Zeus vs Dyáuṣ Pitṛ́ | Zeus' Tripartite Mithraic Nature

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5OWiZyNmVLQ

If Zeus and Dyaus share a name, then why is Dyaus merely the Embodied Sky while Zeus is a different god in the myths, namely the Mitra-type Sovereign?

How did their nearly identical names come to be attached to these two different gods in their respective traditions?

And how is the parallel between Mithra and Zeus established?


Josephus, Arno and Collin join me to discuss.


- O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

At the end of a map is a treasure, and sometimes along the way as well.

Here are my most recent discoveries, which will be further explained in forthcoming articles and videos.

Watch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fxcDjAZQBng

The Proto-Indo-European Absolute (“Axial Age” DEBUNKED by New Evidence)

The Comparative Method is a bit like a nuclear weapon.

People don’t always realize how powerful it is and how it can completely rewrite what we thought we knew about the history of Philosophy and Religion.

It is a lever by which a dominant world religion can be suddenly upended and transformed, shifting our perspective until we come to see that religion as a single branch within a much older and larger tree.

For this power it is downplayed by those who don't want certain questions to be clearly decided. Not everyone likes what it tells us when its ultimate conclusions are drawn.

But the Comparative Method is the only method that will ever be able to truly decide the question of the so-called “Axial Age”, by deducing what the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves believed on the matter.

Was “The Axial Age” a real thing or was it essentially made up by a modern philosopher-psychiatrist (Karl Jaspers) groping in the gaps in history?

Does anyone out there who makes it their career to rail against the “Axial Age” (i.e. Imperium Press, Aryan Paganism, Traditions and Art, etc etc) even care if their words are founded on a historical reality anymore?

Their argument is entirely “open from behind” — you can’t really put a firm earliest date on things like theological conceptions and so their backsides are blowing in the breeze.


In this video I carry out the execution of the “Axial Age” theory, a theory I used to believe myself.

This is a matter of historical facts, and the difference between a gap in the records and a positive piece of evidence. It is not about what we want historical paganism to be, nor what historical fantasy we have logicked our way into or become emotionally attached to.

There is only one true state of affairs here.
Our sacred religion is not a plaything, though we have had our fun theorizing in the dark while we had the dark as an excuse.

https://youtu.be/DKLsv3VG02M

- O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

O'Gravy from the Sun Riders has debunked that monism is a later addition to the Indo-European religions in his new splendid video where he compares the Irish creation myth with the Vedic creation myth.

"What does all of this tell us? It tells us that the Proto-Indo-Europeans [...] had a concept of an Absolute, and that it was not a late developing idea that can be conveniently boxed into an "Axial Age" in the mid to late centuries of the first millenium BC in order to dispense with it. It was in existence and known by the seers long before and was the core of the ancient pagan religion from archaic times."

(see forwarded post below)

This guy will get shot with the golden bullet and then say
"the authorities inform us that golden bullets don't exist."

If you act aggressive about a topic that is at the core of our religion, you should know what you're talking about, and not only have a survey-level familiarity.


Most of this response has nothing to do with anything I say in my video, which is solely about the Absolute, see the title.

The Absolute question is a linchpin of the “Axial Age theory” that Mike rails against. I'm only attacking the head of the theory.

The rest of what he says are things I directly address in the video itself, show the numerous fundamental flaws in, and ultimately refute.


Wait... did he make a response to a video without even watching it?

Not even able to address new evidence head-on?


I see nothing but appealing to made up authority and dodging.

Are we even a real movement if this is how our leaders behave?

Are we afraid of new evidence?

I don’t think I’m being hard on him, but it’s not possible to appeal to the authority of the “historical record” when the historical record is what is at issue in this very debate, and this (nonexistent) “anthropological consensus” he mentions is what the new evidence debunks.


Luckily the video is out there now, so please keep sharing it around!


We want peace between pagans, not people mindlessly calling each other heretics (these guys casually fling this name at me for presenting evidence) while not even being correct about the history.


