worm, the stone of wisdom, sesame, forget-me-not, or the hand of glory.
What are its effects ?
It bursts locks, and shatters stones, it opens in the mountains the hidden treasures hitherto concealed from men, or it paralyzes, lulling into a magic sleep, or, again, it restores to life.
I believe the varied fables relate to one and the same object—and that, the lightning.
But what is the bird which bears schamir, the worm or stone which shatters rocks? It is the storm-cloud, which in many a mythology of ancient days was supposed to be a mighty bird. In Greek iconography, Zeus, “the æther in his moist arms embracing the earth,” as Euripides describes him, is armed with the thunderbolt, and accompanied by the eagle, a symbol of the cloud.
“The refulgent heaven above,
Which all men call, unanimously, Jove[1],”
has for its essential attributes the cloud and its bolt, and when the æther was represented under human form, the cloud was given shape as a bird. It is the same storm-cloud which as “blood--
- ↑ Cicero, De N. Deorum, xvi.
