The Heroes of the Iliad as Indo-European Gods: A Mythological Rosetta Stone: Part 9 of 9

Sarpedon – Dyaus (Father Sky)

Beginning with perhaps the most important detail of all: while the Vedic Bhishma is the spiritual son of Dyaus, the Greek Sarpedon is said to be the son of Zeus (cognate of Dyaus), and is the only warrior said to be so. In the Mahabharata, this makes Bhishma Dyaus' incarnation, but in the Iliad the deeper identity of Sarpedon is not at all made explicit. Both Bhishma and Sarpedon are generals not directly of the royal Kaurava or Trojan family, but are brought in as allied forces. They are also the foremost of these outside generals. Each one, as well, has reservations about the war or does not want to fight it. Bhishma is uncle to and loves the Pandavas, so his heart is not in the fight and he doesn't wish to kill his nephews. Sarpedon complains during the war that he has no reason to hate the Greeks and no reason to fight them. Each one is forced to fight by bonds of alliance and loyalty. Sarpedon gives a speech to Glaucus on the duty of kings to honor their subjects by fighting and dying bravely. Bhishma, as he is dying, gives a speech to Yudhishthira about dharma and the duties of a king, among other topics relating to dharma and right living.

Bhishma and Sarpedon both die in the war, and their deaths bring their divine connections emphatically to the forefront. Both of their death scenes involve divine elements, drawn out ceremony, and the consciously exercised decision of when to die. Bhishma is filled with so many arrows that when he falls back they make a bed for him, holding him off the ground. He does not die yet as he has the power to stay alive until the moment he chooses. Arjuna gives him another “pillow” of three vertical arrows pointing from the ground up to the back of his head, and shoots the ground nearby causing the Ganges water to spring out to slake Bhishma's thirst. His death is drawn out as he gives his speech to Yudhishthira. After 58 nights he gives up his life and attains salvation. Sarpedon is mortally struck in battle by Patroclus, and Zeus debates whether to save his son's life, but Hera convinces him this would be unjust. As Bhishma becomes so filled with arrows that he can lie back on them like a bed, it is also said of Sarpedon that “A man had need of good eyesight now to know Sarpedon, so covered was he from head to foot with spears” (Iliad, Book XVI, line 635). After he is mortally wounded, Sarpedon calls on Glaucus to rescue his body and then Patroclus removes the spear from him (his soul doesn't leave him until this is done, as similarly Bhishma giving up his breath was a significant detail). Apollo then takes his body and washes it in the river Xanthus and anoints it. This moment seems to parallel the moment where Arjuna places the arrow under Bhishma's head and provides the water to soothe him from the sacred river Ganges. While Sarpedon doesn't have the power of choosing when to die exactly, the question is still discussed by his father Zeus who exercises this same choice for him. Indeed, in both cases the choice to not die exists, but the decision in the end is made in favor of allowing death to come. Zeus then has Apollo rescue Sarpedon's body. As Bhishma dies with drawn out ceremony, it is also said that Apollo washes and anoints the body of Sarpedon with ambrosia, and then delivers it to Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death) to take back to his homeland for funeral ceremonies. This is a unique death scene in the epic, and other warriors' deaths are not treated in this way – tended to by the gods, anointed, washed in the river and taken to their homeland for burial – which indicates a deep significance in the scene.

We may speculatively attempt to compare both of these episodes to the deaths of Celtic Sky Fathers Bran and the Dagda. Welsh Bran is killed in the war in Ireland, mortally wounded in the leg. He then gives a speech telling his men to cut his head off and return it to his homeland of Britain, to the White Hill of London to watch and protect against invasion from France (performing this kingly duty ever after). Similarly, Bhishma's specific vow had been not to die until the kingdom of Hastinapur had been secured from all directions, and this was part of the reason he took such a length of time before giving up his breath. The Dagda is mortally wounded in the war with a poisoned spear or “dart of gore” (Lebor Gabala Erenn) thrown by a woman, Cethlenn. Interestingly, it is Arjuna and Shikhandi – who had been a woman in a previous life and whose well-known femaleness is used to deter Bhishma from attacking them – who kill Bhishma. It takes 120 years until the poison is able to kill the Dagda, during 80 of which he reigns as king. Thus his death, like Bhishma's, is the longest and most drawn out of all, and he maintains his kingly duty in spite of its approaching doom.

