The White Goddess

by Robert Graves

  Thus the thyrsus contained three trees, each representing a flight of five calendar letters, or one-third of the year; besides the palm which represented the extra day (or period of five days) on which the Sun-god was born. The number fifteen was therefore of prime importance in the Festival: the Levites sang the fifteen Songs of Ascent (attributed to King David) as they stood on the fifteen steps leading up from the Women’s Court to the Court of Israel. The number also figures in the architecture of Solomon’s ‘house of the Forest of Lebanon’ which was more than twice the size of the House of the Lord. It was built on three rows of cedar pillars, fifteen to a row, and was 50 cubits long by 30 high and wide; with an adjoining porch 30 cubits wide, 50 long, height not given – probably 10 cubits.

  The Hebrew canon of the trees of the week, the seven pillars of Wisdom, is not difficult to establish. For the birch, which was not a Palestinian tree, the most likely substitute is the retem or wild broom, which was the tree under which the prophet Elijah rested on Mount Horeb (‘the mountain of glowing heat’) and seems to have been sacred to the Sun. Like the birch, it was used as a besom for the expulsion of evil spirits. Willow remains the same. For the holly, the kerm-oak, already mentioned in Chapter Ten as the tree from which the ancients obtained their royal scarlet dye. This ascription of the kerm-oak to Nergal or Mars, is confirmed by a characteristic passage in Frazer’s Golden Bough:

  The heathen of Harran offered to the sun, moon and planets human victims who were chosen on the ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to which they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, clothed in red and smeared with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man to ‘the red planet Mars’ in a temple which was painted red and draped with red hangings.

  The substitute for the hazel was the almond: this was the tree from which Aaron took his magic rod, and the Menorah the seven-branched candlestick in the Temple Sanctuary at Jerusalem had its sconces in the form of almonds and represented Aaron’s rod when it budded. It was this branch that Jeremiah (Jeremiah I, 11) was shown as a visionary token that God had granted him prophetic wisdom. The sconces stood for the seven heavenly bodies of the week, and the central sconce was the fourth, namely that dedicated to Wisdom, which gives its name to all the rest; its branch formed the shaft of the candlestick. For the oak, the terebinth sacred to Abraham. For the apple, the quince. For the alder, since we know that the alder was banned in Temple worship, the pomegranate which supplies a red dye as the alder does. The pomegranate was Saul’s sacred tree, and sacred to Rimmon, a name for Adonis from whose blood it is said to have sprung. Also, the Paschal victim was traditionally spitted on pomegranate wood. The pomegranate was the only fruit allowed to be brought inside the Holy of Holies – miniature pomegranates were sewn on the High Priest’s robes when he made his yearly entry. Since the seventh day was sacred to Jehovah and Jehovah was a form of Bran, or Saturn, or Ninib,1 everything points to the pomegranate as the tree of the seventh day. So:

  Sun – Broom

  Moon – Willow

  Mars – Kerm

  Mercury – Almond

  Jupiter – Terebinth

  Venus – Quince

  Saturn – Pomegranate.

  The one doubtful tree here is the broom, or its Irish counterpart, the birch. The seven trees of the Irish grove all belong to the summer months except B, the birch, which has taken the place of H, the hawthorn: and has apparently been chosen because it is the leading letter of the first flight of five trees, as H is of the second. But, as will be shown in the next chapter, B was used as the cypher equivalent of H not only in Hyginus’s Fable 271 but in the third century AD Ogham inscription on the Callen Stone. So it seems that Sunday’s original letter was not B, but H, of which the Hebrew tree, corresponding with the hawthorn, was the Sant, or wild acacia, the sort with golden flowers and sharp thorns, better known to readers of the Bible as ‘shittim’-wood, i.e. from Cyprus. It was from its water-proof timber that the arks of the Sun-hero Osiris and his counterparts Noah and Armenian Xisuthros were built; also the Ark of the Covenant, the recorded measurements of which proved it sacred to the Sun. This is a host-tree of the mistletoe-like loranthus, Jehovah’s oracular ‘burning bush’, and the source of manna.

