The Celtic Creation Myth: Branwen, Matholwch, and Efnysien, or: Earth, Sky, and Rudra: Part 4 of 4

 The Celtic Creation Myth: Branwen, Matholwch, and Efnysien, or: Earth, Sky, and Rudra

 Part 4 of 4

< Part 3

Ymir and the Norse “Father Sky”

Armed with this understanding, we broach a more controversial issue. If Father Sky rapes, or abuses and impregnates, Mother Earth, and then is violently separated from her in the primordial scene in all these other branches, why does this myth of the violation of Mother Earth by Father Sky not seem to appear in the Norse creation, or in Norse myth anywhere? This moment is so charged and indeed so important mythically that it leads to the creation of the life of the cosmos and it is not even absent in the Welsh and Irish traditions, though buried deep in coded narratives that have not been fully understood. In these other branches, Mother Earth and Father Sky always are depicted as consorts of one another, there is usually some violence done to Mother Earth, the divine seed or child is produced, and Mother Earth and Father Sky are always violently separated, whether Father Sky is killed in a war as in the Celtic version or simply castrated or struck with an arrow in the Greek and Vedic cases respectively.

Having seen Odinn clearly in his role as parallel of Cronus/Efnysien/Rudra and understanding the metaphysical significance of this primordial scene a bit better, an answer to the question of what has happened to the Norse myth of the division of Mother Earth and Father Sky makes itself apparent. Odinn is indeed the god who violently divides Earth and Sky in the primordial moment, but this conjunction of Earth and Sky is given the name Ymir. This fact is very plain in the mythic sources: Ymir is divided up by Odinn and his two brothers (or aspects of him) and his skull and brains are made into the sky and clouds, while his body becomes the earth, neither of which had been in existence before this event.

Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the earth,

And the mountains were made of his bones;

The sky from the frost cold giant’s skull,

And the ocean out of his blood. (Vafthrudnismal, 21)

Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the earth,

And the ocean out of his blood;

Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees,

Of his skull the heavens high.

Mithgarth the gods from his eyebrows made,

And set for the sons of men;

And out of his brain the baleful clouds

They made to move on high. (Grimnismal, 40-41)

The sons of Borr [Odinn, Villi and Ve] slew Ymir the giant (Gylfaginning, VII).

They took Ymir and bore him into the middle of the Yawning Void, and made of him the earth: of his blood the sea and the waters; the land was made of his flesh, and the crags of his bones; gravel and stones they fashioned from his teeth and his grinders and from those bones that were broken.’ And Jafnhárr said: ‘Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it.’ Then said Thridi: ‘They took his skull also, and made of it the heaven, and set it up over the earth with four corners.’ (Gylfaginning VIII)

In no other Norse myth, besides that of Ymir, is Earth divided from Sky. As Kramrisch explains with regard to the primordial Vedic scene, the “daughter” with whom Dyaus is locked in violent conjunction is in fact a hypostasis existing within himself who is the primordial being. We repeat the relevant quotations we have noted previously:

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. (Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva, 59)

The daughter with whom the Father cohabits is a hypostasis of the Father himself. She was one with him before he knew her. (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)

As such the primordial scene has the character of a yin-yang: two natures locked in embrace, though in another sense they are only one being at this moment. The one who divides this embrace is as-though the line curving across the yin-yang, cutting it in two. Mythically this can be narrated as Sky, as the male progenitor deity, raping Earth and emitting the seed of the first life into the realm of existence, or it can be narrated as the one hermaphroditic primordial being reproducing out of itself. These are indeed the same thing metaphysically speaking. This is why in the Vedic case we can have Dyaus (Sky) raping his daughter who is a hypostasis within himself, but in Greek we have Ouranos (Sky) raping his mother. It makes no difference which is parent and which is child: in the true meaning of the myth, these beings are locked together as one, and one can be seen as the hypostasis of the other depending on which is given priority in the narrative. When they are finally separated it is as if each is born from the other as the distinct Sky and Earth.

Kramrisch, based on her reading of the Vedic texts, explains the daughter who is raped by Dyaus as really a hypostasis within himself, which implies that the version of the myth in which the primordial union of earth and sky is seen only as a single, hermaphroditic being, could in some sense have a claim to greater metaphysical truth than the version where Sky rapes a goddess who is nominally separate from him. Indeed, the Phrygian form of the myth that we have noted previously also tells of a primordial hermaphrodite, Agdistis, who is castrated like Greek Father Sky, Ouranos, leaving “her” with only the Earth Mother nature thereafter, and whose son Attis is then also castrated like Ouranos’ son Cronus. The “primordial hermaphrodite” form of the myth can be said to be more “philosophical” in terms of representing the full metaphysical unity of the two divine natures, and it can also be said to be, in terms of sensibility, the more conservative, less sexually shocking form of the myth. No incestuous rape has to be spoken of in this narrative form. However, the line between the two narrative forms is very fine, and we can see that the meaning is the same in either case, both forms portraying the same metaphysical reality faithfully with only slightly different emphasis in each case. Ymir produces the first couple from out of the sweat of his armpit or legs, depending on the account, which is then the equivalent of the violent rape depicted in the other branches: the metaphysical “rape” happens only within Ymir, in the procreative combustion between his internal male and female natures that leads to the emergence of life from his armpit and/or from his legs.

