PAGANISM IN NEW YORK.—A STRANGE AND STARTLING SCENE.
It is a popular belief that Christianity is the established religion of the civilized world, and that the old Paganism has long since been destroyed, buried, and forgotten, but like all popular beliefs, this must be taken cum grano salis. True it is that the vast majority of the inhabitants of America and Europe profess at least a respect for Christianity, but equally true it is that the majority of the same inhabitants do not practice Christianity, and that a certain percentage of them do not even so much as believe in its doctrines, and are either quietly or openly infidels, skeptics, free-thinkers, positivists, or what you will, but certainly not Christians. It is still further true that strange, startling as it may seem, even at the present day, even in the year of our Lord 1860, even in the very center of so-called enlightenment, the great city of New York, there exists a number of not only practical but actual heathen, of (professedly) pagans who cherish their own peculiar superstitions or creeds, and who adhere to their own idolatrous rites of worship. These nineteenth century civilized pagans embrace in the city of New York three distinct classes of beings. The Chinese, the lower order of negroes, and the mythologists, who still profess a faith in the poetical fables of ancient Greece and Rome. Let us consider each of these three classes in their order. THE FOLLOWERS OF CONFUCIUS.—THE CHINESE OF NEW YORK.
Not many years ago the Fourth Ward was the home of an extensive Chinese colony, who filled Cliff street, Rose street, and kindred localities; but of late their numbers have lessened, from causes too many and too minute to mention in detail. A hundred or so of peddlers, and a hundred or so of sailors, are all that remain of China in New York; but as one-half of this number are married men with families, the whole Chinese population of the metropolis may be estimated at about four hundred souls. It is by no means complimentary to our boasted Christian civilization, but it is, nevertheless true, that although the Chinese may be theoretically Pagans, they are, so far as their lives are concerned, better than the average of Christians—at least of the Christians of the Fourth Ward. Only one murderer has been known among them, and although they will not hesitate to cheat when they have the chance, they seldom figure in the police reports, even as sneak thieves, or as the perpetrators of petit larceny. They are inveterate gamblers, but they only play among themselves and after their own peculiar fashion; so that, on the whole, if they are an insignificant, they are also an inoffensive, portion of our population. They peddle or work all day, as other men, and at night they return to their families or their boarding houses and devote themselves with assiduity to cards and opium. In regard to their religious rites a few of the more devout Chinese are in the habit of worshiping their gods or josses under difficulties in the privacy of their domestic life; but the majority of these Orientals have merged into a state of indifference, both as to their own species of Paganism and our variety or varieties of Christianity. And suggesting them to our missionaries as decidedly difficult subjects for conversion, we pass to a brief notice of the heathen portion of the negro population of the metropolis. THE NEGROES OF NEW YORK AND THEIR AFRICAN SUPERSTITIONS—“ROOTING” AND “SNAKE-EYED MARY.”
The negroes of New York are waiters, or caterers or white-washers, or plasterers, or washer-women, or stewardesses, and are generally quiet and inoffensive. In fact, in a police point of view, they are unexceptionable as a class. In comparison to their respective numbers three arrests are made of white men to one arrest of a colored man and brother, and considered by themselves, the negroes of the metropolis are by no means the most disgraceful or dangerous element of its population. Their standard of intelligence, though far below that of the average white, is yet above the range that would be generally supposed, and they are deeply imbued with a religious spirit. In some cases this religion is simply superstition of the grossest character, totally inconsistent with the strides of Christianity. In fact, approximately computed, it may be stated that about 250 negro men and women (more men than women, however,) in this city of New York, are as grossly benighted, in a religious point of view, as are any of their naked brethren and sisters in the wilds of Africa. “There exists upon the romantic territory, known as Long Island, an old negress who is known as Snake-eyed Mary. She is a goddess and a charmer—a divinity and a doctress combined. She is potent with spells, and mighty with herbs; she holds in her black hand the issues of life and death—so her black believers think, and they act accordingly. They visit her in awe and trembling, and even fall down prostrate in worship before her. Not long ago the coachman of a prominent New York politician—a fellow dark as the ace of spades—while driving on Harlem lane, leaped from the carriage, and refused to proceed further till a stick was removed from the road, which