JOURNEY OF THE SOUL


which, Cerberus in Greece, is in the Vedas spoken of by the same name, Carvara. The soul must pacify these dogs and pass them without injury if it would enjoy the delights that lay beyond. Within the gates stretched a broad desert through which flowed the river Acheron, which in later myths came to have various branches, the Styx, Lethe, Polyphegmon, etc. This was to be crossed in the boat of Charon, the silent ferryman, who spoke no word but exacted of each ghost a toll.

The dark river crossed, the spirit appeared before the judges, and by them its future fate was decided. An adverse decision condemned it to wander lonely in the darkness, but a favorable verdict authorized its entrance into the happy fields of Elysium. This joyous abode was in the far west, in that land beyond the shining waters and the purple sunset sea, where the orb of light goes to rest himself at night. Its light is eternal, its joys perennial, its happiness perfect.

With little difference, this faith was shared by ancient Indians and ancient Norsemen. The latter often buried with the dead a canoe or boat, destined to convey the soul across the waves to the happy lands beyond.

Even the ancient Kelt of Cornwall or Brittany had this same myth of the Islands of the Blessed, lying somewhere far out in the Western Sea. What to the Greek was the Garden of the Hesperides with its fruit of golden oranges, was to the Kelt the Isle of Avalon, with its orchards of apples.

Thither was conveyed the noble Arthur when slain on the field of Lyoness. He was borne away in a royal boat by the fairy women of the strand. There Ogier the Dane, wore by the wars of a hundred years, was carried by his divine godmother to he restored to youth and strength, and to return again to wield his battle-axe under the Oriflamme of France.

Wherever we turn, whether in the most ancient chants of the Vedas, in the graceful forms of the Greek religious fancy, in the gaunt and weird imaginings of the Norse poets, or in the complex but brilliant pictures of mediaeval romance, we find the same distinct plan of this journey of the soul.

I pass now to the New World, almost to the antipodes of India, and take up the doctrines of the Aztecs. We have sufficiently ample accounts of their notions, preserved by various early writers, especially by Father

Sahagun, who took down the words of the priests in their own tongue, and at a date when their knowledge was not dimmed or distorted by Christian teaching. Something may also be learned from Tezozomoc, a native chronicler, and others.

From these it appears that the Aztecs held that after death the souls of all people pass downward into the under world, to the place called Mictlan. This is translated by the missionaries as "hell" or "inferno," but by derivation it means simply "the place of the slain," from an active verb meaning "to kill.''

To explain this further, I add that in all primitive American tribes, there is no notion of natural death. No man "dies," he is always "killed." Death as a incident in the course of nature is entirely unknown to them. When a person dies by disease, they suppose he has been killed by some sorcery, or some unknown venomous creature.

The journey to Mictlan was long and perilous. The soul first passed through a narrow defile between two mountains which touched each other, where it was liable to be crushed; it then reached a path by which lay in wait a serpent; next was a spot where a huge green lizard whose name was "The Flower of Heat," was concealed. After this eight deserts stretched their wild wastes, and beyond these eight steep hills reared their toilsome sides into the region of snow. Over their summits blew a wind so keen that it was called "The Wind of Knives." Much did the poor soul suffer, exposed to this bitter cold, unless many coats of cotton other clothing were burnt upon his tomb for use at this lofty pass.

These hills descended, the slivering ghost reached the river called "By the Nine Waters." It was broad, and deep and swift. Little chance had the soul of crossing its current, was the aid for this purpose forgotten during life, or by the mourners. This aid was a dog, of the species trained

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