CHAPTER IV.

VENUS AND ADONIS.
''Forte est vinum, fortior est rex, fortiores sunt mnliera; super omnia vincit Veritas."— 1st Bad., ch. ilL, yer. 10, 12.
How is it that the first heir of Shakespeare's inyention (if it was Shakespeare's 1) is found to be upon the subject of Venus and Adonis, the latter being the key figure, or myth centre round which the society of the Eosy Cross and their emblem revolve 1 How is it that these plays and poems still present a like mystery and question of authorship, that is thoroughly Eosicrucian in its silence, profundity, and inscrutability f " To come down hidden through the ages is sublime," writes De Quincey of them ; but does not the problem of the plays and sonnets, as to meaning and authorship, thoroughly suggest something of the same sorti There are parallels of date between the publication of the plays, the death of Shakespeare, and the society, which seem to stand out significantly when placed side-by-side with each other. To this we have ali'eady alluded, but we must allude to it again. In 1623, when the first folio edition is put forth, there is a great Bosicrucian meeting held in Paris, which made a great stir for two years in that capital. The year 1616 (Shakespeare's death), several of the manifestoes of importance are published. In fact, the entire rise of Bosicrucianism and the noise it made, com- mences early in the seventeenth century and expires about 1630, four years after Bacon's death ; and we hear no more about it, except through apologists like John Heydon, who borrow Bacon's •* Atlantis " to illustrate or identify the Society with his College of the Six Days. Then we have, in 1646, a Masonic meeting at
S6 VENUS AND ADONIS,
WarringtOD, where Bacon is again brought in, according to Nicolaiy as one of the Kosicrucians, if not the head ! Nicolai, be it observed, lived a century ago, and was nearer the sources of oral tradition than we are now.
De Quincey (like Mr Waite, in his " Real History of the Kosi- crucians ") in his '' Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Kosicrucians and the Freemasons," questions their existence before the seventeenth century. At any rate they made no stir, no noise, prior to the publication of the " Fama Fratemitatis." They may have been a reorganization, a resurrection of older societies, such as the Templars, or of older sects, but in the form they startled Europe, they present to us the idea of a total re- construction and new inception. They seem to have been LUeraii as well as UluminaH, and in this we see their connection with literature. It may be as well to remember that Dante, who was a member of the order of Templars, makes his art a vehicle of reformation, using the secret language or jargon of his brother- hood, called the gay-science. We find, in the Sonnets, this secret language hinted at, in most unmistakable terms. Dante's work cannot be understood by those who have not seized the Anti- papal spirit of his times. No better work exists upon the subject than Kossetti's (father of the late poet) '' Anti-papal Spirit which preceded the Reformation." Literature indeed, especially alle- gorical literature like Dante's or Rabelais', was especially fitted to ridicule, and attack the abuses of an age, in which no other weapons were possible. We find that Dante's City of Dis, is nothing but Rome, even to the extent of its walls. Now we must not imagine that Bacon's and Shakespeare's age was much beyond Dante's in this matter. We have only to recall a few facts, to immediately realise the barbarity of the age, which was a species of world prison. To step out into the air, was to step into one's *'grave," as Hamlet says to Polonius. The windlace, the gyves, were ready to torture, the prison or stake to consummate the martyrdom of Truth. Just take a few examples that come to memory at once. Bruno burnt, 1600; Ramus massacred, and
VENUS AND ADONIS, 87
Campanella, author of the ' so much commended by Bacon with whose Atlantis there are striking parallels), tortured ; John Selden — one of Bacon's translators, and literary executors — had to apologize ; Des Cartes, to conceal his book; Spinoza^ excommunicated; Galileo, to recant upon his knees. — These are only a few. Do we not see how urgently an universal reformation of society was needed, and how opportune and profound the scheme of the Rosicruciansi What was its object! What could it perform? Very little, apparently, but probably a very great deal more than we can as yet realise or imagine. And, first of all, we believe its aim was to make literature the vehicle of its reformation. We have this hinted in the frequent allusions to Apollo and Parnassus, to the Muses and the Castalian Spring. We find the Sonneteers embracing an universal style after the fashion of the love sonnet- eers of the Renaissance early period, of Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante, addressing a lady of their loves, as Dante does Beatrice, and writing in a language which is profoundly philosophical, and difficult to clearly understand. We imagine we comprehend it, but we are mistaken. And this is shown in the incapability of the modem world to separate the Stella of Sidney from Lady Rich, or the Black-mistress of the Sonnets, of the supposed author Shakespeare, from a real person. But these, like Dante's Beatrice, are metaphysical concepts, personified for art and safety's sake, — ^they are philosophical abstractions.