In Vedic and Greek myth, a defining feature that identifies “Father Sky” is that he is in fact the Sky itself and not only a lord of the sky. Based on the Vedic and Greek branches, the clearest instances we have of the primordial scene, it might be fair to say that a god cannot be the primordial Indo-European “Father Sky” without being the object we call the sky. This was one reason we sought, in a previous investigation, to see if the Irish Father Sky, the Dagda, had the myths of a second deity beyond those of Father Sky alone, as if this second deity were his more active aspect, and we ultimately identified this active aspect with the Wind God. In the primordial Norse scene, there is no question who and what the sky itself is: it is the skull and brains of Ymir. Ymir himself, the controlling, “head” part of Ymir, is the sky. He is also the earth, but as this is the female hypostasis of himself in our reading, his sky nature being the male, procreative nature, the earth gains another name upon separation, becoming the domain of the goddess Jord, “Earth.” Indeed, in no branch does the Indo-European Father Sky himself ever divide Earth from Sky from a position outside of Earth+Sky in the primordial scene, and something similar to this could only be narrated if he was dividing himself in two or castrating himself, as does occur, though by the instigation of an exterior trickster (Dionysus), with the Phrygian hermaphrodite Agdistis. Siva, who in later Shaivite texts takes the role of both Rudra and Dyaus, and is both the Desire-afflicted, procreative Father and the violent attacker of Desire in one, also comes close to combining both roles in his version of the myth, but once again the Father Sky aspect is not outside of the primordial unity looking in. When a second deity is present to divide Earth from Sky, this is always, apparently, “Rudra,” who we know Odinn himself to be from numerous other parallels that we have examined previously. Cronus is the divider of Earth and Sky. Efnysien is the divider of Earth and Sky. Rudra is the divider of Earth and Sky. We see the same in Kalash myth: Mandi (Mahadeva, ie. Rudra) is the divider of Earth and Sky.30 Odinn is the divider of Earth and Sky. Ymir, and in particular his head, which is the location of his active principle, is that Sky itself, just as he is the procreative Father of the first life. Thus he is “Father Sky” (or what is left of Father Sky in Norse mythology), the great ancestor and primordial divine being who has emitted the first seed in conjunction with the feminine nature which in this case is within himself. It should be remembered that Ymir is never said to be definitely killed in the poetic sources when he is thus split in half. Only in Snorri’s account is he said thus to be killed, and this can be taken as a further ossification of a more and more distant divine conception. Meanwhile, the Celtic Father Skys, Welsh Matholwch and Irish Mac Greine, at least in the versions of the tales we have, are indeed killed, and so whether this primordial Sky being is said to be killed or not when divided from Earth is not the most important detail of the myth. The Rudraic God is the Divider. Father Sky is the Divided. This is fundamental and in the nature of these respective divinities. This is the archaic PIE theology of the Creation.

Along with being the sky itself, Dyaus and Ouranos each are notable for being a deus otiosus, a more or less idle god. They are important in the primordial scene and then recede into the background, having less and less of an active role in the lives of humans thereafter. After their initial progenitive outbursts, they are characterized by inertness and distance. This once again accurately describes Ymir, who, after his moment of dramatic procreation of the first beings, and after being divided into earth and sky, seems to become only an inert thing, a skull that is the sky far overhead, bones that are the rocks underfoot. He does not actively contribute much more to the lives of humans and the rulership of society from this point on, but is remembered in kennings for parts of the sky and earth, and his brains that are the clouds still bring rain, though now under the control of Odinn and the other gods. He is now a deus otiosus, an aspect of the rain-bringing process and not much more, a symbol or perhaps a kind of motor of celestial rain-fecundation, just like Dyaus and Ouranos. In addition, we must note that in the archaic layer found in the Mahabharata and Iliad heroes, the incarnation of Dyaus, Bhishma, and the incarnation of the Greek Father Sky (some of whose familial and other mythic associations have been attached to the Mitraic god Zeus despite Zeus not being the primordial sky), Sarpedon, both fight on the side of the indifferent, obstructive divinities, against the incarnations of the gods of society. That is, the primordial Indo-European Father Sky seems likely to have been depicted as reluctantly opposing or obstructing the gods of society in the great war of the gods. This aligns once again with Ymir, who is a member of the Jotunn race, a race that is an active obstacle and opponent in war to the main gods of society and their efforts to forge the disordered cosmos into social and ethical order. Though it may seem strange to our sensibilities, this oppositional alignment of the Indo-European Father Sky is what the myths of Matholwch, Ouranos, Sarpedon and Bhishma all suggest. He is closer in nature to what has not yet been brought into the social order by the gods of society. He is distant and relatively indifferent, though he lends his procreative energies to the world and does not ever actively wish harm to man or god, and in the epics he is reluctant to fight the incarnated gods of society and even dispenses wise discourses of dharma to them in the end as a divine model of kingship.

The etymology of Ymir’s name, which has been interpreted as deriving from a root meaning “Twin,” may indeed imply that he is the sort of double, hermaphroditic being that we have suggested. This has in fact been the conclusion of the scholars Rudolf Simek and Hilda Ella Davidson, among others.

Not only the myth recorded by Snorri but also the etymology reveal Ymir as a hermaphrodite being because the name is etymologically related to Sanskrit Yama, Avedic Yima (likewise mythical ancestors), Lat. geminus, Middle Irish gemuin ‘twin’ from the Indo-Germanic root *iemo- ‘twin, hermaphrodite’. Also → Tuisto who Tacitus names as being the ancestor of the Germanic tribes Ingvaones, Hermiones and Istvaones is revealed to be a hermaphrodite being according to the etymology, so that here too common concepts within Germanic cosmogony may be assumed. (Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, 377)

Ymir’s name has been related to Sanskrit yama, meaning ‘hybrid’ or ‘hermaphrodite’. According to Tacitus, the Germans had a primeval ancestor Tuisto, whose son Mannus was the father of mankind. Attempts have been made to connect Tuisto with Tiwaz, but it seems more likely that his name is connected with Old Swedish tvistra, ‘separate’, and that, like Ymir, it means a two-fold being. An explanation of such a name is given in Vafprudnismal, where we are told that a man and woman were born from under the arm of Ymir, and a giant engendered from his two feet. Another example of a primeval being from which the first male and female spring is found in Indian mythology. Ymir indeed is a two-fold being in another sense, since from him both giants and men are born. (Hilda Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, 199)

The Purusha

A Vedic concept that could form an objection to this analysis in the eyes of some is that of the Purusha. The Purusha appears first in the supposed least archaic of the Rig Vedic books (Book 10, hymn 90), and is conceived as the Cosmic Soul or Cosmic Man who is sacrificed and whose divided body forms the parts of the universe, the castes of humanity, and is the paradigm of the sacrifice. This giant “man” may be seen to have obvious similarities to the jotunn Ymir whose divided body serves similar cosmogenic ends, but the connection between the Norse Ymir and the Vedic Purusha is usually poorly understood. Some might claim that if Ymir is like to the Purusha, he cannot in fact be Father Sky, Dyaus. The foregoing discussion should prime us to understand the similarity of the conjunction of Sky+Earth, which is divided, to the single primordial being who is cut apart, but it can also be shown that the concept of the Purusha is either directly derived from, or was a parallel concept meaning essentially the same as, the Rig Vedic Dyaus.

