The Celtic Creation Myth: Branwen, Matholwch, and Efnysien, or: Earth, Sky, and Rudra
Part 3 of 4
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| The Castration of Saturn, Antoine Verard |
Indo-European Contexts
If we follow Kramrisch’s suggestion that this overall myth connects to the time around the Vernal or March Equinox, we find further parallels confirming these readings. The Roman New Year is known to have taken place on the Ides of March, perhaps originally being tied to the full moon of this period, marking the end of Winter and the coming of Spring. The first inkling of the new light of the day of the year and the beginnings of fertility were for the Romans the moment the New Year would begin. A well-known myth from Phrygia connected to the festivities of the later Imperial Roman period, including the festival day Canna intrat, tells of Attis and Agdistis. Agdistis is a divine being having both male and female genitals and thus should be taken as an image of the primordial union of “Sky” and “Earth” or “Father/Son” and “Daughter/Mother,” the hieros gamos contained in one being, the unity of the Uncreate not yet broken. Connecting this idea of the primordial hermaphrodite to Vedic Dyaus’ rape of his daughter, Kramrisch elucidates this crucial point thus:
The divine mating of Father and daughter is a symbol of ontic truth. Elsewhere, primal being, nearest to the wholeness of the Uncreate, is male and female in one. (Kramrisch, 59)
The daughter with whom the Father cohabits is a hypostasis of the Father himself. She was one with him before he knew her. Ardhanārīśvara, Lord Śiva, is male on the right side and female on the left. As the Purāṇas know him, Śiva is one who divides himself into god and goddess, Śiva and Sivā. Then, for a thousand years he did not cease in his ardent love making to Sivā (cf. ŚP.2.4.1.27-28). Their love has not been considered incestuous by anyone. (Kramrisch, 60)
Father Heaven covered this blushing maiden, part of himself, discernible and other from himself, only to be united with himself. They are not two persons but one self-begotten, begetting entity. (Kramrisch, 62)
[…] in the beginning the Creator embraced his daughter, a hypostasis from within himself in which he asserts himself. To this act of self-love, the emission of seed is biologically a sequel and metaphorically a jolt to the unassailable and undiminished metaphysical plenum. The intercourse of the Creator with his daughter is the two-faced symbol of the rupture of pre-existential wholeness and of the descent to earth of its immortal substance, the seed of life. (Kramrisch, 64)
the infringement of the Uncreate and pre-existential wholeness, a spurt from self-contained fullness, the loss of integrity of the absolute. (Kramrisch, 64)
The primordial Phrygian hermaphrodite Agdistis is equated with the great Earth Mother Cybele and is a mountain deity, Mount Agdistis being its namesake, and thus the underlying Earth Mother nature is apparent, a mountain also being where a union of sky and earth occurs. We recall Bronwen’s association with a mountain as well. A potion puts Agdistis to sleep, and the being is self-castrated at the instigation of Dionysus, who is the god of the sacred liquid which becomes the seed of the primordial progenitor. The blood from the severed genitals gives rise to a tree, as Ouranos’ genitals give rise to the Ash-Tree nymphs, and Matholwch’s son is named for a tree, Gwern, “Alder.” This tree bears an almond and the daughter of a river nymph takes an almond from the tree and is impregnated by it. Attis is born, and now Agdistis falls in love with his beauty. At Attis’ wedding Agdistis appears and drives everyone mad, resulting in Attis castrating himself. Agdistis repents and causes Attis’ body to neither rot nor decay – he attains the state of perfection, of the unmanifest, overcoming the cycle of generation and decay (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7, 19). Thus we have once more a double castration motif of father and son, while the motif of the sleeping draught also seen in the honey of the Cronus myth is transferred to the first castration rather than the second. The fact that the castration of Cronus and that of Attis align and these further align with the bursting of Efnysien’s heart bolsters the idea that Efnysien is indeed extinguishing his own passion in his sacrificial act. The myth of Attis is generally taken as symbolic of the fertility of the land that dies in winter and returns in spring, which is the same idea as what the other myths mark generally, the return of fertility with Spring. However, in such an interpretation the full meaning of the myth has been broadened and become vague, and something of the precise theology of the original myth may be in process of being lost. The self-castrating corybantes and galli are considered to be priesthoods or brotherhoods directly connected to this myth and the worship of its gods, Attis and Cybele-Agdistis, and their ascetic practice could then be seen as in line with Efnysien’s sacrifice and even with the ascetic practice of Odinn. Kris Kershaw and others have extensively commented on the corybantes as a type of Rudraic koryos.