" Adonis or Adonai was an Oriental title of the Sun, signifying Lord ; and the boar supposed to have killed him, was the emblem of Winter ; during which the productive powers of nature being suspended, Venus was said to lament the loss of Adonis until he was again restored to life : whence both the Syrian and Argive women annually mourned his death and celebrated his resurrec- tion. Adonis was said to pass six months with Proserpine, and six with Venus." (Section 120, R. P. Knight's " Inquiry into Symb. Lang, of Ancient Art and Mythology.") Compare (Hesych. in V. Macrob. Sat. i. c. xx.) Adonis with Dionysis or Bacchus. Tov hi
88 VENUS AND ADONIS.
Aduttv ovj^ irspcv dkka AiO¥uoo¥ uvai tofu^outfiv. (Platarch Symp. ^ lib. iv. qu. y. ; also Lucian de Dea Syria. Paasan. Corintli c. zz., S. 5.)
*' The story of the Phoenix appears to have been an allegory of the same kind." (Ibid,)
'' The Phrygian Attis, like the Syrian Adonis, was fabled to have been killed by a boar ; or, according to another tradition, by Mars in the shape of that animal ; and his death and resurrection were annually celebrated in the same manner." (Section 121, ibid.)
''In the poetical tales of the ancient Scandinavians, Frey, the deity of the Sun, was fabled to have been killed by a boar ; which was therefore annually offered to him at the great feast of luul during the Winter solstice. Boars of paste were also served on their tables during that feast ; which being kept till the following spring, were beaten to pieces and mixed with the seeds to be sown in the ground." This Boar is Mars or Winter, who is at war with Venus. We find in the Sonnets that the poet identifies Adonis with the Sun, — and with the Rose, as we shall show very clearly.
The story of Venus and Mars circles round the universe, as the two antagonistic powers of Love and Warfare, or "Strife and Friendship," as Bacon terms it Harmonia or Hermione, was their offspring, being the orderly world, or product of the great dualism everywhere perceptible in Nature, under the physical names of Heat and Cold, — Eepul^ion and Attraction. These laws govern the universe, and keep the solar system under law. For what is Attraction (or what we term Gravitation) but Love, whilst Heat or Fire produces separation, repulsion, — in other words, warfare or hate. It is the orderly conflict or antagonism of these two, alter- nating with Winter or Summer (which is the alternate triumph of one over the other), that constitutes the year. We see, then, that the death of Adonis, " the pleasure of the fleeting year," or Summer, at the tusks of a boar, is merely allegorical for the death of Summer at the hands of Winter. We can see that the poet consciously embodies this idea. Because we find him in his first
VENUS AND ADONIS. 89
poem identifying the Sun with Adonis, and again the latter with Sommer and the rose : —
** How like a Winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year ?
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen ?
What old Decembers bareness every where 1
And yet this time remoVd was summer's time,
The teeming Autumn big with rich increase.
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like vndowed wombea ^ after their Lord's decease :
Yet this aboundant issue seem'd to me,
But hope of Orphans, and un- fathered fruit.
For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute. Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer. That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter's near."
" From you have I been absent in the spring. When proud pied April (drest in all his trim) Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing : That heavy Saturn laugh t and leapt with him, Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue. Could make me any summer's story tell : Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew. Nor did I wonder at the Lilies white. Nor praise the deep Vermilion in the Bose, They were but sweet, but fig^ures of delight : Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away."
The Lily and the Rose are two purely Bosicrucian flowers par- ticularly associated with the order. The Fleur-de-lis is connected with the symbol of Light, as Lux, and the Bose is Adonis. Study the Sonnets quoted, and you will at once see it is addressed to the Sun, as the pattern and exemplar of Nature, which is revealed as the cause of Summer.
* En revenant aux ^poux de V^nus, noos tronvons encore le gnerrier Mars, dont le mois onvrit long temps Tann^e, k I'^uinoxe du printemps ; Yalcain on le feu (prinoipalemeDt le fen inf^rieur, le soleil d'en bas, Osiris enterr^) ; et surtout ^JHK) Adonai' oa Adonis (le seigneur, Tdlev^), dont VSntu-veuve ordonne k ses enfants la recherche et la vengeance. Compare ** Widow Dido " La Ma^onnerie.
90 VENUS AND ADONIS,
'* For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute."
Here is winter during the sun's absence : —
" How like a Winter hath my absence been From thee the pleasure of the fleeting year."
Compare —
"" And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth."
— hUK Sonnet.
Dr Alger writes (" Doctrine of a Future Life ") : — " It is a well- known fact, intimately connected with the different religions of Greece and Asia-Minor, that during the times of harvest in the autumn, and again at the season of sowing in the spring, the shep- herds, the vintagers, and the people in general, were accustomed to observe certain sacred festivals, — the autumnal sad, — the vernal joyous. These undoubtedly grew out of the deep sympathy between man and nature, over the decay and disappearance, the revival and return of vegetation. When the hot season had withered the verdure of the fields, plaintive songs were sung, their wild melancholy notes and snatches borne abroad by the breeze, and their echoes dying at last in the distance. In every instance, these mournful strains were the annual lamentation of the people over the death of some mythical boy of extraordinary beauty luid promise^ who in the flower of youth, was suddenly drowned, or torn in pieces by wild beasts.
" * Some Hyacinthine boy, for whom
Mom well might break, and April bloom.'
