Note: This essay will make more sense if
you first read Indo-European
Paleopaganism and its Clergy, elsewhere on this website.
Our story so far: In the first few episodes
of our continuing saga, All My Oakgroves,
weve established two key concepts for understanding the
world(s)views of the Indo-European Paleopagans. The first concept
is a polytheological and sociological one called the trifunctional ideology, discovered
by Georges Dumezil and his followers. The second is a related
cosmological one of the Three Worlds
plus Fire, identified, I believe
by me, from a variety of Dumezilian and other Celtic and IE studies.
Several decades ago, Dumezil noticed that
the same major characters kept showing up in all the different
IE myths and legends of which we had records; furthermore, they
seemed to reflect a common social structure among all the IE
cultures. There were usually two deities who ruled over matters
of magic and law; he called this the first
function of magical
and judicial sovereignty. Examples
include Odin and Tyr, respectively, from the Norse pantheon,
and Mitra and Varuna from the Vedic. The second
function includes the war gods (often,
but not always, thunder gods as well) such as Thor and Indra.
Then you have the third function
of fertility; this was usually handled by brother-sister
pairs such as Freyr and Freya or else by twin brothers such as
the Vedic Asvins.
The IE cultures all had stories of two
Wars in Heaven: the
first, a battle between the current Gods and a previous generation
of (often monstrous) deities, such as the Formorians (Irish),
Giants (Norse), Titans (Greek), Devas (Iranian), or Asuras (Vedic);
the second, a war between deities representing the first two
functions on one side against those representing the third function
on the other, such as that between the Norse Aesir and Vanir.
The current Gods, of course, beat the previous ones (though often
taking some of them into their ranks), and the deities of first
two functions either conquered or established a truce with the
third function deities, resulting in the divine status quo of
The social structures depicted in the IE myths
and legends reflected the three functions: clergy (who were responsible
for magical/religious and judicial functions), warriors, and
producers (farmers, fishers, herders, craftspeople, etc.). Leading
each IE tribe was a king
who had responsibilities towards all the other
functions and who was usually married to the local Earth Goddess.
Dumezilians speculate that the war
between the functions stories represent
memories of IE conquests of local (non-IE or earlier-IE) peoples
by invading clergy and warriors. This fits well with the usual
theories of bloodthirsty patriarchal Indo-Europeans raping, pillaging,
and looting their way across Europe and Asia, though not so well
with more recent studies (such as those by Colin Renfrew) indicating
that IE cultural diffusion may have been rather more peaceful
than that, albeit stressful to the changed cultures.
As for cosmology, the IE tales make constant
references to land, sky, and various sorts of waters (lakes,
rivers, springs, the sea, etc.) as comprising all of normal physical
reality. For example, there was one famous Celtic chieftain who
reportedly said that he had only three fears: that the sky would
fall down upon him, that the sea would overwhelm him, and that
the earth might open up under him. I believe references to these
three events occurring as punishments for oath breaking can also
be found. Parallels often existed between the functions and the
Three Worlds: clergy
were associated with the Sky, warriors with the Waters, and producers
with the Land. Fire was viewed as extremely sacred and existed
in all Three Worlds (caste-wise, it was associated with the kingship
which affects all other castes). Multiple associations were created
between aspects and incidents of mythology, the caste system,
the Three Worlds plus Fire, sacred trees, the multiple deaths
of kings, and so forth not all of which fit perfectly.
During the 1990s, it became increasingly
clear to me that these views of IE polytheology, sociology, and
cosmology are just too simple. As (my wife) Deborah Lipp pointed
out, they leave no room for the forgotten or rejected people
and spirits who exist in every society and religion, and they
ignore a number of complexities. In fact, I think I was suffering
from monothink the
popular Western fantasy, based on monotheistic thinking patterns,
that there is one best explanation for everything
as have almost all the other Western scholars Id been studying.
So I decided to try using polythink,
by taking a polytheistic, pluralistic approach
to the same materials. New answers quickly became a parrot.
In Alwin and Brinley Rees classic Celtic
Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales,
they discuss the ancient Irish and Welsh cosmology and social
systems from a Dumezilian approach. Most of their discussion
focuses on the Irish, so Ill concentrate on them for now.
The Irish caste system had the king on top, then the druids,
then the warriors. So far, so good; this is the same IE social
structure I just reviewed. But their third producer
caste was split into an upper and a lower class.
The upper producer class consisted of the wealthy farmers and
advanced artisans, the lower producer class of the folks who
got stuck with the societys dirty work agricultural
serfs, satirists, clowns and jugglers, kitchen help, etc.
Each of the castes traditionally
had a province of Ireland symbolically connected to it: Connacht
for the druids, Ulster for the warriors, Leinster for the free
farmers, Munster for the serfs. But in some of the old tales,
Munster was split in two: East Munster for the regular serfs
and West Munster for the weird ones. A similar cosmology of
in ancient Wales.
