The Queen of the Air | Page 6

heavens;* but at
this time we find the four quite definite, both in their kingdoms and in
their personalities. They are the rulers of the earth that we tread upon,
and the air that we breathe; and are with us closely, in their vivid
humanity, as the dust that they animate, and the winds that they bridle.
I shall briefly define for you the range of their separate dominions, and

then follow, as far as we have time, the most interesting of the legends
which relate to the queen of the air.
* And by modern science now also asserted, and with probability
argued, to exist.
11. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the earth mother, is over the
earth, first, as the origin of all life,--the dust from whence we were
taken; secondly, as the receiver of all things back at last into silence
--"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And, therefore, as the
most tender image of this appearing and fading life, in the birth and fall
of flowers, her daughter Proserpine plays in the fields of Sicily, and
thence is torn away into darkness, and becomes the Queen of Fate--not
merely of death, but of the gloom which closes over and ends, not
beauty only, but sin, and chiefly of sins the sin against the life she gave;
so that she is, in her highest power, Persephone, the avenger and
purifier of blood--"The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me out of
the ground." Then, side by side with this queen of the earth, we find a
demigod of agriculture by the plough--the lord of grain, or of the thing
ground by the mill. And it is a singular proof of the simplicity of Greek
character at this noble time, that of all representations left to us of their
deities by their art, few are so frequent, and none perhaps so beautiful,
as the symbol of this spirit of agriculture.
12. Then the dominant spirit of the element water is Neptune, but
subordinate to him are myriads of other water spirits, of whom Nereus
is the chief, with Palæmon, and Leucothea, the "white lady" of the sea;
and Thetis, and nymphs innumerable who, like her, could "suffer a sea
change," while the river deities had each independent power, according
to the preciousness of their streams to the cities fed by them,--the
"fountain Arethuse, and thou, honoured flood, smooth sliding Mincius,
crowned with vocal reeds." And, spiritually, this king of the waters is
lord of the strength and daily flow of human life--he gives it material
force and victory; which as the meaning of the dedication of the hair, as
the sign of the strength of life, to the river or the native land.
13. Demeter, then, over the earth, and its giving and receiving of life.
Neptune over the waters, and the flow and force of life,--always among
the Greeks typified by the horse, which was to them as a crested
sea-wave, animated and bridled. Then the third element, fire, has set
over it two powers: over earthly fire, the assistant of human labor, is set

Hephæstus, lord of all labor in which is the flush and the sweat of the
brow; and over heavenly fire, the source of day, is set Apollo, the spirit
of all kindling, purifying, and illuminating intellectual wisdom, each of
these gods having also their subordinate or associated powers,-- servant,
or sister, or companion muse.
14. Then, lastly, we come to the myth which is to be our subject of
closer inquiry,--the story of Athena and of the deities subordinate to her.
This great goddess, the Neith of the Egyptians, the Athena or Athenaia
of the Greeks, and, with broken power, half usurped by Mars, the
Minerva of the Latins, is, physically, the queen of the air; having
supreme power both over its blessing of calm, and wrath of storm; and,
spiritually, she is the queen of the breath of man, first of the bodily
breathing which is life to his blood, and strength to his arm in battle;
and then of the mental breathing, or inspiration, which is his moral
health and habitual wisdom; wisdom of conduct and of the heart, as
opposed to the wisdom of imagination and the brain; moral, as distinct
from intellectual; inspired, as distinct from illuminated.
15. By a singular and fortunate, though I believe wholly accidental,
coincidence, the heart-virtue, of which she is the spirit, was separated
by the ancients into four divisions, which have since obtained
acceptance from all men as rightly discerned, and have received, as if
from the quarters of the four winds of which Athena is the natural
queen, the name of "Cardinal" virtues: namely, Prudence (the right
seeing, and foreseeing, of events through darkness); Justice (the
righteous