  The use of H for Sunday’s letter explains Lucan’s puzzling account of the sacred grove at Marseilles which Julius Caesar felled because it interfered with his fortification of the city. Marseilles was a Greek city, a centre of Pythagoreanism, and Caesar had to use an axe himself on one of the oaks before he could persuade anyone to begin the work of desecration. The grove, according to Lucan, contained holly-oak, Dodonian oak, and alder – T, D and F. He specifies none of the remaining trees except the cypress, which the Massiliots had brought from their parent state of Phocis where it was sacred to Artemis. One would not have expected the cypress in the grove; but elsewhere in Greece, particularly at Corinth and Messene, it was sacred to Artemis Cranaë or Carnasia; which makes it an H tree, an evergreen substitute for the hawthorn also sacred to Cranaë or Carnea. Thus as the tree of Sunday, succeeding the alder of Saturday, it symbolized resurrection in the Orphic mysteries, the escape of the Sun-hero from Calypso’s alder-girt island, and became attached to the cult of Celestial Hercules. Cypress is still the prime resurrection symbol in Mediterranean church-yards.1

  There is a clear correspondence between this canon and that of the seven days of Creation as characterized in the first chapter of Genesis.

  Sun – Light

  Moon – Division of Waters

  Mars – Dry Land, Pasture and Trees

  Mercury – Heavenly Bodies and the Seasons

  Jupiter – Sea-beasts and Birds

  Venus – Land-beasts, Man and Woman

  Saturn – Repose.

  The apparent illogic of the creation of Light, and even of Pasture and Trees, before that of the Heavenly Bodies and Seasons – though here it has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Ernst Schiff that the Heavenly Bodies were not visible until the fourth day because of the ‘damp haze’ mentioned in verse 9 of the Creation story, and therefore not created in the sense of not being manifested – is accounted for by the powers proper to the deities who rule over the planetary days of the week. The Sun-god rules over Light, the Moon over Water, Mars over Pasture and Trees, and Mercury is the God of Astronomy. Clearly the Genesis legend is subsequent to the fixing of the canon of planets, days and gods. The allocation of Sea-beasts and Birds to the fifth day is natural, because the god of the oak or terebinth cult is, in general, the son of a Sea-goddess to whom the Dove, the Eagle and all other birds are sacred, and himself takes the form of a sea-beast. The order to man and woman to couple and produce their kind, like the creatures over which they have dominion, is appropriate to the day of Venus. The pleasant sloth of Saturn – in whose golden day, according to the Classical poets, men ate honey and acorns in a Terrestrial Paradise and did not trouble to till the soil, or even to hunt, since the earth brought forth abundantly of her own bounty – explains the seventh day as one of repose. The Jewish apocalyptic prophecy (which Jesus took literally) of the Heavenly Kingdom of Jehovah referred to a restoration of this same golden age if only man would cease to busy himself with wars and labours; for Jehovah required rest on the seventh day. As has been already explained, the geographical situation of the former Terrestrial Paradise was variously given. The Babylonians placed it in the Delta of the Euphrates; the Greeks in Crete; the pre-Exilic Hebrews at Hebron in Southern Judaea.

  It is of the highest theological importance that Jehovah announced himself to Moses as ‘I am that I am’ or (more literally) ‘I am whoever I choose to be’ from the acacia rather than from any other tree; because this constituted a definition of his godhead. Had he announced himself from the terebinth, as the earlier Jehovah had done at Hebron, this would have been to reveal himself as Bel, or Marduk, the god of Thursday and of the seventh month, the Aramaean Jupiter, the Paeonian Apollo. But from the acacia, the tree of the first day of the week
, he revealed himself as the God of the Menorah, the transcendental Celestial God, the God who presently said: ‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me…for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.’ The acacia is, indeed, a thorny, jealous, self-sufficient tree, needs very little water and, like Odin’s ash, strangles with its roots all other trees growing near it. Uath, the month dedicated to the acacia, was the one in which the annual Hebron Fair took place, and so holy that (as has been mentioned in Chapter Ten) all sexual congress and self-beautification was tabooed during it: it was the month of the annual purification of the temples in Greece, Italy and the Near East.

  The not yet completed Ages of the World, quoted from Nennius by Gwion, are based on the same planetary canon:

  [Sunday] ‘The first Age of the World is from Adam to Noah.’

  Adam’s was the first human eye to see the light of the sun, or the Glory of God. Sunday is the day of light.

