The Sky Father and Earth Mother: the Basis of All Indo-European Religions, Part Four, the Celtic Earth Mother

 The Proto-Celtic Earth Mother

She has been reconstructed as *Danu, from whom we derive the Irish Reflex Danu and the Welsh Dôn. *Danu ultimately derives from the PIE reconstructed goddess, *Dānu, whose reflex is found in the Vedic Dānu, the mother of a primordial race, the Danavas. She is an extremely ancient water deity, who is indirectly defeated by Indra when He slays Her son, Vṛtra, the serpent/dragon, in order to release the waters. There are no hymns addressed to Her in the Rig Veda, but She is, nonetheless a divine entity, a deva‑matr̥, a 'mother of divine beings'. Her name is also preserved in the Iranian word Dānu, meaning 'river, running water'. Likewise, on the continent, the Celtic reflex of the goddess is preserved in the names of great rivers, such as the Danube (Latin name, Danuvius), the Don, Dnieper, Dniester and the Donets in Russia. The Daugava which runs through Belarus and Latvia from its source in Russia, flowing into the Baltic Sea. A tributary of the Daugava, the Dysna, flows through Lithuania and Belarus. Indeed, the meaning of the root behind the PIE *Dānu, the noun, * dānu‑ means 'river, stream, flowing water.' The underlying verbal root of the noun is *dʰenh₂‑ /*dʰen‑, 'to flow, run, drip.' *dānu‑ is reconstructed from the following reflexes:-

. Sanskrit: dā́nu — 'fluid, drop,' also the primordial mother.

. Avestan: dānu — 'river'.

. Old Irish: Danu — ancestral mother of the gods.

. Welsh: Dôn — same reflex.

. Hittite: dānu‑ — “river”.

Just as the Vedic Dānu is the mother of the Danavas, so the Iranian Dānava are the children of a primordial water deity, whose name was suppressed and consequently not preserved in the Avesta, but the concept is clearly there, and Her name survives in Her offspring. Due to the religious reforms of Zoroaster and the elevation of Ahura Mazda, ancient Indo-European deities were either demonised or erased. We see this pattern time and time again with all monotheistic religions, which are basically intolerant. Fortunately, the same or similar deities survive in the Rig Veda, which gives us insight into the Iranian reflexes. 

It is clear from all these reflexes that the Proto-Celtic *Danu and the PIE *Dānu is strongly associated with water, in particular, rivers. As is evident from the Vedic, Irish and Celtic mythologies, She is also an ancestral deity. This is demonstrated in the Irish mythology where Danu is said to be the mother of the Irish gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann ('the people of the goddess Danu') and in the Welsh mythology as the mother of the Welsh gods, the Plant Dôn ('the Children of Dôn').

My readers may be wondering why the PIE *Dānu and the Proto-Celtic *Danu should be considered to be Earth Mothers when they are so clearly associated with water and rivers? The answer to that question is that the ancestors did not draw such a clear cut distinction between these two domains. The waters that *Dānu and *Danu preside over are the waters beneath the earth, as opposed to the waters which rain down from the heavens. The rivers themselves were important boundary markers for the tribes who occupied the land. It should also be remembered that across Indo-European mythologies, creation begins with the primordial waters, and water is the source of life and fertility. The rivers thus, are the visible representations of the goddess, and it should be noted that hydronyms are the most ancient form of nomenclature that we have, and rarely change with the migrations of peoples.

It is interesting that the PIE and Celtic Earth Mothers do not have a male consort. The absence of such a consort is quite meaningful; *Danu belongs to the oldest ad deepest layer of Indo-European myth, where origin mothers are mothers, but not wives. Examples of such deities include the Vedic Dānu, the Greek Tethys (mother of rivers), the Norse Nótt (the personification of night and mother of Jörð), Jörð, (the personification of the earth), the Greek Gaia (the earth itself), the Vedic Pṛthivī (personification of the earth), and the Baltic Žemyna (the personification of the living earth). Broadly speaking, the various Indo-European Earth Mothers all appear before the Sky Father in the earliest layers of the cosmology; they have roles independent of the Sky Father. Indeed, in the Greek mythology, Gaia produces Uranus, the sky by Herself. In the Celtic mythology, *Danu, no father of Her offspring is mentioned. It is clear that the Earth Mother is older than the Sky Father by at last one cosmological generation. The children of the PIE and Proto-Celtic *Danu appear before the manifestation of the Sky Father. It is only with the appearance of the PIE Sky Father that marriage appears as an institution. The sky is a much later ordering principle.

Riders of the Sidhe, 1911, John Duncan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Riders_of_th_Sidhe_(big).jpg

The Scythian Origin Myth, the Four Hallows, the Grail Runes and the Indo-European Caste System

Over the years I have from time to time discussed the Indo-European pagan origins of the grail or graal mythos and how this is rooted in pre-Christian Celtic religion and reflected in the last three or possibly last four rune staves and names. I have also referred to the Scythian connection in the past which I first encountered in Alu An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology by Edred Thorsson (2012, Weiser Books). Edred devotes an appendix in his book to discussing the grail runes (Appendix C Grail Mythos in Old English Runes?)