What we have seen thus far is also the general theme of the Vernal Equinox celebrations found in Hinduism, and these too can be connected back to the Welsh myth. In Shaivite tradition, 40 days before the Vernal Equinox festival of Holi, an event is commemorated on the day called Vasant Pachami, which appears to be an elaboration of the paradigmatic myth of Rudra shooting his arrow at the sexual desire of Dyaus. In the Shaivite form of this myth, Siva, who is the all-in-all god, is of course both Rudra and Dyaus in one. He is the Father containing the procreative seed and the ascetic destroyer in one, and the cosmic drama of desire plays out within his own being. Kama, the god of Desire, approaches Siva, who is in deep meditation, in an attempt to lure him to return to his spouse Parvati. Kama shoots his arrow at Siva, but Siva shoots fire from his third eye and incinerates Kama, thus killing Desire in blazing mental fire. Kama’s wife then performs asceticism for 40 days, until the Vernal Equinox, when Siva finally agrees to revive Kama, signaling the return of fertility to the world and the end of Siva’s period of wintry meditation. The interpretation of this myth should be familiar and clear by now. The Father in Siva is seduced to release his fertilizing energy into the world, but the ascetic Destroyer kills Desire with a bolt of fire before this can happen. The shooting of an arrow is again a central event in this myth, as in the original Vedic form, but this time the arrow is shot by Kama and directed at Siva as Father. Siva then returns his own kind of arrow at Kama, a bolt from his third eye. An ascetic practice then appears in the myth both in relation to Siva and in relation to Kama’s wife Rati, and finally Desire is allowed to return to life and fertility flows out again from the cold, unmanifest state that Siva had maintained until then in meditation, the state of cosmic Winter.
In the Vaishnava tradition, the day of Holi corresponds to the myth of Holika, a demoness who tries to burn a young boy, Prahlada, in a fire. Knowing the Welsh version, we know that the burning of the boy in the fire is a symbol of the attempt to destroy the generative seed that would bring new life and thus is a symbol of the vitality of the cosmos and of the coming Spring. However, as the attempt to stop the emission of the Father fails in the Vedic version, the attempt to burn the boy Prahlada fails also, though he is held in the fire, due to the intense devotion of the boy to Vishnu, for which he also suffers punishment from his father, and furthermore thanks to the special mantras he employs. The motif of these mantras is perhaps a remnant of the magico-ascetic practices of the various parallels, ie. the fasting, runes, and galdrs of Odinn. The demoness is instead burned and the demon father of the boy is eviscerated by Vishnu as well. The festival of Holi involves the throwing of colored powders, which symbolize the incinerated demoness Holika, and is a celebration of the undaunted life of the new Spring to follow. We can thus see that the Vedic role of Rudra-Siva and the Welsh role of Efnysien has been made into a demoness in this Vaishnava tradition, which is understandable when we consider that the Rudraic Destroyer of the procreative seed appears like a psychopath in some versions of the myth. The demoness Holika also has clear similarities to the castrated Phrygian Earth Mother Agdistis-Cybele, who causes the wedding party of Agdistis to go mad. “Rudra” is a very easy god to demonize, if a given tradition desires, for he or his troop may manifest in destructive forms and his trait of aiming his arrow at the seeds of life can make his motivation appear obscure and cause him to seem to be an excessively cruel god. The incineration of this demoness also reminds us of the parallel incineration of Kama, and the evisceration of the Father is a more tactful or conservative echo of the castration of the Father in other parallels.
In the Vedic version of the myth another element appears that could be a variation of the castration of Rudra-Siva/Cronus/Odinn/Attis motif, or the bursting of the heart of Efnysien, further bolstering the consistency of the motif overall. In the Maitrayani Samhita of the Black Yajurveda, when Rudra first aims his arrow at The Father, Dyaus-Prajapati, and interrupts his procreative act, Rudra spares his life. The Father then makes Rudra into Pasupati, the Lord of Animals, as a reward for his mercy. The Aitareya Brahmana tells the story somewhat similarly, except it is the other gods who turn Rudra into Pasupati after the horror of the primal scene, as an expression of that primal horror. As Pasupati, the Lord of Animals, Rudra’s hunter aspect is focused and foregrounded, and his intimate connection to the wilds and the animal life therein gains its official title. As such, we find parallels such as Irish Fionn who is a hunter living in the wilderness, and Rudra-Siva-Pasupati himself wears the skin of an animal to signify this role. However, as Kramrisch clarifies, the “animals” that Rudra-Pasupati is lord of also signify the passions within the self: “Within man the microcosm, the animals are the passions. Rudra, the archer, aims at Father Heaven, and inasmuch as the Father embracing the daughter acts according to his passionate nature, the Father is Rudra’s prey. Śiva, the Great Yogi, tames and subdues the animals that are the passions” (Kramrisch, 55). Just as Rudra hunts and fires his arrow at the procreative passion of the Father in the primordial scene, he continues this tendency by hunting and mastering the passions at large, within the self. The role of Lord of Animals means the one who is at peace with and in control of the wild and vital nature within. The image of the hunter, at peace, legs folded as if in meditation or a hunter’s crouch, with the wild animals crowding tamely around him, illustrates this trait. Thus the Vedic Rudra, too, becomes, by a process of formal transformation, even by a transubstantiation of his being into Pasupati, the master of the passions, just after his role in the primal scene, thereby paralleling the more vivid castration and more symbolic heart bursting in the parallel myths at the analogous points.
