Wōden/Óðin

Wōden/Óðin

I won't however say again here what I have already said about ure lauerd  [here], but it is still worth reminding ourselves that:

i) Wōden is acknowledged of old to be the same as the Northern Óðinnr;
ii) that Hyndluljóð 2-3 from the Flateyjarbók is a good summing up of the god as understood in the North;
iii) we can set to this the first chapitles of Ynglinga saga to deepen our knowledge and to believe he was the first finder and teacher of the arts (íþróttir) to our forefathers: of which the military arts (herskapr), pœtry (skáldskapr), and magic/runes (galdrar/rúnar) were long minned; and that he was the first giver of our laws.

 "fjölkunnigr maðr"

To write of Wōden is no little thing.  He is maybe the hardest of all the gods to understand for many things may be seen to meet in him and therein take on a new and blended shape all of their own.    To begin at the deep end then, with the well-known "Wooing of Rinda" from book three of Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum we will see that Wōden is therein:

i) an unnamed "magister militum" "captain of the soldiers" (3.4.1);
ii) "Roster" "skilled in smithcraft" ("Rosterum ... fabriliumque rerum officio" - 3.4.2);
iii) an unnamed man  "professing the completest skill in soldiership" ("perfectissimam rei militaris industriam professus " - 3.4.4) in which he  "used to ride proudly up and down among the briskest of them" ("inter promptissimos insolentius obequitare solebat" 3.4.4);
iv) and "a physician" ("medicus" 3.4.7, see also "arte medicam testabatur" - 3.4.5)  who "assuming the garb of a maiden" ("puellari veste sumpta" -3.4.5) called himself "Wecha" ("Wecham" - 3.4.5)

Yet all these may be seen to overlie the underlying reality of the god which is the "crafty old man" "subdolus senex" (3.4.3, see also 3.4.4 and 3.4.7), "skilled in magic" ("praestigiarum" 3.4.4) and a "viator indefessus" "indefatigabe journeyer" (3.4.5).

In the two pœms (Grímnismál and Vafþrúðnismál) that can be said to be wholly about Wōden from the eleven that deal with mythology in the Codex Regius  (GKS 2365 4º), the god  is first and foremostly shown to be a "fjölkunnigr maðr", which is as much to say as a "wise man" or "wizard", who wanders in hidlock among both ettins and men under many names. Thus Grímnismál 48:

  einu nafni|    hétumk aldregi,
    síz ek með folkum fór.

A single name | have I never had
Since first among men I fared.

[awend. Bellows].  

And this is broadly in line with what we find when he pops up in the fornaldarsögur - the sagas of old time - such as Gautreks saga, Völsunga saga and Örvar-Odds saga.

siȝe

This said, our forefathers would nevertheless seem to have worshipped  this  Wōden first and foremostly for what they called siȝe or sigor, the Northern sigr, that is, for victory.  Thus Master Adam of Bremen writeth in his Descriptio insularum aquilonis (A description of the northern ilands) put as a fourth book to his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum  about 1000:

"Alter Wodan, id est furor, bella gerit, hominique ministrat virtutem contra inimicos.  ...si bellum, Wodani [lybabtur],..."

"The second, Wōden that is fury, makes wars, and bestows on man manliness against foes.  ... if war, [they libate] Wōden ..."

And our Ealdorman Æthelweard in his Chronicle:

“Hi [Hengest and Horsa] nepotes fuerunt Uuoddan regis barbarorum, quem post infanda dignitate ut deum honorantes, sacrificium obtulerunt pagani, victoriae causa sive virtutis.”

“They [Hengest and Horsa] were the kinsmen of ‘Uuoddan’ [=Wōden] king of the barbarians, whom after [his death], the pagans honouring as a god with respect not fit to be mentioned, gave sacrifice, for the sake of victory or of manliness.”

Whilst Hyndluljóð 3 hath:

 "Gefr hann [Wōden] sigr sumum, ...".
"Giveth he victory to some...".

However, it would seem that he was not awfully "hands on", when it came to fighting as can be seen from Örvar-Odds saga 20 where it is said that:

“ok sjaldan var Rauðgrani þá við staddr, er nokkurar mannraunir váru í, en inn ráðugasti var hann, þá er þess þurfti við, ok latti sjaldan stórvirkja.”

“Red-beard was seldom around when there was any danger, but he was a great man for advice [ráðugasti] whenever it was needed, and rarely dissuaded them for performing great deeds.”

[awend Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards].

Rauðgrani "Red-beard", or rather "Red-whiskers", is here Wōden/Óðin.  So that Wōden's help towards siȝe was likely to be through rede, ráð, - whence ráðugr and its superlative ráðugasti - that is through advice and planning.  In Saxo's Gesta Danorum book 7 we have a good forebisening of such rede (7.10.6):

" [2] Cuius eventum Haraldo oraculis explorare cupienti senex praecipuae magnitudinis, sed orbus oculo, obvius exstitit, qui, hispido etiam amiculo circumactus, Othynum se dici bellorumque usu callere testatus utilissimum ei centuriandi in acie exercitus documentum porrexit."

" And when Harald wished to inquire of oracles how this war would end, an old man of great height, but lacking one eye, and clad also in a hairy mantle, appeared before him, and declared that he was called Odin, and was versed in the practice of warfare; and he gave him the most useful instruction how to divide up his army in the field. "

[awend. Oliver Elton].

And what follows in Saxo's book is however, no more than a practical application of geometry and arithmetic.  Two of the old free-crafts (artes liberales), in Old English called Rímcræft (arithmetic) and Eorþȝemet-cræft (geometry), that Wōden's southern evenling, namely Mercurius "Mercury" or Hermes ( Ἑρμῆς),  was the first finder of (see Plato Phædrus 274c-d).

 If Wōden builds up some one of mankind so that they become an hæleþ, an hero,  it is to some hidden end of his own, thus in Saxo's Gesta Danorum Book 6 we read (6.5.6):

"Volens quondam Othinus Wicarum funesto interire supplicio, cum id aperte exsequi nollet, Starcatherum, inusitata prius granditate conspicuum, non solum animi fortitudine, sed etiam condendorum carminum peritia illustravit, quo promptiore eius opera ad peragendum regis exitium uteretur."

"Odin once wished to slay Wikar by a grievous death; but, loth to do the deed openly, he graced Starkad, who was already remarkable for his extraordinary size, not only with bravery, but also with skill in the composing of spells, that he might the more readily use his services to accomplish the destruction of the king."

[awend. Oliver Elton].

 And under the heading of rede, ráð, we must also put those things that arise from Wōden's working of  galdrar, that is, magic spells and such like, and of which the going wōd, or mad (from which he takes his name (the Northern berserksgangr)), is only one outcome.  Indeed, Wōden, the "lord of wōd",  in the same way as dryhten is from dryht,  þēoden from þēod, (and scabinus, Dutch schepen from scheppen?), must be a god who can give madness, but also a god who can take it away -

hu fela wode he ȝebrohte on ȝewitte,

how many mad had he brought to their wits, ... .

And we even see this with his "Wooing of Rinda" in Saxo's work for he therein  makes Rinda "like unto one in frenzy" (3.4.4 "lymphanti similem") through magic and then "heals" her (see 3.4.6 to 7). In the end moreover, as a wise god, it may well be that his might to take wōd-nes away is more to be thought of and wished for.  But howsoever thought of, Wōden himself must abide on a higher step than all those who are themselves wōd.

Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ

 That Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ (see Tacitus Annals Bk.12, chap.57), the one-eyed and the one-handed gods make an ancient matching pair cannot be gainsaid.  In the bestowing of siȝe or sigor, the Northern sigr,  these two overlap.   Thus Snorri tells us of Týr:
 
"... ok hann ræðr mjök sigri í orrostum...."
"... and he has much authority over victory in battle;...".

It is  however likely that Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ was  the more "hands on" god when it came to fighting.  Thus when our forefathers wanted a god to even with the Romans' Mars, they picked, notwithstanding what Adam of Bremen and others wrote above, Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ, not Wōden.  Thus the "day of Mars" "dies Martis" (see French Mardi) is our Tīwes- or Tīȝes- dæȝ, now Tuesday, "Tīw's day"; the Northern Týsdagr, now Tisdag, "day of Týr".  And when they wanted a god to even with Mercurius they picked Óðin/Wōden, thus the "day of Mercurius" "dies Mercurii" (see French Mercredi) is our Wōdnesdæȝ, now Wednesday, "Wōden's day"; the Northern Óðinsdagr, now Onsdag "Óðin's day".  When they did this however, they undoubtedly had in mind  - and this is in itself interesting - the older kind of bearded Mercurius mostly found among the Greeks (who knew him as Hermes), and not the young beardless athlete that everyone now links to the name of Mercurius today.

 

 

Above: From L. R. Farnell The Cults of the Greek States (1909), vol. V, lf.43.

"Another interesting type of the Arcadian god of music is given us by a fifth-century vase, which shows us the bearded Hermes running over the mountains with the lyre in his hands (Pl. VIII) : we need see no mythic allusion in this, but only the genial conception of the god rejoicing in his new-found treasure."

  

 

However ... 

However, Arnobius  Adversus Gentes or Adversus Nationes, Book III ( awent by Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell - Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. VI), Chapter XXIII, shows us that the outcome of "luctationes", which can mean open fights (Bryce/Campbell awend it "combats"), as well as wrestlings, were at times bestowed upon Mercurius by the Romans:

 “… "Curat Mercurius ceromas, pugillatibus et luctationibus praeest": - et cur invictos omnes non perficit quibus praeest, cur unius in officio praesidatus hos victoriae compotes, alios vero perpetitur igominiosa infirmitate rideri?”

“Mercury is occupied with combats, and presides over boxing and wrestling matches; and why does he not make all invincible who are in his charge? why, when appointed to one office, does he enable some to win the victory, while he suffers others to be ridiculed for their disgraceful weakness?” 

And among the Greeks we see something akin to this fight-yearning Mercurius with them, thus L. R. Farnell The Cults of the Greek States (1909), vol. V,  lf.22:

“Arising from the simple idea of the way-god, other conceptions came to attach to him. He becomes the ‘Leader of Men’ Ἀγήτωρ at Megalopolis - a title which Zeus and Apollo enjoyed in Argolis and Laconia and Ἡγεμόνιος in Athens. The former title attached to those other gods possessed a military significance; and though Hermes Ἀγήτωρ at Megalopolis might have been vaguely interpreted as the God who ‘leads us on our journey’, or perhaps in the same sense as Hermes ψυχοπομπός , the Escorter of Souls, yet at Athens Ἡγεμόνιος must have once meant ‘the Leader of the host’ to war: for two Attic inscriptions, one of the period of the Lycurgean administration, prove that it was the Strategi who sacrificed to the god under this title. ”

The Main Sheading to be made between Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ

When it comes to fighting, we should always think that Mercurius/Hermes, and thus our Óðin/Wōden, is the more thoughtful god, whilst Mars/Ares, and thus our Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ, is the more physical god.

Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ would therefore make folk win by strength and maybe by the rightness of their side.  Óðin/Wōden would make folk win by wisdom, that is, by outwitting their foes, and maybe for Óðin/Wōden the rightness of the winner was not so thoroughly looked into.  Óðin/Wōden  could also bestow:   a better "luck"  on the day; better communications;  better bodily skill (understood as being as much down to nature as  to nurture);  a greater swiftness and  ability to adapt to changed conditions; better weapons and the skill to wield them; better group cohesion;  a better planning borne of a greater intelligence in all things; and last, but by no means least, a greater share of heaven-sent inspiration at need.

One eye and one hand?

Tīw-Týr- Tīȝ can be told asunder from Wōden-Óðinnr by their offerings of their own hands and eyes. Tīw is called by the Northerners (see Skáldskaparmál 16) “einhenda ás ” “god of the one-hand”. And the tale of how Tīw lost one hand is in Gylfaginning 25 and 34, and it is more or less the only myth we have about him. Loki has three children by the ettin-wife Angrboða “Fenrisúlf” “Jörmungandr, þat er Miðgarðsormr” and “Hel”. All of which it was foretold would bring scathe to the gods. Alföðr had Jörmungandr cast in the deep sea, Hel he cast into Niflheimr, but “Fenrisúlf” still abided to be a thorn in their side but it was soon seen that they had to bind him. Having broke free of two fetters already the wolf had grown great indeed by the time the third fetter was made (“the third times the charm”) that would hold him. But the wolf would not allow himself to have the fetter put on him a third time unless one of the gods would put his own hand in his mouth as a wed veði (=a pledge, and whence we have the wed of wedding “pledging”, and wedlock “sacrificial offering (lock, →O.E. lac) at the making of a pledge” and your “wedded wife” is a wife you have made a pledge to).

“fyrr en þeir lögðu honum at veði hönd Týs í munn hans”
“until they laid Týr's hand into his mouth as a pledge”

“þá leggi einn hverr yðarr hönd sína í munn mér at veði, at þetta sé falslaust gert."

“let some one of you lay his hand in my mouth, for a pledge that this is done in good faith”.

Now only Tīw was willing to do this, holding out his right hand (“hönd sína hægri” “his stronger hand”) and knowing all the while that he would lose it. Thus Tīw gives up his hand, not for wisdom or anything like that, but only for the greater good of all the gods and what goes with that, namely the good of elves and of men. Which good we all still brook, or, as is more often found, misbrook, today, and will go on to do until the wolf breaks free.

Now Wōden’s eye is something else. Þjóðólfr inn hvinverski (see Skáldskaparmál 9) calls Wōden “eineygja Friggjar faðmbyggvi” “one eyed bosom-dweller of Frigg”. And the tale is alluded to in Gylfaginning 15:

“En undir þeiri rót, er til hrímþursa horfir, þar er Mímisbrunnr, er spekð ok mannvit er í fólgit, ok heitir sá Mímir, er á brunninn. Hann er fullr af vísendum, fyrir því at hann drekkr ór brunninum af horninu Gjallarhorni. Þar kom Alföðr ok beiddist eins drykkjar af brunninum, en hann fekk eigi, fyrr en hann lagði auga sitt at veði. Svá segir í Völuspá:

21.

Allt veit ek, Óðinn,

hvar þú auga falt,

í þeim inum mæra

Mímisbrunni.

Drekkr mjöð Mímir

morgin hverjan

af veði Valföðrs.

Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?”

“But under that root which turns toward the Rime-Giants is Mímir's Well, wherein wisdom and understanding are stored; and he is called Mímir, who keeps the well. He is full of ancient lore, since he drinks of the well from the Gjallar-Horn. Thither came Allfather and craved one drink of the well; but he got it not until he had laid his eye in pledge. So says Völuspá:

All know I, Odin, | where the eye thou hiddest,

In the wide-renowned | well of Mímir;

Mímir drinks mead | every morning

From Valfather's wage. | Wit ye yet, or what?”

So although another wed veði, this one is not openly for any greater good, but at first sight seemingly only for Wōden’s own good, a drink from Mimir's well, to further his own gathering of wisdom. Whilst Tīw’s hand-offering is truly a kingly and knightly thing, Wōden’s eye-offering is that of a wizard.

Before going any further I should say here that unlike the tale about Tīw which it seems was common knowledge even in Snorri’s time, Snorri is having to put this one about Wōden together from the odd bits he finds in the old pœms. That Mímir's Well is under Yggdrasill is moot (only the well of Wyrd is witnessed by Völuspá) as also that it is among the ettins. But Völuspá 46 would make Mímir an ettin (also Grímnismál 50, Þórsdrapa). Yet the whole of the above tale however is flatly overthrown by what Snorri writes in Ynglinga saga 4 (and also the line “mælir Óðinn |við Míms höfuð” from Völuspá 46), where Mímir is a god and, having been killed by the Vanir, and his head sent back, Wōden smears it with worts and says a charm over it so that it spoke to him. Gjallar-Horn has crept in here from a willful misunderstanding of Völuspá 27.  

In the German pœtic lore which is the true background to all this we find that “Mime der alte” (Biterolf und Dietleib line 129) was a master smith who taught “Wielant” - our Wayland the Smith - and whilst with Mime, Wielant made the sword “Mimminc” which becomes the sword of “Witege” Wielant’s son. In Þiðrekssaga af Bern almost wholly stemming from now lost Low German tales, Mime is also the foster father of what most folk now know as "Siegfried". That is, the same rôle that Reginn has in the Northerners’ Völsungasaga. Needless to say, Saxo’s “Mimingus” would seem to have formenged the sword’s name with the man it was named after and wildly brought it into his Balder tale without much forethought. 

Now most folk would leave things with this, but I think I know where  “Mime” is truly from.  In Cicero's De Natura Deorum book 3, ch. 22 where the talk turns to how many Vulcans there are "Volcani item complures:..." he goes on:

"... quartus Memalio natus, qui tenuit insulas propter  Siciliam quae Volcaniae nominabantur."

"... the fourth is the son of Memalius, who held the islands hard by Sicily which  were once called the Volcaniae."

So is  “Mime” then at root only for "Memalius", who, as the father of Vulcan is likely to have been a smith-god himself?  And I can't help thinking Memalius also has something to do with the smith Mamurius whom Numa got to make copies of the shield that fell from the sky and was hymned by the Salii.

Wōden’s eye-offering would seem to be match to what was once done in Lithuania. Marija Gimbutas The Lithuanian God Velnias in Myth in Indo-European Antiquity (1974) outset by Gerald James Larson, C. Scott Littleton, Jaan Puhvel lf.89:

 “Velinas's one eye is magic, like the Germanic Odin's (who lost his eye as payment for a drink from the holy spring). From a description of Lithuanian paganism in 1595 by Henneberger we learn that there was a holy spring Golbe near Isrutis (Insterburg) in Lithuania Minor, to which men came “to become one-eyed,” that is, to sacrifice one eye.  It was a great honour to be one-eyed, and some one-eyed old men were still living in Henneberger's time.5 "Velinas's water" exists in the legends of the twentieth century; one can become clairvoyant if one moistens one eye with this water. Clairvoyance in legends is associated with Velinas's participation in dance parties in beautiful palaces, which after a cock's crow become swamps. Velinas constantly mingles with village musicians, or he himself is a musician. The motif of music, dance, and clairvoyance has good analogies in other Indo- European traditions. In the Russian Igor’ Tale "the seer Boian," performer of gusli, musician, and prophetic poet, was ‘grandson of Veles’ (Velesovŭ vnukŭ); the Old Russian Veles may be a deity cognate in name and kind with Velinas. 6”

5 K. Henneberger, Erclerung der Preussischen grössern Landtaffel oder Mappen , (2d ed. Königsberg, 1595) p.527.  
6 Cf. R. Jakobson, "The Slavic God Veles and His Indo-European Cognates,” in Studi Linguistici in onore di Vittore Pisani (Brescia, 1969), pp. 579-599.


And what truly is a "wizard"?  Éliphas Lévi's Dogme et rituel, La clef des grands mystères ("Dogma and ritual, The Key to the Great Mysteries") - the 1896 awending by A. E. Waite (as Transcendental Magic) lvs. 29 to 30:

 " Before advancing further let us tersely define magic.  Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of nature which has been transmitted to us from the magi. By means of this science the adept becomes invested with a species of relative omnipotence and can operate superhumanly— that is, after a manner which transcends the normal possibility of men. Thereby many celebrated hierophants, such as Mercurius Trismegistus, Osiris, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and others whom it might be dangerous or unwise to name, came after their death to be adored and invoked as gods. Thereby others also, according to that ebb-and-flow of opinion which is responsible for the caprices of success, became emissaries of infernus or suspected adventurers, like the emperor Julian, Apuleius, the enchanter Merlin, and that arch-sorcerer, as he was termed in his day, the illustrious and unfortunate Comehus Agrippa.

To attain the sanctum regnum, in other words, the knowledge and power of the magi, there are four indispensable conditions—an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which nothing can break, and a discretion which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. TO KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO KEEP SILENCE [Scire. Audere. Velle. Tacere.]— such are the four words of the magus,  ...".

In Georges Dumézil's Gods of the Ancient Northmen (1973) Introduction, Part II, by Udo Stutynski lf. Xli I mark this odd footnote:

“Ward, Divine Twins, p. 101 n. 11 for a possible parallel in the epic Waltharius where Hagen loses an eye, Walther his right arm, and Gunther loses a leg. Philippson, "Phanomenologie," p. 191 n. 21 draws a facetious parallel to two figures from German history who have found a place in literature: the one-eyed poet Oswald von Wolkenstein and the onearmed rebel Gottfried (Götz) von Berlichingen.”

Philippson has never heard of avatārāḥ (अवताराः) it seems.  Wolkenstein and Berlichingen=Wōden and Tīw – Yes!

And now for some more keener insight.  Manilius Astronomica Book 2 (awend. G. P. Goold):

Quod si sollerti circumspicis omnia cura,

fraudata invenies amissis sidera membris.

Scorpios in Libra consumit bracchia, Taurus

succidit incurvo claudus pede, lumina Cancro

desunt, Centauro superest et quaeritur unum. 260

Now if you examine all the signs with keen attention,

you will find some bereft of limbs which are lost.

The Scorpion expends its arms on the Scales, the Bull

sinks lame with leg doubled under it, the Crab lacks eyes,

whilst of the Centaur’s one survives and one is missing.

Now it is worthwhile to look at what gods rule these signs.

“… Taurum Cytherea tuetur, 439

… Cyllenie, Cancrum,

…

pugnax Mavorti Scorpios haeret; 444

venantem Diana virum, sed partis equinae, 443

… fovet … “

“… the “Lady of Cythera” (=Aphrodite, Venus) wards the Bull,

… the Lord of (Mount) Cyllene” (=Hermes, Mercurius) the Crab,

…

the fight-loving Scorpion cleaves to Mavors (the Old Latin name for Mars, “Mars” is a shortening of this);

Diana helps the hunting man, yet also of a horsey part ...”.

Thus all your lame gods and heroes betoken the Bull, Taurus, which is not a sign of Venus herself but her “husband” (thus in myth lame Hephaestus/Vulcanus is said to be her husband, and at Memphis Ptah, the Hephaestus of Egypt, has a Bull hallowed to him). Thus Höðr is shown blind. For if Balder is the sun and is born at the winter solstice like other sun gods, and sight is to be linked to light, it makes sense his rival is born at the summer solstice at the beginning of the waning of the year. Whilst still babes they are thus shown weak as the witherward might to them is then at its greatest. Thus Höðr (the dark one) is born when light is at its greatest and Balder (the light one) is born when darkness is at its greatest. With Hagen the killer of Siegfried however, we find he is only one eyed, so that one eye might stand in myth for blind.   Tīw is linked to Mars, thus, as we have said dies Martis “day of Mars” is Tīw’s day, now Tuesday, and Mars’ sign among the twelve is the scorpion which is lacking an arm, thus Tīw is said to lack a hand. And one eyed Sagittarius is here hallowed to Diana, but again, this is not a token of Diana herself, but of her help-mate who, as she does not have a husband, must be her brother: Apollo the bowman. And this kind of "wild Apollo" is our own Wōden as the wild huntsman. Thus everywhere in Germany “fraw holt” or “fraw Percht” shares in leading the wild hunt and “das wütende heer” as much as Wōden. And thus the Northmen have the Diana-like Skaði leave Njörðr to take up with Óðin, and by whom she had a son Sæming. Now Emmeline Plunket in Ancient Calendars and Constellations (1903) lvs. 155 to 159 would link Sagittarius with Rudra father of the Maruts, the later Shiva, and indeed Shiva with the moon on his forehead and loving the mountains has something of Diana about him.  Links to the dead, ghosts and crossroads fit with Diana in her “other I” as Hecate who is maybe the same as Rodasi who is Rudra's wife and "other I". "asuro maho divas" "the Asura of mighty heaven:" (RV. 2.1.6) is Rudra.

  Óðin/Wōden and Dyaus ?

When Dyaus is spoken of, Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ is often brought in straightaway as if they were one and the same.  But Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ bears a name going back to an earlier *Tīwaz, and this from the Proto-Indo-European *deywós (“god”). Thus Wiktionary under *deywós:

" Vriddhi derivative of the root *dyew- (“sky, heaven”); *dyew- > *diw- (zero-grade) > *deyw- (full grade vowel inserted in the wrong position)."

Whilst Dyaus  (Dyáuḥ) on the other hand goes back to a *dyḗws, which is not fully the same as *deywós.  Both Ζεῦ πάτερ and Iuppiter are also from *dyḗws.  So these two southern gods are indeed for Dyaus, but whilst *dyḗws can be seen to have a marked kinship to  *deywós, the two words are not fully the same.  You can thus go two ways here.  You can either think that Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ never  was the same as Dyaus and thus our forefathers rightly understood him as Mars not Iuppiter: or, you can think that although not fully the same they are nevertheless near enough for the gods who bear these names to be thought of as being one and the same to begin with.  But if you do  you have to go a long way about to outfold why he ends up being thought of as Mars, and why Óðin/Wōden gets the high seat. 

 If we take the latter way as the more likely then we might begin thus. In making Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ "son Óðins" (Skáldskaparmál 16. Týskenningar.) Snorri is overlooking, rightly or wrongly, Hymiskviða 5 where Týr acknowledges that he is the son of  Hymir, an ettin!  But Hymiskviða is an odd tale altogether, and when Snorri himself tells more or less the same tale in Gylfaginning 48 Þórr is alone "sem ungr drengr" "as a young lad" (and as in our tales of Jack the Giant-killer), and the "hverr" or "ketil" is also wholly forgotten.  It is now Þór's fishing that the whole tale is about.  An one-handed Týr (see Gylfag. 25, Skáldskap. 16.) moreover, wouldn't work too well in the plot as it is laid out in Hymiskviða.  But if we say the Týr of Hymiskviða is a Týr before he loses a hand to Fenrisúlfr this would have to be while he was looking after the same (see Gylfaginning 34),  but after  Alföðr had cast the wolf's brother, the Miðgarðsormr, into the sea for Þórr to get tangled up with when he goes fishing with Hymir.   Which is a tight time frame.

 I would say that Týr and Þórr,  the "hugfulla tvá" "fearless twain" of Hymiskviða 9, when working together like this, can be thought to have something of the feel of the most often met with kind of "Heavenly Twins" about them.  And as we shall see, this muddling up of what we might think of as higher gods for the "Heavenly Twins" is something of a theme that runs through many myths.  Or is it that our understanding of the "Heavenly Twins" as some  kind of lowly helpers of the greater gods is a badly mistaken one?   But how can fathers become their sons, and sons become their fathers you might well ask?  This is indeed a hard thing to grasp I will freely acknowledge, but not altogether an unheard of one (John 10:30).  The best forebisening that springs to mind here that might help is that of the worship of Zeus Chrysaoreus (Ζεύς Χρυσαορεύς) from Stratonice in Caria (see Strabo, Geography 14. 2. 25).   Chrysaoreus means "of the golden sword", by which name the god's thunder-weapon is likely to be meant.  But Chrysaor (Χρυσάωρ) "Golden Sword" is the name of an hero (see Hesiod Theogony lines 280 to 286), the twin brother of Pegasus, and both are truly to be understood as "Heavenly Twins" albeit with one still in horse shape, though Hesiod indeed gave them a background myth that is more fitting of anti-heroes than heroes.   Yet does not what they truly are still shine through in his words nevertheless (awend. H. G. Evelyn-White):

τῆς δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ Περσεὺς κεφαλὴν ἀπεδειροτόμησεν,
ἔκθορε Χρυσαωρ τε μέγας καὶ Πήγασος ἵππος.
τῷ μὲν ἐπώνυμον ἦεν, ὅτ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ περὶ πηγὰς
γένθ᾽, ὃ δ᾽ ἄορ χρύσειον ἔχων μετὰ χερσὶ φίλῃσιν.
χὠ μὲν ἀποπτάμενος προλιπὼν χθόνα, μητέρα μήλων,
285 ἵκετ᾽ ἐς ἀθανάτους: Ζηνὸς δ᾽ ἐν δώμασι ναίει
βροντήν τε στεροπήν τε φέρων Διὶ μητιόεντι.

And when Perseus cut off her head,
 there sprang forth great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus
who is so called because he was born near the springs of Ocean;
and that other, because he held a golden blade in his hands.
 Now Pegasus flew away and left the earth, the mother of flocks,
[285] and came to the deathless gods:  and he dwells in the house of Zeus
and brings to wise Zeus the thunder and lightning.

That is, Chrysaor and Pegasus, are themselves tokens of the thunder and lightning, fire and water, and so on, that is only the might of their true father as it is sent forth into the world. 

In Caria was also the well known shrine of Zeus Labrandeus (Ζεύς Λαβρανδέως) who is shown holding an axe.  Plutarch in his Greek Questions 45 tells us he is called Labrandeus for that he holds an axe and:

"Λυδοὶ γάρ ‘λάβρυν’ τὸν πέλεκυν ὀνομάζουσι"

"the Lydians indeed, call an axe "labrun"  (acc. of the nom. λάβρυς "labrys")...".

Now up ahead we will see how an axe becomes a token of the thunder-weapon and we are not here far from our Þór “Thor”/Þunor “Thunder”/Þūr, with his axe or hammer.  Ælian On Animals 12. 30 who overlooks the axe,  understands the title Labrandeus in another way than Plutarch (awend. A. F. Schofield):

"Ζεὺς δὲ Λαβρανδεὺς ὕσας λάβρῳ καὶ πολλῷ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τήνδε ἠνέγκατο"

"and Zeus received the title of Labrandeus because he sent down furious (λάβρος - labros) and heavy rainstorms."

Pausanias in his Guide to Greece 5.14.6 marks an altar of Zeus Areios (Ζεύς Ἄρειος), Zeus the Ares-like or "warlike", at Olympia that others call of Hephæstus:

"  τούτου δὲ οὐ πόρρω καὶ ἄλλος τῷ Ἀλφειῷ βωμὸς πεποίηται, παρὰ δὲ αὐτόν ἐστιν Ἡφαίστου: τοῦ δὲ Ἡφαίστου τὸν βωμόν εἰσιν Ἠλείων οἳ ὀνομάζουσιν Ἀρείου Διός: λέγουσι δὲ οἱ αὐτοὶ οὗτοι καὶ ὡς Οἰνόμαος ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τούτου θύοι τῷ Ἀρείῳ Διί, ὁπότε τῶν Ἱπποδαμείας μνηστήρων καθίστασθαι μέλλοι τινὶ ἐς ἵππων ἅμιλλαν."

"Not far from it stands another altar of Alpheius, and by it one of Hephæstus. This altar of Hephaestus some Eleans call the altar of Warlike Zeus. These same Eleans also say that Oenomaus used to sacrifice to Warlike Zeus on this altar whenever he was about to begin a chariot-race with one of the suitors of Hippodameia."

Which again would not be that far from our  Þór “Thor”/Þunor “Thunder”/Þūr, - Hephæstus is always shown with a hammer - or you might also say it is not that far from our Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ who was evened with Mars, the Greeks' Ares.  Ælian also calls Zeus Labrandeus (On Animals 12. 30) Stratios (Στράτιος) "of armies" and, overlooking the axe, says that he  was  shown with a sword by his side ("τὸ δὲ ἄγαλμα ξίφος παρήρτηται"), maybe to link him to the neighbouring Zeus Chrysaoreus.  From which we can also see maybe how old titles become new names, and then take on a life of their own.  And the whole thing is helped along by being formenged with  the beliefs about the sons of the god (the "Heavenly Twins") although what is understood by this name can be seen to be one thing in one stead, and another thing again in another.

Now you may, or may not, feel that our Óðin/Wōden is outfolded somewhat by the above.  To get to grips with Óðin/Wōden I think we first have to get rid of the ancestry that the Northerners give him. Our own forefathers traced his stock back to Adam, but only after they were awent to the new belief.  The Northerners make Óðin the son Borr and Bestla, and Borr the son of a  Búri, but as I have written elsewhere [here], and others have said, this is the old myth of Tuisto, Mannus and his three sons found in Tacitus' Germania given a new shape.  It is mistaken genealogy, not theology.  So what follows from that?  At the outset we can then say that whatsoever Óðin/Wōden is, he has been blent , rightly or wrongly, with a seemingly higher godhead that the Northerners called Alföðr.  We can see that Óðin/Wōden is not fully the same with this god, for here and there we can still get a glimpse of Alföðr as Alföðr, thus Gylfaginning 3:

"Gangleri hóf svá mál sitt: "Hverr er æðstr eða elztr allra goða?"
   Hárr segir: "Sá heitir Alföðr at váru máli, ...
...
    Þá spyrr Gangleri: "Hvar er sá guð, eða hvat má hann, eða hvat hefir hann unnit framaverka?"
   Hárr segir: "Lifir hann of allar aldir ok stjórnar öllu ríki sínu ok ræðr öllum hlutum, stórum ok smám."
   Þá mælir Jafnhárr: "Hann smíðaði himin ok jörð ok loftin ok alla eign þeira."
   Þá mælti Þriði: "Hitt er þó mest, er hann gerði manninn ok gaf honum önd þá, er lifa skal ok aldri týnast, þótt líkaminn fúni at moldu eða brenni at ösku, ok skulu allir menn lifa, þeir er rétt eru siðaðir, ok vera með honum sjálfum þar sem heitir Gimlé eða Vingólf, en vándir menn fara til Heljar ok þaðan í Niflhel. Þat er niðr í inn níunda heim."...".

"  Gangleri began his questioning thus: "Who is foremost, or oldest, of all the gods?" Hárr answered: "He is called in our speech Allfather, ...
Then asked Gangleri: "Where is this god, or what power hath he, or what hath he wrought that is a glorious deed?" Hárr made answer: "He lives throughout all ages and governs all his realm, and directs all things, great and small." Then said Jafnhárr: "He fashioned heaven and earth and air, and all things which are in them." Then. spake Thridi: "The greatest of all is this: that he made man, and gave him the spirit, which shall live and never perish, though the flesh-frame rot to mould, or burn to ashes; and all men shall live, such as are just in action, and be with himself in the place called Gimlé. But evil men go to Hel and thence down to the Misty Hel; and that is down in the ninth world."..."
[awend. A. G. Brodeur] 

Why is Alföðr called Alföðr? Gylfaginning 9:

 "Ok fyrir því má hann heita Alföðr, at hann er faðir allra goðanna ok manna ok alls þess, er af honum ok hans krafti var fullgert. Jörðin var dóttir hans ok kona hans. Af henni gerði hann inn fyrsta soninn, en þat er Ása-Þórr. Honum fylgði afl ok sterkleikr. Þar af sigrar hann öll kvikvendi."

" For this reason must he be called Allfather: because he is father of all the gods and of men, and of all that was fulfilled of him and of his might. The Earth was his daughter and his wife; on her he begot the first son, which is Ása-Thor: strength and prowess attend him, wherewith he overcometh all living things."
 [awend. A. G. Brodeur]

That  Ása-Þórr, our Þunor, is named outright here, is a "gift of the gods" towards our understanding of who Alföðr is, for it allows us to see that whoever  he  is, the Earth is his wife, and Þunor is his true son.  Anyone who knows their Ṛgvedaḥ will then readily grasp that it is Dyaus who is truly meant for Alföðr.  For Dyaus is well nigh everywhere in that work matched with the Earth (there called Prithvi, for her breadth), and Indra, who answers to our Þunor, is his foremost son.  Thus in 4.17 we may read (awend. Griffith):

 tvam mahāṃ indra tubhyaṃ ha kṣā anu kṣatram maṃhanā manyata dyauḥ |
tvaṃ vṛtraṃ śavasā jaghanvān sṛjaḥ sindhūṃr ahinā jaghrasānān ||
tava tviṣo janiman rejata dyau rejad bhūmir bhiyasā svasya manyoḥ |
ṛghāyanta subhvaḥ parvatāsa ārdan dhanvāni sarayanta āpaḥ ||
bhinad ghiriṃ śavasā vajram iṣṇann āviṣkṛṇvānaḥ sahasāna ojaḥ |
vadhīd vṛtraṃ vajreṇa mandasānaḥ sarann āpo javasā hatavṛṣṇīḥ ||
suvīras te janitā manyata dyaur indrasya kartā svapastamo bhūt |
ya īṃ jajāna svaryaṃ suvajram anapacyutaṃ sadaso na bhūma ||

 1. GREAT art thou, Indra; yea, the earth, with gladness, and heaven confess to thee thine high dominion.
Thou in thy vigour having slaughtered Vṛtra didst free the floods arrested by the Dragon.
2 Heaven trembled at the birth of thine effulgence; Earth trembled at the fear of thy displeasure.
The stedfast mountains shook in agitation . the waters flowed, and desert spots were flooded.
3 Hurling his bolt with might he cleft the mountain, while, putting forth his strength, he showed his vigour.
He slaughtered Vṛtra with his bolt, exulting, and, their lord slain, forth flowed the waters swiftly.
4 Thy Father Dyaus esteemed himself a hero: most noble was the work of Indra's Maker,
His who begat the strong bolt's Lord who roareth, immovable like earth from her foundation.

The Northerners' wording    "faðir allra goðanna ok manna" leads us to the same thing.  Thus Hesiod has his muses sing in his Theology:

 δεύτερον αὖτε Ζῆνα, θεῶν πατέρ᾽ ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν,  47
ἀρχόμεναί θ᾽ ὑμνεῦσι καὶ ἐκλήγουσαι ἀοιδῆς,
ὅσσον φέρτατός ἐστι θεῶν κράτεί τε μέγιστος. 

And afterwards to Zeus himself the father of both gods and men,
hymning songs to him at the beginning and the closing 
as he is best of the gods and greatest of might.

And  the Southern Jove and Zeus, are readily seen to be one with the Dyaus of the Ṛgvedaḥ. 

 
Alföðr may also be seen to be the same as Naglfari, Annarr (or Ónarr 'gaping') and Dellingr, the three husbands of Nótt "Night" (Gylfaginning 10).  And it is worth bearing in mind that in the beginning of  Sigrdrífumál, Sigrdrífa/Brynhildr calls on Day and Night, and their sons and daughters, before she calls upon  the Æsir and the Asyniur!

Before going on, I mark Ursula Dronke's words about Gimlé from The Poetic Edda (1997) vol.2, lf.152 61/4:

“ ‘Fire-Lee or -Shelter’, not found elsewhere, was a name probably devised by the poet or his circle to express the safety of this blessed hall from both Surtalogi and the flames of the Christian hell.”

Should not all this then make Alföðr the same as Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ?  Some have indeed thought so.  But it is too early yet to say if this is right or wrong.  It is enough here to say that Óðin/Wōden has taken over so much of the rôle of Dyaus, as to borrow his name of Alföðr, and his wife is the earth, and his son Þunor, but beyond this we cannot yet go.  This is not to say that Óðin/Wōden is some upstart god, but only that what once upon a time belonged to Dyaus, is later found to belong to Óðin/Wōden; and, although these two have been long blent together, still the seam is still to be seen in the mythology that shows us  they were not the same to begin with.

Brian Branston The Lost Gods of England (1993) ch. 5, lf.72:

"There can be no doubt but that Allfather and Odinn (no matter how they got mixed up later on) were originally two different personages."

Now some would bring in here Vediovis (see Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 5.12) or Summanus (Pliny Nat. Hist.29.14; Capella, De nuptiis 2.164; Varro Lingua Latina 5.74) who the Romans worshipped alongside of Iuppiter  as a kind of Anti-Iuppiter.  But not even the Romans were of one mind about who these were, so that any theory built upon them is always going to be a bit of a weak one.   And unless we heed the whispers that these are only names for Pluto, they will have truly nothing to  match them among the Greeks.  But is Óðin/Wōden only then for Pluto?  Again, some have thought so, and his title of  Valföðr would lend itself to that, but other things again make it seem less likely.  And in the old Northern pœms we will find that Óðin/Wōden does not take all the slain, but also Freyja takes  half,  that Þór “Thor”/Þunor “Thunder”/Þūr seemingly has all those not killed in fights yet are not bad enough for Hell; though the older layer of belief Hell is widely met with wherein Hell is  thought of as the end for all the dead, the evil doers then being sent down to Niflhel, and the good wherever Balder is.

By why then list out some twelve halls in heaven, each with their own god, in Grímnismál if everything in death wheels about only three or so gods?   My own belief here is that to be found in Plato's  Phædrus.  And I think it is also the belief which must underlie the "heavenly halls" verses of Grímnismál.  We each follow the god that is our leader - there are twelve - both in life and death.  In death we follow above with our own wings, but in life we have to learn to follow without our wings on the earth below.  And depending on how deeply we have drunk from the waters of forgetting, each of us then follows here below as best we can in our own limping and mistake-fraught ways.

Moreover, the well-known verses of Soranus about Iuppiter being both Iuppiter and Iuno together, might also lead us toward thinking that the anti-Iuppiter is only another way of speaking about Iuno.  And if the pœts are right it is the arguments between these two that give the warp and weft to all our lives.

Has our own Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ got anything to do with the the Irish Núadu Airgetlám and the Welsh Nudd, the old Nodens, otherwise known as Lludd Llaw Ereint and Lud?  

Now the loss of a hand by Týr, does in theory match the loss of a hand by Núadu Airgetlám, a king of the Túatha Dé Danann.  But unlike Týr, Núadu had a silver hand fitted as a replacement hence his byname of “Airgetlám” “Silver hand”. And later still Núadu was fully healed (see Aided chloinne Tuireann: Miach and Oirmiach=Dioscuri). Whilst Týr it seems was never healed as he was known to Snorri as the “one-handed of the gods” (see Gylfag. 25, Skáldskap. 16.) . Are they then the same? Well Núadu is the same as the god Nodens (dative Nodente, genitive Nodentis) once worshipped at Lydney.  And Nodens is evened with Mars thus a plate found there reads “D M Nodonti...” “To the god Mars Nodens ...”.  (and see also here).  This I acknowledge looks a bit thin until you know that "D M" in this kind of context is not likely to mean anything else.  I mark that king “Lud” in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniæ Bk. 3, ch. 20 is araught thus (awend. J. A. Giles):

“Fuit ipse bellicosus homo et in dandis epulis profusus.”
“He was withal a warlike man, and very magnificent in his feasts and public entertainments. ”

Also that the sword  (one of the "ceithre seoid uaisle" "four noble jewels" (Keating) of the Túatha Dé Danann) is the god's token, thus Cath Maige Tuired from Harley MS 5280 (awend. Elizabeth A. Gray):

"A Findias tucad claidiub Núadot. Ní térnádh nech dei ó dobirthe  asa idntiuch boduha, & ní gebtai fris."

