The mysteries of the goddess Isis, which originated in Egypt, were, in general, like those of Ceres at Eleusis. The Persian mysteries of Mithra, which were very popular during part of the latter days of the Roman empire, were of the same sort. So were those of Bacchus, Juno, Jupiter, and various other heathen gods. All of them were celebrated with great solemnity and secrecy; all included much that was terrifying; and all of their secrets have been so faithfully kept that we have only guesses and general statements about the details of the performances. Their principal object seems to have been to secure the initiated against misfortunes, and to gain prosperity in the future. Some have imagined that very wonderful and glorious truths were revealed in the midst of these heathen humbugs. But I guess that the more we find out about them, the bigger humbugs they will appear, as happened to the travelers who held a post mortem on the great heathen god in the story. This was a certain very terrible and powerful divinity among some savage tribes, of whom dreadful stories were told—very authentic, of course! Some unbelieving scamps of travelers, by unlawful ways, managed to get into the innermost sacred place of the temple one night. They found the god to be done up in a very large and suspicious looking bundle. Having sacrilegiously cut the string, they unrolled one envelop of mats and cloths after another, until they had taken off more than a hundred wrappers. The god grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller; and the wonder of the travelers what he could be, larger and larger. At last, the very innermost of all the coverings fell off, and the great heathen god was revealed in all his native majesty. It was a cracked soda-water bottle! This indicates—what is beyond all question the fact—that the heathen mysteries had their foundation in gas. Indeed, the whole composition of these impositions was, gammon, deception, hypocrisy—Humbug! Truly, the science of Humbug is entitled to some consideration, simply for its antiquity, if for nothing else.
CHAPTER XLVII.
HEATHEN HUMBUGS NO. 2.—HEATHEN STATED SERVICES.—ORACLES.—SIBYLS.—AUGURIES.
Something must be said about the Oracles, the Sibyls, and the Auguries; which, besides the mysteries elsewhere spoken of, were the chief assistant humbugs or side shows used for keeping up the great humbug heathen religion.
One word about the regular worship of heathenism; what maybe called their stated services. They had no weekly day of worship, indeed no week, and no preaching such as ours is; that is, no regular instruction by the ministers of religion, intended for all the people. They had singing and praying after their fashion; the singing being a sort of chant of praise to whatever idol was under treatment at the time, and the praying being in part vain repetitions of the name of their god, and for the rest a request that the god would do or give whatever was asked of him as a fair business transaction, in return for the agreeable smell of the fine beef they had just roasted under his nose, or for whatever else they had given him; as, a sum of money, a pair of pantaloons (or whatever they wore instead,) a handsome golden cup. This made the temple a regular shop, where the priests traded off promised benefits for real beef; coining blessings into cash on the nail; a very thorough humbug. Such public religious ceremonies as the heathen had were mostly annual, sometimes monthly. There were also daily ones, which were, however, the daily business of the priests, and none of the business of the laymen. To return to the subject.
All the heathen oracles, old and new (for abundance of them are still agoing,) sibyls, auguries and all, show how universally and naturally, and humbly and helplessly too, poor human nature longs to see into the future, and longs for help and guidance from some power, higher than itself.
Thus considered, these shallow humbugs teach a useful lesson, for they constitute a strong proof of man’s inborn natural recognition of some God, of some obligation to a higher power, of some disembodied existence; and so they show a natural human want of exactly what the Christian revelation supplies, and constitute a powerful evidence for Christianity.
All the heathen religions, I believe, had oracles of some kind. But the Greek and Latin ones tell the whole story. Of these there were over a hundred; more than twenty of Apollo, who was the god of soothsaying, divination, prophecy, and of the supernatural side of heathen humbug generally; thirty or forty collectively of Jupiter, Ceres, Mercury, Pluto, Juno, Ino (a very good name for a goddess that gave oracles, though she didn’t know!), Faunus, Fortune, Mars, etc., and nearly as many of demi-gods, heroes, giants, etc., such as Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Trophonius, Geryon, Ulysses, Calchas, Æsculapius, Hercules, Pasiphae, Phryxus, etc. The most celebrated and most patronized of them all was the great oracle of Apollo, at Delphi. The “little fee” appears to have been the only universal characteristic of the proceedings for obtaining an answer from the god. Whether you got your reply in words spoken by the rattling of an old pot, by observing an ox’s appetite, throwing dice, or sleeping for a dream, your own proceedings were essentially the same. “Terms invariably net cash in advance or its equivalent.” A fine ox or sheep sacrificed was cash; for after the god had had his smell (those ladies and gentlemen appear to have eaten as they say the Yankees talk—through their noses,) all the rest was put carefully away by the reverend clergy for dinner, and saved so much on the butcher’s bill. If your credit was good, you might receive your oracle and afterward send in any little acknowledgment in the form of a golden goblet, or statue, or vase, or even of a remittance in specie. Such gifts accumulated in the oracle at Delphi and to an immense amount, and to the great emolument of Brennus, a matter of fact Gaulish commander, who, at his invasion of Greece, coolly carried off all the bullion, without any regard to the screeches of the Pythoness, and with no more scruples than any burglar.
The Delphian oracle worked through a woman, who, on certain days, went and sat on a three-legged stool over a hole in the ground in Apollo’s temple. This hole sent out gas; which, instead of being used like that afforded by holes in the ground at Fredonia, N. Y., to illuminate the village, was much more shrewdly employed by the clerical gentlemen to shine up the knowledge-boxes of their customers, and introduce the glitter of gold into their own pockets. I merely throw out the hint to any speculating Fredonian who owns a hole in the ground. Well, the Pythia, as this female was termed, warmed up her understanding over this hole, as you have seen ladies do over the register of a hot-air furnace, and becoming excited, she presently began to be drunk or crazy, and in her fit she gabbled forth some words or noises. These the priests took down, and then told the customer that the noises meant so-and-so! When business was brisk they worked two Pythias, turn and turn about (or, as they say at sea, watch and watch), and kept a third all cocked and primed in case of accident, besides; for this gas sometimes gave the priestess (literally) fits, which killed her in a few days.
Other oracles gave answers in many various ways. The priest quietly wrote down whatever answer he chose; or inspected the insides of a slaughtered beast, and said that the bowels meant this and that. At Telmessus the inquirer peeped into a well, where he must see a picture in the water which was his answer; at any rate, if this wouldn’t do he got none. This plan was evidently based on the idea that “truth is at the bottom of a well.” At Dodona, they hung brass pots on the trees and translated the banging these made when the wind blew them together. At Pheræ, you whispered your question in the ear of the image of Mercury, and then shutting your ears until you got out of the market-place, the first remark you heard from anybody was the answer, and you might make the best of it. At Pluto’s oracle at Charæ, the priest took a dream, and in the morning told you what he chose. In the cave of Trophonius, after various terrifying performances, they pulled you through a hole the wrong way of the feathers, and then back again, and then stuck you upon a seat, and made you write down your own oracle, being what you had seen, which would, I imagine, usually be “the elephant.”
And so-forth, and so on. Humbug ad libitum!
Like some of the more celebrated modern fortune-tellers, the managers of the oracles were frequently shrewd fellows, and could often pick up the materials of a very smart