Father Sky: (Sarpedon, Dyaus/Bhishma, Bran, the Dagda)

- Is against the war but fights for the “opposition” as one of its main commanders

- Has no antipathy toward his enemies in the war

- Gives a speech on the duty of kings

- Dies in the war, his death scene is extended and he is in some way preserved by the gods

- In his death scene he is washed in or slaked by a sacred river thanks to the aid of another figure

- The conscious choice of when he will die is exercised by himself or another

- His body is covered excessively with projectile weapons on his death

- May be taken to his homeland for special burial ceremonies

Conclusion

We thus have the six main heroes of each epic standing in the exact same order: descending by age and caste in Mahabharata, and descending by authority and caste in the Iliad, from the Terrible Sovereign down to the “Young Son” Horse Twin. On the other side we have the three main warriors of the opposition and the central young queen in more or less the same positions in each epic. Are we prepared to say that this pattern is no more than an extremely elaborate mirage? Beyond the central characters thus far mentioned, the divine identities of the less prominent Iliad characters become less certain as they are less fleshed out. The King and Queen of the Kauravas, Dhritarashtra (incarnation of Bhaga) and Ghandari can easily be said to parallel King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Hecuba bears a son who is prophesied to destroy their kingdom, while Ghandari's son is prophesied to destroy the kingdom and the rest of the universe as well. Cethlenn, wife of Balor in the Irish myth, is a prophetess and warns him of his doom, just as Cassandra, sister of Hector does for him. If Norse Loki is also in the Demon of the Dark Age mold, as Dumezil has argued (Gods of the Ancient Northmen), does he represent a blending of this demon also with the Sun God, a blending we seem to find in Paris and possibly Bres? Or perhaps the scheming half-blooded illusionist uncle who guides Duryodhana, Shakuni, representing the Dwapara Yuga, is closer to the missing element in the Loki question? We can see a direct line through from Krishna to Athena to Gwydion as divine helpers in particular scenes, but this brings as many questions as answers, as in another place Athena also plays a quintessential role of Loki's, provoking the attack on Menelaus almost exactly as Loki had on Baldr. In the section on the funeral games of Patroclus, does Diomedes win the chariot race precisely because he is a god of horses? It's quite incredible that Odysseus is able to wrestle the strongest warrior Telamonian Ajax to a draw – is this only possible due to the fact that the Horse Twins Castor and Polydeuces were famed for hand to hand combat, hence the strongest warrior and the warrior of hand to hand fighting must reach a draw? Achilles tells Agamemnon that he automatically wins the spear throwing contest as no one could beat him. Is this because the spear was always associated most with the Mitra-Varuna, Lawful-Terrible Sovereign duo, whether its wielder was Yudhishthira, Lugh, or Odin?

There are much deeper layers to the story of the epic, but for starters we may attempt to reconstruct a naturalistic meaning of the overall myth of the Dawn Goddess cuckolding the Lawful Sovereign with the Sun God. Crucially, the Lawful Sovereign Mitra was early on associated with the morning sky, before this was expanded to association with the daylit sky as a whole. Hence in the morning, perhaps before the Sun itself quite comes into vision, The Lawful Sovereign is united with the Dawn and rules unchallenged as peace loving lord of all creation. The Sun moving on its path from the low and unknown darkness, far from its proper home on high, then breaks up this peaceful marriage and takes away the Dawn (who yields to it) as it rises in the sky and becomes the inhospitable lord of noontide, shooting its rays from afar with the golden splendor now all for itself, finally recognized as the forgotten but returned prince. The Lawful Sovereign, he whose special power is to unite the armies by oath of alliance (which is Society itself), then pursues his wife's captor along with the other Gods of Society: the Celestial Gods of Justice, those of the tumultuous middle atmospheric region, and those of the flourishing earth. The Sun conspires with the Demon of the Age, of linear time, decay, destruction, to wear away at the Gods of Society and visit them with much death. The seemingly eternal war is the length of the day. The Sun is eventually struck down and goes down to Hades, and its kingdom burns up in the Sunset. The Spear of the Eternal Law of the cycle cannot be stopped by any shield or stone, but goes through them like paper. The Dawn is reunited with the Lawful Sovereign for the following morning.

Placed in a highly simplified initiatic framework, the Soul of the righteous one (the Lawful Sovereign), is united with the essence of sovereignty/divine glory which is the golden glow of Dawn, in a golden age of early morning or a primordial unity where peace and justice reign. Through ignorance and foolish overconfidence the Soul lets his guard down, which is the sin corresponding to his archetype. The forces of Time and Decay represented by the Sun and Demon of the Dark Age cause the dark night of the soul, the wound in the abdomen, the fall into matter and decay (as Lleu here begins visibly decaying), the loss of the Divine Sovereign Principle. This is a necessary decaying of the ignorant state however, an alchemical dissolution, and aided by Wisdom (Gwydion/Athena) the Soul is healed enough to marshal the other powers available to him. An internal battle ensues to regain the Divine Power/Sovereignty/Golden Age (within and without) with all marshaled forces.

