Truefastness: The Heavenly Twins at the Middle of the World 1 Mountains, Arks, Islands & Paradises

"The problem is of the first importance, and we certainly cannot hope to discuss it in a few lines. But we have reason to believe that among the primitives the nostalgia for the lost paradise excludes any desire to restore the "paradise of animality." Everything that we know about the mythical memories of "paradise" confronts us, on the contrary, with the image of an ideal humanity enjoying a beatitude and spiritual plenitude forever unrealizable in the present state of "fallen man." In fact, the myths of many peoples allude to a very distant epoch when men knew neither death nor toil nor suffering and had a bountiful supply of food merely for the taking. In illo tempore, the gods descended to earth and mingled with men; for their part, men could easily mount to heaven. As the result of a ritual fault, communications between heaven and earth were interrupted and the gods withdrew to the highest heavens. Since then, men must work for their food and are no longer immortal.

At least the gnostic, Mandaean, and Manichaean echoes of the Tammuz myth suggest this. For these sects, man as such must bear the lot that once fell to Tammuz; fallen into the pit, slave to the Prince of Darkness, man is awakened by a messenger who brings him the good tidings of his imminent salvation, of his "liberation." ...".

- Mircea Eliade Cosmos and History: The myth of the Eternal Return (1959) lf.91.

A Meditation on the Peaks

Diodorus Siculus in his Library of History, Book 4, chapitle 47 that the island of Samothrace was a refuge from a Great Flood:

"Οἱ δὲ Σαμόθρᾳκες ἱστοροῦσι πρὸ τῶν παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις γενομένων κατακλυσμῶν ἕτερον ἐκεῖ μέγαν γενέσθαι, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον τοῦ περὶ τὰς Κυανέας στόματος ῥαγέντος, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου. Τὸ γὰρ ἐν τῷ Πόντῳ πέλαγος λίμνης ἔχον τάξιν μέχρι τοσούτου πεπληρῶσθαι διὰ τῶν εἰσρεόντων ποταμῶν, μέχρι ὅτου διὰ τὸ πλῆθος παρεκχυθὲν τὸ ῥεῦμα λάβρως ἐξέπεσεν εἰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον καὶ πολλὴν μὲν τῆς Ἀσίας τῆς παρὰ θάλατταν ἐπέκλυσεν, οὐκ ὀλίγην δὲ καὶ τῆς ἐπιπέδου γῆς ἐν τῇ Σαμοθρᾴκῃ θάλατταν ἐποίησε· καὶ διὰ τοῦτ´ ἐν τοῖς μεταγενεστέροις καιροῖς ἐνίους τῶν ἁλιέων ἀνεσπακέναι τοῖς δικτύοις λίθινα κιονόκρανα, ὡς καὶ πόλεων κατακεκλυσμένων. Τοὺς δὲ περιληφθέντας προσαναδραμεῖν εἰς τοὺς ὑψηλοτέρους τῆς νήσου τόπους· τῆς δὲ θαλάττης ἀναβαινούσης ἀεὶ μᾶλλον, εὔξασθαι τοῖς θεοῖς τοὺς ἐγχωρίους, καὶ διασωθέντας κύκλῳ περὶ ὅλην τὴν νῆσον ὅρους θέσθαι τῆς σωτηρίας, καὶ βωμοὺς ἱδρύσασθαι, ἐφ´ ὧν μέχρι τοῦ νῦν θύειν· ὥστ´ εἶναι φανερὸν ὅτι πρὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ κατῴκουν τὴν Σαμοθρᾴκην."

"3 ... And the Samothracians have a story that, before the floods which befell their peoples, a great one took place among them, in the course of which the outlet at the Cyanean Rocks was first rent asunder and then the Hellespont. 4 For the Pontus, which had at the time the form of a lake, was so swollen by the rivers which flow into it, that, because of the great flood which had poured into it, its waters burst forth violently into the Hellespont and flooded a large part of the coast of Asia and made no small amount of the level part of the land of Samothrace into a sea; and this is the reason, we are told, why in later times fishermen have now and then brought up in their nets the stone capitals of columns, since even cities were covered by the inundation. 5 The inhabitants who had been caught by the flood, the account continues, ran up to the higher regions of the island; and when the sea kept rising higher and higher, they prayed to the native gods, and since their lives were spared, to commemorate their rescue they set up boundary stones about the entire circuit of the island and dedicated altars upon which they offer sacrifices even to the present day. For these reasons it is patent that they inhabited Samothrace before the flood."(awending C. H. Oldfather).

That this has something to do with the mysteries celebrated there can be seen from the belief that those who were initiated into the mysteries of Samothrace couldn't drown (see earlier post [here]). And it is worthwhile to keep in mind here that the summit of a high mountain where people went to escape a flood has the same basic symbolic meaning as the larnax of Deucalion, the naus of Manu, the ark of Noah and the var of Yima.

But the mountain top where a flood may be outlasted and the larnax/naus and ark that does the same can be seen to merge. Thus many Greeks believed that Deucalion's sea-going chest, or larnax (λάρναξ), in which he outlasted the waters came to rest on Mount Parnassus (see Apollodorus Library) above Delphi, and this was from the Greeks believing that the navel-stead (ὀμφαλός) of the world was at Delphi. Pausanias 10.6.2 gives us another flood-myth where folk outlasted the rising waters by going to the top of Parnassus and building a town there called Lycoreia. Here we can see Lycoreia = the forefather's chest/ark/ship.

Above: Parnassus by Electron08 (see [here]).

The scholia to Pindar's Olympian Ode 9.62b however would put it a little further north at Othrys in Thessaly:

ὁ δὲ Ἑλλάνικος καὶ τὴν λάρνακα οὐ τῷ Παρνασσῷ φησι προσενεχθῆναι, ἀλλὰ περὶ τὴν Ὄθρυν τῆς Θεσσαλίας. (Dachmann scholia vetera vol.1 lf.281)

"Hellanicus says that the chest didn't touch down on Parnassus, but by Othrys in Thessaly.”

And Servius in his commentary on Vergil's Georgics marks that some Greeks also put it on Mount Athos. We are drifting north-eastward, and if Deucalion's father, Prometheus, did live about the Caucasus as the scholiast of Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica will have it, then maybe some Greeks might have put it there of yore as well.

The highest peak of the Caucasus Mount Elbrus being named after the mythic cosmic axle mountain of the Parsees Alborz>Harborz> Harā Barazaitī .

Above: Mount Elbrus. Photograph by JukoFF (see [here]).

But the name of the Caucasus was brooked by the Greeks of yore for all that ridge that runs eastward from the Caucasus as we understand today, through Persia to the Himalayas where Manu's ship is said to have come to rest.

Above: Mount_Everest_as_seen_from_Drukair2.jpg: shrimpo1967

Himalaya is from Sanskrit: himá (हिम, "snow") and ā-laya (आलय, "abode, receptacle, dwelling"), but the mountains, or its principle peak pars pro toto, are more often called Himavat (हिमवत्) "possessing snow; snowy" in the Epics. However, Mount Kailash in Tibet seems to be more highly thought of by Hindus.

The "mountains of Ararat" - the Vulgate has "montes Armeniae" - where Noah's ark comes to rest in the Bible is only a little to the south of the Caucasus where the Tigris and Euphrates rise.

Above: Little Ararat (left) and Greater Ararat (right) as seen from Yerevan, Armenia by Սէրուժ Ուրիշեան (Serouj Ourishian) (see [here]).

at the middle of the world

Now the key thing here is that we are meant to understand wherever the chest, ark or ship of Deucalion/Manu/Noah came to rest after the Great Flood, as the middle of the world. And although geographical considerations and local tribal loyalty could put this spot almost anywhere, the middle of the world where the axis mundi was to be found, and in these myths this is to be understood as the mountain that our forefather's chest/ark/ship came to rest on, was a holy spot: nearer to the gods than anywhere else beside (as first made by them); and a place wherein time was thought to go much slower, or even to be a place outside the wheel of time altogether. Think of the hub and nave of an old fixed axle as against the wheel that turns upon this. And in short, the only place where a cataclysm was going to be outlasted.

What the middle of the world once meant is maybe best recoverable from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, once we understand that Noah is no more than a mythic double of Adam. Thus the spot where Noah's ark comes to rest in Armenia (Ararat = Urartu = Armenia) where the Tigris and Euphrates rise, is demonstrably the same place as the earlier Garden of Eden where Adam lived at first as we are told these same two waters rise there. The other two rivers and their misunderstood names are "red herrings" for us here, so that we miss seeing that the tale of Noah and the tale of Adam as in essence the same. A splitting up into two of what other folks have kept as one. And what is said of the Garden of Eden, of Paradise, and how it stands inviolate and aloof from the "fallen" world outside it will seem more important as we go on. But it can straightaway be seen that the refuge of life at the time of a cataclysm that is Noah's ark, is symbolically the same as the Garden of Eden/Paradise which abides as a select refuge for chosen creatures for the whole of time. That Dante puts Eden on top of a thinly veiled polar mountain in his Divine Comedy is markworthy and it is not suggested by anything that the Bible says of it. A manuscript in the British Museum goes even further and tells us that:

“Paradise is neither in heaven nor on earth. The book says that Noah’s flood was forty fathoms high, over the highest hills that are on earth; and Paradise is forty fathoms higher than Noah’s flood was, and it hangeth between heaven and earth wonderfully, as the ruler of all things made it. And it is perfectly level both in length and breadth, There is neither hollow nor hill; nor is there frost nor snow, hail nor rain; but there is fons vitæ, that is, the well of life. When the calends of January commence, then floweth the well so beautifully and so gently, and no deeper than man may wet his finger on the front, over all that land. And so likewise each month, once when the month comes in the well begins to flow. And there is the copse of wood, which is called Radion Saltus, where each tree is as straight as an arrow, and so high, that no earthly man ever saw so high, or can say of what kind they are. And there never falleth leaf off, for they are evergreen, beautiful, and pleasant, full of happiness. Paradise is upright on the eastern part of this world. There is neither heat nor hunger, nor is there ever night, but always day. The sun there shineth seven times brighter than on this earth. Therein dwell innumerable angels of God with the holy souls till doomsday. Therein dwelleth a beautiful bird called Phœnix; he is large and grand, as the Mighty One formed him; he is the lord over all birds.”—(MS. Cotton. Vespas. D xiv., fol. 163.)

