The God Notus in History and Mythology

For centuries, Greek mythology has been handed down from generation to generation; in the 8^th century BCE, the poet Homer produced the first written version of the legends surrounding the battle of Troy. These are known as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Within these epic poems, he tells not only the details of the battle itself, but the myths from the ancient world: meetings between the gods and mortals, challenges of heroes, magic, monsters and the creation of life and death.

In Greek mythology, many organic objects were seen to be of divine origin, usually in the form of either a personification or a minor deity (for example, a nymph). The Anemi, the Four Winds, were four deities (Zephyrus from the west, Boreas from the north, Notus from the south and Argestes from the east), who were known as ‘flint-hearted’.

Notus was the son of Astraeus, the Titan god of the stars and planets, and the goddess Eos, the personification of the dawn. He brought with him fog, rain and heat. Hesiod, in his Works and Days, stated that, “Do not wait till the time of the new wine and autumn rain and oncoming storms with the fierce gales of Notos (South Wind) who accompanies the heavy autumn rain of Zeus and stirs up the sea and makes the deep dangerous”.

In one myth, the Psylli decided to make war against Notus when winds from the desert had dried the water in the land (now Tripoli). As they marched into the desert, they were overcome by a simoon and perished to a single man.

In art, Notus was shown as a winged deity, usually pouring rain from a vase as he was believed to bring with him fog and rain wherever he went. In a relief on the column of Marcus Aurelius, the great winged creature showering rain upon the troops is doubtless intended for Notus, and not Jupiter Pluvius.

He seems to appear more frequently to that of his brothers and this might be due to the number of different weather characteristics that he is attributed to, especially by later Latin writers. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Notus is the wind employed by Jupiter to bring on the rain for the deluge.

Weather deities and myths are important elements in a culture’s mythology and identity; they are the reasons how and why their crops grew and so allowed the people to survive. However, like with many deities, they could not only be benevolent but could also turn violent and destructive, giving the residents the explanation for bad weather.

Bibliography:

Cotterell, Arthur & Storm, Rachel (1999) The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Hermes House, Anness Publishing House.

McCartney, Eugene S. (1930) Greek and Roman Weather Lore of Winds, the Classical Weekly, Classical Association of the Atlantic States.

The History and Significance of the god Ebisu

As one of the seven Shichi Fukujin, Ebisu was considered to bring good luck and happiness, each deity looking after a different aspect. In this respect, Ebisu was the Shinto god of work and the most popular of the seven deities. He is the most widely revered god in the fishing industry and fishing villages in modern day Japan.

Illustrations of the god show him as a peasant, linking to him being the patron of labourers, with a smile on his face. Due to him being associated with the sea, he is generally shown holding a fishing rod in one hand and a sea bream (sunfish) in the other, this being a symbol of good luck. However, there are images of him that show him depicted as a human corpse floating on the surface of the sea, occasionally as a shark or a whale, sometimes even of a float - the Ebisu-aba or Ebisu-float -and sometimes Ebisu is just a common stone drifted or brought ashore.

There has been some debate amongst scholars as to why an ordinary stone from the ocean could be Ebisu, or the representation of the deity. One scholar states, “The one conclusion that we can draw is that Ebisu, as fishermen worshipfully call him, is the power who, they believe, grants them successful catches. Consequently we may assume that a stone picked up from the sea bottom, a corpse, a shark, or any object believed to have power over the catch, has the potentiality of becoming Ebisu”.

Ebisu is believed to have originated in the Shinto religious belief system as the son of Okuninushi, who was the god of medicine and magic. There are other sources which state he was the third son of Izanagi and Izanami, the primal couple; from this he is seen as one of the first ancestors of the Japanese people.

The etymology of Ebisu’s name comes from the word ‘ebisu’, which means a stranger, foreigner or person from a remote place; this then places the god Ebisu as a god originating from a remote land bringing good luck.

Ebisu is seen to be a mediator between the human world and the Otherworld. The word ‘ebisu’ itself carries the connotation of deformity and abnormality; for example, ebisu-buna means a malformed crucian carp, and ebisu-zen means abnormally arranged dishes on the table. In addition to this, the belief that Ebisu is seen as both as a man and a woman illustrates an aspect as a mediator between the two worlds.

Bibliography:

Naumann, Nelly (1974) Whale and Fish Cult in Japan: A Basic Feature of Ebisu Worship, Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

Yoshida, Teigo (1981) The Stranger as God: The place of the Outsider in Japanese Folk Religion, Ethnology, University of Pittsburgh of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.

Oceanus in Mythology and History

The myths of ancient Greece have provided the world with one of the richest sources of stories and legends in the world; they provided not only a recording of how they believed the world came to be, but provided a moral guide to live one’s life against as well as being a form of entertainment.

In Greek mythology the Olympian gods were widely worshipped, but they were not the first gods to come into existence. The first primal deities, the Protogenoi, gave birth to several deities who came to be known as the Titans. These Titans then fought in the war against the Olympians which saw, for most of them, their eventual imprisonment in the bowls of the earth.

One of these Titans was Oceanus, whose name can be translated as ‘River Ocean’. There are two versions of his parentage; Hesiod states that Gaia and Ouranos were his parents but the later Roman author, Hyginus, states that they were Aither (also spelt Aether) and Gaia.

