Divine Progenitors of the Suebi: Analysis of an Important Germania Passage
by Sean Jobst
25 September 2018
"They celebrate in ancient songs, which is the only mode of memory and of annals that they have, how the god Tuisto was born from the earth. To him they ascribe a son Mannus [man], the originator and founder of their nation, and to Mannus three sons from whose name those next to the Ocean [sea] are called Ingaevones, those in the middle Herminones, and the others Istaevones. Certain of them, using the license that goes with antiquity, allege that more eponyms of the nation were born of the god - Marsi, Gambrivii, Suebi, and Vandilii - and that these are genuine ancient names." (Tacitus, Germania, 2.2-3)
From this astounding passage, we can make several important observations. Even by the time the Roman Tacitus wrote these words in 98CE, our Germanic ancestors had a very ancient tribal lore that was transmitted orally through songs and memory, and this contrasted with the written annals of Rome. Tacitus regards the Germanic peoples as truly autochthonous to our lands, contrary to the discredited "Out of Africa" theory or the Abrahamic-influenced theories about Middle East origins. As the earliest detailed description of Germanic spiritual and social life, Germania mentions many gods and goddesses subsumed within other figures and concepts in later Germanic spirituality.
Etymology of Tuisto
One of these was Tuisto, related etymologically to the Proto-Germanic god *Tiwaz by Jakob Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, Volume I, p. 344), known to Germans as Ziu (or Tíw to the Anglo-Saxons and Týr to the Norse). Another explanation offered by Josef Lindauer (Germania: Bericht über Germanien, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975, p. 81) was the Proto-Germanic *tiwisko, giving the name of "son of Ziu" so that Tuisco would be son of the Proto-Indo-European sky god *Dyeus and the earth goddess.
Its my contention that continental Germanic mythology was closest to the earliest Indo-European, as its earliest expressions had diverged least from the Indo-Europeans. The etymological evidence is the most pronounced of this, but it also exists in our mythology. Indeed this motif expresses a deeper reality of the links between the sky and the earth as one unifying reality which together gave "birth" to these gods. As our kith and kin, they are archetypal reflections of all members of their tribe and people, who are also sustained through the light and rains from the sky, which regenerate the earth to which they are bounded. So there's some deeper symbolism here.
Earth-Born God Motif
This motif of "deum terra editum" (a god born of the earth) was expressed in common across Indo-European/Indo-Aryan cultures. The Persian Mitra, later adopted into the Roman pantheon as Mithras, was born from a rock - symbolic of arising from the earth. The Greeks conceived of the twelve Titans as born from the father sky god Uranus and the mother earth goddess Gaia, who was personification of the earth. The same can be said for Donar/Thor, whom the Norse believed was born of a mother named Jörd, whose name also meant "earth" of which she was a personification much like Gaia.
One of the profound beauties of pagan Ethnic Religion, as opposed to monotheism, is the drawing down of divine forces from the sky - from the unseen - into the natural forces around us, what we can see and perceive. Mythologies abound with symbolism of the celestial and their linkage to trees, rocks, the sparks of lightning and their effects upon the natural world, etc.. This is contrary to the degenerated religious perspective that sought to mentally constrain you to some unseen force beyond your perception, throwing away your energies to that distant being before which you were nothing but a mere mortal. Its also a profound recognition of the Folkish reality, that every people has a Myth which belongs uniquely to them and expresses both their origins and their destiny upon their land.
A powerful symbolism can be made here with the Tiwaz rune pointing upward, if we accept Tuisto's link to Tiwaz/Týr and that god's important role in order, law and justice binding the tribe. Also the timeless occult principle "As Above, So Below" - the skies and the earth being linked. The tribe's origins upon the land being linked symbolically to their destiny in the skies. The metaphorical "oath" of ancestry that binds us to the tribe, and the Folk Soul that guides us like a compass, much like the Tiwaz rune is often associated with the North Star around which other stars seem to rotate - much like the conscious individuals of a tribe cannot escape their heritage.