"Out of Findias was brought the Sword of Nuada. When it was drawn from its deadly sheath, no one ever escaped from it, and it was irresistible."

And bearing in mind our Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ is also evened with Mars it would seem  that they are indeed to be understood as one and the same god to begin with.

It is interesting to mark that, although we are hindered by euhemerism at every turn, the Irish would seem to understand Núadu Airgetlám as the true king of the gods.  Aided chloinne Tuireann (awend. Eugene O'Curry):

“Rígh sochrach, saoir-chinéalach ro ghabh flaitheas agus forlámhas air Thuathaibh dath-áille De Danann, dar budh chómhainm Nuadha Airgiodlámh, mac Eachtaigh, mic Ordáin, mic Allaoi. Agus is amhlaidh do bhi an rígh sin agus leath-lámh airgid air; agus do bhi dóirseóir air leath-shúil aige.”

“A comely freeborn king took sovereignty and rule over the beautiful-complexioned Tuatha Dé Danann; his name was Nuadha Airgedlamh [that is, Nuadha of the Silver Arm], the son of Echtach, the son of Edarlamh, the son of Ordan, the son of Ionnaoi. And that king was [remarkable for two things]: he had an arm of silver ; and he had for door-keeper a young man with but one eye.”

 And the sharp reader will mark how the one handed Núadu is being matched with his one-eyed door-ward...

From the Cath Maige Tuired the door-wards are said to be (awend. Elizabeth A. Gray):

 "Bótar dorrsaidi for Temraig a n-inbuid-sin, Gamal mac Figail Camald mac Ríaghaild a n-anmonn-sidei."
 

"At that time there were doorkeepers at Tara named Gamal mac Figail and Camall mac Ríagail."

 Maybe to be understood as for the Twins again?

If Núadu Airgetlám like our Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ has something to do with Dyaus we would hope that his name should have something to do with the heavens and so on.  However, the meaning to which most of the linguists lean ("user" looking to the Germanic verb *nutōną!) I would say is flawed. Ranko Matasović's chosen root in  Proto-Celtic *snoudo-, meaning "mist, clouds" is, to say the least, a bit more like it. John Rhŷs in his Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (1888)   Lecture II. The Zeus Of The Insular Celts. PART II., Camulos, Cumall and Nwyvre.lvs. 178 to 180 has this to say:

“ Now the name of one of the Welsh equivalents of Finn mac Cumaill is Gwyn mab Nûᵭ, or Gwyn son of Nûᵭ; and in both finn and gwyn we have the ordinary words for white or fair, and both personages so called were celebrated as great hunters, while Gwyn is usually known to the Welsh as the king of the Fairies and the other world generally. The designations Finn mac Cumaill and Gwyn mab Nûᵭ would seem to oppose Cumall and Nûᵭ to, or equate them with, one another.

Further, the story of Kulhwch and Olwen mentions Gwyn son of Nûᵭ with two other Gwyns, called respectively the son of Esni and the son of Nwyvre; but the composition of the lists of names in that piece is such as to allow of our supposing Gwyn son of Nûᵭ, and Gwyn son of Nwyvre, to have been really only one: Esni is a name otherwise unknown to me; but Nwyvre is the Welsh for the atmosphere, or the space in which the clouds float above the earth; and in the designation Gwyn son of Nwyvre, we seem to have the exact rendering of Finn son of Cumall. The story also associates with Gwyn son of Nwyvre, a certain Fflam mab Nwyvre, whose name would mean Flame son of Atmosphere: he is probably to be identified with the personage otherwise called in the same story Fflewdur Fflam Wledic, or Prince Ffleudur Fflam, and also Ffleudor mab Naf, or Ffleudor son of Nav; while the Triads (i. 15 = ij. 26 = iij. 114) seem to speak of the same personage as Ffleudur Fflam son of Godo; but Godo is not known to have any other meaning than that of a cover, shelter or roof; and in this kind of word, used as a proper name, we seem to have a synonym of Nwyvre or Sky in the sense of Οὐρανός and Varuṇa. Nwyvre is also mentioned in another Triad (i. 40 = ij. 5), which alludes to an expedition to Gaul under the leadership of Gwenwynwyn and Gwanar, sons of Lliaw son of Nwyvre and of Arianrhod their mother. With the reference to Ffleudor son of Nav, may be mentioned an allusion in the same story to a Gwenwynwyn son of Naw, to be corrected doubtless into Nav; for there is a third passage in point which describes Gwenwynwyn as Arthur's rhyswr or huntsman, and calls him the son of Nav Gyssevin, which means 'first or original lord.' Thus it is not improbable that in spite of the Lliaw or Lliaws of the Triads, Nwyvre was the same personage who is here called Nav Gyssevin.”

From which we can see that Finn mac Cumaill=Gwyn ap Nudd, that Nudd=Cumall and   in Welsh lore at least, Nudd would seem to have been thought of as a synonym of Nwyvre, Nav and Godo.  Although the Welsh naw means nine,  as nwyvre is a synonym, I think Rhŷs means us to read it as  nef “heaven”.  Nef, by the way, is from Old Welsh nem, from Proto-Brythonic *neβ̃, from Proto-Celtic *nemos, from Proto-Indo-European *nébʰos (“cloud”). 

Professor  Rhŷs elsewhere links Cumall to the old Celtic god-name Camulos.  In Irish Cumall means inter alia "champion", but if it was somehow borrowed from the Welsh then might it not look to cwmwl "cloud" (this isn't borrowed from the Latin cumulus, as cumulus doesn't mean "cloud" in Latin), Cornish kommol, Breton koumoul?  Camulos is better witnessed than Nodens and also better shown to be an evenling of the Romans' Mars.  And he is the god for whom Camulodunum (Colchester) is named.  Now it is from Camulodunum that   Chrétien de Troyes, or whatever he looked to for this,  must have got the name of "Camaalot".  The Queste del Saint Graal it seems believed Camelot to be named after a pagan king named Camaalis, who must be a dim minning of Camulos.  That King Arthur's main castle/town became known by this name is only right seeing that, Camulodunum was the old headborough of Britain, albeit in the days when the Catuvellauni wielded things,  and Arthur (the British "Conchobar mac Nessa") with his great sword Excalibur can hardly be anything than Camulos or Nodens, Nudd, Lludd, Núadu or whatever you want to call him.  See here what Rhŷs wrote in the Lecture, part 1, marked above on "Conaire, Cormac and Conchobhar" [here].  Or, if you must, Arthur is below, what Camulos and so on, is above.  

And what about Alföðr?  Now it is true that the Irish bestow the matching title of ollathair on the Dagda, and the Dagda would indeed seem to be the only likely rival for the high seat among the Irish gods.  In the Lebor Gabála Érenn when nine or so kings of the Túatha Dé Danann are set out, although Núadu is the first and foremost of them, his twenty-seven (7+20) year kingship is dwarfed by the Dagda's eighty year one.  Indeed, no other of the nine kings has such a big one.  Is this then telling us something?  I think it tells us that many Irish folk did indeed think that the Dagda was the king of the gods.  But at the same time many others among them also thought that Núadu was.  And as to who believed what, well it seems that it was down to your own kindred's understanding of things.  But that Núadu was also as much an ollathair as the Dagda was, I give you this genealogy from Rawlinson B 502 140b (headed “Mínigud Senchais Síl Chuind Inso Sís”):

“Dá mc oc Nuadait Argatlám: Glass & Cú Oiss. Glass a quo sunt Síl Cuind & Dál Riata & Ulaid & Laigin & Ossairgi. Cú Oiss a quo Muimnich nammá.”
 

“The sons of Nuada Argatlam: Glass and Cú Oiss. From Glass are the Sil Cuind and the Dal Riata and the Ulster-men and Leinster-men and the Osraige(=Ossory=folk of Kilkenny and Laois).     From Cú Oiss are only the Munster-men.”

 Mark here also that it may be that we are to understand Glass & Cú Oiss as twins.  Other genealogies have other things and go about to hide Núadu Airgetlám as something else.  Professor Rhŷs in his Lectures ...  marked some of the other Núadus found in the Irish king-lists and genealogies and he understands them all as one and the same.  I only mark here the genealogy from Rawlinson B 502 154b ("Item De Genelogiis Regum Muminensium.") which makes the kings of Munster spring from "m. Con Oiss m. Nuadat Décláim".  This "Núadu Déclám" is listed in the Cóir Anmann 7 as "Nuada Deghlamh":

"Nuada Deghlamh .i. Nuadha Deaghlamha(ch) .i. roba maith & roba láidir a dhí láimh."
"Nuada Deg-lámh, that is, Nuada the good-handed, i.e. good and strong were his two hands." 

But "Déclám" looks more like it should be "ten-hand" to me!  So from one hand now Núadu has ten, isn't that wonderful!
  

Understanding Núadu as the same as our Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ, and the Dagda as the same as our Þór “Thor”/Þunor “Thunder”/Þūr, we might well ask, where is Óðin/Wōden?  Well the unnamed one-eyed door keeper from the Aided chloinne Tuireann is more than likely to be for our god.  But the Arthuriad is maybe more helpful to us here for beside Arthur we have the wiseman Merlin (=British Cathbad) who is indeed our god.  It is odd however, that we would nevertheless be somewhat hard put to bestow a god name upon him from the Irish word-hoard.  Lug, who many folk clutch at here, is at best an odd blending of Wōden and Balder, but with much more that matches Balder than Wōden.  And there again, when he first turns up at Núadu's hall (as Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Galahad once did at Arthur's hall) and frees the Túatha Dé Danann from the Fomoire, he is Þórr  "sem ungr drengr" "as a young lad" blending with one or other of the thundering "Heavenly Twins".  In the Welsh lore Gwyddion/Gilfaethwy and Lleu are all so much better araught and thus so much better to understand. The Irish Cían who stands for the Welsh Gwyddion/Gilfaethwy is hardly a household name, and indeed among the Irish it seems Lug was more often thought of as mac Ethlenn or mac Ethnenn ("son of Ethliu or Ethniu") from his mother, than mac Cein from his father.  The fostering of Lug by Manannán mac Lir that we find in the Aided chloinne Tuireann is better, but raises problems in so much as his Welsh evenling, Manawydan fab Llŷr, cannot well be thought of as the same as Gwyddion/Gilfaethwy.   However, Manawydan and his brother Bran would seem to be a kind of twins, as  also Gwyddion and Gilfaethwy would seem to be themselves. 

Might some of the answer lie here also in the same rivalry that we see in the East between the Parsees and the folk of Ind  also be true of the Celts and Germans?  The rivalry, that is, whereby the one goes out of its way  to brook whatever god-names the other isn't.  The Celts lean toward  Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ as Núadu and so on, whilst the Germans don't, and the Germans lean more toward Óðin/Wōden as the Celts themselves don't?  But by Taranis everyone still calls on the thunder-god!

[If  Camulodunum is named for Camulos and Camulodunum is Colchester the belief that a king Cole built, or gave his name to, Colchester, is true so long as we understand Cole is for Camulos.  In Irish "Cumhall" is said something like "Cool", which is not that far from "Cole".  All those tiresome unfolk who think that the early forms of the name Colchester which show it as meaning "the Chester on the river Colne" thereby disprove that "old King Cole" has anything to do with Colchester are labouring under a misapprehension to say the least. "old King Cole" is for Camulos.  And as "Coel Hen" he was long reckoned a forefather of not a few of the Gwŷr y Gogledd! ]

 

Is Óðin/Wōden a Sun-god?

With this understanding under our caps, we can leave what Óðin/Wōden owes to Dyaus to one side, and begin the hunt  for what are the god's Indo-European roots beyond this.  Ursula Dronke believes Óðin/Wōden to be the Sun, thus  on lf.126 of th'ilk work where she is writing about drasill (akin to “OHG drason, drasjan ‘to snort, breathe heavily, puff and blow’. ...”):

“The sun as originator of life, and the horse as symbol of the moving sun (and therefore the appropriate sacrifice to be made for the renewal of the sun and the life it brings to the world), play a part in the mythology of Óðinn because he – or his IE ancestor – was a solar deity. He has only one eye, that sees everything – like the sun. He is a traveller visiting the homes of men – like the sun. His eclipse is to be swallowed by the great wolf – like the sun. And, like the sun, he is Alfǫdr (Grím. 48).”

Now all this does indeed lend itself to a solar interpretation, as also what Snorri writes of Óðin riding to Völlrinn Vígríðr in Gylfaginning 51:

“ Ríðr fyrstr Óðinn með gullhjálminn ok fagra brynju ok geir sinn, er Gungnir heitir.”

“ Rideth first Óðin with the gold-helm and fair byrnie and his spear that is hight Gungnir.”

And in Skáldskaparmál 24 Hrungnir says of Óðin:

“ hvat manna sá er með gullhjálminn, er ríðr loft ok lög, ok segir, ...”

“ who is that man with the gold-helm that rideth through the sky and over sea ...”

Although it is true to say that he is hardly every met with like this in the myths or fornaldarsögur. And then there is what Saxo writes of him in book 3 of his Gesta Danorum, when after driving out "Ollerus", who had usurped Óðin's own headship of the gods for ten years, (3.4.13 - awending Elton) :

"At Othinus, recuperatis divinitatis insignibus, tanto opinionis fulgore cunctis terrarum partibus enitebat, ut eum perinde ac redditum mundo lumen omnes gentes amplecterentur, nec ullus orbis locus exstaret, qui numinis eius potentiae non pareret."

"But Odin, now that he had regained the emblems of godhead, shone over all parts of the world with such a lustre of renown that all nations welcomed him as though he were light (lumen) restored to the universe; nor was any spot to be found on the earth which did not homage to his might."

And in book one of th'ilk (1.7.2) of Óðin it is written:

"[1] ... ab exsilio regressus cunctos, qui per absentiam suam caelestium honorum titulos gesserant, tamquam alienos deponere coegit subortosque magorum coetus veluti tenebras quasdam superveniente numinis sui fulgore discussit. [2] Nec solum eos deponendae divinitatis, verum etiam deserendae patriae imperio constrinxit, merito terris extrudendos ratus, qui se caelis tam nequiter ingerebant."

"...  returning from exile, he forced all those, who had used his absence to assume the honours of divine rank, to resign them as usurped; and the gangs of sorcerers that had arisen he scattered like a darkness before the advancing glory of his godhead. And he forced them by his power not only to lay down their divinity, but further to quit the country, deeming that they, who tried to foist themselves so iniquitously into the skies, ought to be outcasts from the earth."

The leader of these "gangs of sorcerers" is  said to be "Mithothyn", and it seems  that we are to look upon them all as ettins here.

We have elsewhere marked the  sun-tokening of his son Balder [here].  Some might also have the earn or eagle of Óðin/Wōden as a sun-token.  And what about Snorri's idea that Óðin has twelve names (Gylfaginning 3 "en í Ásgarði inum forna átti hann tólf nöfn" ) and which Guido von List long ago, also seeing something solar in  Óðin, linked to the twelve months of the solar year?

But be that as it may, I think Dronke's leaps from the ash-tree Yggdrasill to "drasill a poetic term for horse" to an Old High German gloss drāsot for the volvit of Vergil's Georgics 3.85, to horse=the sun looking to Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 7.3.2.12, to Óðin=Sun are all maybe a bit too big to work.  For if we carefully follow her steps here we can see that the Sun would be Óðin's horse, not needfully Óðin, and is it right to blend horse and rider into one thing like this?  Does Óðin ever take upon himself the shape of a horse?  Or did he ever have horses hallowed to him?  Is this not maybe more true to say of Freyr rather than of Óðin?  And would not Dronke's tying up of these things to Yggdrasill then mean as well that Yggdrasill = the sun (which in itself is not so hard to swallow (see [here]), but also, much more awkwardly, that Óðin=Yggdrasill? 

Before going on it is worth marking the words of the aforesaid Brāhmaṇa. Thus Julius Eggeling awendeth them:

 "7:3:2:10. And in front they lead a white horse. For at that time the gods were afraid lest the Rakshas, the fiends, should smite them here. They saw that thunderbolt, even yonder sun; for that horse is yonder sun: having driven off the Rakshas, the fiends, in front, by that thunderbolt, they obtained well-being in a place free from danger and devilry. They arrive at the (site of) the fire-altar; south of the tail (of the altar) they set down the layer (of bricks); from the north they make the horse step (on the site of the altar).

7:3:2:11. They lead it eastward on the left (north) side of the altar, inside the enclosing-stones, whereby they ward off evil from the eastern region; then southward, whereby they ward off evil from the south; then westward, whereby they ward off evil from the western region; then northward, whereby they ward off evil from the northern region. Having thus warded off the Rakshas, the fiends, from all the regions, he sets it (the horse) free towards northeast: the significance of this has been explained.

7:3:2:12. Whilst it goes westward he makes it smell (kiss) that layer (of bricks);--that horse is yonder sun, and those bricks are the same as all these creatures (on earth): thus even as he makes (the horse) smell, so yon sun kisses these creatures. And hence, by Pragâpati's power, every one now thinks, 'I am!' And as to why he makes it smell while going westward, it is because, whilst going (from east) to west, that (sun) kisses all these creatures.

 ..."

And his footnote to 7.3.2.12 reads:

"According to Sâyana, it is by his rays (identified with the vital airs of living beings) that the sun kisses (or puts himself in contact with) the creatures (and animates them); so that every one feels that he is 'labdhâtmaka,' or has obtained 'a self,' or life and being."

So thunderbolt=sun=white horse, an amazing line up of evenlings.  And the white horse is, needless to say, the token of the Saxons and the true vane, or flag, of England living on only in Kent, as Kent alone is "(terra) invicta".  But is the tokening here truly to be linked to Óðin/Wōden?  Looking to the warding off of "rakshas", would it not be more true to say   of our own Þunor?  And looking to the white horse some evenlings of the Greeks' Dioscuri (Διόσκουροι), maybe our own Hengest and Horsa?

 

In the North I would say  Móði and Magni have the best title to be the evenlings of the Dioscuri, but nothing hinders Þjálfi and Röskva, Víðarr and Váli, Balder and  Höðr or Freyr and Freyja being thought of.  And the truth is that it is hard not to see matching twin-like pairs almost everywhere in Ásgarðr.  Indeed I would say it is one of the great themes of Indo-European mythology.


 The eight legs of Óðin's horse ("Þat var grátt ok hafði átta fætr...") underline its swiftness but although it is said to be "grey" (=white in a horse) there is little of the shining or golden mane and so on, that is more the hallmark of a solar horse than its swiftness.  Eight moreover is not obviously a solar number but it is a number betokening the universe. "Πάντα ὀκτώ" "eight is all" is an old saying either for that "the eighth sphere encompasses the whole" or "the spheres of the world which rotate around the earth are eight" (see Theology of Arithmetic).  Agrippa Three Books of Occult Philosophy bk. 2, ch.11 "... and the end of the world, because it follows the number seven, which is the mystery of time...".  An 8x8 magic square is a magic square of Mercury.  A chessboard has 8x8 squares as it is meant to be a token of the universe and time (the black and white squares are for days and nights) and an 8x8 square grid is brooked in India as a temple plan. The Middle English Poem Erthe Upon Erthe,  (Harley MS 913)  has the line:

" Erþ is a palfrei to king and to quene."

An ὀκτάπους or ὀκτώπους "eight-footer" can be an octopus (also called a πολύπους many-footer (πολύπους =fylfot) - "bestea Neptuni quinotauri similis"?) - but also a scorpion, a token of Mars, and a crab (Cancer), a token of Mercury and of soul in matter like a crab in its shell.

With the horse race with Hrungnir  in Skáldskaparmál 24 is it the sun and his horse that would need to race an ettin, and his horse, to see who was the swiftest?  If Óðin is here the sun, then what is Hrungnir ("Din maker") meant to be?  And bear in mind Hrungnir's horse itself  even has a solar name "Gullfaxi" "Gold-mane".  Dronke's "visiting the homes of men" could well fit many godheads and angelic beings. What we have said in the last post about Suparṇaḥ [see here] should warn us here that an eagle is not needfully a sun token, but may be no more than a token of swiftness and might.  Óðin "í arnarham" "in arn-, or eagle-, shape" and "í valslíki" "in falcon's likeness" does not need to ride a horse.  So there is, in theory, a needless overlap here.  But we meet something akin to this with the lore of   the  Dioscuri,  the Aśvinau (अश्विनौ) in the East, who are linked to horses ("yātam aśvinā svaśvā" "come Aśvinau with good horses" RV 7.68.1 "aśvināv āśuheṣasā" "the Aśvinau having quick horses" RV 8.10.2) at one time, and then another to birds, like the "swans" haṃsāu (हंसौ - see RV 5.78.1-3; 8.35.8) or cakravākau (चक्रवाकौ - see RV 2.39.3). 

Hard to set under the heading of a sun-god are also Óðin's links to hanging and the hanged (seen in such bynames as hangatýr, hangaguð, hangadróttinn, hangi (Hákonardrápa)), and to magic, as indeed to all those things which link him to the dead.  As also those whispers of a woeful lack of troth shown by the god, thus Hávamál 110 (awend. Bellows):

Baugeið Óðinn, | hygg ek, at unnit hafi;
hvat skal hans tryggðum trúa?
Suttung svikinn |hann lét sumbli frá
ok grætta Gunnlöðu.

On his ring swore Othin | the oath, methinks;
Who now his troth shall trust?
Suttung's betrayal | he sought with drink,
And Gunnloth to grief he left.

But which are in keeping with a god whose byname is  Svipall (Grímnismál 47) and who was fully evened with the Romans' Mercurius.

 Who then is the god of the hanged?

That a gallows is a kind of a "wooden horse" is a common place belief widely met with.  In the Disputatio inter Mariam et crucem from Vernon MS (see Richard Morris Legends of the Holy Rood (1871) lf.148 and lf.209) we read of Jesus:

"Soþly wol say;

On a stokky stede

He rod, we rede,"

And in Royal MS. 18 A 10:

"Soþely to say;

On stokky stede

He roode, men rede,"

The name of the ash-tree Yggdrasill  "ugly steed" or maybe "Ygg's steed" (if we are to read it in the same way as Oxford is for an earlier Oxnaford "ford of the oxen") must therefore stem from Óðin's hanging of himself upon it as beckoned to in Hávamál -  Rúnatal Óðins [for a good run through of the Rúnatal for those "all at sea" with the grammar see here]. The more pithier lines of which are:

138. Veit ek, at ek hekk | vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu,
geiri undaðr ok gefinn Óðni,
sjalfr sjalfum mér,
á þeim meiði, er manngi veit
hvers af rótum renn.

 Wot I, that I hung on a windy wood

nights all nine

by a spear wounded and given to Wōden

self to my self

on the wood that not many wit

from what the roots run.

 139. Við hleifi mik sældu | né við hornigi;
 nýsta ek niðr,
 nam ek upp rúnar, æpandi nam,
fell ek aftr þaðan.

 with a loaf they gladdened me not  |nor with a horn

looked I netherward

noom I (=took I) up runes  |whooping I noom

 fell I back thence.

*            *              *

141.     Þá nam ek frævask|     ok fróðr vera
 ok vaxa ok vel hafask,
 orð mér af orði|     orðs leitaði,
 verk mér af verki|     verks leitaði.

Then noom I (but here meaning “learnt I”) to be fruitful and wise

and to wax and be well,

a word to me from a word (but here belike meaning “words, a saying”) sought a word

a work to me from a work sought a work

*            *              *

145.
…
Svá Þundr of reist |fyr þjóða rök,
þar hann upp of reis, | er hann aftr of kom.

…

So Þundr (=Óðin) carved out before the deeming of folks

where he rose up, when he came back.

I dare say everyone has there own thoughts about this, but something little understood here is that this kind of death, a death by hanging,  is not meant to be a good death.  It is the death of ... well ... I best let Tacitus say it, Germania 12 (awend. Church & Brodribb):

 proditores et transfugas arboribus suspendunt;
Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees;...

And in keeping with this is the line:

Við hleifi mik sældu | né við hornigi;
 with a loaf they gladdened me not  |nor with a horn 

So Wōden would seem to be here putting himself in with the outcasts.  An odd thing for a god to do you might think, but in Grímnismál, Wōden is the victim of a slander which makes him end up in a similar position.  Yet the likeness here to Jesus (See Galat. 3:13) is also strong.   And this makes it hard at the outset to say how deep rooted the lore about Óðin's own hanging is.  On the one hand it is the kind of thing that a wizard might do, and would thus be akin to his giving up of an eye (see below); but, on the other hand, it might well be a borrowing from the Christian beliefs about Jesus.  For a god of the hanged need not himself be hanged.  In the "Nine Herbs Charm" is it  Wōden or Jesus who is the "witig drihten"?

þa wyrte gesceop witig drihten,

halig on heofonum, þa he hongode

But it is odd that Jesus's own death should sometimes be shown as taking place on a tree, rather than on a cross, and above all, that this far-from-normal way of showing the crucifixion, should nevertheless be the one shown on the well-known runestone at Jelling [here].  Far-from-normal that is, unless we wish to believe that the truth has been willfully hidden from us.  That Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified was thought of as the middle of the world is markworthy, as also that a myth grew up that the wood of the cross was made from wood from a tree grown from three seeds taken from the tree of life in the midst of paradise. 

 In the end however, it all comes to the same thing, for long ago Roger Bacon in his Opus Maius, pars quarta, philosophiae moralis, chap. 1, wrote:

"   ... lex Christianorum Mercurialis ab astronomis dicitur..."
"... the law of the Christians is called Mercurial by the astronomers...".   

So that, notwithstanding the strong influence of the old worship of the sun upon Christianity (seen in the holy day of the week being a Sunday, the birthday of the sun being the birthday of Jesus, that churches/temples look east, and so on) still the essence of it was nevertheless deemed to be of Mercurius.  Thus the Jesus of Mark's gospel, of the earliest gospel that we have, is no more than a magician, and his modus operandi and magic-words are therein shown for all to read.  John 3:14 links Jesus to the "fiery serpent ... upon a pole" of Numbers 21:8, and which the Israelites are said to have worshipped until Hezekiah fordid it (see 2 Kings 18:4).  It is worth marking here that Jesus was not hung alone, but he had Gestas, the bad thief, and Dismas, the good thief, on either side of him which would seem to upset things here, until you think that: these thieves are a kind of matching pair, one going up, one going down; that Mercurius was the way-shower both up and down; that Mercurius' caduceus has two snakes, not only one, upon it; and that he was thought of by many as a "god of thieves".   And it maybe that Gestas and Dismas are individually meant to betoken here what Jesus himself betokens as a whole.  But Jesus himself is himself one of a pair of twins, Thomas, rightly Judas Thomas, being his twin brother!  This twinship would seem to have played no small part in the old worship of a god answering to the Roman's Mercurius that was known further East.  Thus astrologers say the planet of Mercurius rules the sign of the Twins, the Romans' Gemini.

A. L. Frothingham in his Babylonian Origin of Hermes the Snake-God, and of the Caduceus I (American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1916), lvs. 175-211) therefore finds the roots of the caduceus in the twin snakes that warded the "tree of life".  And that these were the token of the god Ningishzida "Lord of the steadfast tree".  Frothingham doesn't mark anything to do with fire, but Ningishzida was nevertheless also:

“... the servant of the (fire-) god Gibil, he who drains the waters of the deep, who lays the foundation (temen) of the city and of the temple”...”. (M. C. Astour Hellenosemitica (1967) lf. 157 quoting a cylinder of Sargon).

 In the tale of Adapa (see Robert W. Rogers Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (1912)) we read:

"At the door of Anu, Tammuz and Gishzida are standing, ..."

Anu being the god of heaven, and Gishzida is for Ningishzida.   If Ningishzida was matched with Tammuz some blending might have taken place which might go a long way in outfolding why a Mercurial god might also be a dying god who comes back to life again.  That these pair are found in the door-ward rôle is markworthy, in what follows we will see that the Heavenly Twins, or gods linked to them, often have this odd rôle.  Thus the stars of Gemini were it seems however, the twin gods Lugalgirra and Meslamtaea/Maslamtaea (see the so-called "Astrolabe B" tablet) who were "guard-gods" (W. G. Lambert "Lugalirra and Meslamtaea" in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 7, (1987-1990) lf.145) whose likenesses were put either side of door-ways to ward them (see F. A. M. Wiggerman Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts (1992) lf. 59).  They would seem to be shown as fighting men and holding axes.

By isopsephy Jesus's name in Greek letters - Ἰησοῦς - is 888, and we are told in Matthew's gospel 1.21 ( "et vocabis nomen ejus Jesum: ipse enim salvum faciet populum suum...") that it means "healer".  So he is also for Eshmun "The Eighth" and linked to the Greeks' Asklepios (Ἀσκληπιός) - Æsculapius to the Romans..  But Eshmun is one of the eight Dioscuri or Cabeiri known and worshipped of old at Berytus.  From what Photius (Bibliotheca Codex 242) writes, abridging Damascius's old work, we can see where the Greeks got their Actæon-myth (mark well here that Actæon and Eshmun are both hunters).  But also that the ending is wrong as it is told by the Greeks (out-take Nonnos of Panopolis), or rather, the "happy ending" is only for initiates (but see the tale of Hippolytus-Virbius), for Eshmun is brought back to life by his goddess to become a god of healing.  And it is from the last point that the Greeks evened Eshmun with their own Asklepios.   The myths of Attis and Adonis (whose holy grove was at Bethlehem) are obviously only versions of the same, and thus also that of Tammuz.  Further links could then be made to Osiris and Dionysus.  Moreover, in the near east Tammuz's worship (and the worship of all those gods who blended in with him), lives on under the name of  al-Khiḍr who is himself often evened with St. George!  But all such "healers" are all no more than the Aśvinau of the Āryāḥ, thus RV 8. 18.8 (Griffith):

uta tyā daivyā bhiṣajā śaṃ naḥ karato aśvinā |
yuyuyātāmito rapo apa sridhaḥ || 

And may the Asvins, the divine Pair of Physicians, send us health:
May they remove iniquity and chase our foes.

It is worth marking here that when not taking the shape of an arnr or eagle, then Wōden/Óðin's other chosen shape would seem to be an ormr or  worm (either a snake or,  a “gurt vurm”, that is, a dragon).   Thus in Skáldskaparmál 5 -6 as well as a workman or labourer (verkmaðr - “… Hann bauð at taka upp níu manna verk fyrir Bauga, …”  “...he offered to undertake nine men's work for Baugi, ...” ) Óðin takes on the shape of an arnr (í arnarham),  or an ormr (í ormslíki). 

And in Heimskringla eða Sögur Noregs konunga - Ynglinga saga 7 we may read:

"Óðinn skipti hömum; lá þá búkrinn sem sofinn eða dauðr, en hann var þá fugl eða dýr, fiskr eða ormr, ok fór á einni svipstund á fjarlæg lönd, at sínum erendum eða annarra manna."

"Óðin shaped (that is, shape-shifted) himself; then the body lay as a sleeping man or a dead, and he was then a fowl or a deer, a fish or a worm,  and he fared in a flash into far-off lying lands, on his own errands or on other men’s."

The bogatyr Volkh Vseslavich or Volga Sviatoslavich, is worth setting beside this.  But I would say  that both the arn and the worm have been picked out from all the deer-kinds and fowl-kinds that may be, not recklessly, but with reason.

In the East furthermore, we find the "Buddha" linked to a tree deemed to be at the middle of the world, and snakes are often not far away from this tree as he is sometimes shown seated there shielded by mucalinda.  The old Arabic speaking world even came to link the "Buddha" under the name of "Bûdhasâf" (=bodhisattva - the sheading between the "Buddha" and a bohisattva alluding them, see Barlaam and Josaphat)  with Hermes.  Thus Albiruni’s The Chronology of Ancient Nations (Athâr-ul-bâkiya), Edward Sachau's 1879 awending, ch. viii, lf.188:

 “Idrîs, who is mentioned in the Thora as Henokh [Enoch], they call Hermes, whilst according to others Hermes is identical with Bûdhasâf.”

Idrîs by the way is from the verb أَدْرُس‎ (ʾadrus, “to teach”).

Now there are snakes, and there are snakes, or dragons and dragons. The snake or dragon indeed which is most often met with, is a token of the dark side of things, titanic or gigantic, and so on, and the foe of what the gods stand for. Thus we have: Vritra (वृत्र) or Ahi (अहि) “the first born of dragons” RV 1.32. 3, the foe of Indra; Typhon (Τυφῶν), Typhœus (Τυφωεύς), Typhaon (Τυφάων) or Typhos (Τυφώς), the foe of Zeus; the hydra of Lerna (Λερναῖα Ὕδρα) the foe of Herakles (the Romans’ Hercules); Illuyanka the foe of Tarhunt/Teshub; and Apophis/Apep the foe of Ra-Horus (but Seth was shown as the actual fighter of the dragon of old) among the Ægypt-folk., and so on. The thunder- and/or sun- gods are the foes of these kind of dragons.

But there is another kind of snake or dragon that is more fully a match for the tokening of the twin snakes on the caduceus of Mercurius, and of Óðin when í ormslíki.    These snakes were often of a fiery kind, and more often than not thought of as helpful to men, and  on the side of the gods, wise, healing and warding. And these are truly the kind that, if their blood gets upon your tongue, you will understand the "fuglarödd", the "rurd, or speech, of the fowls" (see Völsunga saga 19 "Ok er hjartablóð ormsins kom á tungu honum, þá skyldi hann fuglarödd.") La Langue des oiseaux!  But it would be a great sin to kill one - the  Völsunga saga has badly muddled up the two kinds of dragon here, but it is not alone in doing this.  For those unconning of this lore I set here this handy outdraught from B. Thorpe Northern Mythology vol. 2 Scandinavian Popular Traditions III. Danish Traditions 1 [From Danmarks Folkesagn samlede af J. M. Thiele 2 Bd. Kiobenhaven 1843] lvs. 217 to 218 under "Snogskilde (snake's-well)":

"Whoever is so fortunate as to catch a snake with a crown on its head, or, as it is also called, a royal snake [Thiele- “kongesnog” “king-snake”], and eats a piece of its flesh, becomes ' fremsynet ' (i. e. able to see into hidden things), understands the speech of animals, and can read any book whatsoever."

 Such is the golden/yellow snake on the rod of Asklepios; the snakes that bestowed on Melampous (Μελάμπους) his prophetic gifts;  the snake token of agathodæmon (ἀγαθοδαίμων), or agathos dæmon (ἀγαθός δαίμων), or Aion (Αἰών) or Zeus ktesios (Z. κτήσιος - "Z. of goods")...

And theses are the kind of snakes that, as well as horses and swans, are even the tokens of the Dioscuri (as on the 5^th. Century B.C.E. dokana (δόκανα) frieze from Sparta (see below)); the which gods,  on Roman soil blend with the penates (wards of the inside house, its hearth and its stores) and the lares (wards of the land  outside the house, and the outside of the house itself).  J. Grimm again in his Teutonic Mythology (ch.21, lf.687) marks an old German belief that:

“ In some districts they say every house has two snakes, a male and a female, but they never shew themselves till the master or mistress of the house dies, and then they undergo the same fate.”

  

Above: the Spartan "dokana" .  A token of the Dioscuri with twin snakes from a
5^th. Century B.C.E. frieze from Sparta.

[If the  dokana minneth some of the torii of Japan this is little wonder for the torii, as the Chinese paifang, stem from the  तोरण toraṇa of India.  The English evenling is indeed our lychgate.]

And this notwithstanding that Castor went on to become St. George the dragon-slayer!  And the Aśvinau sometimes  borrow Indra's title of vṛtrahán (वृत्रहन्) "vṛtra-slayer" thus RV 8.8.9 (Griffith):

 ā vāṃ vipra ihāvase.ahvat stomebhir aśvinā |
ariprā vṛtrahantamā tā no bhūtaṃ mayobhuvā ||

The holy singer with his hymns hath called you, Asvins, hither−ward;
Best Vrtra−slayers, free from stain, as such bring us felicity.

And these are also the kind of snakes that pull the chariot of Demeter which  Triptolemos borrowed; and the chariot of Medea ancestress of the Medes - earlier Āryāḥ (see Herodotus Histories) - and the magi and grand-daughter of the sun; and sometimes of my lady Athena...

 

 

And the dragon vanes or banners of the Parthians (Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 20) - in the Šāh-nāma, it is the banner of Rostam - found beside that showing the sun  (Tertullian, Apologeticum 16) and taking over from the arn or eagle of the Achæmenids (see Xenophon, Cyropædia 7.1.4 and Anabasis 1.10.12).   And thence westward with the Sarmatians to the Dacians and Romans and, at length, the kings of Wessex and of England!  Geoffrey Baker's chronicle has King Edward III flying the old dragon at Crécy on the 26th August 1346, but we don't here of it much after that time.


And also the uræi about the sun disk (see below) "Eye of Ra" who stand for the warding goddesses Wadjet (with red crown of Lower Ægypt) and Nekhbet (with white crown (albeit here shown as golden) of Upper Ægypt). See below.  Mark that these uræi also have cruces ansata or "ankhs".

By KhonsuTemple-Karnak-RamessesIII-2.jpg: Asavaaderivative work: A. Parrot - KhonsuTemple-Karnak-RamessesIII-2.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17846881

 
Wadjet is also called "Neseret" ‘the Fiery One’. 



Nekhbet is more often shown as a kind of vulture (left), which, allowing for the more southerly clime, might well be evened with the more northerly arn or eagle, so that here with these two goddesses we might well have the same tokens being marked out, the orm and the arn,  that Óðin it seems has chosen.  Nekhbet moreover can be shown as a winged snake (top half of a vulture and back half of a snake, Wadjet the other way about) and in wholly anthropomorphic shape but holding a staff with a snake winding about it.  Both Wadjet and Nekhbet can also be shown as lionesses as well.  When shown together Wadjet and Nekhbet are the "Nebty" "Two Ladies", and it would not be unfair to say that they are much like our old wælcyrian, the Northern valkyrjur, and also that they have some things that make us think of the Dioscuri as well.  Thus both valkyrjur and Dioscuri are said to show up at fightlocks, riding through the sky on horses, (or is it in bird shape? or stars? or storms? or fires? or snakes?), and therby to give victory or not as may be.   Gylfaginning 36:

" Þessar heita valkyrjur. Þær sendir Óðinn til hverrar orrustu. Þær kjósa feigð á menn ok ráða sigri."

 "These are hight valkyrjur.  These Óðin sends to each fightlock. These choose the fey among men and rede siȝe (=rede victory)."

That is, they are themselves only a drawing out of Óðin's own might to bestow siȝe.  That there are women among their number like Brynhildr who were earthly king's daughters shows us that they are also the female version of the Einherjar.   The valkyrja-like (she "brought on herself a crow shape and flew" "brá á sik krákuham ok flýgr") Hljóð  in  Völsunga saga 2 is called "Óðin's wish-daughter ("óskmey sína") a wish-daughter being what we would now call an "adopted daughter".  Whilst the Einherjar are "his wish-sons" "hans óskasynir" (Gylfag. 20 "Hann heitir ok Valföðr, því at hans óskasynir eru allir þeir, er í val falla. Þeim skipar hann Valhöll ok Vingólf, ok heita þeir þá Einherjar.") Are not the Dioscuri then seen to be the same as all of Óðin's "óskasynir" in essence?

Wadjet and Nekhbet themselves moreover are to be linked to the "Nebwy" "Two Lords", that is to Seth and Horus, as can be seen from the scene below from the temple of Khonsu at Karnak (see Geraldine Pinches Handbook of Egyptian Mythology (2002) lf. 212 figure 46).  Pharoah sits between Wadjet and Nekhbet, Horus with his falcon-head stands behind Nekhbet on the right, whilst Seth stands behind Wadjet (with the red crown) on the left. 

 

 

The Chester Beatty Papyrus makes Seth a thunder god.  He was thus evened with the Baal Tsaphon who was the god of the Hyksos (Ὑκσώς) "heqau khaswet/heqa-khaset" "rulers [of] foreign lands", and in an Hittite version of a treaty of Rameses II between the Hittites and the Egypt-folk Seth is evened with  the Hittite (Hurrian) Teshub.  In the same way as Wadjet and Nekhbet are linked to the hues of red and white so are Seth and Horus, thus Plutarch in Isis and Osiris 22 (359e) (awend. F. C. Babbitt) writes:

"ἱστοροῦσι γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι ... τὸν δὲ Τυφῶνα τῇ χρόᾳ πυρρόν, λευκὸν δὲ τὸν Ὧρον ..., ὡς τῇ φύσει γεγονότας ἀνθρώπους."

"The Egyptians, in fact, have a tradition ... that Typhon [=Seth] was red in complexion, Horus white, ... as if they had been in their nature but mortal men."

These "Two Lords" are also found on the throne of Senwosret I in a scene (below) that has been understood as them "uniting the two lands", but which Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechend withmete in their Hamlet's Mill to the tale of the Churning of the Sea found in the art of India.  The same which we have already marked as being thought to stem from fire-lighting rites, and of which Mercurius' caduceus may also be a token.

