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Ten Gods - A New Approach to Defining the Mythological Structures of the Indo-Europeans (Hardcover, Unabridged edition)
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Ten Gods - A New Approach to Defining the Mythological Structures of the Indo-Europeans (Hardcover, Unabridged edition)
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The various Indo-European branches had a shared linguistic and
cultural origin in prehistory, and this book sets out to overcome
the difficulties about understanding the gods who were inherited by
the later literate cultures from this early "silent" period by
modelling the kind of society where the gods could have come into
existence. It presents the theory that there were ten gods, who are
conceived of as reflecting the actual human organization of the
originating time.There are clues in the surviving written records
which reveal a society that had its basis in the three concepts of
the sacred, physical force, and fertility (as argued earlier by the
French scholar, Georges Dumezil). These concepts are now seen as
corresponding to the old men, young men, and mature men of an
age-grade system, and each of the three concepts and life stages is
seen to relate to an old and a young god. In addition to these six
gods, and to two kings who relate in positive and negative ways to
the totality, there is a primal goddess who has a daughter as well
as sons. The gods, like the humans of the posited prehistoric
society, are seen as forming a four-generation set originating in
an ancestress, and the theogony is explored through stories found
in the Germanic, Celtic, Indian, and Greek contexts.The sources are
often familiar ones, such as the Edda, the Mabinogi, Hesiod's
Theogony, and the Ramayana, but selected components are looked at
from a fresh angle and, taken together with less familiar and
sometimes fragmentary materials, yield fresh perspectives which
allow us to place the Indo-European cosmology as one of the world's
indigenous religions. We can also gain a much livelier sense of the
original culture of Europe before it was overlaid by influences
from the Near East in the period of literacy. The gods themselves
continue to exert their fascination, and are shown to reflect a
balance between the genders, between the living and the ancestors,
and between peaceful and warlike aspects expressed at the human
level in alternate succession to the kingship.
General
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