We are meant to see in all this that the Garden of Eden/Paradise is a perfect land, suffering none of the imperfections which the Christians say is the outcome of Adam's disobedience. It is a fragment of the world as God intended it should be, and not how it became. The world of the first age of the world, of the so-called Golden Age sung by the old poets, where the earth fed men without being tilled, everything was good, death was endlessly deferred, the gods walked with men and the animals talked. And whilst the greater part of the Earth became increasingly corrupt along with the men and animals that lived there, the Garden of Eden/Paradise was preserved as an inviolate place where the characteristics of the first age of the world were preserved forever. That the author of the above outdraught should put it "neither in heaven nor on earth" truly reflects its mixed earthly and heavenly nature, whilst his acknowledging that "it hangeth between heaven and earth wonderfully, as the ruler of all things made it" reflects the problem everyone in our fallen world has in knowing where to put this surviving fragment of the mythical first land.

That the word Paradise which is brooked as a synonym for the Garden of Eden is a word borrowed into Hebrew from the tongue of the Parsees is markworthy, and much of what is understood by it can be found in the myths of the Parsees.

The Parsees understand the Earth of the Golden Age under the name of airyanəm vaēǰō (Vidēvdāt 1.3; 2.20. Yt. 9.14; 5.17; 5.104; 9.25; 15.2; 17.45) known later as Eranvej and which is the Earth of the Golden Age, is spoken of thus in the Menog-i Khrad “Spirit of Wisdom” chap. 44 §§24 to 35 (awending E. W. West) in a way that makes it akin to the Garden of Eden/Paradise in the Bible:

“24. 'It is declared that Ohrmazd created Eranvej better than other places and districts. 25. And its goodness is this, that the life of the people is three hundred years, (26) and of the oxen and sheep one hundred and fifty years. 27. Their pain and sickness, also, are little; (28) they fabricate (drujend) no lies, (29) they make no lamentation and weeping, (30) and the domination of the demon of greediness (Az) in their bodies is little. 31. When they eat one loaf among tell men, they are satisfied. 32. And in every forty years one child is born from one woman and one man. 33. Their law, also, is goodness, and their religion the primitive faith; (34) and when they die they are righteous. 35. Their spiritual chief (ratu), likewise, is Gopaito, and their lord and king is Srosh.'”

In the midst of this airyanəm vaēǰō (vaŋhuyå dāityayå ) “the Aryan plain (of the good Dāityā)” is rhe axle-mountain of Harā Barazaitī (sometimes known by the names of its peaks Čagād ī Dāitī (“lawful Summit”) or Hukar (Av. Hukairya) “of good activity”). From Harā Barazaitī flowed the mythical river,Arədvī Sūrā Anāhita (which some scholars think should be *Harahvatī) into the great sea, called in Avestan Vourukaša (Pahl. Varkaš or Fraxvkard), which was “the gathering place of the waters” (Vd. 21.15). Two rivers flowed out from it, the Vaŋhvī Dāityā (Pahl. Veh Dāiti or Veh Rōd) to the east and the Raŋha (Arang) to the west.

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads."

Above: an odd "map" of Eden with the four rivers running out to the four cardinal directions from an old handwrit in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 14456, fol. 79r.

René Guénon Le Symbolisme de la Croix (1931) lf. 45

Revenons maintenant à la représentation du « Paradis terrestre » : de son centre, c’est-à-dire du pied même de l’« Arbre de Vie », partent quatre fleuves se dirigeant vers les quatre points cardinaux, et traçant ainsi la croix horizontale sur la surface même du monde terrestre, c’est-à-dire dans le plan qui correspond au domaine de l’état humain. Ces quatre fleuves, qu’on peut rapporter au quaternaire des éléments, et qui sont issus d’une source unique correspondant à l’éther primordial, divisent en quatre parties, qui peuvent être rapportées aux quatre phases d’un développement cyclique, ...
Let us now return to the representation of the "Earthly Paradise": from its centre, that is to say from the very foot of the "Tree of Life", four rivers depart, heading towards the four cardinal points, and thus tracing the cross. horizontally on the very surface of the terrestrial world, that is to say in the plane which corresponds to the domain of the human state. These four rivers, which can be related to the Quaternary of the elements, and which come from a single source corresponding to the primordial ether [=the fifth element], divide into four parts, which can be related to the four phases of a cyclical development, ...

Later times would seem to have switched a world axis mountain for a world axis tree for the Parsees say that in the middle of Vourukaša grew the wan-ī was-tōhmag or wan-ī harwisp-tōhmag “all seed tree (wan)” (Bundahišn). And understood as frārōn/tuxšāgbizešk “righteous/diligent physician,” hamāg-bizešk “all-healer” (Bundahišn) from Av. vīspō-biš, lit., “all-remedy [tree]”, and wan-ī ǰud-bēš “antipain tree” (Mēnōg ī xrad). The phoenix or gryphon-like Sīmorḡ alights in it every year so that the seeds are shaken down from the tree to end up on the earth. The immaculate sacred plant, the “white Hōm” (Av. haoma), also called gōkirin (Av. gaokərənə-) draxt, was planted by Ohrmazd near the aforesaid tree, to bestow deathlessness on anyone who partakes of it.

"And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

The Parsees know Yima ais the king of this airyanəm vaēǰō. Then there is a climactic/climatic shift which meant that airyanəm vaēǰō could not be lived in any more, or at least not in the same way as before. But Yima it seems kept a bit of the old airyanəm vaēǰō alive in what is called the var. And it is this var that is one with the forefather's chest/ark/ship in the flood myths, our flood being in stead of the great winter the Parsees talk of, and the clincher is those Arab historiographers who wrote that Noah lived at the same time as king Yima ruled among the Parsees! It is this var of Yima's which truly answers to the Garden of Eden/Paradise of the Bible. And although the Parsees don't make much of it, we are meant to suppose that Yima's var does not still abide somewhere to welcome those few who find their way in to it. But there are hints. Thus in the Pahlavi Rivāyat (8e), Yima (Jam) and his sister (Jamag) after the loss of his kingship, went into the var to get away from men and divs. Where is the var? The Mēnōy ī xrad (61.15), puts the var underground in airyanəm vaēǰō, while the Bundahišn (29.14), put it beneath a Mount Čamagān in Pārs, the historic Iran having been swapped for the mythic airyanəm vaēǰō. It is more than likely that the var should be thought of as being on or in Harā Barazaitī, and we hear of Yima building a house on Hariburz (=Harā Barazaitī ) made of diamonds (Bdh. 32.1, 14), and though this seems not to be the same as the var, the house and the var were I think one and the same to begin with. And it seems to me that the var may even be thought of as one with Harā Barazaitī as a whole, thus the mountain is the universal refugium. Thus in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh Alborz (=Harā Barazaitī ) is where Fereydun flees when he is sought for by the spies of Zahhāk; where the Sīmorḡ brings up Zāl; and where Kai Kobad dwells before being summoned to the throne of Iran by Rostam.

Most of the Parsee references to Harā Barazaitī that I have come across infer that it is the axle-mountain to be rightly set at the North Pole, but do not put this understanding beyond all doubt. In the Khotanesse Buddhist texts however under the worn down name of "harasya" we find:

Ākāśa-maṇḍäla haräysa vī gaisadai “the circle of the sky turning on the Haraysa”
mala ttraikha sūmīra gārānä rāṃda ttaira haraysä baidä “on the peak Mala of the king of mountains Sumeru, the ttaira Harasya” (awending H. W. Bailey)

And the Mount Sumeru or Meru with which it is being matched to here, was so thought of.

Atlas and Hyperborea?

For the Greeks the mountain or petrified titan that held up the sky was known as Atlas. That Mount Atlas is often linked to the far west (and indeed we find a Mount Atlas today in Morocco whence also the Atlantic Ocean) stems from an old belief that Atlas was the westernmost of the four pillar-mountains that held up the vault of the heavens. From the time of the Odyssey however, it seems that the other pillar-mountains beside Atlas were forgotten and Atlas alone was thought of as holding up the sky, and Mount Atlas was shifted from the West to the North Pole among the Hyperboreans. Thus Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 5. 11:

“...ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἄτλαντος ἐν Ὑπερβορέοις: ...”
“...but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. ...”.

That the Hyperboreans were often (if not universally) understood as the folk living about the North Pole can be seen from this outdraught by Martianus Capella, in his De nuptiis Philologiæ et Mercurii et de septem artibus liberalibus libri novum Book VI (Geometry):

“Post eosdem montes trans Aquilonem Hyperborei, apud quos mundi axis continua motione torquetur, gens moribus, prolixitate vitae, deorum cultu, aeris clementia , semestri die, fine etiam habitationis humanae praedicanda.”

“[664] Behind these mountains [the Rhipaean] and beyond the north wind are the Hyperboreans, in whose vicinity the axis of the world continually rotates-a people remarkable for their customs, length of life, manner of worship, benignity of climate, six-month long day, and their abode at the limit of human habitation.”

[The Marriage of Mercury and Philology awent by William Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson with E.L. Burge, Columbia University Press, 1977C.E. – Book 6, §664, lf. 248].