 

 

The true tokening of Horus and Seth is lost sight of, when Seth is thought of (as he later is among the Egypt-folk), as little more than the god of the foes of Egypt, the desert and the evil slayer of Osiris.  But this does allow us to see how, in the Churning of the Sea in the myths of India it is done by the devāḥ (देवाः) "devas", or gods, on one side, and the asurāḥ (असुराः ) (=ettins) on the other.  And how Hermes the bestower of fire also becomes the titanic Prometheus, the thief of fire doomed to be bound up on Mount Caucasus (=axis mundi) in punishment (in Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus we also have an echo of the "Heavenly Twins") and his liver eaten daily by an eagle (which is also a token of himself(!)).  And how eagles and snakes are said to be bitter foes (see Hræsvelgr and Níðhöggr), although in the old myth of Etana the eagle and snake were once friends; and Vinata,  the mother of Garuda the eagle, and Kadru, the mother of the nāgāḥ "nagas" or snakes, are sisters and were once friends!  In choosing both the orm and the arn,   Óðin can be seen as putting things back together that have (maybe mistakenly) grown (or fallen) asunder and as underlining that he is still the lord of both.  And from Göbekli Tepe in Asia Minor we may well have the "Lost Symbol" we need here:

 

But I cannot help wondering if the eagle and snake motif that runs through traditional art has not arisen from a misunderstanding of what these two things show forth to begin with.  Maybe the eagle and the snake were  never meant to be witherward things, fighting one another.  As we have seen in my last post, the eagle is, after all, the angel, if I may put it that way, of the thunder-god, fetching his thunderbolts at times,  at others the stolen  somaḥ or "fire from heaven", the last two being understood at times as the same as the thunderbolt.  Now  Ṛgvedaḥ 1.79.1 tells us that Agni the fire god, when in the sky, that is, as lightning, is "a raging serpent", and in the following verse he is further called suparṇā "well-winged" which we know, when brooked as a proper noun, is only another name for Garuda:

 hiraṇyakeśo rajaso visāre.ahirdhunirvāta iva dhrajīmān |
śucibhrājā uṣaso navedā yaśasvatīrapasyuvo na satyāḥ ||
ā te suparṇā aminantamevaiḥ kṛṣṇo nonāva vṛṣabho yadīdam |
śivābhirna smayamānābhirāghāt patanti mihaḥ stanayantyabhrā ||

1. HE in mid-air's expanse hath golden tresses; a raging serpent (ahi), like the rushing tempest:
Purely refulgent, knowing well the morning; like honourable dames, true, active workers.
2 Thy well-winged (suparṇā) flashes strengthen in their manner, when the black Bull hath bellowed round about us.
With drops that bless and seem to smile he cometh: the waters fall, the clouds utter their thunder.

(awend. Griffith).

So the snake (or snakes) that the eagle holds might be no more than a token of the lightning or thunder bolt!  Below is a garuda from a ruined temple on Java (Candi Sukuh) holding two snakes twisting about eachother somewhat as we find them on Mercurius' caduceus.

 

 

Kelly (lf. 7):

 “The lightning was a sinuous serpent, or a spear shot straight athwart the sky, ...”.

Such a lightning serpent may well be the vouivre I find araught in J. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology (vol. 4) I find this endnote to lf. 687 on lf.1492:

  “The vouivre wears but one eye in the middle of her forehead, and that is a carbuncle; when she stops to drink at a fountain, she lays it aside; that’s the time to possess yourself of the jewel, and she is blind ever after. The vouivre flies through the air like red-hot iron, Mém. des antiq. 6, 217; the like in Bosquet p. 204-6-9.”

And in keeping with the might of fern-seed bestowed upon it by the thunder-god that we marked in the last post, Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (vol. 2, ch.21, lf.687) tells us of a German belief that:

“The adder’s crown (atternkrönlein) makes any one that wears it invisible and immensely rich as well. ”

Lastly here I mark this from Grimm Teut. Myth. (vol. 4) Superstitions M. Esthonian.1 [1 Etwas über die Ehsten (Leipz. 1788, pp. 55-88).] lf. 1846:

“66. Many believe in the power of man to raise wind, and to change its direction. For this purpose they would hang up a snake, or set up an axe, in the direction whence they wished for a wind, and try to allure it by whistling.”

But why should these lightning snakes be shown about tokens of the sun or axis mundi?  As to the sun, we have seen already from the words of Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 7.3.2.10-12, that, rightly or wrongly, sun gods and thunder gods were often understood to be one and the same.   But the underlying philosophy to this is that to be found in Yāska’s Nirukta Ch. 7, 5 (awend. Lakshman Sarup) whereby the sun and the thunder god (Indra) are understood to be manifestations, each on their respective planes, of a greater godhead:

“tisra.eva.devatā.iti.nairuktāh,.agniḥ.pṛthivī.sthānas.vāyur.vā.indro.vā.antarikṣa.sthānah,.sūryo. dyu.sthānah/[745] ”

“There are three deities only,' say the etymologists : (1) Agni, whose sphere is earth ; (2) Vayu or Indra, whose sphere is atmosphere ; (3) the sun, whose sphere is heaven.”

And in the Bṛhaddevatā of Shaunaka (awend. A.A. Macdonell) bk. 1, ch.14,   §69:

“ Agni in this (world), Indra and Vayu in the middle, Surya in heaven, are here to be recognized as the three deities.”

And as for the axis mundi, well, the might of lightning or of thunder, of fire from heaven, is either hidden within it, as its true being, or is without, shining forth as its "glory" and warding off harm from whatever is lit up by its light.  Genesis 3.24:

"... and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life".

Ṛgvedaḥ 10. 111.5

indro divaḥ pratimānaṃ pṛthivyā viśvā veda savanā hantiśuṣṇam |
mahīṃ cid dyāmātanot sūryeṇa cāskambha citkambhanena skabhīyān || 

The counterpart of heaven and earth is Indra: he knoweth all libations, slayeth Susna.
The vast sky with the Sun hath he extended, and, best of pillars, stayed it with a pillar.

And 1.59.1-2:

vayā idaghne aghnayaste anye tve viśve amṛtā mādayante |
vaiśvānara nābhirasi kṣitīnāṃ sthūṇeva janānupamid yayantha ||
mūrdhā divo nābhiraghniḥ pṛthivyā athābhavadaratī rodasyoḥ |
taṃ tvā devāso.ajanayanta devaṃ vaiśvānara jyotiridāryāya ||

1 THE other fires are, verily, thy branches; the Immortals all rejoice in thee, O Agni.
Centre art thou, Vaisvanara, of the people, sustaining men like a deep−founded pillar.
2 The forehead of the sky, earth's centre, Agni became the messenger of earth and heaven.
Vaisvanara, the Deities produced thee, a God, to be a light unto the Arya.

Now although Nennius' Historia Bruttonum muddies the waters here, badly misunderstanding the tokening, the Welsh Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys from the Red Book of Hergest (Jesus College MS111) 174 verso to 175 recto, reminds us that two of these dragons are indeed what we should look to find at the “punctus permedius”.  The same holy spot in the middle of things where other folk would also put a tree or something to betoken the axis mundi which should be there:

“ ac ympenn yspeit gwedy hynny. ỻud a beris messuraw yr ynys ar y| hyt ac ar y| ỻet. ac yn ryt ychen y cauas y pwynt perued. Ac yn| y lle hwnnw y peris cladu y dayar. ac yn|y clad hwnnw gossot kerwyn yn|ỻawn o|r med goreu a|aỻwyt y wneuthur. a|llenn o pali ar y wyneb. Ac ef e hun y nos honno yn|gwylyat. ac ual yd oed ueỻy. ef a welas y dreigeu yn ymlad. A gwedy blinaw onadunt a diffygyaw. wynt a disgynnassant ar warthaf y ỻenn. a’e thynnu gant[h]unt hyt yg gwaelawt y|gerwyn. A| gwedy daruot uddunt yuet y med. kyscu a|orugant. ac yn eu kwsc ỻud a blygwys y ỻenn yn eu kylch. ac yn| y ỻe diogelaf a| gauas yn eryri y mywn kist vaen a’e kudywys. Sef ffuruf y| gelwit y ỻe hwnnw gwedy hynny. dinas emreis. A| chyn no hynny dinas ffaraon dande. ”



“And some time after this, Lludd caused the Island to be measured in its length and in its breadth. And in Oxford he found the central point, (y pwynt perued = Latin “punctus permedius”) and in that place he caused the earth to be dug, and in that pit a cauldron to be set, full of the best mead that could be made, and a covering of satin over the face of it. And he himself watched that night. And while he was there, he beheld the dragons fighting. And when they were weary they fell, and came down upon the top of the satin, and drew it with them to the bottom of the cauldron. And when they had drunk the mead they slept. And in their sleep, Lludd folded the covering around them, and in the securest place he had in Snowdon, he hid them in a kistvaen. Now after that this spot was called Dinas Emreis, but before that, Dinas Ffaraon. And thus the fierce outcry ceased in his dominions. ” (awending Lady Charlotte Guest).

Dinas Emreis is understood as the stronghold of an "Ambrosius", but if this name belongs to the “punctus permedius” might it not hide the meaning of "ambrosial stronghold" or " the stronghold of ambrosia"? "cauldron of mead" ...  ?  See Nikolai Tolstoy The Quest for Merlin (1985), ch.8 lvs. 102 to 120.

 And "dinas ffaraon dande" "stronghold of the fiery pharoah" is widely understood as meaning King Vortigern who is said to have been burnt to death in his castle by "igne caelesti" (Nennius HB 47) and then everything was swallowed up by the earth (Nennius HB 48). But there was another tale that he died a broken hearted outcast (Nennius HB 48). Might not the name then rather hide that of some sun, fire or thunder god? "Vortigern" after all is also a title rather than a name and meaning "great (vor) tigern (king)".

 

 

Above left: the two dragons - one red, one white, from what we might call the follow-up tale to Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys. Egerton MS 3028 British Library. 

Above right: the same two dragons are shown in the little bows or arches at the foot of a pillar (=axis mundi?).  From Cotton Claudius b. vii. British Library.


 And this brings me to the picture-stone found under the church floor at Sanda on Gotland.  H. R. Ellis-Davidson in her Myths and Symbols (1988) lf. 168 says "dated to about A D 500",  Do you see the tree, maybe a tokening of  the axis mundi, carved into the stone at the bottom?

By Mollberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21135920

 

Richard Dybeck’s Runa (1845):

"Icke sällan får man se ekar, hvilka hela vintrarna bibehålla sina blad. Om dessa har allmogen många berättelser. Den vanligaste är, att den underbara Hvitormen uppehåller sig under en sådan eks rötter. ”Uppå en liten backe, vestan för byen Axeltorp (i Hjersås socken i Skåne), utij vången, har för några åhr stått en gammall stoor och tiock Eek, kallat Gröne-Eek, för dy hon alltjd med sin lööf fandz grön till Juhlafton var förgången; att ehure starck Vinter, köll, frost och sniö dehr kunde falla, och intet löf kunne finnas på något annat trää, stodh lichvähl samma Eck grön med sin lööf, till dess Juhlen var förgången; sedan föllo all löfven af; och dehr någon fördristade, att hugga eller skära den ringaste qvista af trädt, då öfvergick honom någon vanlycka; Efter gammalt taal sägs en drake haft sit bygge under Eeken i backen.” (1691.)"

"You can sometimes see oak trees, which keep their leaves all winter. About these are a lot of stories. The most common thing is that the wonderful White-snake is staying under such oaks’ roots. "On a small hill, west of the town of Axeltorp (in Hjersås parish in Skåne), at the edge of the meadows, there has been for some time an old, great and thick oak, called the Green-Oak, for that it is always found with its leaves green till Yule-eve was gone by; in spite of the hardness of the winter, coldness, frost and snow that there might befall, and no leaves could be found on any other tree, it stood nevertheless the same oak green with its leaves until the Yule-eve was gone; then all the leaves fell off; but no one dared to hew or shear the least limb of the tree, that no unluckiness should overgo them; After an old tale, a dragon is said to have its dwelling under the oak in the hill."(1691.)"

 
Karl Müllenhoff, Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg. (1845), 550. Die Schlange in der Duborg (awend. B. Thorpe):

"In den Ruinen der alten Duborg bei Flensburg lebt eine bläuliche Schlange, die trägt eine kleine Krone von dem feinsten Golde auf ihrem Kopfe. Sie zeigt sich nur einmal am Tage in der Mittagsstunde, aber auch nur auf einen Augenblick. Wer sie aber fangen oder ihr die Krone rauben kann, der ist glücklich. Der König bezahlt ihm sogleich zwanzigtausend Taler Kurant dafür; denn wer sie trägt, der ist unsterblich. - Herr Fries."

"In the ruins of the old Duborg, near Flensborg, there lives a bluish snake that wears on its head a small crown of the finest gold. It appears but once a day, at the hour of noon, and then for a moment only. Whoever can catch it, or get its crown, is fortunate. The king would instantly give twenty thousand dollars current for the crown; for whoever wears it is immortal."

 So whether we have sun-disk, tree, pillar, dokana or doorway the warding gods are the "Heavenly Twins", often understood (or misunderstood if you like), as twin gods or twin goddesses.  Maybe both, for we find that Castor and Pollux are themselves said to have had two sisters, namely Helen and Clytemnestra.  And although they often take upon themselves the shape of snakes to do this, they are elsewhere mainly betokened by horses and birds.  Interestingly, the heads chosen to mark the ends of fourfold fylfot-like ornaments often show the same variations. 

Above: 1. "Celtic" fylfot or swastika with birds? 2. R. Bagdasarov Swastika (2001) figure 65 gives this as being linked to the Alans from the Northern Caucasus (?), but it is alot like "Gothic Silver Eagle Brooch with Garnet inlay" 4th Century C. E., from Romania. 3. A forebisening of the oft met with late Roman horse-head brooch seemingly much beloved by cavalrymen.  4. R. Bagdasarov Swastika (2001) figure 88 from a burial ground at Pryšmančiai near Klaipėda/Memel. 5. From the so-called "Sun-stone" - an old cross shaft now in the parish church at Govan, Lanarkshire.

An Heavenly Twin?

Now, if you have been following the thread I have put down so far you should be now at the point where you are thinking that Wōden/Óðin himself, as also the southern Mercurius and Hermes, may well have been one of the "Heavenly Twins" to begin with.  Or maybe, somehow, both of the "Heavenly Twins" together as one, as the Romans' Janus was maybe once thought of, and which would be, if you think about it, essentially much like what their father (Dyaus) was.   However, A. B. Cook thinks  Janus is an older kind of Zeus, the doorway linked to his name is truly a token of the arch of the heavens, and although his Greek evenling Zan abided without any icons and blended seamlessly with Zeus (in Greece Zan was taken only as another name for Zeus), in Italy Janus' archway icon hindered his blending with Jupiter, although they are indeed the same.  The two faced (bifrons) icon of Janus, long known in Italy was also known in Greece, but there bestowed upon other gods and mythological characters who might still nevertheless be only local variations of Janus/Zan, and thus of Zeus.  Hermes having maybe more than his fair share here.   The two faces are the beginning of the "Heavenly Twins" Professor Cook thinks, each being individually what their father, Janus/Zan, was as a whole, that is, they are Night and Day.  And he has in mind here his Capella Wedding of Mercury... I. 82-83:

“Dehinc admissi Tonantis ipsius filii. … Post hos duorum una quidem germanaque facies; sed alius lucis sidere, opacae noctis alius refulgebat.

“Then the sons of the Thundering One himself were let in …/ And after these came two brothers with the same anseens (=faces)-but one seated himself shining with light; the other darkened by night.”

I think he is right up to a point here for one kind of "Heavenly Twins".   Aitareya-Brāhmaṇa  4.10:

  ahar vai Mitro, rātrir Varuṇa.

Mitra is the day, Varuna the night;

 But there are many "Heavenly Twins", and although they sometimes blend into each other, yet their beginnings might still not be the same.  Thus Cicero De Natura Deorum Book III, ch. 21. (awending H. Rackham) :

 “Dioscoroe etiam apud Graios multis modis nominantur:
primi tres, qui appellantur Anactes Athenis, ex rege Iove antiquissimo et Proserpina nati Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, Dionysus;
secundi Iove tertio nati et Leda, Castor et Pollux;
tertii dicuntur a nonnullis Alco et Melampus et Tmolus, Atrei filii, qui Pelope natus fuit.” 

“The Dioscuri also have a number of titles in Greece.
The first set, called Anaces at Athens, the sons of the very ancient King Jupiter and Proserpine, are Tritopatreus, Eubuleus and Dionysus.
The second set, the sons of the third Jove and Leda, are Castor and Pollux.
The third are named by some people Alco, Melampus and Tmolus, and are the sons of Atreus the son of Pelops.”

Castor and Pollux need no inleading by me I think.  But it is worth thinking that they are shown hiding in an oak tree by Pindar in his Tenth Nemean Ode (awend. Diane Arnson Svarlien):

 μεταμειβόμενοι δ᾽ ἐναλλὰξ ἁμέραν τὰν μὲν παρὰ πατρὶ φίλῳ
Δὶ νέμονται, τὰν δ᾽ ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίας ἐν γυάλοις Θεράπνας,
πότμον ἀμπιπλάντες ὁμοῖον: ἐπεὶ
τοῦτον, ἢ πάμπαν θεὸς ἔμμεναι οἰκεῖν τ᾽ οὐρανῷ,
[110] εἵλετ᾽ αἰῶνα φθιμένου Πολυδεύκης Κάστορος ἐν πολέμῳ.
τὸν γὰρ Ἴδας ἀμφὶ βουσίν πως χολωθεὶς ἔτρωσεν χαλκέας λόγχας ἀκμᾷ.
ἀπὸ Ταϋγέτου πεδαυγάζων ἴδεν Λυγκεὺς δρυὸς ἐν στελέχει
ἡμένους. κείνου γὰρ ἐπιχθονίων πάντων γένετ᾽ ὀξύτατον
ὄμμα.

Changing places in alternation, the Dioscuri spend
one day beside their dear father Zeus,
and the other beneath the depths of the earth in the hollows of Therapne,
each fulfilling an equal destiny,
since Polydeuces preferred this life
to being wholly a god and living in heaven, when Castor was killed in battle.
For Idas, angered for some reason about his cattle, stabbed him with the point of his bronze spear. Looking out from Taÿgetus, Lynceus saw them seated in the hollow of an oak (δρυὸς );
for that man had the sharpest eye of all who live on earth.

This oak is a token the axis mundi, and the two lads in the tree are the same as the two snakes that go about the caduceus, or the two dragons that Lludd found at Oxford.

Euripides in his play Helen gives another tale of their death besides their becoming stars:

ΕΛΕΝΗ
οἱ Τυνδάρειοι δ᾿ εἰσὶν ἢ οὐκ εἰσὶν κόροι;
ΤΕΥΚΡΟΣ
τεθνᾶσι κοὐ τεθνᾶσι· δύο δ᾿ ἐστὸν λόγω.
ΕΛΕΝΗ
πότερος ὁ κρείσσων; ὦ τάλαιν᾿ ἐγὼ κακῶν.
ΤΕΥΚΡΟΣ
ἄστροις σφ᾿ ὁμοιωθέντε φάσ᾿ εἶναι θεώ.140
ΕΛΕΝΗ
καλῶς ἔλεξας τοῦτο· θάτερον δὲ τί;
ΤΕΥΚΡΟΣ
σφαγαῖς ἀδελφῆς οὕνεκ᾿ ἐκπνεῦσαι βίον.

Helen
Are the sons of Tyndareus alive or not?
Teucer
Dead, not dead: there are two accounts.
Helen
Which is the better one? Oh how miserable these woes make me!
Teucer
That they have been made like stars and are gods.
Helen
That at least is good news. But what is the other story?
Teucer
That they killed themselves because of their sister.

[Euripides. Helen. Phoenician Women. Orestes. ouset and awent by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library 11. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.]

So they might have killed themselves.  And although we don't hear of their hanging as such, it is a likelihood as their mother was said to have hanged herself - (βρόχος is a noose):


ΕΛΕΝΗ
ἀπωλόμεσθα· Θεστιὰς δ᾿ ἔστιν κόρη;
ΤΕΥΚΡΟΣ
Λήδαν ἔλεξας; οἴχεται θανοῦσα δή.
ΕΛΕΝΗ
οὔ πού νιν Ἑλένης αἰσχρὸν ὤλεσεν κλέος;
ΤΕΥΚΡΟΣ
φασίν, βρόχῳ γ᾿ ἅψασαν εὐγενῆ δέρην.

Helen
I am undone! Is Thestias’ daughter alive?
Teucer
Do you mean Leda? She is dead and gone.
Helen
What? Killed by Helen’s shame?
Teucer
So they say: she put a noose about her fair neck.


Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1. 14. 2 has Τριπτόλεμος Triptolemus “thrice soldier” and Εὐβουλεύς, Eubuleus "Good Counsel" as the sons of Τρόχιλος Trochilus "wren" (Trochilus is from τρέχειν "to run" and the "wren" is also called τύραννος "king" in Old Greek) by a woman of Eleusis. Triptoloemus also said to be the son of Κελεός Celeus κελεός “orderer, commander; caller of time to rowers” also "green woodpecker" and Μετάνειρα Metaneira. Trochilus and Celeus are ways of naming Zeus without naming him if you follow me.  Demophon is another brother of Triptolemus in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.   Tritopatreus "third father", "great grandfather" is seemingly then the same as Triptolemus.  In Hyginus's Astronomica the star-sign of Gemini is said, among other things, to be Triptolemus and Iasion.  Iasion here may well be for Eubuleus or, at a push, Dionysus, who, as Iacchus, became part of Demeter's mysteries.  Professor Cook marks the underlying samenesses in showing Triptolemus's chariot taking the gift of corn about the world, and Dionysus' chariot taking the gift of wine, and also the solar symbol of the wheel-chariots that they do this in.

 With the forebisening below see how Hermes is shown leading  Triptolemus and a satyr or silenus is shown leading Dionysus as if these two are to be linked in some way as well.

 

Triptolemus and Iasion are more solar than heavenly twins I think, and their work in the East  came under the heading of the Aśvinau. Thus the Ṛgvedaḥ 1.117.21 (awend. Griffith):

yavaṃ vṛkeṇāśvinā vapanteṣaṃ duhantā manuṣāya dasrā |
abhi dasyuṃ bakureṇā dhamantoru jyotiścakrathurāryāya ||

Ploughing and sowing barley, O ye Aśvins, milking out food for men, ye Wonder-Workers,
Blasting away the Dasyu with your trumpet, ye gave far-spreading light unto the Ārya.

Cicero's third lot of Dioscuri would seem to blend several other lots together, and indeed Cicero's list is not exhaustive.  Alco is Alkon ( Ἄλκων) "the strong".  We meet him in book 14 of Nonnus's Dionysiaca lines 17 to 22 (awend. W. H. D. Rouse):

  πρῶτα μὲν ἐκ Λήμνοιο πυριγλώχινος ἐρίπνης
φήμη ἀελλήεσσα Σάμου παρὰ μύστιδι πεύκῃ
υἱέας Ἡφαίστοιο δύω θώρηξε Καβείρους,
οὔνομα μητρὸς ἔχοντας ὁμόγνιον, οὓς πάρος ἄμφω                20
οὐρανίῳ χαλκῆι τέκε Θρήισσα Καβειρώ:
Ἄλκων Εὐρυμέδων τε, δαήμονες ἐσχαρεῶνος.

 First from the firepeak rock of Lemnos  the two Cabeiroi
in arms answered the stormy call  beside the mystic torch of Samos,
two sons of Hephaistos whom Thracian Cabeiro
 had borne to the heavenly smith,
Alcon and Eurymedon well skilled at the forge,
who bore their mother’s tribal name.

These then are all those twins who are builders and makers but also it seems fighters and the fiery sons of the thundering kind of heavenly gods.  What is almost the same name, namely Alcæus (Ἀλκαῖος), was the true name of Hercules.  Hercules was himself a twin brother of Iphicles, but Hyginus in his Astronomica gives Hercules and Apollo as what some folk thought the star-sign of Gemini showed.  These are the Aśvinau as a kind of deified makers or finders of the first of all fires, which then has become a token for all kinds of kindlings and begettings that they then oversee, even that of the universe itself, thus Ṛgvedaḥ 10.184.3, and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.4.22:

  Hiranmayi arani yâbhyâm nirmanthatâm  asvinau,

The golden fire-drills with which
the Aśvins churned the fire; …

[awend. Patrick Olivelle lf.91  1996 Oxford World’s Classics].  See also RV 10.24.4-5.

And this is the kind of Dioscuri that the snakes on the caduceus truly betoken, and the same are truly the snakes warding or climbing about the axis mundi.  Their links to alpha and beta Geminorum are far older and deeper than many might think, thus Santillana and von Dechend Hamlet's Mill:

“… the Aztecs took Castor and Pollux (alpha & beta Geminorum) for the first fire sticks, from which mankind learned how to drill fire. This is known from Sahagun. [n8 Florentine Codex (trans. Anderson and Dibble), vol. 7, p. 60. See also R. Simeon, Dictionnaire de la Langue Nabuatl (1885) s.v. "mamalhuaztli: Les Geameaux, constellation," who does not mention, though, that Sahagun identified mamalhuaztli with "astijellos," fire sticks. Also, the Tasmanians felt indebted to Castor and Pollux for the first fire (see J. G. Frazer, Myths of the Origin of Fire [1930], pp.3f.).].

...  a Mongolian nuptial prayer which says: "Fire was born, when Heaven and Earth separated" [n9 U. Holmberg, Die religiasen Vorstellungen der altaischen Volker (1938), p. 99.]; ...".

 As Penates they will naturally be found either side of Vesta who is the goddess of every hearth-fire and The Hearth-fire of all Hearth-fires: the Sun.  They are needfully linked to the planet of Mercurius and its god as this is the nearest planet to the sun.  They are "Great Gods", "Healers" and "Saviours" for that when the fire is lost or gone out, these will find it out and put it back where it belongs, or they will light it again; for they alone can make an old end into a new beginning.  Do you get the idea?

Melampus, whom we have already marked, was a well known prophet.    He was the son of Amythaon by Idomene, his niece, or by Aglaia.  He was the brother of Bias and Aeolia.

Tmolus was a king of Lydia the husband of Omphale and the father of Tantalus.  That Tantalus is elsewhere said to be the son of Zeus, and Tmolus is also the name of a mountain, make it likely that Tmolus is only a local Lydian name for Zeus. To make Tmolus one of the Dioscuri can only be done if father and son have been muddled up here.  But that Tmolus was said to have been gored to death by a bull might well make him what is indeed a "young Zeus", that is, Dionysus. Tantalus was the father of Pelops, and Pelops the father of Atreus.  The sons of Atreus are Agamemnon and Menelaus who take the part Helen's brothers should have played in her rescue from captivity. 

 To the harm of the official mythic chronology, Menelaus's daughter, Antianeira, was said to be the mother of the Argonauts Eurytus and Echion, by ... Hermes!  Eurytus or Erytus and Echion are specifically called "twins" by Pindar (Pythian Ode 4. 177-179).  Echion's name is interestingly worked up from ἔχις echis "snake", itself only a variant of ὄφις ophis.  Echion is a name also borne by one of the well-known old Spartoi, the "sown men" that grew up from the ground when the dragon's teeth were sown.  This other Echion was Cadmus's son-in-law, but Cadmus, "the Easterner", who first brought letters to the Greeks and will himself, along with his wife Harmonia, become snakes in Illyria, is only  Hermes by another name.  

Another Eurytus is the twin brother of Cteatus begotten by Poseidon or Actor upon Molione, and who, from their mother, are called the Molionidae.  These were slain by Herakles, but not before they had killed his twin brother Iphicles (Paus. Guide... 8.14.9).  That these Molionidai were the "Heavenly Twins" of Elis before a later official mythography made them into anti-heroes I think can be seen from what we find written in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae 2.50 (57f - 58a) (awend. Gullick):

"... Ἴβυκος δὲ ἐν πέμπτῳ μελῶν περὶ Μολιονιδῶν φησι·

[58a] Τούς τε λευκίππους κόρους
 τέκνα Μολιόνας κτάνον,
ἅλικας, ἰσοκεφάλους, ἑνιγυίους,
ἀμφοτέρους γεγαῶτας ἐν ὠέῳ
 ἀργυρέῳ. ...".

 
"Ibycus, in the fifth book of his Lyrics, says of the Molionidae : 

‘I [Herakles] likewise slew the white-horsed youths, 

sons of Molione, equal in age and in height, 

with their limbs joined in one, both hatched

 in a silver egg.’  ...".

Poseidon I think is made out to be their father from their links to white horses and the wont of the "Heavenly Twins" to help those at sea, "foster-father" might be better.  But Leukippos is such a loaded word.  "their limbs joined in one" should have echoes of Janus for us ...

There is much about Janus here that we overlook to our loss.   Like Wōden/Óðin he was a god linked up to fighting, thus Macrobius Saturnalia (awend. Percival Vaughan Davies) bk. 1, ch. 9:

“… Quirinum, quasi bellorum potentem, ab hasta quam Sabini curin vocant: Patultium et Clusivium, quia bello caulae eius patent, pace clauduntur. … [18] ...Ea re placitum, ut belli tempore, velut ad urbis auxilium profecto deo, fores reserarentur. ...”.

“... [16] ... and he is invoked as "Quirinus," as the lord of battles, from the spear which the Sabines call curis. Finally, we invoke him as "Paltultius and Clusivus" because his doors are open (patent) in time of war and shut (clauduntur=cluduntur) in time of peace; ... [18] ... It was therefore resolved to keep the doors of the temple of Janus open in time of war, as though to indicate that the god had gone forth to help the city.”

Akin to this is what Johannes Lydus writes of Janus in his On the Months 4.2 (awend. Mischa Hooker):

 "φασὶ δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν καὶ ἔφορον τῶν ἐπὶ πόλεμον ὁρμώντων τυγχάνειν καὶ διὰ μὲν τῆς μιᾶς ὄψεως ἀποπέμπειν διὰ δὲ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀνακαλεῖσθαι τὸ στράτευμα."

"And they say that he is likewise also the overseer of those who go forth to war, that by virtue of the one face he sends the army out, and by virtue of the other he calls it back."

Under the name of "Quirinus" moreover two gods are always meant.  Juvenal in his eleventh satire line 105 “geminos …  Quirinos” meaning thereby Rome's own twins Romulus and Remus.  They are thus the "Quirini".  And so if we understand "Quirinus" in this way, we can also see that to say "Janus Quirinus" is also the same as saying "Janus Geminus".  Some saw this twofoldness as showing that the god was Apollo and Diana, thus Macrobius Saturnalia again:

 “4 Quidam ideo eum dici bifrontem putant, quod et praeterita sciverit et futura providerit. … Nam sunt qui Ianum eundem esse atque Apollinem et Dianam dicant, et in hoc uno utrumque exprimi numen affirment. 6 Etenim, sicut Nigidius quoque refert, apud Graecos Apollo colitur qui Θυραῖος vocatur, eiusque aras ante fores suas celebrant,  ipsum exitus et introitus demonstrantes potentem: idem Apollo apud illos et ἀγυιεὺς nuncupatur, quasi viis praepositus urbanis: illi enim vias quae intra pomeria sunt ἀγυιὰς appellant: Dianae vero ut Triviae viarum omnium tribuunt potestatem. 7 Sed apud nos Ianum omnibus praeesse ianuis nomen ostendit, quod est simile Θυραίῳ. Nam et cum clavi ac virga figuratur, quasi omnium et portarum custos et rector viarum. 8 Pronuntiavit Nigidius Apollinem Ianum esse Dianamque Ianam, adposita d littera ...”.

“  [5] ... For there are some who identify Janus with Apollo and Diana and maintain that he combines in himself the divine attributes of both. [6] indeed, as Nigidius, too, relates, Apollo is worshipped among the Greeks under the name of Θυραῖος "the God of the Door" (Thyraios), and they pay honours at altars to him before their doors, showing thereby that he has power over their going out and coming in. Among the Greeks Apollo is also called "the guardian of the Streets" (Aguieus), as presiding over the streets of a city (for in Grreece the streets within a city's boundaries are called ); and to Diana, as Trivia, is assigned the rule over all roads. [7] At Rome all doorways are under the charge of Janus, as is evident from his name which is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Thyraios; and he is represented as carrying a key and a rod, as the keeper of all doors and a guide on every road. [8] Nigidius declared that Apollo is Janus and that Diana is Jana, that is to say, Jana with the addition of the letter "D"… (awend. Percival Vaughan Davies)”.

This wants withmeteing with what Lydus writes 4.2:

 "... ἄλλος δέ φησι τὸν Ἰανὸν ἥρωα γενέσθαι καὶ πρῶτον κατασκευάσαι τεμένη καὶ τιμὰς τοῖς θεοῖς ἐπιτελέσαι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μνήμην αὐτοῦ ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς γενέσθαι. ὅ γε μὴν Δημόφιλος πρῶτον αὐτὸν βούλεται οἴκους καὶ πυλεῶνας κατασκευάσαι καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἰανούας, ὅ ἐστι θύρας, Ἰανουάριον ὀνομασθῆναι. ἔχειν δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ ἀδελφὴν τοὔνομα Καμασήνην."

 

"... but another [writer] says that Janus was a hero, and was the first to set up sacred precincts and to present honors to the gods, and that he was memorialized in the temples for this reason.  Indeed, Demophilus supposes that he was the first to build houses and gateways, and that January was named on the basis of the [word] ianua—that is, "door"—and also that he has a sister named Camasene.(awend. Mischa Hooker)."

 Camasene is for Carmenta worshipped in Janus's month, herself understood as twofold (Antevorta and Postvorta).

 But Apollo himself was also a twofold god in his own right thus in chapitle 17 of Macrobius again we read:

“64 ἀπόλλωνα Διδυμαῖον vocant, quod geminam speciem sui numinis praefert ipse inluminando formandoque lunam: etenim ex uno fonte lucis gemino sidere spatia diei et noctis inlustrat: unde et Romani solem sub nomine et specie Iani Didymaei Apollinis appellatione venerantur.”

“[64] Men call Apollo "the Twin God" (Διδυμαῖος) because he presents a twin form of his own divinity, by himself giving light and shape to the moon, for, as a twofold star giving light from a single source, he illumines the periods of day and night. And this too is the reason why the Romans worship the sun under the name and form of Janus, with the style of Didymaean Apollo. (awend. Percival Vaughan Davies)”

But as well as his sister here we might also think of Dionysus, thus th'ilk chap.18 §8:

“In sacris enim haec religiosi archani observatio tenetur, ut sol, cum in supero, id est in diurno, hemisphaerio est, Apollo vocitetur: cum in infero, id est nocturno, Dionysus, qui est Liber pater, habeatur.”

“In the performance of the sacred rites a mysterious rule of religion ordains that the sun shall be called Apollo when it is in the upper hemisphere, that is to say, by day, and be held to be Dionysus, or Liber Pater, when it is in the lower hemisphere, that is to say, at night.” (awend. Davies)

And Janus' two headed token was also taken to show his wisdom th'ilk:

“[4] Quidam ideo eum dici bifrontem putant, quod et praeterita sciverit et futura providerit ”.

“ [4] Moreover, some think that he received the epithet of "two-faced" because of his knowledge of the past and foreknowledge of the future."(awend. Percival Vaughan Davies)”.

 And Lydus maybe should have the last word here:

" … ὁ δὲ Γάβιος Βάσσος ἐν τῷ περὶ θεῶν δαίμονα αὐτὸν εἶναι νομίζει τεταγμένον ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀέρος, καὶ δι' αὐτοῦ τὰς τῶν ἀνθρώπων εὐχὰς ἀναφέρεσθαι τοῖς κρείττοσι· ταύτῃ δίμορφος εἶναι λέγεται ἔκ τε τῆς πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἔκ τε τῆς πρὸς θεοὺς ὄψεως."

"Gavius Bassus, in his work On the Gods, considers him to be the daemon appointed over the air, and that through him human prayers are conveyed up to the greater [gods]—thus, he is said to be double in form, from his gaze toward us and his gaze toward the gods.(awend. Mischa Hooker)."

 That is more or less the same as Mercurius!

Above: Janus or Mercurius?

A doorway is made by its frame, and the frame is the same frame as made the old kind of gallows, even that called a "wooden horse".  Horse, doorway and gallows are all tools for moving from one place to another so to speak.  Whilst riding a horse or a gallows, as also whilst in a doorway, you are neither in one place or another, but in between.  And this links to the axis mundi.  In the architecture and folk-art of Java, an old colony of folk from India, the well-known tokens of the axis mundi, namely mount (gunungan) and tree (kekayon) sometimes blend together and gain doors and wings to make what Roger Cook in his The Tree of Life (1974) calls the "winged-mountain-tree-door motif"!  The wings belike stemming from the garudas, who, along with snakes, may be seen warding doorways in India.  Those who know their Narniad will see straightaway what C. S. Lewis has done with his magic wardrobe made from wood stemming from "the Tree" in Narnia.  And see also the drawing by Lewis' friend, J. R. R. Tolkien, for the gateway to the Mines of Moria, with its two trees and two pillars bearing up an arch.



 Manilius Astronomica Book 2 (awend. G. P. Goold):

non licet a minimis animum deflectere curis, 234
nec quicquam rationis eget frustrave creatum.

You must not divert your attention from the smallest detail:
nothing exists without reason or has been uselessly created.

And:

Quin tria signa novem signis coniuncta repugnant
et quasi seditio caelum tenet. Aspice Taurum
clunibus et Geminos pedibus, testudine Cancrum
surgere, cum rectis oriantur cetera membris; 200
ne mirere moras, cum sol aversa per astra
aestivum tardis attollat mensibus annum.

 Further, three adjacent signs are at variance with the other nine
 and a kind of dissension takes hold of heaven. Observe that the Bull
rises by his hind quarters, the Twins by their feet, the Crab by his shell,
whereas all the others rise in upright posture;
 so wonder not at the delay when in tardy months the Sun
 carries summertide aloft through signs which rise hind-first.

[Lvs. 98 & 99 of Loeb Classical Library edition (LCL469) 1997].

Now this rising upside down of the Twins by their feet is another “gift of the gods” toward our understanding here as it allows us to make some amazing links that brightly light up for us what would otherwise be so dark and dim.

In the near and middle east among the Jews and Arabs we find a tale told of two angels  called something like Harut and Marut among the Muslims, and Uzza or Azza and Azzael among the Jews, though we also find one of these names swapped for Shemhazai (Raymundus Martini in his Pugio Fidei (first printed 1651) calls them "Schamchusai & Azael").  Harut and Marut are names mistakenly borrowed from the Parsees and the Jewish names only hide their true identity but the rhyme and alliteration are clues.  For these are the "Heavenly Twins"!   Now both the Muslims and Jews understand them as fallen angels, or angels who fell, as nonether than the "sons of God" of Genesis 6 (where many fallen angels are wanted these two become their leaders) but the cause of their fall was said to be their lust for women.  If by fall you understand death, and death of the mortal twin, the same might well be said of Castor and Pollux whose untimely apotheosis was brought about by their making off with the daughters of Leukippos.  Both the Jews and Muslims have them as the teachers of forbidden arts to men.  The Muslims lean toward understanding this narrowly as idol-worship and magic, but the Jews many other unnatural things besides these  such as writing.  All this, needless to say, looks to Mercurius.  The clincher however is the end.  To some Azza and Azzael to  are chained up until Doomsday in "mountains of darkness"  which might look to Prometheus.  But others still say they are hung up until Doomsday between heaven and earth.  Azzael the penitent fallen angel is allowed to hang the right way up, but Azza the impenitent is hanging upside down (Pugio Fidei (1651) tertia pars, dist. iii, cap. xxii. sectio xxvi, lf. 729: "... dixeruntque de Schemchusai quod reversus est per poenitentiam & suspendit seipsum inter caelum & teram, caput suum deorsam, & pedes suos sursum, quia non erat ei apertio oris coram Deo sancto benedicto: & adhuc hodie suspensus est  per poenitentiam inter caelum & terram.  Sed Azael non reversus est ..." ). Withmete these to the good and bad, or impenitent and penitent, thieves that hang next to Jesus at his crucifixion.  A further markworthy thing about Azza:

"Azza has one eye open and one eye shut. ... his one eye remains open that he may perceive his plight and suffer the more." (B. J. Bamberger Fallen Angels (1952) in endnote 10 to chap. 24 on lf.285 and, if I understand Bamberger aright, seemingly found in a work called Kanfe Yonah "Wings of a Dove" Azariah da Fano (1548-1620)).

These two fallen, or should we say falling, angels may be seen carved at the often marked Roslin Chapel, either side of a pillar, although it is only the fallen one that seems to be photogenic.  Robert Graves and Raphael Patai in their Hebrew Myths (1963) mark all this tale, but bring in the seeming "half red-herring" by saying Azza is meant to be the star-sign of Orion.  For Azza and Azzael, a pair, are obviously meant to be the neighbouring star-sign of Gemini.  This is more or less proved from the belief of Muslims about the end of Harut and Marut, for they say they are both hanging upside down in a well at Babel, and their are pictures for the curious.  This from a 18th century C.E. Ottoman handwrit of a work of Zakariya al-Qazwini (1208-1283):

handwrit W.659 of a work of Zakariya al-Qazwini - now in Walters Art Museum: Baltimore, Maryland.  Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18854362

That Gemini is meant is further strengthened by the belief that Azza begat two sons "Hija & Chija" who in turn begat the Amorite kings Sihon and Og (Pugio Fidei (1651) tertia pars, dist. iii, cap. xxii. sectio xxvi, lf. 729: "Schemchusai genuit duos filios, quorum nomina Hija & Chija: & duxerunt uxores, & genuerunt Seonem & Ogum;..." ).