The progression follows thusly: Dyaus rapes his “daughter” in the version told in the Rig Veda and is divided from her by an arrow shot, dropping the primordial seed onto the earth. In later texts such as the Brahmanas, as Kramrisch painstakingly shows, the Father of this myth is renamed “Prajapati,” the title for a Creator God, while the narrative remains essentially the same. This is not Savitr-Prajapati, or Soma-Prajapati, although those had been the named Prajapatis of the archaic part of the Rig Veda. We can see, instead, that the Brahmanas are narrating the same myth as the Dyaus myth from the Rig Veda, but under the name of Prajapati. As such, either Dyaus was originally seen as also being a third Prajapati alongside Savitr and Soma, or he has taken over the title in the Brahmanas due to his role as a prime generator of life.

Now, Prajapati is said repeatedly to be the sacrifice itself. “Prajapati is the sacrifice” is the refrain (Satapatha Brahmana 1.7.4.4; cf. 3.2.2.4; 5.1.1.2; 5.2.1.2; 11.1.1.1; Taittiriya Samhita 2.6.8-4). However, when the concept of the Purusha appears in the 10th and least archaic book of the Rig Veda (and even then many scholars have taken it to be a later addition to the text), this Purusha too is said to be the sacrifice. As Brereton and Jamison explain: “The púruṣa here serves as a symbol of the sacrifice itself, which especially in the middle Vedic tradition is a locus of creative power. The púruṣa is thus similar to the later divine figure Prajāpati, who in the Brāhmaṇas personifies the sacrifice” (Brereton and Jamison, Rig Veda, 1538). Prajapati is the sacrifice because he is the primordial creator who is violently divided from the hypostasis within himself, dividing the celestial and the earthly natures, creating heaven and earth, and whose seed creates the fiery site of the sacrifice and generates the ancestors of the first humans among other beings. Purusha is the sacrifice because he is the Cosmic “Self” who is cut apart to create the cosmos and whose division is the model of the division of the social castes among humans. These are essentially the same being described from different angles. Prajapati is this being seen in his Procreative Father aspect. Purusha is this being seen as a Cosmic Soul in which all things subsist and originate. For this reason, Purusha is sometimes said to sacrifice himself, combining the Rudra and Dyaus roles in one. As he is the Cosmic Soul, there is no one beside him. Both Prajapati and Purusha can be said to be the sacrifice itself because they are essentially one and the same, although the concept of the Purusha evidences a development toward a more abstracted, philosophical idea of the primordial being as a perhaps more totalizing entity. Yet we see from the case of Norse Ymir that the idea of a single giant being who is divided apart in the primordial scene was not only a late Vedic development, but that it may have been a form of the primordial myth that existed in parallel to the form “Dyaus who rapes his daughter,” while describing the same scene in different terms. It is once again a question of what aspect of the primordial scene is emphasized, what angle is privileged, whether this or that philosophical dimension is brought to the fore and elaborated. The Purusha, then, is a concept drawn directly from, or running parallel to, the Vedic Dyaus, but made into a narrower abstraction gradually divorced from its original divine personality, while also being expanded to emphasize its metaphysical universality, its status as the Soul of the whole cosmos, and its role as model of the sacrifice, a role once again first enacted by the Dyaus of the Rig Veda.31

In its character of soul of the cosmos, Kramrisch can say that, in fact, according to one major tradition, it is Rudra-Siva who is the Purusha: “Siva, who is the absolute reality, ‘the imperishable Purusa” ([Linga Purana] 1.20.70)” (Kramrisch, 366). “As Purusa or Cosmic Man, the god is born at a sacrificial session and out of a golden bowl held by Prajapati” (Kramrisch, 235; KB 6.2). She repeats that Rudra is the Purusha many times over, as for instance in the sections “The Golden Bowl,” “The Memory of the Initial Evil,” “Rudra Issues From the Head of Brahma,” “The Meaning of the Linga,” “The Linga and the Face of Siva,” and “The Severed Head: The Cause of its Fall,” among others. Like Dyaus, Ymir is only one subdivision or dimension of the total Cosmic Being or Purusha. Ymir does not take in himself all things, for Odinn, Audhumbla, and other things are outsides of him. He then cannot be the Purusha alone, the soul of the whole cosmos, although he is a primary component of it. We have to draw a circle around the Prajapatis and Rudra, or around Ymir and Odinn and Audhumbla, to begin to reach the full concept of the Purusha. Thus Dyaus/Ymir both are Purusha and are not the totality of Purusha. 

When Purusha (which is the equivalent of the Cosmic Egg) is split apart, this is the same metaphysical event as the splitting of Sky and Earth, as the two Prajapatis of lunar and solar light (Soma and Savitr) and the Male/Celestial and Female/Earthly natures are separated in this event. We see that the splitting of the Cosmic Egg is indeed the same event as the dividing of Earth and Sky in the Orphic fragments, where we read that there was “[…] generated a huge egg, which, being filled full, by the force of its engenderer was broken in two from friction. Its crown became Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven), and what had sunk downwards, Gaia (Gaea, Earth). There also came forth an incorporeal god [Protogonos-Phanes, the cosmic Light]” (Orphica, Theogonies Fragment 57). This is plainly the splitting of Earth and Sky, Gaia and Ouranos, which event happens only once. It is a more philosophical presentation of the myth of Cronus dividing Ouranos from Gaia. Furthermore, while it is the division of the Purusha that creates the three castes in the Purusha hymn, we have noted previously that it is Prajapati’s role to create the castes in the Brahmanas (SB 2, 1, 4, 11.), and it is Math (who is Savitr-Prajapati) who creates the three lineages of deer, wolf, and swine in the Mabinogi, which may likewise symbolize the three castes of priest-sovereign, warrior, and producer.

