Hi Cort
Cort Williams wrote:
>The way I see it, Ge parthenogenically gives birth to Ouranos,
represented as you say by the bull of heaven. The bull of heaven is
ritually killed or castrated, representing the castration of Ouranos.
Ouranos, as primordial father, represents male potency. The fertility
is brought to earth via the rains, which is unleashed by the
destruction of the sky. The storm and rain, new provider of
fertility, is thus represented by the son, or rather, Grandson. The
relationship is even more evident(and explicitly Freudian)in the
Hurrian creation myth. Kumarbi(Kronos) bites off sky god's phallus,
and is thereby impregnated with the unborn storm god. The storm god
is thus the re-emergent male potency lost in the castration/sacrifice
of bulll, which is represented by the falling fertility-bringing
rains. Thus the familiar image of grain springing from the body of
the sacrificed bull.
We differ here in that, in my view, these myths could have an astronomical
explanation. For instance, the death of the bull in the Roman Mithras
tradition - the source of the last image to which you refer - has been
associated, IIRC, with the mythical up-ending of the ecliptical plane, and
the consequent beginning of time [Clauss, M. (2000), “The Roman Cult of
Mithras": 88.]
Best regards,
Jean Kelly