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Now the Moon does not love derision, as I well know, for in part I serve the Moon." "Eh?" says Jurgen: and he began to reflect. So they came to a wall that was high and gray, and to the door which was in the wall. "You must knock two or three times," says Anaitis, "to get into Cocaigne." Jurgen observed the bronze knocker upon the door, and he grinned in order to hide his embarrassment.
The Lady of the Lake was in bed: she slept unaccompanied, as Jurgen noted with approval, for he wished to intrude upon no more tete-a-tetes. And Dame Anaitis did not at first awake. Now this was a gloomy and high-paneled apartment, with exactly the traditional amount of moonlight streaming through two windows.
"Upon my word, I believe that in the end this is the only way in which females are capable of loving. And she is a dear and lovely creature, of whom I am sincerely fond. What is this thing, then, that I desire? Why do I feel life is not treating me quite justly?" So the summer had passed; and Anaitis travelled a great deal, being a popular myth in every land.
Another deity, practically perhaps as much worshipped as Ormazd and Mithra, was Anaitis or Anahit. Anaiitis was originally an Assyrian and Babylonian, not a Zoroastrian goddess; but her worship spread to the Persians at a date anterior to Herodotus, and became in a short time exceedingly popular. Anaitis was the Babylonian Venus; and her rites at Babylon were undoubtedly of a revolting character.
Anaitis opened a little door of carved crystal that was in the lower half of the hour-glass, just above the fallen sands. With her finger-tips she touched the sand that was in Time's hour-glass, and in the sand she drew a triangle with equal sides, she who was strangely gifted and perverse. Then she drew just such another figure so that the tip of it penetrated the first triangle.
These girls, as Jurgen afterward learned, were Alecto and Tisiphone, two of the Eumenides. And now Jurgen shifted the red point of the lance, so that it rested in the open triangle made by the fingers of Anaitis. "I am life and the giver of life," cried Jurgen. "Thou that art one, that makest use of all!
Now he listened more attentively than ever, and his eyes were narrowed, and his lips were lax and motionless and foolish-looking, and he was deeply interested. For Anaitis had thought of some new diversions since their last meeting: and to Jurgen, even at forty and something, this queen's voice was all a horrible and strange and lovely magic.
The painted Asan were, in all conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anaitis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry.
There were features connected with this procession sufficiently unusual to cause Jurgen to vow that the desiderated moment wherein he walked unhurt from the forest would mark the termination of his last visit thereto. Then amazement tripped up the heels of terror: for now passed Mother Sereda, or, as Anaitis had called her, AEsred.
After dinner I started the subject of the temple of ANAITIS. Mr. M'Queen had laid stress on the name given to the place by the country people, Ainnit; and added, 'I knew not what to make of this piece of antiquity, till I met with the Anaitidis delubrum in Lydia, mentioned by Pausanias and the elder Pliny. Dr. Johnson, with his usual acuteness, examined Mr.
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