Rudra, as the Intelligence or Soul of the total Cosmic Being can then be argued, as does the tradition Kramrisch cites, to be the true essence of the Purusha which has the several main components we have described. Plotinus says this same thing in different words, describing the total pre-cosmic scene which in Vedic terms is Rudra-Shiva + the Three Prajapatis (Soma, Savitr, Dyaus), this being the total Purusha or Primal Being, the Yin Yang with line through it, or the Cosmic Egg with serpent around it:

Thus we find that the Intellectual-Principle [Cronus], the Intellectual Realm and Real Being constitute one thing, which is the Primal Being [see: Purusha]; the primal Intellectual-Principle is that which contains the realities or, rather, which is identical with them. (Plotinus, Ennead 5.3.5)

The argument over which god is the core essence of the Purusha indeed came to the forefront in the later metaphysical and sectarian speculations. However, we see that there is no giant Purusha who is divided up but who is distinct from Dyaus himself, Dyaus being the Celestial Progenitor component of the Purusha who is united with his own female aspect in the pre-cosmic moment and divided from her during the division of the Purusha. There is no way, then, that Ymir can be the whole Purusha in a simple fashion. He can only be connected to the Purusha in the same manner that Dyaus is connected to the Purusha, as a primary part of its greater totality.

There is also a popular Proto-Indo-European myth reconstruction which equates Ymir with Yama, the God of Dead (based largely on possible linguistic similarities as evidenced by Simek’s comment above), who in the Vedic myth is the first or one of the first kings and first mortal man to die on earth, and who himself or whose parallel iterations or incarnations may be cut apart or have their heads severed, as we have discussed in previous investigations. Yama gains his lordship of the realm of the dead as a result of his death. However, not only does Norse Ymir not die on earth whatsoever, as Yama does, considering that earth is said not to exist until it is divided and created out of Ymir’s own body, but our foregoing analyses allow us to draw a much clearer line from Yama instead to the Norse jotunn Mimir, whose head is severed from his body, in a similar but distinct fashion to Ymir. Thus Mimir’s decapitation does echo the dismemberment of Ymir and we can see how a Mimir parallel could be confused for a parallel of Ymir, especially considering possibly overlapping, echoing etymologies. In a sense, as the first king of the world who is mortal and dies, Yama is indeed a re-instantiation of the cosmic being that was Dyaus/Purusha, and this is what allows human kings, who follow his archetype, to be themselves a bridge to the divine. As Bran, the Welsh Yama, says in his myth when he enters Matholwch’s land just before battling him, and as he makes his own body into a bridge spanning a lofty ridge over a rushing river: “he who will be chief, let him be a bridge. I will be so”32 (Branwen, daughter of Llyr). He is thus the model of the worldly king, just as Yama, the bridge to the celestial land of Matholwch. Just after the rape-creation myth is recited in the Rig Vedic hymn, the earthly king is lauded by the poet, and this should be taken as a direct parallel of Bran’s act: “This king praised here has been extolled as a ritual adept, and as inspired poet he crosses the waters, creating his own bridge” (RV 10.61.16). In the Welsh myth, Father Sky Matholwch abuses Mother Earth Branwen, they have their child, the child is thrown into the fire, there is a battle which kills Matholwch and so ends his marriage to Branwen, and then Bran is decapitated. All of the events that parallel the dividing of Earth and Sky precede the decapitation of the giant Bran, aka Yama, then, at least in this branch (in the Irish case, however, Bran’s parallel Eber Donn dies before the battle that kills Father Sky). The separation of Earth and Sky is itself divided in time from the separation of Bran’s head from his body by a battle. As such, Bran’s decapitation is indeed a sequel to and repetition of the more primordial division of Earth and Sky, but it is not the same event nor does it come first. In like manner, the decapitation of the jotunn Mimir, though it echoes the cutting of Ymir’s head from his body, occurs in a later age from the dividing of Ymir, after the first war in the world. Based on the strong parallels that have been gathered between Yama and Bran/Donn/Mimir, the idea that Yama is Ymir should therefore be discarded. Yama is not the primordial being in any attestation, and is only projected backward as a primordial being via faulty comparative reconstructions and the sway of close linguistic estimations, which may then be interpreted to mean something they do not in fact mean. Yama is instead a repetition within the now-created World of the primordial being who is Dyaus/Purusha. Any etymological problems with the supposed linguistic connection of Yama to Ymir do not even need to be gone into when the mythic concepts are understood accurately.

If Ymir is then the Norse instantiation of the deity known to the Vedics as Dyaus, then no other deity can strictly speaking be the Norse “Father Sky” in the same sense that Dyaus is. Neither Odinn nor Tyr are the sky itself, nor are they divided from the earth after a procreative outburst in the primordial scene. They are each other than this primordial being that is Earth+Sky, in some sense, for in the Norse myth the Divider is not one with the Divided although they do inhabit one ontological space together somehow. However, the most common confusion that arises around this topic is regarding the colloquial title “Sky Father.” The loosely applied term “The Sky Father” may not mean precisely “Dyaus” or “Father Sky,” the name of a specific divinity within Indo-European myth. Odinn, however, is indeed the inheritor of Ymir’s domain (the sky), acting as the great king of the sky in his “Varuna” aspect. The sun and moon are his eyes, as is said also of Varuna. It is evidently in this Varunian aspect that he is consort of the now distinct Earth goddess, Jord, just as the incarnation of the Vedic Varuna, Pandu, is consort of the incarnation of the Vedic Earth Goddess, Pritha-Kunti. From the pairing of Odinn and Jord is produced Thor, while Arjuna, incarnation of Indra, is produced from the pairing of Pandu and Pritha-Kunti, and this is the parallel we should look to with regard to the coupling of Odinn and Jord. For no violence nor separation occurs in the relationship of Odinn and Jord, as their coupling does not take place in the primordial scene. Varuna himself, however, is a bringer of rains from the clouds and the celestial ocean above, he is a fecundator and a bull who rains down upon Earth, and he is both a father and a First Sovereign of the skies in the chronology of the cycle. This Varunian role would well explain the relationship of Odinn to Jord (Earth), which is the relationship of the rain-bringing sovereign to the earth within the cycle of unfolding time rather than in the primordial moment.

