"A savage Dragon lives in the forest, / Most venomous he is [...] / In the hour of his death / His venom becomes the great Medicine". Book of Lambspring 15 c...
Fiery (fire breathing) dragon, symbol of the destructive sun's heat during the hot, dry half of the year, which peaks in in Leo, Jul/Aug, the hottest and dries time of the year in continental Europe, Levant, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran...
I talked about this dragon in Mesopotamia in my post "Seven headed dragon"...
In Mesopotamia, summer lasted seven (hot) months...Which is why local dragon (dragon = symbol of summer), had seven snake heads (snake = symbols of sun's heat)...Oh, and look, we also have dragon killer(s) and the princess 🙂
Why were Persian kings so obsessed with lion hunt? Cause they were reenacting the annual fight between the Rain season (Rain god) and the Dry season (Lion/Dragon) in which the rain god always wins...
In Bulgaria, at the start of summer, all the strong and healthy village men would gather at midnight, strip naked and walk the village land in ritual silence brandishing axes or cudgels, weapons of thunder gods "to scare the dragon who steals the waters"
In all these places, dragon always marks Jul/Aug, the hottest and driest time of the year...
Is the venom the water that dragon (drought) stole? Which gets released when dragon dies (drought ends) and the waters that dragon stole get released as rain and flowing water?
It is the main duty of all the thunder gods to kill the snake/dragon and release the waters the dragon stole...
So is the archer depicted pointing its arrow at the dragon a thunder god? This guy depicted here with a bow, killing the blazing sun that causes drought?
Until recently I would have been sure it was. In Fertile Crescent, where I think this fire breathing dragon mythology originated, the year is divided into two halves,
And right at the beginning of the rain season, lightning arrows start shooting from the night sky. Orionids....
And if arrows are shooting down from the night sky, there must be an [invisible] archer shooting them from up there. Orion...
I talked about this father of all thunder gods in my post "Invisible archer"...
But now I know that there are two Great Archers in the sky. One that shoots his arrows towards Earth in Oct/Nov (Orion), and the other one that shoots his arrows towards Earth in Jul/Aug (Perseus)...
I stumbled across this while I was writing my article "Apollo the great archer" about why Apollo was the terrible "far shooting" archer...About arrow and bow constellation from Mesopotamia, Ishtar, Sirius, and Jul/Aug, the season of Perseid meteor shower...
And I have a feeling that the red dude from the original image is the later...The one which was marked by Mesopotamians with the bow and arrow constellation...
Question here, which I will try to answer soon: Did Mesopotamians see both Great Archers as one, just shooting at two different times of the year?
And the one which was in India called Rudra/Indra, the leader of the army of Rudras/Maruts armed with golden spears...I talked about this in my post "Rudra"...
And the one whom Greeks called Perseus...And Heracles...I talked about him in my post "Cetus"...
And the one whom Serbs call Ilija Gromovnik (Elijah the Thunderer), a very very strange saint celebrated in Jul/Aug...
Amazing picture. Elijah's Chariots of Fire, Byzantine Museum, Athens, Greece.
When I wrote my articles about him, "The thundering sun god", "Alidjun", "Zodiac killer", I already suspected that Elijah the Thunderer was not just simple replacement for Perun, Slavic thunder god. Like in Greece where he seem to have replaced Zeus, because most holy places associated with Elijah in Greece are mountain tops once associated with Zeus...
The reason why I thought that there was more to Elijah, is because Serbs believed that Every August 2nd, the hottest day of the year, Ilija Gromovnik (Elijah the Thunderer) is about to burn the world to ashes, but his sister/wife Ognjena Marija (Fiery Mary), another strange Serbian saint, persuades him not to do it.
This Russian "Christian" icon depicts Ognjena Marija or the "Fiery Mary" surrounded with fiery wheels of Perun, inside the burning flame.
This is why I called him The Thundering Sun God/Saint...But I couldn't fully make sense of him...
Then while I was writing my article "Croesus" I came across "Thundering Apollo" which sounded very similar to The Thundering Sun God/Saint from Serbian folklore...
It all finally made sense when I discovered the reason why Apollo was "the most feared archer"...
