The Theme of the Eighty Brothers

2 Comments | November 16, 2006 at 3:31 am by mahud
Filed under Japanese Mythology, The Cosmic Mysteries

In the myth of Okuninushi, the theme of the eighty brothers who are motivated by jealously and conspire to kill Okuninushi has it’s parallels in a number of corresponding myths.

The Murder of Okuninushi

According to the Japanese ‘Izumo Cycle’, the hero Okuninushi had 80 brothers who were jealous of his marriage to the princess Ya-gami-himi, and so, plotted to kill him. After telling Okuninushi to help them hunt a huge boar, they heated a large rock and pushed it down a mountainside to wards their brother below. Thinking that is was the boar, Okuninushi attempted to catch it and was burnt to death. his mother, filled with grief, appealed to the gods and he was restored to life again.

The Eighty brothers made a second attempt to take Okuninushi’s life, by crushing him in the fork of a tree. Again his mother appealed to the Kami, and Okuninushi was brought back to life. She then set Okuninushi to Yomi, the Japanese realm of the dead.

Odysseus and Penelope’s suitors

In the epic of Odysseus, the brothers of Okuninushi are the would-be suitors of Penelope who abuse the hospitality of their absent host, whom they believe to of been lost at sea long ago.

Osiris

In one version of the popular Egyptian myth, they are the seventy-two conspirators who, along with Set, murder Osiris.

The Sixty-Thousand Sons of Ocean

They are also the sixty-thousand sons of Sagara (ocean), burnt to ashes by the fiery gaze of Kapila.

Dionysus

They are the pirates who kidnap Dionysos, and likewise, they are the Titans, blasted by Zeus’ thunderbolt as punishment for the murder and dismemberment of Dionysos-Zagreus, his son and heir, comparable with the myth of Lycaon and his 50 sons.

The Fifty Sons of Lycaon

Lycaon was an ancient king of Arcadia, who had fifty sons. One day, Zeus visited Lycaon disguised as a beggar. His sons (and some say Lycaon himself) set before the god a meal mixed with the flesh of a child. Zeus, in his wrath, overturned the table, and blasted Lycaon and his sons with bolts of lightning. Only one son was said to of survived, Nyctimus, who was also said to be the child who’s flesh was served up before the god. In another version of the myth it was the flesh of Arcas, The grandson of Lycaon and the son of Zeus himself, which was mixed up in the meal for the god. Zeus restored his son to life but blasted his wicked uncles with thunderbolts, while transforming Lycaon into a wolf. In consequence to the actions of Lycaon and his sons, Zeus flooded the world to wipe out mankind.

They are also the god’s who castrated Agdistis.

The Miraculous Birth and Death of Attis

The Phrygian myth concerning the goddess Cybele and Attis begins with the god Zeus who manages to impregnate the earth (Cybele was identified with the earth goddess Rhea) while he slept, resulting in the birth of the Hermaphrodite Cybele (called Agdistis). The gods castrate Cybele, and an almond tree grows from her severed genitals. Nana, the daughter of a river god, becomes pregnant with the boy Attis, after she picks an almond from the tree and it enters her womb. Eventually, Attis reaches manhood and the all-female Cybele falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Attis is betrothed to a daughter of king Pessinus, and so the jealous Cybele sends Attis into an insane frenzy whereby he castrates himself and dies. Full of remorse, Cybele decrees that Attis’ body shall never decay, or according to another tradition, Attis is transformed into the evergreen pine tree, symbolic of his undying nature. According to a further tradition, Cybele “Brought him back to life” (‘The who’s who of classical mythology’, Grant. M, and Hazel. J, 2002, p.95).

Cosmic Dismemberment

They are also the Vedic gods who sacrificed Purusha and set the universe in motion, formed as it was, from the dismembered parts of his body.

Separation of Heaven and Earth

We find the same idea in the Myth of the Castration of Ouranos, by the Titan Kronos, instigated by the long-suffering Mother Earth.

The Children (Titans) of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), were hated by their tyrannical father, who imprisoned them deep within their mother Earth. Gaia plotted to release them from her aching innards, and forming a sharp-toothed sickle made of strong adamant, she incited her children to take revenge. Her words transfixed them with fear, and in the deadly silence that followed, only the corrupt Kronos took courage and agreed to his mother’s plan. Gaia concealed Kronos — probably within her vagina (‘The Nature of Greek Myths’, Kirk, G.S, 1990, p.116) — and waited. Ouranos approached Gaia, desiring to unite, when suddenly Kronos sprang from his hiding place and castrated Ouranos, tossing his genitals into the raging ocean. White foam rose up from the severed flesh, and from this was born the beautiful goddess Aphrodite.