Dualism
Aside from the interconnectedness of sky and earth, more examples of duality abound in this motif. In his commentary to Germania, James B. Rives linked Tuisto to Ymir, the primeval being of Norse mythology from whom the earth was fashioned. Rudolf Simek traced the etymology of Ymir to the Proto-Indo-European *iemo-, "twin, double", the root of the Sanskrit Yama, Greco-Roman Dioskuri, and Yima of the Persian Zend (Rudolf Simek, Lexicon der germanischen Mythology, Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1995, p. 485).
This term is also a derivative of the Latin geminus (as in "Gemini"), the "twins" associated with the Dioskuri Castor and Pollux. Our Germanic god Tuisto's name was linked to "twofold" by Jan de Vries and "hermaphrodite" to Simek. The latter should especially be clarified, free from the modern trend towards gender confusion. Rather, its a recognition of the duality of masculine and feminine principles within nature - complementing each other in the harmony of the nature and the cosmos. Yet this is only one aspect, as the more prevalent dualism here is that of the "twin brothers", who are together creators and progenitors of a people.
Expanding on the possible Ymir/Yama link, we can see in the Vedic tradition that the artisan god Tvastr - whose name possibly comes from the same cognate as Tuisto - was father of Saranya, goddess of the clouds who was wife of Vivaswan, also known as Surya or the Sun personified. From their union was born the mythical first man Manu and the twins, Yama and Tami. Etymological links between Manu and Mannus will be explored later.
One crucial difference between Tuisto and Ymir was noted by Grimm, namely that while in the Norse myth Ymir was passive - the gods using his body to create the earth - Tuisto was proactive: "The main difference between the Scandinavian view and all the others is, as I said before, that the one uses the microcosm as material for the macrocosm, and the other inversely makes the universe contribute to the formation of man. There the whole of nature is but the first man gone to pieces, here man is put together out of the elements of nature" (Teutonic Mythology, Vol. I, p. 568).
In The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Faith, Guido von List named Mannus as a personification of the moon. The moon was a masculine principle to Northern Europeans, while it was feminine to Southern Europeans. As noted by Joseph Campbell, both symbols are about finding the eternal in the temporal within our own lives. So its not surprising that a divine progenitor would be associated with either the sun or moon depending on culture.
God Father - Son - Three Sons
Contrary to the universalist idea of one distant god over all, Ethnic Religion is founded upon the idea that members of a tribe are literal children of their gods. One unique expression of this among the Germanic and broader Indo-European peoples is the succession of father-son-three sons, which Simek traced as a motif originating among the Proto-Indo-Europeans around 2000 BC (Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2007, pp. 225, 336).
A Scythian myth named their ancestor as Targitaus, son of the Greek god Zeus (whose name related to *Dyeus) and a daughter of the river god Borysthenes, associated with Lemnos. Targitaus, in turn, had three sons - Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais - who ruled the then-desolate Scythia, with further stories that only the youngest, Colaxais, could rule since only he out of his brothers could handle the four golden objects (plough, yoke, sword, and bowl) that burned upon descending from the heavens to the earth. Georges Dumézil interpreted this as symbolic of the trifunctional structure of Indo-European societies, in this case the sword of the warrior class over the plough and yoke of the farmers and bowls of the priestly/shamanic class.
The Greeks believed that the earth-born god Uranus begat Kronos, whose three sons were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Tracing this lineage, perhaps Uranus - Kronos - Zeus - Targitaus indicated the Scythians' view of their origins as linked to the ancient Greeks. In any case, this same motif was also present among the Norse, with the Eddas mentioned Buri ancestor of the gods begetting Borr, who then began three sons - Odin, Vili, and Ve. Applying this to the earlier Germanic myth, the role of Buri was preceded by Tuisto and that of Borr by Mannus.