(see Pliny Natural Histories, Book IV.XII)

And it is also worthwhile to mark that Now Hecataeus of Abdera (as marked by Diodorus Siculus) understands Hyperborea as an island. Diodorus' first words in his Library of History book 2, ch. 47, 1-2 are:

"Τῶν γὰρ τὰς παλαιὰς μυθολογίας ἀναγεγραφότων Ἑκαταῖος καί τινες ἕτεροί φασιν ἐν τοῖς ἀντιπέρας τῆς Κελτικῆς τόποις κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανὸν εἶναι νῆσον οὐκ ἐλάττω τῆς Σικελίας. Ταύτην ὑπάρχειν μὲν κατὰ τὰς ἄρκτους, κατοικεῖσθαι δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ὀνομαζομένων Ὑπερβορέων ἀπὸ τοῦ πορρωτέρω κεῖσθαι τῆς βορείου πνοῆς· οὖσαν δ´ αὐτὴν εὔγειόν τε καὶ πάμφορον, ἔτι δ´ εὐκρασίᾳ διαφέρουσαν, διττοὺς κατ´ ἔτος ἐκφέρειν καρπούς. Μυθολογοῦσι δ´ ἐν αὐτῇ τὴν Λητὼ γεγονέναι· διὸ καὶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω μάλιστα τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν παρ´ αὐτοῖς τιμᾶσθαι· εἶναι δ´ αὐτοὺς ὥσπερ ἱερεῖς τινας Ἀπόλλωνος διὰ τὸ τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον καθ´ ἡμέραν ὑπ´ αὐτῶν ὑμνεῖσθαι μετ´ ᾠδῆς συνεχῶς καὶ τιμᾶσθαι διαφερόντως."

"1. ... Of those who have written about the ancient myths, Hecataeus and certain others say that in the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and since it has an unusually temperate climate it produces two harvests each year.2 Moreover, the following legend is told concerning it: Leto was born on this island, and for that reason Apollo is honoured among them above all other gods; and the inhabitants are looked upon as priests of Apollo, after a manner, since daily they praise this god continuously in song and honour him exceedingly. "

For what it is worth I think we should set down the rest of what he says as well although it is not to the point of our argument:

" Ὑπάρχειν δὲ καὶ κατὰ τὴν νῆσον τέμενός τε Ἀπόλλωνος μεγαλοπρεπὲς καὶ ναὸν ἀξιόλογον ἀναθήμασι πολλοῖς κεκοσμημένον, σφαιροειδῆ τῷ σχήματι. Καὶ πόλιν μὲν ὑπάρχειν ἱερὰν τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου, τῶν δὲ κατοικούντων αὐτὴν τοὺς πλείστους εἶναι κιθαριστάς, καὶ συνεχῶς ἐν τῷ ναῷ κιθαρίζοντας ὕμνους λέγειν τῷ θεῷ μετ´ ᾠδῆς, ἀποσεμνύνοντας αὐτοῦ τὰς πράξεις. Ἔχειν δὲ τοὺς Ὑπερβορέους ἰδίαν τινὰ διάλεκτον, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας οἰκειότατα διακεῖσθαι, καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ Δηλίους, ἐκ παλαιῶν χρόνων παρειληφότας τὴν εὔνοιαν ταύτην. Καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τινὰς μυθολογοῦσι παραβαλεῖν εἰς Ὑπερβορέους, καὶ ἀναθήματα πολυτελῆ καταλιπεῖν γράμμασιν Ἑλληνικοῖς ἐπιγεγραμμένα. Ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ ἐκ τῶν Ὑπερβορέων Ἄβαριν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καταντήσαντα τὸ παλαιὸν ἀνασῶσαι τὴν πρὸς Δηλίους εὔνοιάν τε καὶ συγγένειαν. Φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν σελήνην ἐκ ταύτης τῆς νήσου φαίνεσθαι παντελῶς ὀλίγον ἀπέχουσαν τῆς γῆς καί τινας ἐξοχὰς γεώδεις ἔχουσαν ἐν αὐτῇ φανεράς. Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν θεὸν δι´ ἐτῶν ἐννεακαίδεκα καταντᾶν εἰς τὴν νῆσον, ἐν οἷς αἱ τῶν ἄστρων ἀποκαταστάσεις ἐπὶ τέλος ἄγονται· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸν ἐννεακαιδεκαετῆ χρόνον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων Μέτωνος ἐνιαυτὸν ὀνομάζεσθαι. Κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ταύτην τὸν θεὸν κιθαρίζειν τε καὶ χορεύειν συνεχῶς τὰς νύκτας ἀπὸ ἰσημερίας ἐαρινῆς ἕως πλειάδος ἀνατολῆς ἐπὶ τοῖς ἰδίοις εὐημερήμασι τερπόμενον. Βασιλεύειν δὲ τῆς πόλεως ταύτης καὶ τοῦ τεμένους ἐπάρχειν τοὺς ὀνομαζομένους Βορεάδας, ἀπογόνους ὄντας Βορέου, καὶ κατὰ γένος ἀεὶ διαδέχεσθαι τὰς ἀρχάς."

"And there is also on the island both a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollo and a notable temple which is adorned with many votive offerings and is spherical in shape. 3 Furthermore, a city is there which is sacred to this god, and the majority of its inhabitants are players on the cithara; and these continually play on this instrument in the temple and sing hymns of praise to the god, glorifying his deeds.

4 The Hyperboreans also have a language, we informed, which is peculiar to them, and are most friendly disposed towards the Greeks, and especially towards the Athenians and the Delians, who have inherited this good-will from most ancient times. The myth also relates that certain Greeks visited the Hyperboreans and left behind them there costly votive offerings bearing inscriptions in Greek letters. 5 And in the same way Abaris, a Hyperborean, came to Greece in ancient times and renewed the good-will and kinship of his people to the Delians. They say also that the moon, as viewed from this island, appears to be but a little distance from the earth and to have upon it prominences, like those of the earth, which are visible to the eye. 6 The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished; and for this reason the nineteen-year period is called by the Greeks the "year of Meton." At the time of this appearance of the god he both plays on the cithara and dances continuously the night through from the vernal equinox until the rising of the Pleiades, expressing in this manner his delight in his successes. And the kings of this city and the supervisors of the sacred precinct are called Boreadae, since they are descendants of Boreas, and the succession to these positions is always kept in their family."

That some have thought that Britain is meant by this is an obvious conclusion, but Britain as also Scandinavia, which was mistakenly thought of as an island of yore, are only proxies for the true Hyperborea, which, as Pindar says in his tenth Pythian ode lines 29-30:

... ναυσὶ δ᾽ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰών κεν εὕροις
ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.

neither by ship nor on foot would you find
the marvellous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans. [awend. Svarlien]

It might not be out of place here to set down what Pindar says of Hyperborea in his tenth Pythian Ode and we will see that this hard to get to place continues in the Golden Age whilst the world outside it has moved on:

... ναυσὶ δ᾽ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰών κεν εὕροις

30ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.

[50] παρ᾽ οἷς ποτε Περσεὺς ἐδαίσατο λαγέτας,

δώματ᾽ ἐσελθών,

κλειτὰς ὄνων ἑκατόμβας ἐπιτόσσαις θεῷ

ῥέζοντας: ὧν θαλίαις ἔμπεδον

35εὐφαμίαις τε μάλιστ᾽ Ἀπόλλων

χαίρει, γελᾷ θ᾽ ὁρῶν ὕβριν ὀρθίαν κνωδάλων.

Μοῖσα δ᾽ οὐκ ἀποδαμεῖ

τρόποις ἐπὶ σφετέροισι: παντᾷ, δὲ χοροὶ παρθένων

[60] λυρᾶν τε βοαὶ καναχαί τ᾽ αὐλῶν δονέονται:

40δάφνᾳ τε χρυσέᾳ κόμας ἀναδήσαντες εἰλαπινάζοισιν εὐφρόνως.

νόσοι δ᾽ οὔτε γῆρας οὐλόμενον κέκραται

ἱερᾷ γενεᾷ: πόνων δὲ καὶ μαχᾶν ἄτερ

οἰκέοισι φυγόντες

ὑπέρδικον Νέμεσιν. θρασείᾳ δὲ πνέων καρδίᾳ

45 [70] μόλεν Δανάας ποτὲ παῖς, ἁγεῖτο δ᾽ Ἀθάνα,

ἐς ἀνδρῶν μακάρων ὅμιλον: ἔπεφνέν τε Γοργόνα, καὶ ποικίλον κάρα

δρακόντων φόβαισιν ἤλυθε νασιώταις

λίθινον θάνατον φέρων. ἐμοὶ δὲ θαυμάσαι

θεῶν τελεσάντων οὐδέν ποτε φαίνεται

50ἔμμεν ἄπιστον.

Neither by ship nor on foot could you find [30] the marvellous road to the meeting-place of the Hyperboreans— Once Perseus, the leader of his people, entered their homes and feasted among them, when he found them sacrificing glorious hecatombs of donkeys to the god. In the festivities of those people [35] and in their praises Apollo rejoices most, and he laughs when he sees the erect arrogance of the beasts. The Muse is not absent from their customs; all around swirl the dances of girls, the lyre’s loud chords and the cries of flutes. [40] They wreathe their hair with golden laurel branches and revel joyfully. No sickness or ruinous old age is mixed into that sacred race; without toil or battles they live without fear of strict Nemesis. Breathing boldness of spirit [45] once the son of Danae went to that gathering of blessed men, and Athena led him there. He killed the Gorgon, and came back bringing stony death to the islanders, the head that shimmered with hair made of serpents. To me nothing that the gods accomplish ever appears [50] unbelievable, however miraculous.