We thus come to the well known Tarot trump of "The Hanged Man".  He is thus to be understood as an half of Gemini.  The picture below is from the so-called "Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards" as they have the badges of those kindreds upon them. It is thought to be the work of Bonifacio Bembo and his family, and were made for Bianca Maria Visconti (1425–1468), and her husband, the condottiero Francesco Sforza (1401–1466).  In Italy this card was called  Il Traditore, The Bewrayer or Traitor, but the Latin that this is from, namely Traditor, can mean "teacher" as well as "traitor", as it is from the verb tradere which means literally "to hand over".  The word tradition comes from the same roots.

That Saint Peter was "hung" or crucified upside down outside Rome on the Janiculum Hill hallowed to Janus is worth marking here.  But both he and Saint Paul have  long been assimilated to the Dioscuri in the city of the twofold Janus and of the twins Romulus and Remus!  Mark also that Peter to whom Jesus gave "the keys to the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:19), and so the same as Janus is araught by Ovid in his Fasti line 139 "coelestis janitor aulae", is a de facto "twin" with Paul.  

I can't help thinking here that we also have the old langue des oiseaux creeping in.  Peter is Petrus Πέτρος "a stone" and Paul, Paulus - Παῦλος, which word being Latin doesn't mean much in Greek, was nevertheless understood as πόλος "pole", as if they were two pillars or posts ...  Or did the Greeks hear πῶλος meaning the same as our word "foal", but also brooked by the Greeks as some of us today would say "kid" for a child.  Euripides in his more or less lost play Antiope makes Hermes call Amphion and Zethus (the "Heavenly Twins" of Thebes), the "white foals" of Zeus though Page awends this as "White Steeds" in the following:

λεύκω δὲ πώλω τὼ Διὸς κεκλημένοι τίμας μεγίστας ἕξετ᾿ ἐν Κάδμου πόλει.

You shall both be called the White Steeds of Zeus, and enjoy great honours in the city of Cadmus.

 [Select Papyri, Volume III: Poetry. Awent by Denys L. Page. Loeb Classical Library 360. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941. ]

Mark: "city of Cadmus".

 The odd way the "Hanged Man" has his legs bent is not to be overlooked.  In the East Krishna is shown playing his pipe making almost the same shape with his legs.  And Vishnu sometimes borrows it.  But Krishna is a twin brother of Balarama.   Below we have Cautes (torch up) and Cautopates (torch down) - the "torch-bearers" - who are hardly ever shown that far away from Mithras and were blent with the Dioscuri as the  "Mithraic Cameos" shown beneath will outfold. 

Above: 1. A cameo with the well-known tauroctony "bull-slaying" scene with Cautes (torch up) and Cautopates (torch down) either side of Mithras and the bull.  2. Part of a bas-relief found at Virunum in Noricum with the birth of Mithra from the "petra genetrix" with Cautes  and Cautopates on either side of him.  3. A wonderful cameo with the same birth of Mithra scene, but this time Cautes and Cautopates have shifted into the Dioscuri on horseback with stars and snakes!  Mark the eagle with a snake in his beak at the top.  The back shows these snakes twined about staves and on bows.  Between these snakes are the Dioscuri's two stars, a bowl (crater?) and a pitcher of wine with a square cover (the same that on the front has a round loaf on top). All from Franz Cumont's Classic study.


The upside down Gemini also give us the (hopefully) well-known token of Hercules and the Cercopes (Κέρκωπες).  Hercules here could be for the sun in Gemini or for the neighbouring star-sign of Orion.

By Velvet - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16176213

I called Graves and Patai's linking of Azza to Orion an "half red-herring" for that the lore of the star-signs of Gemini and Orion can often be seen to blend together so that it becomes hard to tell them asunder.  Thus Albiruni’s The Chronology of Ancient Nations (Athâr-ul-bâkiya), Edward Sachau 1879 awending, ch. 11 lf.226, where he is withmeteing the knowledge of the Arabs and the Chorasmians, says of the Arabs:

  “For instance, they count Aljauzâ among the number of the Zodiacal signs instead of Gemini, whilst Aljauzâ is the figure Orion.”

Now many of you will then straightaway see from this where "Herne the Hunter" fits into the scheme of things.  The hanging and the oak tree belonging to Gemini.  The hunting, the "great ragg'd horns" and the "all the winter-time" (Orion is best seen then in northerly climes)  belong to Orion, but not so much the Orion of Greek mythology as of India where he is Prajapati awending back from a deer into a god, the head not fully shifted (hence λ and φ Orionis are called Mrigashīra "deer's head"), when he is shot by Rudra!  What Prajapati was doing to be shot by Rudra is another tale, but it lived on in the British Isles to give rise to the ballad called the "Twa Magicians" (Roud 1350, Child 44).  In Greek myth however see Actæon whom Arnobius calls (3.34) “corniger ille venator”.  I should say here that J. E. Fontenrose is bang on when he takes Actæon for Orion in his Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress (1981), but I have already said something pithy about Actæon above.

From the nearness of the star-sign of Orion to the Milky Way the two become linked in all kinds of ways, often dragging the Twins along with them!  Orion and the Milky Way is said to be Saint James/Jack (Jacob) the Great often shown as a pilgrim with a broad-brimmed hat wending on his weary way to Compostella.  But this same James and his brother John are otherwise understood as stand-ins for the "Heavenly Twins".  Mark. 3:17 is interesting reading in Old English:

 "... and Iacobum Zebedei, and Iohannem his broðor, and him naman onsette Boaneries, þæt is, Ðunres bearn."

"... and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, and set on them the name Boaneries, that is,  Ðunor's sons."

 Or if we think of the Milky Way more as a milky water-way than a street on dry land,   then we will see how Orion then becomes the gigantic Saint Christopher wading over a stream with the child Jesus on his back.  Or Wade with Wayland (Wayland is one of three brothers), or Þórr wading "norðan yfir Élivága" with Aurvandil on his back (from Saxo we know Aurvandil had a naughty brother called "Fengo"...).   In August Brunk's 'Der wilde Jäger im Glauben des pommerschen Volkes' in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 1903 xiii. lf.184 we may read :

 "Feuerstreifen bezeichnen den Weg, den er nimmt, und als er sich einst zu hoch in die Lüfte erhob, blieb die Milchstrasse am Himmel als Spur seines Zuges zurück, die davon noch heute in Pommern Wildbahn heisst."

" Tongues of fire mark the path he takes, and when he once rose too high into the air, the Milky Way was left behind in the sky as a mark of his riding out, and which is therefore still called in Pomerania "Wildbahn" ["Wild-pathway"]."

And this is as good a time as any to maketh minning as to why the Northerners have seemingly muddled up  Wōden/Óðin and his two brothers with the three sons of Mannus.  The birth-tale of the Aśvinau hinted at in Ṛgvedaḥ 10.17.1 to 2 is filled out for us by  Yāska in his Nirukta 12.10 (awend. Lakshman Sarup) :

 “tvāstrī.saranyūr.vivasvata.ādityād.yamau.mithunau.janayām.cakāra/

sā.savarṇām.anyām.pratinidhāya.āśvam.rūpam.kṛtvā.pradudrāva/

sa.vivasvān.āditya.āśvam.eva.rūpam.kṛtvā.tām.anusṛtya.sambabhūva/

tatas.aśvinau.jajñāte/

savarṇāyām.manuh/”

“Saraṇyū daughter of Tvaṣṭṛ bore twins, Yama and Yamī, to Vivasvat the sun. She having substituted another lady of similar appearance, and having assumed the shape of a mare, ran away. He, Vivasvat, the sun, having also assumed the shape of a horse, pursued her, and joined her. Thence the Aśvins were born. Manu was born from the lady of similar appearance.”

So Manu, the first man (the same as the Mannus marked in the Germania), and the  Aśvinau are half brothers!  The Aśvinau are the children of Vivasvat and the goddess Saraṇyū, but us men are the children of Vivasvat and only a likeness of  Saraṇyū, which likeness is elsewhere called Savarṇī.  If
Wōden/Óðin and his brothers are set here for the Aśvinau, you can then see how the two pedigrees might have got themselves muddled up.  Now the elder twins here, Yama and Yamī, are also worthwhile to mark.  For they also are a token of Gemini in their own way.  And the muddling of these with the  Aśvinau has led to some of the odd things we find in the old tales and writs like Lydus' words in his fourth book on the Months  4.17:

 " οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἐπιμενίδην ἄρρενα καὶ θήλειαν ἐμύθευσαν τοὺς Διοσκόρους, τὸν μὲν αἰῶνα, ὥσπερ μονάδα, τὴν δὲ φύσιν, ὡς δυάδα, καλέσαντες· ἐκ γὰρ μονάδος καὶ δυάδος ὁ πᾶς ζωογονικὸς καὶ ψυχογονικὸς ἐξεβλάστησεν ἀριθμός. ἰστέον δὲ κατὰ ταύτην τὴν ἡμέραν τοὺς ἐρίφους δύεσθαι καὶ τροπὴν γίνεσθαι κατὰ Φίλιππον."

" The [school] of Epimenides  related that the Dioscuri were male and female, calling the one Aiôn, as a "monad," the other Physis, as a "dyad." For from the monad and the dyad the whole of life-producing and soul-producing number sprang up. (awend. Mischa Hooker)"

And thus also why only women swore by Castor "ēcastor", but both men and women by Pollux "edepol".  And the begetting of "Bleidwn, Hydwn, Hychdwn Hir" by Guydyon and Giluathwy in the Welsh tale of Math uab Mathonwy.  We may also understand from this why all those medieval tokens of the star-sign of Gemini show a man an a woman, and seemingly as lovers.  They are not mistaken copies of earlier Classical art, but rather done with a reason all of their own.   For they look back to the first man and the first woman, who, you will now see (I hope), are as much tokens in their own way of the "Heavenly Twins" as any tokens of Castor and Pollux might be.  And that the  token of the tree of life with its warding snake should be found alongside them is also no wonder.  Though two snakes would be better.  Nor that the same is misread by overmany folk who have never learnt to rightly read such things.  What the Chinese once did with the self same things is, to say the least, a bit of an eye-opener (see Fuxi and Nüwa):

By Anonymous - Zhongguo gu dai shu hua jian ding zu (中国古代书画鑑定组). 1997. Zhongguo hui hua quan ji (中国绘画全集). Zhongguo mei shu fen lei quan ji. Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she. Volume 1., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9923834

That Yama Ṛgvedaḥ 10. 10.3 is the "sole existing mortal" shows us that Yama and Manu might have once been the same.  And 10.14.1-2 has the idea that, as Yama was the first to die, so he is the way shower to those of us who come after and go where he went before.

 "pareyivāṃsaṃ pravato mahīranu bahubhyaḥ panthāmanupaspaśanam |
vaivasvataṃ saṃghamanaṃ janānāṃ yamaṃrājānaṃ haviṣā duvasya ||
yamo no ghātuṃ prathamo viveda naiṣa ghavyūtirapabhartavā u |
yatrā naḥ pūrve pitaraḥ pareyurenā jajñānāḥpathyā anu svāḥ ||"

"  1. HONOUR the King with thine oblations, Yama, Vivasvan's Son, who gathers men together,
Who travelled to the lofty heights above us, who searcbes out and shows the path to many.
2 Yama first found for us a place to dwell in: this pasture never can be taken from Us.
Men born on earth tread their own paths that lead them whither our ancient Fathers have departed."

That Yama is above, not below, is also to be gleaned from 10.64.3 where we read "yamaṃ divi" "to Yama in heaven" (divi is locative).   But when we start reading of Yama's dogs (10.14.11) we have the lore of Orion bending things.  "the path" would then be the Milky Way with which Orion is always tightly linked.

Among the Parsees Yama and Yamī were long minned.  Yama as Jam or Jamšid, earlier Yima xšaēta,  as a king wielding over a golden time in days of yore.  And his twin sister as Jamī (Jamag)  [see here]. Their father is called  Wīwanghān, earlier Vīuuaŋᵛhant, answering to Vivasvat.  And of this same Wīwanghān, the Arabic writers had something odd to say:

 “Abū Ma‘šar al-Balhī the astrologer said in the Book of the Thousands:

The Hermeses are three. The first of them is Hermes who was before the Flood. The significance of “Hermes” is a title, like saying “Caesar” and “Husraw” [which are titles]. The Persians named him Wīwanghān, meaning “the Just,” in their biographies of the kings (fī siyarihā). He is the one to whose philosophy the Harrānians adhere.”

[awending Kevin van Bladel The Arabic Hermes (2009) lf.125].

And at long last t hen, having gone a long way about, we now I think can know why Óðin's horse has eight legs, for like Janus' twofold head, it is to show that he is two gods in one.  Thus the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (1997), outsetters J. P. Mallory & D. Q. Adams, under "Divine Twins" Steven O' Brien writes lf.163:

  “The most famous horse in Norse myth is Sleipnir, Óðinn's eight legged steed. As told in the Prose Edda, Sleipnir's birth is connected with the building of the Walls of Asgarð, for which a giant demands Freyja, together with the sun and moon, as payment. Elements of this story recall the Celtic horse goddess and birth of the Divine Twins viz. the demand for the goddess by an unwanted suitor and the seduction of the builders. Instead of a twin birth, in the Norse tale Sleipnir is born with an extra set of legs, thus representing an original pair of horses.”

 

Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ=Varuna and Mitra?

That Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ (see Tacitus Annals Bk.12, chap.57), the one-eyed and the one-handed gods make an ancient pair is not in doubt.   But whether these are as Georges Dumézil will have them is a moot point.  To trace them back as he does to Varuna and Mitra looks good at the outset, but it is not long before you start hitting little snags.   One of which is to do with Mitra.  As everyone should know, in the Ṛgvedaḥ it is the thunder-god Indra who mainly wields the thunder-weapon therein called a vajraḥ (वज्रः).  In the Avesta of the Parsees this same word is vazra 'mace'   (see "Tocharian" wasir thunderbolt) but it is there the weapon of ... Mitra, or Mithra as he is with them!  Thus Mihr Yasht (10), verse 132:

"    hishtaite aom vâshahe

    mithrahe vouru-gaoyaoitôish

    vazrem srîrem hunivixtem

    satafshtânem satôdârem

    fravaêkhem vîrô-nyåñcim

    zarôish ayanghô frahixtem

    amavatô zaranyehe

    amavastemem zayanãm

    verethravastemem zayanãm,

    mainyavaså vazeñti

    mainyavaså pateñti

    kameredhe paiti daêvanãm."

" 'On a side of the chariot of Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, stands a beautiful well-falling club (vazrem), with a hundred knots, a hundred edges, that rushes forward and fells men down; a club cast out of red brass, of strong, golden brass; the strongest of all weapons, the most victorious of all weapons. It goes through the heavenly space, it falls through the heavenly space upon the skulls of the Daevas."

[awending  James Darmesteter  Sacred Books of the East (1898)]


So seemingly alot like our Þunor if we understand the "daevas" here as the same as our ettins. And this becomes even more of a likelihood when we know that vazra was borrowed into Finnish as vasara where it means hammer!  But all this cannot be. Dumézil will have Mithra-Mitra as a god of the first of his “three cosmic and social functions”, whilst our Þunor with his thunder-weapon has to be in his second. Now to be fair, Dumézil himself marks this particular problem with his theory (see his Mitra-Varuna (1988) Ch. VII *Wôdhanaz and *Tîwaz, lvs.117 to 118 ’Mithra Armed’) and his answer is (Lf.118) that Mithra's vazra:

 “... is the thunderbolt of a notary, not that of a captain - a legal impress rather than a weapon of war,…”.

Well, read Mihr Yasht and decide for yourself! But I give you verse 135 therefrom:

     "mâ mithrahe vouru-gaoyaoitôish

    grañtahe vaêkhâi jasaêma,

    mâ-nô grañtô aipi-janyå

    mithrô ýô vouru-gaoyaoitish

    ýô aojishtô ýazatanãm

    ýô tañcishtô ýazatanãm

    ýô thwaxshishtô ýazatanãm

    ýô âsishtô ýazatanãm

    ýô as verethrajãstemô ýazatanãm

    fraxshtaite paiti âya zemâ

    mithrô ýô vouru-gaoyaoitish.

    ahe raya ... tåscâ ýazamaide!"

"'Oh! may we never fall across the rush of Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, when in anger! May Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, never smite us in his anger; he who stands up upon this earth as the strongest of all gods, the most valiant of all gods, the most energetic of all gods, the swiftest of all gods, the most fiend-smiting of all gods, he, Mithra, the lord of wide pastures.

'For his brightness and glory, I will offer him a sacrifice worth being heard.... ".

And Dumézil I don't think knew his Kipling:

"Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!"

Another snag is that Dumézil's understanding of the caturvarṇāḥ does not match the eastern tradition about such things  and he has twisted it to fit his own theory.  Firstly, the four classes are thus in the Laws of Manu (awend. George Bühler), chap. 1:

sarvasyāsya tu sargasya guptyarthaṃ sa mahādyutiḥ |
mukhabāhūrupajjānāṃ pṛthakkarmāṇy akalpayat // Mn_1.87 //
adhyāpanam adhyayanaṃ yajanaṃ yājanaṃ tathā /
dānaṃ pratigrahaṃ caiva brāhmaṇānām akalpayat // Mn_1.88 //
prajānāṃ rakṣaṇaṃ dānam ijyādhyayanam eva ca /
viṣayeṣv aprasaktiś ca kṣatriyasya samāsataḥ // Mn_1.89 //
paśūnāṃ rakṣaṇaṃ dānam ijyādhyayanam eva ca /
vaṇikpathaṃ kusīdaṃ ca vaiśyasya kṛṣim eva ca // Mn_1.90 //
ekam eva tu śūdrasya prabhuḥ karma samādiśat /eteṣām eva varṇānāṃ śuśrūṣām anasūyayā // Mn_1.91 //

87. But in order to protect this universe He, the most resplendent one, assigned separate (duties and) occupations to those who sprang from his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet.
88. To Brahmanas he assigned teaching (adhyāpanam) and studying (adhyayanaṃ - the Veda), sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting (of alms).
89. The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people (prajānāṃ rakṣaṇaṃ), to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures;
90. The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land.
91. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes.

Under the heading "protect the people (prajānāṃ rakṣaṇaṃ)" is kingship.  The king being no more than the foremost of this class, the kshatriya of kshatriyas as the Parsees say (see Xšāyathiya Xšāyathiyānām or Šāhe Šāhān).      In the Rajatarangini we read of a bad king (awend. M. N. Dutt): 

"Envious of the gods, and thinking that the brahmanas displayed the glory of the gods, he ceased to punish guilty brahmanas in order that they might become corrupt."

So a king could and should punish law-breaking brahmins in the temporal domain, and this shows the separateness of himself, as a kshatriya, from brahmins, and thus the separateness of the two classes.  As to why the brahmin class was deemed higher than the kshatriya we have the tale in the Mahabharata,  Chaitraratha Parva of the Adi Parva, ch. 176 (awend. K. M. Ganguli) where King Visvamitra is going about to steal Nandini, Vashista's only cow, after he won't sell it:

"Viswamitra replied, 'I am a Kshatriya, but thou art a Brahmana devoted to asceticism and study. Is there any energy in Brahmanas who are peaceful and who have their souls under perfect command? When thou givest me not what I desire in exchange even for ten thousand cows, I will not abandon the practice of my order; I will take thy cow even by force!'

"Vasishtha said, 'Thou art a Kshatriya endued with might of arms. Thou art a powerful monarch. O, do in haste what thou desirest; and stop not to consider its propriety.' ...".

I won't harm the tale for those who don't know it yet by saying what happens next, for it is enough to say here that things don't go as Visvamitra thought they would:

"... Viswamitra, beholding this wonderful feat that resulted from Brahmana prowess, became disgusted with Kshatriya prowess and said, 'O, fie on Kshatriya prowess! Brahmana prowess is true prowess!  In judging of strength and weakness, I see that asceticism is true strength.' Saying this, the monarch, abandoning his large domains and regal splendour and turning his back upon all pleasures, set his mind on asceticism. Crowned with success in asceticism and filling the three worlds with the heat of his ascetic penances, he afflicted all creatures and finally became a Brahmana. The son of Kusika at last drank Soma with Indra himself (in Heaven).'"

Thus the first two of Dumézil's “three cosmic and social functions” are not accurately based on the first two of the caturvarṇāḥ as he claims.  The sovereignty of the first class among men is wholly of a spiritual kind, think Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury rather than king, and the king, the worldly ruler, belongs with other kshatriyas in the second class.  Dumézil thus seems to err to my mind by taking the king out from the kshatriyas and putting him with the brahmins as a quasi-priest.  And he then brings in the worship of Mitra and Varuna together as representing above what his brahmins+king class is on earth.  

 Another snag then lies in the assumption that heavenly society must match the earthly.  For all the gods, as gods, have a ruling characteristic, and all of them are lords or ladies, kings and queens, so to speak.  And so to put them in an hierarchy reflecting human society is a bit misleading, although it is undoubtedly true that certain gods are assigned to certain classes.  A  recent view is given by Rai Bahadur A.C. Mukerji Hndu Fasts and Feasts (1916), lf. 12: 

“Shiva is the god of the Brahmans, Vishnu of the Kshattriyas, Brahma of the Vaishyas and Ganesha of the Sudras.”

Then when it comes to look at what classes  Mitra and Varuna might have adopted we find in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, IV, 1, 4, 1, which text Dumézil himself marks (lf.178 of the above work), that  "Mitra is the priesthood, and Varuna the nobility", that is, Mitra is the god of brahmins, Varuna of kshatriyas, and this then doesn't really fit into his theory of these gods at all.  For Mitra-Varuna are Dumézil's first function gods, but only brahmins and kings (as quasi-priests) are first function humans. But the words of the above Brāhmaṇa would put all kshatriyas, not just kings, under Varuna, and thus all of Dumézil's second function humans (see his lf.22) as well.  Needless to say Dumézil is "economical" with the truth here, as he knows a more generous helping would harm his theory.    Any way you look at it, the assigning of Mitra and Varuna to different and rival classes, namely to brahmins and kshatriyas, makes perfect sense based on what we know from elsewhere that the things of Varuna are not those of Mitra ("Now that which is of Mitra is not of Varuna" = SB 3.2.4.18), whereas to assign them to the same class, artificially subdivided to fit a shaky theory, makes none.  

Now it may be that the most pre-eminent brahmin and the most preminent kshatriya, say our Archbishop of Canterbury and our king, have a pre-eminence that puts them in a kind of a set of their own, as earthly embodiments of Mitra and Varuna you might say, and it maybe that this is actually what Dumézil is driving at, but this has nothing to do with the  caturvarṇāḥ, for neither Archbishop nor king will ever stop belonging to the class that they truly belong to from their svakarman/svadharma.  Indeed, their respective positions depend on even this.  And in theory they need never stoop to working with each other, although it is better for all if they do, yet far too often in history we see them clash over who has the higher right.   

Now this touches on Plato's "philosopher-kings"  (see Republic bk. 5, 473d).  In all that Plato writes about these there is an air of impossibility about them.  And so Marsilio Ficino's argumentum for Plato's Second Letter, in the 1484 outsetting of Platonis Opera (but Hankins gives Platonis Opera (1491), f. 327vb) comes up with this answer:

“Morale igitur apud Platonem preceptem esto: principes sapientes honorent, sapientes libenter principibus consulant.  Nam et sapientia absque potential prodest paucis et potentia, remota sapientia, obest multis.  Potentia quidem expers sapientiae quo maior est, eo pernitiosior.  Sapientia vero procul a potential manca videtur.  Docent hoc magne planetarum coniunctiones.  Iuppiter quidem dominus est, Saturnus vero philosophus.  Hi profecto nisi coniungantur, nihil uel magnum uel stabile moliuntur.” 

''Let this then be Plato’s moral teaching: princes should honour the wise; the wise should willingly consult the interest of princes.  For wisdom without power helps few, and power without wisdom harms many.  Indeed power without wisdom is the more pernicious the greater it is; wisdom which remains distant from power is lame. The great conjunctions of the planets teach us this. Jupiter is the lord; Saturn the philosopher. Surely, unless these be conjoined nothing either great or stable may be established'' (Plato in the Italian Renaissance 1 (1990) James Hankins., lf. 304).

Which of course allows us to see that what Plato is truly advocating is the need for brahmins (spiritual wisdom) and kshatriyas (worldly might) to work together as one.  And this is also why the writers of the Ṛgvedaḥ twinned Mitra and Varuna thus Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, 4:1:4:2 to 4 (awend. Eggeling):

 4.1.4.[2] te haite agre nānevāsatuḥ | brahma ca kṣatraṃ ca tataḥ śa śākaiva brahma mitra ṛte kṣatrādvaruṇātsthātum
4.1.4.[3] na kṣatraṃ varuṇaḥ | ṛte brahmaṇo mitrādyaddha kiṃ ca varuṇaḥ karma cakre
'prasūtam brahmaṇā mitreṇa na haivāsmai tatsamānṛdhe
4.1.4.[4] sa kṣatraṃ varuṇaḥ | brahma mitramupamantrayāṃ cakra upa māvartasva
saṃsṛjāvahai purastvā karavai tvatprasūtaḥ karma karavā iti tatheti tau samasṛjetāṃ
tata eṣa maitrāvaruṇo graho 'bhavat

2. Now in the beginning these two, the priesthood (brahma) and the nobility (kṣatraṃ), were separate: then Mitra, the priesthood, could stand without Varuna, the nobility.
 3. Not Varuna, the nobility, without Mitra, the priesthood: whatever deed Varuna did unsped by Mitra, the priesthood, therein, forsooth, he succeeded not.
 4. Varuna, the nobility, then called upon Mitra, the priesthood, saying, 'Turn thou unto me that we may unite: I will place thee foremost, sped by thee, I will do deeds!'--'So be it!' So the two united; and therefrom resulted that graha to Mitra and Varuna.

 In England moreover we see the word made flesh in so much as sovereignty is traditionally invested in parliament (not the king): and the higher house of this body once had a right of veto upon anything the lower house (the commons) did, and the higher house was properly made up of lords temporal (worldly might), who were our leading kshatriyas, and lords spiritual (spiritual might), who were our leading brahmins.

A further thought worth marking here is that from what is written in the Mihr Yasht, I would say it was also possible (for the gods can have their cake and eat it) to swap Mitra and Varuna about so Mitra is the god of nobles and Varuna the god of priests thus Asko Parpola The Roots of Hinduism (2015) well writes:

 "However, in Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa 11,4,3,10–11, while Varuṇa is called samrā´j, it is Mitra who is connected with the ruling power (váruṇaḥ samrā´ṭ samrā´ṭpatiḥ . . . mitráḥ kṣatráṃ kṣatrápatiḥ). Moreover, in RV 6,68,3, Varuṇa is called a vípra, “[sacred] poet,” in contrast to the warrior Indra, who slays Vṛtra with his mace. ... Thus originally Mitra represented mundane kingship, Varuṇa priesthood. In the Atharvaveda, Varuṇa is a master of the magic, which was the domain of the royal purohita."

And not to be overlooked here is Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa 12, 9, 2 12:

“... now Mitra is this (terrestrial) world, Varuna yonder world, ...”

All of which, bearing in mind that Indra is like our Þunor, and the Mithra of the Mihr Yasht, might then make the words of Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, X, 4, 1, 5 - and which Dumézil sets aside as "Vedic 'confusionism'" (lf.180),  not to be so confused after all:

"athendrāgnī vā asṛjyetām brahma ca kṣatraṃ cāgnireva brahmendraḥ kṣatraṃ ..."

"Now Indra and Agni were created as the Brahman (priesthood) and the Kshatra (nobility): the Brahman was Agni and the Kshatra Indra. "

Agni in the rôle of priest of the gods is Brihaspati/Bramanaspati (see Þom Rowsell's thoughts on Wōden).   

And we find Indra and Varuna twinned together in the Ṛgvedaḥ.  Two hymns each in books  7 (hymns 82 to 85) and 4 (hymns 41 and 42), one each in books 6 (hymn 68) and 8 (the hymn 11 etched at the end), and outside the "family books", one in book 1 (hymn 17).  In all these we might think that Indra is beginning to take over the rôle of a dwindling Mitra.   Ṛgvedaḥ 6.68.3 could well have been written about Þunor and Wōden instead of Indra and Varuna:

tā ghṛṇīhi namasyebhiḥ śūṣaiḥ sumnebhirindrāvaruṇā cakānā |
vajreṇānyaḥ śavasā hanti vṛtraṃ siṣaktyanyo vṛjaneṣu vipraḥ ||

Praise those Twain Gods for powers that merit worship, Indra and Varuṇa, for bliss, the joyous.
One with his might and thunderbolt slays Vṛtra; the other as a Sage (vipraḥ) stands near in troubles.
[awend. Griffith]

Needless to say vipraḥ would be more naturally awent as "poet" as Parpola has it above.

And I mark here that what is said about the Sun being raised to heaven by Indra-Varuna in Ṛgvedaḥ 7, 82.3, is said of Mitra-Varuna in 4, 13. 2; 5, 63. 4 & 7.

Origins of Mitra and Varuna

Asko Parpola in his The Roots of Hinduism (2015) would seem to say that Mitra and Varuna were  at the outset either, a double of the Heavenly Twins, the Aśvinau (अश्विनौ), or, maybe an outgrowth from the same root.  The Aśvinau being "the original deities of dual kingship".  He marks out an easily missed reference in Ṛgvedaḥ 3.38.5 seemingly to the Aśvinau under their name of divo napātā (दिवो नपाता), and which calls them rājānā kings:

  asūta pūrvo vṛṣabho jyāyānimā asya śurudhaḥ santi pūrvīḥ |
divo napātā vidathasya dhībhiḥ kṣatraṃ rājānā pradivo dadhāthe ||

First the more ancient Bull engendered offspring; these are his many draughts that lent him vigour.
From days of old ye Kings, two Sons of Heaven, by hymns of sacrifice have won dominion.

And he awends 8.35.13, which is about the Aśvinau as :

  “... possessed of Mitra and Varuṇa as well as of Dharma” (mitrā´váruṇavantā utá dhármavantā)...".

Whilst Griffith has it "With Mitra, Varuṇa, Dharma, and the Maruts in your company...".  The wording is akin to that of the well known byname of Indra, marutvat, and once at least of Rudra (marutvān - RV 2.33.6).  I mark here also that in 6.67.4 Mitra and Varuna are likened to two "aśvā ... vājinā" "swift/strong horses" and in 7.62.5 Mitra and Varuna are themselves "yuvānā" "youths".

Moreover, the Heavenly Twins have their own mythical beginning (as Parpola thinks) as a divine charioteer and chariot-fighter, who share the same chariot as twins do the womb (see Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, 5, 3, 1, 8), the thoughts about these then grew to betoken them as the king and his priest:

"This dual kingship is associated with the chariot (and therewith the Aśvins), for, according to the Jaiminīya-Brāhmaṇa (3,94), “formerly the kings’ chief priests used to be their charioteers so that they could oversee that the king did not commit any sin.”  ...".

And we cannot but think here of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita.  Or Bruno the charioteer (auriga) of king Haraldus (=Haraldr hilditǫnn) at the "belli Brawici" (=Brávellir) who is Óðin/Wōden in hidlock to be found in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum 8.4.8-9 [here]. But the priest is hardly to be told asunder from the scop, skald or bard as Parpola tells us further:

"In the Indian epics, the charioteer gives the hero advice and encourages him in battle by singing of the feats of his ancestors; hence sūtá- means both “charioteer” and “bard.” ...".

Simon Grunau (“bruder Symon Grunaw von Tolckemitte”)  in his Cronika (1526), would also seem to flesh this out a little for us, where we have two brothers ("Bruteno und Witoudo sein bruder,...") as the first leaders of the Prussians to that land since named for them.  And Witoudo is the first king but Bruteno the "crywo cyrwaito" or first high priest.  And both became gods.  Are all such twin led first settlings of folk (often as the outcome of a ver sacrum) to be so thought of?  

 

 

Pole-Lords of heaven

But at length I would say that it would seem that what should truly beshead Mitra and Varuna from the Aśvinau, although there is indeed no little overlap and formenging in what has been written about them, is that whilst the chariot of the Aśvinau is the sun, the chariot of Mitra and Varuna is in the "parame vyomani" "highest heaven", see 5.63.1.  This last being linked to the stars that our own fathers called “carles wǣn” or “cherlemaynes wayne” where “carl” or “cherlemayne" is for Þunor (the Old Swedish prose chronicle etches to Adam of Bremen's areaching of the old temple at Uppsala that "Toor" (Thor) "sath oppa karlawagnen och vij stiernor hade han j hende" "sat in the “carles wǣn” and had the seven stars in his hand"), Frēa, Tīw or Wōden (in a gloss (of eveneld to the work it glosses) to an awending into Dutch of Boethius' De consolatione ... (of all things) by one Jacop Vilt, a goldsmith of Bruges written 1462 to 1466 we find "woenswaghen" ). Whilst John George Eccard (1670-1730) in his De Origine Germanorum (1750), has (as Grimm tells us) "Irmineswagen" from somewhere.  Take your pick.  The Hindu tale of king Nahusha riding in Indra's chariot having yoked some rishis to pull it  would then stem from the need to outfold how the seven stars of the “carles wǣn” are widely known in India as the saptarṣi (सप्तर्षि) "seven rishis".

 The “Mithras” Liturgy from the Paris Codex Awent  by Marvin W. Meyer:

"..."When you have said this, the rays will turn toward you; look at the center of them. For when (635) you have done this, you will see a youthful god, beautiful in appearance, with fiery hair, and in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak, and wearing a fiery crown. At once greet him with the fire-greeting:

“Hail, O Lord, Great Power, Great Might, (640) King, Greatest of gods, Helios, the Lord of heaven and earth, God of gods: mighty is your breath; mighty is your strength, O Lord. If it be your will, announce me to the supreme god, the one who has begotten and made you: that a man – I, _______ whose mother is _______ (645) who was born from the mortal womb of _______ and from the fluid of semen, and who, since he has been born again from you today, has become immortal out of so many myriads in this hour according to the wish of god the exceedingly good– resolves to worship (650) you, and prays with all his human power (that you may take along with you the horoscope of the day and hour today, which has the name THRAPSIARI MORIROK, that he may appear and give revelation during the good hours, EORO RORE ORRI ORlOR ROR ROI (655) OR REORORI EOR EOR EOR EORE!).”

After you have said these things, he will come to the celestial pole, and you will see him walking as if on a road. Look intently and make a long bellowing sound, like a horn, releasing all your breath and straining your sides; and kiss (660) the amulets and say, first toward the right: “Protect me, PROSYMERI!” After saying this, you will see the doors thrown open, and seven virgins coming from deep within, dressed in linen garments, and with the faces of asps. They are called the Fates (665) of heaven, and wield golden wands. When you see them, greet them in this manner:

“Hail, O seven Fates of heaven, O noble and good virgins, O sacred ones and companions of MINIMIRROPHOR, O most holy guardians of the four pillars!

(670) Hail to you, the first, CHREPSENTHAES!
Hail to you, the second, MENESCHEES!
Hail to you, the third, MECHRAN!
Hail to you, the fourth, ARARMACHES!
Hail to you, the fifth, ECHOMMIE!
Hail to you, the sixth, TICHNONDAES!
Hail to you, the seventh, EROY ROMBRIES!

There also come forth another seven gods, who have the faces of black bulls, in linen (675) loin-cloths, and in possession of seven golden diadems. They are the so-called Pole-Lords of heaven, whom you must greet in the same manner, each of them with his own name: “Hail, O guardians of the pivot, O sacred and brave youths, who turn (680) at one command the revolving axis of the vault of heaven, who send out thunder and lightning and jolts of earthquakes and thunderbolts against the nations of impious people, but to me, who am pious and god-fearing, you send health and soundness of body (685), and acuteness of hearing and seeing, and calmness in the present good hours of this day, O my Lords and powerfully ruling Gods!

Hail to you, the first, AIERONTHI!
Hail to you, the second, MERCHEIMEROS!
Hail to you, the third, ACHRICHIOYR!
(690) Hail to you, the fourth, MESARGILTO!
Hail to you, the fifth, CHICHROALITHO!
Hail to you, the sixth, ERMICHTHATHOPS!
Hail to you, the seventh, EORASICHE!”

Now when they take their place, here and there, in order, look in the air and you will see lightning-bolts going down, and lights flashing (695), and the earth shaking, and a god descending, a god immensely great, having a bright appearance youthful, golden-haired, with a white tunic and a golden crown and trousers, and holding in his right hand a golden (700) shoulder of a young bull: this is the Bear which moves and turns heaven around, moving upward and downward in accordance with the hour. Then you will see lightning-bolts leaping from his eyes and stars from his body." 

Mark that Helios is not the sun here but for Mithras. The bull imagery stems from the fact that the Egypt-folk knew “carles wǣn”as Meskhetyw "the foreleg of a bull".  Further east however we find Mul. MAR.GID.DA (=mer-ka-bah) which is as much to say as our own "wain".

Of the same kind with the seven "Pole-Lords" above are:

"And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; ...".

And the seven ādityāh of the Ṛgvedaḥ and the seven amshaspends of the Parsees. Two of the "seven angels", namely Michæl and Gabriel, are well worth thinking about here.

Heliand lines 119 to 122:

… Ic is engil bium,

  Gabriel bium ic hêtan, the gio for goda standu,

  anduuard for them alouualdon, ne sî that he me an is [ârundi] [huarod]

  sendean uuillea.

... I am his angel,

I am hight Gabriel, that from yore-time before God stands,

in the presence of the All-Wielder, unless he me on his errand somewhere

send will.  ...

 Now Michæl and Gabriel are a kind of "Heavenly Twins" if you will, upon whom much old lore settled.  Often they are marked as the named witnesses to something that God himself does, and there is an odd belief that Michæl was made out of fire and Gabriel out of snow.  They are said to be two of the three angels who show up Dioscuri-like before Abraham's tent under the oaks of Mamre, and therefore are likely to be those two who then go on to punish Sodom for its woeful lack of hospitality.  Origen Contra Celsum Book 6, ch. 30 writes of "τῶν ἑπτὰ ἀρχόν των δαιμόνων," " … the seven ruling demons…", and among others listed there we will find:  "... Μιχαὴλ τὸν λεοντοειδῆ" "Michael the Lion-like" and "Γαβριὴλ ... τὸν ἀετοειδῆ" "Gabriel, the eagle-like".

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim De Occulta Philosophia book 3, ch. 10 and ch. 24 will have Michæl for Mercury and Gabriel for the moon, but in ch.24 we will also find the much more meaningful list:

 "These are those seven Spirits which always stand before the face of God, to whom is entrusted the disposing of the whole celestial, and terrene Kingdoms, which is under the Moon. For these (as say the more curious Theologians) govern all things by a certain vicissitude of hours, daies, and years, as the Astrologers teach concerning the planets which they set over; which therefore Mercurius Trismegistus calls the seven governors of the world, who by the heavens, as by instruments, distribute the influences of all the Stars and signs upon these inferiours. Now there are some that do ascribe them to the Stars, by names somewhat differing, saying, that over Saturn is set an intelligence called Oriphiel; over Jupiter Zachariel; over Mars Zamael; over the Sun Michael; over Venus Anael; over Mercury Raphael; over the Moon Gabriel."

So Sun Michæl, Moon Gabriel.  This is worth setting beside Śaṅkarācārya, Commentary on the Tattirīya Upaniṣad 1.1:

“Mitra, the spirit that personifies the day....
Varuna, the spirit personifying the night...”

[A.Daniélou The Myths and Gods of India, Inner Traditions International Rochester, Vermont 1991, (first published 1964 as Hindu Polytheism by Princeton University Press in the Bollingen Series), 5 One:Philosophy 3.the cosmic being, Lf.57.]

And, understanding that the Aśvinau have been muddled up with Mitra and Varuna,  Yāska’s Nirukta Ch. 12. 1, awending Lakshman Sarup (for Yāska’s full outdraught on the Twins see [here]):

12,1: aśvair.aśvināv.ity.aurṇavābhah/
12,1: tat.kāv.aśvinau/
12,1: dyāvā.pṛthivī.āv.ity.eke/
12,1: ahorātrāv.ity.eke/
12,1: sūryā.candramasāv.ity.eke/
12,1: rājānau.punya.kṛtāv.ity.aitihāsikāh/

"They are called Aśvins on account of their having horses (aśva),' says Aurṇavābha.  Who then are the Aśvins? According to some they are heaven and earth;  day and night, according to others.   Some take them to be the sun and the moon, (while) the historians regard them as two virtuous kings".

 

Mitra and Varuna as Gods of Oaths

Here it is well maybe to give a thought to the well known treaty of kings Suppiluliuma (Hittite) and Shattiwaza (Mitanni) where among others we find marked "the gods Mitrashshil, the gods Uruwan-ashshil, the god Indar, the gods Nashatianna" which are widely thought to look to Mitra and Varuna, Indra and the Aśvinau under their byname of Nāsatyau (नासत्यौ).  Now gods witnessing treaties, which are a kind of written oath, are the same kind of gods who witness oaths, and upon which our old laws stood.  The gods called upon were often understood as watching in some way over the deeds of men.  Gods linked to the heavens in some way, to the sun and moon, stars or thunder were an obvious choice. But we see that this was often broadened out to infold all things needful for life. 