stick he alleged, had been placed there by Snake-eyed Mary to injure him, and to ride over which, or to touch which, with his own person, would have involved his certain death. “And not long ago, at one of our police courts, a case even more singular transpired. An emaciated negro claimed the protection of the law against the designs of a surly black fellow, his enemy, who had betaken himself to Snake-eyed Mary, procured a liquid, sprinkling which around the stable where the complainant was employed, he had been enabled, so the plaintiff stated, to ruin his health and so to distract his senses, as to render life a burden. And this in New York and in the year 1869. “There are also several darkies in this great city who earn a comfortable living as “policy dreamers,” announcing to their highly colored and credulous patrons what numbers, what combinations of numbers, what gigs and saddles, &c., will be lucky and draw prizes, and from Snake-eyed Mary and similar sources do these enlightened prophets draw their inspiration.” The negroes, however, like the Chinese in our midst, are generally destitute of education, and beside all this, in the case of the latter the Paganism is, as it were, derived from their far-off native land, or inherited from their ancestors; but what shall be said of those who, educated, and accomplished, refined and fashionable, with white skins and Caucasian associations, are yet devoted to the effete idolatries of Greece and Rome? And yet such idolators do exist, in the very midst of our churches and our Sabbath Schools, within the sound of our Sabbath bells—although their existence is a profound mystery to the many—a secret to all but the initiated few. THE IDOLATORS OF NEW YORK.—THE WORSHIP OF ANCIENT ROME AND GREECE REVIVED IN OUR MIDST.
Thus, a well-known scholar and professor of the classics, who resides in the upper portion of the city, and who is the center of a large circle of admiring friends, professes to believe (and confesses his belief to his intimates) that there is much truth as well as beauty at the basis of the ancient mythology. Another gentleman, well versed in ancient literature, goes still further, and absolutely offers libations and sacrifices to the gods of Greece, statues of whom are to be seen distributed in liberal profusion throughout his dwelling; while a third gentleman, of “eccentric turn of mind”—at least let us charitably trust so—is at the present moment employed upon a work “On the Evidences of the True Divinity of the Ancient Mythologies.” Not only men but women are embraced in this category of modern Pagans. One of the most charming of our local poetesses asserts charmingly, in a letter to a friend, that she looks upon the old religions as she looks upon the roses, and upon the modern creeds as she does upon the lilies, and that for her part she does not admire the lily half so much as the rose. While a lady of high social position in our midst openly states that Christianity is only another form, and an objectionable one, of ancient so-called Paganism. A certain palatial residence on Madison avenue has attached to it a species of small chapel, with stained glass windows; urns of fragrant incense and exquisite statues of the ancient gods scent and adorn it; flowers add to its beauty, and the tout ensemble of the chapel is charming—soft, poetical, as well as in no slight degree imposing. And within this chapel a few weeks since on a Christian Sabbath morning one of the strangest scenes ever witnessed in the strange city of New York, transpired. A number of men and women assembled themselves together for purposes of worship. A number of intellectual, educated, classically trained gentlemen and ladies of rank and fashion came together for devotional exercises. A priest and a priestess were present, but the worship was not that of the Christian divinity. The devotion was not of the orthodox persuasion; the officiating ministers were not ordained in any known religious denomination. The faith here practiced in this gorgeous private chapel by these fashionable and intellectual New Yorkers was that of the Ancients. The religion here honored upon this Sabbath in the metropolis of America, was the same creed which had been transmitted from time immemorial to Homer, and from that blind old bard to the era of Socrates and Plato, and which had found a parallel in the land and in the days of Cincinnatus and of the Cæsars. In other phrase, the chapel was devoted to Mythological Paganism, and the worshippers assembled within were the Pagan votaries of an exquisite, but exploded mythology. The congregation being ready and awaiting further developments, a sheep was brought into the chapel, a meek, dumb, soft-eyed sheep, who was led to the statue of Mercury, and was there by the fair priestess (clad in the graceful and commanding vestments of ancient Rome, and standing with uplifted knife) sacrificed to the heathen god. Said we not truly that this Sabbath sacrifice to the god Mercury, in a private chapel on Madison avenue, in the Christianized city of New York, in the year of our Lord 1860, was one of ‘the strangest scenes ever witnessed in that strange city?’—Days’ Doings for March 20, 1860.