Re: [tied] PIE theogony

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 4025
Date: 2000-09-23

You know more pure myth than I do. But I am a damn good mythographer. Keep posting.
 
The Standard (North Pontic) Model makes it ***obligatory*** that the PIEs were Shamanists ('polydaemonists'). Their notions about religion were not to far from those of a Souix Medicine Man a la Sitting Bull -- mucho mana, mucho machismo -- danced to a much-slowed-down, drum-driven version of Beethoven's "March" from the incidental music to The Ruins of Athens.
 
We can reach back to PIE religion, but what we can affirm lacks distinct gods and goddesses, or even a particular sense of 'gender' in the divine.
 
Those things which are NOT shared among the various stocks are those which should be looked at. In Greece, Zeus raped Hera. In Lithuania and Germany, Lord Day-Sky did not, and in Germany, Lord Day-Sky seems to have been essentially defunct as a religious personality post AD 1. Robert Graves would have told us the Aesir and Vanir were the new gods merged with the old regime. Dumezil spoke of the Vanir as the third-function gods.
 
As for Snorri, he just told us good stories; like Homer, he undoubtedly changed things for literary purpose. It's sorta like Egil introducing rhyme into Norse poetry (it did save his head).
 
Mark.
 
 
From: João Simões Lopes Filho

The idea of Titanomachy as version of final Ragnarok is interesting, but I think that Trojan War has some elements of a Greek Ragnarok. Vanir and Twins (Nasatya): Dumezil stated them. They were linked to third Function, Fertility. They are also linked to Medicine, Peace, Children protectors. Dumezil stated that perhaps Njoerd-Freyr was originally a pair of brothers similar to Indian Nasatya e Greek Dioskouroi. Nowadays there are explicit features of Dioskouroi in Catholic Saints Cosmas and Damianus (we call them Cosme & Damiao in Portuguese).

The problem with the Vanir is that they suddenly appeared in Nordic Myths. There's no tale about their birth. There's Njoerd and his 2 children Freyr and Freyja. There's Guldrun. There's Beyla and Byggv. But what their origins. A good clue to track IE myths is compare Scandinavia and India. But who were the Indian "Vanir"? The Asuras? The multiple aspects of Shiva? The Rudras?