"Among the Argives it was Linus. With the Arcadians it was Scephrus. In Phrygia it was Lityerses. On the shore of the Black Sea it was Bormus. In the country of the Bithynians it was Hylas. At Pelusium it was Maneros. And in Syria it was Adonis. The untimely death of these beautiful boys, carried off in their morning of life, was yearly bewailed ; their names re-echo- ing over the plains, the fountains, and among the hills. It
VENUS AND ADONIS. 91
is obvious that these cannot have been real persons, whose death excited a sympathy so general, so recurrent." Now compare (Sonnet 104) :—
" For fear of which, hear this thou age unhred^ Ere you were born, was beauty's ifiimmer dead/*
This is addressed to us — Posterity. Again compare (Sonnet
97);—
" How like a vrinter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasitre of the fleeting year J"
Compare Sonnets 73, 63, 67 ; equally addressed to Dionysus, or Adonis.^
With regard to Adonis, we must now draw attention to Shake- speare's extraordinary forestalment of modern mythographers and writers upon ancient symbolism in religion. Sir George Cox says, " Tammuz (or Adonis) became the symbol undei' which the sun, invoked with a thousand names, has been worshipped." Now compare Shakespeare, 53 : —
" "What is your substance, whereof are ye made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend 1 Since everyone, hath, everyone, one shade, And you btU one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you."
This is the sun which Adonis and myriads of other solar heroes represented. Directly we begin the first poem or heir of his invention, the poet's Venus and Adonis, we find he is identifying Adonis with the sun. His opening comparison is solar : —
" Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase."
^ The myth of Adonis links the legends of Aphrodite with those of Dionysos. Like the Theban wine-god, Adonis is bom only on the death of his mother : and the two myths are in one verson so far the same that Dionysos like Adonis is placed in a chest which being cast into the sea is carried to Brasiai, where the body of his mother is buried.
92 VENUS AND ADONIS.
It is absord to take the poem literally, as if merely a peg to hang his poetic proclivities upon, and draw attention to himself. The writer is perfectly acquainted with the entire bearing of the Adonis myth. To prove this is easy enough. The metaphysical or purely fabulous parabolical nature of his treatment of the poem reveals itself in these lines : —
^ By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd Was melted like a vapour from her sight. And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up, cbequer'd with white. Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.'' ^
Thus the great Eosicrucian protagonist, Adonis, is changed into a flower, which we know is the Eose — ^Yenus' own flower, sacred to her, and which she places in her breast : —
" She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis' breath ; And says, within her bosom it shall dwell. Since he himself is reft from her by death : She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.
" * Poor flower,' quoth she, * this was thy father's guise, (Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire). For every little grief to wet his eyes : To grow unto himself was his desire.
And so 't is thine ; but know, it is as good
To wither in my breast as in his blood.
" * Here was thy father's bed, here in my breast ; Thou art the next of blood, and 't is thy right : Lo ! in this hollow cradle take thy rest. My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night : There shall not be one minute in an hour Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love's flower.' "
^ For the story of the Rose springing out of Adonis' blood, see Bion, _ Idyll i. 66. Pausanias also identifies Adonis with the Rose (v. Eliac ii., vi., cap. 24, sectioD 5» ed. Schubart).
VENUS AND ADONIS. 93
But that there shall be no loophole left for the critics to doubt this, consider this Sonnet : —
LIV.
** O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet orDament that traih doth give !
The raw looks fair, but fairer we it deem, . For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses.
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their mask'd bud discloses :
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade ;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ;
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made : And so of you, beauteous and lovdy youth. When that shall fade my verse distils your truth"
We see here that this Eose is a '' beauteous and lovely youth,'' Adonis, who is Truth at the same time. For he is the Logos of the Sun "crucified in the Heavens at the vernal equinox." (Godfrey Higgins.) Now mark the last line, and, particularly, the words : —
"My verse distils your truth."
Compare Sonnet 5 : —
" Then were not Summer's distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass."
So that we have in these last lines a hint to Adonis as Summer's distillation, or Sose-Water pent in Crystal, which we find a common expression among the Eosicrucians. For example, Thomas Yaughan, a famous member of the mystic Brotherhood, writes: —
"In regard of the ashes of the vegetables, although their weaker exterior elements expire by violence of the fire, yet their earth cannot be destroyed, but is vitrified. The fusion and transparency of this substance is occasioned by the Eadicall
94 VENUS AND ADONIS,
moysture, or seminal water of the compound. This water resists the fury of the fire, and cannot possibly be vanquished. ' In hoc Agud (Crystal) Rosa latet in hiime' These two principals are never separated ; for Nature proceeds not so far in her dissolu- tions. When Death hath done her worst, there is an. union between these two, and out of them shall God raise us at the last day, and restore us to a spiritual constitution."
Not only is Yaughan's idea the entire substance of our ailment, but it is evident Shakespeare borrows this simile from the rose pent up in the crystal, "Walls of glass" can have but this reference, and the entire Sonnet deals with this spiritual rebirth of the flower, out of the seed of its essence, in Spring and Summer. Sidney employs this simile of Bose- Water in his " Arcadia." The philosophic expression of Vaughan's theory, is what in scientific parlance is termed, the conservation of eneigy, or the indestructibility of matter.