The old wont of swearing "by oak, ash and thorn" we shall come to later on, but here  I want to say something about those old gods who must have overseen the ordeals by fire and water which were found in our old laws.  That the sun and the moon are the mights who wield sun and water I take as given, but the link between the heavenly body and the element is maybe more of a profound and subtle thing than the bare words might lead us to believe.  Now the old ordeals arose from a worship of fire and water, as holy elements, as clean things which will not ever harm the good and truthful or truefast, but will always overwhelm the bad and sinful.  Northern, Roman and Greek mythologies are all not much help here in outfolding these things as these hardly touch upon them.  The belief underlying them is older and deeper than the shards of our old Western mythology left to us, more unashamedly Eastern in its beginnings and brought westward from the East by our forefathers long ago.  Something from the Golden Eld hopelessly brought forward into an evermore broken world that could no longer bear it.  And it is to such holy fire and water that Mitra and Varuna I think  should be truly  linked with, as the heavenly overseers thereof.  And this is why their names are to be found on the old treaty.  Mary Boyce has much to say on this in her A History of Zoroastrianism (1975) [here]. In India although Mitra was more or less forgotten, Varuna never lost his links to water, but these are all too often overlooked by Western writers.  Among the Parsees Mitra as Mithras was never forgotten, nor his deep links to fire, thus Mihr Yasht 10.3 awent by James Darmesteter (From Sacred Books of the East, American Edition, 1898.):

âsu-aspîm dadhâiti mithrô ýô vouru- gaoyaoitish ýôi mithrem nôit aiwi-druzhiñti,
razishtem pañtãm dadhâiti âtarsh mazdå ahurahe ýôi mithrem nôit aiwi-druzhiñti,
ashaonãm vanguhîsh sûrå speñtå fravashayô dadhâiti âsnãm frazaiñtîm ýôi mithrem nôit aiwi-druzhiñti.


3. 'Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, gives swiftness to the horses of those who lie not unto Mithra.
'Fire, the son of Ahura Mazda, gives the straightest way to those who lie not unto Mithra.
'The good, strong, beneficent Fravashis of the faithful give a virtuous offspring to those who lie not unto Mithra.

And what of Varuna among the Parsees?  Well,  Mihr Yasht 10.113, and 145 have led to  the downfall of many here. These have an “ancient dvandva compound”(Boyce) – older than the hymns they are in – which reads:

mithra ahura berezañta or Miθra Ahura bərəzanta
“Mithra and Ahura, the high ones”,

And the not unreasonable assumption is leapt to that, by Ahura,  Ahura Mazda must be meant, and therefore, by another leap, Ahura Mazda must be Varuna.  But whilst this “ancient dvandva compound” does indeed here tie together Mitra and Varuna, as we so often find them matched in the Ṛgvedaḥ, albeit with Varuna under the name of Ahura, still Ahura Mazda is not the only god called Ahura in the old hymns of the Parsees.  For in the Zam Yasht 19.8.52 it is noneother than Apąm Napāt who is there called “bərəzantəm ahurəm” “the High Lord”, and from which title the later Parsees know him as the yazad (!) called Borz or Borǰ.  Putting all this together then, it is likely that not only Apąm Napāt must have been understood as only another name for Varuna, but that it is even under this other name that Varuna was more often known among the Parsees.

With this further understanding we seem a long way indeed from our own Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ.  And it is worthwhile here to mark the gods who might then be thought to be in the old stead of Mitra and Varuna in the later oath of the Iceland-folk.  Thus Landnámabók part iv, ch. Vii (Hauksbók 268):

"Nefni ek í þat vætti," skyldi hann segja, "at ek vinn eið at baugi, lögeið. Hjálpi mér svá Freyr ok Njörðr ok inn almáttki Áss sem ek mun svá sök þessa sækja eða verja eða vitni bera eða kviðu eða dæma sem ek veit réttast ok sannast ok helzt at lögum ok öll lögmæt skil af hendi leysa, þau er undir mik koma, meðan ek em á þessu þingi."

“I call to witness in evidence, he was to say, that I take oath upon the ring, a lawful one so help me Freyr and Njörðr and the “almighty god”, to this end that I shall in this case prosecute or defend or bear witness or give award or pronounce doom according to what I know to be most true and most lawful, and that I will deal lawfully with all such matters in law as I have to deal with while I am at this thing.” [awend. T. Ellwood]

 Freyr and Njörðr!  Freyr being for the sun/fire side of things,  Njörðr for the moon/water.  If we understand here, as we have understood many times before, that Freyr is one with Apollo whenever that god has a youthful solar character and is a warder of grazing grounds and flocks (νόμιος). And that Njörðr is one with Neptunus.  Then the unlikely pairing of Apollo and Neptunus, Apollon and Poseidon,  among the Greeks and Romans is markworthy and seems to look to the same background as matches Freyr with Njörðr.  Thus the Penates of Rome were understood to be the Penates of Troy, namely  Neptunus and Apollo, for that it was these two gods who had built Troy's walls (Arnob. iii. 40; Macrob. l. c.).  In the "Homeric" hymn to Aphrodite line 24 we find these two gods as asking for Hestia's hand in wedlock.  And at Delphi and Calaurea these two gods are seen to overlap.

Vayu/Vata ... and Rudra...?

"The name of Vā́ta has been identified with that of the Germanic god of storm and battle, Odhin or Wodan, which is explained as formed with a derivative suffix from the cognate base. But this identification seems to be very doubtful."
                                                                          - A. A. Macdonell Vedic Mythology.

Notwithstanding the unlikelihood of any etymological connection, there is still much that can be said for a common identity between our Óðin/Wōden and the eastern Vāyuḥ (वायुः) or Vā́ta  (वात).  But let us get the etymologies out of the way first.  Óðin/Wōden is said to come from a Proto-Germanic *Wōdanaz.   This word has *wōdaz (“raging”) as its root.   *wōdaz is from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂t- (“to be excited”). The Proto-Germanic *wōþuz (“rage, manic inspiration, furor poeticus”) which is muddled up sometimes with the foregoing, is however also from this same root.  Akin also is the Latin vātēs (from Proto-Indo-European *weh₂t-i- (“seer”), from *weh₂t- (“to be excited”)). So, in short, Óðin/Wōden has a name going back to root *weh₂.  Vāyuḥ on the other hand is said to be from Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hwāyúš, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weh₁yu- (“wind, air”),  from *h₂weh₁- (“to blow”), and so, if you knock off the *h₂- prefix, the root is *weh₁.  So a word with a root morpheme that looks the same as the foregoing *weh₂ but which the linguists nevertheless believe to be another word altogether, with another meaning, hence the little subscript numbers.    Vā́ta is from  Proto-Indo-European *h₂wéh₁n̥ts (“wind”) whence also our own word "wind".

 But be this as it may be, when you give some thought to the things of Óðin/Wōden and the things of Vāyuḥ/Vā́ta you start seeing some wonderful matches.  One of Monier-Williams' definitions of Vāyuḥ in his Sanskrit Dictionary is odd:

" the wind as a kind of demon producing madness Kād. Vcar. (cf. -grasta) "

Óðin/Wōden can be understood as wielding over the wind, and we might bethink here of the all too often overlooked words of Hyndluljóð 3:

 
byri gefr hann brögnum,
a wind (birr) he gives to men

And in Gautreks saga 7 king Víkarr is becalmed (fekk andviðri mikit) whilst sailing north to Hörðaland, and we are told that Víkar's fleet will only get a wind if a man is hanged to Óðin.  The lot falls to king Víkarr himself.

"Þeir felldu spán til byrjar, ok fell svá, at Óðinn vildi þiggja mann at hlutfalli at hanga ór hernum. Þá var skipt liðinu til hlutfalla, ok kom upp hlutr Víkars konungs."

"They carved bits of wood [as lots] for a good sailing wind, and it fell out so, that Óðin would take a man from the heere (=army) to hang  that the lot fell to.  Then the fleet shaped them to cast lots, and king Víkar's lot came up."

And hanging on a tree, which is what then befalls  Víkarr on the island Víkarshólmr, has all the hallmarks of being the obvious way to give an offering to the "prince of the power of air" if the offering is left swaying in the wind.  But I can't see this as being an obvious way to make offerings to the sun at all.


We should all know by now the words “önd gaf Óðinn” “ghost gave Wōden” of Völuspá 18.  But this is no more than another way of saying what we find later in Ypotys (Vernon handwrit fol. 296):

 “And of þe holygost his sowle anon”.   

But the wording of Völuspá is more nearly matched by the so-called Sidrak and Bokkus (Lansdowne handwrit 793):

Adames soule so was wrought
Of Goddes onde... 

And   Cursor Mundi (Bodley handwrit Fairfax 14):

Of  erþ al-ane made was he noȝt,
bot of  þe foure elementes wroȝt:
Of water his blode his flesshe of laire
his hete of fire, his ande of ayre.     520

laire is clay, earth.
ande, or onde is another word here for breath.

But this same word is also a word for the wind:

 þis ande þat he drawes oft,
  be-takenes winde þat ys on loft.       532

The god gives to men what is his to bestow, for that he is himself “önd”.   In short, much the same as the Christians' ideas about the "holy ghost" or "holy spirit". But our Northern forefathers have not copied the Christians in any of this, although a knowledge of Christian belief might have helped to bring to the fore something that was maybe less strongly thought of before. 

  

 

 This is Arthur Rackham's well known (I hope) book-painting, showing forth Richard Wagner's “Die Walküre”  Act Three, Scene One:

Waltraute

Furchtbar fährt dort Wotan zum Fels!

Sechs Walküren
Brünnhilde,

hör' seines Nahens Gebraus!

Waltraute

Awesomely, fareth Wōden to the High-Fell!

Six Walkyries
Brünnhilde,

 Hear his uproar (as of a storm/wind) drawing near!


Among the Parsees however, Vāyuḥ, as Vayuš,   has even more to interest us.  In their Ram Yasht, which is the hymn to Vayuš, his often met with epithet is uparō.kairya- “having superior skill.”  He is there shown to be a greater god than even Ahura Mazda, who is otherwhere the highest god with them, for 1.2-3 (awend James Darmesteter):

2.tem ýazata ýô dadhvå ahurô mazdå airyene vaêjahi vanghuyå dâityayå zaranaêne paiti gâtvô zaranaêne paiti fraspâiti zaranaêne paiti upasterene frasteretât paiti baresmen perenêbyô paiti khzhârayatbyô.

3. aom jaidhyat,
avat âyaptem dazdi-mê
vayush ýô uparô-kairyô
ýatha azem nijanâni
angrahe mainyêush dâmanãm
naêcish avat ýô speñtahe.

2.    To him did the Maker, Ahura Mazda, offer up a sacrifice in the Airyana Vaejah, on a golden throne, under golden beams and a golden canopy, with bundles of baresma and offerings of full-boiling [milk].
3.     He begged of him a boon, saying: 'Grant me this, O Vayu! who dost work highly, that I may smite the creation of Angra Mainyu, and that nobody may smite this creation of the Good Spirit!'

 And here Airyana Vaejah can barely be understood as any kingdom of this earth.

And it seems likely that  Vayuš was  once thought of, not as some lowly wind god, but as the god of gods, the wielder of that "endless something", which, for want of a better word was called "air" or "wind", and in which our physical universe was believed to have came to be.  And this might well make him then greater even than that Dyaus or Jove about which we have written above, or at least his match.  Only later is Vayuš said to have been made by Ahura Mazda.

In the yasht we find that Vayuš has a golden helmet (zaranyō.xaoδa- literally "golden hood/hat"), and a golden cloak (zaranyô-pusem) and he has, among other golden weapons (zaranyō.zaya-),  a sharp spear (tižyaršti-), about which he himself has much to say, thus 10.48:

    tizhyarshte nãma ahmi tizhyarshtish nãma ahmi 
perethvareshte nãma ahmi perethvareshtish nãma ahmi, 
vaêzhyarshte nãma ahmi vaêzhyarshtish nãma ahmi,
 hvarenå nãma ahmi aiwi-hvarenå nãma ahmi.

My name is Sharpness of spear; my name is He of the sharp spear.
    My name is Length of spear; my name is He of the long spear.
    My name is Piercingness of spear; my name is He of the piercing spear.
    My name is the Glorious; my name is the Over-glorious.

Indeed he seems to have many names ...  

From the later works moreover such as the  Bundahišn we learn that this god was linked to fighters above all; that he was understood to have an ambiguous character hence "the good Vayu" is set beside "the evil Vayu" (or "evil wind" as the following outdraught will awend it); and how he has something of the rôle of a psychopomp ...   Thus Bundahišn ch.26. §§28 - 30 (awend. B. T. Anklesaria):

"rām ī wāy ī weh ī dagrand-xwadāy gōwēd xwad ast wāy ī dagrand-xwadāy kē andar mēnōgān artēštārān-sālārīh xwēškārīh dārēd. ud ruwān ī ahlawān ka pad cēhwidarag widerēd, wāy ī weh dast gīrēd, ō ān ī xwēš gāh barēd. ē rāy rām gōwēd cē rāmišn-dādār ō hamāg gēhān. ka-z wāy ī wattar gyān az tan be zanēd, ōy wāy ī weh be padīrēd ud hunsandīh be dahēd."

"28 Ram which, one says, is the good Vayu (in Pahlavi "wāy ī weh") lord of long duration, is Vayu lord of long duration itself, whose allotted work is chieftainship among the spiritual warriors (artēštārān-sālārīh). 29. And when the soul of the righteous will pass over the "pass of selection", the good Vayu (wāy ī weh) will hold its hand, and carry it to its own seat. One calls it Ram for this reason, because it is the giver of delight to the entire creation. 30. Even when the evil wind (wāy ī wattar) severs the life from the body, the good Vayu (wāy ī weh) accepts it, and gives it resignation."

The earthly artēštārān sālār was a kind of Field Marshal among the Sassanid Parsees.  But the  kshatriya class was known as the artēštārān among them.




There are some deep links between Vāyuḥ or Vayuš and Rudra  who in Ṛgvedaḥ 10.92.9 is first called śivaḥ "shiva".  The Encyclopedia Iranica marks of Vayuš's old time worship among the folk of Sogdia and the Kushans:

"As H. Humbach observed, SogdB wyšprkr /wēšparkar/ is an EIranian form of an OIr. name plus epithet which is attested in Av. vayuš uparō.kairyō. This then explains the deity found on Kušān coins iconographically identified as Śiva, but whose name is given as OEŠO /wēšo/."

 [William W. Malandra, "VĀYU,"  Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2018, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/vayu (accessed on 03 September 2018).]

Macdonell Vedic Mythology:

"Vayu is once said to have generated the Maruts from the sky (1, 134.4) and Vata is approximated to Rudra in 10, 169.1."

  The Maruts being more often understood as the sons of Rudra (1.114. 6 & 9; 2.33.1).    Rudra who is kṣayadvīrāya "Lord of Heroes" (1.114.2; 10.92.9).   Macdonell Vedic Mythology marks of the Maruts:

 "They are like sons to Indra (1, 100. 5) and are called his brothers (1, 170. 2)."

And at a push I guess Indra might then even be thought of as a kind of Marut himself, and understaning the Maruts as one with the Northern Einherjar, I mark in Lokasenna 60 that Loki calls Þórr "þú einheri" which is a seldom met with brooking of the singular shape of a word that in the plural is Einherjar.   But in the epics Vāyuḥ is often called Mārutaḥ (मारुतः), a word seemingly akin to marut (मरुत् ) whence the "Maruts" (मरुतस्), and, understanding Indra as the leader and lord of the Maruts (they are indrajyeṣṭhāḥ (RV 1.23.8), indravantaḥ (RV 5.57.1), and he is in the epics marutpatiḥ), then Vāyuḥ would be a marut and thus a follower of his. 

 With the Maruts  therefore Vāyuḥ, Rudra and Indra blend together and overlap each other.  We can thus understand how whereas Indra is the lord of the slain heroes (once thought of as Maruts?) in the East (although Rudra and Vāyuḥ are not altogether forgotten), Óðin not Þór is such in the West, if we take Óðin as a Western Vāyuḥ.  And thus also how the ash might be Wōden's and the oak Þunor's and both storm gods.


 In that scheme of things found in Yāska’s Nirukta Ch. 7, 5 whereby there are deemed to be only three gods (as three forms of Agni who, as well as being the name of this god in his earthly shape,  is also the name of the god of gods, hidden behind all things with them) Indra and Vāyuḥ are said to overlap (awend. Lakshman Sarup), if not to be the same thing, namely, the atmospheric manifestation of Agni:

“tisra.eva.devatā.iti.nairuktāh,.agniḥ.pṛthivī.sthānas.vāyur.vā.indro.vā.antarikṣa.sthānah,.sūryo. dyu.sthānah/[745] ”

“There are three deities only,' say the etymologists : (1) Agni, whose sphere is earth ; (2) Vayu or Indra, whose sphere is atmosphere ; (3) the sun, whose sphere is heaven.”

And in the Bṛhaddevatā of Shaunaka (awend. A.A. Macdonell) bk. 1, ch.14,   §69:

“ Agni in this (world), Indra and Vayu in the middle, Surya in heaven, are here to be recognized as the three deities.”

Vāyuḥ and Indra,  it is worth marking were given the first offering of Soma, thus Ṛgvedaḥ 7.92:

ā vāyo bhūṣa śucipā upa naḥ sahasraṃ te niyuto viśvavāra |
upo te andho madyamayāmi yasya deva dadhiṣe pūrvapeyam ||
pra sotā jīro adhvareṣvasthāt somamindrāya vāyave pibadhyai |
pra yad vāṃ madhvo aghriyaṃ bharantyadhvaryavo devayantaḥ śacībhiḥ ||
pra yābhiryāsi dāśvāṃsamachā niyudbhirvāyaviṣṭayeduroṇe |
ni no rayiṃ subhojasaṃ yuvasva ni vīraṃ ghavyamaśvyaṃ ca rādhaḥ ||
ye vāyava indramādanāsa ādevāso nitośanāso aryaḥ |
ghnanto vṛtrāṇi sūribhiḥ ṣyāma sāsahvāṃso yudhā nṛbhiramitrān ||
ā no niyudbhiḥ śatinībhiradhvaraṃ sahasriṇībhirupa yāhi yajñam |
vāyo asmin savane mādayasva yūyaṃ pāta ... || 

1. O VĀYU, drinker of the pure, be near us: a thousand teams are thine, All-bounteous Giver.
To thee the rapture-bringing juice is offered, whose first draught, God, thou takest as thy portion.
2 Prompt at the holy rites forth came the presser with Soma-draughts for Indra and for Vāyu,
When ministering priests with strong devotion bring to you Twain the first taste of the Soma.
3 The teams wherewith thou seekest him who offers, within his home, O Vāyu, to direct him,
Therewith send wealth: to us with full enjoyment, a hero son and gifts of kine and horses.
4 Near to the Gods and making Indra joyful, devout and ofFering precious gifts to Vāyu,
Allied with princes, smiting down the hostile, may we with heroes conquer foes in battle.
5 With thy yoked teams in hundreds and in thousands come to our sacrifice and solemn worship.
Come, Vāyu, make thee glad at this libation. Preserve us evermore, ye Gods, with blessings.

And as the lords of the middle Indra and Vāyuḥ are beginning to look like a matching pair, thus Bṛhaddevatā  bk. 1, ch.18,   §87:

“A formula addressed to Indra is distinguished by the characteristic marks of Vayu as well as of Indra, and by denominations of the bolt, by mighty activity, and by might.”

And, although a bit too far reaching to be taken too literally, th'ilk work bk. 1, ch.25,  §122 at least shows us that there could be a deep link between Indra and Vāyuḥ :

“ In Indra are contained Parjanya, Rudra, Vayu, Brhaspati, Varuna, Ka, Mrtyu, and the god Brahmanaspati...”

Buddhist monks took their culture, the culture of the Āryāḥ of India, with them on their farings to China and Japan.  In Japan therefore we will find the wind-god, Fūjin, and the thunder god, Raijin, albeit in a somewhat ugly and devilish shape, one green, the other red, often met with as a pair in art.  As doorwards they are to be seen in the entrance gate of Sensō-ji, the Kannon temple in Asakusa, Tōkyō, which is therefore also called Kaminari-mon, "Thunder Gate". [see here]  These are in stead of the older kind of doorwards or niō who are only a doubling up of the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi "the thunderbolt bearer" who is noneother than Indra awent into a bodhisattva!  But here the sharp reader will begin to see how the thunder and wind gods might become muddled up with the "Heavenly Twins" so that it is hard to see where the one ends and the other begins. 
 

Now speech, poetry and song, all brook the air, we might say wind, and it is not much of a leap from being a wind-god to a god of speech, poetry, song and at length music (to begin with however only music played on woodwind instruments).   Tus the Maruts are  shown as singing, and without their song   Indra could not overcome "the Dragon", thus Ṛgvedaḥ 5.29.2:

anu yad īm maruto mandasānam ārcann indram papivāṃsaṃ sutasya |
ādatta vajram abhi yad ahiṃ hann apo yahvīr asṛjat sartavā u ||

What time the Maruts sang their song to Indra, joyous when he had drunk of Soma juices,
He grasped his thunderbolt to slay the Dragon, and loosed, that they might flow, the youthful Waters.

And to inspired (from inspirare "to beath in") madness  in men Ṛgvedaḥ 1.39.5 (awend. Griffith):

pra vepayanti parvatān vi viñcanti vanaspatīn |
pro ārata maruto durmadā iva devāsaḥ sarvayā viśā ||

They make the mountains rock and reel, they rend the forest-kings apart.
Onward, ye Maruts, drive, like creatures drunk with wine (durmadā), ye, Gods with all your company.

 durmadā means "badly maddened; drunk", Griffith has etched on the "with wine" to bring out the more likely meaning here, the Maruts themselves being great drinkers of  soma.  But is this at root a case of swapping one cause of inspiration for another until the lines that sundered the two were blurred?

And the words of the Acts of the Apostles chap. 2 are worth bearing in mind about how this shows itself to men:

 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

So not only "air", but "fire" also, and its effect was to make those so "inspired" to speak out far beyond their natural abilities.  And, as it will come in later, and with a swift look back at my last post [here] and Óðrœrir, it is worth marking also that when the "inspired" were before them:

13 Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.

Almost acknowledging some link between these two things.

Some might well ask here: how could a wind god become muddled with a sun god?  Well, one of the less often brooked names of Vāyuḥ is Prāṇaḥ (प्राणः) "breath", and this at least was long mystically linked to the sun, thus Praśna upaniṣad 1.5:

ādityo ha vai prāṇo rayir eva candramāḥ |
rayir vā etat sarvaṃ yanmūrtaṃ cāmūrtaṃ ca |
tasmān mūrtir eva rayiḥ ||

Lifebreath is clearly the sun, while the moon is simply substance.  And this whole world – both what has form and what is without form – is substance.  Substance, therefore, is a form.” [awend. Patrick Olivelle The Upaniṣads (1996) lf.279]

I say "mystically" linked here for that the sun is not the wind, and the wind is not the sun, but their respective actions upon an otherwise lifeless matter were understood to be in effect the same, and this belike led to the somewhat awkward tying of the two things together.  All those images of wind gods found in Western art which show a man's head in the act of blowing can be seen as betokening the sun, for it is the sun's heat by warming the air causes that stirring thereof which we call wind.

But when we  understand the wind as the breath or soul of the whole universe, and even of the gods themselves, we may begin to see that it has a much more transcendant nature than that of the sun.  So that any solar imagery taken up by the wind-god is only to show his might that is to be seen wielding through it,  but the wind-god, howsoever he is thought of, is himself altogether an higher god than the sun as such.  Vishnu Purana 2.14 (awend. Wilson):

 eko vyāpī samaḥ śuddho nirguṇaḥ prakṛteḥ paraḥ /
janmavṛddhyādirahita ātmā sarvagato 'vyayaḥ // ViP_2,14.29 //
parajñānamayo 'sadbhir nāmajātyādibhir vibhuḥ /
na yogavān na yukto 'bhūn naiva pārthiva yokṣyati // ViP_2,14.30 //
tasyātmaparadeheṣu sato 'py ekamayaṃ hi yat /
vijñānaṃ paramārtho 'sau dvaitino 'tattvadarśinaḥ // ViP_2,14.31 //
veṇurandhravibhedena bhedaḥ ṣaḍjādisaṃjñitaḥ /
abhedavyāpino vāyos tathā tasya mahātmanaḥ // ViP_2,14.32 //
ekatvaṃ rūpabhedaś ca bāhyakarmapravṛttijaḥ /
devādibhede 'padhvaste nāsty evāvaraṇo hi saḥ // ViP_2,14.33 //

“Objects, then, which are considered most desirable are infinite. What the great end of all is, you shall, monarch, briefly learn from me. It is soul (ātmā-): one (in all bodies), pervading, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, undecaying, made up of true knowledge, independent, and unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time present, past, or to come. The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one’s own and in all other bodies, is the great end, or true wisdom, of one who knows the unity and the true principles of things. As one diffusive air (vāyos = vāyoḥ gen. of Vāyuḥ), passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of the scale (Sharga and the rest), so the nature of the great spirit (mahātmanaḥ) is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequences of acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that of god or the rest, is destroyed, then there is no distinction.”

And Vishnu Purana book 2, chap. 4  of the mythic island of Salmaladwipa (awending Wilson) we read:

"śālmale ye tu varṇāś ca vasanty ete mahāmune /
kapilāś cāruṇāḥ pītāḥ kṛṣṇāś caiva pṛthak pṛthak // ViP_2,4.30 //
brāhmaṇāḥ kṣatriyā vaiśyāḥ śūdrāś caiva yajanti tam /
bhagavantaṃ samastasya viṣṇum ātmānam avyayam /
vāyubhūtaṃ makhaśreṣṭhair yajvino yajñasaṃsthitam // ViP_2,4.31 //
devānām atra sāṃnidhyam atīva sumanorame /
śālmaliś ca mahāvṛkṣo nāma nirvṛtikārakaḥ // ViP_2,4.32 //"

"The Brahmans, Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras of this Dwipa, called, severally, Kapilas, Arunas, Pitas, and Rohitas, (or tawny, purple, yellow, and red), worship the imperishable soul (ātmānam avyayam) of all things, Vishnu, in the form of Vayu (wind), with pious rites, and enjoy frequent association with the gods. A large Salmalali (silk-cotton) tree grows in this Dwipa, and gives it its name."

The word for breath here ātmán (आत्मन्), is one with Old English ǣþm (“breath”), but it also means "soul" hence the "the imperishable soul (ātmānam avyayam) of all things" in the outdraught above. Or maybe we might say the soul of all the gods?  Earlier still Vā́ta is said to be the breath of Varuna (ātmā te vāto raja RV 7, 87. 2) which we can also see might have led to a blending of the two gods at times.  Vā́ta is moreover the breath of all gods 10, 92. 13:

pra naḥ pūṣā carathaṃ viśvadevyo.apāṃ napādavatuvāyuriṣṭaye |
ātmānaṃ vasyo abhi vātamarcata tadaśvinā suhavā yāmani śrutam ||

Dear to all Gods, may Pūṣan guard the ways we go, the Waters’ child and Vāyu help us to success.
Sing lauds for your great bliss to Wind (vāta), the breath of all: ye Aśvins prompt to hear, hear this upon your way.

Back to Tuesday, Wednesday ...

But be this all as it may be, the links of Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ to the Romans' Mercurius and Mars from the names for the days of the week put us back on a much less shaky footing and much nearer to home.

MS Harley 2278 fol. 10v:

IN Saxonie whilom ther was a kyng
Callid Alkmond / of excellent noblesse
A manli prince / vertuous of leuyng
And ful habounde / of tresour and richesse
Notable in armys / ful reno[m]med of prowesse
A semly persone / hardi and corageous
Mercurie in wisdam / lik Mars victorious

Julian writes in his Oration on the Sun:

 “οἱ τὴν Ἔμεσαν οἰκοῦντες, ἱερὸν ἐξ αἰῶνος Ἡλίου χωρίον, Μόνιμον αὐτῷ καὶ Ἄζιζον συγκαθιδρύουσιν. αἰνίττεσθαί  φησιν Ἰάμβλιχος, παρ᾿ οὗ καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ἐκ πολλῶν μικρὰ ἐλάβομεν, ὡς ὁ Μόνιμος μὲν Ἑρμῆς εἴη, Ἄζιζος δὲ Ἄρης, Ἡλίου πάρεδροι, πολλὰ καὶ ἀγαθὰ τῷ περὶ γῆν ἐποχετεύοντες τόπῳ.”

“The inhabitants of Emesa, a place from time immemorial sacred to Helios, associate with Helios in their temples Monimos and Azizos.  Iamblichus, from whom I have taken this and all besides, a little from a great store, says that the secret meaning to be interpreted is that Monimos is Hermes and Azizos Ares, the assessors of Helios, who are the channel for many blessings to the region of our earth.” 

[awend Wilmer C. Wright]

Hermes is Mercurius, Ares is Mars.  From the name Azizos "the strong one" by the way, the Jews may well have gotten the name of the fallen angel Azza that we have already met. They are here matched together as  "Ἡλίου πάρεδροι" "helpmates of the sun", and this is a special relationship, pairing these two gods, not just because their planets are nearest to the sun in the old Ptolemaic order, out-take that of Venus, but also in more profound ways. Thus our gods Óðin/Wōden and Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ answering to these, the one-eyed and the one-handed are matched. But to understand what is going on we need to know two things. Firstly, that Mars and Hercules, the Greeks' Ares and Heracles, are profoundly linked  to each other.  Thus Pliny Natural History, Book 2, ch. VIII, §34 speaking of the planet that we now call that of Mars, has:

“... tertium Martis, quod quidam Herculis vocant, ...”.

“The third, of Mars, which some call of Hercules, ...”

Macrobius Saturnalia Book 3 chpt.12 §§5 to 8 (awend. Davies):

 “[5] Salios autem Herculi ubertate doctrinae altioris adsignat, quia is deus et apud pontifices idem qui et Mars habetur. [6] et sane ita Menippea Varronis adfirmat, quae inscribitur Ἄλλος  οὗτος Ἡρακλῆς, in qua, cum de Inuicto Hercule loqueretur, eundem esse ac Martem probauit. Chaldaei quoque stellam Herculis uocant, quam reliqui omnes Martis appellant. [7] est praeterea Octavii Hersennii liber, qui inscribitur de sacris Saliaribvs Tibvrtivm, in quo Salios Herculi institutos operari diebus certis et auspicato docet.[8] item Antonivs gnipho, uir doctus, cuius scholam Cicero post laborem fori frequentabat, Salios Herculi datos probat in eo uolumine, quo disputat quid sit festra, quod est ostium minusculum in sacrario, quo uerbo etiam Ennius usus est.”

“[5] As for the Salii, Vettius continued, in assigning them to  Hercules Vergil shows the wealth and depth of his learning, for the pontiffs too identify Hercules with Mars. [6]  And indeed this identification is supported by Varro’s Menippean satire This Other Hercules, in which the author, speaking of Hercules One of Many, has shown  that this god and Mars are one and the same.  The star, too, which is known to all other peoples as the Star of Mars is called by the Chaldeans the star of Hercules.  Furthermore, Octavius Hersennius, in his book entitled On the Rites of the Salii of Tibur, explains that the Salii were instituted for the service of Hercules and, after the taking of auspices, perform rites in his honour on certain fixed days. [8] Antonius Gnipho also, a learned man whose lectures Cicero used to attend when his work in court wasover, proves that the Sali were assigned to Hercules; the reference will be found in the roll in which the writer  discusses the meaning of the word festra (a small opening in a shrine), a word which has been used by Ennius too.”

Servius commentary on Vergil's Æneid 8.275 COMMUNEMQUE VOCATE DEUM and call on the common god... :

"... alii communem deum ideo dictum volunt, quia secundum pontificalem ritum idem est Hercules, qui et Mars: nam et stellam Chaldaeis dicentibus unam habere dicuntur, et novimus Martem communem dici: Cicero “Martemque communem”, Vergilius “et dis communibus aras” . item paulo post dat salios Herculi, quos Martis esse non dubium est.  ..."

"...Others wish the common gods to be called for the reason that after the priestly custom the same is Hercules who is Mars:  for it is said by the Chaldeans referring to the one star we know as of Mars to be called in common: ...  The same [Vergil] a little after gives the Salii to Hercules, who it is without doubt are Mars’.  ...".

And the second thing you need to know is Plutarch's Of Isis and Osiris 41, but read with the understanding that by Heracles or Hercules, Mars is meant:

“ ...καὶ τῷ μὲν ἡλίῳ τὸν Ἡρακλέα μυθολογοῦσιν ἐνιδρυμένον συμπεριπολεῖν, τῇ δὲ σελήνῃ τὸν Ἑρμῆν. λόγου γὰρ ἔργοις ἔοικε καὶ περισσῆς σοφίας τὰ τῆς σελήνης, τὰ δ᾽ ἡλίου πληγαῖς ὑπὸ βίας καὶ ῥώμης περαινομένοις.   ...”

“They have a legend that Heracles, making his dwelling in the sun, is a companion for it in its revolutions, as is the case also with Hermes and the moon. In fact, the actions of the moon are like actions of reason and perfect wisdom, whereas those of the sun are like beatings administered through violence and brute strength. ...”

[awend. F. C. Babbitt]




Thus Óðin/Wōden's lack of being "hands on".   As also why we should look to Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ to make up for this lack.   Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ should be understood as the Mars found in Macrobius  “The Saturnalia” I. 19 §§4- 6 (awend. Davies):

 “...Martem solem esse quis dubitet? 5 Accitani etiam, Hispana gens, simulachrum Martis radiis ornatum maxima religione celebrant, Neton vocantes. 6 Et certe ratio naturalis exigit ut di caloris caelestis parentes magis nominibus quam re substantiaque divisi sint: fervorem autem quo animus excandescit excitaturque alias ad iram alias ad virtutes nonnumquam ad temporalis furoris excessum, per quas res etiam bella nascuntur, Martem cognominaverunt, cuius vim poeta exprimendo et similitudini ignis adplicando ait:

Μαίνετο δ᾽ ὡς ὅτ᾽ ἄρης ἐγχέσπαλος ἢ ὀλοὸν πῦρ.

In summa pronuntiandum est effectum solis, de quo fervor animorum, de quo calor sanguinis excitatur, Martem vocari.”

“... without doubt Mars is the sun. And there is the further consideration that the Accitani, a people of Spain, worship with the greatest respect a statue of Mars which is adorned with rays calling it Neton.  Now a natural explanation unquestionably requires that the gods from whom springs the heat of heaven should differ in their names rather than in their real essence. And to the glowing heat by which the spirit is kindled and roused, sometimes to anger, sometimes to deeds of valour, and sometimes (in excess) to a temporary madness – and these are the causes which give birth to wars – to this property men have given the name of Mars; the poet Homer too has expressed the violent might of the god, under the likeness of fire, in the line:

 In his fury he was as Ares brandishing his spear, or as a destroying fire [Iliad 15.605]

so that, in short, one must maintain that the activity of the sun which fires the spirits and inflames the blood is called Mars.”

 And can there be any doubt that Óðin/Wōden is a god then, if he is the other half of such a Mars, that he is truly not a god of kshatriyas as such, but of brahmins under which heading poets were once infolded thus Rai Bahadur A.C. Mukerji, Hndu Fasts and Feasts (1916)  lf.26:

“The Bhats are by caste Brahmans whose ancestral occupation was in ancient times to compose songs and odes, and recite them on ceremonious occasions before public and private gatherings.”

That is of the magical and spiritual lordship, or whatever you want to call that side of things. As we have marked, thus Wōden's character in poetry and charms is that of a "fjölkunnigr maðr", a wiseman or wizard.  A Wōden in armour, although found, is only found seldom, and is already a Wōden-Tīw hybrid.

  Wōden's hat which gives rise to not a few of his nicknames should not be overlooked here if we see what Jordanes says on hatted and unhatted folk in his De origine actibusque Getarum "The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths"  or the Getica, (awend. Charles C. Mierow) ch. 11:

"71 Haec et alia nonnulla Dicineus Gothis sua peritia tradens mirabilis apud eos enituit, ut non solu mediocribus, immo et regibus imperaret. Elegit namque ex eis tunc nobilissimos prudentioresque viros, quos theologiam instruens, numina quaedam et sacella venerare suasit fecitque sacerdotes, nomen illis pilleatorum contradens, ut reor, quia opertis capitibus tyaris, quos pilleos alio nomine nuncupamus, litabant: 72 reliquam vero gentem capillatos dicere iussit, quod nomen Gothi pro magno suscipientes adhuc odie suis cantionibus reminiscent." 

"(71) These and various other matters Dicineus taught the Goths in his wisdom and gained marvellous repute among them, so that he ruled not only the common men but their kings. He chose from among them those that were at that time of noblest birth and superior wisdom and taught them theology, bidding them worship certain divinities and holy places. He gave the name of Pilleati to the priests he ordained, I suppose because they offered sacrifice having their heads covered with tiaras, which we otherwise call pillei. (72) But he bade them call the rest of their race Capillati. This name the Goths accepted and prized highly, and they retain it to this day in their songs."

Pilleati "capped, hatted" from Pillei "caps or hats", Capillati “hairy”, so “unhatted”.


And this of course matches him to Mercurius yet again. Both have hats!! The Seven Books of Arnobius Against the Heathen. (Adversus Gentes.), Book VI, 12:

“...cum petaso gnatus Maiae, tamquam vias adgredi praeparet et solem pulveremque declinet,...”
“...the son of Maia with a broad-brimmed travelling cap (petasus), as if he were preparing to take the road, and avoiding the sun's rays and the dust;...”.

  The Answer of the Preceptor Abammon to the Epistle of Porphyry to Anebo, and a Solution of the Doubts Contained In It we find (awend. Thomas Taylor):

“Θεὸς ὁ τῶν λόγων ἡγεμών,  Ἑρμῆς, πάλαι δὲδοκταὶ καλῶς ἅπασι, τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν εἶναι κοινός· ὁ δὲ τῆς περὶ θεῶν ἀληθινῆς ἐπιστήμης προεστηκὼς εἷς ἐστιν ὁ αὐτὸς |ἐν ὅλοις· ᾧ δὴ καὶ οἱ ἡμέτεροι πρόγονοι τὰ αὑτῶν τῆς σοφίας εὑρήματα ἀνετίθεσαν, Ἑρμοῦ πάντα τὰ οἰκεῖα συγγράμματα ἐπονομάζοντες.”

“HERMES, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true science concerning the Gods  is one and the same in the whole of things.  Hence our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes. ...”.

On the way I mark  J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) doth also give us Gandalf.  In a letter of 1946 (no. 107 of The Letters of ... (1981))  Tolkien stated that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer" and in a letter of 1954 (no. 156), Tolkien refers to Gandalf as an "angel incarnate". Gandalf is an elf (O. N. alfr) with a "wand" (O. N. gandr)...   The Hobbit (1937):

"Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves—or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter—I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business."

Again we should not overlook that Wōden was a god of skáldskapr, thus Hyndluljóð :

 mælsku mörgum | ok mannvit firum;
 To many skill in speech | and wit to men,

And:

en brag skaldum,
to the singer his song (brag).

Another name for Wōden may well be Heorrenda thus Hjarrandi  “Screamer” is one of Óðins nöfn “Óðin’s names” found among the Viðbótarþulur of the Skáldskaparmál in some books of Snorri Sturluson's  Edda.  But it is best known as the name of a wandering poet, a scop or skald found in the Old English Deor, and in Middle High German Kudrun (sometimes known as the Gudrunlied), as Hôrant von Tenerîche lf.81.  In Kudrun moreover the same might over nature is given to Hôrant's verse as the Greeks gave to Orpheus. As an aside here I mark that Orpheus was of the stock of the old kings of Thrace, and that these had Hermes as their god (see here).

The lack of kingliness about a god who is meant to be the wielder of heaven and earth is an odd thing here.      Indeed, another good question here is why is it that:

 "All the poets were beggars; all alchemists and all philosophers are beggars."

 And the answer is this (which is a saying more to be thought of than the well-worn "As above, so below"  from the Tabula Smaragdina):

 “τὸ δὲ ἕτερον ἐλαττωθὲν τὴν τοῦ ἑτέρου ἐφανέρωσεν ἐνέργειαν”
“but lessening the one reveals the activity of the other” (Hermetica IV. §6 see B. Copenhaver’s outsetting lf.16).

Or "lessening the one reveals the other".   At one with this are:

 "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life ... shall find it."

" That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  ... The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

Ṛgvedaḥ 10.136.2 (awend. Griffith):

munayo vātaraśanāḥ piśaṅghā vasate malā |
vātasyānudhrājiṃ yanti yad devāso avikṣata ||

 The Munis, girdled with the wind, wear garments soiled of yellow hue.
They, following the wind's swift course go where the Gods have gone before.

 

Above: Wappen of one  Johannes Gensfleisch, called Gutenberg.

 "Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero; Books, written words, are still miraculous: Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined, - they are precious, great: but what do they become~? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives ; can be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book.  All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men."
                                                                                                           - Thomas Carlyle.

Wōden thus makes and breaks all earthly kings as he wills, as can be seen from Grímnismál (where as well as a "fjölkunnigr maðr" Óðin appears as a kotbóndi or karl, so a "peasant"), and from Gestumblindagatur which last is echoed in the old ballad called “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury”. He is seemingly then much like Merlin to kings Uther and Arthur, and we are probably talking a god whose true earthly embodiment was never ever meant to be the king, but in reality the power behind the throne, the high-priest such as the Sinistus was said to be among the Burgunds thus Ammianus Marcellinus Roman History Bk.28, chap.5, §14 (awend. C. D. Yonge):

“14. Apud hos generali nomine rex appellatur Hendinos, et ritu veteri potestate deposita removetur, si sub eo fortuna titubaverit belli vel segetum copiam negaverit terra, ut solent Aegyptii casus eius modi suis adsignare rectoribus. nam sacerdos apud Burgundios omnium maximus vocatur Sinistus, et est perpetuus, obnoxius discriminibus nullis, ut reges.”

