Seth’s voyage, like Gilgamesh’s, has eternal Life as its goal. He seeks the “oil of mercy” which he hopes will revive Adam. Although, again like Gilgamesh, he fails, he is given a vision which foreshadows the Christ who will revive Adam through his death and resurrection.
When Adam is about to die, he bids his son Seth go to Paradise for the oil of mercy. The path will be apparent, since, as Adam and Eve left Paradise, their footprints were burned upon the grass, and no vegetation has ever grown there. Seth is refused the oil of mercy, but is granted three glimpses of Paradise. In the first he beholds a dry tree; in the second, an adder twined about the trunk; in the third, a newborn baby in the top. He is told that the dry tree and the serpent represent the sin of man and that the baby is Christ, who will be the oil of mercy. Seth receives three kernels of the tree of life and plants them in the mouth of his dead father. From the kernels three trees grow—a cedar, a cypress, and a pine—and remain growing in the vale of Hebron until the time of Moses.
These three trees are uprooted by Moses and become the wands with which he sweetens the waters of Marah and brings forth water from a rock.
David inherits the wands, which are now united to form a single staff. With it he changes the color and shape of some Ethiopians. The staff is replanted and grows into a tree.
Later Solomon attempts to use it in building his Temple, but in whatever way the tree is cut, it is always too long or too short. Perceiving its miraculous power, Solomon has the tree placed in the Temple.
One day a lady named Maximilia accidentally sits on the tree, and, when it bursts into flame, she is inspired to prophecy. The Jews, hearing that Christ will die upon this wood, put Maximilia to death and hurl the tree into a pit.
Miracles are performed until the tree is removed by the Jews and placed over a brook to serve as a bridge. The holy nature of the wood is announced by Sibyl, who refuses to walk on it and instead wades through the brook barefooted.
As the time of the Crucifixion approaches, a cross is made of the tree. The cross, however, cannot be lifted by any except Christ, since it was destined for him. By his dying on it he becomes the redeemer or the oil of mercy for mankind.
Toltec and Aztec
The Aztec hero is tempted by the hope that he may return from his voyage “as a young boy." His, too, is thus a quest for immortality.
In Tollan dwelt Quetzalcoatl. And in Tollan all the arts and crafts that we know of were first practised, for Quetzalcoatl taught them to the people there. He taught them the smelting of silver and the clearing and setting of precious stones; he taught the craft of building with stones; he taught 5 them how to make statues, and paint signs in books, and keep count of the moons and suns. All crafts except the craft of war Quetzalcoatl taught the people of Tollan. And they made sacrifice to him with bread, and flowers, and perfumes, and not as other peoples made sacrifice to the other gods— by tearing the hearts out of the opened breasts of men and women.
10 He lived in a house that was made of silver: four chambers that house had the chamber to the east was of gold, the chamber to the west was set with stones of precious green—emeralds and turquoises and nephrite stones, the chamber to the south was set with coloured sea-shells, and the chamber to the north was set with jasper. The house was thatched with the 15 feathers of bright plumaged birds. All the birds of rich plumage and sweet song were gathered in that place. In the fields the maize grew so big that a man could not carry more than one stalk in his arms; pumpkins were great in their round as a man is high; cotton grew in the fields red and yellow, blue, and black, and white, and men did not have to dye it. All who lived 20 where Quetzalcoatl was had everything to make them prosperous and happy.
There was a time when they did not have maize, when they lived upon roots and on what they gained in the chase. Maize there was, but it was hidden within a mountain, and no one could come to where it was. 25 Different gods had tried to rend the mountain apart that they might come to where the maize was; but this could not be done. Then Quetzalcoatl took the form of a black ant; with a red ant to guide him he went within the mountain Tonacatepetl, and he came to where the maize was; he took the grain, and laboriously he bore it back to men. Then men planted fields 30 with maize; they had crops for the first time; they built cities, and they lived settled lives, and Quetzalcoatl showed them all the crafts that they could learn from him. They honoured him who dwelt in the shining house. And Quetzalcoatl had many servants; some of them were dwarfs, and all were swift of foot.
35 Then it came to pass that Tezcatlipoca, he who can go into all places, he who wanders over the earth stirring up strife and war amongst men, descended upon Tollan by means of spiderwebs. And from the mountain he came down on a blast of wind of such coldness that it killed all the flowers in Quetzalcoatl’s bright garden. And Quetzalcoatl, feeling that coldness, 40 said to his servants, “One has come who will drive me hence; perhaps it were better that I went before he drives me, and drank from a fountain in
The Land of the Sun, whence I may return, young as a boy.” So he said, and his servants saw him burn down his house of silver with its green precious stones and its thatch of bright plumage, and its door-posts of white and red shells. And they saw him call upon his birds of sweet song and rich plumage, and they heard him bidding them to fiy into the land of Anahuac. 5
Then Tezcatlipoca, that god and that sorcerer, went to where Quetzalcoatl stood, and took him into the ball-court that the two might play a game together. All the people of the city stood round to watch that game. The ball had to be cast through a ring that was high upon the wall. Quetzalcoatl took up the ball to cast it. As he did Tezcatlipoca changed lo himself into a jaguar and sprang upon him. Then Quetzalcoatl fled. And Tezcatlipoca chased him, driving him through the streets of the city, and out into the highways of the country.
His dwarfs fled after him and joined themselves to him. With them he crossed the mountains and came to a hill on which a great tree grew. Under 15 it he rested. As he rested he looked into a mirror and he said, “I am grown to be an old man.” Then he threw the mirror down and took up stones and cast them at the tree.
He went on, and his dwarfs made music for him, playing on flutes as they went before him. Once again he became weary, and he rested on a 20 stone by the wayside; there, looking back towards Tollan, he wept, and his tears pitted the stone on which he sat, and his hands left their imprints upon it where he grasped the stone. The stone is there to this day with the pits and the imprints upon it. He rose up, and once again he went on his way. And men from Tollan met him, and he instructed them in crafts that 25 he had not shown them before.
But he did not give them the treasure of jewels that his dwarfs and humpbacked servants carried for him. He flung this treasure into the fountain Cozcaapan; there it stays to this day—Quetzalcoatl’s treasure. On his way he passed over a Firemountain and over a mountain of snow. On the 30 mountain of snow his dwarfs and humpbacked servants all died from the cold. Bitterly he bewailed them in a song he made in that place.
Then Quetzalcoatl went down the other side of the mountain, and he came to the sea-shore. He made a raft of snakes, and on that raft he sailed out on the sea. Or so some say, telling Quetzalcoatl’s story. And those who 35 tell this say that he came to the land of Tlappallan in the Country of the Sun, and there he drank of the Water of Immortality. They say that he will one day return from that land young as a boy.....
(Padraic Colum, Myths of the World, pp. 298-300.)
World History
