Dionysus, Hades and Soma: The Greek Lunar Cycle Part 3 of 3
Dionysus and Hades
Building on this understanding of Dionysus as Soma, we must make a further leap to consider if Hades too might be rooted in this same Indo-European “Soma” mythos. This connection is prompted by the aforementioned fact that the moon was often seen as an afterlife destination with the moon god as the lord of this destination (Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, The Moon and its Mystique). Dionysus, after all, with his vegetative powers rooted in the depths, is already a clearly chthonic god, who was often considered to have a "subterranean" aspect, called Dionysus Khthonion. But in addition, both Dionysus' explicit Egyptian parallel and influence, Osiris, and the Welsh “Soma” god, Arawn, are named as the Lord of the Underworld in their respective mythologies, while the Irish parallel, Midir, is suggested to be an underworld lord as well by his depiction with three cranes, likely symbols of death, who guard his castle and can steal the will to fight from any warrior, along with his habitation in the burial mounds. The Welsh underworld Annwn, whose lord is Arawn, is also said to be guarded by three cranes – as if more evidence was needed that these are the same god. Norse Mímir, too, has been argued by Victor Rydberg to be a lord of the afterlife, lord of an underworld “grove” or “holt.” Most importantly, perhaps, the identity of Dionysus and Hades has been asserted several times before. In his book Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, Philologist Karl Kerenyi put forward the thesis that one of the primary secrets of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most central and revered mystery cults of Ancient Greece, was that Dionysus is Hades. He cites the fact that the two gods have many overlapping and identical epithets, that certain of their statues have identical facial features, and that ancient writers such as Heraclitus and Euripedes imply or assert this identification in their writings, among other evidences. Clement of Alexandria quotes Heraclitus as saying, “… For were it not Dionysus to whom they institute a procession and sing songs in honor of the pudenda, it would be the most shameful action. But Dionysus, in whose honor they rave in bacchic frenzy, and Hades are the same…” (Fragment of Heraclitus (5th BC), quoted by Clement of Alexandria).
Kerenyi's case for the identification of these two gods is fascinating and multi-faceted. He points out that Persephone is abducted by Hades on the Nysian Plain, at the foot of Mount Nysa, the birthplace of Dionysus, and that this plain was dedicated to Dionysus. The ground is said to gape open when Hades emerges, while Dionysus has the epithet "the gaping one." Kerenyi claims that Demeter's rejection of wine while she mourns for her stolen daughter is a sign that her daughter's abductor is really the god of wine. Demeter says the drinking of wine at that time would be "contrary to themis, the order of nature" (Kerenyi, 207). He also notes that the pomegranate, the fruit given by Hades to Persephone, is a fruit associated strongly with Dionysus, describing, among other instances, an image in which, “a bearded, long-robed Dionysos was represented lying in a cave, holding in his hand a golden cup; around him grow the vine and the apple and the pomegranate tree" (Kerenyi, 134). Kerenyi also describes a votive engraving of the nameless chief god of the Mysteries, called in the dedication only Theos, or "God":
the recumbent god has the features rather of the bearded Dionysos than of Plouton [Hades]. In his right hand, he raises not a cornucopia, symbol of wealth, but a wine vessel with an animal's head, a rhyton; in his left, he bears the goblet for the wine. Over his head stands the dedication... “To Theos,” befitting the mystery god...On his couch sits his wife, identified by the dedication … “To Thea,” and differing from the Kore both in her features and in her headdress. Both female figures are assuredly Persephone, who showed her true face in the Mystery Night (152)
Thus he asserts that Persephone is here shown as the bride of Dionysus, making Dionysus one with Hades in such imagery. He points also to a painting on the Xenokles Cup which depicts what seems to be a wedding between Persephone and Dionysus, the couple attended by Hermes and Demeter on their left. With these evidences, among others, Kerenyi confidently concludes, “Kore and Thea are two different duplications of Persephone; Plouton and Theos are duplications of the subterranean Dionysos” (155), solidifying his thesis that “the wine god in his quality of Lord of the Underworld was the girl's ravisher” (35).