Divine Progenitor
The divine progenitor was another common Indo-European/Aryan motif, seen as both spiritual and temporal figures for the tribe. As noted by Survive the Jive, their function was as embodiment of the Folk, their personified spirit. Just as the human body has a soul that animates it, the body collective of a people also have a soul that is animated by such divine progenitors-god heroes. A notable example was the dragon-slayer Siegfried, often taken as an ancestral archetype for Germanic aristocrats. In his Nordic manifestation Sigurd, he was claimed as forerunner of Swedish nobility such as in the famed 11th century Sigurdsristningen. He was himself descended from the all-father Wotan/Odin. A similar divine lineage was adopted by the Danish king Halfdan, who claimed descent from Thor.
My Alemanni people extolled Mannus as the progenitor of our tribe. Even the etymology has been variously traced as "Mannus' own people" or "all-men". The Spartans modeled their dual kingship after the Dioskuri, Castor and Pollux, with two kings - one ruling during times of peace and the other during war. This motif also appeared with the Roman mythological origins of Troy and especially the mythical founders, Romulus and Remus. The Estonian scholar Jaan Puhvel (Comparative Mythology, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987, pp. 144-165) traced this Roman myth as a remnant of the same Proto-Indo-European creation story of which Ymir and Mannus are Germanic remnants.
It could be that Tacitus was mistaken in considering Mannus to be the son of Tuisco, especially if we see their parallels in the Vedic tradition in Manu and Yama being brothers. Indeed, elsewhere Tacitus mentions unnamed "Alcis" as twin brother gods among the Germans, whom he compared to the Dioskuri through interpretatio graeca. This manifested a twin brother god motif common to many Indo-European cultures, including Sanskrit Ashvin, Latvian Dieva deli (sons of Dieva) - which god shared the same cognate as Ziu - and Lithuanian Asvieni (the Baltic languages share striking similarities to Sanskrit).
Relation of Manu and Mannus
Dumézil was not alone in postulating a link between the Vedic Manu and Germanic Mannus (Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations, 1988, p. 87), while the English Indologist Ralph T.H. Griffith similarly found a link between the two and the Minos of Greek myth. All seem to share the same Indo-European/Aryan origin, with Mannus having the same etymology with the Proto-Germanic *Mannaz, "man". All of these archetypes relate to the Proto-Indo-European story of twin progenitors, *Manu- ("man") and *Yemo- ("twin"), whose creation myth was reconstructed by Bruce Lincoln and David W. Anthony:
Manu and Yemo traveled the cosmos, accompanied by the primordial cow (a common Indo-Aryan theme), when they decided to create the world. Manu is the active agent, sacrificing either Yemo or the cow. With help from the sky father/storm god and divine twins, he then shapes the earth from the remains. Manu thus becomes the first priest, establishing the first sacrifice. The sky god then presents cattle to the third man, *Trito, who loses it to a three-headed serpent (a common symbol for wisdom and enlightenment), whom he then overcomes either alone or through help from the sky god. He thus becomes the first warrior and ensures the cycle of mutual exchange between gods and humans will continue. (Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 134-135)
Thus, we see the trifunctional structure of Indo-European societies, an explanation of humans' role in this cycle, how the Pagan idea of a mutual exchange between humans and the gods was established, and the active role of the sky father in the forging of the earth. Returning back to the Tacitus passage, the three tribal groupings he mentioned are those three from which all the continental Germanic tribes descended and our Suebi/Alemanni ancestors particularly stemmed from the Irminones. "Irmin" was an early name for Wotan, and later gave rise to the Irminsul, so that we truly are children of our gods and especially of our allvater Wotan....As with all else, I don't know all the answers but I dedicate the preceding to my ancestors, as my small contribution to our folk, through whom I seek insights.