You should check my articles about Apollo if you want to fully understand what I am talking about here:
"Palil". About "Palil" a nickname of Nergal, the terrible, burning, destructive sun of Jul/Aug, Leo...And about the origin of the name Apollo and its meaning...
"Lord of the flies". About Nergal and Apollo as "The lords of the flies"...And about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the peak of the fly and fly born diseases season in Northern Hemisphere...
"Lions of Delos". About the Lions of Delos, the burning destructive sun in Jul/Aug, Leo, and the fact that both Nergal and Apollo are linked to lions.
"Apollo and dolphins". About Jul/Aug, Leo being the "best time to sail in Eastern Mediterranean", and the link between dolphins and Lions...and Apollo...
"Marble throne of Apollo". About snakes (symbols of sun's heat), dragons (symbols of burning sun's heat) and terrible sun gods, Nergal and Apollo who are dragons themselves...
"Apollo and Python". About why Python followed Apollo after his birth? Cause snakes are solar animals...According to the Delphian tradition, Apollo was born on the 7th day of the month of Bysios (Jan/Feb)
"White raven". About the black and white raven legend which is found in both Nergal and Apollo mythology, Egyptian vultures and the twins that guard the gates of hell. And some other weird stuff...
"Threshing floor of Apollo". About the threshing floors as solar observatories/temples, about the threshing floor of Apollo from Delphi, about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the holy month of Apollo, and about solar bonfires...
"Apollo the great archer". About why Apollo was the terrible "far shooting" archer...About arrow and bow constellation from Mesopotamia, Ishtar, Sirius, and Jul/Aug, the season of Perseid meteor shower...
"Apollo Sminthius". About Apollo and peak infectious diseases season, Jul/Aug
That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
Most Vedas interpreters agree that Maruts are deified moisture laden monsoon storm winds, turned into rain bringing deities armed with thunder and lightning. Even I agree with that and I even wrote this post, "Maruts" talking about this through analysis of this 7th c. Maruts relief, Sambor Prei Kuk, Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia.
But, the Mysore Palace edition of the Rigveda, which gives in 36 volumes an exhaustive introduction, the text, traditional meaning, ritual application, grammatical explanation, and the Sanskrit commentary of Sâyan says that: Vâyu (winds) and Maruts are distinctly different...
And so in the above paper, R.N. Iyengar proposes that Maruts were, in the oldest layers of Rigveda, a deified meteorite shower, resulting from a close encounter of Earth with a comet. And I actually agree with his proposal...
So...I can hear you ask, you believe that Maruts are deified storms and deified meteorite shower? Actually I do. It will all make sense at the end of this post. So read on...
Here are some things that Vedas tell us about Maruts, and which R.N. Iyengar interpreted as description of a meteorite shower, resulting from Earth's close encounter with a comet. You can find a lot more in his article. It's well worth reading...
Agni was born (among gods, in the sky) bright like the sun and was moving in the night sky along with smoke. After that Maruts were born with great commotion holding shining spears. Then the Maruts stood surrounding Agni with their lights.
Maruts then came (to earth) along with Agni from above. They are visible at a distance shining like stars. They come down in thousands to earth together. They are shaped like drops and are bright like fires. They gleam like serpents as they approach the earth.
They roar as they fly towards on the ground. The whole world is afraid to look at them during their brightened travel. They move/shake/crash the hills and mountains and disturb the oceans.
A flash of bright light, the sound of explosions - what witnesses report and cameras captured as a meteor broke apart as it entered the atmosphere...
They have an epithet "asurâh", which, apparently, means "one who throws". The material of the weapons of Maruts is made clear by Agastya in: "Far be from us, your impetuous shaft. Far from us be the stone you hurl". So Maruts are deities which "throw stones towards earth".
I love this in particular: They can bring "airless showers to deserts" (apprently, an intense meteoritic shower can make the target region airless for some time).
The author concludes that: Three broad phases can be discerned in the description of Maruts.
The first, probably the earliest in time, are hymns which express awe at the approach of Maruts. These also express a sense of fear that Maruts are prone to kill people on earth.
In the second group are prayers that the shower of stones may avoid the worshippers of Maruts.