⁃ O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

Someone forwarded me a video claiming to "debunk" the Axial age. The Axial age is an influential thesis with a large body of scientific literature and empirical support, much of that literature written since the Seshat database opened a decade ago. On the "yes there was an Axial age" side of the ledger we have:

- transition from emphasis on religious orthopraxy (rite-focused, exoteric) to orthodoxy (inward/attitude-focused, doctrinal)

- transition from Weberian "magical" religious paradigms to Weberian "ethical" religious paradigms

- new "big gods" appear (transcendent moralizing deities concerned with minute human affairs)

- law/morality/religion begin to address themselves to all men

- de-territorialization of religion — "God" is everywhere

- man becomes free to choose which deity to worship — no longer bound to ethnic/tribal gods

- shame culture (external, social locus of moral authority) gives way to guilt culture (internal, individual)

- rise of asceticism — de-emphasis on this-worldly goods as object of highest interest

- linear history appears

On the "no there wasn't an Axial age" side we have the claim that all Indo-European religions knew "The Absolute". The evidence:

- although clear evidence of such knowledge enters many centuries after the historical record opens (in any branch), we suspect this knowledge was hidden

- related concepts (e.g. Brahman, karma) only took on the connotation of The Absolute later, but secretly they always meant this

- there was a big-thing-at-the-beginning in all IE mythologies, this must have been The Absolute

The comparative method is extremely powerful, but used incautiously it can also produce a lot of noise. None of what is claimed on the "no" side would pass muster in a real academic department. A doctorate supervisor would, right at the proposal stage, reject the thesis that the PIEs had the "Axial acquisitions". Even the minority of anthropologists who reject the Axial age do so not because they're trying to push neoplatonism back into the Bronze age, but for precisely the opposite reason—because too many non-IE cultures went through the same transition later.

The Axial age is just the time when the list of things above happened for the first time. To debunk it you'd have to dispute that, and no serious person does.

Here is the comparison chart showing proof of the Proto-Indo-European Absolute from my video.

The level of detail in the evidence changes everything we thought we knew about the deep history of Indo-European theology.


The question this chart raises that opponents will never answer is:

What is capable of being the source of both the Primordial Waters and the Cosmic Tree, indeed being the source of all things in this myth, while also having both the name-root and symbol that we see tied to the Vedic Absolute?

What do the Primordial Waters and the Cosmic Tree emerge from?

Just a Tower?

A Tower that is the source of everything? And shares its name root with Brahman?

And his other sons are named after wood and food, comparable to the myth of the Vedic Absolute, why?


I am genuinely asking here.


But the alternate explanation also has to be plausible, and has to explain all of the data better than this straightforward explanation does.

- O'Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

And here is the Gaelic/Indo-European Creation Myth chart with the full explanatory notes.

- O'Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

Here is a long hymn I adapted from the Rig Veda to the Gaelic deities.
Compare it to the original to see how closely the mythic details match.

Key:
The Dagda = Vayu (Wind God)
Tuireann = Indra (Thunderer)
His Warband = Maruts (storm deities who follow Indra)
The Muirdris = Vritra (Obstructing Serpent)
Lugh = Mitra (Day Sovereign)
Nuada = Varuna (Night Sovereign)
Cian = Pushan (Magician of the Wilds, Guardian of Cattle)
Glas Gaibhnenn = cow form of Soma (God of Sacred Liquid and the Moon)
Midir = Soma (as above)
Anu (Danu/The Morrigan) = Danu (Primordial Watery Abyss Goddess)
Manannan = Agni (God of Fire who lives in the Waters)



from Rig Veda HYMN 1.XXIII.
(Griffith translation)

The Dagda and Others.