Two other branches in addition to the Norse also favor the Varunian god as the great “Sky Father” above others: early Rig Vedic (Varuna), Avestan (Ahura Mazda). And thus the Varunian god as the Sky Sovereign or “Sky Father” should not seem in any sense to be out of sync with the larger Indo-European pattern, but is equally common compared to other possibilities. Meanwhile, the Celtic branches place the Mitraic (Lugh/Lleu) and the Varunian (Nuada/Lludd/Nodens) sky sovereigns on relatively equal footing, though they appear to lean toward a preference for the Mitraic sovereign. The Roman does similarly (the Varunian Jupiter Summanus and Mitraic Jupiter) and the Greek branch seems to favor a Mitraic god in Zeus who has absorbed or swallowed the roles of several other deities, possibly even certain Varunian roles. We will look at the theology of this “swallowing” below. If we accept Ymir as the Norse Father Sky, then Norse myth has essentially every piece of the Indo-European Creation Myth as seen in other branches; if not, then the Norse Creation Myth is a curious outlier from essentially all other branches, except perhaps late Iranic, featuring a procreative giant who becomes the sky but somehow is not the Father who is the Sky.

The Greeks, as we have discussed in our analysis of Math-Savitr→Lleu and Phanes→Zeus, had a clear theological concept, as recorded in the Orphic sources (Orphic Fragments 129, &c.), that the King of the Gods, Zeus, absorbed the powers and roles of his predecessors, “swallowing” and becoming them for the present age, until he was considered to be the All and the One within the world. They applied this theology to Zeus, and as such Zeus fathers the Fire God, the Horse Twins, and possibly the incarnation of the Dawn Goddess Helen, children or descendants who attach to Dyaus in Vedic myth, even though mythically Zeus falls much more in line with the Mitraic god-type. It is possible that in Norse myth Odinn and Tyr could once have shared dominion of the sky, as the duality of Vedic Mitra-Varuna might suggest, sovereign of Night sky and Day sky respectively, of the Night of the cycle and the Day of the cycle in succession. This is not necessary to assume considering the relative prominence of the Varunian sky sovereign in other branches, however. The Celtic case is the best example of the paired Varunian and Mitraic sovereigns placed on relatively equal footing. If Tyr and Odinn were ever closer to equals, then Tyr’s role as such has certainly been obscured in existing sources, leaving the full dominion of the sky seemingly to Odinn alone.

In this sense Odinn would be an Indo-European Sky Father, a true inheritor of the domain that Ymir is, that primordial Father who is the Sky. As “Rudra,” Odinn furthermore transcends above and beyond both Varuna and Mitra, and even above Dyaus in some sense, for he, as the Greeks knew of Cronus, is the great Pure Intellect that cuts through Sky and Earth and, as god of Fire, a role we have previously supported, he is also the heat that burns within Ymir and prepares the procreative seed. He is the god who manifests and re-manifests again and again under names and masks that cannot be counted. He is the wily and policing hunter in the pre-cosmic wilderness who forges existence out of what otherwise would be mere undifferentiated substance, mere Uncreate. Though he himself is not the first sacrifice, he is the first sacrificer and, like Rudra-Vāstoṣpati, the “house” that is the cosmos is his domain.

Thus seeing Zeus and Odinn as direct equivalents is a serious error in terms of their mythic essences, while theologically they are in somewhat comparable positions within their traditions. The one crucial thing that could speculatively harmonize these two contrasting Sky Sovereigns is the idea that we have suggested previously: that the Norse Lord of the Endtimes who appears cryptically in the Voluspa is in fact Tyr, the Mitraic God, who parallels Zeus in his Mitraic essence. Because we have seen some fragment of the idea that the Mitraic god absorbs the roles of his predecessors in Greek tradition (Zeus), in the Rig Veda (Savitr becoming Mitra) and in the Welsh myths (Math teaching Lleu and passing roles of justice, light, and rulership, as well as inheritance, to him), we can then say that such a concept of the Mitraic sovereign absorbing roles of predecessors, in some form, was likely to be PIE. The main question would be whether the Greeks took this concept further than the original theology implied, further than the other branches did, or not. We then are bound by logical necessity to ask whether the Norse Lord of the Endtimes, who must be Mitraic and thus some form or incarnation of Tyr as we have shown, will, in the final stage when he appears, have absorbed or combined with his predecessor(s), namely Odinn. If the Lord of the Endtimes follows the pattern of the Greek theology, which shows traces in the other branches as well, he could be a re-manifestation of Tyr-Odinn as the absolute final sovereign, or he could be a Tyr who has absorbed and carried on the Odinnic essence (Odinn being his true father, conceived as he is with Gunnlod, as we have shown) in some sense for this final phase. This conception would also parallel the composite duad Mitra-Varuna often found in the Vedas. If this were so, it is this Lord of the Endtimes who could accurately parallel the Greek conception of Zeus, who himself is the late-coming Mitraic sovereign of justice and light who has become the all-in-all sovereign after the reign of Cronus. This would imply that Greek tradition, in Zeus, has merely focused its devotion on the final, Mitraic sovereign, the sovereign of the “day” half of the cycle and of the endtimes, while the Norse, in Odinn, has focused on a penultimate, Varuna-Rudra sovereign, who yet is pointing toward the one who will come after him, the Mitraic Lord of the Endtimes. We repeat that this line of thinking is speculative, but appears to us the only harmonization of the Greek and Norse sovereigns possible.

