Besides the Aesir-Vanir war, a second war found in Norse myth also is frequently cited as unique to the Norse, and is often considered a poor match to the wars found in the other Indo-European branches. In this war, Ragnarok, we are told there will be a great series of cataclysms as well as the deaths of nearly all the gods, resulting in the end of this world as we know it, with the returned Baldr and the mysterious Lord of the endtimes leading the way into a newborn age. All bonds of kinship, duty, and morality will disintegrate, the Sun will be swallowed by the wolf, the stars will disappear, winter will last for years, mountains will crumble, and the whole world will be burned by Surtr's fire. If we look at the great wars of the gods and god-incarnations found in the Indian Mahabharata, the Irish Battle of Magh Tuireadh, and the Greek Iliad, this apocalyptic imagery is nowhere to be found. In these cases, the great war is finished with a certain handful of gods or heroes surviving, many dying, and the victorious king ruling his people for another period of time (40 years for Lugh, 37 years for Yudhishthira, an unstated period for Menelaus) in an age of righteousness and peace. Generally these kings then die (Lugh) or ascend to Elysium (Menelaus) or Paradise (Yudhishthira), and other kings inherit the kingdom from them and history continues. It is very difficult to read these other wars as in any sense world-ending. In fact they seem merely to set the stage for history to begin unfolding up to the present, if anything.
However, we have already noted the numerous consistent parallels in these other branches to the events leading up to and following Ragnarok, from the wooing of Gerthr by Freyr, to the Lunar Cycle as a whole and the Aesir-Vanir conflict, to Tyr's cuckolding and the loss of his hand during the binding of Fenrir, to Loki's mockery of Freyja as unchaste, to the retrieval of the sacred liquid, to the death of Baldr, to Baldr's return from the underworld to lead a golden age along with the mysterious Lord of the endtimes, and as such we are confronted with the unavoidable implication that these myth cycles are telling us the same underlying story. And indeed, these are presumably, if we take the broader Indo-European perspective, the same gods whose stories must have derived originally from one source, one body of original myths. These were either a single large cycle of myths at one point or they were not, and if many of the god-heroes in the non-Norse branches are said to die in one great war, are we to believe that they were supposed to have lived again and died again in a different cataclysmic war to end the cycle as well? Why would the deaths of some of these Celtic, Greek and Indian gods or heroes who embody the mythoi of gods not correspond to their deaths in the Ragnarok cycle, if they are at their cores the same gods with the same original myths, for which thesis we have up to now seen evidence?
This is a difficult but not impossible question for a critic to answer. It could be that the gods die in one early war, come back later, and then die again in the war of the end times. Yet this gives an unshakably redundant flavor. More likely perhaps, the Germanic branch may have developed their own war myth completely whole-cloth and unique to them, telling only the tale of the end times while never developing an earlier great war besides the Aesir-Vanir conflict. But this runs into the same problem: we either believe these branches were united at one point or not. Which branch then diverged and invented a new, unconnected war story, while forgetting the story of the original primordial war, a myth presumably so important and central? How exactly do two branches split off and then develop different War of the Gods myths that can be said to be actually unconnected, while retaining numerous shared individual mythemes? It is not impossible, but it is not the simplest answer.
It is because of this difficulty that many have wished instead to see the Aesir-Vanir war as comparable to the Irish Battle of Moytura, Greek Trojan War, or Indian Kurukshetra War, or at least to draw lines between these wars and other conflicts like the deva-asura conflict in the Vedas, and thus put them off to the side. We have shown how these equations simply do not match the identities of the combatants or reasons for war in these cases, and that, furthermore, if we take the equation for the Aesir-Vanir war (as we have previously proposed) as Horse Twin(s) + battle against the higher gods + gain acceptance into the society of higher gods + gain access to the high rite + become priests of the sacrifice, then it is clear that this structure is instead a match to the Asvins' story of Chyavana battling Indra and them joining the Soma sacrifice as priests, and, furthermore, that this myth sometimes appears as a full blown war, but in several cases appears as a much smaller conflict or battle. Only a very superficial understanding of who and what is involved in the war myths can lead to an equation of the Aesir-Vanir war with one of the Great Wars of the Gods found in the other branches.
The greatest obstacle to the acceptance of Ragnarok as identical to the other great wars may be the apocalyptic imagery seemingly unique to it. However, if we look at the name of Ragnarok itself, we find that it is not semantically centered on the concept of the endtimes in itself. Instead, the word Ragnarok means something like “the doom or destruction of the gods,” while other terms for the event also tend to refer specifically to the time when the gods die: regin þrjóta ("end of the gods") from Hyndluljóð, þá er regin deyja ("when the gods die") from Vafþrúðnismál, and unz um rjúfask regin ("when the gods will be destroyed") from Vafþrúðnismál, Lokasenna, and Sigrdrífumál. Terms like aldar rök (aldar means age, "end of an age") from Vafþrúðnismál and aldar rof ("destruction of the age") from Helgakviða Hundingsbana II do clearly reference the end of the age, but not of the world itself, and it could plausibly be claimed that "an age" has ended after any of the other great wars, especially as when the gods recede and make way for human history in the Irish case. Though there is much other specific description of endtimes occurrences in the mentions of Ragnarok, its name and the other most well-known terms for the event itself seem to emphasize that its primary significance centers instead around the deaths of the gods, with the material cataclysm being secondary to its deeper meaning.