1 STRONG are the Liquors; come thou nigh;
This honey has been mixt with wine:
Drink, Dagda, the presented draughts.
2 Both Deities who touch the heaven,
Tuireann and Dagda we invoke
To drink of this the potent juice.
3 The singers for their aid, invoke
Tuireann and Dagda, swift as mind,
The thousand-eyed, the Lords of thought.
4 Lugh and Nuada, wide-renowned
As Gods of consecrated might,
We call to drink the potent juice.
5 Those who by Law uphold the Law,
Lords of the shining light of Law,
Thus Lugh I call, and Nuada.
6 Nuada be our chief defence,
And may Lugh guard us with all aids
Both make us rich exceedingly.
7 Tuireann, by warband girt, we call
To drink the potent juice: may he
Sate him in union with his troop.
8 Gods, warrior hosts whom Tuireann leads,
Distributors of Cian’s gifts,
Hearken ye all unto my cry.
9 With conqu’ring Tuireann allied, strike
The Muirdris down, ye bounteous Gods,
Let not the wicked master us.
10 We call the Universal Gods,
And warbands to the Mead draught bright,
For passing strong are Anu’s Sons.
11 Fierce comes his warband’s thund’ring voice,
Like that of conquerors, when ye go
Forward to victory, O Men.
12 Born of the laughing lightning may
His warband guard us everywhere,
May they be gracious unto Us.
13 Like some lost animal, drive to us,
Bright Cian, him who bears up heav’n,
Glas Gaibhnenn, laid on rainbow grass.
14 Cian the Bright has found the cow,
Concealed and hidden in a tow’r,
Who rests on grass of many hues.
15 And may he duly drive to me
The six yoked flames, sped by these drops,
As one who ploughs with steers brings corn.
16 Along their paths the Mothers go,
Sisters of priestly ministrants,
Mingling their sweetness with the milk.
17 May Waters gathered near the Sun,
And those wherewith the Sun is joined,
Speed forth this sacrifice of ours.
18 I call the Waters, Goddesses,
Wherein our cattle quench their thirst;
Oblations to the Streams be giv’n.
19 Nectar is in the Waters, yea,
In Waters there is healing balm
Be swift, ye Gods, to give them praise.
20 Within the Waters—Midir thus
Hath told me—dwell all balms that heal,
And Manannan, who blesseth all.
The Waters hold all medicines.
21 O Waters, teem with medicine
To keep my body safe from harm,
So that I long may see the Sun.
22 Whatever sin is found in me,
Whatever evil I have wrought.
If I have lied or falsely sworn,
Waters, remove it far from me.
23 The Waters I this day have sought,
And to their moisture have we come:
Manannan, rich in milk, come thou,
and with thy splendour cover me.
24 Fill me with splendour, Manannan;
Give offspring and long life; the Gods
Shall know me even as I am;
And Tuireann with the Seers, know.


—-
O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

And here is a hymn to Finn (=Odin/Rudra/Cronus), lightly adapted from the Orphic Hymn to Cronus (Thomas Taylor translation).


TO Finn
The Fumigation from Storax.
Ethereal father, mighty Milesian, hear, great fire of Gods and men, whom all revere:
Endu'd with various council, pure and strong, to whom perfection and decrease belong.
Consum'd by thee all forms that hourly die, by thee restor'd, their former place supply;
The world immense in everlasting chains, strong and ineffable thy pow'r contains
Father of vast eternity, divine,
O mighty Finn, various speech is thine:
Blossom of earth and of the starry skies, husband of Sadhbh, auspicious friend of Goll.
Obstetric Nature, venerable root, from which the various forms of being shoot;
No parts peculiar can thy pow'r enclose, diffus'd thro' all, from which the world arose,
O, best of beings, of a subtle mind, propitious hear to holy pray'rs inclin'd;
The sacred rites benevolent attend, and grant a blameless life, a blessed end.



—-
O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

The Devil is in the Details

The Axial Age theory Can Only Ignore the Rig Veda

In addition to the 2 instances that I mentioned in my (above) post and video where the precise title and symbol of the Brahman, “The Skambha (Pillar) of Heaven”, is used mystically in the earliest layer of the Rig Veda (circa 1500 B.C.) (RV 4.14.4-5 and RV 4.13.5):

“With what autonomous power does he [the Sun] journey? Who has seen it? As skambha [pillar] of heaven, utterly fixed, he protects the vault.”

and the one instance in the middle layer (RV 9.86.46),

there is another hymn from the earliest layer (and certainly others) that also strongly points to a well-established ideology of an Imperishable Unity underlying the Gods.

Jamison and Brereton, the translators of the most recent scholarly Rig Veda (2014) and the most prominent Vedic scholars you are likely to know, even emphasize this fact, stating that this hymn typifies the “Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity”. And again this is the earliest layer of the Rig Veda, which is the earliest-composed complete Indo-European religious text we have, the very beginning of the Indo-European theological record.

So what basis do sociologists and historians have for stating that the Rig Veda and thus the Indo-European tradition affirmatively does NOT refer to any mystical unity or Absolute in its earliest layer, if Rig Veda scholars themselves actually say otherwise?

There isn’t one. Or, often, this is a misrepresentation of those historians. As usual this claim is entirely based on perceived gaps in the theological record and an assumption that anything that doesn’t explicitly label itself as an Absolute, up to our standard of clarity, cannot be referring to one. But this is plainly fallacious.

