Germanic pagan Ian Read is best known for his neofolk project 'Fire + Ice' which “takes the purity and philosophy of early music and melds it into a message redolent with powerful seeds of honour, truth, loyalty and the bond of true friendship.” Ian is also Drihten (lord) and Rune-Master in the Rune-Gild, an initiatory school devoted to the esoteric and exoteric study of the Germanic runes.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans of the Pontic Caspian Steppe and other parts of Eastern Europe in the neolithic worshipped a paternal deity who they called Dyḗus ph₂tḗr “sky father”. With comparative linguistics and comparative mythology we can learn a lot about this ancient god from whom Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Irish Dagda, Vedic Dyáuṣ Pitṛ́ and Norse Odin and many others also derive. In this video I explain what we know about the god’s mythic roles relating to cattle, his relationship to other gods in the Indo-European religion and his association with different animals in later pagan religions.
Anthony, D., ‘The Horse, the Wheel, and Language’ 2007 Dumezil, G., ‘Mythe et Épopée’ 1973 Dumezil, G., ‘Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty’, 1988 Kershaw, K., ‘The one-eyed god: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde’ (Journal of Indo-European studies monograph) 2000 Lincoln, B., ‘THE INDO-EUROPEAN MYTH OF CREATION’ 1975 Matasović, R., ‘A Reader in Comparative Indo-European Religion’ 2010 Mylonas, G. E., ‘The Eagle of Zeus’ 1946 Puhvel, J., ‘Victimal Hierarchies in Indo-European Animal Sacrifice’: The American Journal of Philology , Autumn, 1978, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 354-362 Puhvel, J., ‘Comparative Mythology’ 1987