25 September 2018
"They celebrate in ancient songs, which is the only mode of memory and of annals that they have, how the god Tuisto was born from the earth. To him they ascribe a son Mannus [man], the originator and founder of their nation, and to Mannus three sons from whose name those next to the Ocean [sea] are called Ingaevones, those in the middle Herminones, and the others Istaevones. Certain of them, using the license that goes with antiquity, allege that more eponyms of the nation were born of the god - Marsi, Gambrivii, Suebi, and Vandilii - and that these are genuine ancient names." (Tacitus, Germania, 2.2-3)
From this astounding passage, we can make several important observations. Even by the time the Roman Tacitus wrote these words in 98CE, our Germanic ancestors had a very ancient tribal lore that was transmitted orally through songs and memory, and this contrasted with the written annals of Rome. Tacitus regards the Germanic peoples as truly autochthonous to our lands, contrary to the discredited "Out of Africa" theory or the Abrahamic-influenced theories about Middle East origins. As the earliest detailed description of Germanic spiritual and social life, Germania mentions many gods and goddesses subsumed within other figures and concepts in later Germanic spirituality.
 |
| Stylized representation of Tuisto from a German manuscript |
Etymology of Tuisto
One of these was Tuisto, related etymologically to the Proto-Germanic god *Tiwaz by Jakob Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, Volume I, p. 344), known to Germans as Ziu (or Tíw to the Anglo-Saxons and Týr to the Norse). Another explanation offered by Josef Lindauer (Germania: Bericht über Germanien, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975, p. 81) was the Proto-Germanic *tiwisko, giving the name of "son of Ziu" so that Tuisco would be son of the Proto-Indo-European sky god *Dyeus and the earth goddess.
Its my contention that continental Germanic mythology was closest to the earliest Indo-European, as its earliest expressions had diverged least from the Indo-Europeans. The etymological evidence is the most pronounced of this, but it also exists in our mythology. Indeed this motif expresses a deeper reality of the links between the sky and the earth as one unifying reality which together gave "birth" to these gods. As our kith and kin, they are archetypal reflections of all members of their tribe and people, who are also sustained through the light and rains from the sky, which regenerate the earth to which they are bounded. So there's some deeper symbolism here.
 |
| Mithras relief I saw in Bad Canstatt, 9 July 2016 |
Earth-Born God Motif
This motif of "deum terra editum" (a god born of the earth) was expressed in common across Indo-European/Indo-Aryan cultures. The Persian Mitra, later adopted into the Roman pantheon as Mithras, was born from a rock - symbolic of arising from the earth. The Greeks conceived of the twelve Titans as born from the father sky god Uranus and the mother earth goddess Gaia, who was personification of the earth. The same can be said for Donar/Thor, whom the Norse believed was born of a mother named Jörd, whose name also meant "earth" of which she was a personification much like Gaia.
One of the profound beauties of pagan Ethnic Religion, as opposed to monotheism, is the drawing down of divine forces from the sky - from the unseen - into the natural forces around us, what we can see and perceive. Mythologies abound with symbolism of the celestial and their linkage to trees, rocks, the sparks of lightning and their effects upon the natural world, etc.. This is contrary to the degenerated religious perspective that sought to mentally constrain you to some unseen force beyond your perception, throwing away your energies to that distant being before which you were nothing but a mere mortal. Its also a profound recognition of the Folkish reality, that every people has a Myth which belongs uniquely to them and expresses both their origins and their destiny upon their land.
A powerful symbolism can be made here with the Tiwaz rune pointing upward, if we accept Tuisto's link to Tiwaz/Týr and that god's important role in order, law and justice binding the tribe. Also the timeless occult principle "As Above, So Below" - the skies and the earth being linked. The tribe's origins upon the land being linked symbolically to their destiny in the skies. The metaphorical "oath" of ancestry that binds us to the tribe, and the Folk Soul that guides us like a compass, much like the Tiwaz rune is often associated with the North Star around which other stars seem to rotate - much like the conscious individuals of a tribe cannot escape their heritage.