In this connection, the full chain of development of the Mitraic divine principle clarifies itself as well. Zeus (who is Mitra) is the Soul to the Platonists, just as we have described Lleu-Mitra-Menelaus as the archetypal Soul in his esoteric process from birth to rebirth to immortalization in our analysis of the Iliad. A chain of names known from Mithraic inscriptions34 as Zeus-Helios-Mithras-Phanes then describes the exact process we have traced of Savitr/Phanes, the light-bringing sun at night and during sunrise, “becoming” Mitra, that is, Zeus, and this Mitraic god, the archetype of the Soul, finally overcoming and merging with the Sun, Helios, in the final achievement of immortality, at the end of the cycle or day. This is why both Jupiter and Mithra could be identified with the Unconquerable Sun, Sol Invictus, for they are one and the same. The details of the Mithraic theme are expanded upon in our discussion of the Mitraic Path of Immortality.

Furthermore, the understanding of Cronus as the Primordial Rudra vindicates the Greek theogony from many claims of foreign influence, whether Near Eastern or otherwise, and instead clarifies the Indo-European core of the sequence of sovereigns from Ouranos, to Cronus, to Zeus. Degrees of influence on this element or that are still likely to spark intense debate, but the succession myth is paralleled in its details and its meanings in essentially all of the Indo-European branches that we have examined. Only from the perspective of seeing Cronus as Rudra can this clarification and harmonization be firmly established and only from this perspective can the underlying theology be accurately understood.

The Celtic tradition thus has essentially every element of the creation myths found in the Norse, Greek, and Vedic mythologies, with only a couple of items possibly missing. These could be enumerated as the Norse Cosmic Cow, Audhumbla, and the Norse Yawning Gap, Ginnungagap. It is possible the Cosmic Cow could have an analogy to some coded symbol or other in the Celtic myths that we have not examined, or perhaps some resonance with the Cauldron of Regeneration of Bran and Matholwch, which we may presume to be a container of a divine liquid. The Cow might also parallel the god or goddess of sacred liquid, Arawn (Soma) or goddess Cerridwen (Saraswati-Vac). Arawn appears in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, one tale before the Creation Myth of Branwen, daughter of Llyr within the Mabinogi myth cycle. Arawn is Soma/Dionysus/Midir, and this god also appears in Irish mythology as the cow of wondrous milk, the Glas Gaibhneann. The Glas Gaibhneann most directly parallels Kvasir, another Norse Soma analogue, in its mythical placement, but the lord of sacred liquid appearing as a cosmic cow does point to a possible connecting line also to Audhumbla here. In the Rig Veda, certain hymns are simply dedicated to the “Cows,” and these divine cows appear here and there in other hymns throughout the Veda as well. These Cows evidently inhabit the upper regions of the cosmos and their milk is the divine substance which humanity asks of the gods. Their milk could perhaps be seen to flow in the Milky Way, called by the Irish the Bealach/Bóthar na Bó Finne, the Way/Road of the White Cow, and its patron goddess, the embodiment of the waters of the sacred river, is Irish Boann/Bo Finne, the White Cow, or Welsh Cerridwen, keeper of the cauldron of Inspiration. In the Iranic creation myth, the soul of the Cosmic Cow Gavaevodata, who accompanies the Cosmic Man Gayomard, is said to go to be housed in the region of the Moon, and this cow is repeatedly associated with the moon. Arawn/Midir/Soma, being the lord of the sacred liquid of the moon, would thus be the lord who oversees and overlaps with the soul of this Iranic Cosmic Cow who might be connected somehow to the cow-named goddess of the sacred river and the Milky Way.

It is clear that all these gods and symbols of the heavenly sacred liquid run together and overlap, and lead again to the cauldron and the seed of Father Sky. For, as Kramrisch explains, the seed of Dyaus is also the sacred soma liquid, the divine substance of the Uncreate or of the Divine Realm, the milk of the moon or of the celestial river that is the Milky Way, which, being first placed within him, is being spent into the realm of Creation by Dyaus’ outburst. Dyaus’ ejaculation forms a great lake of fiery semen, which is both the site of the sacrifice and the cause of much trouble to the gods and priests thereafter, as the Cauldron of Regeneration also causes trouble to Bran and Efnysien, and these objects seem to align at several points. Ymir feeds on the milk of the cow Audhumbla when he generates the first beings from his body, and thus it is the cow that seemingly provides the fuel for this creation of life, with her sacred liquid. Similarly, Rudra-Agni prepares the seed for Dyaus and places it within him, this seed being a sort of fiery soma, inflames his passion, and then avenges the procreative outburst that follows, setting things right by reestablishing order and a mystic yogic pathway back to the divine as the newly made Master of Animals. Precisely so, Efnysien causes the cauldron to be given to Matholwch (the divine seed-liquid prepared for Dyaus by Rudra-Agni or the milk of Audhumbla that Ymir drinks) when he inflames the tensions between Matholwch and Branwen by mutilating the horses of Matholwch, leading directly to Branwen’s abuse (the inflaming of Dyaus’ passion leading directly to his rape of his daughter). Efnysien then remorsefully avenges what he himself has set in motion, lamenting especially the fact that the cauldron has fallen into Matholwch’s hands, and a war is fought against Matholwch during which Matholwch is killed and the cauldron is destroyed by Efnysien’s sacrifice (as Rudra avenges the procreative outburst he himself has prepared, given to Dyaus, and inflamed, when he fires his arrow at Dyaus and separates him from his daughter, at the same moment as the fall of the seed to earth and the creation of the lake of fire-seed). The edge of this lake of fire-seed would also be the likely analogue of the ocean beach where the first humans, Askr and Embla, are said to be found by the gods in Snorri’s account in Gylfaginning, for the lake of fire-seed creates the ancestors of the first humans in the Vedic case.

