e.,
celebrate their Easter Mass, on the back of a great Fish.[43] On
their first meeting with this monster Saint Brandan tells them it is
the greatest of all fishes, and is named Jastoni, a name which bears
a curious resemblance to the Jhasa of the Indian tradition cited
above.[44] In this last instance the connection of the Fish with
life, renewed and sustained, is undeniable.
The original source of such a symbol is most probably to be found in
the belief, referred to in a previous chapter,[45] that all life comes
from the water, but that a more sensual and less abstract idea was
also operative appears from the close connection of the Fish with the
goddess Astarte or Atargatis, a connection here shared by the Dove.
Cumont, in his Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain,
says: "Two animals were held in general reverence, namely, Dove and
Fish. Countless flocks of Doves greeted the traveller when he stepped
on shore at Askalon, and in the outer courts of all the temples of
Astarte one might see the flutter of their white wings. The Fish were
preserved in ponds near to the Temple, and superstitious dread forbade
their capture, for the goddess punished such sacrilege, smiting the
offender with ulcers and tumours."[46]
But at certain mystic banquets priests and initiates partook of this
otherwise forbidden food, in the belief that they thus partook of the
flesh of the goddess.
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