Can this proposed understanding of the sacred Mysteries be any further verified by comparison of the Hades myths with the other “Soma” myths? Indeed, if Kerenyi is correct and this identification was understood by the ancient initiates, they seemingly had good reasons, as comparative analysis will support. First of all, and crucially, we would have to treat the Hades myths as sometimes doubling some of the motifs we have traced already in the Dionysus myths. This doubling could then have been the result of separate tribes or even migrations bringing the two gods to prominence with different aspects emphasized, only later brought back together by those who could understand their equivalence. Or it could be the result of simple divergence over time after a splitting of the two gods. Such splitting could also come back to the idea that there were multiple connected gods who made up “Soma” and multiple known “Dionysuses.” Different regions may have focused on different iterations or aspects of the god. It is also possible that the Dionysus and Hades myths were simply rooted in the same original mythos, but diverged over time, becoming doubles or variants of one another. As Kerenyi himself puts it, discussing this tendency for the gods to be "doubled," “The student of Eleusinian mythology must acquire a kind of double sight if he wishes to do justice to the entire tradition – the literary and the pictorial – with all their contradictory statements which were allowed to stand side by side” (148).
In any event, we see once again in Hades' primary mythos a myth centered around the abduction and trapping of a goddess in the underworld, repeating the "Rhiannon" theme once more, and also possibly doubling the Hera and Hephaestus myth previously discussed. Persephone, daughter of Demeter is taken to the underworld by Hades, who allows her to leave, but only if she consumes nothing while there. She eats a certain number of pomegranate seeds, however, and so as a compromise she is allowed to live away from Hades for part of the year and to stay with him as his wife for the remainder. Thus we have, combined into one story, the marriage of a proposed “Soma” god (Hades) to his bride, and the trapping in the underworld of the goddess. Crucial to this interpretation is the fact that, exactly as in the Welsh Rhiannon myth and the Indian Samvarana-Tapati myth, when the goddess is trapped or stays too long in the otherworld location, away from the society that needs her, the world becomes a wasteland. When Persephone is away, crops die and nature is sapped of vitality. For this reason, her stay in the underworld is often seen as taking place during, and causing the conditions of, the harsh Summer or perhaps Winter. It must be said that the similar trapping of Welsh Pryderi and Rhiannon in the Otherworld is also frequently seen as connected to a concept of seasonal change, and Samvarana staying on the sacred mountain too long specifically causes the rains to stop. But the “wasteland” period caused by the absence of Persephone does not have to be tied to a particular seasonal timeframe, and can be seen in a more general sense as the archetypal wasteland found in the other Lunar Cycles, connected to the paradigmatic drought or blight brought on by the forgotten sacrifice.
It is Hermes, the proposed Gandharva, who brings Persephone out of the underworld (a subject found on Attic vases), just as the Gandharva Samvarana accompanies Tapati, after the help of Vasistha, back to society to heal the wasteland. Meanwhile the “Surya's Bridal” hymn explicitly states that Surya passes from Soma to the Gandharva, for safe keeping, just as Hermes has become a temporary guide for Persephone, a situation we also see with Welsh Pwyll, who stays with Arawn's wife for a time, like a surrogate husband and guardian.
We can thus see just how much has shifted around in the various versions, though we can now also track these shifts more precisely. Hermes' role in the myth (when he is considered as the Gandharva) also brings together the same set of gods once again: Soma (Hades), the Gandharva (Hermes), the Young Child (this time a daughter, Persephone), and the Great Queen (Persephone taking both the role of the mother Rhiannon and child Pryderi in a sense). The fact that there is no “Young Son” in this Greek version, as there is in the Welsh with Pryderi, but instead a “Young Daughter,” may have a distinct cause and be the result of a specific documented syncretism.