We find Sir Philip Sidney, in his " Arcadia," using the same language to the same efifect. It is evident this is a symbol of immortality, of resurrection, of conservation for the- sake of rebirth.
" Have you ever seen a pure Bosewater kept in a crystal glass? How fine it looks t How sweet it smells while that beautiful glass imprisons it ) Break the prison and let the water take his own course, doth it not embrace dust and lose all its former sweetness and fairness ? Truly so are we if we have not the stay rather than the restraint of crystalline marriage."
'' Crystal," writes Hargreave Jennings, " is a hard transparent stone composed of simple plates, giving fire with steel, not fermenting with acid meyistrua, calcining in a strong fire, of a regular angular figure, supposed by some to be formed of dew coagulated with nitre." (" Bosicrucians," vol. L, p. 180) "But the Jewel of the Bosicrucians was formed of a transparent red- stone, with a red cross on one side and a red rose on the other — thus it is a crucified rose." (Ibid,, vol. ii., p. 65) We thus see that this is typical of Adonis crucified in the Heavens at the vernal
VENUS AND ADONIS, 95
equinox. Nay, more, it is plain that this connection of Dew with the Eose, and therefore with Adonis, is purely historical. For in the Vishnu Purana Wilson (614) relates the story of Procris in another form : — " The dew becomes visible only when the blackness of the night is dispelled, and the same sun is reflected in the thousands of sparkling drops; but the language of the Purana is in singular accordance with the phraseology in which Roman Catholic writers delight to speak of nuns as the brides of Christ." (Cox's "Myth, of Aryans," ii., 139). Do we not here receive a hint as to the "crystalline marriage" of Sir Philip Sidney and Vaughan's resurrection (quoted), with this " dewy question") Can we not further see that the crucified Bose, mounted on a Calvary, has at bottom the same meaning as the crucifixion of Christ, who was the Logos, the " corner stone," the ** philosopher's stone " of the Temple 1 In the sonnets quoted we find the poet connecting the Eose with Truth as sacrificed — as Winter — as promise of rebirth — as fresh Summer. All this faUs in with the idea presented us by the Jewel emblem of the Bosicrucians. Christ was the Light of the world — ^the Divine Lux, after more of which every true Mason is searching. But the Sun is the Light of the world — it dies in winter apparently, to be reborn in the summer. Directly we go deeper into this question we find corroborating facts. This is what Hargreave Jennings writes : — *' In regard to the singular name of the Bosi- crucians, it may be here stated that the Chemists, according to their arcana, derive the Dew from the Latin Eos, and in the figure of a cross ( + ) they trace the three letters which compose the word Lux, Light. Mosheim is positive as to the accuracy of his information." (" The Bosicrucians, their Bites and Mysteries " p. 101, vol. i, 3rd edition).
The reader will remember, in Bacon's ** New Atlantis," " the pillar and Cross of Light, which brake up and cast itself abroad, as it were, into a firmament of many stars; and which also vanished soon after, and there was nothing left to be seen but a small ark or chest of cedar, dry, and not wet at all with water,
96 VENUS AND ADONIS.
though it swam ; and in the fore-end of it, which was towards him, grew a small ^een branch of pcHmJ*
Now there is in this " pillar and cross of light " an unmistak- able resemblance to the emblem of the Bosicrucians, the crucified glory or light, which, as the Rose is disguise for Adonis, the Su)i or Logos, on the cross. Is there not also, in the breaking " up of this cross and casting itself abroad into a firmament of many stars," a hint of the spread of the society and the growth of individual talent in its service (as stars), which ako vanished soon after. Eosicrucianism produced a firmament of literary stars all over Europe, of whom Fludd and Boehmen stand pre- eminent, but the striking parallel is that the society did vanish soon after Bacon's death in 1630, in exactly the way he describes it. But the fame of the fraternity still outlives the shipwrecks of time, and floats, like the ''cedar chest," upon the waters of oblivion, immortal 1 Now there can be no doubt, to those who understand these subjects, that the green branch of palm in the fore-end of the chest is introduced by Bacon to typify immortality and rebirth. The palm tree is the Phoenix dadylifera, with which the fable of the fabulous bird, the Phoenix, is most closely associ- ated, being supposed to build its nest upon a palm tree. But the curious growth of the Phoenix dadylifera explains, we think, the origin of the fable. It throws out branches every year from the centre, and the old ones dying go to form the bark of the tree in a remarkable way, suggesting continual death and re- birth.
Upon three steles in the Berlin Museum, the sacred Tree or Tree of Life is represented by the date palm — Phosnix dadylifera.
Among the Jews, the date palm would seem to have had a certain typical signification; it was largely introduced in the decorations of Solomon's temple, being represented on the walls along with the cherubim, and also on the furniture and vessels of the temple (1 Kings vi 29, 32, 35 ; vii. 36).
In the Song of Solomon, which theologians regard as signifi- cant of the love of the Church for Christ, the Spouse of the
VENUS AND ADONIS, 97
Church is spoken of as the palm tree. " I said, I will go up to the palm tree, 1 will take hold of the boughs thereof" (Solomon, Song viL 8).
