Indo-European Mythology and Religion

by Alexander Jacob

  men. This ordeal is a self-sacrifice of Odin to himself that

  repeats in the Mid-Region the original killing of Ymir, the

  First Man, by Odin:596

  139. I ween that I hung on the windy tree, 597

  Hung there for nights full nine;

  With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was

  To Othin, myself to myself,

  On the tree that none may ever know

  What root beneath it runs.

  140. ... I took up the runes, shrieking I took them,

  And forthwith back I fel .

  142. Then began I to thrive, and wisdom to get,

  I grew and well I was;

  Each word led me on to another word,

  Each deed to another deed.598

  with the birth of the solar Skanda/Muruga as well (see p.103).

  596 See p.261.

  597 The reference to the “windy” tree reminds us of Wotan’s own

  nature as Wind-god.

  598 The Poetic Edda, tr. H.A. Bellows.

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  The baneful aspect of the material manifestation of the

  universe (which is the central focus of the Zoroastrian

  reform of the Vedic religion) is to be found in the

  Dravidian version of the Skanda Purāna, Kantapurānam.

  Here, the mango tree situated in the midst of the

  ocean is the second form taken by the demonic Asura,

  Sūrapadman, who is concealed in a mountain (exactly as

  Asakku is in Lugal-e, or Vrtra in the Vedas).599 The first form assumed by Sūrapadman is a monstrous multiform

  mockery of the Purusha characterised by a thousand arms

  and legs.

  The son of Shiva born especial y for the martial

  purpose of defeating the Asura Sūrapadman is Ganesha/

  Indra’s ‘brother’, Muruga (Skanda). Like Ninurta and

  Marduk in Mesopotamia, and Indra in the Vedas, Muruga

  is the god in the Underworld who has to combat the asura

  that represents the forces blocking the emergence of the

  sun into our universe. Muruga destroys Sūrapadman’s first

  form by revealing his own true, and eternal, form as the

  Purusha.

  Sūrapadman’s second form, however, is that of a mango

  ‘tree’, which is also cloven into two by Muruga when he

  casts his Māya-destroying lance (“vel”) against it. The tree

  is then transformed into a cock and peacock, which are

  symbols of death and the Underworld. This episode is

  also similar to Shiva’s burning of his erotic aspect Kāma in

  the form of a tree in the Skanda Purāna, I,1,21,82-99 and maybe a representation of Yogic discipline.

  It is true that the Germanic mythology does not

  exhibit any clear understanding of the Yogic bases of the

  cosmic events it describes and represents these events

  rather in a fabulous, ‘fairy tale’ form. However, we may

  599 See D. Handelman, “Myths of Murugan: Asymmetry and

  Hierarchy in a South Indian Puranic Cosmology”, History of Religions, 27, no.2, p.143.

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  indo-european mythology and religion

  assume that, as a result of his penance on the Tree in our

  nascent universe, Odin also recovers the full divine force

  that he original y bore in the Elder Asgard and that is

  reflected in the twelve names he possessed there:

  He is called in our speech Allfather, but in the Elder

  Ásgard he had twelve names: one is Allfather; the

  second is Lord, or Lord of Hosts; the third is Nikarr, or

  Spear-Lord; the fourth is Nikudr, or Striker; the fifth is

  Knower of Many Things; the sixth, Fulfiller of Wishes;

  the seventh, Far-Speaking One; the eighth, The Shaker,

  or He that Putteth the Armies to Flight; the ninth, The

  Burner; the tenth, The Destroyer; the eleventh, The

  Protector; the twelfth, Gelding"600 (‘Gylfaginning’,

  ch.3).

  In conclusion, we may return to Jung’s descriptions of

  Wotan in his article as a ‘god of storm and frenzy, the

  unleasher of passions and the lust of battle … a superlative

  magician and artist in il usion’.601 We see from our study

  that Jung did not consider that the storms and battles

  and il usions recounted in the Eddas were enacted on a

  cosmic level and that Wotan is indeed a far more complex

  mythological phenomenon than merely a ‘storm-god’.

  Furthermore, rather than representing ‘a wind that blows

  into Europe from Asia’s vastness, sweeping in on a wide

  front from Thrace to the Baltic, scattering the nations

  before it like dry leaves’,602 the original followers of Wotan

  seem, from Sturluson’s account, to have been forces of

  civilisation that introduced architecture and poetry, as

  well as laws, into the northern lands.

  600 A gelding is a castrated horse, which should be understood within the context of the solar cosmology outlined above.

  601 C.G. Jung, ibid.

  602 Ibid.

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