Re: [tied] More on IE myth

I am still alive, Glen :-)

> But... we have two lords fighting over rulership - This much is clear. This
> two-lord battle must be ancient because the theme exists not just in IE myth
> but in the nearby Middle East as well (El versus Baal). The battle sometimes
> involves competing generations of gods but nonetheless there is indeed a
> battle for the sky, not the underworld or the earth but the _sky_.

I agree. Perhaps the everlasting battle between Chaos and Order?

> This
> mythological fact could serve well to obscure the connections that the IE
> war god had with the underworld. In other words, the warrior god fights the
> sky god in the sky, maybe even taking over and voila! After a while, people
> start believing in an originally underworld war god living in the sky.

But it is a presumption that we may accept or not. It is akin to
explain the wickedness on the world saying that Jehovah was defeated and
confined to Hell while Satan is the ruler of the universe, don't you
think?

> The whole tripartition theme, I feel, is of prehistoric European origin.

According with what kind of prehistoric European believing? Earth
goddesses, for example?

> I
> also feel that the IE language (as opposed to culture or mythology) came
> ultimately from off the steppes, from the east. The pre-IEs would come from
> east to west into the North Pontic-Caspian area by 7000 BCE. So, the
> original view of the cosmos of these pre-IEs might have been more like a
> dual sky-earth opposition only, without a clear underworld.

I agree, but what about the remains of shamanistic ideas in IE
myths? Can't they be connected with early Asiatic influences? In fact,
shamanistic journeys involve travels to sometimes very well developed
Underworlds. Were these ideas taken from the times of the original IE
homeland or later?

> The mortal Hero, while having "warrior" characteristics, is not entirely
> connected with the underworld. He's human and so he lives in the earthly
> realm. It's just how things end up in the tale of the three-headed serpent.
>

The Underworld is the common end for all warriors, of course. But
which could be the meaning of the warrior journey to the Underworld
being he alive?

> Cow Mother represents the
> concept of justice side-by-side with her husband *Dye:us, the law guy.

I doubt that a patriarchal people could have had a goddess in so an
important place, frankly speaking.

> I'm not quite familiar with Celtic mythology but it would seem that his
> journey to the faraway land (Scythia, was it?) doesn't relate greatly to the
> underworld nor does it appear to connect with any other IE myths.

I took Cú Chulainn travel as an example of common initiation
patterns. Sometimes far away islands are connected with warrior
initiation and death. This death is perhaps a symbolic one because
the initiation patterns in the utmost of cultures (not only from IE
origin) involve death and resurrection. It seems that the hero has to
suffer this experience prior to be seen as a warrior. Whether this
experience has its place on an island, a far away country, in a
cave or in the Underworld, the fact is the same, I mean, the gaining
of skills, wisdom or whatever name we may use. It is a very common
motive even in IE myths indeed.
Bran's story, however, is so much connected with death. The island
where he goes to is a place where time is different from ours. When Bran
comes to Ireland after a few years, he finds that in fact hundreds of
years have passed. Oisin's story has the same pattern (and a lot of folk
tales from Japan to Germany). Interestingly, the same phenomenon happens
in heaven like places too, but the difference is that the traveller
doesn't die or gets older. So I think there are strong links between
these places and the dead.

> >According to Norse mythology, Thor fights against Jormungard
> >the serpent. IMHO, the same question arises in another way (the same
> >about Herakles and Kerberus).
>
> What question?

The question is that, being the warrior function an Underworld
function (if we stand that there is an Underworld war god), why does the
Overworld hero descend to the Underworld? Two fighters facing each one,
so to speak, but what for? I see this realm as a deposit of knowledge
and skills, incidentally connected with war because skills are needed to
fight.

> Cerberus is clearly an IE character (connected to Yama's
> dog), who guards the underworld. The fact that we have a tale explaining the
> reason why there is a wolf guarddog for the underworld, connected to the
> labours of Heracles, another clear IE character, tells me that the capturing
> of this dog for *Yemos by *Manus, the IE Hero, must have been part of IE
> myth to begin with. This canine story would be a second tale of heroism
> alongside the well-known underworld-related serpent tale. With two tales,
> one concerning the earth and canines, the other concerning the underworld
> and serpents, one must start wondering whether there was a third tale linked
> to the overworld involving birds. Afterall, there are those Stymphalian
> birds...

Dogs and birds are of course related to the Underworld, but there
are sympathetic occurrences of these animals. It seems as both of them
share a bipartite nature. Birds eating human corpses is an explicit
image of the Underworld as well as dogs or wolves. But dogs were buried
along with men to serve as partners in their Underworld travel, and
beneficient birds are found everywhere. May we infer from that that the
first connection of these animals was with death and that it gave birth
to a more kindly nature later?

> I'm speaking about the structure of the IE cosmos. The dead were in the
> underworld both in physical terms as well as metaphysical terms. These
> isolated stories don't matter when it comes to where the dead were generally
> believed to go. As I mentioned, Norse had Hel and the Greeks had Hades, both
> under the earth. Of course there are deviations and add-ons like Valhalla, a
> specialized heaven, and such, but I'm talking about the general structure of
> things in IE beliefs. If we accept that the place of the dead was in the
> underworld, we find that, as with everything else, the IE belief system is
> much like the ideas in the Middle East and Egypt where we also find an
> underworld place of death.

I agree with you about Middle East and Egypt. What I wanted to say
was that Underworld places are not the only places for the dead to rest.
In addition to this, and having in mind your Valhalla-Hell example, I
think that lower realms for the dead are connected with shamanism (in a
first stage) and with sorcery (later). Hallucinogenic herbs, trances or
sorcerers are needed to establish a reliable connection with
Underworld dwellers.

> Looking at myths in the general European and Middle-Eastern areas, there
> appear to be two main objects in the center of the cosmos. It's either the
> tree or the mountain. The central object varies from location to location
> and appears to be a little unstable. Mountains however appear to be
> restricted to southern locations (Sumer, Greece, Italy) and there is some
> overlap with the tree motif too since the tree is even mentioned in the
> bible (Genesis) and Sumerian mythology (huluppu). In all, I have to conclude
> that the mountain could not have been central to the IE cosmos (since they
> didn't live in mountains), leaving only the tree.

OK.

> Further, it makes sense for the purposes of the IE creation myth. If it was
> a bird emerging from the primordial waters that created the IE cosmos (Greek
> Nyx), it makes sense that the bird would lay a "cosmic egg" (Vedic religion)
> from which a great tree (Norse Yggdrasil, Celtic Bile) would grow. Why?
> Because the bird was tired of flapping her wings and needed a place to
> perch, silly! The bird is found elsewhere associated with Creation like in
> the biblical epic of the flood where Noah sends out birds to find land (a
> blatant re-Creation tale where the bird flies over eternal primordial waters
> all over again).
>
> So you see, in all, the IE creation myths clearly support an avicentric
> cosmos complete with cosmic eggs and a giant tree as is supported by the
> fragments seen in Greek, Indo-Iranian, Germanic and Celtic religion.
>

But it is an IE motif then? Are not trees connected with shamanistic
practices?

Omar