It is well-attested that Persephone took the place in this particular myth that had once been occupied by a goddess bearing the title Despoina. Likewise, this Despoina had a prominent mother figure in her myth. Kerenyi explains that "The older goddess who originally no doubt played the part of the mother was not entirely forgotten, even after Demeter had taken her place” (Kerenyi, Eleusis, 132). The religion of the pre-Greeks was thus dominated by a cult of a mother goddess and her daughter, a fact that has left its imprint on the form of the Demeter-Persephone myth. This mother goddess had both a daughter and a son (or a daughter and a horse, just as, for instance, the parallel Norse god Freyr is closely tied to his sister Freyja, or Irish Aengus to his sister Brigid, and as Pryderi is curiously born the same day as a special horse), but the son seems to have been overshadowed by the daughter, Despoina. This may explain why, while in the Welsh version both a goddess and “Young Son” are trapped in the underworld together, in the Greek version it is only a “Young Daughter” who takes on this role, her male horse-associated counterpart pushed out of the picture in accordance with an earlier local understanding.
Not only can we see the “Young Daughter” take the place otherwise occupied by “Young Son” and Mother Goddess together, but Despoina/Persephone's mother, the great Earth goddess Demeter, has a myth directly paralleled in Rhiannon's myth as well. That is, Rhiannon parallels both the mother goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, seemingly taking both roles in the Welsh version. Kerenyi, in fact, believed that Persephone and Demeter should be seen as merely two aspects of one goddess, saying that "Demeter represented the earthly aspect. Persephone another, rather ghostly and transcendent,” (33) and, “Demeter searched for her vanished daughter as though she were the lost half of herself and found her at last in the underworld” (130). He also explains that this doubling of aspects may have resulted from the overlaying of Demeter onto the pre-existing mother-daughter goddesses: "Obviously the grain goddess was a latecomer, fitted into an older genealogy, now in one way, now in another. The later conception that Demeter and not Rhea was Persephone's mother won out and became classical” (133). Therefore seeing the single Welsh goddess Rhiannon as taking the roles of both Demeter and Persephone would be perfectly natural.
Rhiannon's parallel with Demeter is this: Rhiannon is initially seen by Pwyll, the Gandharva, who sends riders after her, but she cannot be caught up to, though her horse appears only to amble. Later she gives birth to her son the same night a horse is born (he is a "Horse Twin" god, Pryderi), then she is punished for seeming to have killed her son even though he was only kidnapped (it is debated whether in an earlier version of the myth she actually did kill her son, sending him temporarily to the otherworld) by having to give people rides on her back like a horse, and finally she is made to wear the collars of a donkey during her imprisonment in the Otherworld. Repeatedly, she is made to take on the actions of a horse and to be identified and associated with horses (Irish Etain, "horse rider," is also closely tied to horses). In Demeter's myth, Poseidon Hippios (“of the horses”) sees Demeter and chases after her. To escape him, Demeter then turns into a horse (compare Rhiannon evading pursuit on her magically ambling horse after Pwyll sees her). Poseidon turns into a stallion, catches Demeter, and mates with her, whereas Rhiannon ultimately stops for Pwyll and pledges to be wed with him (much more similar in this last detail to the Indian version than to the Greek, which emphasizes this union as capture and violation).
