"
[44] Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better,
explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through
which the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may
henceforth pass forever. See the details of the evidence in
his Primitive Culture, I. 315.
[45] The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means
both "cloud" and "mountain." "In the Edda, too, the rocks,
said to have been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed
to be intended for clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both
cloud and rock; nay, the English word CLOUD itself has been
identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock. See Justi, Orient
und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Muller, Rig-Veda, Vol. 1.
p. 44.
This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by the
arrow of Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the spear of
Odin, the trident of Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The
forked streak of light is the archetype of the divining-rod in
its oldest form,--that in which it not only indicates the
hidden treasures, but, like the staff of the Ilsenstein
shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them to
the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to the
divining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it
shall be forked.
It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the
ancients to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent,
trident, arrow, or forked wand; but when we inquire why it was
sometimes symbolized as a flower or leaf; or when we seek to
ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel,
white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in a certain
sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too
complicated to be satisfactorily treated within the limits of
the present paper.
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