What was the role of the King in the Indo-European Creation Myths? And what does this have to
do with the fairy tale we know today as Cinderella? Well all will be explained in this video,
I’m Jon White, and welcome to Crecganford. And so for those of you who are new to my
videos, they have subtitles, citations in the video description, and a like button,
which you can press for free and it will help this to channel to grow, and there are chapters
in this video so you can easily skip to the sections you want to see. And with that grab
yourself a cup of tea, and I shall begin. The king is dead! Long live the King! I used
to be confused about what that meant when growing up, I heard it in films occasionally.
And for those of you who don’t know it refers to the King physical and the King politic.
The physical King is dead, but the position of King remains and must be filled. And so
through this statement we have an understanding that the king is an important figure in societies
that say such things. But, was that the case in the earliest Indo-European societies, what
was the role of king? Now as you may remember from my earlier videos, in the Indo-European
Creation Myth, there was Manus and Yemo, with Manus sacrificing Yemo to create the earth
and the people. And so within the land and inside the people there is a piece of Yemo.
And this is highlighted when you first look at the purpose of ma n, and was something
initially raised by Dumézil, who was a scholar in religious studies, and he had something,
what we call his tripartite ideology of the Indo-Europeans. And Dumézil wrote that there
were three classes of men, Priests that represent magic, Warriors representing war, and Commoners,
representing the freemen or food producers. But where was the King in his tripartite society?
Well, as Yemo was sacrificed to provide the material to form the earth, and the first
person, from which all others came, it means that all people contain traces of the first
man, but more importantly the first man contains all the elements found in all three social
classes, and because of this, the first man is often also considered the king. And this
is highlighted by Dumézil when he states that the King has the virtues of all classes,
and so is able to perform in all three functions. He can practice the correct ritual as a priest,
he has the courage to fight like a warrior, and has the generosity to deliver food and
resources to the free people, like a food producer. And we can see this in the roles
of Yama of India, or Yima in Iran, or Iōn in Greece, Romulus in Rome, and the legendary
pagan king of Prussia, Witowudi. We also see this in the roles of the sons of the King,
in myths such as Volund’s Saga, something I’ve spoken about in this video. And so,
in summary, the King is a physical representation of all the other classes in one. Well nearly
always, as if we head into the Persian Creation myth , we see the Avestan term xarenah, a
term that refers to a spirit, or an essence, and this must sit within the King to provide
them with the divine right to rule. And we spoke about this when talking about the Flight
of Yima’s Xarenah in Yast 19, which I quote in this video here. If this essence is seen
as leaving the king then the king no longer has the rite to rule. And this infers the
narrative that all Kings need to have all elements of all the social classes within
them to rule, and this is usually because they are descended from Yemo, or an equivalent,
as the brother or twin of Manus. And so, this need to have all parts of all classes within
them defines a king’s power, and so equally if they lost some of their physical form,
through battle, or an accident, or injury, then this would mean that they physically
lost a part of that tripartite social representation, and then they could not be judged as being
fit to be king. And probably the best-known myth about this is in the Celtic story of
Nuada Airgelám, or the Welsh hero Ludd Llaw Ereint, and who could be considered a part
of the British Creation Myth which I’ve discussed with Jon Mason in this video here.