Cronus, Saturn, and Neoplatonism
In this context, Cronus unfolds himself to us as the Primordial “Rudra” of Greek myth, now seen in his proper character as the parallel of Efnysien and Rudra, adding to the alignment of Cronus with the Irish rudra Balor that we have examined previously (Cronus and Balor each are prophesied to be deposed or killed by their Mitraic son or grandson, Zeus or Lugh). Like Nisien and Helenus, and like Fionn, Apollo, and Odinn, Cronus is in fact a prophet. Prophecy, as we have repeatedly noted, is a prime Rudraic power. Orphic Fragment 129 notes Cronus’ power of “foreknowledge into the sensibles”: “And Krónos (Κρόνος) surrenders the principles of all creation to Zeus, and of foreknowledge into the sensibles, and endowing himself with intelligence, is unified with the primary intelligibles, and is satiated with the good things from there” (Orphic Fragments 129). Cronus’ name is said to mean “he who strikes (awakens) the mind (κρούων τον νοῦν).” From this, Thomas Taylor says: “Saturn (Κρόνος) [Cronus], therefore, according to Plato, is pure intellect, viz. the first intellectual intellect: for the intellects of all the Gods are pure in the most transcendent degree; and therefore purity here must be characteristic of supremacy. Hence Saturn subsists at the summit of the intellectual order of Gods, from whence he is received into all the subsequent divine orders, and into every part of the world” (Taylor, note on Κρατύλος Πλάτωνος 396b-c).22 Cronus’ is called “wily” as well as “most terrible” by Hesiod (Theogony 126, 147), both Rudraic descriptors, and it is for these traits that Gaia tasks him with the mission against Ouranos. He is thus no mere brute, but is aligned with the highest aspects of Intellect and even seership.
As Rudra seeks to guard and then desires to return to the state of perfect integral wholeness before manifestation, a few of Cronus’ traits may point in a similar direction. Cronus, and no other god, is made the lord of the Blessed Isles, the highest afterlife destination. Hesiod states: “And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Okeanos (Oceanus), happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Kronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. And these last equally have honour and glory” (Hesiod, Works and Days 156). Indeed, only after living three faultless lives and going to Elysium after each can the perfected soul go to Cronus’ Blessed Isles.23 24 Furthermore, in a description of the Golden Age, of which Cronus is king, which sounds just like the Uncreate that Kramrisch discusses in the Vedic case, or like the state of Rudraic samadhi that leads back to it, Plotinus says of Cronus that:
That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing – now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings – but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. (Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.4)
This seems to us the parallel of the state of perfection sought by the Rudraic mystic and indeed by Rudra himself, the reintegration of the Uncreate state. Cronus’ well-known trait of devouring his children would then signify his desire to draw nascent life and generation back within himself, wanting to return to the state of “darkness,” for Orphic Fragment 136 says, “Krónos (Κρόνος), in turn, intends to punish the Gods again, and seize his kingdom; that is to say, he intends that ancient darkness, to rule the zodiacal circles, those possessing the stars.” Similarly of Vedic Rudra, Kramrisch says that “Rudra, to whom tamas [the guna of darkness] belongs, would annihilate the constituents of the cosmos and dissolve them in darkness, steeped in its own density” (Kramrisch, 183).25 This ancient darkness of Cronus/Rudra is thus an analogy for the dark night of the cycle, the unmanifest wholeness which Cronus/Rudra wishes to reinstate. Cronus is indeed explicitly associated with Winter in the Orphic Fragments, the Night of the cycle, and this is directly connected to the concealment of the seeds, to which the Rudraic withholding of the seed can be compared: “And on which account, they say of the seasons that wintertime is Kronian, concealing under the earth the seeds, just as the fruits are there from himself – if you wish to speak theologically – and through chilling her, he provides naturally to their coming into being” (σχόλιον Πρόκλου επὶ Πολιτείας Πλάτωνος II 61, 22 Kr). Thus Cronus’ drawing his children back into himself is a reiteration of the same tendency to conceal the seed, to draw generation back into the state of contraction and integral wholeness, which is also the state of ancient darkness. It seems plain that this tendency is the esoteric parallel of the mystic Rudraic practice of semen re-uptake which Kramrisch discusses at length, the reabsorption of the seed being the same metaphysically as the swallowing of Cronus’ “children.” Cronus’ swallowing of his own children also repeats the trait of child-killing which is constantly connected to the Rudraic gods, and this goes back to the same metaphysical theme again: destroyer, concealer, and re-absorber of the seeds of new life, propitiated in Vedic religion to spare the born and unborn child.