The palm tree is also in Scripture a favourite simile for the right- eous, who are said to flourish like the palm tree (Psalm xcii. 12).
The Tree of Life mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis y. 9, has always been understood as the palm tree— -the date palm — Phoenix daciylifera.
In the last chapter of the Apocalypse there is a reference to the palm tree, as the Tree of Life in the heavenly Jerusalem. St John thus describes the water of life and the Tree of Life : " And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month : and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations " (Hev. xxii. 1, 2).
The palm tree was popularly believed to put forth a shoot every mouth, and hence became, at the close of the year, a symbol of it; and was the origin of the Christmas tree, so popular with the Germans, but derived originally from Egypt. It is well known the leaves of the palm were at one time used for writing on (Pliny). In Christian symbolism, the Tree of Life is the date palm, and souls are represented, commonly, as doves. On one of these palm trees is very commonly perched a phcenix with a glory of seven rays. There is a good example of this in the Church of the SS. Cosma and Damiano; the phoenix with the glory symbolises the resurrection to eternal life, and is placed on the palm tree as the symbolical support of that life.
The phoenix was, in this sense, a very ancient mythical symbol. Dante alludes to it, ** Inferno," xxiv., 106-8 —
'* Coal per li gran savi si confeesa, Che la Fenice muore e poi rinasce, Quando al cinquecentesimo anno appressa."
Ovid (" Metamorphoses," lib. xv. v. 392 et eeq,) associates this
o
98 VENUS AND ADONIS.
fabulous bird with the pahn tree, as preparing its funeral nest among the branches, ''tremulsque cacumine palmsB/'from whence, on its death, another little phoonix rises up.
It is a doubtful point whether the tree. Phoenix dadylifera, gave name to the bird, or the mythical bird to the tree ; possibly the well known fact that, when an aged female palm tree was burnt down to the roots, a new tree sprang up amid the ashes of the old one, may have been the origin of the fable. (See C. Plinii, ** Secundi Naturalis Historise," lib. xiii., c. 9.)
In Chester's "Love's Martyr" (published 1601), in which Shakespeare's supposed poem, the Phumix and Turtle is to be found, we find Ben Jonson contributing a poem, in which we find the idea of crystal repeated : —
" Judgement (adorned with Learning) Doih shine in her discerning, Cleare as a naked vestall Closde in an orbe of Christall.*' — Ben Jonson.
In Bacon's " Natural History," we find him giving us an ex- periment how to make crystal (Century IV. Experiment 364), and in the next experiment, 365 (the number of days in the year), telling us how to preserve, or conserve Eoses 1 It is plain that the thought of the crystal, calls up the thought of the Hose, and shows intimacy with the crystal and Eose-water idea.
This comparison of the Bose, begins with the first sonnet, in a sense thoroughly in keeping, with a depth of creation, that is to conserve for immortality. The rose is ever before the poet's mind's eye : —
" From fairest creatures we desire increase That thereby beauties Rose might never die."
This Eose is to be as. immortal as the crucified Rose, and herein we can see, that the only way such immortality can be attained, is by just this sacrifice of crucifixion. To preserve the Jiosey or the rose-water, during the Winter, it must be first im- prisoned in the crystal.
VENUS AND ADONIS, 99
Compare —
" Why should poore beautie indirectly seeke B0668 of Shadow, since his Hose is true ? "
^* Then were not summer's distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauties effect with beautie were bereft, Nor it nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers dlstiird, though they with winter meef, Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet."
This is a most unmistakable application of Sir Philip Sidney's Rosewater, kept in a crystal glass, or Vaughan's " In hoc Aqud, (Crystal) Rosa laiet in hieme"
" Then let not winter's ragged hand deface In thee thy summer ere thou be distiird : Make sweet some vial ; treasure thou some place With beauties treasure ere it be self kill'd."
How is it Masonry terminates with the grade of Eose Cross (Rose-Croix), the Paradise of Dante, and, indeed, the entire Divine Comedy terminates with the Great Rose ? Dante employs thi? emblem of the Rose to depict the Virgin : —
'* Perchd la faccia mia si t'innamora, Chd tu non ti rivolgi al bel giardino, Che sotto i raggi di Cristo s'infiora, Quivi h la rosa in che'l verbo divine,
Came si f ece.**
«
The Divine Word is the Logos, through which everything was created. What does the Rose mean] It means secrecy — it means Love through which everything is created. And as Cruci- fied Rose, it means Crucified Love or Logos, Light and truth — immortality — the secret of immortality !
" There is a Silver Rose, called Tamara Pua, in the Paradise of the Brahmans. 'This Paradise is a garden in heaven, to which celestial spirits are first admitted on their ascent from the terrestrial sphere. The Rose contains the images of two women, as bright and fair as a pearl ; but these two are only one, though
loo VENUS AND ADONIS.
appearing as if distinct according to the medium, celestial or terrestrial, through which they are viewed. In the first aspect she is called the Lady of the Mouth, in the other, the Lady of the Tongue, or the Spirit of Tongues. In the centre of this Silver Hose, God has his permanent residence."