The weird ones
included social outsiders such as foreigners,
aboriginal (pre-Celtic?) people, sorceresses, madmen, criminals,
etc., plus various types of supernatural Outsiders,
such as elves, giants, Formorians, banshees,
and so forth. In short, when we talk about the Outsiders, we
mean people and spirits associated with aboriginal mysteries,
female power, danger, magic, and chaos in general frightening
concepts to a patriarchal culture obsessed with maintaining the
cosmic order. There is also a hint (via the aboriginal and female
power concepts) that this part of the cosmology is intimately
associated with the local Earth Goddesses.
The people at the very bottom of the social
scale were thus associated with the forces of primordial chaos.
I believe the ancient Vedics had a very similar caste system,
with the Sudras (or untouchables) separated from the lower part of the producer caste
and associated with female power, demons, and magic. Paradoxically,
in Ireland and Wales (and India?) these forces of chaos were
intimately connected with the king who resided in the center
of the system (in the Middle Province) and who was the primary guardian of order. So while
the ancient Irish and Welsh had one cosmology of four provinces
plus the center, they simultaneously had one of five provinces
plus a center/outside combination.
Naturally every physical province had all
kinds of people living in it, and indeed these cosmological/social
patterns were apparently repeated within each province and within
each caste. Among the members of the clergy caste, for example,
the druids per se, who presided over sacrifices and were judges
as well (the magical and judicial rulerships), corresponded to
themselves. The diviners/poets corresponded to the warrior caste,
because of their connections to death and the ancestors (for
divination) and the creation of epic poetry celebrating the accomplishments
of the warriors. The bards corresponded to the farmers (as providers
of musical nourishment and support), and the lesser musicians
(no doubt along with the servants who helped with various druidic
activities) to the serfs. Perhaps the highest ranking local or
national druid (or Archdruid) corresponded to the
local king or national high king
and also had a connection to the Outsiders. The
myths about Merlin show this, as well as the Norse myths about
Odin, who was king as well as chief magician of the Aesir.
Simultaneously, although the Rees brothers
dont make this explicit, the other castes had members who
corresponded to these druidic subcastes. Among the serfs, for
example, we can find sorcerers (= magicians), satirists and soothsayers
(= poets and diviners), clowns and jugglers (= bards), etc. If
indeed every major caste had subcastes within it reflecting the
larger pattern, then you could very quickly get many subcastes.
If the larger pattern had then been reflected into each of the
subcastes to produce sub-subcastes, you would have eventually
gotten a result similar to the Hindu caste system (and I guess
thats exactly what happened in India).
Is this all confusing? Very. Yet, as the Rees
brothers put it, the co-existence
of contradictory cosmological systems is by no means peculiar
to Celtic traditions. They make
a very good argument that we may need to think of the lower half
of the third function
as a distinct, if not separate, fourth function. Perhaps
the Outsiders constitute a fifth function as well.
Another way to consider this fourth function, however,
is as the shadow side
of the third. As most of you know, IE metaphysics
seem obsessed with the alternation of polarities, usually described
as dark and
a dark half to every Celtic day, month, and year, for example.
The dual first
function (magical vs. judicial) of the clergy, the confusion
over the roles of berserkers
in the second (warrior) function, and the roles
of the third (producer) functions twin (or sister-brother)
deities, would be much clearer if we assumed that each function
has a dark (=
dangerous) side and a light
(= safe) side.
That would give us a pattern where the first
function would consist of the dangerous magician and the safe
judge; the second function would be the dangerous werewolf/berserker
and the safe hero; and the third function would give us the dangerous
serf and the safe producer (though that might not be enough to
account for the distinctions between upper and lower class producers).
The Outside/Center function then consists of the dangerous Outsiders
and the safe king. What the mythologies make clear, of course,
is that these dangerous
categories do not equate with evil
since you can have, for example, good Outsiders
and evil kings. However, the conservatism of most tribal societies
would lead to prejudices for and against the safe/dangerous polarities.
The Three Worlds of the Land, the Waters,
and the Sky, dont work properly for Lithuanian mythology
and cosmology, however, despite the myths and language being
thoroughly IE. Instead, they used terms that are usually translated
as Sky, Land,
and the Underworld.