And needless to say, the island of Hyperborea= Garden of Eden/Paradise =Yima's var=Deucalion's larnax, Manu's naus and Noah's ark! That the Middle of the World they betoken is actually to be set at the North Pole is maybe a surprising detail. All other centres are but proxied for it, as René Guénon tells us in his Aperçus sur l'Initiation - Perspectives on initiation :

"... centres spirituels sont constitués à l’image du centre suprême lui-même, dont ils sont en quelque sorte comme autant de reflets ..." [ch.10, lf. 47 of 1946 edition]

“ … spiritual centres are constituted in the image of the supreme centre itself, of which they are, as it were, so many reflections; ...”. [ch.10 lf.60]

Above: "ARRIAN'S WORLD as depicted by ORTELIUS, 1624" [here]

Hyperborea Scythia?

Other old Greek writers put Hyperborea as having some kind of nearness to Scythia and we even find Hyperborea Scythia Ὑπερβορέα Σκυθία (see Suda under Abaris).    Hesiod's Catalogue of Women Fragment 40a (from Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358 fr. 2) has something worth knowing here :

“τοὺς πάντα]ς πέρι κύκλ     ἐθύεον ἀΐσσοντες          20
..... ἔθ]νεα μ[ ...     Ὑ]περβορέων εὐίππων.
.... ]φέρβουσ [ολ]υσπερέας πολύφορβος
... παρ᾿ Ἠριδανοῖ]ο βα[θυρ][ό]ου αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα,
....                      ]πρ [ ...] ἠλέκτροιο.”

Around [them all] in a circle they kept going, rushing
      ] the peoples [ ] of the well-horsed Hyperboreans.
] bounteous, pasturing the widely dispersed
] beside the steep streams of the deep-flowing Eridanus]
] of amber.[

[Hesiod. The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments. Outset and awent by Glenn W. Most. Loeb Classical Library 503. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. lvs.170 to 171]

Now εὐίππων is a gift here. For Pindar in his third Olympian Ode speaks of

"εὐίππων ... Τυνδαριδᾶν"
"from the sons of Tyndareus with good horses".

And in the Ṛgvedaḥ the Aśvinau are called svaśvā “with good horses” (7.69.3) a word that is an etymological match of the Greek one.

"Heavenly Twins (Aśvinau, Dioscuri), connected at once with horsemanship and navigation, have such extraordinarily similar traits in Vedic psalms, in the Homeric Hymns, and in archaic Lithuanian verses that their cult in the primeval period seems to the writer a likely conjecture."

- V. Gordon Childe The Aryans (1926) ch.4 lf.81.

Atlantis found (again)?

On the island of Samothrace which we have marked in an earlier post [here] as an holy island hallowed to the Heavenly Twins, much of its holiness stems from it being thought of as the peak of a mountain that was once set in a now drowned land. That is, like Yima's var, it is what is left of a greater golden kingdom that is now lost as the outcome of some climatic shift. Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica 1.916 tells us Samothrace is:

νῆσον ἐς Ἠλέκτρης Ἀτλαντίδος,
the island of Electra daughter of Atlas.

Electra, notwithstanding that she is commonly understood as a Pleiad (sing. Πληϊάς/Πλειάς, plural Πλειάδες), is truly a sun-goddess, Electra being, as we have marked in earlier blog posts. Her name is the feminine of Elector which is brooked as a byname of the sun by Homer (see Iliad 6.513 and 19.398). Her name also echoeth the Greek word ἤλεκτρον, electron, which was their name for amber, or "ambre jaune" (to tell it asunder from "ambre gris") a Northern thing to the Greeks. And that she is a daughter of Atlas (Ἄτλας) should not be overlooked, whom many Greeks understood to be the axis mundi personified, even if sometimes understood as a mountain. The two things are not mutually exclusive thus Ennius in his Historia Sacra has:

"Deinde Pan eum deducit in montem, qui uocatur coeli stela."

"Then Pan led him onto the mountain which is called the pillar of heaven."

And although Atlas is often linked to the far west, from an old belief that Atlas was the westernmost of the four pillar-mountains that held up the vault of the heavens, Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 5. 11 rightledgeth this mistaken belief and puts Atlas back where he should be:

“...ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἄτλαντος ἐν Ὑπερβορέοις: ...”
“...but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. ...”.

That is to say, in the far north under the North Pole.

Daughters may be named for their fathers in Greek. Thus the daughter of the river Borysthenes may be spoken of in Greek as Borysthenis, and Helen of Troy is called Tyndaris (Τυνδαρίς) from her reputed human father Tyndareus (Τυνδάρεος). Atlas (Ἄτλας), with stem Atlant-(Ἄτλαντ-), the father of Electra would give us Atlantis ( ἡ Ἀτλαντίς) as another name for her, and indeed Ovid so calls her. Samothrace the island of Electra, is thus also the island of Atlantis!

There is every reason to suppose that Calypso's island of Ogygia (Ὠγυγίη) to be found in Homer's Odyssey (see 1.14, 1.48–62, 5.58-74, 7.245) is actually a hidden reference to Samothrace. Thus Calypso (Καλυψώ) is said to be a daughter of Atlas and her name, from καλύπτω (kalyptō), meaning "to cover", "to conceal", "to hide", or "to deceive" implies she is the hidden Pleiad, who is often understood to be Electra (see Hyginus Fab. 192, Poet. Astr. ii. 21, thus Hesiod, Astronomy Fragment 1 (from Scholiast on Pindar's Nemean Odea 2.16) calls her "dark-faced Electra" ). It being understood that there were seven Pleiads but one was hidden so you can only ever see six stars in the sky. Ogygia's claim to be the middle of the world, or rather middle of the sea in this case, lies in Homer's description of it in book 1, line 50:

" νήσῳ ἐν ἀμφιρύτῃ, ὅθι τ᾽ ὀμφαλός ἐστι θαλάσσης."
"a sea-girt isle, where is the navel of the sea"

And that Calypso is the daughter of Atlas who holds the pillars that keep apart heaven and earth.

νῆσος δενδρήεσσα, θεὰ δ᾽ ἐν δώματα ναίει, 51
Ἄτλαντος θυγάτηρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅς τε θαλάσσης
πάσης βένθεα οἶδεν, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας αὐτὸς
μακράς, αἳ γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.

'Tis a wooded isle, and therein dwells a goddess, daughter of Atlas of baneful mind, who knows the depths of every sea, and himself holds the tall pillars which keep earth and heaven apart.

Plutarch's On the face of the Moon, puts the island "five days’ sail from Britain" westward and seems to be wantonly muddling it with ideas of Thule. Odysseus' raft building on Ogygia mirrors what is said of Dardanus on Samothrace. Initiates in the mysteries of Samothrace were given a band (ταινία) which would save them from drowning, thus scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.916-8

"μυεῖσθαί τε φασι τοὺς μυομένους περιεζωσμένους ταινίας πορφυρᾶς, καὶ τοὺς μυηθέντας ἐν τοῖς κατὰ θάλασσαν κινδύνοις διασώζεσθαι. τὸν οὗν Ὀδυσσέα φασὶ μυηθέντα καὶ χρησάμενον τῷ κρηδέμνῳ ἀντὶ ταινίας σωθῆναι ἐκ τοῦ θαλασσίου κλύδωνος, θέμενον ὑπὸ τὴν κοιλίαν τὸ κρήδεμνον. οὐ μόνον δ’ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ θάλατταν κινδύνοις οἱ μυηθέντες διασώζονται, ἀλλὰ καὶ {εἰ} τύχοι ἄν παντὸς οὗ {ἂν} τυχεῖν εὔξαιτο ὁ μυηθείς. τὸν οὗν Ἀγαμέμνονά φασι, ἐν ταραχῇ καὶ στάσει μεγάλῃ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὄντων ἐν Τροίᾳ, μυηθέντα τε καὶ ἔχοντα τὴν πορφυρίδα καταπαῦσαι τὴν στάσιν. διὸ καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης φησὶ <<ἀλλ' εἴ τις ὑμῶν ἐν Σαμοθρᾴκῃ τυγχάνει μεμυημένος, νῦν εὔξασθαι καλόν.>> σωστικὰ γὰρ πάνυ τὰ μυστήρια ταῦτά φησιν. διὸ καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος τὴν αἰτίαν ἀποδιδοὺς τοῦ μυηθῆναι τοὺς Ἀργοναύτας ἵνα, φησίν, σαώτεροι ναυτίλλωνται.”
"Those being initiated are said to be girded with purple fillets during the ceremony, and the initiates are said to be saved from dangers at sea. So Odysseus, being an initiate, is said to have been saved from the storm at sea by using the veil [of Leucothea] in place of a fillet and placing the veil below his abdomen. Not only are the initiates saved from dangers at sea, but the initiate would obtain whatever he might pray to obtain. So when the Greeks at Troy were in terrible turmoil and discord, Agamemnon, being an initiate, is said to have quelled the discord by carrying the purple cloak (πορφυρίς). Thus Aristophanes too says, “But if any of you happens to have been initiated in Samothrace, now is the time to pray”; for he is saying that these mysteries have great power to save. Thus Apollonius, too, gives as reason for the Argonauts’ being initiated that, as he says, they might sail more safely.”

As the scholiast hints at, this mirrors Leucothea's veil (κρήδεμνον - 5.351) which saves Odysseus from drowning. Leucothea being a daughter of Cadmus the founder of seven-gated Thebes in Boeotia who some say wed Harmonia on Samothrace.