" A correspondence will be readily recognised between this divine woman or virgin — two and yet one, who seems to typify the Logos, the Spirit of Wisdom, and the Spirit of Tnith — and the two-edged sword of the Spirit in the Apocalypse, the Sapientia quce ex ore Alti^mii prodtit, as it is called in the sublime Advent antiphon of the Latin Church. The mystical Hose in the centre of the allegorical garden is continually met with in legend. Buddha is said to have been crucified for robbing a garden of a flower, and after a common fashion of mythology, the divine Avatar of the Indians is henceforth identified with the object for which he suffered, and he becomes himself * a flower, a Rose, a Padma, Lotus, or Lily.' Thus he is the Rose crucified, and we must look to the far East for the origin of the Rosicrucian emblem. According to Godfrey Higgins, this is 'the Rose of Isnren, of Tamul, and of Sharon, crucified for the salvation of men — crucified,' he continues, *in the heavens at the vernal equinox.'" (Waite's "Real Hist, of Rosicrucians," /?i/ro(^i/c//o«, page 11.)
The Rose is also the emblem of Bacchus or Dionysus, whom the best authorities identify with Adonis : —
** Adonis, be it observed, is with the Hymn- writer only another name for Dionysos, and so he is Polyonymos, the many-named, ' the best of heavenly beings,' as Zagreus and lao are * the highest of gods.' So Adonis is Eubouleus, the Wise-counselling, and Dikeros, the Two-homed, ' nourisher of all,' t.e., vital power of the world, ' male and female ; ' or, as Shelley says, * a sexless thing it seemed,' in fact the Hwo-natured lakchos.' Ever fresh and vigorous, he is, like Dionysos, both solar and kosmogonic.
" * Adonis, ever flourishing and bright ; At stated periods doom'd to set and rise
VENUS AND ADONIS. loi
With splendid lamp, the glory of the skies. Tis thine to sink in Tartarus profound, And shine again thro' heaven's illustrious round.' '' — Taylor. (Brown's "Great Dionysiak Myth./* vol. i. p. 66.)
Note that he is androgynous, or, as Shelly writes, " a sexless thing it seemed," which finds its complete reproduction in the Sonnets, under the title of Master-MistresSy separate yet identical, — ^Light and Darkness, Heaven and Hell, Summer and Winter, Idea and Form, Logos and Concealment. It is the marriage of these two, which constitutes Creation, and whose offspring is the reappearance of the Light or Logos — Revelation — the child or son, in which we at once see the mystery of the Trinity pre- figured. The father contemplates his alter Ego, which is his Mind, crucified in the act of creation, that is concealed (as mean- ing or archetypal ideas or principles) in the material or form, which is feminine. But this is Plato's simile to exemplify Crea- tion Divine or poetic, i.e., Marriage for the sake of Divine offspring :—
" A woman's face with nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the MajBter-Mistress of my passion, A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion ; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling : Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth ; A man in you, all hues in his controlling. Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created ; Till nature as she wrought thee, fell a doting, And by addition me of thee defeated. By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick't thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure."
'*A man in yov^" concealed "in you," identified with " you** in this ** union in partition" ^ of the plays — light concealed in darkness !
^ " So they lov'd, aa love in twam Had the essence but in one ; Two distincts, division none : Number there in love was slain."
— Phoenix and Turtle.
102 VENUS AND ADONIS.
Read the openiDg of the Sonnets. The argument is marriage for the sake of immortality, — true immortality,— copy (in the second degree), of divine truths concealed for a planned revelation through time, that is the secret of the poems. They contain the creative principles of the plays — are the new life of the poet's art. This is written so " within and without," so plainly, that we hardly know how to deal with it, for it is everywhere. The poet is a god. He divides his art into an external and an internal for posterity to discover and reveal The unrevealed side (to him) id darkness, winter — the icy image of death and sleep. We know that the Winter's Tale embraces this creative separation under the summer and winter myth of Persephone and Dem^ter (or Pro- serpine and Ceres) taking the ''Mysteries of Eleusis" as key centre. Until Perdita is found this Art is but winter; its summer (Adonis), " the pleasure of the fleeting year " crucified as the Rose (his emblem), and therefore the ''age unbred" is told that "beauty's summer" was dead or sacrificed as Love's Martyr: —
" For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, — Ere you were bom, was beauty's summer dead."
" But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest j Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade. When in eternal lines to time thou growest : So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." ^
" For as the sun is daily new and old. So is my love still telling what is told."