Dualism
Aside from the interconnectedness of sky and earth, more examples of duality abound in this motif. In his commentary to Germania, James B. Rives linked Tuisto to Ymir, the primeval being of Norse mythology from whom the earth was fashioned. Rudolf Simek traced the etymology of Ymir to the Proto-Indo-European *iemo-, "twin, double", the root of the Sanskrit Yama, Greco-Roman Dioskuri, and Yima of the Persian Zend (Rudolf Simek, Lexicon der germanischen Mythology, Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1995, p. 485).
This term is also a derivative of the Latin geminus (as in "Gemini"), the "twins" associated with the Dioskuri Castor and Pollux. Our Germanic god Tuisto's name was linked to "twofold" by Jan de Vries and "hermaphrodite" to Simek. The latter should especially be clarified, free from the modern trend towards gender confusion. Rather, its a recognition of the duality of masculine and feminine principles within nature - complementing each other in the harmony of the nature and the cosmos. Yet this is only one aspect, as the more prevalent dualism here is that of the "twin brothers", who are together creators and progenitors of a people.
 |
| Image from Richard Verstegan, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (1605) |
Expanding on the possible Ymir/Yama link, we can see in the Vedic tradition that the artisan god Tvastr - whose name possibly comes from the same cognate as Tuisto - was father of Saranya, goddess of the clouds who was wife of Vivaswan, also known as Surya or the Sun personified. From their union was born the mythical first man Manu and the twins, Yama and Tami. Etymological links between Manu and Mannus will be explored later.
One crucial difference between Tuisto and Ymir was noted by Grimm, namely that while in the Norse myth Ymir was passive - the gods using his body to create the earth - Tuisto was proactive: "The main difference between the Scandinavian view and all the others is, as I said before, that the one uses the microcosm as material for the macrocosm, and the other inversely makes the universe contribute to the formation of man. There the whole of nature is but the first man gone to pieces, here man is put together out of the elements of nature" (Teutonic Mythology, Vol. I, p. 568).
In The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Faith, Guido von List named Mannus as a personification of the moon. The moon was a masculine principle to Northern Europeans, while it was feminine to Southern Europeans. As noted by Joseph Campbell, both symbols are about finding the eternal in the temporal within our own lives. So its not surprising that a divine progenitor would be associated with either the sun or moon depending on culture.
God Father - Son - Three Sons
Contrary to the universalist idea of one distant god over all, Ethnic Religion is founded upon the idea that members of a tribe are literal children of their gods. One unique expression of this among the Germanic and broader Indo-European peoples is the succession of father-son-three sons, which Simek traced as a motif originating among the Proto-Indo-Europeans around 2000 BC (Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2007, pp. 225, 336).
A Scythian myth named their ancestor as Targitaus, son of the Greek god Zeus (whose name related to *Dyeus) and a daughter of the river god Borysthenes, associated with Lemnos. Targitaus, in turn, had three sons - Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais - who ruled the then-desolate Scythia, with further stories that only the youngest, Colaxais, could rule since only he out of his brothers could handle the four golden objects (plough, yoke, sword, and bowl) that burned upon descending from the heavens to the earth. Georges Dumézil interpreted this as symbolic of the trifunctional structure of Indo-European societies, in this case the sword of the warrior class over the plough and yoke of the farmers and bowls of the priestly/shamanic class.
The Greeks believed that the earth-born god Uranus begat Kronos, whose three sons were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Tracing this lineage, perhaps Uranus - Kronos - Zeus - Targitaus indicated the Scythians' view of their origins as linked to the ancient Greeks. In any case, this same motif was also present among the Norse, with the Eddas mentioned Buri ancestor of the gods begetting Borr, who then began three sons - Odin, Vili, and Ve. Applying this to the earlier Germanic myth, the role of Buri was preceded by Tuisto and that of Borr by Mannus.