As Jamison and Brereton state of this hymn, RV 3.55.1:

“The most obvious feature of this hymn is the refrain found in every verse: “great is the one and only lordship of the gods,” notable for its emphasis on unity (ékam “one and only” is the final word of each verse) and for the juxtaposition and implied identity of asura(tvám) “lord(ship)” and devā́nām “gods,” given that in later Vedic the Asuras and the Devas are locked in eternal enmity.

This familiar Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity is further exemplified by the references to numerous gods (generally unnamed, but usually recognizable), especially in the second part of the hymn, in the manner of many All God hymns.”

Here is the hymn in their translation:

RV 3.55.1: “Then when the ancient dawns dawned forth, in the track of the cow a great imperishable (syllable) was born [/ was discerned],
which tends to the commandments of the gods: great is the one and only lordship of the gods.”

Aurobindo translates the final phrase as: “the vast, the mightiness of the Gods, the One (Ekam)" (III.55.1), which is validated by the fact that Ekam, One, is indeed the final word of each line on which the thematic emphasis lands.

The repeated use of “Ekam” (that is “one and only”) is also significant because the Absolute which appears in the final mandala of the Rig Veda is called “Tad Ekam,” “That One,” whereas of course the Absolute was known to the Greek philosophers as “The One,” “To Hen.”

Aurobindo also notes that words such as “The Timeless” or “Imperishable” are common descriptors of this eternal Absolute in Vedic scripture. Griffith translates the word for Imperishable in this hymn as “Eternal” and Aurobindo as “Unmoving.”
This indeed matches the special quality of the Brahman as found in other texts where it is characterized as the Eternal, having Unmoving Fixedness, and for specifically these reasons being the Foundation of all. Note that the Skambha of Heaven mentioned in the previous hymn is likewise said to be “utterly fixed”, which again is this special characteristic of nothing but the Absolute alone throughout the entire Vedic corpus.

What else indeed can have such a quality of Unmoving Imperishableness but an Eternal Absolute? Is there a response?

Doesn’t the emphasis on an Unmoving Imperishableness and the One-Ness of the Gods’ Might, in this line from among the earliest hymns, completely undermine the idea that “ancient pagans” only believed in a flux without unity?

The Imperishable “Syllable” more specifically, mentioned in this hymn, calls to mind the primordial syllable Om, which is also the Brahman. Indeed the word used for Imperishable Syllable here (akṣaram) is defined as a synonym for Om throughout the rest of Vedic scripture. According to Aurobindo, The Cow here, in whose track is found the Imperishable Syllable, is the Vedic goddess Aditi, whose name means The Boundless. This of course fits the overt theme of Imperishableness and One-Ness in the verse.

We thus have:
“In the track of the Boundless is found the Unmoving Imperishable (Syllable): great is the Lordship/Might of the Gods, the One and Only.”


Agni’s Mystical Treatment

Lastly, what should also be mentioned is the way the Fire God Agni is treated throughout the earliest layer of the Rig Veda, a treatment consistent through all Vedic scripture.

Agni “becomes” All the Gods, suggesting that he must be a vector of unity between them. It is even said that “in” Agni are all the gods. It’s hard to read this other than as the gods being unified in “One lordship,” as in the previous hymn.
From RV V.3, which is again in the earliest layer of the Rig Veda:

"Thou O Agni, art Varuna when thou art born, thou becomest Mitra when thou art perfectly kindled, in thee are all the Gods, O Son of Force, thou art Indra to the mortal who gives the sacrifice. Thou becomest Aryaman when thou bearest the secret name of the Virgins… For the glory of thee, O Rudra, the Maruts brighten by their pressure that which is the brilliant and varied birth of thee…By thy glory, O Deva, the gods attain to right vision and holding in themselves all the multiplicity (of the vast manifestation) taste Immortality. Men set Agni in them as the priest of the sacrifice when desiring (the Immortality) they distribute (to the Gods) the self-expression of the being."

The solar lord Savitar in similar fashion “becomes” both Pushan and Mitra in succession:
To Savitar it is said: “thou, O God, art Mitra through thy righteous laws.”
“Pūṣan art thou, O God, in all thy goings-forth.” V.81.4-5

It is impossible to explain how one god can “become another” without accepting that they do not have rigid boundaries in a simple sense. The only way to explain this away is by rationalizing what is explicitly being stated in mystical terms, which is what secular scholars often do. The other common tactic is to simply ignore these lines entirely, which should discredit the historian.