Oceanus was believed to have been the great river that encircled his mother, the earth. He, like many of the gods in Greek mythology, married his sister Tethys, and together they produced many children. These included the elegant Oceanids, nymphs of the sea and the many river-gods of the earth (called the Potoami). Like Zeus and Poseidon, he had many affairs which resulted in the birth of the Aurae (nymphs of the breezes), the monkey-thieves Cercopes by the goddess Theia as well as the semi-divine Triptolemos by Gaia. In addition to this, he also raised Hera, the future queen of the gods, from birth until her marriage to Zeus.

Oceanus and Tethys were, as stated earlier, an incestuous couple, a theme which reoccurs in Greek mythology. Due to this, their relationship was used by the Roman poet Catullus. In one of his poems, Gellius is accused of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt and not even Oceanus and Tethys can wash away his crimes. This notion that large bodies of water are unable to wash away the stain of crime is of course a ‘topos’ going back to Greek tragedy but the “individual naming of the two sea-deities seems to make a point-a literary point which is relevant to the invective of the poem. Not even the mythologically incestuous couple Oceanus and Tethys can wash out Gellius' incest, though they are guilty of the offence themselves and might be thought likely to connive at it”.

Although the children that the Titans gave birth to were more influential in Greek and Roman society than that of their parents, the Titans’ myths still had a great significance on ancient society. Their tales were usually seen as explanations of the nature of the world or the origins of the dominant gods. In spite of this, the Titans are interesting characters of ancient Greek mythology.

Bibliography:

Harrison, S. J. (1996) Mythological Incest: Catullus 88, The Classical Quarterly, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Classical Association.

Lesser Known Deities Starting With the Letter A

Throughout history, the world has seen the birth of many new religions and the worship of strange, beautiful and mysterious deities. Some of these gods (such as Zeus, Athena, Odin, Loki, Jupiter, Venus, etc) have still stayed with us in these modern times. However, there are thousands of lesser known deities from world mythology who are only really known to scholars.

There is a list of lesser known deities starting with the letter A:

1. Acrasia – the Greek personification of intemperance.

2. Ada-Ea - the Mesopotamian ferryman in the Babylonian underworld.

3. Adda-Nari – the Egyptian goddess of religion and truth.

4. Adhimukticarya – a Buddhist goddess and one of the 12 bhumis.

5. Afi – a storm god from the Caucasus.

6. Afrikete – an African sea goddess of the Fon people who was regarded as a trickster and a gossip.

7. Agas Xenas Xena – the deity of the evening star according to the Chinook of North America.

8. Agwatana – the god of the sun and the Nigerian supreme deity.

9. Aha – a river god of the Yakut people of Siberia.

10. Ah Peku – a Mayan thunder god.

11. Ah Uuc Ticab – a Mayan fertility god.

12. Ahi – the Egyptian goddess of the dawn.

13. Ai Apaec – the supreme god of the Mochica tribe in Central America.

14. Aion – the Greek male personification of time.

15. Akakanet – a vegetation god of the Araucanian tribe in South America. He is said to live in the Pleiades and provides flowers and fruit for the tribe.

16. Akano Jewel – a Japanese god of famine.

17. Ake – a Polynesian water god.

18. Akkruva –a fish-goddess in Finland.

19. Akongo – a creator god of the Ngombe people in Africa, who was said to have found the people so noisy that he left to live in the sky.

20. Akshobhya – one of the five Buddhist Dhyanibuddhas and one of the five Dhyanibodhisattvas.

21. Akua – a creator god of Hawaii.

22. Ala – a goddess of the earth and fertility of the Ibo people in Africa.

23. Alako – the god of the gypsies, according to Norwegian mythology. After teaching the gypsies his secret lore, he returned home in the heavens.

24. Alannus – a Celtic messenger god in Gaul who was worshipped by the Romans as well.

25. Alatanagana – the creator god of the Kono people in Africa.

26. Albunea – a Roman water nymph that had the gift of prophecy. Some of her revelations were recorded in the Sibylline Books.

27. Alcyone – a daughter of the Greek Titan Atlas, she was the leader of the Pleiades and the mother of Aethusa by Poseidon.

28. Algea – the Greek female personification of pain. She was an attendant of the goddess of strife, Eris.

29. Alilat – an ancient Arabian mother-goddess, she was worshipped by the Nabataeans in the form of a four-sided stone idol.

30. Allat – a Babylonian underworld goddess.

31. Almaqah – an Arabian sky god of the Saba tribe.

32. Alo’alo – a weather god in Tonga.

33. Alpan – an underworld deity of the Etruscans in ancient Italy.

34. Alrune-wife – a household goddess from Germany.

35. Aluberi – a distant and supreme god of the Arawak American Indians.

36. Ama – from ancient Mesopotamia, a Sumerian virgin mother-goddess.

37. Ama-no-ho – a divine messenger god in Japanese mythology.

38. Amaethon – a Welsh god of agriculture and the son of Beli and Don.

39. Amana – a creator goddess of the Calina tribe in South America. She lived in the Milky Way and was attended to by sea creatures.

40. Amarok – an Inuit deity in the form of a wolf-like monster.

41. Ar-tojon – a supreme god of the Yakut people in Siberia.

42. Aralo –a Georgian agricultural god.

43. Aramati – the Hindu female personification of devotion.

44. Aranyani – a woodland goddess in Hindu belief.

45. Aranzakh – a river god and the personification of the river Tigris in ancient Persian belief.

46. Areop-Enap – a creator deity in Nauru Island who made men from stones and had them support the sky.

47. Argimpasa – the Scythian goddess of love.

48. Asto-vidhotu –a demon in ancient Persia who was then later promoted to a god of death.

49. Astrild – a Norse god of love.

50. Azacca – an agricultural deity in Haiti.