“14. Among them their king is called by one general name of "Hendinos," and according to a very ancient custom |496 of theirs, is deposed from his authority if under his government the state meets with any disaster in war; or if the earth fails to produce a good crop; in the same way as the Egyptians are accustomed to attribute calamities of that kind to their rulers. The chief priest among the Burgundians is called "the Sinistus." But he is irremovable and not exposed to any such dangers as the kings.”

And at the “concilium” I mark it is the priest not the king who is the highest authority, thus Tacitus Germania 10:

“Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus tum et coercendi jus est, imperatur.”
“Silence is proclaimed by the priests, who have on these occasions the right of keeping order.”


And see the rôle of the "Speaker" of the House of Commons matched as it to the king or queen who. when showing themselves in parliament, sit in a seat overagainst that of the "Speaker" in the House of Lords. Postula Sögur: Páls saga postula (AM 236 fol.) chap. 7:

Guþ com til var i manna li[ciom] oc cølluþo þeir Paulum Oþin en Barnabas Þor.

For Acts 14:11-12:

"The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.
And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker."

"Dii similes facti hominibus descenderunt ad nos.
Et vocabant Barnabam Jovem, Paulum vero Mercurium: quoniam ipse erat dux verbi."

The Greek is:

"οἱ θεοὶ ὁμοιωθέντες ἀνθρώποις κατέβησαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς·
ἐκάλουν τε τὸν βαρναβᾶν δία, τὸν δὲ παῦλον ἑρμῆν, ἐπειδὴ αὐτὸς ἦν ὁ ἡγούμενος τοῦ λόγου.

"dux verbi" "duke/leader of words" "ὁ ἡγούμενος τοῦ λόγου" is more stavewisely awent "the leader of speech".

And it is thus Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ who is shown truly to be the god of kings and kshatriyas, that is of the juridical and temporal lordship. For I also find that with Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ and Óðin/Wōden there is this also to tell them asunder, namely that Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ would seem to be the god of swords, the nobleman's, if not king's weapon whilst Óðin/Wōden gets the common weapon, everymans' weapon, the spear.  Thus Sigrdrífumál     6 links swords to Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ :

Sigrúnar skaltu kunna,| ef þú vilt sigr hafa,
ok rísta á hjalti hjörs,
sumar á véttrimum, | sumar á valböstum,
ok nefna tysvar Tý.

Victory-runes shalt thou know, | if thou wilt have victory
   and write on the sword’s hilt,

    some on the  “véttrimum”,|     some on the “valböstum”,

    and name twice Týr.

And then look also who is doling out sigr here… Týr!   (Sigrdrífumál  I should warn the reader is a poem made up of lots of bits of old poems put together,  and should not thus be brooked as a whole work, or as needfully having anything to do with the Sigurd tale at all.)  

The spear on the other hand, is only the common man's weapon, thus in Old English the male side of a family tree could be spoken of as the "spere-healf" "spear-half", in the same way as the female side was the "spinelhealf" "spindle-half".  There is much to say here about holy weapons and oaths upon swords and weapons which were made by our forebears, as the later times made oaths on saint's bones or the bible, but this must abide a later post.

The wielding of a sword would also seem to link Týr to Freyr, but Freyr himself, as we all know, gave up his sword for love and now has to make do with a hart's horn!  But a wonderful link between these two is being made here nevertheless for those with the eyes to see it.

If  Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ ever was forgotten about as some have said, then might not his forgetting  be from the wont of naming him and Óðin/Wōden so often together, that to say the one implied the other, until the one more often missed off became forgotten about? And then again there was Þórr ("Thor")/Þunor/Þūr of course, who stands to Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ as Hercules does to Mars, and was belike always thought of by theology as essentially the same no matter what the scopas or skald said.

For those who would like the answer then to Why then is Wōden is linked to our old kings I have it here.

If Óðin/Wōden is for Mercurius then where are his Wings or Featherhames?

Now some might say, if Óðin/Wōden is Mercurius, where are his wings?  For everyone knows Mercurius, "Mercury", is meant to have wings or featherhames, thus Chaucer's awending of Boethius's "De consolatione philosphiæ" hath:

"þe godhed of mercurie þat is cleped þe bride [=bird] of arcadie".

We are therefore to read much more into  Óðin's faring "í arnarham" "in arn-, or eagle-, shape" (in Skaldskaparmál 5 and 6) and "í valslíki" "in falcon's likeness" (Saga Heiðreks konúngs ens vitra [H]  11) than has been done hithertofore.  "Arnhöfði" "Arn, or eagle, head" moreover is one of  Óðin's bynames in the list of these found in the Arnamagnus handwrit AM 748 I b 4°, folio 18 recto, (that is, the handwrit in which Baldrs draumar is alone found). 

Where is the Caduceus? 

With our Wōden this would seem to have become a spear.  But to understand how this might be we first need to know what Mercurius' caduceus is meant to be?  Mercurius' caduceus (the Greeks' κηρύκειον kērū́keion "herald's wand, or staff") is in theory a white (that is, stripped of its bark) hazel wand, such as was brooked by Greek heralds of old.  But to this the Greeks put two "fighting" snakes who look to be climbing upward about the caduceus although some said it was thrust between the two snakes to sunder them, and therby stop them  "fighting". 

In the Odyssey Hermes doesn't seem ti have a caduceus but rather has what is called a "golden rod" "ῥάβδον ... χρυσείην" (see Odyssey Bk. 24, lines 2 to 3).  This has the following might:

"...τῇ τ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει
ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ᾽ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει: ..."

" ... wherewith he bewitches the eyes of men,
whom he will,  others again he wakens out of sleep; ..." (see Odyssey Bk. 24, lines 3 to 4).

So in short it is a "magic wand", not a herald's staff.

And in the  Homeric hymn to Hermes (Εἲς Ἑρμῆν) lines 529 to 530 it is:

"ὄλβου καὶ πλούτου  περικαλλέα ...  ῥάβδον,
χρυσείην, τριπέτηλον, ..."

" ... an all-fair rod, of happiness and wealth
golden, three-leaved ..."

But mark that the Greek literally says it is "three petalled" or "three leaved" as though it were a stalk of some wort, or a twig of some tree... [see here].
 
It is there moreover, said to be given to Hermes by Apollo, as a mede for Hermes' gift of the lyre to him, and its might is:

" ... ἀκήριον ἥ σε φυλάξει
πάντας ἐπικραίνουσ᾽ ἄθλους ἐπέων τε καὶ ἔργων
τῶν ἀγαθῶν, ...".

Which Hugh G. Evelyn-White awends:

 "and it will keep you scatheless,
accomplishing every task, whether of words or deeds
 that are good, ... ".

Which last seems to look more to the folklore of  the  “plants of the lightning tribe” than anything else.

But a third thing needs to be said here about the so-called "caduceus" for the light it might well throw on the god who bears it.   If you look in Edward B. Tylor's  Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1878) ch. 9, lvs. 244 to 245 you will see two old "pump drills"  fig.27 being from Switzerland, and figure 28 from Bowditch Island in the South Pacific.

 

 

But on leaf 246 we see that more or less the same tool was brooked by the Iroquois Indians in North America as a "fire-drill"! 

 

Tylor quotes L. H. Morgan League of the Iroquois (1851) lf. 381:—

" This is an Indian invention, and of great antiquity. ... It consisted of an upright shaft, about four feet in length, and an inch in diameter, with a small wheel set upon the lower part, to give it momentum. In a notch at the top of the shaft was set a string, attached to a bow about three feet in length. The lower point rested upon a block of dry wood, near which are placed small pieces of punk. When ready to use, the string is first coiled around the shaft, by turning it with the hand. The bow is then pulled downwards, thus uncoiling the string, and revolving the shaft towards the left. By the momentum given to the wheel, the string is again coiled up in a reverse manner, and the bow again drawn up. The bow is again pulled downwards, and the revolution of the shaft reversed, uncoiling the string, and recoiling it as before. This alternate revolution of the shaft is continued, until sparks are emitted from the point where it rests upon the piece of dry wood below. Sparks are produced in a few moments by the intensity of the friction, and ignite the punk, which speedily furnishes a fire."

And the likelihood is that more folk of yore than the Iroquois brooked something like this, so that the so-called "caduceus" is no more than a misunderstood "fire-drill".  And we will thus see the words of the Homeric hymn in a new light (awend. Hugh G. Evelyn-White) :

ἔνθ᾽ ἐπεὶ εὖ βοτάνης ἐπεφόρβει βοῦς ἐριμύκους                            105
καὶ τὰς μὲν συνέλασσεν ἐς αὔλιον ἀθρόας οὔσας,
λωτὸν ἐρεπτομένας ἠδ᾽ ἑρσήεντα κύπειρον:
σὺν δ᾽ ἐφόρει ξύλα πολλά, πυρὸς δ᾽ ἐπεμαίετο τέχνην.
δάφνης ἀγλαὸν ὄζον ἑλὼν ἀπέλεψε σιδήρῳ
 ... ἄρμενον ἐν παλάμῃ: ἄμπνυτο δὲ θερμὸς ἀυτμή:                         110
Ἑρμῆς τοι πρώτιστα πυρήια πῦρ τ᾽ ἀνέδωκε.

 Then, after he had well-fed the loud-bellowing cattle
 with fodder and driven them into the byre,
close-packed and chewing lotus and dewy galingal,
 he gathered a pile of wood and began to seek the art of fire.
He chose a stout laurel branch and trimmed it with the knife ...
 held firmly in his hand: and the hot smoke rose up.
For it was Hermes who first invented fire-sticks (πυρήια is rightly a fire-drill- "the stationary piece was called ἐσχάρα, the drill τρύπανον") and fire.

That snakes, or a snake, might be in stead of the ropes see the tale of the Churning of the Sea which is thought to have the lighting of a fire with a fire-drill in mind as its model.  And the making of thunder and lightning, either by the thunder god or by heaven and earth, is the prototype of all  such fire making rituals.


Little wonder then that Kelly (lf.171, 187) understands Mercurius' caduceus  as a thunder-weapon, as also the trident (lf.187), and all looking to Ovid's description of lightning as trisulcum "three-foldly cleft" as if "three-pronged" (see his Amores II.v.52, Ibis 469, also Seneca, Thyestes 1089).  And he might well be right.   

But Þunor, not Wōden, is the thunder-god I hear you say.  Yet who is it that is Þunor's father?    Father and son are much nearer in many ways than some might at first think.  Thus Jacob Grimm [in the Vorrede to vol. 1 of his Deutsche Mythologie (1844) lf. xvii,  awend. Stallybrass (in his vol.3)]:

"Obschon Wuotans sohn und ihm an macht oder einfluss weichend erscheint Donar wieder mit ihm zusammenfallend, gewissermassen als ein älterer vor Wuotan verehrter gott."

"Though a son of Wuotan (Wōden) and yielding to him in power or influence, Donar (Thunar, Thor) appears at times identical with him, and to some extent as an older god worshipped before Wuotan. "

.And a little later [lf. xix]:

"... Wuotan, Donar, Zio theilweise in einander aufgehn..."

"... Wuotan, Donar, and Zio partly run into one another... "

.And at the end of his chapitle on Wuotan in vol. 1 [ch. Vii, lf. 150]:

"... Ziu und Froho sind blosse ausflüsse Wuotans."

"... Ziu (Týr/Tīw/Tīȝ) and Froho (Freyr/Frēa) are mere emanations of Wuotan ... "

And so in the Ṛgvedaḥ whilst Indra is the wielder of the thunder-weapon above all, yet we will still find it wielded by the Maruts (8.7.32, see also 1.86.9 and 7.56.17), Rudra (2.33.3),  Brihaspati (1.40.8), together with Varuna (4.41.4), together with Agni (6.59.3) and together with Soma  (7.104.4) and old Dyaus is still implied to be its wielder (10.44.8; 45.8; 67.5).  And nearer home we find in Servius' commentary on Vergil's Æneid that Juno and Minerva as well as Vulcan are wielders of Jove's bolt. Thus Æschylus in his Eumenides  827 to 828 (awend. Herbert Weir Smyth) has Athena say:

  καὶ κλῇδας οἶδα δώματος μόνη θεῶν,
ἐν ᾧ κεραυνός ἐστιν ἐσφραγισμένος:
 
—and I alone of the gods know the keys to the house 
where his thunderbolt is sealed.

And in Euripides tragedy The Trojan Women the same goddess, nettled by the lack of awe shown by the Achæans to her temple in their sacking of Troy:

 καὶ Ζεὺς μὲν ὄμβρον καὶ χάλαζαν ἄσπετον
πέμψει, δνοφώδη τ᾽ αἰθέρος φυσήματα:
ἐμοὶ δὲ δώσειν φησὶ πῦρ κεραύνιον,                      80
 βάλλειν Ἀχαιοὺς ναῦς τε πιμπράναι πυρί.
 

On them will Zeus also send his rain and fearful hail,
 and inky tempests from the sky;
and he promises to grant me his thunder-bolts
to hurl on the Achæans and fire their ships.

[Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, awent by E. P. Coleridge. Volume I. London. George Bell and Sons. 1891].


A. B. Cook Zeus (1925) vol. 2, pt.1 lvs.625 to 626:

"Athena, who in various ways recalls the great mother-goddess of Crete, is on occasion equipped with the double axe. Simias of Rhodes in his picture-poem the Double Axe makes Epeios the Phocian dedicate to Athena as an acceptable gift the axe with which he had made the wooden horse and thereby captured Troy. The fateful tool was to be seen in her temple at Eilenia in the district of Lagaria near Metapontum. Again, bronze coins of the Oxyrhynchite nome, struck by Domitian, Trajan (fig. 529), Hadrian (fig. 530), and Antoninus Pius, have for reverse type Athena bearing Nike in one hand and a double axe with straight or rounded edges in the other, ...  Lastly, a ' Gnostic ' amulet in the St Geneviève collection (fig. 532) represents Athena armed with the double axe amid a group of Egyptising deities."

Cook gives another  Oxyrhynchite forebisening as figure 100 in vol. 3, lf.190.

 

 
 Left: Minerva with the axe from Cook's figure 532, in th'ilk vol. 2, pt.1, lf. 626.

That an axe is a token of the thunder weapon we shall see anon, but here it is enough to acknowledge that it might be.  And might not Minerva's wonted spear  be a token of the thunderbolt as well?  Kelly (lf. 7) at least marks it:

  “The lightning was ... a spear shot straight athwart the sky, ...”.

  And if Minerva's spear why not Mars' spear also?  And, more to our theme, why not Óðin's/Wōden's spear?  We have a clue I think in that the runestave ᚫ æsc "ash" which we marked above, is twinned with ᚪ ac "oak" in the ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ runestave-row.  Few of us would have any worries in seeing the oak as the thunder-god's tree, so why not the ash-tree as well?  Might not Wōden then be another thunder-god?  Or, better said, might we not have in Wōden and Þunor a matching pair of storm gods, with Wōden maybe more  a lightning god and Þunor more a thunder god?
 þáttr Hálfdanar svarta from the Flateyjarbók:

"... en Odinn heitir morgum nofnnum. h  ... þui er hann kalladr Uidrir at þeir sogdu hann uedrum rada. ... "

"... But Óðin is called by many names.   ... He was called Viðrir for that they said he wielded the weather.  ... ".

Telling here also to my mind is that in Grímnismál, 23-24, Wōden's hall of Valhöll is said to have 540 doors (dyr - "Fimm hundruð dura| ok umb fjórum tögum,") whilst  Þunor's hall, Bilskirnir, ("Fimm hundruð  gólfa|  ok umb fjórum tögum,") the same tale of floors/rooms (gólf).

Logos and Nous

Even if you don't have any kings, there is still a need to acknowledge the ruling divine principle of the universe, by whatever name you call it.  The Old Saxons and the folk of Iceland who didn't have any kings, were no less worshippers of Wōden/Óðin.  Indeed the Northmen themselves acknowledged Wōden/Óðin to be a Saxon god, thus in the Viðbœtir við Ólafs sögu hins Helga from Flateyjarbók  we read "Óðin Saxa goð". 

Before we go on, and by way of further background, it might be well to take a minute at this point to read the following from the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, awend. by Robert Drew Hicks, Book VII, under Zeno:

[136] Ἕν τ' εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ Δία· πολλαῖς τ' ἑτέραις ὀνομασίαις προσονομάζεσθαι. κατ' ἀρχὰς μὲν οὖν καθ' αὑτὸν ὄντα τρέπειν τὴν πᾶσαν οὐσίαν δι' ἀέρος εἰς ὕδωρ˙ καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου, τοιόνδε ὑπολείπεσθαι ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ, εὐεργὸν αὑτῷ ποιοῦντα τὴν ὕλην πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἑξῆς γένεσιν˙ εἶτ' ἀπογεννᾶν πρῶτον τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, πῦρ, ὕδωρ, ἀέρα, γῆν. λέγει δὲ περὶ αὐτῶν Ζήνων τ' ἐν τῷ Περὶ τοῦ ὅλου καὶ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τῶν Φυσικῶν καὶ Ἀρχέδημος ἔν τινι Περὶ στοιχείων. 


136. God is one and the same with Reason [the Greek reads "Mind" here, νοῦν], Fate, and Zeus; he is also called by many other names.  In the beginning he was by himself; he transformed the whole of substance through air into water, and just as in animal generation the seed has a moist vehicle, so in cosmic moisture God, who is the seminal reason of the universe, remains behind in the moisture as such an agent, adapting matter to himself with a view to the next stage of creation. Thereupon he created first of all the four elements, fire, water, air, earth. They are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and by Archedemus in a work On Elements. 

Now the next thing needful to know is that  Mercurius or Hermes, in the highest understanding that can begiven to this god, is the divine Logos (ὁ λόγος) or Reason of the material universe personified. 


Plutarch in his Of Isis and Osiris 54:

τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ, τουτέστι τοῦ λόγου,
"Hermes, that is to say Reason,"), ... .


Proclus:

“ In the Gods therefore, the angel or messenger of Jupiter [i. e. Hermes], who has the relation of logos to the intellect of his father, announces the will of Jupiter to secondary natures.”

 Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies (Κατὰ Πασῶν Αἰρέσεων Ἔλεγχος) Book 4, Chap. 48:

“Εἶναι δὲ τὴν λύραν μουσικὸν ὄργανον ὑπὸ νηπίου; ἔτι παντελῶς κατεσκευασμένον τοῦ λόγου· λόγῳ δὲ εἶναι παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀκουόμενον τὸν Ἑρμῆν.”

“And that the lyre is a musical instrument fashioned by Logos while still altogether an infant, and that Logos is the same as he who is denominated Mercury among the Greeks.”

Book 5, chap. 7:

“Κυλλήνιοι δὲ διαφερόντως τιμώντες λό(γ)ον (φησὶ γάρ·   Ἑρμής έστι λόγος. <ὃς> ἑρμηνεὺς ὢν καὶ δημιουργὸς τῶν γεγονότων ὁμοῦ καὶ γινομένων καὶ ἐσομένων) παρ’ αὐτοῖς τιμώμενος ἕστηκε  …”.

“Worshipping, however, Cyllenius with especial distinction, they style him Logios. For Mercury is Logos, who being interpreter and fabricator of the things that have been made simultaneously, and that are being produced, and that will exist, stands honoured among them, ...”

And from a lost work of Porphyry given by Eusebius of Caesarea  in his Preparation for the Gospel. awend. E.H. Gifford (1903) -- Book 3, ch. 11:

τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦ πάντων ποιητικοῦ τε καὶ ἑρμηνευτικοῦ ὁ Ἑρμῆς παραστατικός. ὁ δὲ ἐντεταμένος Ἑρμῆς δηλοῖ τὴν εὐτονίαν, δείκνυσιν δὲ καὶ τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάν3.11.43 των. λοιπὸν δὲ σύνθετος λόγος, ὁ μὲν ἐν ἡλίῳ Ἑρμῆς, Ἑκάτη δὲ ὁ ἐν σελήνῃ, Ἑρμόπαν δὲ ὁ ἐν τῷ παντί· κατὰ πάντων γὰρ ὁ σπερματικὸς καὶ ποιητικός.

σύνθετος δὲ καὶ οἷον μιξέλλην καὶ παρ' Αἰγυπτίοις ὁ Ἑρμάνουβις. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῆς ἐρώσης ἦν δυνάμεως ὁ λόγος, ταύτης ὁ Ἔρως παραστατικός. διὸ παῖς μὲν τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ ὁ Ἔρως, νήπιος δὲ διὰ τὰς αἰφνιδίους περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἐμπτώσεις αὐτοῦ.

τοῦ δὲ παντὸς τὸν Πᾶνα σύμβολον ἔθεντο, τὰ μὲν κέρατα δόντες σύμβολα ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης, τὴν δὲ νεβρίδα τῶν κατ' οὐρανὸν ἀστέρων ἢ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς ποικιλίας.»


'Hermes is the representative of reason and speech, which both accomplish and interpret all things. The phallic Hermes represents vigour, but also indicates the generative law that pervades all things.

'Further, reason is composite: in the sun it is called Hermes; in the moon Hecate; and that which is in the All, Hermopan, for the generative and creative reason extends over all things. Hermanubis also is composite, and as it were half Greek, being found among the Egyptians also. Since speech is also connected with the power of love, Eros represents this power: wherefore Eros is represented as the son of Hermes, but as an infant, because of his sudden impulses of desire.

'They made Pan the symbol of the universe, and gave him his horns as symbols of sun and moon, and the fawn skin as emblem of the stars in heaven, or of the variety of the universe.' 

On the "phallic Hermes" I mark this from Plotinus, The Third Ennead, Sixth Tractate.  The Impassivity of the Unembodied §19 :

“Ὅθεν, οἶμαι, καὶ οἱ πάλαι σοφοὶ μυστικῶς καὶ ἐν τελεταῖς αἰνιττόμενοι Ἑρμῆν μὲν ποιοῦσι τὸν ἀρχαῖον τὸ τῆς γενέσεως ὄργανον ἀεὶ ἔχοντα πρὸς ἐργασίαν τὸν γεννῶντα τὰ ἐν αἰσθήσει δηλοῦντες εἶναι τὸν νοητὸν λόγον, τὸ δὲ ἄγονον τῆς ὕλης μενούσης τὸ αὐτὸ ἀεὶ διὰ τῶν περὶ αὐτὴν ἀγόνων δηλοῦντες.

Μητέρα γὰρ πάντων ποιήσαντες, ἣν δὴ οὕτως ἐπιφημίζουσι τὴν κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἀρχὴν λαβόντες καὶ ὄνομα τοῦτο θέμενοι, ἵνα δηλοῖεν ὃ βούλονται, τὸ πρὸς τὴν μητέρα οὐχ ὅμοιον πάντη ἐνδείκνυσθαι θέλοντες, τοῖς ὅστις ὁ τρόπος βουλομένοις ἀκριβέστερον λαβεῖν καὶ μὴ ἐπιπολῆς ζητοῦσι πόρρωθεν μέν, ὅμως δὲ ὡς ἐδύναντο, ἐνεδείξαντο ὡς ἄγονός τε καὶ οὐδὲ πάντη θῆλυς, ἀλλὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν θῆλυς, ὅσον ὑποδέξασθαι, ὅσον δὲ γεννᾶν οὐκέτι, τῷ τὸ πρὸς αὐτὴν κεχωρηκὸς πρὸς αὐτὴν μήτε θῆλυ εἶναι, μήτε γεννᾶν δύνασθαι, ἀποτετμημένον δὲ πάσης τῆς τοῦ γεννᾶν δυνάμεως, ἣ μόνῳ ὑπάρχει τῷ μένοντι ἄρρενι. ”

“This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes with the generative organ always in active posture; this is to convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual Reason Principle (τὸν νοητὸν λόγον): the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as the All-Mother.

This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate that it is the source of things in the sense of being their underlie: it is an approximate name chosen for a general conception; there is no intention of suggesting a complete parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface impression but needing a precisely true presentment; by a remote symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity only, not in pregnancy: this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the unchangeably masculine.”

[awend. Mackenna]

We should thus understand Mercurius' links, as also of our own Wōden's links, to the number four in the light of this.  Thus Martianus Capella On the Wedding of Mercurius and Philologia, Book VII De Tetrade §754:

“Quid quod quatuor anni tempora, frontesque coeli, elementorumque principia esse non dubium est? Hominum etiam quatuor aetates, quatuor vitia, quatuorque virtutes.  Hic numerus quadratus ipsi Cyllenio deputatur, quod quadratus deus solus hebeatur.” [Kopp edition 1836 lf.587]

“Then, too, are there not four ages of man, four vices, and four virtues? The number four is assigned to the Cyllenian himself, for he alone is regarded as the fourfold god.” [lf.279 of Stahl awending].

And book 2 §106:

“Nam quaternarius suis partibus complet decadis ipsius potestatem, ideoque perfectus est, et habetur quadratus, ut ipse Cyllenius, cui anni tempora, coeli climata, mundique elementa conveniunt. 107 An aliud illa senis dejeratio, qui μὰ τὴν τετράδα non tacuit, confitetur, nisi perfectae rationis numerum? Quippe intra unum, secundum, triademque ipsumque bis binum tenet, quis collationibus symphoniae peraguntur.”  [lvs. 145 to 147].

“For the number four with its parts makes up the whole power of the decad itself and is therefore perfect and is called quadrate, as is the Cyllenian himself, with whom are associated the four seasons of the year, the regions of heaven, the elements of earth. [107] That celebrated oath of old Pythagoras, who did not refrain from swearing “by the tetrad” - what does that signify except the number of perfect ratio?  Within itself it contains the one, the dual, the triad, and is itself the square of two, within which proportions the musical harmonies are produced. ”[lf.36 Stahl]

Cyllenius is Mercurius from the well-known hill on the landshear between Arcadia and Achaia where he had a shrine.

 

Lydus writing of Janus Quadrifrons, the Janus with four-anseens which, as we have seen, well belongs here 4.1:

" …ἔνθεν καὶ τετράμορφον ἀπὸ τῶν τεσσάρων τροπῶν· καὶ τοιοῦτον αὐτοῦ ἄγαλμα ἐν τῷ φόρῳ τοῦ Νερβᾶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν λέγεται σεσωσμένον."

"From this, he is also [said to be] quadruple in form, from the four "turns" [i.e., the solstices and equinoxes]—and a statue of him of this type is said to be preserved even now in the Forum of Nerva." (awend. Mischa Hooker)

Crossroads, places where four ways meet, in English folk-speech sometimes called “Four Wents” or “Four Throws” both “went” and “throw” here having the sense of “a turning”, are centres in their own way and long hallowed to Wōden. Hundred courts, stemming from the earlier English folk-moot or þing, often met at such places which were marked by stones or trees.  Ælfrīċ  ‘Grammaticus’  De Falsis Diis   (MS. Cott. Jul. E. vii. 237. b. ):


Sum man wæs gehaten Mercurius on life 70
se wæs swiðe facenful and swicol on dædum,
and lufode eac stala and leasbrednysse :
 ðone macodon ða hæðenan him to mæran gode
and æt wega gelætum him lac offrodon
and to heagum beorgum him brohton onsægdnysse.

A man was called Mercurius in life
he was most deceitful and treacherous in deeds,
and loved also stealing and lying:
him the heathen made a great god,
and by the crossroads made him offerings,
and on high hills brought him sacrifice

The well-spring of this text De Correctione Rusticorum of Martin of Braga (c. 520–580) written to Polemius of Astorga which marks the worship at crossroads, but says nothing of at “high hills” and this seemeth to be from Ælfrīċ’s own thoughts.  Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 3:1:1:1:

" devayajanaṃ joṣayante | sa yadeva varṣiṣṭhaṃ syāttajjoṣayeranyadanyadbhūmerābhiśayītāto vai devā divamupodakrāmandevānvā
eṣa upotkrāmati yo dīkṣate sa sadeve devayajane yajate sa yaddhānyadbhūmerabhiśayītāvaratara iva heṣṭhvā syāttasmādyadeva varṣiṣṭhaṃ
syāttajjoṣayeran"

"They choose a place of worship. Let them choose (the place) which lies highest, and above which no other part of the ground rises; for it was from thence that the gods ascended to heaven, and he who is consecrated indeed ascends to the gods. He thus sacrifices on a place of worship frequented by the gods; but were any other part of the ground to rise above it, he would indeed be lowered while sacrificing: let them therefore choose (the place) which lies highest."

Martin of Braga's words in his [Epistola Sancti Martini Episcopi Ad Polemium Episcopum] De Correctione Rusticorum §7 are:

 “Alius deinde daemon Mercurium se appellare voluit, qui fuit omnis furti et fraudis dolosus inventor; cui homines cupidi quasi deo lucri, in quadriviis transeuntes, iactatis lapidibus acervos petrarum pro sacrificio reddunt.”

 “Another daemon then wished to call himself Mercurius, who was the first finder of theft and deceitful fraud; to which greedy men  give back for an offering as if a god of profit, in going over crossroads,  rock-heaps of thrown stones. ” 

 And it maybe worth marking here that the Old English rite for the freeing of thralls was to take them to the crossroads and give them weapons.  The idea being I guess that they were on their own now having the necessary weapons to maintain their independence, and that they could go any way they liked.  That is, whichever way  Wōden led them.  And he was the great leader (dux) or way-shower. Or "guiding light" we might say in all things.  Thus in book 24 Iliad, Hermes is pompos (πομπός),. that is "guide":

σοὶ δ᾽ ἂν ἐγὼ πομπὸς καί κε κλυτὸν Ἄργος ἱκοίμην,   437
ἐνδυκέως ἐν νηῒ θοῇ ἢ πεζὸς ὁμαρτέων:
οὐκ ἄν τίς τοι πομπὸν ὀνοσσάμενος μαχέσαιτο.

Howbeit as thy guide would I go even unto glorious Argos,
attending thee with kindly care in a swift ship or on foot;
 nor would any man make light of thy guide and set upon thee.

And this links to the piles of stones at crossroads, thus in the Suda under Ἑρμαῖον we find (awend. Catharine Roth):

 “εὕρημα. ἐπειδὴ λίθων σωροὺς ἀφιέρουν τῷ Ἑρμῇ ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς ταῖς ἀδήλοις.”

 “ a [sc. lucky] find. [So named] because they used to dedicate piles of stones to Hermes on roads that were hard to follow.” 

And under Τρικέφαλος "threefold-head" from the same work (awend. David Whitehead):

 “ὁ Ἑρμῆς, ὥσπερ διδάσκων τὰς ὁδοὺς καὶ ἔχων ὑπογραφήν, ποῦ μὲν αὕτη φέρει ἡ ὁδός, ποῦ δὲ ἐκείνη. ἴσως δὲ πρὸς ἑκάστην ὁδὸν κεφαλὴν εἶχεν.”

“Hermes, in the role of someone teaching [about] the roads and bearing an inscription [indicating] where this road leads, and where that. But perhaps having a head [pointing] towards each road.”

From which you will see that these statues of Hermes evolved into our  sign-posts!  I can't hold off putting this here from W. D. Parish & W. F. Shaw A Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms in Use in the County of Kent (1888):

"BISHOP' S-FINGER, sb. A guide post; so called, according to Pegge, because it shows the right way, but does not go therein."

And this shows us that sometimes "bishop" might be for Wōden.   But we might have been thinking a fourfold-head would fit a fourfold god better, and happen they did once exist, but a threefold-head shows us that our god was at times matched to Hecate (see above) and given "three-legged" crosses where three ways meet.   H. Lincoln Key to the Sacred Pattern (1997C.E.), Pt. 2, 12, lf. 174:

      “Naturally, not every pagan sacred site became a church, but it is interesting to note that a seventh century bishop [this is Eligius] was imploring his flock to cease practising rites at ‘sacred stones, rocks, springs and places where three trackways meet’. The French countryside is dotted with innumerable  wayside crosses. These Calvaires stand, almost invariably, at ‘places where three trackways meet’.  Thus they, too, may be preserving the memory of significant sites.”

Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 2:6:2:7:

"tāntsārdham pātryāṃ samudvāsya | anvāhāryapacanādulmukamādāyodaṅ paretya
juhotyeṣā hyetasya devasya dik pathi juhoti pathā hi sa devaścarati catuṣpathe
juhotyetaddha vā asya jāṃdhitam prajñātamavasānaṃ yaccatuṣpathaṃ
tasmāccatuṣpathe juhoti"

"Having removed all (the cakes from the potsherds) into one dish, and taken a fire-brand from the Dakshina-fire, he walks aside towards the north--for that is the region of that god--and offers. He offers on a road (pathi),--for on roads that god roves; he offers on a cross-road (catuṣpathe - "four paths"),--for the cross-road, indeed, is known to be his (Rudra's) favourite haunt. This is why he offers on a cross-road."

What about where 4+4 ways meet? O. G. S. Crawford The Anglo-Saxon Bounds of Bedwyn and Burbage in The Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine. vol. xli, lvs. 289 to 290:

"(20.) Thonne to gemotleage easteweardre. Here, as one would expect, the bounds turn eastwards at last, after a straight northerly run of over 4½ miles. "Gemotlea" has left no trace that I can discover in the modern names hereabouts, unless Luton Lye (Luden's Lye, 1786) be an echo of the " lea " portion. On the 1789 map Luden's Lye is marked on the plateau in the centre of which the Eight Walks meet. Here in Elizabeth's reign stood a gibbet, surmounted by a pair of ram's horns in commemoration of the execution there of a notorious sheep-stealer named Brathwaite, a native of Cumberland. (W. Maurice Adams, Sylvan Savernake, p. 54). This would naturally stand at or near a traditional place of assembly, such as "gemotlea" must have been. It was probably the meeting place of the hundred, and the idea of making this the converging point of the Eight Walks may have been suggested by a number of rides meeting there already."

Above: "Gereon's Head" from Guido von List's Das Geheimnis der Runen (1908).

More three anseen tokens [here].

 

 

Wednesday is the fourth day of the week and the MIDDLE of the week. 

We only get hints of course, but in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos Bk.2 chap.3 we read:

 “... With the said particular parts about the middle of the earth, Mercury also, as well as the other planets in dominion, bears familiarity, in consideration of his meditative condition and common nature.”

And a little later:

“... in consequence of the vicinity of these regions to the middle of the earth, Mercury likewise has a proportionate dominion over them.” 


Plato says in the Republic , Book IV, 427c of Apollo:

“ὁ θεὸς ...  [ἐν μέσῳ] τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀμφαλοῦ καθήμενος ...”

“The God who sits in the centre on the navel of the Earth...”.


But Apollo and Mercurius were linked in astro-theology. Thus the star rightly called Stilbon (Στιλβών) was either the “star of Mercurius” or "of Apollo". Pliny Nat. Hist. 2.6§39:

“... Mercurii sidus, a quibusdam appellatum Apollinis,...”
“star of Mercurius is by some called that of Apollo” .

So as we have already marked with Mars and Hercules, so now also with Mercurius and Apollo. And if you will allow it, I also think the following from the Laws of Manu is useful to us here, after speaking of offerings to be made in the the four  directions and other places Manu says 3.89:

“...in the centre of the house let him place a Bali for Brahman and for Vastoshpati (the lord of the dwelling) conjointly.”

 So the centre is sacred to the supreme god (=Brahman) and the lord of whatever it is the centre of, in this case a dwelling.

On Yggdrasill see here.

 

Dionysus?

As the Logos, Hermes/Mercurius blends with what the Orphics understand the god Dionysus to be, namely the divine Mind or Intellect (ὁ νοῦς) of the material universe personified “the material mind (νοῦν ὑλικόν)”  (see Macrob. Commentarius ex Cicerone in Somnium Scipionis Bk.1, ch. 12).  Thus a word-play on Dionysus' name is  dianoesis (διανόησις) the Greek word for “thought” (noesis from nous (ὁ νοῦς)) and  I mark Plato, Philebus 28c “νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς” “intellect (ὁ νοῦς) is king of heaven and earth”.  Johannes Lydus On the Months, March 51 (awend. Mischa Hooker):

 “Διόνυσον δὲ ὡσανεὶ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς νοῦν οἱονεὶ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχήν· πολλαχοῦ γὰρ εὑρίσκομεν, ὡς ὁ σύμπας κόσμος Ζεὺς ὀνομάζεται διὰ τὸ ἀείζωον καὶ ἀτελεύτητον. Σεμέλης δὲ αὐτὸν ποιοῦσιν υἱόν, ὡς ὑπὸ γῆν κρυπτόμενον καὶ διὰ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ, τουτέστι τοῦ λόγου, προϊόντα· ...”

  “… And [they describe] Dionysus as the "mind of Zeus," as [representing] the soul of the cosmos; for we find everywhere that the entire cosmos is named "Zeus," on account of its eternal life and endlessness. They describe him as the son of Semele, as being hidden under earth and coming forth by virtue of Hermes, that is, the Logos; …”.

A little before:

  “οἱ δέ γε Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν Διόνυσον Βακχευτὴν τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνός φασιν, οἱονεὶ βακχευτὴν καὶ ἀνατρέχοντα ἀνὰ τὸν οὐρανόν, ὃν ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἑπτὰ συμφωνίας ἀστέρων Κιθάρωνα ὠνόμασαν· ὅθεν Ἑρμῆς κιθάραν δίδωσι μυστικῶς τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι, οἷον ὁ λόγος τῷ ἡλίῳ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἁρμονίαν. ἐν ἀπορρήτῳ δὲ τῷ Διονύσῳ τὰ μυστήρια ἐτελεῖτο, διὰ τὸ πᾶσιν ἀπόκρυφον εἶναι τὴν τοῦ ἡλίου πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν κοινωνίαν. καὶ φαλλοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς αὐτοῦ παρελάμβανον, οἱονεὶ τὰ γεννητικὰ ὄργανα, καὶ εἴσοπτρον οἱονεὶ τὸν διαυγῆ οὐρανόν, σφαῖραν δὲ οἱονεὶ τὴν γῆν· ὁ γὰρ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ φησίν· «γῇ μὲν τὸ σφαιρικὸν εἶδος."”

“But the Romans call Dionysus the "Bacchanal of Cithaeron" — meaning, one who is in a Bacchic frenzy and runs up to the heavens, which they named "Citharon" on the basis of the harmony of the seven "stars," and hence Hermes mystically gives the cithara to Apollo, as the Logos grants the attunement of the universe to the Sun. And the mysteries in honour of Dionysus were conducted in secret, because of the fact that the sun's shared association with the nature of the universe is hidden from everyone.  And in his sacred rites they would carry along phalli, as being the generative organs, and a mirror, as [representing] the translucent/radiant heavens, and a ball, as [representing] the earth. For Plato says in his Timaeus, "to earth, the spherical form."”

Grímnismál 48:

  einu nafni|    hétumk aldregi,
    síz ek með folkum fór.

A single name | have I never had
Since first among men I fared.

[awend. Bellows].  

 πολυώνυμος "God of many names,.." was a title of Dionysus in Sophocles' play Antigone, line 1115 (awend. Sir Richard Jebb).

Lydus again  4.160:

" Διόνυσός ἐστι τὸ ... πνεῦμα, ..."
"Dionysus is the ... [holy] ghost ..."

 Völuspá 18: "önd gaf Óðinn".  This word was borrowed into English, thus Sidrak and Bokkus (London, British Library, Lansdowne 793):

  "Adames soule so was wroght Of Goddes onde...".

Julian:

 " καὶ τὴν Διονύσου μεριστὴν δημιουργίαν, ἣν ἐκ τῆς ἑνοειδοῦς καὶ μονίμου ζωῆς τοῦ μεγάλου Διὸς ὁ μέγας Διόνυσος παραδεξάμενος, ἅτε καὶ προελθὼν ἐξ ἐκείνου, τοῖς φαινομένοις ἅπασιν ἐγκατένειμεν, ἐπιτροπεύων καὶ βασιλεύων τῆς μεριστῆς συμπάσης δημιουργίας. προσήκει δὲ σὺν τούτοις ὑμνῆσαι καὶ τὸν Ἐπαφρόδιτον Ἑρμῆν· καλεῖται γὰρ οὕτως ὑπὸ τῶν μυστῶν ὁC θεὸς οὗτος, ὅσοι λαμπάδας φασὶν ἀνάπτειν Ἄττιδι τῷ σοφῷ. τίς οὖν οὕτω παχὺς τὴν ψυχήν, ὃς οὐ συνίησιν, ὅτι δι᾿ Ἑρμοῦ μὲν καὶ Ἀφροδίτης ἀνακαλεῖται πάντα πανταχοῦ τὰ τῆς γενέσεως ἔχοντα τὸ ἕνεκά του1 πάντη καὶ πάντως ὃ τοῦ λόγου μάλιστα ἴδιόν ἐστιν; ..."

"And I discern also the divided creative function of Dionysus, which great Dionysus received from the single and abiding principle of life that is in mighty Zeus. For from Zeus he proceeded, and he bestows that life on all things visible, controlling and governing the creation of the whole divisible world. Together with these gods we ought to celebrate Hermes Epaphroditus. For so this god is entitled by the initiated who say that he kindles the torches for wise Attis. And who has a soul so dense as not to understand that through Hermes and Aphrodite are invoked all generated things everywhere, since they everywhere and throughout have a purpose which is peculiarly appropriate to the Logos? "

 [awend. Wright].