If so, then we can say that the other branches also definitively tell of the deaths of the main gods, either during the Great War of the Gods, or closely following. In the Mahabharata, almost the entire army of the Pandavas is wiped out in the Kurukshetra war, including their own children (Ashvatthama's final great slaughter of their camp makes sure of this), though the Pandava brothers themselves survive at least til after the war. During the war, the incarnations of Dyaus Pitr (Bhishma), of Surya (Karna), of Agni (Drishtadyumna), of Brihaspati (Drona) and of many other incredibly important deities perish. The incarnation of Varuna (Pandu) dies before the war itself. Many of the other main incarnations die in a fire in their forest retreat where they go to live ascetically after the war. The Pandava brothers themselves, incarnations of the central gods of the social classes (Mitra, Vayu, Indra, the Asvins), after Yudhishthira's reign of 37 years, go on a pilgrimage into the Himalayas. They are said to drop dead one by one on this pilgrimage, each due to a sin characteristic to them, until only King Yudhishthira remains. He finally reaches Paradise on the Holy Mountain, passes the tests presented him, and enters. Thus, accepting that these heroes do stand in for the gods, this war and its aftermath can indeed be called the twilight and doom of the gods, especially considering the argument we have previously forwarded, following Dumezil and Wikander, that in the epic heroes we actually find a version of the myths of the gods that is sometimes more archaic.
Similarly in the Greek epic tradition, we have the deaths of the figures we have proposed as incarnations of the Sun God and Father Sky (Paris and Sarpedon) during the war, along with incarnation of the Thunderer (Achilles) and possible incarnation of the Son of the Moon, (Patroclus). Many other great heroes who incarnate divinities die in the war as well, as Hector is said to slaughter 31,000 from the Greek side, then to die himself. It is the aftermath of the Trojan war, as in the Vedic version, where many of the main heroes die, however. Ajax commits suicide after the funeral games of Achilles, while still in Troy, insulted by his comrades and shamed by his own actions. Agamemnon is killed by his wife or wife's lover immediately on returning home. Odysseus is said to reach home safely, but later to be killed inadvertently by his own son Telegonus. As for Menelaus and Diomedes, these are the only two said to be taken to Elysium and given immortality, which perfectly matches the concept that Menelaus parallels Yudhishthira reaching Paradise on pilgrimage as well as Baldr along with the mysterious Lord of the endtimes overcoming death and attaining the golden age, while Diomedes is the Horse Twin who expectedly gains the gift of immortality and joins the society of the gods. Nearly every god-hero falls in the events surrounding the Trojan war, and this fact certainly must have had great significance. Finally, in the Irish version, we see that Nuada, the Varunian Terrible Sovereign, is beheaded during the war, that Bres, the proposed Sun God, is killed right after the war comes to a close, while his double Cermait is killed by Lugh later on (compare Paris and Helen's second foreign husband Deiphobus who both are killed). The Dagda, the Sky and Wind god, is wounded in the leg with a poisoned dart during the battle and dies of it 120 years later. Ogma and Indech are said to kill one another in single combat, though the poet then confusingly depicts Ogma alive again at the end of the battle. Perhaps the most central god, Lugh, rules for 40 years after the war, but then is killed by the sons of Cermait, avenging their father's death. Once again, the great majority of main gods all are depicted as dying in the war or the aftermath, even if it is not as clean of a sweep as in the Norse case, and even there some gods survive. In what way then, is this not the war þá er regin deyja,“when the gods die”? How is this not literally “the doom or destruction of the gods,” Ragnarok?
As an aside, it should be noted that apocalyptic imagery similar to Ragnarok is by no means absent from all other the Indo-European traditions, and should not be seen as pure anomaly or necessary outside influence on the Norse myth. The Vedic branch has a mysterious motif of a horse or horse's head that will emerge from under the waters in the endtime to consume the world in flame. “The fire of doomsday is said to have the form of a mare (vadava) at the bottom of the ocean; inextinguishable flames issue from her mouth. The destructive fire which cannot be quenched can at least be made to wait for the moment appropriate for destruction; the fire that blazes from Siva’s eye to burn Kama is the fire of untimely doomsday, which yawns wide to burn up the universe until it is placed beneath the sea. Agni Vadava-vaktrya (the fire of the mare’s mouth) drinks the waters of the ocean and lets them out again; eventually this fire of the underworld will destroy the univers, at the end of an aeon” as Wendy Doniger puts it (The Submarine Mare in the Mythology of Siva). Doniger demonstrates that this motif originates from elements in the earliest Vedic layers and is elaborated throughout subsequent late Vedic literature. In the Iranic branch, as recorded in the Bundahishn, we also find mention of an end of days when all will be washed in a sea of fire. It is said that fire will “melt the metal in the hills and mountains, and it will be upon the earth like a river" (Bundahishn 34.18) burning away all that is unrighteous. The Selections of Zātspram (34.52) speaks of a Great Battle that brings about the endtimes and the ultimate renovation of the righteous.