Ogygia moreover was a name that also cleaved to Boeotia (see Strabo Geography 9.2.18) and to seven-gated Thebes (“Θήβης ... ἑπταπύλοιο” – Iliad 11.263 & 4.406)- “ogygian Thebes” (“Ὠγυγίῃ ἐνὶ Θήβῃ” - Argon. 3.1178) - there, but Boeotia was long known to have been settled by Thracians and so we find the Cabeiri were a considerable feature of the worship of Boeotia having been imported from Samothrace (that is the "Samos of Thrace") by these same Thracians. Diodorus Siculus book 3 of his Library of History, chapitle 55:

"ἔνιοι δὲ τῶν ἱστορικῶν λέγουσι τὸ πρὸ τοῦ Σάμον αὐτὴν καλουμένην ὑπὸ τῶν κατοικούντων ἐν αὐτῇ ποτε Θρᾳκῶν Σαμοθρᾴκην ὀνομασθῆναι. "

"... some historians say that it was formerly called Samos and was then given the name of Samothrace by Thracians who at one time dwelt on it."

That Ogygia is so often spoken about by the Greeks of old in the context of a Great Flood leads us back to Samothrace and the Cabeiri.

Islands marking the "middle of the world" brings us to conside Delos in the midst of the Cyclades wher the twins Apollo and Artemis were born. The cosmic axis-mundi mountain here only has a token presence in mount Cynthus. However, the idea that the island floated or was submerged before Apollo and Artemis were born on it shows (see Pliny N.H. 4.25) us that the ark of Noah may have been a floating island. Pliny's names for Delos are interesting 4.25:

"aglaosthenes cynthiam, alii ortygiam, asteriam, lagiam, chlamydiam, cynethum, pyrpylen igne ibi primum reperto. "

"Aglaosthenes, however, gives it the name of Cynthia, and others of Ortygia, Asteria, Lagia, Chlamydia, Cynthus, and, from the circumstance of fire having been first discovered here, Pyrpile."

The fire being first discovered here takes us back to Prometheus and an old idea linked to the Heavenly Twins that we dealth with in an earlier post ([here])

A floating island is said to mark the middle of Italy by Pliny 3.12.109:

in agro Reatino Cutiliae lacum, in quo fluctuetur insula, Italiae umbilicum esse M. Varro tradit.

In the territory of Reate is the Lake of Cutiliæ, in which there is a floating island, and which, according to M. Varro, is the navel or central point of Italy.

Now the mention of the Pleiads with respect to the axis-mundi as a flood-beating island/mountain leads us to consider Mount Cyllene on the northern edge of Arcadia where the god Hermes was said to have been born to the Pleiad Maia. And the mountain named for the Pleiad Taygete (Ταϋγέτη) in Sparta upon whose slopes Castor and Polyduces were born according to the Homeric hymn to them: "under the peak of Taygetos" (no. 17: ὑπὸ Τηϋγέτου κορυφῇς (line 3). No. 33: ὑπὸ Ταϋγέτου κορυφῇ (line 4)).

Above: The Peak of Mount Taygetus seen from Vassiliki Forest. By Athens2004 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9994090. The κορυφῇ or pyramid-like peak of the tallest mountain in the Peloponnese (it reaches 7,887 ft.) is now named for the Prophet Elijah "Profitis Ilias" (there is a ruined chapel, see [here]). This is Pausanias' "ἄκρα δὲ τοῦ Ταϋγέτου Ταλετὸν" "peak of Taygetos Taléton" (3.20.4) where horses were offered to the sun.

Pausanias (see 3.26.2-3) however records the twins' birth at the little rocky eyot (νησίς) of Pephnus (Πέφνος) in the Gulf of Messenia.

Uttarakuru

Pliny has an odd thing to say in his Historiæ Naturales 6.20.55:

Seres mites quidem, sed et ipsi feris similes coetum reliquorum mortalium fugiunt, commercia exspectant. primum eorum noscitur flumen Psitharas, proxinaum Cambari, tertium Lanos, a quo promunturium Chryse, sinus Cirnaba, flumen Atianos, sinus et gens hominum Attacorarum, apricis ab omni noxio adflatu seclusa collibus, eadem qua Hyperborei degunt temperie; de iis privatim condidit volumen Amometus, sicut Hecataeus de Hyperboreis.

The Chinese, though mild in character, yet resemble wild animals, in that they also shun the company of the remainder of mankind, and wait for trade to come to them. The first river found in their territory is the Psitharas, next the Cambari, and third the Lanos, after which come the Malay Peninsula, the Bay of Cirnaba, the river Atianos and the tribe of the Attacorae on the bay of the same name, sheltered by sunbathed hills from every harmful blast, with the same temperate climate as that in which dwell the Hyperborei. The Attacorae are the subject of a monograph by Amometus, while the Hyperborei have been dealt with in a volume by Hecataeus.

[Pliny. Natural History, Volume II: Books 3-7. Awent by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 352. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. lvs.378 -9]

Why should these Attacorae be matched to the Greeks Hyperborei? Well, as many have answered this over the years, here we have a Westerner speaking of what the Hindus call Uttarakuru and which, like Hyperborea, both is, and is not, a this world place. The Skanda Purana has the Aśvinau born in Uttarakuru. The Buddhist Atanatiya Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, say Uttarakuru is "where towers beautiful Moiunt Meru" and yet is also said to lie to the north of it. And the golden age lives on among them thus:

"They neither sow the seed nor use the plow. Spontaneously grown corn is there for them to enjoy."

["Atanatiya Sutta: Discourse on Atanatiya" (DN 32), translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.32.0.piya.html .]

Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Majjhima Nikāya called the Papañcasūdanī: gives us a story of the origin of the Dakkhiṇa or Southern Kurus of India.

"Ekam samayam bhagava Kurusu viharati = "At one time the Blessed One was living in the (country of the) Kurus." Although the territory of the Kuru Princes, their homeland, was a single contiguous domain, by taking into consideration its many villages and market-towns, it was commonly referred to by the use of the plural form "Kurus."
In the time of the legendary king Mandhatu, say the commentators, inhabitants of the three continents, Pubba Videha, Apara Goyana, and Uttara Kuru, having heard that Jambudipa, the birthplace of Sammasambuddhas, Paccekabuddhas, the Great Disciples of the Buddhas, Universal Monarchs and other beings of mighty virtue, was an exceedingly pleasant, excellent continent, came to Jambudipa with the Universal Monarch Mandhatu who was making a tour of all the continents, in due order, preceded by his Wheel Treasure. And at last when Mandhatu bodily translated himself by means of his psychic virtue to the Tavatimsa devaloka, the heaven of the Thirty-three, the people of the three continents who accompanied him to Jambudipa begged of his son for territory to live in, as they said they had come carried by the great power of Mandhatu, and were now unable by themselves to return to their own continents. Their prayer was heard and lands were granted to each of the groups of people of the three continents. The places in which these people settled got the names of the original continents from which they had emigrated. The settlement of people from Pubba Videha came to be known as Videha, of those from Apara Goyana, as Aparanta, and of those from Uttara Kuru as Kururattha."

["The Way of Mindfulness: The Satipatthana Sutta and Its Commentary", by Soma Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html .]

Kururaṭṭham, that is, "the kingdom of the Kurus".

In the Argonautica the sailors meet Apollo faring from Lycia to Hyperborea. And although Apollo is the "god of Lycia" he was also thought of by the Greeks as the god of Hyperborea even more. The gods first temple at Delphi was said to have been built by Παγασὸς καὶ Ἀγυιεύς from Hyperborea (Paus. 10.5.8). This links the Greeks' proxy middle-stead to the true middle-stead, as it were, under the North Pole. Παγασὸς is the Doric for Πήγασος, and Ἀγυιεύς is only a byname for Apollo. These are the same as the Ὑπέροχος καὶ Ἀμάδοκος from Hyperborea (Paus. 1.4.4) who keep the Gauls out of Delphi later. And they are Pegasus and Chrysaor the sons of Medusa who we have linked to the Heavenly Twins many times before. And I mark on the way here that Pegasos in Greek myth is linked to Bellerophon who was a king of Lycia, and an etymology of the name is Luwian pihassas, meaning "lightning", with Pihassassi, being the name of a weather-god in southern Cilicia. As Chrysaor echoes a byname of Apollo it would seem Apollo was sometimes thought of as one half of a pair of male twins. And we have already marked how Hyginus can say that the star-sign of Gemini shows Apollo and Hercules. Apollo and Artemis is shorthand for two male and two female twins and we call to mind here that Castor and Polydeuces are the twin brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra.

The Greeks knowing the truth play with those who don't. And thus we find it said that in Hyperborea:

This god [Apollon] has as priests the sons of Boreas (Βορέας) and Chione, three in number, brothers by birth, and six cubits in height. (Aelian On Animals)

And:

" Βασιλεύειν δὲ τῆς πόλεως ταύτης καὶ τοῦ τεμένους ἐπάρχειν τοὺς ὀνομαζομένους Βορεάδας, ἀπογόνους ὄντας Βορέου, καὶ κατὰ γένος ἀεὶ διαδέχεσθαι τὰς ἀρχάς."

And the kings of this (Hyperborean) city and the supervisors of the sacred precinct are called Boreadae, since they are descendants of Boreas, and the succession to these positions is always kept in their family. (Diodorus Siculus)

But those Boreades who are the sons of Boreas by Orithyia or Oreithyia (Ὠρείθυια), namely Calaïs and Zetes, who are on the Argo with Castor and Polydeuces! So twins again!

Island of the Sun

Now, many hedge-scholars like myself link the islands of Hyperborea and Thule (Θούλη) together as if they are one and the same thing. Thus René Guénon can write "la Thulé ou Tula hyperboréenne". But key to our understanding of Thule are the words of Isidore of Seville in his Etymologies 14.6.4:

Thyle ultima insula Oceani inter septentrionalem et occidentalem plagam ultra Brittaniam, a sole nomen habens, quia in ea aestivum solstitium sol facit, et nullus ultra eam dies est. Unde et pigrum et concretum est eius mare.