That aspect of Hermes that is known as Hermopan or Pan is thus often found linked to Dionysus.  Thus in the Homeric hymn to Pan (19) we read (awend. Hugh G. Evelyn-White):

...  πάντες δ᾽ ἄρα θυμὸν ἔτερφθεν    45
ἀθάνατοι, περίαλλα δ᾽ ὁ Βάκχειος Διόνυσος:
Πᾶνα δέ μιν καλέεσκον, ὅτι φρένα πᾶσιν ἔτερψε. 

Then all the immortals were glad in heart 

and Bacchic Dionysus in especial;

 and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.

 

 

Above: This is the wappen of Hans Tscherte as drawn by Albrecht Dürer. Tscherte was from Bohemia and his name is the Czech "čert" which means "satyr, devil" (“ein Behem ist ein ketzer”).  He was an architect and his fortifications contributed decisively to the defense of Vienna in 1529 against the Turks, and thus saved Western Europe.ᛋ

 

 Above: helmschau (left) and wappen (right) of the thrutcher Siegmund Grimm (1480 - 1530), grimm meaning in German the same as grim does in English "wild; harsh".

 

 Above: This is an old "horned" man or god belonging to the  so-called "Master or Mistress of Animals" type (there is a great photo-stream on Flickr), and from which you can see the beginnings of all the "horned" or "raven-headed" Wōdens.  And also the likenesses of "Daniel in the Lion's Den" and of King Alexander going into heaven with the help of two griffins.


Wīdsīð begins its list of kings, after Hwala, with:

ond Alexandreas      ealra ricost
monna cynnes,      ond he mæst geþah
þara þe ic ofer foldan      gefrægen hæbbe.

and of Alexander the richest of all
mankind, and he most throve
wherever that I over the earth have asked about it.

The Anabasis of Alexander (Αλεξάνδρου Ανάβασις), awent by E. J. Chinnock | Book III, ch. 3:

Πτολεμαῖος μὲν δὴ ὁ Λάγου λέγει δράκοντας δύο ἰέναι πρὸ τοῦ στρατεύματος φωνὴν ἱέντας, καὶ τούτοις Ἀλέξανδρον κελεῦσαι ἕπεσθαι τοὺς ἡγεμόνας πιστεύσαντας τῷ θείῳ, τοὺς δὲ ἡγήσασθαι τὴν ὁδὸν τήν τε ἐς τὸ μαντεῖον καὶ ὀπίσω αὖθις. Ἀριστόβουλος δέ, καὶ ὁ πλείων λόγος ταύτῃ κατέχει, κόρακας δύο προπετομένους πρὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς, τούτους γενέσθαι Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας. καὶ ὅτι μὲν θεῖόν τι ξυνεπέλαβεν αὐτῷ ἔχω ἰσχυρίσασθαι, ὅτι καὶ τὸ εἰκὸς ταύτῃ ἔχει, τὸ δὲ ἀτρεκὲς τοῦ λόγου ἀφείλοντο οἱ ἄλλῃ καὶ ἄλλῃ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ ἐξηγησάμενοι.

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, says that two serpents went in front of the army, uttering a voice, and Alexander ordered the guides to follow them, trusting in the divine portent. He says too that they showed the way to the oracle and back again. But Aristobulus, whose account is generally admitted as correct, says that two ravens (κόρακας δύο) flew in front of the army, and that these acted as Alexander's guides.

Strabo, Geography xvii. 1, section 43 (awend. H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A.):

ὁ γοῦν Καλλισθένης φησὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον φιλοδοξῆσαι μάλιστα ἀνελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ χρηστήριον, ἐπειδὴ καὶ Περσέα ἤκουσε πρότερον ἀναβῆναι καὶ Ἡρακλέα: ὁρμήσαντα δ᾽ ἐκ Παραιτονίου καίπερ νότων ἐπιπεσόντων βιάσασθαι, πλανώμενον δ᾽ ὑπὸ τοῦ κονιορτοῦ σωθῆναι γενομένων ὄμβρων καὶ δυεῖν κοράκων ἡγησαμένων τὴν ὁδόν, …

Callisthenes, for instance, says that Alexander was ambitious of the glory of visiting the oracle, because he knew that Perseus and Hercules had before performed the journey thither. He set out from Parætonium, although the south winds were blowing, and succeeded in his undertaking by vigour and perseverance. When out of his way on the road, he escaped being overwhelmed in a sand-storm by a fall of rain, and by the guidance of two crows (δυεῖν κοράκων), which directed his course.

Needless to say the word Hamilton/Falconer have awent as "crows" is "ravens" - ὁ κόρᾰξ (stem κόρᾰκ-, corak-), corax, is rightly a raven, and not, ἡ κορώνη (stem κορών-, coron-), corone, a crow (see above).

As the "Mind" of the universe, Dionysus was often blended with his father Zeus (see also “I and my Father are one” and “Πάντα γὰρ ἐν πᾶσι τὰ θεῖά ἐστιν καὶ διαφερόντως τὰ συστοιχα ἀλλήλων μετέχει καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις ὑφέστηκεν.”“For all divine natures are in all, and particularly such as are co-ordinate with each other, participate of, and subsist in each other” (awending Proclus's Commentary on Plato's Cratylus by Thomas Taylor). ).   Thus Sallustius hath “Διόνυσον μὲν ἐν Διί” “Dionysus in Zeus” , and Polycleitus of Argos made a likeness where Dionysus is blended with Zeus (see Paus. Guide to Greece 8.31.4).  But to speak rightly Dionysus is that part of Zeus which is immanent in the world, whilst Zeus is a more fulsome godhead, a god who is both immanent and transcendant. The Christians borrowed this old theology for their own father and son, thus Justin Martyr:

“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.”

And:

“The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and gave out that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they number wine [or, the ass] among his mysteries; and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven.”

And the whisper in Plutarch that the god of the Jews is none other than Dionysus is worth thinking about here, and the vision of Ezekiel and Dionysus's shape shifting as Robert Graves marked long ago show a match for everyone to see.  But the god of the Bible is all things to all and if you know where to look he is even a lot like our own Wōden.   For he is a god who feeds the ravens (Luke 12:24); who sent ravens to feed his witeȝa (1 kings 17:3); who commands the eagle (Job 39:27); who bears his chosen on "eagles' wings" (Exodus 19:4); who made heaven and earth (Genesis 1) after smiting a many-headed monster (Psalms 74:14); who is linked to the "tree of life" and a holy borough in the middle of the world (Gen. 2:9; Rev. 22:2; Ezek. 5:5); whose "throne" is "above the stars" yet also a "mount ... in the ... north" (Isaiah 14:14) and from which he "looketh from heaven" and "beholdeth all the sons of men" (Psalm 33:13); who inspires songs (Pslams 40:3), wisdom (Amos 3:7), foresight (Joel 2:28/2 Peter 1:21); who is the "Dominus exercituum" "Lord of Armies (hosts)"; whose spirit causes "the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands" (Judges 15:14) and enables one man to rend a lion with their bare hands (Judges 14:6) and slay  "a thousand men" (Judges 15:15) and to "mount up with wings as eagles; ... run, and not be weary; ..walk, and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31); whose foes are dedicated to death by having a spear stretched out toward them (Joshua 8:18);   to whom overthrown kings are hung on trees (Joshua 8:29).  And whose dearest son was slain only to come back to life again, and is a sun-hero (Malachi 4:2 ). Whilst another was a great dragon and "devil" slayer (Revelations 12. 7-9).

Dionysus and "Battle-frenzy"?

Wōden's name means he is the lord of "wōd" that is the "wōdnes", woodness or madness that might grip fighters and bring about a victory. Thus in Heimskringla, Ynglinga Saga, chapter 6 (Frá atgervi Óðins.) of Wōden it is written:

“Óðinn kunni svá gera, at í orrostum urðu úvinir hans blindir eða daufir eða óttafullir, en vápn þeirra bitu eigi heldr en vendir; en hans menn fóru brynjulausir ok váru galnir sem hundar eða vargar, bitu í skjöldu sína, váru sterkir sem birnir eða griðungar; þeir drápu mannfólkit, en hvártki eldr né járn orti á þá. Þat er kallaðr berserksgangr.”

“Odin could make his enemies in battle blind, or deaf, or terror-struck, and their weapons so blunt that they could no more but than a willow wand; on the other hand, his men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon themselves. These were called Berserker.”

What this woodness was we may learn from the rightful brooking of the word by English writers such as William Shakespeare King Henry VI, part I, Act IV, scene VII:

“How the young whelp of Talbot's, raging-wood,
    Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen's blood!”


And Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte Darthure Book I, Chapter 25:

“Soo with the helpe of syr Kay & of syr Gryflet / they helde these vj kynges hard that vnnethe they had ony power to defend them But whan syr Arthur sawe the batail wold not be endyd by no maner / he ferd wood as a lyon / & stered his hors here & there on the right hand & on the lyft hand / that he stynte not tyl he had slayne xx knyghtes / Also he wounded kyng Lot sore on the sholder and made hym to leue that ground / for syr Kay & Gryflet dyd with kyng Arthur there grete dedes of armes /”

Now this all links Wōden/Óðin once again to the Greeks' and Romans' god Bacchus “the founder of the triumph [auctorem triumphi]”, although Bacchus' links to fighting are not as well known as they should be.  Thus Macrobius  “The Saturnalia” I. 19 §§1- 4 (awend. Davies):

“1 ... siquidem plerique Liberum cum Marte coniungunt, unum deum esse monstrantes: unde Bacchus Ἐνυάλιος cognominatur, quod est inter propria Martis nomina. 2 Colitur etiam apud Lacedaemonios simulachrum Liberi patris hasta insigne, non thyrso: sed cum thyrsum tenet, quid aliud quam latens telum gerit, cuius mucro hedera lambente protegitur? Quod ostendit vinculo quodam patientiae obligandos impetus belli. Habet enim hedera vinciendi obligandi naturam: nec non et calor vini, cuius Liber pater auctor est, saepe homines ad furorem bellicum usque propellit. 3 Igitur propter cognatum utriusque effectus calorem Martem ac Liberum unum eundemque deum esse voluerunt: certe Romani utrumque patris appellatione venerantur, alterum Liberum patrem, alterum Marspitrem, id est Martem patrem, cognominantes. 4 Hinc etiam Liber pater bellorum potens probatur, quod eum primum ediderunt auctorem triumphi. ”

 “... for we commonly join Liber with Mars, suggesting thereby that they are one god.  That is why Bacchus is called “Warlike,” one of the names which properly belong to Mars./ Moreover, in a statue of Liber Pater worshipped by the Lacedæmonians the distinguishing emblem is not a thyrsus but a spear; and indeed the thyrsus which Liber carries is in fact a veiled weapon, its point being hidden by the encircling ivy, thus showing that any impulse to war should be restrained by the bonds, as it were, of patience, since it is the nature of ivy to bind and to restrain.  Again, wine is the gift of Liber Pater and the heat engendered by wine often drives men on to madness and to battle./  The affinity, then, between the heat of wine and the heat of battle has led us to regard Mars and Liber as one and the same god.  The Romans certainly pay reverence to each deity under the style of “Father,” calling the one Liber Pater and the other Marspiter or Mars Pater./  And the fact that they have declared Liber Pater to be the founder of the triumph [auctorem triumphi] is a further proof that he is the Lord of Battles.” 

Liber Pater is the Romans' name for Dionysus or Bacchus when they didn't borrow these straight from the Greek. And the Northerners themselves I think whisper all this when they say that  Óðin  liveth only upon wine, which is often overlooked as some little thing when it is at the heart of the by'r lady mystery.  Grímnismál    19 (awend. H. A. Bellows):.
   
Gera ok Freka|     seðr gunntamiðr
    hróðigr Herjaföður;
    en við vín eitt|    vápngöfugr
    Óðinn æ lifir.

 Freki and Geri | does Heerfather feed,
The far-famed fighter of old:
But on wine alone | does the weapon-decked god,
Othin, forever live.

"æ lifir" = "aye lives; lives forever".  None of Iðunn’s apples for Óðin then!    By the way here I mark Servius commentary on Vergil's Æneid 8.275 DATE VINA give wine:

"quia tantum diis superis vino libari decebat."
"that it is fitting only to offer wine to the gods above."

And:

 "But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

No little thing here also is the so often missed Corpus Gloss: “ba[c]chantes: uuoedende”.  And also this in King Alfred’s awending of Orosius:

“Eac, on  þæm dagum, wæs þæt Liber Pater oferwan þa underigendan Indea ðeode, and hi forneah mid ealle fordyde, ægþer ge mid druncennysse, ge mid firen-lustum, ge mid man-slyhtum : þeah hi hine eft æfter hys dæge heom for God hæfdon; and hy sædon þæt he wære ealles gewinnes waldend.”

“It was also, in those days, that Liber Pater overcame the harmless people of India, and almost brought them to an end, either by drunkenness, by lusts, or by manslaughter : nevertheless, after his days, they had him for a god; and they said that he was lord of all war.” 

Orosius’ Latin hath nothing of Liber being worshipped as a god, let alone a god of fighting! And although this thought is from Arnobius' Against the Heathen (Adversus Gentes) the question abides as to why Alfred saw fit to slot it in here.  But we have already marked that it is for siȝe that Wōden was mainly worshipped in the North.

 

 

Twofold Dionysus and Dionysus and Apollo

Dionysus however has a twofold character: one mad and raging, "Βακχεύς" "Baccheus"; the other kindly,  in Greek "μειλίχιος" "Melichios" (see Athenaeus  Deipnosophists bk, III, 78c where it is muddled up with a wardship of figs).  Thus Diodorus Siculus would have two gods of this name:  one bearded and older; the other beardless and younger.  That the names of Dionysus and Apollo themselves might at times span the same breadth is also an interesting thought here, with Dionysus standing for the mad god, and Apollo for the kindly one.  Or is it the other way about?  That the might of the god would overwhelm someone who wore Dionysus' mask would seem to be the beginnings of drama and the masks of comedy and tragedy now brooked as tokens of the dramatic art are again old tokens of the two aspects of the god.  Needless to say drama has broken away more and more over time from its hallowed roots.  A mask or a hood is a "grima" in Old English.  Whilst a helm is a "here-grima".  This word is known in the North too, as "gríma", and from which we have the nicknames of  Grímr and Grímnir for Óðin (see Grímnismál 47), and our own Grim, Grime or Græme.  These last will be found to cleave to many an old work of earth (such as Grime's Graves in Norfolk) or stone (such as Grim's Pound on Dartmoor) in the English landscape that our forebears either could not understand the whys and wherefores of, or were thought of as being beyond the might of man to do.

But Dionysus's madness is not wholly confined to the field of fighting, and that Wōden/Óðin had other interests at times beside fighting shows us that his madness was not either.  Thus Teiresias marketh in Euripides’ Bacchæ of Dionysus:

“μάντις δ᾽ ὁ δαίμων ὅδε: τὸ γὰρ βακχεύσιμον
καὶ τὸ μανιῶδες μαντικὴν πολλὴν ἔχει:
ὅταν γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἐς τὸ σῶμ᾽ ἔλθῃ πολύς, 300
λέγειν τὸ μέλλον τοὺς μεμηνότας ποιεῖ.
Ἄρεώς τε μοῖραν μεταλαβὼν ἔχει τινά:
στρατὸν γὰρ ἐν ὅπλοις ὄντα κἀπὶ τάξεσιν
φόβος διεπτόησε πρὶν λόγχης θιγεῖν.
μανία δὲ καὶ τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ Διονύσου πάρα. 305
ἔτ᾽ αὐτὸν ὄψῃ κἀπὶ Δελφίσιν πέτραις
πηδῶντα σὺν πεύκαισι δικόρυφον πλάκα,
πάλλοντα καὶ σείοντα βακχεῖον κλάδον,
μέγαν τ᾽ ἀν᾽ Ἑλλάδα.  ...”.

“But this god is a prophet—for Bacchic revelry
and madness have in them much prophetic skill.
For whenever the god enters a body in full force, [300]
he makes the frantic to foretell the future.
He also possesses a share of Ares' nature.
For terror sometimes flutters an army under arms
and in its ranks before it even touches a spear;
and this too is a frenzy from Dionysus. [305]
You will see him also on the rocks of Delphi,
bounding with torches through the highland of two peaks,
leaping and shaking the Bacchic branch,
mighty throughout Hellas. ...”.

Now it is worth marking here that a kind of “woodness” bestowing great strength was also linked to Apollo (see Pausanias, Guide to Greece 10. 32. 6). And walking through fire is done to Apollo (see Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7. 19) and the berserkir in Vatnsdæla saga 46.  And Apollo is, you will not be overwhelmed to learn, linked by the Greeks and Romans in many ways to Dionysus.  Dion Chrysostomos, when speaking to the Rhodians (31), sayeth [awend. A. B. Cook]:

“ ... καίτοι τὸν μὲν Ἀπόλλω καὶ τὸν Ἥλιον καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἔνιοί φασιν εἶναι τὸν αὐτόν, καὶ ὑμεῖς οὕτω νομίζετε,...”

“Yet some maintain that Apollon, Helios, and Dionysos are all one and the same; and that is your own accepted view.”

See also Servius' commentary on Vergil's Aen. 3. 93, and his commentary on Vergil's Eclogues 5.66.

It is from Apollo moreover that our Wōden has his wieldship of poetry, his foresight, his ravens, his wolves and the three-footed token that is none other than Apollo's tripod!

 

  Above: Wappen of Rabenstein zu Döhlau. An east Frankish kindred. But an odd token for one whose name means "raven-stone".  Mark the wings on the helmschau.

 Fulgentius Mythologies (or Mythologiarum libri), bk.1, ch.17 (awend. G. L. Whitbread):

"His tripum quoque Apollini adiciunt, quod Sol et praeterita nouerit et praesentia cernat et futura uisurus sit."

"They also associate Apollo with the tripod because the sun has had knowledge of the past, sees the present, and will see the future. "

Canidia (1683) has "Delphos Three foot-Stool" which gives us the English name for this token: the "three-foot".

Rai Bahadur A.C. Mukerji, Hndu Fasts and Feasts (1916) Lf.37 on Shiva's three eyes:

“These three eyes are supposed to typify the god’s omniscience – his knowledge of the past, present and future.”

Mahabharat 13.146 has these words spoken to Shiva:

“… "Uma said, 'O holy one, O lord of all created things, O source of all that is past, present, and future, it is through thy grace that the words I am uttering are taking their rise in my mind.”

   

Above: a black-figure ware pot showing Achilles fighting Hector, Achilles having the token of the "three-foot" on his shield (for other forebisenings see here and here).  This is seemingly playing on his Homeric epithet of "swift-footed divine Achilles" (ποδάρκης δῖος Ἀχιλλεὺς (podárkēs dĩos Achilleús - Iliad 1.121, 2.688.) or "quick-footed Achilles" (πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς (pódas ōkús Achilleús )- as at Iliad 1.58, 1.84, 1.148, 1.215, 1.364, 1.489). But Achilles’ father was Peleus who was the half-brother of Phocus (Φῶκος the word being akin to φώκη “seal”; φώκαινα “porpoise”) for whom the land of Phocis was named and where is the oracle of Delphi. Furthermore, although holding sway in southern Thessaly - Phthia - Achilles’ true fatherland was the island of Aegina, the folk of which belonged to the Amphictyony, or “Holy League”, of the asylum/temple-island of Calaurea, (see Strabo Geography, 8.6.14; Pausanias Guide to Greece 2.33.2 ). The main temple on Calaurea is holy to Poseidon, but Poseidon and Apollo are said to have wrixled temples with each other, so that, Apollo got Poseidon's Delphi whilst Poseidon got Apollo's Calaurea:

“Καλαύρειαν δὲ Ἀπόλλωνος ἱερὰν τὸ ἀρχαῖον εἶναι λέγουσιν, ...”

“Calaurea, they say, was sacred to Apollon of old, ...”. (awend. W. H. S. Jones/H.A.Ormerod)

 Now notwithstanding that there is much that is shared by Dionysus and Apollo, and our Wōden therefore has something of both these gods,  when Dionysus and Apollo are to be thought of as being a pair without overlapping eachother, then Wōden is for Dionysus and Þunor is for Apollo.  And thus we should understand the Old English gloss for Apollo's mother, Latona:

“Latona: Þūres modor.”

 Which evens Þunor with Apollo, Þūr being a shortening of Þunor (see the name Thursday, when we should have Thunder(s)day). We minn here Adam of Bremen's words:

"...Si pestis et famis imminet, Thorydolo lybatur, ..."

“... If sickness or famine threaten they sacrifice to the idol Thor;...” 

Which, taken alone, would even him with Apollo as “Apollinem morbos depellere,” “Apollo averts diseases”. It should be marked here that Alexikakos (Ancient Greek: Ἀλεξίκακος), the "averter of evil", and linked to the averting of plague, is not only an epithet among the Greeks of Apollo but also of Jupiter and Hercules!  Both gods whom Þunor has no little likeness to.

 

Wōden and Þunor

It is worth setting out here that the Acts of the Apostles 14:12 mark Jupiter and Mercurius out as seemingly being thought of together  as a pair of gods, in Lycaonia at least, who might "come down to us in the likeness of men" (see Acts 14:11).  There is nothing unlikely or made-up about this, as some have mooted (id est Philip Shaw Uses of Wodan (2002)).  Homer singeth in the Odyssey  Book 17, lines 485 to 487 (awending S.H. Butcher & A. Lang  ):

“καί τε θεοὶ ξείνοισιν ἐοικότες ἀλλοδαποῖσι, 485
παντοῖοι τελέθοντες, ἐπιστρωφῶσι πόληας,
ἀνθρώπων ὕβριν τε καὶ εὐνομίην ἐφορῶντες.”

“Yea and the gods, in the likeness of strangers 
from far countries, put on all manner of shapes, 
and wander through the cities, beholding the violence (ὕβρις) and the righteousness of men.”


But much more to the point, is Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis from his Metamorphoses Book 8 lines 616 to 724 (see here) where we find Jupiter and Mercurius doing even this, and I mark:

"Iuppiter huc specie mortali cumque parente   626
venit Atlantiades positis caducifer alis."

"Jupiter came here in mortal disguise, and
With his parent came Mercury the caduceus bearer after his wings had
been set aside ..." 

And, with my last post in mind,  Mercurius is truly to be understood as one with Jupiter's  eagle, so to speak, that is with Jupiter's armiger or  minister (angel).  Mercurius is also seemingly noneother than Suparṇaḥ (सुपर्णः) or Suparṇaḥ Garutmān (सुपर्णो गरुत्मान), otherwise  Garuḍaḥ (गरुडः), or the  unnamed śyenaḥ (श्येनः) that flies on the gods' errands. And by setting the soma-fetching myth beside that of the fetching of the mead of poetry (in Skaldskaparmál 5 and 6) we have to acknowledge that Óðinn " í arnarham" "in arn-, or eagle-, shape" is the same.  But Óðinn is our Wōden, and both are linked to Mercurius, as dies Mercurii "the day of Mercurius" is Óðinsdagr, now Onsdag, and Wōdnesdæȝ, now Wednesday "the day of Óðinn/Wōden".  Now Garuḍaḥ is said to be the vāhanam (वाहनम्) of Vishnu.  This actually works in another way as we shall see, but here we can take Vishnu for Indra, and we can find images in the Westof Jupiter  riding an eagle in a way that is not too much unlike how Vishnu is shown riding Garuḍaḥ in the East.  And we might understand that this could become in time a tale where these two gods do no more than fare forth together as two fellow wayfarers.  And we are not far here either from the "Heavenly Twins", one of whom was often shown as a strongman (like Zethus, Heracles, Balarāma), whilst the other was more thoughtful (like Amphion, Iphicles, Krishna).  And, bearing in mind that the Romans' Mercurius is the Greeks' Hermes, we have a twofold old/young Hermes known among the Greeks, thus  Synesius:

"The conception, indeed, my son, of your forefathers in the formation of sacred images, is perfectly admirable. For the Egyptians make a twofold representation of the daemon Hermes, placing a young by the side of an elderly man, intending to signify by this, that he who rightly inspects [sacred concerns] ought to be both intelligent and strong, one of these being imperfect in affording utility without the other. On this account, also, a sphinx is established by us in the vestibules of our temples, as a sacred symbol of the conjunction of these two goods; the beast in this figure signifying strength, but the man wisdom.  For strength when destitute of the ruling aid of wisdom, is borne along with stupid astonishment, mingling and confounding all things; and intellect is useless for the purposes of action, when it is deprived of the subserviency of hands. "

[awend. Thomas Taylor]

“When great Attempts are undergone,
Join Strength and Wisdom, both in one.”

The Sphinx?  Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies of Gnostic Notes, According to the True Philosophy (otherwise called Miscellanies (Stromata), Book V, Chapter VII, The Egyptian Symbols and Enigmas of Sacred Things:

“πρὸς τοῖσδε ἀλκῆς μὲν καὶ ῥώμης σύμβολον αὐτοῖς ὁ λέων· ... ἀλκῆς τε αὖ μετὰ συνέσεως ἡ σφίγξ, τὸ μὲν σῶμα πᾶν λέοντος, τὸ πρόσωπον δὲ ἀνθρώπου ἔχουσα. ὁμοίως τε τούτοις σύνεσιν καὶ μνήμην καὶ κράτος καὶ τέχνην ὁ ἄνθρωπος αἰνισσόμενος τοῖς ἱεροῖς πρὸς αὐτῶν ἐγγλύφεται.”

“Besides, the lion is with them the symbol of strength and prowess, ... while, on the other hand, the sphinx, of strength combined with intelligence--as it had a body entirely that of a lion, and the face of a man. Similarly to these, to indicate intelligence, and memory, and power, and art, a man is sculptured in the temples.”

Northern myth nowhere has Óðin and Þór as faring among men together for that Lóki, Óðin's sworn-brother, takes what should be his sworn-brother's part.

Among our own folk, the stow-names show that Wōden and Þunor were the most worshipped in a way that makes them into a matching pair for they were the main gods of the old belief in the North. Thus Onlaf Ball (“Onalafball”) in the Historia de sancto Cuthberto swears "per deos mes potentes, Thor et Othan" "by my mighty gods, Thor and Othan" at Chester-le-Street ("Cunceceastre").   Paulus Diaconus writes to Charlemagne of the Danish king Sigifrid that he `adveniat manibus post terga revinctis, / Nec illi auxilio Thonar et Waten erunt' `should come with his hands tied up behind his back, nor will help him Þonar and Wōden '(In Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi, i,  Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, ed. by Ernest Duemmler,  (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881) lvs. 5I-52.)

De Temporibus Anticristo (Edited by Arthur Napier 1883, Napier Homily 42):

“Þor eac and Owðen, þe hæðene men heriað swiðe.”

Fornmanna sögur: eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins Norræna fornfræða felags vol.2 (1826) Saga Ólafs konúngs Tryggvasonar ch.201 lvs. 156 to 7:

“Biskup spurði, hvat manna hann væri.
Hann sagðist vera Norðmaðr.
Biskup mælti: á hvern trúir þú?
Finn svarar: á Þór ok Óðin, sem aðrir Norðmenn.”

“The bishop asked, what of men he was?
He said he was a Northman.
The Bishop said: in what dost thou believe?
Finn answered:  in Thor and Odin as other Northmen.”


Laxdæla saga 40:

“Þá segir konungur og brosti að: "Það sér á yfirbragði Kjartans að hann þykist eiga meira traust undir afli sínu og vopnum heldur en þar sem er Þór og Óðinn.”

“Then the king said and smiled, "It may be seen from the mien of Kjartan that he puts more trust in his own weapons and strength than in Thor and Odin.” [here]


The same from the Saga Ólafs konúngs Tryggvasonar ch.162 lf.34:

“Þá svarar konúngr brosandi: Þat se ek glōggt, Kjartan! Bæði í orðum þinum ok yferbragði, at þú þikkist meira traust eiga undir afli þínu ok atgervi, heldr enn þar sem er Þórr eðr Óðinn.”

“Then the king answered smilingly, "I see that, Kjartan!" Both in your words and boast that you think to trust more in your strength and might, than Thor or Odin.”

Lf.156 ch. 201:

“En Finnr sagði honum Ímót frá Þór ok Óðni ok frá Þeirra hervirkjum.”
“But Finnr said against him about Thor and Odin and about their military works.”

Lf.157:

“At engir guðar væri jafnmáttugir sem Þórr ok Óðinn...”
“But no gods were  even-mighty as Thor and Odin ...”

Of "Eyvindr kinnrifi" “chin-rift” Ch. 205 Lf.168:

“At sá maðr skal alt til dauðadags þjóna Þór ok Óðni...”
“But that man shall always follow Thor and Odin until his death-day...”

Viðbœtir við Ólafs sögu hins Helga:

“Ólafr konungr kristnaði þetta riki allt, öll blót braut hann niðr ok öll goð, sem Þór Engilsmanna goð, ok Óðin Saxa goð, ok Skiöld Skánunga goð, ok Frey Svía goð, ok Goðorm Dana goð”.

“King Olaf Christened all that kingdom, all offerings he brought low and all gods, as Thor the Englishman’s god, and Óðin the Saxons’ god, and Skiöld the Skáney-folk’s god and Frey god of the Swedes and Goðorm god of the Danes.”

 "... Þór Engilsmanna goð, ok Óðin Saxa goð,...".  And so mote it ever be.

Dionysus and Herakles or Hercules

Now seven-gated Thebes in Bœotia is meant to be where both Dionysus and Herakles or Hercules were born, and this alone would match them as a pair if nothing else did.  But it may be that these two were among the Greeks the same as what Wōden and Þunor were among our own forebears. Dionysus being the same as Wōden and Þunor the same as Herakles/Hercules. Now the Greeks understood Dionysus and Herakles/Hercules to be the gods of the East.  Thus Strabo Geography Book 15, chap. 1. §§58-59 writing of India and drawing on Megasthenes now lost work, awending H. L. Jones:

  "Speaking of the philosophers, Megasthenes says that those who inhabit the mountains hymn the praises of Dionysus and point out as evidences the wild grape-vine, which grows in their country alone, and the ivy, laurel, myrtle, box-tree, and other evergreens, no one of which is found on the far side of the Euphrates except a few in parks, which can be kept alive only with great care;  and that the custom of wearing linen garments, mitres, and gay-coloured garments, and for the king to be attended by gong-carriers and drum-beaters on his departures from the palace, are also Dionysiac; but the philosophers in the plains worship Heracles.  ...

Megasthenes makes another division in his discussion of the philosophers, asserting that there are two kinds of them, one kind called Brachmanes [brāhmaṇāḥ (ब्राह्मणाः) "brahmins"] and the other Garmanes [that is, śramaṇāḥ (श्रमणाः) "ascetics " among which the Buddhist monks are mostly to be understood];...".

Dionysus being Shiva and Herakles being Vishnu as others have marked.  But these two gods are played about with and borrow eachothers' attributes.  Thus Mahabharat bk. 3 ch.39:

“śivāya viṣṇurūpāya viṣṇave śivarūpiṇe”
“Thou art Siva in the form of Vishnu, and Vishnu in the form of Siva.”

And th'ilk bk 12, ch. 328:

“rudro nārāyaṇaś caiva sattvam ekaṃ dvidhākṛtam”
“Rudra (=Shiva) and Narayana (=Vishnu) are one being in two forms”.

 The well known Black/Blue and White twins are Krishna and Balarāma.  Although said to be avatārau of Vishnu and his snake, it may be that the Blue/Black Twin, that is the Twin with Vishnu's hue, namely Krishna, also has much of the kindly side of Shiva about him.  Whilst, the White Twin with Shiva's hue, has much of the heroic Vishnu about him.   But Vishnu is not  Indra, although much of what once belonged to Indra is latterly bestowed upon Vishnu, and in many places Vishnu is put in Indra's old stead even as being a god of kshatriyas. Vishnu  is even Indrakarman, that is “He whose acts are done by Indra;…” (Mahabharat bk. 13, ch. 149)!   Yet the lost truth however is that Vishnu was Indra's "sakhā (सखा)" "comrade" (see RV 8.89.12 "sakhe viṣṇo") as Mercurius/Aquila was to Jupiter, and he is threfore seen to be in origin the same as our own Western Mercurius!  Thus Varaha mahira Brihat Jâtâka ch. 2 §5:

 

The Sanskrit is "vahny  ambu agnija- keśava- indra- śaci     kāḥ sūrya- ādi-nātʰāḥ kramāt" where "Vahni" is another name for Agni, Ambu for ambupa or ambupati "Lord of Water", a well-worn byname of Varuna, Agnija "fire-born" for Subrahmanya or Skanda, the Hindu Mars, Keshava "fair-head" a byname of Vishnu, Indra needs no outfolding, Saci is a byname of  Indrani, and "Ka", meaning "Who" is an odd, but well known way of naming Brahma.  The order is of the days of the week.

 "sakhā" is akin to the Old English "secg" and Latin "socius" whence "societas" "society".

Thus we should understand the vāhanam (वाहनम्) of Vishnu as Suparṇaḥ/Garutmān/Garuḍaḥ/śyenaḥ, is truly his "other I", thus Bhagavad-Gita (Ch.10, Verse 30), Krishna/Vishnu says:

 " ’haṁ vainateyaśh cha pakṣhiṇām"
"and I am thes son of Vinata [that is Garuda], among birds".

This is the other way I marked earlier.

And  Nārada (नारद) an avatāraḥ of Vishnu still has much of the character of the Western Mercurius/Hermes, even down to the making of the lyre (vina) from a tortoise shell!

 vānarāḥ

Vishnu's avatāraḥ of Rama has help from vānarāḥ (वानराः) "wood men" who make up his heer (=army) to get his wife back.  Now the vānarāḥ are understood to be apes or monkeys, but are they not rather the Eastern reflection of our Northern berserkir? Thus Ramayana, book 1, ch.17:

"kaama rUpa balopetaa yathaa kaama vichaariNaH || 1-17-24
si.mha shaardUla sadR^ishaa darpeNa ca balena ca |
shilaa praharaNaaH sarve sarve parvata yodhinaH || 1-17-25
nakha danSTra aayudhaaH sarve sarve sarva astra kovidaaH |
vicaala yeyuH shailendraan bheda yeyuH sthiraan drumaan || 1-17-26
kSobha yeyuH ca vegena samudram saritaam patim |
daara yeyuH kSitim padbhyaam aaplaveyuH mahaa arNavan || 1-17-27
nabhasthalam visheyur ca gR^ihNiiyur api toyadaan |
gR^ihNiiyur api maata.ngaan mattaan pravrajato vane || 1-17-28
nardamaanaaH ca naadena paata yeyuH viha.mgamaan |
iidR^ishaanaam prasuutaani hariiNaam kaama ruupiNaam || 1-17-29
shatam shata sahasraaNi yuuthapaanaam mahaatmanaam |"

 "And all these [vānarāḥ] were endowed with strength; and could assume shapes and repair everywhere  at will.  And they were like unto lions and tigers, both in pride and prowess.  And they faught with crags and hurled hills.  And they faught with nails and teeth, - and were accomplished in all weapons.  And they could move the largest hills; and crush the fixed trees; and with their impetus, vex that lord of rivers - the Ocean.   And they could with their kicks rend the Earth, and swim over the mighty main. And they could penetrate into the welkin, — and capture the clouds. And they could subdue mad elephants ranging the forest. And with their roars, they could bring down birds singing. Thus came into being Kotis of high-souled leaders of hariṇām (=vānarāḥ)-herds, assuming forms at will."

[awend. M. N. Dutt]

I mark here on the way that the Ramayana has bears, ṛkṣāḥ (ऋक्षाः),  begotten at the same time as the vānarāḥ. And that the well-known Hanuman is likened to Garuḍaḥ:

 "maarutasya aurasaH shriimaan hanumaan naama vaanaraH |
vajra sa.mhananopeto vainateya samaH jave || 1-17-16
sarva vaanara mukhyeSu buddhimaan balavaan api |"

 "And the Wind-god begat the graceful monkey named Hanuman, endowed with a frame hard as adamant; in fleetness like unto Vinata's offspring [that is, Garuḍaḥ] ; and the most intelligent as well as the most powerful amongst all the principal vānarāḥ."

It is worth bearing in mind that Nārada was cursed for a time to be a monkey, that apes were linked to Thoth, the Hermes of Egypt, that κῠνοκέφᾰλοι "dog-heads" was the Greeks' name for these apes of Thoth (they might well have been hallowed to the god as they bore a likeness to dogs which more obviously belongs to Hermes).  Plutarch hath this to say of the dog (Of Isis and Osiris 11, awend. F.C.Babbitt):

“ οὐ γὰρ τὸν κύνα κυρίως Ἑρμῆν λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ζῴου τὸ φυλακτικὸν καὶ τὸ ἄγρυπνον καὶ τὸ φιλόσοφον, γνώσει καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ τὸ φίλον καὶ τὸ ἐχθρὸν ὁρίζοντος, φησιν ὁ Πλάτων,  τῷ λογιωτάτῳ τῶν θεῶν συνοικειοῦσιν.”

  “The facts are that they do not call the dog by the name Hermes as his proper name, but they bring into association with the most astute of their gods that animal's watchfulness and wakefulness and wisdom, since he distinguishes between what is friendly and what is hostile by his knowledge of the one and his ignorance of the other, as Plato remarks.”

That the god Anubis in Egypt (blent with Wepwawet) who was shown with what was thought to be a dog's head, was also evenend by the Greeks with their own Hermes.  That the Greeks also thought that there were κῠνοκέφᾰλοι dog-headed folk in India, maybe from muddled reports of apes there.  That all these things blending together gave rise to the medieval worship of "saint" Christopher, sometimes shown with a dog-head, and said to be of the  κῠνοκέφᾰλοι or dog-headed folk, which folk were known in Old English as "half-hundingas".  The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo (1840C.E.), awend. Alexander Turner Cory, XIV. WHAT THEY DENOTE WHEN THEY POURTRAY A CYNOCEPHALUS:

 “...And they symbolise by it the habitable world, because they hold that there are seventy-two primitive countries of the world; and because these animals, when brought up in the temples, and attended with care, do not die like other creatures at once in the same day, but a portion of them dying daily is buried by the priests, while the rest of the body remains in its natural state, and so on till seventy-two days are completed, by which time it is all dead. They also symbolise letters by it, because there is an Egyptian race of cynocephali that is acquainted with letters; wherefore, when a cynocephalus is first brought into a temple, the priest places before him a tablet, and a reed, and ink, to ascertain whether it be of the tribe that is acquainted with letters, and whether it writes. The animal is moreover consecrated to Hermes [Thoth], the patron of all letters. And they denote by it a priest, because by nature the cynocephalus does not eat fish, nor even any food that is fishy, like the priests.  ...”.

But the "hundingas" "the sons of the hound" were an old folk known in the North as well, and in  Wīdsīð we will read:

“Mearchealf [weold] Hundingum”.

And:

“mid hæðnum ond mid hæleþum ond mid Hundingum
Mid Israhelum ic wæs      ond mid Exsyringum,
mid Ebreum ond mid Indeum      ond mid Egyptum.
Mid Moidum ic wæs ond mid Persum      ond mid Myrgingum, ...”. 

“with heath-dwellers and with heroes and with Hundings
with Israelites I was      and with Assyrians,
with Hebrews and with Indians      and with Egyptians.
with Medes I was and with Parsees     and with Myrgings ...”. 

R. W. Chambers Widsith (1912) lf. 195 links Mearchealf to the figure of the mythic Marcolphus who may well be for Wōden (see J. M. Kemble  The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus: With an Historical Introduction (1848)).  But the "half-hundingas" or "hundingas" "the sons of the hound" have something of Wōden about them any way: 

"... hans menn fóru brynjulausir ok váru galnir sem hundar eða vargar, ..."
"...his men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, ...".

And see the tale of the beginnings of the house of Welf  "whelp", the kindred of Queen Victoria.

As a wading giant however, "saint" Christopher draws less on Wōden and much more from Þunor.

Cleansed, or healed, of its wilder forms, Wōden's woodness is "ellenwōd" glossing Zeal; zēlus= ζῆλος.  We might say religious fervour.  The Ramayana of Valmiki by Ralph T. H. Griffith canto xl:

 "Famed in all lands for souls afire,
With lofty thoughts, they never tire,
O'er hill and vale they wander free,
And islets of the distant sea."

Plato Republic Book 2, 374e to 376c which sees Hermes's hound as the best forebisening of the man who behaves "οἰκείους πρᾴους ... πολεμίους χαλεπούς:" "soft to those of their own land ... hard to their foes" (2. 375c).  And thus knighthood or chivalry is born.   Mahabharat Book 9 ch. 5 Duryodhana (awend Ganguli):

“This is not the time for acting like a eunuch. On the other hand, that is time for the battle. I have performed many sacrifices. I have given away Dakshinas to Brahmanas, I have obtained the attainment of all my wishes. I have listened to Vedic recitations. I have walked upon the heads of my foes. My servants have all been well cherished by me. I have relieved people in distress. I dare not, O foremost of regenerate ones, address such humble words to the Pandavas. I have conquered foreign kingdoms. I have properly governed my own kingdom. I have enjoyed diverse kinds of enjoyable articles. Religion and profit and pleasure I have pursued. I have paid off my debt to the Pitris and to Kshatriya duty. Certainly, there is no happiness here. What becomes of kingdom, and what of good name? Fame is all that one should acquire here. That fame can be obtained by battle, and by no other means. The death that a Kshatriya meets with at home is censurable. Death on one's bed at home is highly sinful. The man who casts away his body in the woods or in battle after having performed sacrifices, obtains great glory. He is no man who dies miserably weeping in pain, afflicted by disease and decay, in the midst of crying kinsmen.  Abandoning diverse objects of enjoyment, I shall now, by righteous battle, proceed to the regions of Shakra, obtaining the companionship of those that have attained to the highest end.  Without doubt, the habitation of heroes of righteous behaviour, who never retreat from battle, who are gifted with intelligence and devoted to truth, who are performers of sacrifices, and who have been sanctified in the sacrifice of weapons, is in heaven. The diverse tribes of Apsaras, without doubt, joyfully gaze at such heroes when engaged in battle. Without doubt, the Pitris behold them worshipped in the assembly of the gods and rejoicing in heaven, in the company of Apsaras. We will now ascend the path that is trod by the celestials and by heroes unreturning from battle, that path which has been taken by our venerable grandsire, by the preceptor endued with great intelligence, by Jayadratha, by Karna, and by Duhshasana. Many brave kings, who had exerted themselves vigorously for my sake in this battle, have been slain. Mangled with arrows and their limbs bathed in blood, they lie now on the bare Earth. Possessed of great courage and conversant with excellent weapons, those kings, who had, again, performed sacrifices as ordained in the scriptures, having cast off their life breaths in the discharge of their duties, have now become the denizens of Indra's abode. They have paved the way (to that blessed region). That road will once more be difficult in consequence of the crowds of heroes that will hurry along it for reaching that blessed goal.”