Opponents of this attempt to align Ragnarok with the other wars of the gods will of course point to the many surface differences we can find between the branches. The rebuttal to this objection forces us to look to the esoteric core of the myth. Firstly, while the age certainly ends and the world undergoes great destruction, the world itself does not in fact end even in the Norse case. Time continues forward and a new age or cycle is begun without intermission. Secondly, we must take the perspective that the myths have not just a material, historical significance, but a religious one as well, central as they have been to their cultures. As such, we can say that these myths are relating events from an eternal, metaphysical timeframe, from what Mircea Eliade calls illo tempore, “that-ideal-time,” “that time before.” In our interpretation of the Eliadic, esoteric understanding of myth, myths depict timeless events which occurred at the beginning, are occurring presently, and will occur at the end of the cycle. That is, they recur eternally within the microcosm of the individual, or of the day, as they do in the time-out-of-time of eternity. They pierce through, and have relevance to, all levels. They are prisms of ultimate meaning. Hence the central myth of the end of the age and of the gods could not be merely a literal rendition of what will happen on the material plane at a certain time. Instead it is the story of the cycle generally, which occurs below as it does above on the transcendental plane. This is how it is known about by the seers and by the gods. It has happened before, will happen, and is happening.
We have shown previously that the basic framework of the War of the Gods myth involves the King who is the God of the Early Morning Sky (the Lawful Sovereign) wedded to the Dawn Goddess or another goddess who fulfills the same role, who is stolen by the Sun God, the pursuit and overcoming of the Sun God and the gods of Fate, Time and Destruction, the deaths of all the other gods, and the achieving of the Golden Age both internally and externally by the Sovereign. The union of the God of Early Morning Sky and Dawn Goddess represents the primordial unity of the Golden Age, a time of both peace and naïveté, while the adultery of the Dawn Goddess with the Sun and the wounding of the Sovereign by the Sun is the fall into matter, into samsara, into Time, and ultimately into the Kali Yuga. The overcoming of the Sun God is the esoteric mastery over Time and Decay, resulting in the end of the age and the achieving of a new Golden Age both internally and externally. This cycle can be seen in the great cycle of Time, with our world historically going through the great ages and then ending in cataclysm before beginning again, but can also be seen in the microcosm of the process of the Day, with its early morning calm, burning hot midday as Time tyrannically rules and leads us toward death, and the sunset when the forces of light and order seem to die but so does the tyrannical aspect of the day, the kingdom or even world itself seeming to burn up in the sunset, while the principle of order survives the night to initiate a new dawn. And again this framework can apply to the even smaller microcosm of the individual esoteric seeker (the core Mitraic structure of this myth likely being the elitist esoteric path reserved only for kings and possibly High Priests in ancient times), who begins in primordial unity with the One before birth and is united with the Golden Glory or Khvarenah (the early morning golden age), who falls into matter and time (Mithras trapped in the rock), breaks free from the rock and overcomes the Sun God, the lord of Time who guards the mystery of immortality, and finally attains the inner golden age and transcendental elevation or reintegration of the whole.
As such it should be permissible to suggest that just because the other branches do not depict a total cataclysm of the world that this does not mean that this meaning is not already present in the story of the widespread deaths of the gods in these other branches. Simply by telling the story of the war and deaths of the gods, these other branches implicitly convey the end of a great age and the beginning of a new cycle, which the poets have then tied, clumsily or not, into human history. In fact, as scholar John Carey explains in his “Myth and Mythography in Cath Maige Tuireadh,” there is much evidence that the Irish Battle of Magh Tuireadh narrative was not originally placed in the constructed historical narrative in which we find it today, but that it originally was seen as a battle that occurred “once upon a time” – that is, clearly, in illo tempore. As he puts it, “it seems safest to presume that CMT in its original form existed independent of the historical scheme which was to evolve into LG and that the battle of Mag Tuired was portrayed as having been fought “once upon a time” rather than at a definite point in the canonical sequence of invasions” (John Carey, Mythography of Cath Maige Tuiredh, 54).
While this eschatological meaning is then present-but-effaced in these branches, it is possible that the apocalyptic imagery has likewise been further emphasized in the Norse version or lessened in the Irish. It is impossible to say for certain exactly what this myth looked like in its “original” form, whether the full extent of the material and temporal apocalypse was part of the original vision or became elaborated more as Germanic society developed its own unique perspective on the myth over time. It is not hard to imagine the apocalyptic imagery being elaborated or reduced in one version or another, one society wishing to tie the myth into known history, with another wishing to show it as the end of (almost) all things. We should ultimately be able to reach a position where these superficial trappings do not change our understanding of this shared myth, a position where we can see the core meaning of the Great War of the Gods, the time when the gods always have and always will reach their doom, a position from which we can finally grasp the implications of this greatest of myths on every level.
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