Thule is the last island of the Ocean among the northern and western parts beyond Britain, having a name from the sun, for that in it the sun makes the summer solstice, and no greater is the daylight. Whence its sea is slow and thick.

But it should always be borne in mind here that by Thule Pliny, and Isidore of Seville and our Bede from him, seem to understand Iceland, whilst Procopius in his Histories understands what we today would call Scandinavia and which, as we have said, was mistakenly thought of as an island of yore. But if Hyperborea=Thule these are, once again, only proxies for the true Thule which both is, and is not, of this world.

René Guénon:

" la Tula hyperboréenne ; et c’est cette dernière qui, en réalité, représente le centre premier et suprême pour l’ensemble du Manvantara actuel ; c’est elle qui fut l’ « île sacrée » par excellence, et sa situation était littéralement polaire à l’origine. Toutes les autres « îles sacrées », qui sont désignées partout par des noms de signification identique, ne furent que des images de celle-là ; ..."

“… the primordial Tula… is … the original and supreme center for the totality of the present Manvantara; it was the ‘sacred isle’ par excellence, having originally been situated quite literally at the pole… All the other sacred isles, which everywhere bear names of identical meaning, were only its images...”

"... la Tradition primordiale, originellement « polaire » au sens littéral du mot, et dont le point de départ est celui même du présent Manvantara, ..."

“… the primordial tradition, which was originally ‘polar’ in the literal sense of the word and whose starting point is the very same as the present Manvantara...” (Place de la tradition atlantéenne dans le Manvantara in Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques - Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles part II, 2, lf.23)

"le nom de Tula donné originairement au centre hyperboréen de la tradition primordiale,..."
“ … the name Tula, given originally to the Hyperborean centre of the Primordial Tradition” (Symbole fondamentaux de la science sacrée - La Terre du Soleil first published in É. T., jan. 1936. ).

In Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques. lf.162 from a review of Xavier Guichard’s book: Eleusis Alésia : Enquête sur les origines de la civilisation européenne:

“Nous savons que l’origine première de la tradition, et par conséquent de toute « civilisation », fut en réalité hyperboréenne, et non pas orientale ni occidentale ;”

“We know that the primordial origin of tradition, and consequently of all ‘civilization’, was in reality hyperborean, and neither Eastern nor Western... ”

Th'ilk reviewing Sir Charles Marston's La Bible a dit vrai. Version française de Luce Clarence.lf.114:

Il faudrait aussi, quand il s’agit des origines de l’humanité, se méfier de l’obsession du Caucase et de la Mésopotamie, qui, elle non plus, n’a rien de traditionnel, et qui est née uniquement d’interprétations formulées lorsque certaines choses n’étaient déjà plus comprises dans leur véritable sens.

"When it comes to the origins of humanity, we should also be wary of the obsession with the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, which, too, has nothing traditional about it, and which was born solely from interpretations. formulated when certain things were no longer understood in their true sense."

Eden is put at the North Pole by Guillaume Postel (1510 – 1581) Compendieum Cosmographicum (1559): « Le paradis se trouve sous le pôle Arctique », And again by William Fairfield Warren in his Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole (1885). Moreover, Thomas Burnet in The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681 -1690) links the fall of man or end of the Golden World to the first tilt in the Earth's axis which would indeed have provided the wherewithal for the four seasons we now know.

Cities of the Sun?

Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques, from a rteview of Noel De La Houssaye's Le Phoenix, poème symbolique:

“la vérité, en effet, est que ces diverses «Cités du Soleil» d’une époque relativement récente ne furent jamais que des images secondaires de la «Terre solaire» hyperboréenne, et qu’ainsi, par-delà toutes les formes dérivées qu’on connaît «historiquement», le symbolisme du Phénix se trouve directement rattaché à la Tradition primordiale elle-même” (lf.166)

“The truth, in fact, is that these various“ Cities of the Sun ”of relatively recent times were never more than secondary images of the hyperborean“ Solar Earth ”, and thus, beyond all the derivative forms that 'we know “historically”, the symbolism of the Phoenix is directly linked to the primordial Tradition itself ”

"Terre solaire" refers to Thule "a sole nomen habens" and thus to Hyperborea.

Ódáinsakr in Glæsisvellir

Scandinavia we learn from certain sögur of Ódáinsakr in Glæsisvellir, which truly answers to the Greeks Hyperborea, and these Glæsisvellir are said to be in the far north of Scandinavia in a mythic Jötunheimr or Risaland that is often located there:

Hervarar saga og Heiðreks (Saga Heiðreks konúngs ens vitra [H]) chapter I:

“Svá er sagt, at í fyrndinni var kallat Jötunheimar norðr í Finnmörk, en Ymisland fyri sunnan ok millim Hálogalands; þar bygðu þá risar víða, en sumir voru hálfrisar; var þá mikit sambland þjóðanna, þvíat risar fengu kvenna af Ymislandi.

Guðmundr hét konúngr í Jötunheimum; hann var blótmaðr mikill; bær hans hét á Grund, en héraðit á Glasisvöllum; hann var vitr ok ríkr; hann ok menn hans lifðu marga mannsaldra, ok því trúa menn, at í hans ríki sé Ódáins-akr, en hverr, er þar kemr, hverfr af sótt ok elli, ok má eigi deyja. ”

“It is said that in the days of old the northern part of Finnmark was called Jötunheimar, and that there was a country called Ymisland to the south between it and Halogaland. These lands were then the home of many giants and half-giants; for there was a great intermixture of races at that time, because the giants took wives from among the people of Ymisland.

There was a king in Jötunheimar called Guthmund. He was a mighty man among the heathen. He dwelt at a place called Grund in the region of Glasisvellir. He was wise and mighty. He and his men lived for many generations, and so heathen men believed that the fields of immortality lay in his realm; and whoever went there cast off sickness or old age and became immortal.” (awending Nora Kershaw)

Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns chapter 5:

“Goðmundr heiti ek. Ræð er þar fyrir, sem á Glæsisvöllum heitir. Þar þjónar til þat land, er Risaland heitir. Ek er konungsson, en mínir sveinar heitir annarr Fullsterkr, en annarr Allsterkr, ...”

"I call myself Goðmund. I rule over that which is called "Glaesir fields". They are subject to that land called Risaland. I am a king’s son, and my two swains are called Fullsterk and Allsterk.”

Fullsterkr and Allsterkr look like the twins to me.

(Saxo has the kingdom of "Guthmundus" “in ulteriorem Byarmiam”).

"Halagland insula"

Þórsteinns saga Vikingsson 1 has “ því landi, er norðr er af Noregi” “that land north of Norway” called Hálogaland where a king called Hálogi ruled with two his daughters “Eisa (glowing embers) and Eimyrja (embers)”. There are two jarls called Véseti and Vífill who run off with tese daughters and this is a kind of ver sacrum, as Véseti settles Borgundarhólmr and Vífill "Vífilsey".

“Véseti settist í ey þá eða hólm, er kallaðr er Borgundarhólmr. Hann var faðir Búa ok Sigurðar kápu. Vífill sigldi austr lengra ok settist í þá ey, er Vífilsey heitir.”

"Véseti settled in that island or "holm" called "Borgundarhólmr" (now Bornholm). He was the father of Búi and Sigurðr kápa. Vifill sailed further east and settled in that island that is called "Vífilsey" (Öland?)."

Véseti and Vífill are our twins again. The saga tells that Hálogi's wife was Glöd (Glǫð 'glad'), the daughter of Grím (Grímr) of Grímsgard (Grímsgarðr) in Jötunheim in the far north and her mother was Alvör (Alvǫr) the sister of King Álf the Old ('Álfr hinn gamli') of Álfheim. Or perhaps, the name of Hálogi's wife should be rendered instead as Glód (Glóð 'red-hot embers') if this Logi is indeed either identical or confused with Logi as a personification of fire.

The Passio Sancti Sigismundi regis, marks that the "Burgundofarones... hodie Burgundiones vocantur" were once a "gens de insula, quam mare Oceanum cingit, cuius vocabulum est Scanadavia, qui ex vocabulo quoque regionis Scanadavii nuncupati sunt" who left in the time of Tiberius (see [here]).

Adam of Bremen calls Halogaland an island.

Adam of Bremen in his Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis.Capitulum 37 writes:

Tercia est Halagland insula vicinior Nortmanniae , magnitudine ceteris non impar. Haec in estate circa solsticium per quatuordecim dies continuos solem videt super terram et in hieme similiter per totidem dies sole caret. Stupenda res et incognita barbaris, qui nesciunt, disparem longitudinem dierum contingere propter solis accessum et recessum. Nam propter rotunditatem orbis terrarum necesse est, ut solis circuitus accedens alibi diem exhibeat, alibi recedens noctem relinquat. Qui dum ascenderit ad aestivale solsticium, his qui in borea sunt dies prolongat noctesque adbreviat; descendens autem ad hiemale solsticium, simili ratione facit australibus. Hoc ignorantes pagani, terram illam vocant sanctam et beatam, quae tale miraculum praestet mortalibus. Itaque rex Danorum cum multis aliis contestatus est hoc ibi contingere, sicut in Suedia et in Norvegia et in ceteris quae ibi sunt insulis.