The Vedic peoples are said (in English) to have
used Sky, Middle
Air, and Land
as their Three Worlds, while the Norse had a
total of Nine Worlds instead of three. During a cosmological
lunch at the Wellspring Festival in 1991, J.D. LaBash, Paul Maurice,
Ian Corrigan (who drew the illustration you see here to the right),
myself, and several other participants came to some tentative
conclusions of how one cosmology can reconcile all these seemingly
Firstly, Mircea Eliade pointed out in several
of his books the nearly universal tendency for tribal peoples
to have a cosmology with a vertical axis (a World Tree, a shamanic
pole, a magic mountain, etc.). In Indo-European terms, that vertical
axis may have originally reached from a Celestial
Realm in the far heavens (where
dwelt the distant creator deity and sometimes the major tribal
deities), through the Middle Realm
(of ordinary mortal activity), and down to an
Underworld or Chthonic Realm (where
demons, dead people, old deities, and other chaotic beings dwell
i.e., a lot of the Outsiders).
Secondly, the Three Worlds of the Land, the
Waters, and the Sky may all be seen on a horizontal axis filling
the Middle Realm, and reflected into the Celestial and Chthonic
Realms as well. The ancient Irish, for example, had Lands in the Celestial
Realm and underneath the ocean (which was equated with what Im
calling the Chthonic Realm). There were also Celestial and Chthonic
Waters, and possibly types of
Sky as well.
This sort of multiplication could be done in various ways by
the different IE cultures, including dark/light variations, leading
to different numbers of what are usually translated as
Thirdly, Fire, as a primeval divine force,
was seen as existing in, and communicating between, all Three
Realms and all Three Worlds. The stars, sun and moon were Celestial
fire; underground coal, peat, or volcanic fires were Chthonic.
In the Middle Realm, fire existed in the Sky (lightning, smoke),
on the Land (camp, hearth and forest fires), and even in the
Waters (alcoholic beverages, soma).
Fourthly, some of the confusion in IE cosmological
studies may have been caused by the translators. We have to remember
that none of these ancient peoples used modern English, so the
words we see in translations may not be precise matches from
culture to culture. As one example, the term in Sanskrit that
gets translated as the Middle Atmosphere
or Middle Air
may really mean (local or near) Sky, while the
word usually translated as Sky
in Vedic cosmological studies may translate better
as what Ive called the Celestial
Realm. I dont read Sanskrit
so I dont know for sure, I just have my suspicions.
So how can we tie all of this up into a nice
neat package? We cant. Some of our confusion about Indo-European
cosmologies can be explained, if not simplified, when we realize
that the IE peoples loved to combine simple units into amazingly
complex patterns (look at Celtic art, for example). Just as castes
could be subdivided to reflect other castes, then divided again
to display a dark/light polarity; so too there could be Worlds
within Realms (or vice versa?), each split along the dark/light
They might even have been split again along
an Otherworld/This world polarity (which would explain why there
are so many ways to get into Faerie via Sidhe hills, ocean
voyages, diving into lakes, becoming a bird and flying there,
etc.). The Otherworld
is a concept that shows up universally in religions
as the place where spirits live. Usually its perceived as
interpenetrating mundane reality or This
world in which most people live
their lives, but with particular locations where it is easiest
to contact. The Otherworld isnt the same as the Chthonic
or Celestial Realms, but it is connected to them, as it is to
the Three Worlds. The supernatural Outsiders might have been
viewed as living mostly in the Otherworld and using its connections
to travel throughout the realms and worlds. Each IE culture would
have associated various sorts of beings, from the demonic to
the divine, with each of the places
weve defined. Among the Irish, for example,
the Outsiders were usually chthonic, but were sometimes associated
with very distant lands, waters, or skies. The dark/light split
might also throw some light (you should pardon the expression)
on the good demons
and evil gods
in different IE myths, many of whom are said
to be descended from both dark and light spirits.
To put all of this into geometric terms, visualize
the Three Worlds and the Three Realms as representing the horizontal
and vertical (or Y) axes of IE cosmology. The Light and Dark distinction
would then be a third (Z) axis and the This World
distinction would be a fourth dimensional (W) axis
which kind of figures.
What does all this mean for Neopagan Druids?
To begin with, it gives us a useful vocabulary with which to
discuss these ideas. It also means that those of us who are comfortable
working with the Three Worlds of Land, Waters, and Sky can continue
to do so. Others may prefer to focus on the Three Realms of Celestial,
Middle, and Chthonic existence (OK, all you Lithuanian Pagans??).
The dark/light or dangerous/safe polarity can be used, as can
the Otherworld/Here polarity (just dont get trapped into
evil/good dualisms). Fire burns through all these categories
of reality (yes, there is dark fire consider Balor, the
evil sun god, for
example) and can be used symbolically to tie them all together
(with the smoke carrying the sacrifices up to the Celestial Realms).
Another way to view Fire in these IE cosmologies
is in balance with a sacred Well, which ties into the popular
(at least among IEs) fire-in-the-water symbolism. This usually
seems to associate the Well with the Chthonic Realm and wisdom,
and the Fire more with the Celestial Realm and knowledge or inspiration.
The symbol of the World Tree then makes a nice triplicity linking
the solar fire with the earthly waters.