The third layer contains hymns wherein Maruts are invoked to arrive at a prayer or worship.
It may not be wrong to conjecture that this trend should have been directly matching with the frequency of the storms of Maruts.
As Maruts were constant companions of Indra, the author concludes that originally Indra was the equivalent of the Celestial Agni and the personification of the comet which created the Maruts meteorite shower.
A point to be reconciled is the meaning of Maruts as storm wind deities in later literature. We guess, with the status of Indra getting downgraded in time to a mere rain god, Maruts always linked with Indra, were also brought down as wind deities.
This has happened notwithstanding the fact parjanya and vâyu are the independent rain and wind deities in Rigveda. One reason for this mismatch should be the absence of recognisable Indra and Maruts in the skies...
Important!!! I would beg to disagree with the last sentence...
Evidence for the evolution of the concept of Indra from the concrete to the abstract is found in RV itself. In the hymn (VI.21.4) the poet wonders: "Where the famous Indra is now located? Where he travels, among what people? What prayers summon him? Indra!"
In many hymns of RV Maruts are said to be the children of Rudra...The author concludes that "It is most likely that Maruts were thought to originate from a particular object or constellation in the sky, called Rudra".
This object, which has not been identified yet, could, according to the author, be planet Mars??? Cause Rudra is red and Mars is red...
Eeeeee....This makes no sense...Considering that he spends the whole paper talking about comets...Why Mars? Why not a comet?
I think that Rudra was originally another name for the same comet which the author thinks was named Agni and Indra. I mean in Rigveda Rudra was called He Who shines like [the] Sun, He Who shines like gold, He Who has [long] matted/braided hair...
Sadhu (holy man) ritual during the holy bathing for Magh Mela, an annual festival that celebrates the beginning of the universe...
What does this remind you of?
I mean...
Anyway...Who's Rudra?
Rudra (the roaring one, the wild one, the terrible one, the red, burning one) is a Rigvedic deity who is praised as the "mightiest of the mighty" and described as "extremely terrifying".
Rudra is one of several deities identified with Agni, most likely the same celestial Agni, the comet, who was said to give birth to Maruts...
Rudra is also called asura (the one who throws). Actually he was called "The great asura of heaven"...Significant I think 🙂
He was so feared, that in Rigveda he was often not named and was referred as "asau devam" (that god) and was given the adjective śiva (shiva) in the sense of "propitious" or "kind".
Rudra is also called Śarva (the archer), Dhanvin (bowman) and Bāṇahasta (Armed with a hand-full of arrows) and bow and arrow are his essential attributes. RV declare that Rudra discharges "brilliant shafts which run about the heaven and the earth" (RV 7.46.3)...
I talked about another heavenly archer in my post "Invisible archer":
If arrows are shooting down from the night sky, there must be an [invisible] archer standing somewhere up there shooting them out of his bow...
Orionid meteorite shower
Orion
An example of an ancient "scientific" explanation for an annual natural event...
Even the gods were afraid of the strung bow and the arrows of Rudra, lest he should destroy them...Sounds familiar? It should. Remember my post "Apollo the great archer"?
Apollo armed with bow and arrows. Why?
"I will remember and not be unmindful of Apollo who shoots afar. As he goes through the house of Zeus, the gods tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow..."
Why was everyone so frightened of Apollo and his bow and arrows?
So, the Earth survived the near collision with the comet. It was most likely already broken into 3 really big bits as it approached Earth, which could be the reason why Rudra/Shiva has 3 eyes or 3 heads/faces. Three-headed Shiva, Gandhara, 2nd century AD.
As the comet passed by earth, comet either further disintegrated into many smaller but still big enough bits which could create the chaos described in Vedas...
These large comet bits fell on Earth causing all the death and destruction described in the Vedas. And then every following year the Earth flew through the comet's path full of debris which kept producing a meteorite shower full of destructive large meteorites.
Eventually, after who knows how many years, all the big bits fell down on Earth. And as time passed, the stories about the terrifying Rudra (the comet) and his murderous children Rudras (the large meteorites) turned from history to myths. 11 Rudras, Udayagiri Caves, c. 401 AD...
And now Rudra is indeed just the name for the area of the sky from which the Rudras/Maruts meteorite shower (still) emanates every year.