Each of the metaphysical forces corresponding to the gods has a particular strength required for this task as well as a sin or danger they are prone to, and these must be regulated carefully. The violent nature of the Terrible Sovereign's retribution is prone to destructive harshness, yet the fierce power of the commander-in-chief is required as a force of creative action. The Lawful Sovereign's calm and wise Righteousness, which creates unities, is required, and yet one must not let one's guard down or succumb to too great of detachment or slip into an avoidance of conflict. The Wind God is also known as the Lord of Life, as the wind is the breath-soul and source of life. Hence he is the embodiment of overflowing vitality and raw power. The Lord of Life then becomes the fitting force to oppose, like a nemesis, the Demon of Decay and Decadence, the Demon of the Dark Age, Decay being that which afflicts all things more and more in the last days of the Yuga and which is responsible for spiritual and material destruction and degradation on an unmatched scale. These two fight one-on-one, to a draw, until the Lord of Life finally overcomes the Demon by possibly underhanded means. The Demon is fated to be vanquished at the end of the age, yet as a force of Fate he too has his necessity, his role, and his honesty as such an impersonal force shows in thought-provoking relief the necessary artifice that Life always uses in service of its continuation. Life is always wedded to Maya (illusion) as it exists within Becoming, within the material world of Samsara. Its danger or sin is falling into overindulgences of the material world, of falling too deeply into Maya, of abusing Dharma, becoming too drunken with Life that one brings shame on oneself or becomes weighted down by material desires. On the path to transcendence, even illusion necessary to life must be overcome. The power which is embodied by brooding thought, and by the duality of Skill and the sensitivity that comes with it (as seen in the Thunderer), is perhaps the most essential power in the esoteric battle, though it has a fragility to it. It is able to perceive and understand the deeper layers of Dharma, of Cosmic Balance, and to perform the skillful operations needed to to wage the Greater Holy War and attain the Divine Glory. Its dangers are overconfidence in its Skill (the reason Arjuna is said to die before reaching Paradise) and its proneness to falling prey to powerful emotions or internal storms that can destroy. Hence the Soul must master all internal storms as well as personal attachments. Cunning in general, for planning and carefully sieging the place where the Divine Glory is kept, is required, as are the Youthfulness of Spirit to give one enough boldness to vie with immortal powers when one must. The mortal sins of the Horse Twins in the Mahabharata are said to be Sahadeva's pride in his wisdom and Nakula's pride in his beauty, thus vanity must be defeated within. Odysseus' famous hubris of announcing his true name after tricking the cyclops Polyphemus in the Odyssey, a kind of pride in his own cleverness which leads directly to his catastrophe, seems like a direct echo of this same sin of Sahadeva's. From the Iliad there may also be added the occasional cowardice of Odysseus and possibly the overstepping of Diomedes (though this is mainly lauded). Ultimately, the Soul confronts the Sun God (ie Mitra here confronts Surya exactly as Mithras confronts the Sun God in the Mithraic Mysteries), the ultimate double-sided god with one face governing Time and thus the world of Decay, the other pointing to the Absolute and the world of Divine Glory, its keeper and gateway. The Soul uses its Spear of Dharma (which represents a power of concentrated asceticism in the Mahabharata, prayed over for many years) to at last overcome the Sun God and recapture the Divine Glory, the Golden Glow.

This is a very rough proposed outline (not attempted from this angle before, to my knowledge) of what current Iliad scholars refer to as a Faktenkanon, or standard list of events, that theoretically existed in the tradition of the epic poets, and that formed the underlying framework of the epic as it spread, and which, as Franco Montinari explains, was “marked by a strong tendency to preserve its content,” while “strong deviation from the contents of the story that had been established” was not allowed (Franco Montinari, Introduction to the Homeric Question Today). The layers of the epic we have suggested here, as well as others, exist simultaneously. The whole war can be seen as a naturalistic allegory of the cycle of the day or year, an allegory of the pursuit of transcendence, and an allegory of the cycle of the age all at once. It is a case of microcosm equals macrocosm; as above, so below. These all are the same thing on different metaphysical levels. It seems that this epic had a religio-mythic basis to its deep structure, and if it did, while being as central to the cultures that carried it as it clearly was, then all of these levels would have been active in the minds of the poets and audiences at once. This is after all how myth works.

To be certain, there is more that can be learned by a patient study of the Greek epic. What seems almost incontrovertible from this perspective is the idea that these epics share a common origin, that they are the same myth with the same characters and events. The idea that all of this is only a case of borrowing also seems far-fetched: much of the parallelism here described can only be grasped when one knows the proper pattern of other Indo-European correspondences, so buried in the text as it is. Whatever influence the Greeks may have taken into their mythology later, the Iliad preserves a deeper, more archaic mythological framework carried by these Indo-European people, that perhaps remained relatively untouched by later influences as its ancient meanings were slowly forgotten and the heroes became seen as only mortal. Take this foundational European epic in hand and you will be able to see things in other parts of the mythological web with new eyes. Understand its pattern and you will have equipped yourself with one more Rosetta Stone.

Bibliography:

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The Mahabharata

The Odyssey - Homer

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Lebor Gabala Erenn

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The Sun Riders Telegram Link