Perfectly in line with this comparison, Plotinus exclaims regarding Cronus, who is “The Intellectual-Principle”:
A being of this quality, like the Intellectual-Principle [Cronus], must be felt to be worthy of the all-pure: it could not derive from any other than from the first principle of all; as it comes into existence, all other beings must be simultaneously engendered – all the beauty of the Ideas, all the Gods of the Intellectual realm. And it still remains pregnant with this offspring; for it has, so to speak, drawn all within itself again, holding them lest they fall away towards Matter to be ‘brought up in the House of Rhea’ [in the realm of flux]. (Plotinus, Ennead 5.1.7)
An Orphic fragment points out that Cronus is not only the consumer of all things, but also their restorer, much like Rudra-Siva: “Oh clever, pure, mighty, brave Titan, you consume all things and restore them yourself.” Another comment of Plotinus sounds like a devotion of a Shaivite when read in terms of Cronus-Siva: “The sensitive principle is our scout; the Intellectual-Principle [Cronus] our King. But we, too, are king when we are moulded to the Intellectual-Principle” (Ennead 5.3.3-4).26 And this comment of Plotinus on the Intellectual-Principle [Cronus] would be to a Shaivite a clear description of the state of Rudra-Siva in stillness and meditation, embodying the withdrawal or immunity from action, as the immovable yogi, the pillar or sthāṇu:
[…] self-gathered and unalloyed, it is Intellectual-Principle through all the range of its being – for unintelligent intelligence is not possible – and thus it possesses of necessity self-knowing, as a being immanent to itself and one having for function and essence to be purely and solely Intellectual-Principle. This is no doer; the doer, not self-intent but looking outward, will have knowledge, in some kind, of the external, but, if wholly of this practical order, need have no self-knowledge; where, on the contrary, there is no action – and of course the pure Intellectual-Principle cannot be straining after any absent good – the intention can be only towards the self; at once self-knowing becomes not merely plausible but inevitable; what else could living signify in a being immune from action and existing in Intellect? (Ennead 5.3.6).
Cronus’ apparent Roman analogue, Saturn, is also the lord of the Winter festival of Saturnalia, which recreates and commemorates a Golden Age without the strictures of social conventions and with their notable inversion. Cronus’ own festival, the Kronia, is in fact at the other end of the year, in Summer. However, it still marks the beginning of the year in the regional Attic calendar, and thus its position apart from the otherwise “Kronian time” of Winter could speculatively be the result of a particular calendar reform, the festival moved to the Summer when the start of the year was moved there. On the other hand, the Kronia being in the Summer and marking the first harvest could simply connect to Cronus’ role in the harvest, being the god of the sickle as he is, the god who draws life back to the unmanifest like cutting a gourd from its stalk.27 The Kronia likewise enacts a memorial of the Golden Age with social strictures suspended or reversed, and is thus notably similar to the Saturnalia of Winter, though at the opposite point in the seasonal cycle. The corybantes are usually called the offspring of Apollo, the primary Rudra within the Greek world of the present age, and as such these corybantes would be a match of the Fianna/rudras/vratyas/Ulfhednar of other branches. However, the corybantes are in one account (Strabo, Geographica 10.3.19) instead said to be the children of Cronus, a curious and impenetrable attestation unless we consider Cronus as the primordial Rudraic manifestation, who re-manifests, in the created world of Becoming, as Apollo.28
With frightening precision, Efnysien follows the same pattern that Kramrisch describes with respect to Rudra: he causes the “catastrophe” and then he avenges or sets right what he himself has set in motion. This arc is apparent in Efnysien’s own words: “Alas! woe is me, that I should have been the cause of bringing the men of the Island of the Mighty into so great a strait. Evil betide me if I find not a deliverance therefrom” (Branwen, daughter of Llyr). He first mutilates the horses of Matholwch, inflaming tensions, which causes Bran to give the cauldron to Matholwch (Father Sky), the cauldron which will later lead to the destruction in battle of Efnysien’s allies. The mutilation is also at least one of the causes of the “abuse” of Branwen by Matholwch and his men, the abuse which brings on the war and is the analogy of the primordial Vedic rape. Thus Efnysien sees his own culpability in the unfolding of the events and takes it upon himself to throw the boy Gwern (the divine seed) into the fire and then to destroy the magical cauldron, the unbalancing remainder left from the breach of the divine liquid substance escaping into the realm of Generation, into the created World. In Kramrisch’s words, Rudra is “the cause and also that effect on which again he acts,” when he, as the incandescent essence of Fire, prepares the seed in the Father, which he then avenges with the arrow from his bow.