The third island is Helgeland, nearer to Norway, but in extent not unequal to the rest. That island sees the sun upon the land for fourteen days continuously at the solstice in summer and, similarly, it lacks the sun for the same number of days in the winter. To the barbarians, who do not know that the difference in the length of days is due the accession and recession of the sun, this is aastounding and mysterious. For on account of the rotundity of the earth, the sun in its course necessarily brings day as it approaches a place, and leaves night as it receeds from it. While the sun is approaching the summer solstice, the day is lengthened for those who live in the northern parts and the nights shortened; when it descends to the winter solstice, that is for the same reason the experience of southerners. Not knowing this, the pagans call that land holy and blessed which affords mortals such a wonder. The king of the Danes and many others have attested the occurrence of this phenomenon there, as in Sweden and in Norway and on the rest of the islands in those parts. (awending Francis J. Tschan).

Scholion 152:

Alii dicunt, Halagland esse partem Nordmanniae postremam, quod sit proxima Scritefingis, asperitate montium et frigoris inaccessibilis.

Others say Helgeland is part of farthest Norway, lying very near the Skritefingi, and inaccessible by reason of the rugged mountains and the cold.(awending Francis J. Tschan).

According to Skáldskaparmál chapter 55, Hálogaland or Hålogaland is named after one Hölgi:

55. Frá Hölga konungi.

"Svá er sagt, at konungr sá, er Hölgi er nefndr, er Hálogaland er við kennt, var faðir Þorgerðar Hölgabrúðar. Þau váru bæði blótuð, ok var haugr Hölga kastaðr, önnur fló af gulli eða silfri - þat var blótféit - en önnur fló af moldu ok grjóti. Svá kvað Skúli Þorsteinsson:

125.

Þá er ræfrvita Reifnis

rauð ek fyr Svölð til auðar,

herfylgins bar ek Hölga

haugþök saman baugum."

"It is said that the king called Hölgi, from whom Hálogaland is named, was the father of Thorgerdr Hölgabrúdr; sacrifice was made to both of them, and a cairn was raised over Hölgi: one layer of gold or silver (that was the sacrificial money), and another layer of mould and stones. Thus sang Skúli Thorsteinsson:

When I reddened Reifnir's Roof-Bane,

The ravening sword, for wealth's sake

At Svöldr, I heaped with gold rings

Warlike Hölgi's cairn-thatch." (awending Brodeur)

From the Old Norse adjectives helga, a weak forms of *heiligr (“happy, lucky”).

The alternative form Hǫlga stems from the Old Norse adjective hǫlga, a weak form of *heilugr.

Cognate to the male given names Helgi and Hǫlgi.

Helgi from Proto-Norse *hailaga- = 'holy'

Hölgi is the father of two daughters: Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr (Thorgerdr Holgabrudr) and Irpa. They appear together in Jómsvíkinga saga 34, Njáls saga 88, and Þorleifs þáttr jarlsskálds 7 (chap. 173 of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar). Beside Skáldskaparmál 55, Þorgerðr without Irpa is marked in Færeyinga saga 23, Harðar saga ok Hólmverja 19 and Ketils saga hœngs 5.

They help Haakon Sigurdsson (d. 995) at the Battle of Hjörungavágr against the Jómsvíkings:

"Nú eftir þetta fer jarl til skipa sinna og eggjar nú lið sitt allt að nýju - "og veit eg nú víst" segir hann, "að vér munum sigrast á þeim Jómsvíkingum, og gangið nú fram að betur, þvíað nú hefi eg heitið til sigurs oss á þær systur báðar, Þorgerði og Irpu, og munu þær eigi bregðast mér nú heldur en fyrr."..."
"After that the earl went back to his ships and encouraged his men anew ' and I know now for certain that we shall be victorious. Go forward more bravely in the knowledge that I have invoked the two sisters Þorgerðr and Irpa for our victory'." (awend. N. F. Blake)

It is worth marking here that before the fightlock, Haakon calls upon the sisters "facing north" ("horfir þó í norður"). In Njáls saga 88 Þorgerðr and Irpa seem to be worshipped in a temple with Þórr.

These are like Hyperoxe and Laodice (ὁ Ὑπερόχην τε καὶ Λαοδίκην·) which are given by Herodotus (Hist. 4.33.3) as the names of two Hyperborean maidens buried at Delphi. Their essential relationship to the Heavenly Twins may be seen in the fact that they have male versions of their names Hyperoxus and Laodocus (ὁ Ὑπέροχος καὶ ὁ Λαόδοκός) who are said to have helped the Greeks overcome the Gauls at Delphi (Paus. 10.23.2). They must also therefore be the same as the valkyrja-like "white-maidens" (λευκὰς κόρας) who it was foretold would help beat the Gauls (See Diod. Sic. Lib. book 22, ch.9§5) understood as Artemis and Athena! Here we should call to mind that Castor and Polyduces have two sisters born at the same time as they are, namely the famous Helen of Troy and the less well-known Clytemnestra. Whilst their wives, "Phoebe and Hilaira, daughters of Leucippus", are indeed their female "other halves", for these daughters of the white horse (> λευκός (leukós, “white”) +‎ ἵππος (híppos, “horse”)) answer to Castor and Polyduces who in Pindar's first Pythian Ode, line 66, are brought into close contact with the same symbol- λευκοπώλων Τυνδαριδᾶν, "to the sons of Tyndareus of the white horses". Hyginus in his Fabulæ moreover tells us that "Phœbe ... a priestess of Minerva, and Hilaira of Diana" thus assimilating them to these two goddesses.

The Black Hill

Ketils saga hœngs 5:

" Það var eina nótt, að hann vaknar við brak mikið í skóginum. Hann hljóp út og sá tröllkonu, og féll fax á herðar henni. Ketill mælti: "Hvert ætlar þú, fóstra?" Hún reigðist við honum og mælti: "Ég skal til tröllaþings. Þar kemur Skelkingur norðan úr Dumbshafi, konungur trölla, og Ófóti ór Ófótansfirði og Þorgerður Hörgatröll og aðrar stórvættir norðan úr landi. Dvel eigi mig, því að mér er ekki um þig, síðan þú kveittir hann Kaldrana." Og þá óð hún út á sjóinn og svo til hafs. Ekki skorti gandreiðir í eyjunni um nóttina, og varð Katli ekki mein að því, og fór hann heim við svo búið og sat nú um kyrrt nokkura hríð."
"Then it was one night that he woke from a great din in the woods. He ran out and saw a troll-wife/witch and her hair fell onto her shoulders. Ketil said: "What art thou intending, foster-mother?"
She looked toward him and said: "I am going to the "tröllaþing". Skelking is coming there, from the north of the Dumb Sea (the Arctic Ocean), the king of the trolls, and Ófóti from Ófótan's firth and Þorgerðr Horgatroll, and other great wights from the northern land. Hinder me not, for that is for me not for you, since you are the one who wounded Kaldrani."
And then she waded out into the sea and so to the deep ocean. It was nothing short of witch rides in the island that night, but Ketil was not harmed from that, and he went back home and thus lived and sat there quiet for some time."

Here the far north of Norway ( Finnmark) where Ódáinsakr and Glæsisvellir are said to be, has become the place that witches hold their gatherings and gandreiðir "gand-rides" take place - a gandr being either a "magic wand" or some "magical being" that witches' might "ride".

Above: marginalia showing flying "vaudoises" from a manuscript of Martin le France’s 'Le Champion des Dames' (The Champion of Women), dated circa 1440.

Now the Greeks speak of one Abaris who was meant to have come to them from Hyperborea and befriended Pythagoras who has the odd habit of flying about on a golden arrow, and I wouldn't be the first to see a link between this and the witches of our folklore who ride on broomsticks (but the older records have more latitude of objects enchanted for flying). Where do witches fly too? To their "sabbath" variously located, but in late Swedish trials (see A Relation of the strange Witchcraft Discovered in the Village Mohra in Swedeland appended to Sadducismus triumphatus ) we hear of a meeting on the Blockula (Blåkulla in modern Swedish) whose name means "blue or black hill (Blå from Old Norse blár means "blue" but also "black", and kulle from Old Norse kollr "hill"). It was however described as "a delicate large Meadow, whereof you can see no end". It is further identified as the island now called Blå Jungfrun ("Blue Maiden"), and lying in the Kalmar Strait, between Småland and the island of Öland. So a black hill that might be an island and that drew witches magically toward it like iron to a magnet ...

Above: Arctic continent on the Gerardus Mercator map of 1595.

Above: Detail of the above map showing the "North Pole" (Polus Arcticus) where Mercator believed there was a "rupes nigra et alitissima" "very high black rock" we could say "very high black rocky hill".

Our own ancestral traditions re-examined

Now as we have said, the English have long claimed to descend from Angles, Saxons and Jutes who came from "Old Saxony" and "Old Anglia" and Jutland in what is now northern Germany and Denmark. And their "mother tongue" in its oldest forms, the so-called Old English, bears witness to this. In the name of the runestave called Ing and the old verse about it, and in the byname of Ingwine for the Danes in Bēowulf they have some vague notions of the hero whom Tacitus (2) makes one of the three sons of Mannus. From Pliny we know that he was the forefather specifically of the Chauci Cimbri and Teutones who must be ancestral in some way to the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Thus fleshing out for us Tacitus' "proximi Oceano Ingaevones" "Ingaevones near the Ocean". It is worth bearing in mind that in the runestaverow, the rune ᛝ Ing is twinned with ᛚ Lagu "sea". Mannus seems to be remembered in Northern tradition, as Rydberg marked, under the name of Halfdan the Old, and thus we find a son named Yngvi is given to him (see Skáldskaparmál 80 ). The tradition that a number of Old English kingly stocks sprung from the god Wōden seems to be unique to the English in Britain (see [here]) and doesn't reflect the traditions of the mainland at all. Snorri borrows these for his Edda prologue (see [here]), and the Háleygjatal made by Eyvindr skáldaspillir for the Hlaðajarl Hákon Sigurðarson who died 995, no doubt reflects an English influence stemming from Hakon the Good being fostered in England. It was from an attempt to bring the English kingly pedigrees into line with mainland ideas that first Geat, then Scyld Scēfing⁠ were made into the great forefathers of the kings of Wessex:

Ipse Scef cum uno dromone aduectus est in insula Oceani, que dicitur Scani, armis circundatus, eratque ualde recens puer, et ab incolis illius terrae ignotus. Attamen ab eis suscipitur, et ut familiarem diligenti animo eum custodierunt, et post in regem eligunt; de cuius prosapia ordinem trahit Aðulf rex.