And there are other avatārāḥ of Vishnu with Mercurial leanings, thus Vishnu Purana Book III, 3 (awending Wilson):

“In every Dwápara (or third) age, Vishńu, in the person of Vyása, in order to promote the good of mankind, divides the Veda, which is properly but one, into many portions: observing the limited perseverance, energy, and application of mortals, he makes the Veda fourfold, to adapt it to their capacities; and the bodily form which he assumes, in order to effect that classification, is known by the name of Veda-vyása.”

psychopompos

When it comes to the dead well, I think they are all Wōden's one way or another.  Thus among the Romans we find it said of   Mercurius that he leadeth souls over and back (“Mercurius enim, qui animas ducere et reducere solet,...” – Petronius Satyricon 140.).  And even stronger in Plutarch's Greek Questions 24 we will read (awend F. C. Babbitt): 

 “νομίζουσι γάρ, ὥσπερ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀποθανόντων δέχεσθαι τὴν γῆν, οὕτω τὰς ψυχὰς τὸν Ἑρμῆν:”  

“For they believe that, just as the earth receives the bodies of the dead, even so Hermes receives their souls.”  

The ”locus classicus” of Hermes as psychopompos (ψυχοπομπός) “leader of souls” is Book 24 of the Odyssey, lines 1 to 14:

Ἑρμῆς δὲ ψυχὰς Κυλλήνιος ἐξεκαλεῖτο

ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων: ἔχε δὲ ῥάβδον μετὰ χερσὶν

καλὴν χρυσείην, τῇ τ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει

ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ᾽ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει:

τῇ ῥ᾽ ἄγε κινήσας, ταὶ δὲ τρίζουσαι ἕποντο.                                     5

ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε νυκτερίδες μυχῷ ἄντρου θεσπεσίοιο

τρίζουσαι ποτέονται, ἐπεί κέ τις ἀποπέσῃσιν

ὁρμαθοῦ ἐκ πέτρης, ἀνά τ᾽ ἀλλήλῃσιν ἔχονται,

ὣς αἱ τετριγυῖαι ἅμ᾽ ἤϊσαν: ἦρχε δ᾽ ἄρα σφιν

Ἑρμείας ἀκάκητα κατ᾽ εὐρώεντα κέλευθα.                                   10

πὰρ δ᾽ ἴσαν Ὠκεανοῦ τε ῥοὰς καὶ Λευκάδα πέτρην,

ἠδὲ παρ᾽ Ἠελίοιο πύλας καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων

ἤϊσαν: αἶψα δ᾽ ἵκοντο κατ᾽ ἀσφοδελὸν λειμῶνα,

ἔνθα τε ναίουσι ψυχαί, εἴδωλα καμόντων.

[1] Meanwhile Cyllenian Hermes called forth

the spirits [ψυχὰς] of the wooers. He held in his hands his wand [ῥάβδον] ,

a fair wand of gold, wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he will,

while others again he wakens even out of slumber;

[5] with this he roused and led the spirits, and they followed gibbering.

 And as in the innermost recess of a wondrous cave

bats [νυκτερίδες] flit about gibbering, when one has fallen

from off the rock from the chain in which they cling to one another,

so these went with him gibbering, and

[10] Hermes, the Helper, led them down the dank ways.

Past the streams of Oceanus they went, past the rock Leucas,

past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams,

and quickly came to the mead of asphodel,

where the spirits [ψυχαί] dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils.

[Homer. The Odyssey with an English awending by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919.]



The Christburg treaty of 1249 between the Teutonic Knights and the heathen Prussians gives us one of the best witnesses (contemporary, first hand, detailed) in Europe, albeit an unfriendly one, outside of olden Greece and Rome, to a heathen's hopes at death.  In that treaty the knights and the Pope's legate forbid the Prussians a number of their old ways, among which is this:

"Promiserunt eciam, quod inter se non habebunt de cetero Tulissones vel Ligaschones, homines videlicet mendacissimos histriones, qui quasi gentilium sacerdotes in exequiis defunctorum v[a]e tormentorum infemalium promerentur, dicentes malum bonum et laudantes mortuos de suis furtis et spoliis, immundiciis et rapinis ac aliis viciis et peccatis, que, dum viverent, perpetrarunt: ac erectis in celum luminibus exclamantes, mendaciter asserunt, se videre presentem defunctum per medium celi volantem in equo, armis fulgentibus decoratum, nisum in manu ferentem et cum comitatu magno in aliud seculum procedentem; talibus et consimilibus mendaciis populum se-ducentes et ad ritus gentilium revocantes. Hos, inquam, promiserunt se nunquam de cetero habituros."

"They also promise henceforth not to have among themselves Tulissones or Ligaschones, men, evidently the most fraudulent actors who deserve  the woe of hell’s torments, as pagan priests at the funeral-rites of the dead, for calling evil good and praising deadmen for their thefts and booty-taking, for unclean things and reavings and other vices and sins, that, while living they did: and standing upright in the light of heaven and calling out, they falsely assert, to see for themselves the dead man present flying on a horse through the midst of the air, decked with flashing arms, bearing a hawk in hand, and with a great fellowship (comitatus) going forth into another world/life-time (aliud seculum);  and by such like and similar lies leading and calling back the people themselves to the rites of the pagans.  These, I say, they promise  henceforth never to have."

 Thus all our  "raging hosts" in folklore should be understood.

William of Auvergne the erstwhile Bishop of Paris in De Universo wrote of: 

“equitibus ... nocturnis, qui vulgari gallicano Hellequin, et vulgari hispanico exercitus antiquus vocantur, ...”

“nightfaring horsemen, which the French folk call “Hellequin” and the Spanish folk “the old here (=host, army)” (see Grimm Deal 3, lf.941).

  ‘Das Wütende Heer’ the "raging host" is a name for what everyone takes to be the same thing from Thuringia, Hesse, Franconia and Swabia and the name might play on the name of Wōden, both coming from the same verb meaning "to be mad; rage".   As we have already seen [here] something going under this name could be said to be led by the elf-queen, the German   “fraw holt” or Frau Holla, but I would not like to say if those  drightfares [=processions] that she is in are fully the same as those led by Wōden, even though the souls of the dead may indeed be seen in them as well. But having also already evened the elf-queen with the Northern Freyja, I am bound by the words of Grímnismál 14 to say that maybe they are, and we are talking a 50:50 split (awend. Bellows):

Fólkvangr er inn níundi, | en þar Freyja ræðr
sessa kostum í sal;
halfan val | hon kýss hverjan dag,
en halfan Óðinn á.

The ninth is Folkvang, | where Freyja decrees
Who shall have seats in the hall;
The half of the dead | each day does she choose,
And half does Othin have.

By “Hellequin” William of Auvergne meaneth “la mesgnée de Hellequin” known to such Frenchmen as Raoul de Presle (see Grimm Teut. Myth. Deal 3, lf.941) but which Ordericus Vitalis marketh even earlier in Normandy as “familia Herlechini” (see his Historia Ecclesiastica book 8 chap. 17). What William of Auvergne calls French, Walter Mapp in his The Courtier’s Trifles (De Nugis Curialium) would seem to make out as English, or maybe British.   One day a pygmy appears before him, and says that he will come to his wedding if Herla will come to his wedding a year later.  Herla accepts, and as promised the pygmy arrives on his wedding day, and as promised Herla goes to the pygmy’s wedding. Upon leaving the wedding festivities Herla is given a bloodhound and is told not to dismount until it leaps from the hands of its bearer. Upon leaving the cave they encounter a man who turns out to be a Saxon, he explains that Herla is a legend and it has been many centuries since his reign. The shock of this discovery forces many of his men to dismount and they are turned to dust, so they must wander until the bloodhound leaps from the arms of its bearer. As Map puts it:

“Unde fabula dat ilium Herlam regem errore semper infinito circuitus cum excercitu suo tenere vesanos sine quiete uel residencia.”

“Hence the story hath it that King Herla, in endless wandering, maketh mad marches with his army without stay or rest.”

But a bit later we have this:

“Cetus eciam et phalanges noctiuage quas Herlethingi dicebant famose satis in Anglia usque ad Henrici secundi, domini scilicet nostri, tempora regis comparuerunt, exercitus erroris infiniti, insani circuitus et attoniti silencii, in quo uiui multi apparuerunt quos decessisse nouerant. Hec huius Herlethingi uisa est ultimo familia in marchia Walliarum et Herefordie anno primo regni Henrici secundi, circa meridiem, eo modo quo nos erramus cum bigis et summariis, cum clitellis et panariolis, auibus et canibus, concurrentibus uiris et mulieribus. Qui tunc primi uiderunt tibiis et clamoribus totam in eos uiciniam concitauerunt, et ut illius est mos uigilantissime gentis statim omnibus armis instructa multa manus aduenit, et quia uerbum ab eis extorquere non potuerunt uerbis, telis adigere responsa parabant. Illi autem eleuati sursum in aera subito disparuerunt.
Ab illa die nusquam uis a est illa milicia, ...”

“The nocturnal companies and squadrons, too, which were called of Herlethingus, were sufficiently well-known appearances in England down to the time of King Henry II, our present lord. They were troops engaged in endless wandering, in an aimless round, keeping an awestruck silence, and in them many persons were seen alive who were known to have died. This household of Herlethingus was last seen in the march of Wales and Hereford in the first year of the reign of Henry II, about noonday: they travelled as we do, with carts and sumpter horses, pack-saddles and panniers, hawks and hounds, and a concourse of men and women. Those who saw them first raised the whole country against them with horns and shouts, and as is the wont of that most alert race, a large force came equipped with every weapon, and, because they were unable to wring a word from them by addressing them, made ready to extort an answer with their arms. They , however, rose up into the air and vanished on a sudden.
From that day that troop has nowhere been seen; ...”

[see Walter Map. De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles. Outlaid and awent by M. R. James. Rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford University Press, 1983. lvs. 370 to 373.]

Mark that he sayeth of this Herlethingi:

“in quo viui multi apparuerunt quos decessisse nouerant”
“in which are seen many living who had newly died”.

The best restored Old English sense I can wrest from Walter Map’s worn down “Herlethingi” is “Herlan-Þing” “the assembly/meeting of Herla” and comparable then to O.N. “trolla-þing”. But "Herlan-here/Herlan-dryht" "Herla's host" or "Herla-cyninges here" "host of king Herla" is what I would like to say.  It may also be  that Map's Herlathing- should be read Herlaching- (c and t being eath to misread) so that what we have here is no more than “Herla ching” or “Herla cyng” “King Herla”!   Herla would be in Old English Her(e)la whence the Herelingas of Wīdsīð line 111.   So at the end Her(e)la is only another old haleth (=hero) to be found in the “wütende heer” but not needfully the name of its true leader. 

The French “la mesgnée de Hellequin”, that is la maisnie Hellequin itself becomes the Middle English Hurlewaynes kynne or ‘Hurlewaynes meyné’ (Chaucer ‘The Merchants Tale’). Herla is often cited as an origin for the name of Harlequin, one of the thirteen stock characters from the Commedia dell’arte.   Harlequin, is cunning and acrobatic/athletic, Mercurial. The medium might be the dæmon Alichino from Dante’s Inferno.

We will find this "raging host" marked thus in Sir Orfeo (Auchinleck Handwrit):

 And oþer while he miȝt him se.
As a gret ost bi him te,
Wele atourned ten hundred kniȝtes,
Ich y-armed to his riȝtes,
 Of cuntenaunce stout and fers,
Wiþ mani desplaid baners,
 And ich his swerd y-drawe hold;                 295
Ac never he nist whider þai wold.

Akin then to the foregoing would be the Oskorei of Norway, also called Jolarei(d) or Jolaskrei(d) from the time it is most often met with, and which is led by Guro Rysserova and her husband Sigur Svein, that is seemingly Gudrun and Sigurd from the Volsunga saga.  Better not mark here that sometimes it is led by Starke-Thor or we'll never make an end, (see Salmonsens konversationsleksikon / Anden Udgave / Bind II: Arbejderhaver—Benzol /lf. 206 andra utgåva (26 band, 1915-1930) under Asgaardsrei and Grimm lvs. 945 to 946).

Unwonderfully we find this, or something akin to it,  in the records going back a long way.  From History Of The Wars by Procopius (awent by H.B.Dewing) Book VI, xiv

“And when the two armies came close to one another, it so happened that the sky above the Lombards was obscured by a sort of cloud, black and very thick, but above the Eruli it was exceedingly clear. And judging by this one would have supposed that the Eruli were entering a conflict to their own harm; for there can be no more forbidding portent than this for barbarians as they go into battle. However, the Eruli gave no heed even to this, but in absolute disregard of it they advanced against their enemy with utter contempt, estimating the outcome of war by mere superiority of numbers. But when the battle came to close quarters, many of the Eruli perished and Rodolphus himself also perished, and the rest fled at full speed, forgetting all their courage. And since their enemy followed them up, the most of them fell on the field of battle and only a few succeded in saving themselves.”

Pliny Natural History Book 2, §58 or 148 (awend. Bostock and Riley):

Armorum crepitus et tubae sonitus auditos e caelo Cimbricis bellis accepimus, crebroque et prius et postea. tertio vero consulatu Mari ab Amerinis et Tudertibus spectata arma caelestia ab ortu occasuque inter se concurrentia, pulsis quae ab occasu erant. ipsum ardere caelum minime mirum est et saepius visum maiore igni nubibus correptis.

We have heard, that during the war with the Cimbri, the rattling of arms and the sound of trumpets were heard through the sky, and that the same thing has frequently happened before and since. Also, that in the third consulship of Marius, armies were seen in the heavens by the Amerini and the Tudertes, encountering each other, as if from the east and west, and that those from the east were repelled. It is not at all wonderful for the heavens themselves to be in flames, and it has been more frequently observed when the clouds have taken up a great deal of fire.

Virgil, Georgics. i. 474, 475 (awend. H R.Fairclough):

Armorum sonitum toto Germania cœlo
Audiit.—

Germany heard the noise of battle sweep across the sky … 

Plutarch's Lives... (awnd. Perrin):

χρόνοις δ᾽ ὕστερον Ἀθηναίους ἄλλα τε παρέστησεν ὡς ἥρωα τιμᾶν Θησέα, καὶ τῶν ἐν Μαραθῶνι πρὸς Μήδους μαχομένων ἔδοξαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι φάσμα Θησέως ἐν ὅπλοις καθορᾶν πρὸ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους φερόμενον.

In after times, however, the Athenians were moved to honor Theseus as a demigod, especially by the fact that many of those who fought at Marathon against the Medes thought they saw an apparition of Theseus in arms rushing on in front of them against the Barbarians.

And this one which the Greeks said befell before Salamis, which I think outfolds things a great deal, thus Herodotus Histories (awend Macaulay) Book 8 (Urania):

    65. [1] ἔφη δὲ Δίκαιος ὁ Θεοκύδεος, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος φυγάς τε καὶ παρὰ Μήδοισι λόγιμος γενόμενος τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον, ἐπείτε ἐκείρετο ἡ Ἀττικὴ χώρη ὑπὸ τοῦ πεζοῦ στρατοῦ τοῦ Ξέρξεω ἐοῦσα ἔρημος Ἀθηναίων, τυχεῖν τότε ἐὼν ἅμα Δημαρήτῳ τῷ Λακεδαιμονίῳ ἐν τῷ Θριασίῳ πεδίῳ, ἰδεῖν δὲ κονιορτὸν χωρέοντα ἀπ᾽ Ἐλευσῖνος ὡς ἀνδρῶν μάλιστά κῃ τρισμυρίων, ἀποθωμάζειν τε σφέας τὸν κονιορτὸν ὅτεων κοτὲ εἴη ἀνθρώπων, καὶ πρόκατε φωνῆς ἀκούειν, καί οἱ φαίνεσθαι τὴν φωνὴν εἶναι τὸν μυστικὸν ἴακχον. [2] εἶναι δ᾽ ἀδαήμονα τῶν ἱρῶν τῶν ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι γινομένων τὸν Δημάρητον, εἰρέσθαί τε αὐτὸν ὅ τι τὸ φθεγγόμενον εἴη τοῦτο. αὐτὸς δὲ εἰπεῖν «Δημάρητε, οὐκ ἔστι ὅκως οὐ μέγα τι σίνος ἔσται τῇ βασιλέος στρατιῇ· τάδε γὰρ ἀρίδηλα, ἐρήμου ἐούσης τῆς Ἀττικῆς, ὅτι θεῖον τὸ φθεγγόμενον, ἀπ᾽ Ἐλευσῖνος ἰὸν ἐς τιμωρίην Ἀθηναίοισί τε καὶ τοῖσι συμμάχοισι. [3] καὶ ἢν μέν γε κατασκήψῃ ἐς τὴν Πελοπόννησον, κίνδυνος αὐτῷ τε βασιλέι καὶ τῇ στρατιῇ τῇ ἐν τῇ ἠπείρῳ ἔσται, ἢν δὲ ἐπὶ τὰς νέας τράπηται τὰς ἐν Σαλαμῖνι, τὸν ναυτικὸν στρατὸν κινδυνεύσει βασιλεὺς ἀποβαλεῖν. [4] τὴν δὲ ὁρτὴν ταύτην ἄγουσι Ἀθηναῖοι ἀνὰ πάντα ἔτεα τῇ Μητρὶ καὶ τῇ Κούρῃ, καὶ αὐτῶν τε ὁ βουλόμενος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων μυεῖται· καὶ τὴν φωνὴν τῆς ἀκούεις ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ὁρτῇ ἰακχάζουσι. » πρὸς ταῦτα εἰπεῖν Δημάρητον «σίγα τε καὶ μηδενὶ ἄλλῳ τὸν λόγον τοῦτον εἴπῃς· [5] ἢν γάρ τοι ἐς βασιλέα ἀνενειχθῇ τὰ ἔπεα ταῦτα, ἀποβαλέεις τὴν κεφαλήν, καὶ σε οὔτε ἐγὼ δυνήσομαι ῥύσασθαι οὔτ᾽ ἄλλος ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ εἶς. ἀλλ᾽ ἔχ᾽ ἥσυχος, περὶ δὲ στρατιῆς τῆσδε θεοῖσι μελήσει. » [6] τὸν μὲν δὴ ταῦτα παραινέειν, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ κονιορτοῦ καὶ τῆς φωνῆς γενέσθαι νέφος καὶ μεταρσιωθὲν φέρεσθαι ἐπὶ Σαλαμῖνος ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων. οὕτω δὴ αὐτοὺς μαθεῖν ὅτι τὸ ναυτικὸν τὸ Ξέρξεω ἀπολέεσθαι μέλλοι. ταῦτα μὲν Δίκαιος ὁ Θεοκύδεος ἔλεγε, Δημαρήτου τε καὶ ἄλλων μαρτύρων καταπτόμενος.

65. Moreover Dicaios the son of Theokydes, an Athenian, who was an exile and had become of great repute among the Medes at this time, declared that when the Attic land was being ravaged by the land-army of Xerxes, having been deserted by the Athenians, he happened then to be in company with Demaratos the Lacedemonian in the Thriasian plain; and he saw a cloud of dust going up from Eleusis, as if made by a company of about thirty thousand men, and they wondered at the cloud of dust, by what men it was caused. Then forthwith they heard a sound of voices, and Dicaios perceived that the sound was the mystic cry Iacchos; but Demaratos, having no knowledge of the sacred rites which are done at Eleusis, asked him what this was that uttered the sound, and he said: "Demaratos, it cannot be but that some great destruction is about to come to the army of the king: for as to this, it is very manifest, seeing that Attica is deserted, that this which utters the sound is of the gods, and that it is going from Eleusis to help the Athenians and their allies: if then it shall come down in the Peloponnese, there is danger for the king himself and for the army which is upon the mainland, but if it shall direct its course towards the ships which are at Salamis, the king will be in danger of losing his fleet. This feast the Athenians celebrate every year to the Mother and the Daughter; and he that desires it, both of them and of the other Hellenes, is initiated in the mysteries; and the sound of voices which thou hearest is the cry Iacchos which they utter at this feast." To this Demaratos said: "Keep silence and tell not this tale to any other man; for if these words of thine be reported to the king, thou wilt surely lose thy head, and neither I nor any other man upon earth will be able to save thee: but keep thou quiet, and about this expedition the gods will provide." He then thus advised, and after the cloud of dust and the sound of voices there came a mist which was borne aloft and carried towards Salamis to the camp of the Hellenes: and thus they learnt (said he) that the fleet of Xerxes was destined to be destroyed. Such was the report made by Dicaios the son of Theodykes, appealing to Demaratos and others also as witnesses.

A ghostly drightfare then for Mother  and Daughter, but "the cry of Iacchos" is no little thing as Iacchos is another name for Dionysus.  Thus Suda (awend Catharine Roth):

Ἴακχος: Διόνυσος ἐπὶ τῷ μαστῷ. καὶ ἥρως τις: καὶ ἡ ἐπ' αὐτῷ ᾠδή: καὶ ἡ ἡμέρα, καθ' ἣν εἰς αὐτὸν ἡ πανήγυρις. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ θόρυβος. ὅ τε μυστικὸς Ἴακχος ἠκούσθη κατὰ τὴν ναυμαχίαν Περσῶν καὶ Ἑλλήνων. Ἴακχος οὖν παρὰ τὸ ἰάκχω. καὶ μέντοι καὶ ὁ Ἴακχος ἠκούσθη ἐκ τοῦ Ἀρείου πεδίου, ὑμνούμενός τε καὶ ᾀδόμενος.

Dionysos at the breast. And a certain hero; and the song for him; and the day on which the feast for him [is held]. But some [say the word means] also a tumult.
"The mystical Iacchus was heard at the naval battle of Persians and Greeks".
So Ἰακχος [comes] from [the verb] ἰάκχω ["I shout"].
"And also the Iacchus was heard from the Areian plain, having hymns and songs sung to him".

Sophocles (awend. Jebb):

"ἰὼ πῦρ πνειόντων χοράγ᾽ ἄστρων, νυχίων
φθεγμάτων ἐπίσκοπε,
παῖ Διὸς γένεθλον, προφάνηθ᾽
ὦναξ, σαῖς ἅμα περιπόλοις                                                 1150
Θυίαισιν, αἵ σε μαινόμεναι πάννυχοι χορεύουσι
τὸν ταμίαν Ἴακχον."

"O Leader of the chorus of the stars whose breath is fire,
overseer of the chants in the night,
son begotten of Zeus,
[1150] appear, my king, with your attendant Thyiads, who in night-long frenzy dance and sing you as Iacchus the Giver!"

 The above is a woodcut illustrating Geiler von Kaisersberg's Die Emeis, Strasbourg 1516, f. xxxvii r from the British Library, where the "Wūtende Heer" is marked ( 'Am dumstag nach Reminiscere von dem wutischen heer').  But what is shown is odd.  It is a reused woodcut from an edition of Vergil showing Bacchus, Silenus and a satyr playing the bagpipes!  Of it C. Ginzburg Night Battles (2011) lf.45 writes: “It is difficult to see how this scene from classical mythology could have been expected to suggest to readers the shadowy myth of the 'Furious Horde', so well known to them.”  Or maybe not...

The Chorus (Χορός) once an old word for a ring dance, doubles up in meaning for army.  And Dionysus is the Chorus leader,  χορηγός, Doric χοραγός.  Dionysus' band (also called the comos κῶμος, or thiasos θίασος) as well as mad women, the maenads, has nymphs and satyrs these last two, thanks to Greek bucolic poetry have not been understood for what they are,  as at times, they must be the evenlings of  the valkyrjur (see the apsarāḥ of the East, who are seen as both nymphs and valkyrjur) on the one hand and the vānarāḥ and berserkir on the other.  Furthermore we sometimes find centaurs in Dionysus' here, and in later Greek folk-lore they become the Kalli-kantzaroi "Beautiful centaurs" and Lykokantzaroi""wolf-centaurs" the last being the Greek word for werewolves (Arcadia was the home of werewolves).  A centaur was to begin with only a man belonging to a cow-herding folk of Thessaly, seemingly on horseback, whence the iconic image blended the two, or, as Robert Graves I think well wrote, maybe shape-shifters and wisemen (see Chiron), whose iconic image stems from some early misunderstood representation showing a man becoming, as it were, a horse.  From the Greeks having got rid of their giants early on, centaurs also doubled up with them for what are ettiins everywhere else (above all in the Hercules tale).  Contact with India might have brought an influx of lore about the gandharvāḥ (गन्धर्वाः).   Mahabharat Book 8, ch. 87 (awend. Ganguli):

“The diverse tribes of celestial and regenerate and royal rishis were for the son of Pandu.  The gandharvas headed by Tumvuru, O king, were on the side of Arjuna.   With the offspring of Pradha and Mauni, the several classes of gandharvas and apsaras, and many wise sages, having for their vehicles wolves and stags and elephants and steeds and cars and foot, and clouds and the wind, came there for witnessing the encounter between Karna and Arjuna.  The gods, the danavas, the gandharvas, the nagas, the yakshas, the birds, the great rishis versed in the Vedas, the pitris that subsist upon the gifts called svadha, and asceticism and the sciences, and the (celestial) herbs with diverse virtues, came, O monarch, and took up their stations in the welkin, making a great noise. Brahman, with the regenerate rishis and the Lords of creatures, and Bhava himself on his car, came to that part of the welkin.”

 I give a lengthy outdraught from Strabo's Geography here to show not only that Dionysus is "τὸν ἀρχηγέτην τῶν μυστηρίων, τῆς Δήμητρος δαίμονα·" "the chief Dæmon of the mysteries of Ceres" (10.3.10), even  "founder of the mysteries, Dæmon of Demeter", but that the whole worship of Demeter, Cybele and Dionysus was mingled up so that what were the followers of Cybele by rights, the Curetes, who had a strong military character dancing in armour, could be seen at a push as followers of Dionysus, leading Strabo to put forward the belief that there is a link, as least in type, to the satyrs. Lucretius On the Nature of Things book II, lines 629 to 643:

hic armata manus, Curetas nomine Grai
quos memorant, Phrygias inter si forte catervas                 630
ludunt in numerumque exultant sanguine laeti
terrificas capitum quatientes numine cristas,
Dictaeos referunt Curetas, qui Iovis illum
vagitum in Creta quondam occultasse feruntur,
cum pueri circum puerum pernice chorea                           635
armat et in numerum pernice chorea
armati in numerum pulsarent aeribus aera,
ne Saturnus eum malis mandaret adeptus
aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus.
propterea magnam armati matrem comitantur,                    640
aut quia significant divam praedicere ut armis
ac virtute velint patriam defendere terram
praesidioque parent decorique parentibus esse.

Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.
Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks
Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since
Haply among themselves they use to play
In games of arms and leap in measure round
With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake
The terrorizing crests upon their heads,
This is the armed troop that represents
The arm'd Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,
As runs the story, whilom did out-drown
That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,
Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,
To measured step beat with the brass on brass,
That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,
And give its mother an eternal wound
Along her heart. And 'tis on this account
That armed they escort the mighty Mother,
Or else because they signify by this
That she, the goddess, teaches men to be
Eager with armed valour to defend
Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,
The guard and glory of their parents' years.

[awend. William Ellery Leonard ]

Now there are werewolves and there are werewolves.  Those under a curse who lose their mannishness in the wild beast's are evil, but often under this name we need to understood here,  no more than a shape-shifter who happens to be in wolf-shape.  And that the wolf shape is only one of many shapes that they could shift into.  And such never lose themselves in the beast's nature.   The best tale here to gain insight is that of the bogatyr called  Volga Svyatoslavovich (grounded on  Vseslav of Polotsk), Volga is from an misunderstanding of either volk "wolf" or volkv "wizard" (this word brooked for the Magi of the Bible).  An avatāraḥ of Wōden I have always thought.  And I mark on the way L.A. Magnus in The Heroic Ballads of Russia (1921) lf.29:

"He even transforms himself into the Naui-ptitsa (or Stratim, or grif, the mysterious bird,...), and flies beneath the clouds."

The “wild hunt” should be carefully distinguished from this “the raging host” (Das Wūtende Heer), our “Herlan-Þing”,  as a hunt, even a supernatural one, is not an "exercitus", an "here" an "army".  The "wild hunt" also has hunting dogs much more in evidence. I overgo the Peterborough Chronicle's well known write up, and begin with Gervase of Tilbury's  Otia Imperialia 2, 12 (indeed Joseph Ritson somewhere wisely wrote of this “This seems to resemble the familia Hellequini”):

“In sylvis Britanniae majoris aut minoris consimilia contigisse referuntur, narrantibus nemorum custodibus, quos forestarios vulgus nominat, se alternis diebus circa horam meridianam et in primo noctium conticinio sub plenilunio luna lucente saepissime videre militum copiam venantium et canum et cornuum strepitum, qui sciscitantibus se de societate et familia Arturi esse affirmant.”

“In the woods of Britain, greater or lesser, like things are said to have happened, the wood-wards, whom the folk call foresters,  every other day about noon and in the first still time of the night under a shining full moon,  reporting to see most often  a great many knights hunting and hounds and the blowing of horns, which, after being asked, they swear themselves to be of the fellowship and household of Arthur”.

 I would take Arthur here as another hero in the host rather than its leader or we will have to say Arthur is Wōden. And for those who have followed all my posts so far, Wōden it is who is the other elf-king of which I said we will come back to at a later time [here].  Thus Sir Orfeo (Auchinleck Handwrit):

He miȝt se him besides,
Oft in hot under[n]tides,
Þe king o’ fairy wiþ his rout
Com to hunt him al about
Wiþ dim cri and bloweing,
And houndes also wiþ him berking ;
Ac no best þai no nome,
No never  he nist whider þai bicome.   288

And indeed I would be so bold as to say that when the “the gude wichtis... rydand in Middil-ȝerd” are given a king or a queen, the queen is the elf-queen, the Northern Freyja.  But the king is not what I should call the true elf-king, who is, as we have shown, Frēa, the Northern Freyr, but  almost always Wōden.  Sörla þáttr from Flateyjarbók, shows us that Freyja and Óðin have a working relationship shall we say  ( “Hún fylgdi Óðni ok var friðla hans.” “She followed Óðinnur and was his lemman (friðla).” and “Óðinn unni mikit Freyju,” “Óðinnur loved Freyja much, ...” ), whilst Ynglinga saga 4 and 7 has them both as skilled in seiður.

Now I have already spoken of Pan and satyrs and linked them through the Sun to Apollo/Dionysus [here] where I leaned more to Apollo and evened him with the Northern Freyr.  But in the above we have linked Apollo/Dionysus and even Pan through Hermopan with Óðin.  From which we are made to say that Óðin and Freyr, notwithstanding whatever the poets say against it, must, in theology, be the same.   And  I will then stick my neck out further and say that whilst there is some overlap on the understanding that they are at heart the same, the name of Óðin is truly to be given to the more sterner aspects of this god, so Dionysus Bacchus,  whilst Freyr is the more kindly, so what we have called Dionysus Melichios, the which last is also truly the more Apollo-like of the two as the common understanding of this god is.   If it helps, think of the sun and moon, and all the cultural associations of day and night life that these two bodies wield over, and yet how the moon does no more than reflect the light of the sun so that what seems twofold is nevertheless understood as only one thing.  And thus the phallic images that rightly belong to Freyr in the North (see Adam of Bremen) are linked in the south with Mercurius/Hermes and Dionysus (Priapus is the son of  Dionysus).  Moreover I find that even the "The Dionysus-Giver" rôle that we have met in the earlier post is even hinted at by the otherwise utterly mysterious words of Lokasenna 37, which Týr speaks (awend. H. A. Bellows):

  "Freyr er beztr |     allra ballriða
    ása görðum í;
    mey hann né grætir |     né manns konu
    ok leysir ór höftum hvern."

"Of the heroes brave | is Freyr the best
Here in the home of the gods;
He harms not maids | nor the wives of men,
And the bound from their fetters he frees."

Fetters here we need to understand as the Orphics would do.  Whispering something further to us here are:

i)  that Skírnir, Frey's thane (see Skírnismál), is nevertheless sent by Óðin ("Alföðr" Gylfaginning 34) to Svartálfaheimr about Fenrisúlf's fetter;

ii) that the best of ships, Skíðblaðnir is Frey's (Grímnismál 43-43) and ... Óðin's (Ynglinga saga 7 "Óðinn átti skip, þat er Skiðblaðnir hét, er hann fór á yfir höf stór, en þat mátti vefja saman sem dúk." "Óðin owned a ship that is hight Skíðblaðnir, he fared in it over high seas, but it might be folded up like a cloth.");

iii) and once at least we find Freyr sitting in Óðin's high-seat Hliðskjálf (Gylfaginning 37) .


The "wild hunt" however is in English folklore spoken of as "Gabriel's Hounds" as found in Robert Plot's The Natural History of Stafford-Shire (1686) Ch.1, lf. 22, §44.

 "Nor have the Heavens and Air only presented the Eye with unusual Objects, but also the Ear has sometimes been as much surprized from them: for not to mention some unknown noises pre∣tended to have been heard about Alrewas, nor the shreeks as it were of persons about to be murdered said to be heard about Frodley: We need go no farther for an instance than the same Town of Wednesbury, where the Colyers will tell you that early in the morning as they go to their work, and from the Cole-pits themselves, they sometimes hear the noise of a pack of hounds in the Air, which has happened so frequently that they have got a name for them, calling them Gabriels hounds, though the more sober and judicious take them only to be Wild-geese, making this noise in their flight; which perhaps may be probable enough, for upon consulting the Ornithologists I find them one of the gregarious migratory kind, to fly from Country to Country in the night, noctu trajiciunt says Aldrovandus of them, and to be very obstreperous either when wearye with flying, or their order is broken, they flying ordine literato after the manner of Cranes."

Mark Wednesbury, is Wōden's bury.  And Gabriel?  A World of Wonders (1608):

“... Nay, they would faine make the Angell Gabriel beleeve that he is God Mercury. ...”.

What Plot writes of these being geese is interesting here, as geese aren't that far from the bats which the souls that Hermes leads in the Odyssey (see above) are likened to.  As to being a metaphor for noise, well nettled geese would give Homer's caveful of disturbed bats a run for their money.  Might not the souls led (or hunted) by Wōden actually have been thought of as geese at one time? Our word is in Old English gōs, from Proto-Germanic *gans, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰh₂éns, and it's Sanskrit match haṃsaḥ (हंसः) was certainly so thought of to deem from what Monier-Williams writes in his Sanskrit Dictionary (1898) for one of the meanings of that word:

"the soul or spirit (typified by the pure white colour of a goose or swan, and migratory like a goose)".

Elias Tozer Devonshire & other Original Poems with some account of Ancient Customs, Superstitions, and Traditions (1873), lf. 94 under ”YETH " HOUNDS.:

 “FAITH in supernatural hunting, with headless hounds and horses, at the "witching hour of night," was common in Devonshire at one time, and still lingers in the minds of ancient grandams in obscure localities.  The spectral animals were called " Wisht " and " Yeth " hounds. Our Devonshire poet, Mr. Capern, has a poem on this subject, in a note to which he says that he knew an old matron who was a firm believer in the existence of the moor-fiend and his pack, and who also was convinced that every unbaptized infant became the prey of the " Yeth " hunter. Following are verses from the poem : —

' Oh for a wild and starless night,

And a curtain o'er the white moon's face,

For the moor-fiend hunts an infant sprite,

At cock crow over Parkham chase.

Hark to the cracking of the whip !

A merry band are we, I ween ;

List to the ' Yeth ' hounds' yip ! yip ! yip !

Ha, ha ! 'tis thus we ride unseen.”  …”.

The "wild hunt" in northern Germany would seem to be linked to harvest customs.  Thus Nicolaus Gryse “Spegel des antichristischen pawestdoms” (1593), a printed text of a sermon preached against the evils of Popery in Rostock:

Ja, im heidendom hebben tor tid der arne de meiers  dem afgade Woden umme god korn angeropen, denn wenn de roggenarne geendet, heft men up den lesten platz eins idem veldes einen kleinen ord unde humpel korns unafgemeiet stan laten, datsilve baven an den aren drevoldigen to samende geschörtet, unde besprenget. Alle meiers sin darumme her getreden, ere höde vam koppe genamen, unde ere seisen na der sülven wode unde geschrenke dem ornbusche upgerichet, und hebben den Wodendūvel dremal semplik lud averall also angeropen unde gebeden:

Wode, hale dinem rosse nu voder,

nu distil unde dorn,

tom andern jar beter korn !

welker afgödischer gebruk im Pawestom gebleven. Daher denn ok noch an dissen orden dar heiden gewanet, bi etliken ackerlüden solker avergelövischer gebruk in anropinge des Woden tor tid der arne gespöret werd, und ok oft desülve helsche jeger, sonderliken im winter, des nachtes up dem velde mit sinen jagethunden sik hören let.

In paganism, at the time of the harvest, the mowers called to the idol Woden for good corn, when the rye harvest was over, a small sheaf of grain was left standing in the last place of each field, the ears  festooned together three times, and sprinkled.  All the mowers gathered round about, took off their caps from their heads, and raised their scythes to the same Wode, encircling the corn-sheaf, and three times they called loudly together to the Woden-devil, invoking and praying:

Wode fetch thine horse to the fodder,

now thistle and thorn

but another year better corn!

Which superstitious customs abide yet in Popery: because in these places they still live heathen, and such superstitious customs and invocations of Woden at the time of the harvest were employed by some farmers.  And also the same hellish huntsman has often been heard, especially in winter, by night with his hunting-hounds in the field.

[Grimm has this vol. I lvs. 154 to 156.]

And much like this is what Erik Gustaf Geijer writes in Svenska Folkets Historia (1832) vol. 1, lf.123 from Sweden:

“Om hans jagt, och hans hästar ha berättelser varit gängse i flera landsorter, såsom i Upland, i det på hedendomsminnen så rika Småland, äfven i Skåne och Blekinge, der Bonden vid skörden brukade att lemna qvar en kärfve på åkern åt Odens hästar…”

 “About his hunting, and his horses stories have been common in several places, such as in Upland, in the records of paganism of the kingdom of Småland, also in Skåne and Blekinge, where the farmer at the harvest time used to lay a sheaf in the field for the horses of Oden ...”

On Rousay in the Orkneys [here] they leave some corn standing for the “birds of the air”. But the "wild hunt" or "raging host" and such like phenomena led by Wōden (but often under some nickname) is often met with from the time of the corn-harvest to Yule (See Dr. Jos. Schrijnen De H. Nikolaas In Het Folklore (1898)).  And that our giving of sherry and mince-pies to "Father Christmas" is the same as the leaving of some corn for Wōden's horse. þáttr Hálfdanar svarta from the Flateyjarbók:

"Nu skal segia af huerium rokum heidnir helldu iol sin þuiat þat er miog sundrleitt ok kristnir menn gera. þui at þeir hallda sin iol af hingatburd uars herra Jesu Cristi en heidnir menn gerdu ser samkundu j hæidr ok tignn vit hinn illa Odin. en Odinn heitir morgum nofnnum. hann heitir Uidrir ok Hárr ok Þride ok Jolnir. þui er hann kalladr Uidrir at þeir sogdu hann uedrum rada. Harr af þui at þeir sogdu at huerr yrde hárr af honum. Jolnir af þui at þeir drogu þat af iolunum. Þride af þui at þeir hofdu auita ordit at sa er einn ok þrir er bazstr er ok hofdu þa spurnn af þrenningunne ok sneru þui j uillu."

"Now shall I say from what cause heathens held their Yule for that it is much unalike that Christian men make.  For they [the Christians] hold their Yule from the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the heathen men made themselves a feast in exaltation and honour with the evil Óðinn.  But Óðin is called by many names. He is called Viðrir and Hár and Þriði and Jólnir. He was called Viðrir for that they said he wielded the weather.  Hár for that they said that everyone became a highman from him.  Jólnir for that they drew that from Yule.   Þriði for that they had become aware that he that is best is one and three and had learned of the Trinity but turned that into foolishness."

Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme. (1686-7) lf.21:

 “Of Whistling.
Mdm. The seamen will not endure to have one whistle on shipboard: believing that it rayses winds. On Malvern-hills, in Worcestershire, &c., thereabout when they fanne their Corne, and want wind, they cry Youle ! Youle ! Youle ! to invoke it, wch word (no doubt) is a corruption of Æolus (ye God of ye Winds).
This ye above sd Cramer affirmes to be don likewise in Germany.  He being once upon the River Elbe, begun accidentally to whistle, which the Watermen presently disliked, and would have him rather to forbeare.”

Æolus is, to say the least, unlikely, but could "Youle" be for Jólnir, or its English evenling?