advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the mantic frenzy in Pagan priests and Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the μάντεις (manteis) or prophets. "Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the number," says the author of Prophecy, Ancient and Modern. "The Montanists seem to have resembled the Bacchantes in the wild enthusiasm that characterized their orgies," he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word Manticism. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic frenzy by saying that "in the inner recesses of the mind is divine prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called furor" (frenzy, madness).
But there is still another etymology possible for the word mantis, and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin. The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious rites, and generally known as grahâs, are respectively called Sukra and Manti.[1]
It is in the latter manti or manthi cup that Brahma is said to be "stirred up." While the initiate drinks (albeit sparingly) of this sacred soma-juice, the Brahma, or rather his "spirit," personified by the god Soma, enters into the man and takes possession of him. Hence, ecstatic vision, clairvoyance, and the gift of prophecy. Both kinds of divination—the natural and the artificial—are aroused by the Soma. The Sukra-cup awakens that which is given to every man by nature. It unites both spirit and soul, and these, from their own nature and essence, which are divine, have a foreknowledge of future things, as dreams, unexpected visions, and presentiments, well prove. The contents of the other cup, the manti, which "stirs the Brahma," put thereby the soul in communication not only with the minor gods—the well-informed but not omniscient spirits—but actually with the highest divine essence itself. The soul receives a direct illumination from the presence of its "god;" but as it is not allowed to remember certain things, well known only in heaven, the initiated person is generally seized with a kind of sacred frenzy, and upon recovering from it, only remembers that which is allowed to him. As to the other kind of seers and diviners—those who make a
- ↑ See "Aytareya Brahmanan," 3, 1.
