The Functions of the Nature wor ship, originating independently, as it undoubtedly. did, in different quarters of the world, naturally developed along different lines among people racially and linguistically different. But as the origin of the pantheistic conceptions that distin guished it were essentially the same, there is a striking similarity in the functions and attrib utes of the nature gods everywhere. The earth, which gives birth to all things, is the universal mother; the sky, which sends the fructifying rains, is the husband of the earth and the great nature father. The sun, with his vivifying rays is the father of growth. The winds, with their ceaseless movements and their great speed, be come the messengers of the gods, the bringers of culture and the purifiers or healers. But there are beneficent winds and harmful winds, gentle winds and destructive winds. Those working in the interest of man are represented as in a constant struggle with those seeking to harm him. This feature of nature worship is strongly evident in many myths. In the Mexi can mythology Quetzalcoatl, the beneficent east wind is represented as the culture hero struggling with Tetzcatlipoca, the black spirit of the night, or the night wind. Hiawatha fought and defeated the Great Pearl Feather, the wind that broods over the pestilential marshes; and he fought his own father Mud jikierwis, the west wind and the father of all the winds of heaven, who finally shares his kingdom with him, making him the Keewatin, the northwest wind, the home wind.
The Serpent in Nature Every where the serpent drags its tortuous length through the habitat of the nature gods. Many explanations of its presence there have been presented by students of mythology, but most of these explanations have been unfortunately fanciful or manufactured to fit preconceived theories. The serpent is inseparably associated with the wind gods. Sometimes, he is a kindly deity; at others he is the spirit of malevolence. This is a natural development of nature and in no way demands a supernatural explanation since it fits in with the nature of the winds. Quetzalcoatl (q.v.), the great culture hero of Mexico, Yucatan and Guatemala, was repre sented as a plumed serpent, and the serpent formed the most conspicuous decoration of his temples. Yet others of the Mexican wind gods also bore the sign of the serpent. The robe of the mother of the gods was represented as con sisting of interwoven snakes. The serpent was frequently intimately connected with the deities of fruition and birth, probably because the wind gods were also thus connected. But the de was also represented as a winged serpent in many parts of the world. This is but another form of the evil wind. This latter conception gave birth to the dragons of de struction bearing with them fire or lightning as their destroying agents. From this conception to that of the evil one, the old serpent, the per sonified force of evil as found in the Persian and other related religions, is hut a step.
Christianity and the Hebrew faith borrowing the imagery of the nature religions have made it vividly familiar to us.
In Roman and Greek mythologies, the gods of healing are associated with the serpent and not the least of these is Apollo. This associa tion of the serpent with the gods of birth and healing explains their relationship to public wor ship which has produced so much discussion and investigation and has given birth to the so called theory of serpent worship. With the Chinese, as with the Toltecs, the wind god (in the case of the Chinese in the shape of a dra gon) became a sort of world divinity, the great wisdom, the universal benefactor. As the fruc tifying rain bringer, the serpent represented kindly forces; as the rain preventer his tend encies were evil.
The Cross in Throughout all primitive America and in many of the mythol ogies of the eastern hemisphere the world was divided into four quarters over which ruled one of the winds, all of which were frequently rep resented as so many serpents or dragons. Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec culture god, sailed away to the unknown land on a raft of snakes, or in a boat moved by supernatural serpents, which were at once symbolical of his origin as a wind god and his office as the greatest cul ture hero of the American races and the symbol of divine wisdom and earthly progress. Being the symbol of fertility, the serpent naturally be came that of the so-called pallic worship which was also symbolized by the cross, as the rep resentative of the four quarters of the earth in which lived the winds and the rain gods. In pre-Columbian times the cross was the sym bolical representation of the activity of the winds as the bearers of fertility throughout Mexico, most of Central America and the Pue blo and some other Indians of the United States. In the form of the swastika (the four footed cross with the ends bent, generally at right angles), the cross became the symbol of good fortune and (among the American In dians) of generation. The Cretan mother god dess, the great deity of fertility, is represented, in her surviving statues, with snakes coiled about her waist and arms; and she was wor shiped in the temple of the sacred cross. Throughout Crete, where her worship seems to have had a very important place, the cross was looked upon as a sacred symbol. Like the rain gods of Mexico and Central America, the mother god of Crete was worshiped on the tops of the hills and the high places from whence descended the fructifying waters. Like the tla locks and other gods of the rain cross she was connected with death and life, more especially the latter. In the course of time the cross, es pecially in America, came to form a very im portant part of the decoration of temples and sacred places in pre-Columbian days. The trail of the cross, like the trail of the serpent, runs across Mexico and Central America and a very considerable part of the United States.