Now, it is also attested that the earlier mate of Demeter in this archaic form of the myth was known simply as the Wanax, or “chief,” or by the name Paredros, “companion.” This was not originally Poseidon properly, but, due to the fact that Poseidon was the god generally given the title of Wanax, and the fact that this god was associated with underground streams as well as with horses, Demeter's mate became identified as Poseidon – again not Poseidon proper, but Poseidon Hippios. It is believed that this horse-associated Wanax was originally a separate being connected to underground rivers and springs. Considering the close similarity of Welsh Pwyll's encounter with and pursuit of the equine Rhiannon to this Poseidon's pursuit of the equine Demeter, we should examine the possibility that this Wanax Hippios may originally have been something more like Pwyll the Gandharva than the sea god Poseidon. The Gandharvas, after all, are heavily associated with the giving of horses. As a psychopomp (see Hermes) they are also associated with the underground liminal space approaching the underworld, and the rivers that flow and spring from that space (like the Styx, boundary of worlds, by which Hermes is often depicted). It is difficult to make an in-depth speculation of this kind due to the small amount of information on this Wanax, but due to the several connections we have pointed to thus far, the possibility should be more carefully examined in the future. As this was a very archaic figure, it is not clear whether he was Indo-European in origin or not, but the question of why Welsh Pwyll takes the parallel role remains intriguing.
Another curious myth associated with the bride – Skaði – of one of the "Soma" gods – Njorðr – also occurs in Demeter's tale. This is the scene in which the goddess, having lost a family member, her daughter, is made to laugh by the attending deities, specifically in order to quell the goddess' wrath and make peace. This happens when Demeter loses Persephone to the underworld god, and is then consoled, in early versions by the goddess Iambe, and in Orphic versions by the goddess Baubo. To pacify Demeter in her grief and anger (Demeter being known for the furious form she can take, Demeter Erinys), Iambe or Baubo jest, dance, and perform "obscene gestures," for example exposing their genitals to Demeter. Baubo even "throws herself on her back" in this obscene dance or gesture, and the result is that, though Demeter is not consoled, she is pacified, she "grows mild and tender” (40). This is strikingly similar to the performance that is given to the Norse goddess Skaði in the Prose Edda book Skaldskaparmal when her father has been killed. She too must be pacified, as well as repaid, in order to make peace. To appease her, the gods must attempt to make her laugh. So Loki ties a cord around the beard of a goat and connects the other end to his own testicles. As Baubo ends her obscene dance, her genitals exposed, by falling on her back, so Loki similarly ends, his testicles humorously pulled about, by falling in Skaði's lap. Until now it has been difficult to see how the contexts of these two scenes could connect them. Only with an understanding of both of these myths as important parts of the Lunar Cycle, the husbands of Skaði (Njörðr) and Persephone (Hades) being parallels, Demeter and Persephone being aspects of one another and partial parallels of Skaði, indeed the abduction of Iðunn which had immediately preceded this scene also being a parallel of the abduction of Persephone, can we see that these myths are after all in their right places. Only by understanding both Hades and Njörðr as "Soma" gods, or in a similar way intimately interrelated, can this parallel make complete sense.
Looking to the case of Iberia, we may even see a deity who forms an illuminating bridge between the Celtic underworld/Soma gods and Dionysus. This is Endovelicus, Iberian lord of the Underworld, associated with vegetation, grapes, the vine, crowns, pine cones, mountains, dreams, pigs, fertility, swans, dogs, and equated with Serapis, a Roman form of Osiris who also has a bull aspect. Each of these symbols can be seen connected with either Dionysus, Hades, or one of the other Celtic “Soma” cognates, Midir or Arawn. Grapes, vines, crowns and pine cones are all central symbols of Dionysus in his role as god of wine, fertility and vegetation. His origin on or association with a mountain is a part of his very name: “Dio nysus,” meaning god of Mount Nysa. Dreams are the purview of Hades, and he is known as “Plouton, master of the black-winged Oneiroi (dreams)” in an anonymous Greek lyric (V Anonymous, Fragments 963, from Demetrius, On Style, BC). Irish Midir is closely associated with swans, turning into a pair with his wife to escape Eochu Airem. Hades famously keeps the three-headed dog Cerberus who guards his realm. Arawn gives “the Swine of Arawn” to Pwyll as a token of friendship.