Inasmuch as he is Agni, he prepares the seed. Inasmuch as he is Rudra, he is intent on the destruction of the effect that he has caused. He incites toward creation, and when it takes its course he lets fly his arrow against it. The sequence of contradictory actions is far from self-defeating. It is of the very nature of Rudra, who creates in order to destroy, for he will create again in an inexhaustible renewal of life on earth, where creation is the aeviternal answer to destruction, and both have their ground and antithesis in the Uncreate. This is the course that Rudra set. More truly than any other god he could have said of himself: ‘I am not a puzzled-out book, I am a god with his contradictions.’ His contradictions, his polarities operate on all levels of his ambience, radiating from his center. (Kramrisch, 28)
“Rudra caused the seed of the Father to fall down to earth. But did not the avenger also avenge his own action?” (Kramrisch, 56) she asks. Can precisely the same thing not be said of Efnysien, the avenger of his own inflammation of the tensions between Matholwch and Branwen, the avenger of the giving of the cauldron of sacred liquid to Father Sky, the avenger of the catastrophe which he set in motion?
Thus we are left with parallel sets of Rudraic groupings across several branches, generally including a primordial Rudra, and a prime Rudra-of-the-world, with a destructive, lower-case “rudra” also often appearing as an offshoot of these, sometimes interchangeable with them: The primordial Greek Rudra Cronus and Rudra-of-the-world Apollo; Irish Eber Finn(/destructive rudra Balor) and Fionn; Welsh Efnysien-Nisien(/destructive rudra Ysbaddaden) and Gwyn-Gwion. Odinn, being the Norse “Ur-Rudra,” is given as the primordial Rudraic god on the scene of creation and is not given a separate name on that scene as happens to the Primordial Rudras in the Greek and Welsh branches. The jotunn Suttungr, on the other hand, parallels Balor as a destructive rudra, who also parallels Cronus in his role as the Fatherly rudra who must be overcome by the Mitraic god. In this way, Suttungr is only a particularized manifestation of the essence of this primordial divinity in a more narrow context. He is only a “rudra” of the world in the myths we have, an offshoot, a metaphysical descendant of the primordial Odinn from whom he has apparently become distinct, manifesting the sometimes jotunn-like nature of the frightening “rudras.” It may be noteworthy that the name of Suttungr’s father is Gilling, meaning “screamer,” while Rudra is the god who “cries” or “howls,” as the colloquial meaning of his name denotes. However, many jotnar bear similar names and this could be insignificant. In any case, Rudra and his rudras are divine beings who can manifest in any form they choose, and very often appear in destructive or frightening guises, spooking, obstructive, misshapen, near-demonic. The idea that both Suttungr and Gilling could be “rudras,” even though classified as Jotnar, should not seem odd in the least, and is even to be expected. Suttungr’s parallel Balor is called a Fomorian, the Irish grouping directly paralleling the Jotnar, and Balor is after all a “rudra,” as we have seen, especially under his alternate name, Goll, who is a member of the Fianna. The fact that Odinn sacrifices himself to himself on the Windy Tree also implies this sort of concept of “levels” within the deity. When Odinn, in his manifestation as the “Rudra” of the world, sacrifices himself to himself, this may then be a sacrifice of the “Rudra”/Odinn of the World to the Primordial “Rudra”/Odinn from the primordial scene, who is the higher Self of “Rudra”/Odinn.
For the Vedics, all these Rudraic roles are named “Rudra,” yet there are also titles such as Pasupati, Vāstoṣpati, and Siva, names which are used contextually, as names for precise manifestations of the divinity, and also interchangeably.