  [Monday] ‘The second Age is from Noah to Abraham.’

  Noah’s Age was introduced by the Deluge. Monday is the day of Water.

  [Tuesday] ‘The third Age is from Abraham to David.’

  Abraham was famous for his flocks and herds and for having the fertile Land of Canaan promised to his descendants. Tuesday is the day of Trees and Pasture.

  [Wednesday] ‘The fourth Age is from David to Daniel.’

  The third Age should really run from Abraham to Solomon and the fourth from Solomon to Daniel – the change was apparently made in honour of St. David – since in the introductory paragraph Nennius gives the number of years, 1048, from Abraham to the building of Solomon’s Temple, which David was to have built if he had not sinned. Solomon’s wisdom was embodied in the Temple. Wednesday is the day of Wisdom.

  [Thursday] ‘The fifth Age is from Daniel to John the Baptist.’

  In the introductory paragraph Nennius gives the number of years, 612, ‘from Solomon to the rebuilding of the Temple which was accomplished under Darius King of the Persians.’ Here Daniel has been substituted for Darius (who put him in the lions’ den at Babylon) as being under the particular guidance of God; but in the myth of Jonah the power of Babylon was symbolized by the whale which swallowed and then spewed out the chosen people when they cried out from its belly. Thursday is the day of Sea-beasts and Fishes.

  [Friday] ‘The sixth Age is from John the Baptist to the Judgement Day.’

  Nennius gives the number of years: 548, from Darius to the Ministry of Jesus Christ; so John the Baptist figures here as having assisted at Jesus’s Baptism. The object of the Ministry was to preach the Gospel of Love; to separate the sheep from the goats; to make the lion lie down with the ox; to persuade man to be born again – the Second Adam redeeming the First Adam. Friday is the day of Land-beasts, Man and Love.

  [Saturday] ‘In the seventh Age our Lord Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire.’

  In the present Age, the sixth, of which 973 years had passed when Nennius wrote, man must look hopefully forward to the seventh Age for eventual repose of soul. Saturday is the day of Repose.1

  The Rabbinical explanation of the Menorah, in terms of the creation of the world in seven days, is obviously faulty: the ascription of the central light to the Sabbath contradicts the ‘Let there be Lights’ text of the fourth day. The more ancient tradition preserved in the Zohar: ‘These lamps, like the seven planets above, receive their light from the Sun’, goes back to the pre-exilic Sun-cult. The Menorah was placed in the Sanctuary to face W.S.W., towards On-Heliopolis, as the original home of the Sun-god to whom Moses was priest.

  Josephus (Antiquities v. 5; 5) writes of the three wonders of the Sanctuary, namely the lamps, the table of shew-bread, and the altar of incense:

  ‘Now, the seven lamps signified the seven planets, for so many there were springing out of the candlestick; the twelve loaves that were upon the table signified the circle of the Zodiac and the year; and the altar of incense by its thirteen kinds of sweet-smelling spices with which the sea replenished it, signified that God is the lord of all things in both the uninhabitable and the habitable parts of the earth, and that they are all to be dedicated to his use.’

  These thirteen (rather than four) spices must belong to an early secret tradition not mentioned in the Law, coeval with the instructions in Numbers XXIX, 13 for the sacrifice of thirteen bullocks on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles. (Incidentally, the total number of bullocks to be sacrificed from the inauguration of the critical seventh month to the end of the seven days of the Feast was the sacred seventy-two again. The sacrifice of a single bullock on the eighth day was a separate matter.) Josephus is hinting that the number thirteen refers to Rahab, the prophetic Goddess of the Sea, Guardian of Sheol (‘the uninhabitable parts of the world’) where God also, however, claims suzerainty.

  What appears to have been a jewel-sequence corresponding with Ezekiel’s tree-sequence was arrayed in three rows on the golden breast-plate worn by the High Priest, called in Greek the logion or ‘little word-giver’ (Exodus XXVIII, 15). It was made by Egyptian craftsmen; and the King of Tyre wore a similar one in honour of Hercules Melkarth (Ezekiel XXVIII, 13). The jewels, which gave oracular responses by lighting up in the dark of the Sanctuary, were probably hollow-cut with a revolving drum behind them on which was a small strip of phosphorus: when the drum was revolved the message was spelt out in ouija style as the strip of phosphorus came to rest behind different letters in turn.

