[117-1] They are
the same stories which in the old world have been elaborated into the
struggles of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Thor and Midgard, of St. George and
the Dragon, and a thousand others.
Yet it were but a narrow theory of natural religion that allowed no
other meaning to these myths. Many another elemental warfare is being
waged around us, and applications as various as nature herself lie in
these primitive creations of the human fancy. Let it only be remembered
that there was never any moral, never any historical purport in them in
the infancy of religious life.
In snake charming as a proof of proficiency in magic, and in the symbol
of the lightning, which brings both fire and water, which in its might
controls victory in war, and in its frequency, plenteous crops at home,
lies the secret of the serpent symbol. As the "war physic" among the
tribes of the United States was a fragment of a serpent, and as thus
signifying his incomparable skill in war, the Iroquois represent their
mythical king Atatarho clothed in nothing but black snakes; so that when
he wished to don a new suit he simply drove away one set and ordered
another to take their places,[118-1] so, by a precisely similar mental
process, the myth of the Nahuas assigns as a mother to their war god
Huitzilapochtli, Coatlicue, the robe of serpents; her dwelling place
Coatepec, the hill of serpents; and at her lying-in say that she brought
forth a serpent.
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