This Sceaf came with one ship to an island of the ocean named Scani, sheathed in arms, and he was a young boy, and unknown to the people of that land ; but he was received by them, and they guarded him as their own with much care, and afterwards chose him for their king. It is from him that king Ethelwulf derives his descent. (see[here])

The "insula Oceani, que dicitur Scani" is in Bēowulf "Scede‐landum in" (line 19). The same genealogy in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, though every extant copy has miswritten it, would seem to tells us about Sceaf that "se wæs ġeboren on þære earce Noes" "he was born in the ark of Noah".

A Danish connection is always understood. "Old Anglia" is the southernmost bit of Jutland lying to the north of the Eider, whilst Jutland is one of the three law districts of the kingdom of Denmark. Jordanes in his De Origine actibusque Getarum 3.23 has the "Dani" drive out the "Herulos" from their seats. The Danes can hardly be anything other than an offshoot of the Goths. The Goths thought they came from "Scandza insula quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina nationum" (Jord. 4.25) by which he clearly means the whole of what we now call Scandinavia mistakenly thought of as an island. Procopius in his History of the Wars calls the same quasi-island Thule, but as we have seen, the mythic Thule was rightly further north under the Pole. The Goths in Tacitus were marked by "rotunda scuta, breves gladii" "round shields, short swords" (44), and these short swords can hardly be anything other than the "seax" or "sax" that the Saxons were sometimes said to be named for (see Res gestae Saxonicae 1.6-7).

Widukindus Corbeius in his Res gestae Saxonicae 1.2 has this to say of the "origin of the Saxon people" ( De origine gentis Saxonice):

Et primum quidem de origine statuque gentis pauca expediam, solam pene famam sequens in hac parte, nimia vetustate omnem fere certitudinem obscurante. Nam super hac re varia opinio est, aliis arbitrantibus de Danis Northmannisque originem duxisse Saxones, aliis autem aestimantibus, ut ipse adolescentulus audivi quendam predicantem, de Graecis, quia ipsi dicerent Saxones reliquias fuisse Macedonici exercitus, qui secutus Magnum Alexandrum inmatura morte ipsius per totum orbem sit dispersus. Caeterum gentem antiquam et nobilem fuisse non ambigitur; de quibus et in contione Agrippae ad Iudaeos in Iosepho oratio contexitur et Lucani poetae sententia probatur.

First, I will present a little bit of information about the origin and status of the people. In this section, I am relying solely on tradition because the passage of so much time has clouded any certainty. There is a great deal of disagreement about this matter. Some think that the Saxons had their origins among the Danes and Northmen. Others believe, as I heard someone saying when I was a youth, the Saxons descended from the Greeks. They say the Saxons were survivors of the Macedonian army that followed Alexander the Great, and was dispersed all over the world following his premature death. There is no doubt this is an old and noble people.

[Deeds of the Saxons by Widukind of Corvey, Bernard S. Bachrach, David S. Bachrach]

But right afterwards:

Pro certo autem novimus Saxones his regionibus navibus advectos et loco primum applicuisse qui usque hodie nuncupatur Hadolaun.

We know for certain that the Saxons came to this region by ship. They first arrived at a place that is still called Hadeln up to the present day.

navibus is literally "in ships". We must presume from Scandinavia, although as John Morris thinks notions of a back-migration from Britain following the victories of Ambrosius or Arthur might have become mixed up with things here. But more to the point here is that the tale Widukindus then tells of the Saxons overcoming the Thurings (see chapitles 3 to 7) and winning the land afterwards named for them is a match for the tale we find in Nennius' Historia Brittonum and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae about the Saxons overcoming the Britons. What Widukindus' tale is missing is the brothers Hengest and Horsa leading the new colony. But the two tales are so alike that we can see that we are dealing with a genuine folk tradition remembered by both halves of the Saxon people on either side of the North Sea. However, what we really have here is a tale of primordial ancestors and an original migration from an original Northern home. The idea that Ing had first come "over the wave" which we find in the Old English rune-poem (see [here]) seems to show that muddling of first men/forefathers and the Heavenly Twins that we have so often marked already in earlier posts. He seems hard to tell asunder from Scyld Scēfing⁠ as the latter is described in Bēowulf, and that they are the same might outfold why 'frēan Ingwina' (1319) can be a synonym for 'frēan Scyldinga' (291, 500, 166)/'frēan Scildinga' (351). Furthermore, as Grimm and others have marked hithertofore sbout Scyld, he is more or less echoed in later traditions of the swan-knight who also turns up in a boat to become the forefather of a number of Dutch and German noble families. The swan that pulls his boat being his own brother in swan-shape. But with this swan-knight however, the relationship to the Heavenly Twins has resurfaced, for as well as horses they were linked to swans, and thus we find Castor and Polyduces are said to have been begotten upon their mother by Zeus in swan shape.

The early history of the Lombards (see [here]) which has them come from the "insula qui dicitur Scadanan/Scadan" seemingly copies the history of the Goths who were their predecessors in Italy. As far as we know their earliest known home is in Bardengau on the Lüneburg Heath against the Elbe whence they are called in Bēowulf, Heaðobeardan, and it was here that Ingeld and Frōda were kings, who became linked to the Danes through a wedding whose unhappy outcome was to make it live long in Northern folk-memory. In Wīdsīð they are already understood as Danes which they are also for Saxo Grammaticus later. Freculphus will copy this Gothic origin myth again for his Franks, though they liked to say they were exiles from Troy. Freculphus Episcopus Lexovensis, Chronica, 2, 17:

“Item ut alii volunt Phrygas et Aeneas germani fuerunt, Aeneas in Latio et Phrygas in Phrygia regnaverunt. Post Aeneam vero Ascanius, derelicto novercae suae Laviniae regno, Albam longam condidit, et Sylvium posthumum fratrem suum, Aeneae ex Lavinia filium, cum summa pietate educavit. Ascanius etiam Julium filium procreavit, a quo familia Juliorum orta est, sed propter aetatem parvuli, quia necdum idoneus erat cives ejus regere, Sylvium posthumum fratrem suum regni reliquit haeredem. De Phryga namque progenies progressa est, quae per multas regiones vagando cum uxoribus et liberis, eligentes regem ex se Francionem nomine, ex quo Franci vocantur, eo quod fortissimus ipse Francio in bello fuisse fertur. Et dum gentibus cum plurimis pugnasset, in Europam iter suum dirigens inter Rhenum et Danubium consedit. Ibique mortuo Francione, praelia multa gesserunt: quibus attriti parva ex ipsis manus remansit. Hinc duces ex se constituerunt, attamen iugum alterius semper negantes ferre. Haec quidem ita se habere de origine Francorum opinantur. Alii vero affirmant eos de Scanza insula, quae vagina gentium est, exordium habuisse, de qua Gothi et caeterae nationes Theotiscae exierunt: quod et idioma linguae eorum testatur. Est enim in eadem insula regio, quae, ut ferunt, adhuc Francia nuncupatur. ”

"Others say that Phrygas and Aeneas were brothers, and that Aeneas came to reign in Latium while Phrygas ruled in Phrygia. After Aeneas, Ascanius having abandoned the kingdom of Lavinia, his mother-in-law, built Alba Longa. It is added that Ascanius tenderly raised his brother Silvius Posthumus, whom Aeneas had had from Lavinia. This same Ascanius had a son named Julius, from whom came the Julian family; but as this child was too young, and his age rendered him incapable of governing the citizens, Ascanius left his brother Silvius Posthumus heir to his crown. As for Phrygas, his posterity wandered in a large number of countries, where they travelled with their wives and children. They chose from among themselves a king named Francio; and the motive of this election was the courage which Francio had shown in war: he fought with several nations; and directing his way to Europe, he fixed himself between the Rhine and the Danube. It was there that Francio died, after which the Franks engaged in a large number of battles by which their population was so diminished, that they formed only a small nation. They chose themselves kings in this land; but they still refused to submit to a foreign yoke. This is the opinion of a few authors on the origin of the Franks. Others claim that they came from the island of Scanza, which is the source of the nations, and from which came the Goths and other "Theotiscae" peoples: as attested by the idiom that they talk. In fact, there is still a region on this island called France."

Phrygas and Aeneas are being made into a kind of Heavenly Twins here as the first finders of kingdoms.

The Lombards however have improved on the tale of origins as we have it in Jordanes. Jordanes speaks only of them being led by "rege suo nomine Berig Gothi" "a king of the Goths named Berig" (4.5), also called "Berich" (17.94). But the Lombards have the island of "Scadanan/Scade" ruled by Gambara and her sons Ybor and Agio ("ipsi cum matre sua nomine Gambara principatum tenebant super Winniles"). And it is under these same three that they leave to look for a new home. These are however the Sun goddess and the Heavenly Twins who are the old gods of .Hyperborea, the airyanəm vaēǰō of the Parsees before it was fordone by winter. Thus Saxo Grammaticus in writing of the same forth faring of folk says it was at a time when a king Snio (=Snow) ruled in Denmark. The Heavenly Twins led the first migration endlessly copied afterwards and remembered as our Hengest and Horsa.

Farewell.

Truefastness

Saturday, 22 August 2020

The Heavenly Twins at the Middle of the World 1 Mountains, Arks, Islands & Paradises