  The account of the breastplate given in Exodus mentions twelve precious stones, inscribed with the names of the Twelve Tribes, set in a gold plaque eight inches square. But there is a thirteenth stone which is given such importance elsewhere in the Bible, for example in Isaiah, LIV, 12, that we may assume it to have been part of the original series. This is the kadkod, mistranslated in the Authorised Version as ‘agate’, probably the red carbuncle, and we may assign it to the tribe of Gad which disappeared early in Israelite history. All the jewels are mistranslated in the Authorised Version, and a slightly different set appears, in Revelation, XXI, 19, as forming the foundations of the New Jerusalem. The breastplate was still in existence in the time of Josephus, though it no longer lighted up, and probably contained all the original stones except the kadkod. We can build up our jewel-sequence from it, relying on J. I. Myers’ solid scholarship to identify the jewels and then re-arranging them in a likely seasonal order. For we may assume that the order given in the Bible, like the order of the elements in the Song of Amergin, has been purposely confused for reasons of security.

  We know that amethyst, ahlamah, is the wine stone – its Greek name means ‘charm against drunkenness’ – and can be assigned to M, the vine month. Similarly, yellow serpentine, tarsis, naturally belongs to G, the yellow-berried ivy month. The banded red agate, sebo, belongs to C, the month before the vintage, when the grapes are still red. The white carnelian, yahalem, and the yellow cairngorm, lesem, may belong to the glaring hot D and T months; the blood-red carbuncle, kadkod, to S, the month of the razzia or raiding party; and the lapis lazuli, sappur, to H, the first month of summer, since it typifies the dark blue sky. Sappur is translated ‘sapphire’ in the Authorised Version, and Ezekiel mentions it as the colour of the Throne of God. The light green jasper, yàsepheh, and the dark green malachite, soham, suit NG and R, the winter rain-months of Palestine. Nophek, the bright red fire-garnet, or pyrope, is likely to be F, the month of the Spring equinox. The rusty-red Edomite sard, odem, comes first in the year in honour of Adam, the red man – for ‘Edom’, ‘Adam’ and ‘Odem’ are all variants of the same word meaning rust-red: odem belongs to the month B. The remaining two stones corresponding with L, the month of Hercules’s golden cup, and N, the month of his sea-voyage, are pitdan, clear yellow chrysolite, and bareketh, green beryl – the name beryl meaning, in Greek, the sea-jewel.

  We can go further: with the help of the names given to the tribes by their mothers in Genesis XXIX and XXX, and of the prophetic blessings or curses bestowed o
n them by Jacob in Genesis XLVIII and XLIX, we can assign a letter and month to each tribe. To Ephraim (‘fruitful’) and Manasseh (‘forgetfulness’), the two sons of Joseph who was a ‘fruitful vine’ we can assign the months C and M; and B to Reuben the first-born, who had Edomite connections. To Reuben’s four full-brothers, Gad (‘a robber band’) Levi (‘set apart’) Asher (‘royal dainties are on his plate’) and Simeon (‘the bloody brother whose anger is fierce’), the months of S, H, D and T. Gad has the month of the razzia when the corn is invitingly ripe; Levi has the H month because it is the month of peculiar holiness; Asher has the important royal D month because his name is connected with the Ashera, the terebinth groves of the midsummer sacrifice; Simeon has T, the murderous month when the sun is at its fiercest. To Issachar, ‘the strong ass between two burdens’, we can assign L, the month of rest between sowing and harvest. To Zebulon, ‘among the ships’, belongs the sea-voyage month of N; to Judah (‘lion’s whelp’), the Spring solstice month of F; to Naphta’i, ‘he strove’, the ploughing month, R. And to ‘Little Benjamin their ruler’ belongs New Year’s Day, the day of the Divine Child. When we have assigned to Dan, ‘like a serpent’, the serpentine month of G, we naturally fill the Ng month, which alone remains vacant, with the tribe of Dinah: for Dinah, the female twin of Dan, was another tribe that disappeared early (see Genesis XXXIV), and since the Ng month marks the beginning of the rains and the resumption of the seasonal cycle of growth, a woman naturally belongs there.