Important!!!
And the later Vedic texts corroborate the above points. The Taittirîya Brâhmana states that "There is only one Rudra and the innumerable thousands Rudra’s children, and that they are not seen any more but only remembered"...
At the end of his paper, R.N. Iyengar says: This raises the question whether Marut was a generic word for all types of meteoritic activity or it referred to particular types. This can not be answered definitively at present.
Well, I think it can. Here comes the interesting bit:
In his paper R.N. Iyengar talks about the fact that the Taittirîya Âranyaka, says that Rudras appear in the grîsma-rtu, the two month before summer solstice and the Maruts appear in the hemanta-rtu, the two months before winter solstice.
That would make Rudras = Aquarids meteorite shower which falls in May and Maruts = Orionids meteorite shower which falls in Oct/Nov, both result of the Earth crossing the debris full path of the Haley comet, which swings by Earth every 75 to 76 years.
Why was Orion seen by Ancient Greeks as a "the greatest hunter" armed with a cudgel (club)? And why do Bulgarians call Orion "cudgels (clubs)" and why do Serbs call Orion "Baba's (grandmother's) sticks" and all the stars "Baba's (grandmother's) cudgels (clubs)"?
Maybe because of this
Wow, amazing, we solved the identity of Rudra/Agni/Indra and the identity of Rudras/Maruts and we resolved the ancient dilemma whether Rudras and Maruts are one and the same or different. They are both...
Done and dusted...
Weeeeeeell...It all fits except for one tiny thing...
The above interpretation doesn't fit Indian climate and is therefore wrong...You know whose climate it fits? Mesopotamian. Perfectly...But that is a completely different archer...I explained it all in this in my post "Invisible archer" I already mentioned earlier...There the rains arrive when Orion appears in the night sky, right when the rains start, rains that kill drought caused by the sun of the dry season.
An example of an ancient "scientific" explanation for an annual natural event...
So, we can't just take parts of Rigveda that describe Indra and Maruts as respectively comets and meteorite showers and ignore the other parts where they are clearly described as storm/rain deities directly linked with annual monsoon.
Every year, Indra and Maruts slay Vritra, the drought dragon. In India, Orionids mark the beginning of the dry season and Aquarids mark the end of the dry season. Neither of them can be Rudras/Maruts, the bringers of rain. Which means that Helley comet can't be Rudra/Indra.
So who were/are Rudra/Indra and Rudras/Maruts? I think that Rudra/Indra is deified comet Swift–Tuttle and that Rudras/Maruts are deified Perseids meteor shower. Why?
Perseids meteor shower peaks in Jul/Aug, the same time when the monsoon rains peak in India. This means that Rudras (meteor shower) can also be Maruts (thunderstorm shower)...
See I told you it will all make sense in the end...
The comet Swift–Tuttle, whose trail of debris is the source of the Perseid meteor shower, is on an orbit that makes repeated close approaches to the Earth–Moon system...
It seams that (at least) once, it came too close to the Earth, and this terrifying close encounter was eventually deified as the birth of Rurdra/Indra/Agni in the sky...
That we are onto something here can be seen from this:
The abode of Rudra is commonly regarded as in the north, while that of the other gods is in the east. From "Vedic Mythology" by Macdonell, Arthur Anthony. This sounds strange until you realise that: "To see the Perseids meteors, you should look up and to the north"...
In Rgveda Rudra is described as "armed with a mace"...Why? Maybe because mace/club looks so much like a falling meteor...I talked about this in my post "Jack and the magic beans" about "might smiters".
Baal with his battle mace...
But he is mostly seen as an archer, who is still there, shooting arrows that cause plague and other infectious disease...Rudra, just like Apollo, was believed to both inflict and cure infectious diseases...
I talked about this side of Apollo in my post "Apollo Sminthius"...
Coin depicting Apollo Sminthius (Apollo lord of the mice) with his plague causing bow and a mouse/rat at his feet. Minted in Alexandria, Troas/Troad. Around 300 AD. Currently in The British Museum, Department of Coins. London...
The peak plague/infectious diseases season is Jul/Aug, the peak Monsoon season and the peak Perseid meteor shower season...So this again points at Rudra being comet Swift–Tuttle and Rudras being Perseid meteor shower.
