, Olympus and Parnassus.

304. Mountains are also worshiped as being themselves divine.566 The cult, however, has not been important; the physical mass is too solid, lacking in movement, and human interest naturally centered in the spirit or deity who dwelt therein.567

305. Mythological fancy has made them the abodes and places of assembly of gods and glorified saints, usually in the north. The mythical Ekur was the dwelling place of Babylonian deities.568 In India various peaks in the Himalayas, inaccessible to men, were assigned to groups of deities, and the mythical world-mountain Meru was the special abode of great gods, who there lived lives of delight.569 On the highest peak of the Thessalian Olympus Zeus sat, surrounded by the inferior gods; here he held councils and announced his decrees.570 The two conceptions of the home of the gods—on mountains and in the sky—existed for a time side by side, having in common the feature of remoteness and secrecy; gradually the earthly abode was ignored, and the gods were assigned to the more dignified heavenly home.