Apsu and Tiamat

A late Babylonian account of creation known as the Enuma Elish (late 2nd millenium B.C) tells us that before the universe came into existence, Apsu (the male sweet primordial waters) and Tiamat (the female salt primordial waters) mingled together as one, along with their son Mummu “The personification of the divine force behind Apsu’s utterance” ( ‘The Babylonians’, Saggs, H.W.F, 1988, p.332). Apsu and Tiamat also gave birth to the firstborn gods, but their rebellious behaviour brought nothing but misery and unrest to their primordial parents. The sleep that was Apsu’s sole desire became increasingly disturbed, and so both he and Mummu agreed to murder his tumultuous offspring. Dispite the pain Tiamat was constantly forced to endure, she was fiercely protective of her children and angrily opposed her husbands wicked scheme. The gods soon learnt of Apsu’s intention to destroy them and they fell silent. Ea (Enki), who was the greatest of the gods, cast a protective spell, encircling his siblings. He uttered a powerful incantation over the primordial waters which paralysed Mummu and sent apsu into a deep sleep. He removed the crown from the sleeping Apsu, and placing it upon his own head, he killed him. Ea then built a palace in the waters of Absu, for himself and his wife Damkina, and subdued Mummu with a rope through his nose.

Cosmic Death and Recreation

The theme running through all these myths is a cosmological one, as in the Vedic hymn of Purusha, The Castration of Ouranos, and the Enuma Elish. The myth of Cadmus and the Spartoi also has it’s origins in this cosmological myth.

King Cadmus and the Sown Men

It was Cadmus who founded the Greek city of Thebes. Directed by a Delphic prophecy, Cadmus followed a cow, recognizable by it’s unusual moon-shaped markings, and built the city on the site where it collapsed from exhaustion. Wanting to sacrifice the cow to Athene, Cadmus ordered his men to fetch water—for the ritual—from a nearby spring. however the spring belonged to the god Ares, and was guarded by his offspring, a terrible serpent, who devoured most of them. Cadmus killed the serpent, crushing it’s head with a rock, and was afterwards instructed by Athene to sow the serpents teeth, like seeds, in the earth. From these ‘seeds’ sprung the Spartoi ‘sown men’, bearing arms and ready to attack. Cadmus tossed stones among them, and in the resulting confusion, they slaughtered one another, until only five remained standing. These five Spartoi became the ancestors of the Theban aristocracy.

Reborn into the Cosmic Realm

The Spartoi are the resurrected men of Cadmus, born from the very teeth that devoured them, after Cadmus crushed the serpent’s head. Also the destruction of the war-like Spartoi, caused by Cadmus when he cast stones among them, is paralleled by the destruction of the sons of Sagara (whose name means ocean), who tried to assault Kapila, and were reduced to ashes, but were later resurrected by the River Ganges.

The death (and re-birth) of the ‘dying god’ (Okuninushi, Osiris, Dionysos, Nyctimus, Attis, Purusha) is bound up with the death and creation of the temporal universe of opposites (The separation of Ouranos and Gaia and the birth of the female Aphrodite, the male and female primordial ocean, and the separation of the double-sexed Agdistis into Attis and the all-female Cybele) . The wounding of the god, like the universe itself, is only a temporal-cosmic one.

The Wrath-Bliss

The deity is indestructible according to his eternal nature, which is represented by the Cosmological weapon (The lightning Bolt of Zeus, The adamantine sickle, The Stones of Cadmus, The Eye of Kapila), that is also the weapon of the self-wounding God, that can further be identified with the Axis-Mundi from which all things flow, and the gateway to paradise.

The Time before Time

The malefactors of the Cosmological Myth, however, (such as the Spartoi, Lycaon and his 50 sons, and the sons of Sagara.), who once pre-existed within the eternity beyond opposites, are no longer made of the same eternal substance as the ‘dying god’ and The destructive nature of the weapon destroys them. Or rather, should destroy them, because the wound is also paradoxically a wound of healing. Instead, they are transformed to live in another mode of existence (The Titans freed from within mother Earth, The sons of Sagara born from the Shattered Gourd, The resurrected men of King Cadmus, and the Pirates that kidnap Dionysos who are transformed into Dolphins).