One other thing. In "The Presence of Siva" by S. Kramrisch we can read this about Rudra:
So Rudra is (directly linked to) Sirius. Which rises with the sun in Jul/Aug. At the peak of the Perseid meteor shower...
in "Vedic Mythology" by Macdonell, Arthur Anthony we can read that Rig Veda tells us about Rudra's widemouthed, howling dogs, who swallow their prey unchewed...Sirius is also linked to dogs and dog days. I talked about it in these posts:
When our mythologies were made out of animal calendar markers, Sirius, the Dog Star rose with the sun in Jul/Aug, when mating season of the old dog breeds began...
And Sirius in Jul/Aug is finally linked to archers and bows and arrows, not just in India, where we find Rudra, but also in Greece (Apollo/Artemis). I mentioned Apollo the archer earlier.
I talked about Artemis, Apollo's twin seister, the archer in my post "Artemis Orthia"...
Mesopotamia (Ninurta/Ishtar, bow and arrow constellation). I talked about this in my post "The brightest star"
This might finally answer my question: Why was Sirius deemed so important that everyone seems to have tracked it? Maybe because it's heliacal rising announced the arrival of the Terrible Archer, who (at least for a while) terrorised people all over the world every Jul/Aug...
It also explains why rising of Sirius was announcing the beginning of the time of fires and why Sirius was called The Scorcher...
July/Aug is the hottest time of the year in the northern hemisphere, so that could explain it...But maybe the "Fire that descends from the sky" also had something to do with such Sirius's reputation...
Anyway...I think this is enough for tonight...
So, what do you think? For the end I just want to send my regards to Perseus...
To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
If arrows are shooting down from the night sky (Orionid meteorite shower)...
...there must be an [invisible] archer (Orion) standing somewhere up there shooting them out of his bow...
An example of an ancient "scientific" explanation for an annual natural event...
Of course, if you look at the stars that form Orion constellation, this is what you see...
The lines were added by people to form the imagined archer which rises in the night sky as the arrow like meteorites, the debris from the Halley comet, start shooting down on earth from Orionid radiant. Right above Orion...
Anyway, this is how some people saw and explained Orionid meteor shower, which starts every year in Sep, and ends in Nov, and peaks in mid Oct.
Some other people did't see arrows coming down from the sky. They saw clubs...
And so
Why was Orion seen by Ancient Greeks as a "the greatest hunter" armed with a cudgel (club)? And why do Bulgarians call Orion "cudgels (clubs)" and why do Serbs call Orion "Baba's (grandmother's) sticks" and all the stars "Baba's (grandmother's) cudgels (clubs)"? I talked about this in my post "Grandmother's cudgels (clubs)"
You might also like this article, "Jack and magic beans", about (thunder) giants living in the sky...And the possibility that our myths about sky gods originated as the best scientific explanation for observed phenomena. If huge rocks are falling from the sky, someone is throwing them...So, giants living in the sky...
A 15th-century engraving depicts the town of Ensisheim in present-day France being struck by a thunderbolt as a giant rock...
Now guess what happens in Mesopotamia in Oct/Nov? The dry season, the season of drought and death, ends when the first rains arrive...In Oct/Nov...
And these rains are brought by Ninurta/Ningirsu...The old storm god, the old god of rain...The same guy, depicted here with a bow, killing the blazing sun that causes drought...From my post "Adda seal"...
Why was Ninurta/Ningirsu depicted as an archer? Well, originally, I thought that it is because when it rains, you can see a rainbow. And in Mesopotamia this is only between Oct/Nov and Apr/May...
In Hindu mythology, rainbow or the Indradhanush is the bow of Lord Indra, the god of lightning, thunder and rains.
But the Mesopotamians didn't see the rainbow as Ninurta/Ningirsu's bow. They saw it as the rain/thunder god's crown/tiara...
So why then? Maybe because just before the rains arrive to Mesopotamia, the arrows start shooting from the sky announcing the arrival of the Sky god, Ninurta/Ningirsu...The bringer of rain...The Great Archer...Who also shoots thunder and lightning bolts...