Divine Progenitor
The divine progenitor was another common Indo-European/Aryan motif, seen as both spiritual and temporal figures for the tribe. As noted by Survive the Jive, their function was as embodiment of the Folk, their personified spirit. Just as the human body has a soul that animates it, the body collective of a people also have a soul that is animated by such divine progenitors-god heroes. A notable example was the dragon-slayer Siegfried, often taken as an ancestral archetype for Germanic aristocrats. In his Nordic manifestation Sigurd, he was claimed as forerunner of Swedish nobility such as in the famed 11th century Sigurdsristningen. He was himself descended from the all-father Wotan/Odin. A similar divine lineage was adopted by the Danish king Halfdan, who claimed descent from Thor.
My Alemanni people extolled Mannus as the progenitor of our tribe. Even the etymology has been variously traced as "Mannus' own people" or "all-men". The Spartans modeled their dual kingship after the Dioskuri, Castor and Pollux, with two kings - one ruling during times of peace and the other during war. This motif also appeared with the Roman mythological origins of Troy and especially the mythical founders, Romulus and Remus. The Estonian scholar Jaan Puhvel (Comparative Mythology, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987, pp. 144-165) traced this Roman myth as a remnant of the same Proto-Indo-European creation story of which Ymir and Mannus are Germanic remnants.
It could be that Tacitus was mistaken in considering Mannus to be the son of Tuisco, especially if we see their parallels in the Vedic tradition in Manu and Yama being brothers. Indeed, elsewhere Tacitus mentions unnamed "Alcis" as twin brother gods among the Germans, whom he compared to the Dioskuri through interpretatio graeca. This manifested a twin brother god motif common to many Indo-European cultures, including Sanskrit Ashvin, Latvian Dieva deli (sons of Dieva) - which god shared the same cognate as Ziu - and Lithuanian Asvieni (the Baltic languages share striking similarities to Sanskrit).
Relation of Manu and Mannus
Dumézil was not alone in postulating a link between the Vedic Manu and Germanic Mannus (Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations, 1988, p. 87), while the English Indologist Ralph T.H. Griffith similarly found a link between the two and the Minos of Greek myth. All seem to share the same Indo-European/Aryan origin, with Mannus having the same etymology with the Proto-Germanic *Mannaz, "man". All of these archetypes relate to the Proto-Indo-European story of twin progenitors, *Manu- ("man") and *Yemo- ("twin"), whose creation myth was reconstructed by Bruce Lincoln and David W. Anthony:
Manu and Yemo traveled the cosmos, accompanied by the primordial cow (a common Indo-Aryan theme), when they decided to create the world. Manu is the active agent, sacrificing either Yemo or the cow. With help from the sky father/storm god and divine twins, he then shapes the earth from the remains. Manu thus becomes the first priest, establishing the first sacrifice. The sky god then presents cattle to the third man, *Trito, who loses it to a three-headed serpent (a common symbol for wisdom and enlightenment), whom he then overcomes either alone or through help from the sky god. He thus becomes the first warrior and ensures the cycle of mutual exchange between gods and humans will continue. (Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 134-135)
Thus, we see the trifunctional structure of Indo-European societies, an explanation of humans' role in this cycle, how the Pagan idea of a mutual exchange between humans and the gods was established, and the active role of the sky father in the forging of the earth. Returning back to the Tacitus passage, the three tribal groupings he mentioned are those three from which all the continental Germanic tribes descended and our Suebi/Alemanni ancestors particularly stemmed from the Irminones. "Irmin" was an early name for Wotan, and later gave rise to the Irminsul, so that we truly are children of our gods and especially of our allvater Wotan....As with all else, I don't know all the answers but I dedicate the preceding to my ancestors, as my small contribution to our folk, through whom I seek insights.
Irmin as an early name for Wotan isn't something I had encountered in my own research. Thank you for sharing that.
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