Just as Norse Njörðr is known as the god of wealth, and indeed Vedic Soma is repeatedly associated with wealth, while Welsh Arawn's underworld palace is said to be "the best supplied with food and drink, and vessels of gold and royal jewels" of all courts, so Hades too is seen as the lord of all the mineral and vegetative wealth held within the earth, and his quality of richness is emphasized in his byname, Plouton, which was also the name of his Roman analog, meaning “the rich one.” Thus Hades naturally fills the role of "god of wealth" repeatedly connected with the "Soma" god in his chthonic aspect. And while Hades is known for his two-pronged "bident," Irish Midir, at least, is said to carry a 5-pronged fork.
Further curiosities include the fact that Demeter goes to Helios, the Sun god, to find out who has stolen her daughter. He is the only one who can answer this question. In the Indian Samvarana tale, the (fire) priest Vasistha must go to the Sun god Vivasvat right before Samvarana and Tapati have their wasteland-causing dalliance on the otherworldly mountain, but this visit to the Sun god is in order to procure the Sun Princess' hand in marriage for Samvarana. Also during Demeter's mourning period, she is known to have sat on a simple chair, or, in an older version, on a particular rock, and stayed there without laughing. Due to the fact that Theseus sits on this same "laughless rock" or agelastos petra right before descending to the underworld, it may be said that the rock and the underworld have a close connection. Thus this chair/rock of Demeter may parallel the sacred mound that Pryderi and the others sit on to trigger the wasteland, and the chair of Hephaestus that Hera sits on to cause the crisis in that version. Finally, Kerenyi says of the marriage of Hades and Persephone that it was "the prototype of all marriages” (174), which is precisely the explicit role given to the marriage of Soma and Surya in the Rig Veda and elsewhere.
If the claims of Kerenyi and Heraclitus and the suggestion of Euripides are correct, and Hades is to be identified with Dionysus, then both the Eleusinian Mysteries and the cults of Dionysus and his unmixed wine could stem, at least in part (taking into account considerable layers of syncretism), from the myths of the Indo-European “Soma” cycle. In the case of Dionysus, there is significant documented Egyptian influence, while in the case of Hades we see significant influence from an earlier greek if not pre-greek substrate of myths, and these separate influences may have gone a long way to giving the two gods the seemingly separate characters they came to possess.
However, despite all the important connections we have arrayed in the foregoing, a second possibility has to be put forward. We have seen from the Celtic case just how many underworld gods there may have been in the Proto-Indo-European society: the “Soma” god, the god of the dead (Yama, Donn, perhaps Bran, etc.), the “Gandharva,” the Fire god (Manannan), the god of the wild hunt of ghosts (Gwynn, Rudra) not to mention underworld roles that may have belonged to the Horse Twins and Wind god. Hence we would be remiss if we did not consider the clear possibility that Hades and Dionysus were simply two lords of the underworld who overlapped in certain ways, shared certain traits and roles. From this perspective, it may be more proper to see the Dionysus cycle of myths that we have investigated as forming the first portion of the Lunar Cycle, Dionysus marrying Ariadne paralleling for instance the marriage of Arawn and his wife, Midir and Etain, Skaði and Njorðr, Soma and Surya, and Chyavana and Sukanya. This would also include the possible Aesir-Vanir War motif of Dionysus battling Poseidon and the Indian Brahmins, as well as the Dioskouroi winning their wives, Hilaeria and Phoibe. The Hades and Persephone cycle would follow this myth cycle just as the abduction of Rhiannon and Pryderi follows the aforementioned myths in the Welsh case. This brings up an unanswered question from the Welsh myth: while the Soma god Arawn appears as the lord of the Underworld of Annwn in the very beginning of the Welsh Lunar Cycle, when Rhiannon and Pryderi are whisked away to the Otherworld upon touching the golden bowl it is not at all clear who has taken them. We find out in the end that it was a friend of Gwawl, from whom Pwyll had taken Rhiannon, and this friend is named Llwyd ap Cil Coed. This name is mysterious, however, meaning “grey-blue, son of the depths of the woods,” and an underworld identity beneath the surface is a debated question. One might guess that it has been Arawn by another name, as he is a lord of the Underworld, but Arawn was so close and so fully allied to Pryderi's father Pwyll that they were nearly identified. It seems unlikely that he would perpetrate such a hostility on his ally's wife and son. The abductor of Rhiannon and Pryderi, who parallels Hades in this act of abduction, seems likely to have been a completely separate Otherworld deity from the Soma god. Among those left on our list of underworld gods when we remove the Soma god (Arawn), the Gandharva (Pwyll), the Fire god (Manawydan) and the Horse Twin (Pryderi), would be the parallel of Vedic Yama or the parallel of Vedic Rudra.