In the Welsh myth, the divine “seed” child of Matholwch, the tree-named boy Gwern, walks, in one curiously charged scene, from Bran to Manawydan (Fire) to Nisien (benevolent Rudra aka Siva) to Efnysien (primordial avenging Rudra) in the moment just before being cast into the flame. Setting aside the giant Bran, the king of Britain who is once mistaken for a mountain and then becomes a talking severed head, and who would parallel the jotunn Mimir and Vedic Yama in our schema, it seems to be possible to match this Welsh scene to the Norse scene involving the investing of the first tree-named humans with qualities by Odinn and his two divine colleagues. Odinn, Lodurr, and Hoenir are said in Voluspa 17-18 to give the first tree-humans Askr (Ash) and Embla the vital qualities of life. While Odinn in the primordial scene can be seen to parallel Efnysien, who is the primordial Welsh Rudra, this Lodurr on the other hand has sometimes been connected to heat and fire,29 especially considering that he gives “goodly hue” and blood or film of flesh to humans and his name can be connected to the German word lodern, “to blaze.” We will accept this theory without digression for the present interpretation as it appears to us well-supported, and, furthermore, is greatly bolstered by the Welsh parallel which tends to directly confirm it. From this perspective, Lodurr would match Manawydan, the Fire God as he manifests on the primordial scene. Hoenir, next, is said to have special prophetic abilities (Voluspa 63: “Then Hönir wins the prophetic wand”) and to give óðr (perhaps “understanding,” “mind,” “inspiration”) as his gift to the ancestral humans. Indeed, óðr, the word for the gift that Hoenir gives, has long been recognized to share its root with Odinn’s very name, and as such the idea that he is only nominally distinct from Odinn, a hypostasis of an Odinnic aspect, is not new, and ought even to be the default hypothesis due to the name of his gift. Hoenir (or Hone) is depicted as excessively passive or indecisive in Snorri’s account in Ynglingasaga 4, which then appears to be an exaggerated way for Snorri to demonstrate him to be the softer, more peaceable or passive Siva to Odinn’s Rudra, considering the other Rudra-Siva pairings we have identified in Efnysien-Nisien, Diephobus-Helenus, and Bolwis-Bilwis. Hoenir’s passiveness is indeed simply a caricature of the famous Siva tranquility. As the passive and prophetic “Siva,” Hoenir would most closely parallel Helenus of Troy, also gentle and possessed of prophetic power, and, in the primordial Welsh scene of the gods surrounding Gwern one by one before the boy is thrown into the flames, Hoenir would parallel Nisien, the peaceable brother of Efnysien. If this is an accurate comparison of primordial trios, then it may be that during the strange scene in which Gwern walks from one god to the next, seemingly for no reason, before being thrown into the “sacrificial” fire, these gods are doing more than is stated on the surface. In the original version of the myth, they may in fact have been investing the tree-child with the vital qualities of life, the divine gifts of all humans to come thereafter. In terms of the proposed Norse Primordial Fire God Lodurr, united on the primordial scene with Odinn as Agni is with Rudra, once the world was created and Time was begun he would have split into the good fire, which remained an aspect of Odinn, as we have seen, and the destructive fire, which would eventually arise in its final apocalyptic form as Surtr.
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We leave off this analysis with a few more quotations from this very great book of Kramrisch’s, which, though certain marks of influence by later Indian philosophy should be noted, is the book of a seer, and is the key to unlocking the deep meaning of this Welsh creation myth. I hope that these quotations elucidate some of the esoteric connections between the myth and the larger paradigm of the sacrifice.
Agni [see: Manawydan] celebrates the union of the Father [Matholwch] and his daughter [Branwen]. The target of Rudra-Agni [Efnysien], the Wild Archer, is the incontinence of the Father that makes him shed into creation the substance [Gwern] of the Uncreate. Rudra [Efnysien] avenges the violation, that is the rupture of the Uncreate. Rudra—Fire and Archer—is Rudra Lord of Yoga and Guardian of the Uncreate. But the Lord of Generation’s seed [Gwern] fell down on the earth. (Kramrisch, 46)
This primordial assault on Prajāpati [Dyaus/Matholwch], the Lord of Generation, who himself had violated pre-existential totality, was the bond in creation between the abiding and paradoxically inviolate pre-existential integrity, the fire of creation, and the agony of the Lord of Generation, that foaming bull, the primordial sacrificial victim. (Kramrisch, 73)
Creation was flawed from the start, yet was redeemed at the same time by the intervention of the gods, who out of the substance and rhythm of their magic words fashioned Vāstoṣpati. (Kramrisch, 76)
By rape and incontinence, powers of creation and procreation came down to earth from the Uncreate. It had never been tapped before, nor depleted. Henceforward it would be known in its fulness by a return to it in the state of samādhi or in moments of creative intuition. (Kramrisch, 79)