The Rose crucified is, we believe, nothing short of crucified Light or glory. For as Hargreave Jennings shows us. Lux is the Logos by whom all things were made, and the Logos is BasU. We know that the Red Rose sprang from the blood of Adonis. Thus from his sacrifice, who, as the sun, is light, we have the idea, in the crucified Rose, of the Saviour's martyrdom. Pegasus, the winged steed of the muses, springs from the blood of Medusa, and from the stroke of the hoof of Pegasus arose the fountain of
VENUS AND ADONIS, 103
Hippocrene. This idea, which is connected with the winged chariot of Phsedrns, finds its reproduction in the Sonnets. But we have direct proof of this association of Light or Logos with the crucified Eose. Khunrath, an adept of the order, in his ** Amphiiheairum SapienicR AStemcB^ gives us in his fifth pan- tacle a Eose of Light, in whose centre there is a human form extending its arms in the form of a cross, which puts the matter out of further doubt. In short, the crucified Eose is the Chris- tian legend, extracted from Nature {and as universal as Nature)^ applied symbolically to indicate immortality, or the secret of the creation of the universe, — that is the Logos, or Light, concealed in darkness, — ^Truth as the Thought of God, hidden yet made manifest, in the works of the creation. This Truth is the archetypal Mind, or meaning of the world. It is the creative idea, or ideas, which are clothed in Nature's art, as a truth may be con- cealed in a fable, myth, or allegory. As the fly in the amber or crystal, so is Truth open yet secret, concealed and hidden^ according to our capacities. It is sacrificed in the making, to be revealed in the unmaking or rebirtL This is the secret of the poems commonly called Shakespeare's.
We have abundant proof that the Eose is intended to represent the sun or light. " In the Paradise of Dant^ we find, however, the emblem whose history we are tracing, placed, and assuredly not without reason, in the supreme, central heaven amidst the intolerable manifestation of the Uncreated Light, the Shecinah of Eabbinical theosophy, the chosen habitation of God — 'a sacred Eose and Flower of Light, brighter than a million suns, imma- culate, inaccessible, vast, fiery with magnificence, and surrounding God as if with a miUion veils. This symbolic Eose is as common a hierogram throughout the vast temples and palaces of the Ancient East as it is in the immense ruins of Central America.' " (Waite's "Eeal Hist. Eosicrucians," Introduction, 17).
The Eose plays a double symbolic part^ according as we take it physically or metaphysically. In the former sense it is the secret flower of Venus, the emblem of the mysteries of love, — the
J 04 VENUS AND ADONIS,
sign of creation in a human sense. In the latter sense, it is crea- tion in the Divine (crucified) meaning. In the solar meaning it is the crucifixion of the sun at the vernal equinox. Thus we see what a vast meaning it embraces. If the poet's art has two complete sides (which is plain to those who can read the Sonnets), /Aey mud be in opposition. Darkness is the reversed side of Light Winter is the opposite to Summer, Day to Night, Heaven to Hell, Male to Female, Love to Hate, Life to Death. With this key, which is a paradox of identity and separation, a " union in partition/' we can at once unlock many mysteries of the poems, and particularly of that strange one, the Phcsnix and Turtle, — which promises a rebirth in the plainest language. The art of the plays and poems entitled Shakespeare's is as pro- found, as full a circle, as all living and complete, as Nature itself. It is a little Nature, and its creative God was Francis Bacon.
We find Bacon writing : — " It is reported by some, that the herb called Earn Soils (whereof they make strong waters) will at the Noonday, when the sun shineth hot and bright, have a great dew upon it. And therefore that the right name is Ros Solis ^ (or dew of the sun), which they impute to a delight and sympathy that it hath with the sun." (" Nat. Hist. Cent.," v. 103.)
"Some of the ancients, and likewise divers of the modern writers, that have laboured in Natural Magick, have noted a sympathy between the Sun, Moon, and some principal stars, and certain herbs and plants. And so they have denominated some herbs. Solar and some Lunar. It is manifest, that there are some flowers that have respect to the sun in two kinds, the one by opening and shutting, and the other by bowing and inclining the head. For Marygolds, Tulippas, Pimpernels, and indeed most flowers do open or spread their leaves abroad when the sun
^ There has indeed been spread abroad, as well in books as in common rnmour, the story of a tree in one of the Tercera or Canary Isles (I do not well remember which) which is constantly dripping ; so as to some extent to supply the inhabitants with water, ^d Paracelsus says that the herb called JR08 Solis is at noon and under a burning sun filled with dew, while all the other herbs round it are dry. — (Natural History.)
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shineth serene and fair : and again (in some part) close them, or gather them inward, either toward night, or when the Sky is overcast.
" For the bowing and inclining of the head, it is foond in the great flower of the Son, in Marygolds," &c., &c.
''The Sossi — or Bosy — crucians' ideas, concerning the em- blematical red cross and red rose, probably came from the fable of Adonis, who was the sun^ whom we have seen so often crucified — being changed into a red rose by Venus." (See Drummond, " Origines," vol. iii. p. 121.) " Bus (which is Ras in Chaldee) in Irish signifies * tree,' ' knowledge,' ' science,' * magic,' * power.' This is the Hebrew Ras.^ (Hargreave Jennings' " Rosicrucians," vol. ii. p. 66.)