And I’ll come back to this in a few minutes or so. Now the tripartite virtues were of
critical importance if you wanted to become a king, but other virtues too became important
as time passed, including the virtue of truth, a virtue which is linked with that of honour
and fame, all of which are key Indo-European virtues. And what did a King have to do to
be considered truthful? Well, here we see the concept of being wed, and specifically
wed to woman who would be considered divine or a “goddess”. A sacred wedding was the
key to delivering that virtue, as it was seen that the goddess would provide this to the
king, to show he could be trusted and so would be fair to all who lived on his land. And
this in turn helps order to be maintained within his kingdom, and so within the cosmos,
and this cycles to help the cosmos and the land, be at one with the king. Now this wedding
would in later Indo-European cultures involve a horse ritual, and it is at this time we
start seeing the horse take over from the bovine as a creature that was considered a
sign of power, and so as being involved in the creation of the cosmos or giving fertility
to the land. And so the horse evolved into cultural rituals, where by in some the King
or Queen would have intercourse with a white mare, although not normally literally, although
there are indications in some texts that suggest either directly, or indirectly a dismembered
phallus was involved, from the horse. And this evolved into a ritual regarding the creation
of the divine twins, something written about by Jaan Phuvel in a book he compiled on Myth
and Law amongst the Indo-Europeans, and I will discuss the Divine Twins in another video
one day, as they are different to the twins of creation, which I touch on in this video
here. And so this ritual of wedding could have then evolved into a horse sacrifice,
a horse sacrifice well evidenced and which may well have helped the evolution of the
horse goddesses, a goddess who probably was not around in the early Proto Indo-European
times, and is now often represented by a white horse, a horse whose name in myths can be
found in Epona, or Rhiannon, or Étaín, or Gontia, amongst others. But it shows an interesting
evolution of the Indo European culture as the horse and its influence on war and society
grew. Making the horse feel like a magical gift for man, a unit for war, and a tool for
farming, an equivalent of a tripartite social unit, and so eventually a powerful goddess.
And if you want to know more about the horse or divine twins leave a comment in his video
below and I’ll pick up on those, and if necessary I’ll make a video for that. So
back to the King as we got a little distracted, and for us, we see this King figure, with
these virtues, hold a position of power which was often considered less than that of a priest
in the earlier Indo-European societies. The King would seek the priest’s advice before
making decisions. In fact, the whole community would seek the priests for their help. Now
this left the King to be the more of a symbolic head of the people, and their culture, rather
than the go to position of knowledge and wise decisions about the future and fate. And so
we can see evidence of this still being the case just 2,000 years ago in Europe, when
the King Masyus of the Germanic Tribe, the Semnoni, brought his seeress, Ganna, with
him when visiting Rome. And Ganna is mentioned by Cassius Dio briefly in his works, when
he says. “Masyus, king of the Semnones, and Ganna, a virgin who was priestess in Germany”
… “came to Domitian and after being honoured by him returned home” and it may have been
Ganna who provided evidence or stories that Tactius then used in his book about Germania,
as all this happened shortly before Tacitus wrote his book. Now one thing we haven’t
touched on is the god-king, as some Kings were meant to be descended from gods? Surely,
they were considered powerful enough to be considered as such. Well, strictly speaking
Yemo, the twin of Manus, wasn’t a god, and nor was his brother, and the earliest kings
of the Proto Indo Europeans were also probably not considered gods, not whilst they were
alive anyway. But certain Indo-European cultures considered kings as turning into gods when
they died, such as in early Mesopotamian culture, or they were considered divinely sanctioned
to rule, such as in Rome or Egypt. And then as beliefs evolved, then only if the King
was a good king, would he then be considered as being able to go to the divine realm to
become a god. But this belief, as many beliefs, evolved through time, and eventually we would
see Kings write down their ancestor’s names so as to show they were descended from a recognised
god. Now this was a good strategy if you were a king, as few subjects lived more than several
generations, making it a hard thing to prove false with no evidence to prove otherwise.
And this is seen in the Anglo-Saxon Kings for example, whose 9th generation of ancestor
was often Woden, and such an example can be found in the documents known as the Anglican
collection of CCCC and Tiberius, showing Cerdic being the descendant of Woden, although the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles not only shows this being Woden, but before him it goes back to
the king’s ancestors being Adam, of Adam and Eve fame. Now this narrative, by some
at least, of suggesting kings were gods, or divine people, still exists in modern times.
We have an example with the Ethiopian ruler in the middle of the 20th century, Haile Selassie,
who was venerated as a divine person despite his protests to say he wasn’t, and his followers
ignored him to place him at the centre of the Rastafarian religious movement. And even
more oddly, there was a church in England at the end of the second World War called
“The League of Christian Reformers” who considered Hitler a god. And so there seems
to be a natural human disposition amongst some, to place a person in power into the
same realm as the gods. So what can we take from this, apart from the fact that some people
are incredibly gullible? It’s that the position of a King was an important one, and a respected
one, but one that may not have had the power that you would expect at the time of the Proto
Indo-European speaking cultures and when they were around. They were people from who could
be considered as being representative of all people, and at being at one with the land.