If the Hades abduction myth follows after Dionysus' myths rather than fully overlapping them, this could still involve a certain amount of doubling, interchange of motifs, and even overlap between the sets of myths, and this could explain some of the parallels we have seen in the preceding. There is a kind of doubling redundancy to the Dioscouroi, Dionysus' twin sons, and Persephone and her forgotten brother that can be seen when lining all these traditions up, and this may come down to the question of variant versions of the myths and the various layers of syncretism we have previously discussed. Indeed, from this perspective the myths of Dionysus and Hades would still form one long cycle of connected myths: the totality of the Great Lunar Cycle. Furthermore, the naturally overlapping nature of Hades and Dionysus as underworld gods would explain many motifs that became shared or even interchanged between them. If this conclusion is the proper one to take from what we have seen, then Kerenyi and Heraclitus' theory of the identity of Hades and Dionysus could only be true from an esoteric perspective, seeing their essences as united on a deeper level. Whether this is the proper conclusion or whether Hades and Dionysus are indeed one, I leave an open question. To pursue it further would require looking at, for instance, a fuller comparison of Vedic Yama and Greek Hades, and investigating whether there was seen to be any overlap of Soma and Yama, either in an esoteric sense, or if at their roots they could have even come from a shared origin. As it stands, it appears to us most prudent to consider Yama and Soma separately and thus to consider Hades and Dionysus likewise.
However, we will add one final line of speculation to this prospect. We have discussed how both Norse Mimir and Njorðr could be seen as aspects of the Soma mythos, Njorðr much more securely. Reflected upon with the Hades and Dionysus example in mind, the question of Njorðr and Mimir could face a similar problem, and we should be sure not to lump together what ought to be kept separate. In fact, it was Viktor Rydberg who first suggested that Mimir could be read as a parallel of both Vedic Soma and Vedic Yama. This could make some sense if Soma and Yama had any overlap in the Vedic sources, which again is beyond our scope. At present we will only state that Rydberg's argument for Mimir as Yama appears perhaps stronger than his argument for Mimir as Soma, considering that Lif and Lifthrasir are protected in something named after Mimir – Hoddmimis holt, “Hoard-Mimir's holt or grove” – during the great Fimbulwinter, to emerge when Ragnarok has ended in order to repopulate the world. Yima, the Iranic parallel of Vedic Yama, himself has an underground enclosure wherein he is instructed to keep men and women to wait out the “evil winters” of “deadly frost” that Ahura Mazda will send to destroy the earth. Even if Hoddmimis holt is merely a kenning for Yggdrasil, which scholars such as Simek and Lindow maintain on very tenuous evidence, this does not change the fact that the grove bears the name of Mimir. Lindow himself posits the case loosely by claiming that the grove of trees could even be in a location in the vicinity of Yggdrasil rather than Yggdrasil itself, and this would not at all disrupt the possible thread between Mimir and Yama. As such, if we could establish that Mimir parallels Yama and that Hades could as well, we could see why Mimir sometimes seems to overlap the sacred-water role associated with the Soma god, just as Hades sometimes overlaps Dionysus.