This is a mystical description of gods becoming one another in an endless cycle. Agni, the Fire that forms each god, is one primary vector of the unity between them. They are within Agni and Agni is Them, and fundamentally they are together as One Lordship, the familiar theme of Unity in Diversity.

As such the Axial Age theory can do nothing except ignore the very earliest theological literature of the Indo-Europeans and its insistently mystical framing:
The utterly fixed Skambha of Heaven, The Unmoving Imperishable Syllable, the One And Only Lordship of the Gods, the gods becoming one another and being all within Agni the cosmic Fire, who himself is often a symbol of the Absolute in other layers of the Veda.

One would have to be illiterate to miss the mysticism of the Rig Veda from start to finish.

⁃ O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

Happy Easter and hail the Gods

ON ETHNIC GODS IN HOMER
Proponents of the Axial Age hypothesis claim that each ethnos originally (i.e. in “preaxial” times) viewed its own Gods as distinct from the others’ Gods; the idea of universal Gods, they claim, is a degenerate invention of “postaxial” and “heretical” thinkers such as Xenophanes and Heraclitus. To learn about ancient Hellenic theology, according to this view, we should discard the vast majority of philosophers, and only turn to Homer and Hesiod.
Homer is a divine and divinely inspired poet indeed. Let us look at what the Muse has sung through him: shall we find the notion of Gods being exclusive to an ethnos?
In Odyssey 4.232, we read that Egyptians “are of the race of Pæeon”.
But we know that Pæeon is a Greek God! If Gods are exclusive to an ethnos, how can Egyptian people descend from a Greek God?
In Homer’s understanding, there clearly was an Egyptian God who was the same as the Greek God Pæeon. Egyptians and Greeks must have known this God by different names and worshiped Him through different rituals, as names and rituals are, and ought to be, exclusive to each ethnos; but the God Himself is nonetheless the same.
- Jōsēphus Græcus, The Sun Riders

HYMN To Finn

THERE be no grief here for the grieving ones:
We dip our cups in perpetual suns.
We do not waver in our cadenced speed,
But use both silent hands to take Life’s meed.
Our muscles are the steady butter churn
To make the sacrificial grease we burn,
And without pause our tireless feet ascend
Alacritous to Finn’s cloud-throned command.
What cannot be replaced we cannot need,
Grief is forgot and shamed beyond all heed.

O Finn come to our cause and bless its ends,
Your mind devised a course your will unbends.
We honor you with shining cups and tongue;
Drink and be judge of ancient glories sung.
You brought down Aillen with the venom-spear
Pressed to your face to vanquish mortal fear.
And when the Formael Boar had burst its pen
Thy grandson spread its jaws and left his men
The bowels of the beast to be unspooled.
In streams of blood they worked and never cooled.

Grant us, like feuding tribes you brought at last
Under one union at the mead hall massed
By clasping firm the hand of Goll thy foe,
In view of all, for all to see and know,
Grant us that friendship and long-lasting grace
To all our kin and our extended race.
We are thy sons and all our might is yours;
If you will bless them these will be thy wars.
Drink, noble Finn, the brightest drop we own,
And give us sons and allies firm as stone.



- O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

Me after a single person accuses me of using “thin evidence”

⚡️The Celtic THUNDERER⚡️

Who is the Celtic Thunderer god, the equivalent of Thor and Indra?
Do the Celts even have a Thunderer mythos that has survived, or was it lost forever?

We search across the Celtic lands to answer this question once and for all.

WATCH:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tWMgExBaltI&feature=youtu.be

- O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

*Manu and *Yemo DEBUNKED: Response to Crecganford (Proto-Indo-European Creation Myth)

[Go to the 33 minute mark for the linguistic debunking of the claim that Ymir = Yama = PIE *Yemo.]

- Bruce Lincoln's endlessly regurgitated Proto-Indo-European Creation Myth reconstruction, known as the "*Manu and *Yemo" twin sacrifice myth, is a linguistic and mythological deception. As a myth, it never existed, and it is not the Proto-Indo-European Creation Myth in any way.

Those who continue to spread it across the internet, such as the Youtuber Crecganford and other scholars and amateurs in the field, must confront the flaws in this reconstruction and move past Lincoln's theory entirely.

WATCH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuZe7GngXsU