They were, by this measure, a father figure of their kingdom, the political father of
their people. And so, with this connection to the people and the land, another narrative
persisted, and that is what we talked about earlier, and that is when the king, or the
god-king, lost part of his body, or his xanerah, he was seen as losing part of his connection
with the people, and literally losing control of the land, and his rite to rule the land.
And this is shown in the narrative of in some mythologies about Kings, and especially god-kings,
with many tales telling that if the king loses a limb, or a hand, or a foot, the land suffers,
plagues come, or lands are lost. Now this doesn’t also mean that if a king or a god
suffers injury that their purpose is over, I mean look at the Old Norse Pantheon, Odin
loses an eye, Tyr a hand, Thor his head wound, and there are other stories, they seem, on
first examination anyway, to not be affected by such injuries. But an injured king or god
is part of a common story within Indo-European mythology, and this mythology is seen in one
story most know of today but many do not realise it, and this is Cinderella. And let me explain
why. It is not only the loss of an arm that was popular in these stories, but a narrative
where feet become lame, or we see more deliberate acts where gods such as Uranus is castrated
by Kronos, who himself is seen in some myths as being castrated by Zeus. And so we see
the narrative where the Gods losing their power due to this harm, and this is seen in
so many other stories, from the tales of Romulus and Remus’ early life with shepards, to
within the Greek tale of Oedipus whose grandfather was lame, to the story of Achilles and his
heel, or Melampus of Thessaly with his blackfoot. But these myths have more to them than just
the injury, there are academics who think that this narrative hints at a far long lost
initiation ritual. But whilst there may be some potential for this, the main plot we
see in many of these myths is that there is an infliction placed on the key figure, the
god-king, they then are given a chance to prove themselves by receiving a magical gift,
and then go somewhere beyond their usual boundaries to prove they can overcome this initial infliction.
And to conclude a challenging task then happens that leads to the hero, this god-king, to
be identified, often within a narrative of false heroes trying to take the credit instead.
As I mentioned, this narrative is in many stories, but it can be imagined as a story
where a sister is kept from the Prince’s Ball by her step-sisters, but then magically
she is gifted shoes and garments and goes to the ball. But then she loses her shoe,
a reflex of the lame hero, and whilst her stepsisters say the shoe is theirs, the Prince
eventually finds Cinderella, and she lives happily ever after, if you assume she cares
not for the psychological damage to the animals that were turned into people, and back again.
But the thing is these myths are not just told in Indo-European lands, they’re told
across the Americas and in Africa. These stories probably go back in to the Paleolithic age,
alongside stories of the Ferryman. Now I’m not saying Cinderella was told all this time
ago, it is just based on one told that long ago. This notion of a hero or king losing
a part of their body and so not being fit is a premise far far older than the Proto-Indo
Europeans, and so this view of a King could be much older too. Although to counter this,
if there are no static societies, no cities or more precisely kingdoms, could there really
be Kings? Perhaps this has developed from a story about a hero or a leader of a tribe?
And so to summarise all this, the first man on the earth was often considered a king,
because his body contained the elements of all the social classes, and the same material
as which the earth was made. Making him at one with the people and the land. These Kings
were often considered divine, and in later Indo-European cultures were turned into gods.
But the downside of this is that if the king lost that connection with the people or the
land, through a physical or perceived spiritual incident, then they would lose that right
to be king, and so as time passed, we start to see myths and stories about the things
they would do to keep the power in their family, scenes such as incest and betrayal are themes
of many stories about kings. And so on that note, I hope you enjoyed that journey about
kings, it really helps me out if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.
It doesn’t cost anything and hopefully mean this channel will grow. And in the next video
week we are going to look at a question I am asked a lot, and that is about Tyr from
the Old Norse pantheon, and was he originally a lead god of that pantheon? And you’ll
be glad you watched this video first if you do watch that one. So until then, please stay
safe and stay well, and this was Crecganford.