No clear Ginnungagap yet appears to us, but the Celtic myths are set in the unassuming form of medieval romances, and such cosmic void space should not necessarily be expected of them when working with such a seemingly mundane setting. Still, the mysterious man and woman who are said to be the original owners of the cauldron and who are almost burned alive in a house along with it at the beginning of the tale of Branwen, before the cauldron is given to Bran and then to Matholwch, may represent, once again in symbolic code, a similar cosmic moment: the meeting of the heavenly liquid and the flame in the void-time before the conjunction of Earth and Sky. This event could also simply show the preparation of the seed of the father by fire, before it is given to him. The man who first owns the cauldron is said to be “yellow-haired.” Arawn is the Soma God who keeps the cauldron of Annwn in his otherworld realm. Midir, his Irish parallel, is said to be yellow-haired with blue eyes in The Wooing of Etain, and also keeps a cauldron that is stolen by Cuchulainn as Arawn’s cauldron is also sought by adventurers like Arthur. Thus this first owner of the Cauldron of Regeneration could be Arawn, Welsh Soma God, which might be the most logical supposition to begin with, although it should be noted that this man is also said to be “of horrid aspect.” We should remember, however, that Arawn is the Lord of the Otherworld/Underworld, and that he might age and grow young again as does his parallel Chyavana or the moon itself, and so he may indeed have a frightening aspect at times. His wife is twice his size, which, though we can only speculate, could refer to the larger, dangerous, golden-yellow moon we have previously noted, or it could perhaps refer to the darkness covering the crescent moon which is larger than the crescent itself. He and his wife, along with the cauldron, are said to have escaped an “iron house” around which coals were heaped and fire ignited. This could simply be a description of the purifying of the analogue of the soma liquid, paralleling myths such as the burning of Gullveig or Fuamnach, wife of Midir, that we have previously analyzed. As such, it would be a depiction of the preparation of the analogue of the soma liquid before it is given to Father Sky, Matholwch, to be used in the creation event. This preparation of the sacred liquid in the time before Creation is, however, nearly the same thing as the fire and ice of Ginnungagap colliding and forming the creative liquid that becomes the procreative giant Ymir and the Cosmic Cow that provides the giant’s vital force with its milk.

The Celtic Creation myth is heavily coded and its symbols remain a challenge to read. However, the egg has now been cracked and the secrets begin to issue out into the world again. Never again will it be permitted to say that the Celts do not have a creation myth in every essential aspect as complete and as theologically deep as those of the other Indo-European branches. The Welsh Mabinogi, in particular, encode a version of the Indo-European Creation Myth on par with venerated esoteric traditions such as the Orphic, and even preserve details that can fill gaps in the Creation myths of other branches.

The Three Prajapatis and the Festival Calendar

We are thus left with three “Prajapatis,” or cosmic progenitors, to borrow the Vedic term. These are Soma and Savitr (the “Prajapatis” so titled in the more archaic portions of the Rig Veda), and Dyaus, who takes on or even takes over the title of Prajapati in the texts of the Brahmanas. We can see that Dyaus does indeed share traits with these other Prajapatis and can fairly be titled as a Prajapati for his central role in the procreation of the life of the cosmos. As an analogy is thus drawn between Dyaus, Savitr and Soma, an analogy is also drawn between Matholwch (Dyaus) and Math (Savitr) in the Welsh cycle, as can be seen in the closeness of their names and in repeated themes shared between their myths. These three Prajapatis are thus the lord of the light and liquid of the moon (Soma), Father Sky (Dyaus), and the lord of the light of the sun at night and upon sunrise (Savitr). In Welsh terms, these are Arawn, Matholwch, and Math fab Mathonwy. The cosmogenic events that these three gods preside over are the advent of the light and sacred liquid of the moon, the advent of the life of the cosmos via the spending of this sacred liquid into the world, and the advent of the light of the sun which brings the full blooming of the life of the world.

These myths are thus laid out in perfect chronological sequence in the Four Mabinogi, a fact which has never been understood. The First Mabinogi begins with Arawn (Soma), the First Prajapati, already having married his bride, and he is thus the presiding god of this earliest part of the mythic cycle. The Second Mabinogi tells of Matholwch (Dyaus), the Second Prajapati, who begets Gwern, the divine seed of new life, and whose tale has just been told. The Third Mabinogi finishes the tale which had been begun in the First Branch, when the Fire God Manawydan (Agni) heals the wasteland and symbolically cleanses the site of sacrifice of the evil influence of a hostile sorcerer, so acting as the sacred flame itself via his actions. This flame which he is allows the sun to rise, which is what the Fourth Branch then depicts, with the third Prajapati, Math (Savitr), rising from his rest on the lap of the violated goddess Night and impelling the life of the Day and of the Day-half of the cycle (Summer) which now follows. It has always been a mystery why the First and Third branches, which tell two halves of one tale, were interrupted by the Second Branch, which is a different tale altogether. But with this understanding of the myths in hand, we can see that, due to this sequence and due to the insertion of the Second Branch between the First and Third, the branches are in the perfect chronological order.

When we map the Four Branches to the calendrical events they appear to correspond to, the great perfection of their order becomes clear. As Greek Anthesteria, during which was reenacted the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne, the Greek parallel of the marriage of Arawn (Soma) and his wife, likely occurred at the full moon around what we would call January, roughly speaking, we can surmise that the First Branch of the Mabinogi, when this marriage of Arawn has already taken place and the Gandharva (Pwyll) comes on the scene, must occur sometime around mid January or just after. The events of the wooing of Pwyll’s wife, which fill the rest of this First Branch, would then likely correspond to the following full moon, around Valentine’s Day or the Roman Lupercalia of mid-February, which Dumezil indeed believed to be a festival related to the Roman analogues of the Gandharvas: “Luperci, in a ritual practiced at the end of every year, centaurs, in fabulous narrative, and Gandharva, in legends in which we glimpse a ritual (year-end) reality, all display the same fundamental features” (Dumezil, Mitra-Varuna, 29-30). Next, the Second Branch, as we have stated, corresponds to the cosmic creation set in motion by the conjunction of Sky and Earth, of Matholwch, who is the Second Prajapati, and Branwen. This marks the beginning of Spring in the still raw “Dawn” period of the cycle. The Third Branch, whose central figure is Manawydan, the God of Fire who heals the wasteland by acting as the sacred ritual fire and cleanses the site of sacrifice in particular, would correspond to the events leading to the great fire of Beltane. The Fourth Branch would correspond to the events set in motion around the time of the Celtic festival of Beltane or thereafter, the fire which Manawydan is giving rise to the rising sun that is Math fab Mathonwy, the Third Prajapati. This event at last sets the Summer and the Day of the cycle fully in motion, and the full mythic sequence of Creation is completed in its proper order, just as the Mabinogi cycle lays it out.