A French writer (anonymous) thus expresses himself: — "Enfin la Mafonnerie, dont le centre 6tait I'Angleterre, apr^s avoir triomph6 des terreurs frivoles d'£lizabeth et du parlement, apr^s avoir obtenu la protection signal6e d'£douard III. et de Henry VI., qui avaient voulu la connattre, vit le nombre de ses membres s'accroltre avec les lumidres, quand I'Europe eut re9u Timpulsion vigoureuse du 16* si^cle. Elle meme propagea toutes les sciences et les enseigna sous la forme symbolique, jusqu'^ ce que par do plus grands progr^ cette forme fQt devenue inutile. Comment se refuser k admettre ce que j'avance, si I'on jette les yeux sur toutes les allusions au manieau blanc, k la croix rouge, au temple dc Salomon, que renferment la Nouvelle Atlantis de BUcon, la Noce chymique, et autres ouvrages du meme temps, si justement attribuis h la compagnie des Bose-croix" (La Ma9onnerie, ''Po6me en trois Chants," 1820.)
The Rose is the secret of this Art called Shakespeare's, for until the World awakes to realize the idea that this art is Christi- anity dramatized, and that it contains a planned revelation through time, it will comprehend nothing but folly in all this. When we use the expression " Christianity," we mean the real naiure meaning of the divine myth. We mean the Divine Mind or Logos hidden in this art, as orderly philosophical
io6 VENUS AND ADONIS.
construction underlying its appearance. The Logos from the earliest times, comprehends the foundation of the world — it is simply the Wisdom, or Divine Mind underlying creation — as Truth. The act of creation is its crucifixion. For it is buried in the Art of Nature,^ in order to rise again through us as we identify ourselves ivUh U. The Spirit of God is the spirit of truth, and it is in Nature, half-hidden, half-concealed, as it is in its divine copy. Bacon's plays* —
** For words like Nature half conceal. And half reveal the soul within."
We find in the plays and poems a mysterious allusion to fire, which it is impossible to reconcile with the simple external meaning of the text. For example (Sonnet 144) : —
*^ The truth shall I ne*er know, but live in doubt Till my bad angel fire my good one out,**
In the Winter*s Tale we find Leontes saying : —
" Leontes. Say, that she were gone,
Qiven to thefirt^ a moiety of my rest Might come to me again.**
This is very striking and curious. What is the "moiety** or lialf, that might come to Leontes again 1
A writer, last century, remarks of the Eosicrucians : — " They all maintain that the dissolution of bodies by the power of fire, is the only way by which men can arrive at true wisdom, and come to discern the first principles of things. They all acknowledge a certain analogy and harmony between the powers of nature and the doctrines of religion, and believe that the Deity governs the kingdom of grace by the same laws with which ho rules the kingdom of nature: and hence they are led to use chemical denominations to express the truths of religion,**
^ " Thy unas'd beauty muat be tomb'd with thee, Which, a8*d, lives thy executor to be."
{Sontiel iv,)
VENUS AND ADONIS. 107
Bacon writes : —
"Therefore this kindling or catching Fire, Heraclitus called peace ; because it composed nature and made her one ; but genera- tion he called war, because it multiplied and made her many." (Bacon's " Works," vol v., p. 473, Spedding.)
In AlVa JVM tluU Ends Wdl, we have a curious plot founded upon Love and Hate. Helena is married to Bertram against his desire. Then they are separated, and the play turns upon their reconciliation. We find Bertram is attended by one called Parolles, a name which means Words. He is an evil instrument of separation, persuading Bertram to go to the wars — ^and is a i> liar. We cannot be mistaken in suspecting that he is an emblem of Words and their false connotations.^ The first character who detects and exposes him is Le Feu, a name which translated is >^ simply fire / We see that Bertram is separate yet identical with Helena (that is, an '* union in partition "), and that ParoUes (or words — false words) is the separating medium. There is, in the fact of Bertram's Hate, and Helena's Love, a principle of Strife and Friendship, or Mars and Venus, which we refind in the Sonnets. Bertram is associated with Mars as soldier. Helena exchanges rdle with Diana, whose name recalls her classical prototype, who was the great reconciler of separated things — Nature. Very few will believe this, but we are certain of it. The union of Con- traries is a favourite system of plot construction in the plays. The poem of Venus and Adonis is one of Love on one side— Hate on the other. Borneo and Juliet is a play in which Love is.crossed by family Hate. The poems are philosophically, the expression of a youth, who is Love and Light, at cross-purposes with a woman who is Hate— and Darkness.
Take Sonnet 45 : —
'* The other two, slight air and purging fire, The first my thought, the other my desire."
1 * traiture of this vanity ; for words art hut the. images o/maUer, and except they have life of reason and invention to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a ;>ic^ttre.*'—(*
io8 VENUS AND ADONIS.
Or consider this with regard to study : —
" Biron, So etady evermore is overshot,
While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should : And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, T is won as towns with fire ; so won, so lost."
Compare Sonnet 144 : —
" The truth shall I ne'er know but live in doubt, Till my bad angel ^rc my good one out."
Thomas Taylor tells us in his notes upon Plato's Cratylus, that air is a symbol of soul or spirit, and fire is an image of intellect,
" Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross very carefully and with ingenuity. It ascends &om the earth into heaven, then again descends into the earth, and receives the force of above and below." (" Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes.")