If we follow this speculative train a bit further, we can see that Bran, another likely Welsh underworld god, could fit into this larger pattern. We have said already how Bron becomes a name of the Grail King in later versions, and how the severed head at the Grail castle is reminiscent of the severed head of the god Bran that is central to Welsh myth. Thus Bran's presence is certainly felt in the Grail version of the Lunar Cycle. If the abductor of Rhiannon and Pryderi is unclear, Bran as such an underworld god is one possible candidate, as he is also a possible candidate for the Welsh parallel of Vedic Yama. Now, in the Welsh myth the severed head of the god Bran is taken back to Britain where it continues to speak and to guard the land. Norse Mimir himself is beheaded, his head preserved, and continues to dispense advice to Oðinn. The similarity between the myth of Mimir and that of Bran has remained puzzling, as in other points their myths do not coincide, but if they both could be seen as versions of the same “Yama” underworld god, then the mystery could be explained.
It is a popular theory that Irish Donn comes from the same root as this Yama, seeing that Eber Donn is the first of the Sons of Mil to die on reaching Ireland, and Donn becomes known as an underworld god, with the rocky island Tech Duinn known as his domain, while Vedic Yama is the first human to die, and becomes the lord of the underworld as a result. Next we have Dagda, who, while he has a much larger identity, also seems to have an underworld role, gives and takes life and presides at the burial mount Brugh na Boinne. He is sometimes called Dagda Donn, which could refer to many things including simply to a dark color or an adjective meaning “noble,” but could also indicate his underworld role, as if he had absorbed or overlapped the role of Donn. Meanwhile, we have previously suggested, and are not the first to do so, that Bran, the giant king with his cauldron of reviving could parallel the giant king Dagda with his cauldron of plenty and staff of reviving. We then would draw a line speculatively between Dagda and Bran in their underworld aspects, which could include the role of Donn aka Yama. As such, through this long and narrow line of connections, the talking head of Bran could be an actual match to the talking head of Mimir, and these could be seen in relation to the archetype of this “Yama.” From many directions we see the name of Yama popping up, a counterpart and counterpoint to the Soma underworld god. Against those who would claim Mimir is merely a local water spirit of some kind I would say only this: who then is the governing deity who governs the waters springing up from the underground and the spirits that manifest therein?
From a ritual perspective, we should also investigate whether the Mahavira earthen pot used in the Pravargya ceremony, introduced at the “head” of the soma sacrifice, and which is believed to stand in for the head of Vishnu, in which milk is boiled to be offered to the Asvins, could have originally been seen as the head of Yama instead of Vishnu. This would be a possibility based on the idea that Yama was the first man killed and thus that Yama was the original primordial sacrificial being, parallel of Norse Ymir and Roman Remus in this role. In Rig Veda 10.13.4 Yama sacrifices himself at High Priest Brihaspati's yajna sacrifice: “He, for God's sake, chose death to be his portion. He chose not, for men's good, a life eternal
They sacrificed Bṛhaspati the Ṛṣi. Yama delivered up his own dear body.” Vishnu could have replaced Yama in this role as his cult rose to prominence, but Yama would have been the more archaic being whose dismembered body is the sacrifice. If this line of inquiry could prove valid, then the severed head motif relating to the possible “Yama” parallels we have discussed could have partially survived in its ritual form in the Mahavira pot, a key part of the soma sacrifice.
We offer these last notes only as a sketch and await further research into these questions.
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Works Cited:
Athenaios
Carl Kerenyi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter
Clement of Alexandria, Fragments of Heraclitus
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Hill, J, 2008, https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/
H. Jeremiah Lewis, “Dionysos and Osiris Compared” http://alkman1.blogspot.com/2006/12/osiris-and-dionysos-compared.html
The Mahabharata
Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion
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Sigrid Hoedel-Hoenes, Life and Death in Ancient Egypt, 114
Text of Pepi II
Theoi.com
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