These Three Prajapatis might be seen to correspond in Greek terms to both Phanes and Ouranos: Phanes, who is also called Protogonos (a title which has been linguistically and mythically compared to Prajapati: see Kate Alsobrook, “The Beginning of Time: Vedic and Orphic Theogonies and Poetics”) is called “two-natured.” We have also previously shown Phanes to have several alignments with Math-Savitr, who himself is an archaic Prajapati of the Veda. However, Phanes is also called Phanes-Dionysus (Greek Dionysus being Vedic Soma/Welsh Arawn), which becomes an important part of Dionysus’ myth and cult. This direct connection of Dionysus to the original light-seed of creation is one of the reasons that his cult brought with it the potential for experiences of ecstatic unity with existence and a mystic path to a more favorable afterlife. Thus, as Phanes is the light-seed of creation, we may imagine that he splits into his “two natures” as Soma/Dionysus/Arawn and Savitr/Phanes/Math, the deities of the lunar and solar lights, respectively, as these lights arise in their first forms in the Night of the cycle. Phanes, then, is Prajapati in terms of the light that sparks creation, helping to mature and purify the sacred liquid in the moon in the dead early Night of the brand new cycle, which becomes the seed of the Second Prajapati, Dyaus/Matholwch/Ouranos, and then he is Prajapati again in terms of the god of the solar light that rises as the sunrise. In either case, this Phanes is the seed of light resting on the bosom of Night which divides into lunar and solar and triggers the creation of life in the new cosmos. This also explains why the Great Lunar Cycle precedes the Creation: the sacred liquid must first be matured and purified before being given to Dyaus as his seed, and we can see this process play out in Phanes-Dionysus-Arawn passing to Ouranos-Matholwch. This Phanes is Prajapati, the instigator of Creation, specifically in terms of of light and the development of the sacred liquid, while Ouranos is Prajapati in terms of the action of the celestial dimension (Sky) upon the earthly matter which is his other essential half or a hypostasis formed from within him. Light. Sky. Earth. The Divine Liquid. Mind and Fire. And the world is created.

*********

Endnotes:

30. This refers to the Kalash/Nuristani god Mahandeu or Mandi (from Mahan deva, near-identical to Rudra-Siva’s name Mahadeva) who changes into a boy (reverting to the nascent state) and pushes his finger into a door he is not supposed to open, causing it to turn golden (think of Fionn who smashes his finger in an otherworldly door or puts his finger on the Salmon of Knowledge and sucks his finger, first to gain and then to tap into his power of mystical sight and knowledge). Mandi then cuts the heads off of a demon who has hidden the sun and moon and brings them back to the world, in what is recognized as a creation myth. In another version of the same tale, he shoots his arrow at the rope that connects the castle of the demons suspended between Heaven and the Earth, this castle holding sun, moon, waters, fertile fields, gold and silver. Under the instruction of Mandi, seeds (consider the seed of Dyaus) are then sowed by the goddess Disni and the ripened chaff turns white on the rope causing it to be visible. Mandi’s arrow then strikes the rope and causes the castle to crash to the ground. He then gets excited by the white skin of the goddess Disni (compare Bronwen “white breast”) and uses his body to break the door of the castle, though it is not a self-sacrifice as when Efnysien breaks the cauldron. Still, he is essentially breaking into Heaven here. He survives the breaking of the door and kills the demons within the house, thus cleansing it like Vastospati or Efnysien. Thus Mandi too is the severer of Heaven from Earth with his arrow in the scene of creation and the cleanser of the “house.” The fact that Mandi is excited by the goddess’ skin before breaking the door of heaven could be carry the same meaning as when Cronus is drunken with honey just before being castrated and becoming lord of the Blessed Isles, or when Efnysien plays dead before entering the cauldron of generation and bursting his own heart: perhaps the idea here is that the Rudraic god must enter the sensuous realm of generation before bursting back into the divine realm, thus bridging the gap. See M. Witzel, “Kalash Religion,” 3-5, 9-10.

31. More or less the same can be said for the Iranic Cosmic Man Gayomard, of whom it is said that at the moment of his death his sperm fell to the ground and was purified by the sun. Forty years later the first human couple arose therefrom, not as trees, but indeed as rhubarb plants (Bundahisn 4, 10-28; 6F, 9; Zadspram 2, 10-11, 18-22; 3, 67-76). This is a direct parallel in nearly every aspect of what happens to the seed of Dyaus in the earlier Vedic myth, which is understandable considering that no outright “Father Sky” appears as such in Iranic myth. According to Encyclopedia Iranica, based on linguistic similarity, another possible parallel of Gayomard is the Vedic Martanda, the divine “lump,” who is a son of the Sun God Aditi, and from whom rises Vivasvant, progenitor of mankind, so that Vivasvant and Martanda are often seen as one and the names are used interchangeably.

32. “‘Lord,’ said his chieftains, ‘knowest thou the nature of this river, that nothing can go across it, and there is no bridge over it?’ ‘What,’ said they, ‘is thy counsel concerning a bridge?’ ‘There is none,’ said he, ‘except that he who will be chief, let him be a bridge. I will be so,’ said he. And then was that saying first uttered, and it is still used as a proverb. And when he had lain down across the river, hurdles were placed upon him, and the host passed over thereby” (Branwen, daughter of Llyr).

34. Ulansey, David, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, pp.120-1: "The identification between Mithras and Phanes indicated by CIMRM 860 is also explicitly attested by an inscription found in Rome dedicated to 'Zeus-Helios-Mithras-Phanes' and another inscription dedicated to 'Helios-Mithras-Phanes'." See also: Clauss, M. The Roman cult of Mithras, p. 70, photo p.71. My thanks to Kalin for pointing out these inscriptions and helping me to clarify this pattern.