Rudra, in a time-caused reverse effect of his intention, brought the life itself of mankind to this earth, and with it he brought time. (Kramrisch, 96)
Rudra as the consciousness of the absolute had failed to preserve its integrity. (Kramrisch, 174)
It was Rudra alone who got ready that very substance [the cauldron of regeneration] for Father Heaven and, having given it to him and having avenged the violation, brought guilt on himself. The fierce Wild God then was given a shape of conglomerate horror [Pasupati, Yogi and master of passions/Lord of “Animals”] for his appearance in the wasteland of this earth. (Kramrisch, 179)
There is much darkness in Rudra. When he sinks low and into the abyss of his own being, he draws the world with him into the cosmic night of dissolution [as Cronus is said to wish to return all to ancient darkness]. Tamas [guna of darkness] is the heavy downward pull into disintegration. Tamos is the dark ground of Rudra’s being, whence the flame of destruction leaps upward. It ends physical existence and liberates from ahamkāra, from individuation and the ego. When the thousands and thousands of arrows ready in the hands of Rudra (TS.4.5.10.5) have hit their targets, Rudra is seen as Sambhu, the cause of tranquillity, Saṅkara, the giver of bliss, Śiva, the liberator (TS.4.5.8.1). As liberator and giver of happiness, Śiva is in all beings, their indwelling potential of freedom and peace. (Kramrisch, 184)
The Mahāmṛtyuñjaya mantra invokes Rudra, the conqueror of death, who has the power to inflict or to withhold death (RV.7.59.12). (Kramrisch, 187-188)
Śiva, the destroyer who leads out of the cosmos, is the Great Yogi who within himself annihilates the world of experience [Efnysien destroying the cauldron of regeneration]; he is the ferryman and the ferry leading from this world to the other shore (TS .4.5.8.2), to a nameless beyond to which the darkness of dissolution is only an allusion. When there is no darkness, there is neither day nor night, neither being nor nonbeing, only the one (Śiva) alone. Śiva in absolute transcendency, Śiva in manifestation and its destroyer, Śiva in the darkness of dissolution is at the same time the lord of sentient beings, Paśupati, Lord of Animals, their fierce hunter of a hundred shapes. (Kramrisch, 188)
As Agni-Rudra he is the protagonist of the drama of creation, leading into it and lashing back, letting the arrow fly against it […] This arrow too will be set flying by Rudra within man, in inner realization. Then ‘the syllable AUM is the bow, the ātman (self) is indeed the arrow; brahman (ultimate reality) is its target; carefully should it be pierced. Thus one becomes united with it like the arrow (with its target)’ (MUp.2.2.4; RHUp.38). (Kramrisch, 82-83)
***
Endnotes:
22 “[…] when Saturn is called κόρος, it does not signify a boy, but the purity and incorruptible nature of his intellect.” It has been suggested to me here or there that the myth of Fionn sucking his thumb to trigger his mystical insight carries with it a deeper symbolical meaning: that of returning the state of boyhood, to the eternal infant within, who is the symbol of the pure and incorruptible nature of the Intellect and of the Golden Age that the Rudraic god guards and leads back to, especially in moments of inspiration.
23 “But those who had good courage, three times on either side of death, to keep their hearts untarnished of all wrong, these travel along the road of Zeus to Kronos’ (Cronus’) tower. There round the Islands of the Blest, the winds of Okeanos (Oceanus) play, and golden blossoms burn, some nursed upon the waters, others on land on glorious trees; and woven on their hands are wreaths enchained and flowering crowns, under the just decrees of Rhadamanthys, who has his seat at the right hand of the great father, Rhea’s husband [Kronos (Cronus)], goddess who holds the throne highest of all” (Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.55).
“Now in the time of Kronos there was a law concerning mankind, and it holds to this very day amongst the gods, that every man who has passed a just and holy life departs after his decease to the Isles of the Blest (Nesoi Makaron), and dwells in all happiness apart from ill; but whoever has lived unjustly and impiously goes to the dungeon of requital and penance which, you know, they call Tartaros (Tartarus)” (Plato, Gorgias 525a).
24 Apollo, the Greek Rudra within the present age, is the god of the land of Hyperborea, a place that is a sort of Golden Age on Earth, and is said to visit there each Winter, which, as we will see, is the Kronian time. Winter, as should be clear by now, is also the phase in the cycle that Rudra attempts to preserve by staving off the cosmic “Spring.”
25 “Tamas [the guna of Rudra] is darkness; when this guṇa increases its activity, the darkness becomes deeper, denser, and heavier, and by its weight tends to obstruct the other two guṇas. It can be considered the first efficient cause of physical manifestation or of the five elements of which the cosmos is composed. It leads the descent from prematter into matter. The descent into matter—beyond which the cooperation of the three guṇas does not extend—would end with the dissolution of matter” (Kramrisch, 183).