It would appear that according to Herodotus, writing in The Histories the ancestor of the Scythians was called Targitaos, the son of Zeus (the Greek name for the equivalent Scythian deity) and the daughter of the river god Borysthenes (the Greek name for the Dnieper). He in turn had three sons, Lipoxais, Arpoxais and his youngest Colaxais. These three sons fathered their own tribes. This origin myth bears some similarity to the Germanic origins myth referred to by Tacitus in his Germania. Mannus, the son of the 'earth born god' Tuisto fathered three sons who were the ancestors of the tribal confederations of the Ingaevones, Herminones and the Istvaeones. It is of course possible that these myths are a later survival of an original Proto-Indo-European origins myth.

An alternative view of these three sons is that they are the fathers of three castes rather than tribes. Only the ruling caste, the Skolotoi (Royal Scythians) who were descended from Colaxais worshiped the deity Thagimasadas (identified by Herodotus as the equivalent of Poseidon). This reminds me of the Germanic caste system myth in the Rigsthula of the Poetic Edda. It is the third and youngest caste, Jarl that bears the first Germanic king and this is represented by Kon, the youngest son of Jarl. Likewise Odin has a special relationship with the Jarl caste and it is my contention that the god referred to as Rig is in fact Odin, not Heimdall as this otherwise would not make a great deal of sense. I have discussed this elsewhere on my blogs and do not intend to repeat the arguments in favour of that theory here.

Herodotus goes on to relate that four gold implements fell from the sky to the sons of Targitaos, a plough, yoke, cup and a battle-axe. Dumezil interpreted these as symbols of the Indo-European caste system. The fact that these symbols appeared before the three progenitors of the Scythian castes is significant in my opinion. Only Colaxais was able to touch these gold implements without them bursting into fire and thus his descendants became the guardians of them. Quite obviously the plough and yoke became symbols of the producer or farmer caste. The battle-axe symbolised the warrior (and thus noble) caste whilst the cup represented the priestly one.

At this point I just wish to clarify that the Scythians are regarded as an Indo-European people of Iranian origins. This has been concluded via a study of  the genetics of ancient bodily remains, anthropological descriptions by classical authors, their language (Scythian, a branch of Eastern Iranian), culture and religion. Genetic analysis of six Kurgan warriors indicates that they were carriers of the R1b1a1a2 or R-M629 haplotype which is very common in western Europe and reaches its greatest intensity of 92.3% in Wales. Various classical writers describe the Scythians as having red or fair-hair, being of light skin and having grey or blue eyes and being tall in stature. These physical characteristics closely match those of the Germanic and Celtic peoples and no doubt point to a common distant origin.


The religion of the Scythians appears to have been derived from early primitive Iranian pre-Zoroastrian religion and a number of their deities have been identified. One of their primary deities whose name is unknown corresponds closely to the Greek Ares. As the Scythians were a war-like people this should not surprise us!

In recent years scholars have begun to reassess the King Arthur and grail legends in the light of Scythian history and mythology. Notable examples of this include From Scythia to Camelot: Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail (Arthurian Characters and Themes) by C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor (2000, Routledge) and Arthur the Dragon King. Man and Myth Reassessed by Howard Reid (2001, Headline Book Publishing).

Returning to the issue of the grail legend Edred Thorsson makes the argument in his afore-mentioned book that the symbols of the grail are represented in the last three rune staves of the Anglo-Saxon or (more correctly) the Northumbrian runic futhorc. Calc symbolises the cup or chalice, Stan the stone and Gar the spear of Parsifal. Each of these three symbols, chalice, stone and spear are integral parts of the legend. In the version related in the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach it is the stone rather than the chalice which represents the grail. Wagner in his last work Parsifal emphasises the spear and the chalice. Like Eschenbach Heinrich von Ofterdingen in his Wartburgkrieg depicts the grail as a green stone that fell from the crown of Lucifer. For more interesting background information on this topic I recommend both of Otto Rahn's books translated into English:- Crusade Against the Grail: The Struggle Between the Cathars, the Templars and the Church of Rome and Lucifer's Court: A Heretic's Journey in Search of the Light Bringers (Inner Traditions, 2006 and 2008).

All of this raises the question as to why was the grail mythos encoded in the last three Northumbrian runes? Edred posits the theory that the ultimate origin for the grail runes is to be found in the stationing of Alans in Northumbria by the Roman Empire. With the withdrawal of Rome from Britannia in the early 5th century the Alans appear to have been an influential community in that region of the country. Edred points out that the Alans are of course related to the Scythians and would have been familiar with the legend related by Herodotus. He speculates that the grail runes may have a similar or related meaning. What is certain is that these runes find their parallels in the four hallows of the Celtic gods, the Tuatha De Danann in Irish mythology.

The four hallows are the Stone of Fal, the Spear of Lug, the Cauldron of the Dagda and the Sword of Nuada. It should be noted at this point that the rune which appears immediately before the three grail runes is Cweorth. Some students of the runes have speculated that the etymology and possibly the shape of the stave may indicate a sword and it is certainly worth bearing in mind but it is unfortunately not provable.

Edred further speculates that the three grail runes like the four gold Scythian implements may symbolise the tripartite Indo-European caste system. The spear rune Gar which is closely associated with Odin symbolising the warrior or noble caste, the cup or chalice the rune Calc, the priestly caste whilst Stan the stone rune symbolising the caste of producers. If Edred's theory is correct then we should apply the same interpretation to the four hallows. The Spear of Lugh (partially mythically cognate with Odin) and the Sword of Nuada (mythically cognate with Tyr) represent the warrior and noble caste. The Cauldron of the Dagda would symbolise the priestly caste whilst the Stone of Fal would of course relate to the producers. It is certainly a tempting theory.