Latin materials speak of 'Divine Crows' [Corniscae Divae - Allen has this as "Crow-Goddesses", even] which are of Juno; Festus' Epitome [56L] relates: "Corniscarum Divarum locus erat trans Tiberim cornicibus dicatus, quod in Junonis tutela esse putabatur", with this being often cited in accompaniment of an engimatic inscriptional "DEVAS CoRNISCAS SACRVM". This, whilst lesser-known today, … Continue reading The Crows of Juno
Indo-European Religion
Prometheus & Ithax, Saboteur of Sacrifice – Part One: The Emissary of the Anti-Divine
As applies Prometheus - everybody knows the main 'pop-culture' narrative. But what if there was an additional reason that Prometheus deserved the outcome - and for Prometheus to have wanted to interfere with setting down the formulaic metaphysics of sacrifice to begin with… Now, here is the key detail - a fragment transmitted via Hesychius … Continue reading Prometheus & Ithax, Saboteur of Sacrifice – Part One: The Emissary of the Anti-Divine
Psychopompi Germanica – And Why It’s Not Odin
In recent days I have run into a rather recurrent skein of assertions about Odin purportedly being a "Psychopomp". Now as for why this has kept coming up - the context has been fairly much what you'd expect. Namely, people looking to affirm an accuracy for that well-known 'Interpretatio' from Tacitus, whereby Odin is inferred … Continue reading Psychopompi Germanica – And Why It’s Not Odin
TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology – Part Three: The Dead Among The Stars
Now speaking of the Night's Sky - this brings us to what's probably the most 'divergent' area for our trifold TriPlanar schema. And I mean that in two senses - first, in terms of just how 'different' one of the Hellenic (and later Classical) conceptions for this Layer is as compared to 'Everybody Else' on … Continue reading TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology – Part Three: The Dead Among The Stars
TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology – Part Two: Sailing The Sea Of Sky
As promised, we begin our series of subsequent commentaries seeking to add illumination to 'what went where' - and, more especially as applies some detailings, 'why' - for our TRI-LOKA charting of the archaic Indo-European cosmology. For the first installment, we delve into various of the considerations pertaining to the Middle Realm extant between the … Continue reading TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology – Part Two: Sailing The Sea Of Sky
TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology
The archaic Worlds-view of the (Proto-)Indo-Europeans featured a functional conceptualization for the Cosmos as broadly divisible into three 'layers' or realms. We can safely infer this due to the shared fundamental TriPlanar structure carried forward by various of the major (post-PIE) Indo-European spheres, attested amidst both their mythic and ritualine perspectives - as we have drawn from … Continue reading TRI-LOKA : The Three Worlds Of Indo-European Cosmology
ভগবান ইউল (Yule), ভগবান জোল (Jól) এবং জোলের (Jöl) দেবতা
ভগবান জোল। …এবং ভগবান -জোলনির / জোলফদর এখন, এটি কিছুটা অর্থহীন পূরনাবৃত্তি ,কারণ আমরা দেখতে পাই যে জোলন (Jóln) শব্দটি নিজেই দেবতাদের অর্থে ব্যবহৃত হয়েছে। যদি অনুমান করা হয় যে জোলন বা জোল শব্দের জন্য একটি অনুমানভিত্তিক প্রোটো-ইন্দো-ইউরোপীয় বুৎপত্তি (PIE:*Yek)) সঠিক - যার অর্থ উচ্চারণ করা, বা একটি প্রদর্শনী প্রদর্শন করা… তাহলে এটি দেবতা শব্দের … Continue reading ভগবান ইউল (Yule), ভগবান জোল (Jól) এবং জোলের (Jöl) দেবতা
Why We Offer To The Gods [Part Three: I Bring The Fire]
In our previous installments, we had sought to extoll two key elements. For the first - some brief textual attestations of Roman and Vedic provenance for the concept of the Gods being actively supported ("subsist[ing]", as one translated section had it) through our offerings to Them through the proper rites. Which is, of course, a … Continue reading Why We Offer To The Gods [Part Three: I Bring The Fire]
Why We Offer To The Gods [Part Two: Irrigating The Worlds With Blood-Dimmed Tide]
As you can see there from the title, our intent with these linked pieces has been to take a look at one of the more foundational questions to the Indo-European theology. Namely, why it is that we carry out rites of sacrifice and offering to the Gods in the first place. I suspect that for … Continue reading Why We Offer To The Gods [Part Two: Irrigating The Worlds With Blood-Dimmed Tide]
On The Symbolism Of The Gigantes & Gigantomachy [Part One: He Shall Tread]
We had earlier received a question as to the iconography of the Gigantes of Classical myth - more specifically, what was up with the Serpents they so prominently feature instead of legs in an array of renderings. And, because it's a very, very cool illustration for the concept - here's a beautiful 2nd-3rd Century (BC) … Continue reading On The Symbolism Of The Gigantes & Gigantomachy [Part One: He Shall Tread]