26 Meanwhile, this inquiry by Plotinus regarding the breaking up of what is “self-gathered” could be spoken by Siva himself, the self-gathered one, the vengeful guardian of the wholeness of the Uncreate, and clearly comes from a shared theology:
from such a unity as we have declared The One to be [compare: The Uncreate], how does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity? (Ennead 5.1.6)
27 “‘Whatever destroys any existing thing, movable or stationary, at any time, is . . . Rudra’ (VP.1.22.39). His power is deadly. Like a gourd from its stalk, he cuts off life or spares it (cf. RV.7.59.12). As Paśupati, he spared the life of animals. The archer has the power over life and death. He may avert or restrain his arrow. This is the grace by which he frees from death. He is the liberator” (Kramrisch, 83).
28 This understanding of Cronus/Saturn as Rudra also helps to explain the Hermetic conception of Saturn as expounded by esotericist Julius Evola:
“Saturn-Kronos is the king of the primordial age, who is asleep in the Hyperborean seat; according to some myths he was castrated at the beginning of a new cycle.[...] Moreover, in the Hermetic tradition Saturn-Kronos is the deceased who must be resuscitated; the royal art of the heroes consists in freeing lead from its ‘leprosy;' namely, from its imperfections and darkness, transforming it into gold, thus actualizing the Mystery of the Stone. Moreover, Kronos, gold, and ‘foundation stone’ are different references to the primordial regal tradition” (Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail, 98-99).
Rudra’s lingam, symbol of the high essence of the god, is a stone which contains in it paradoxically the negation and the potentiality of life, and which represents the force standing at the foundation of existence, and thus explains the meaning Evola ascribes to Saturn, the lead or stone which is the mystical origin point substance that must be turned into gold in Hermeticism.
“Saturn's Kingdom Transformed into the Golden Age. In Hermeticism the theme of a primordial state that needs to be reawakened takes the form of the production of gold through the transformation of Saturn's metal, lead, in which it is hidden. In a hieroglyphic drawn by Basil Valentine we can see crowned Saturn atop a complex symbol that represents the overall Hermetic Work. Beneath Saturn is the symbol of sulfur, which in turn contains the symbol of resurrection, the Phoenix. According to Philalethes, the wise find the missing element in Saturn's race, after adding the needed sulfur: here the key is provided by the double meaning of [...] both ‘sulfur’ and ‘divine.' Moreover, sulfur is often the equivalent of fire [compare Rudra being united on the primordial scene with Agni as Rudra-Agni, Odinn with Lodurr, and Efnysien with Manawydan], the active and vivifying principle of the Hermetic tradition. In the Hellenistic texts we find the theme of the sacred black stone, the power of which is stronger than any spell. This stone, in order to be truly regarded as ‘our Gold;' ‘namely Mithras [compare Cronus fathering the Mitraic god Zeus, who is also called the Soul by Platonists];' and to produce the ‘great Mithraic mystery;' must possess the right power or the ‘medicine of the right action’; this is just another way to express the mystery of awakening and of reintegration. What we have here is a further parallelism with the themes of the Grail: symbols of a primordial regality and of a stone that await a virile and divine power (sulfur = divine) in order to be manifested as ‘gold’ and as the ‘philosopher's stone’ endowed with the medicinal power to destroy every ‘illness' [consider Rudra as healer and bringer of illness]” (Evola, 153).
Evola speaks further of
[…] the divine or heavenly stone described in Hermetic texts: the latter has also been perceived as an elixir or as a principle that renews itself and bestows eternal life, health, and victory. When we read in a text by Kitab-el-Focul, ‘The stone speaks but you heed it not: it calls to you and you answer not! O you sleepers! What deafness stops your ears? What vise grips your hearts and minds?" […] When Zacharias wrote ‘Our body, which is our occult stone, cannot be known nor seen without inspiration ... without this body our science is vain’ […] according to one of its most recurrent themes, the Royal Art of the Hermetists is focused on a ‘stone’ that is often identified with Saturn; this stone contains the phoenix, the elixir, the gold, or ‘Our King’ at the latent state. Moreover, I also wish to recall that the ‘strange and terrible mystery that was transmitted to the disciples of king Hermes’ and to the ‘Heroes’ who try to find their way to the ‘earthly paradise’ through ‘fierce fighting:' consists in destroying that state of latency often referred to as ‘death’ or ‘disease’ or ‘impurity’ or ‘imperfection:' through operations of an initiatory character” (Evola, 154).
29 Credit for this connection to the work of Carla O’Harris.
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