James L. Kelley.

The Indo-European Homogenesis

Accessed 22 January, 2015.

https://romeosyne.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/the-indo-europeanhomogenesis/.
In Vedic literature we find texts that carry on an I-E tradition that life-power (AV 18.2.23 being,
power, and energy) is attained by the moon and stars via their capacity as watchers. That is, the
celestial bodies reflect the rays of the Sun by watchingnot unlike mirrorsthe disc of the sun. The
moon is a disc of water that is able to reflect (and in a sense contain) fire in the form of sun rays [1].
According to Syanas Vedic commentary,
The demons obtained supremacy merely by looking at Dadhyanc, the son of the
Atharvan priest, while he was alive. And when he went to heaven, the earth was filled
with demons. Indra, who could not fight with the demons, searched for that sage, and he
was told that he had gone to heaven. Then Indra asked the people there, Is there no limb
left of him here? and they replied, There is the horse-head by which he told the Avins
the secret of the honey. They discovered [Dadhyancs horse-head] in Saryanavat and
brought it. (-) With the bones of that head, Indra slew the demons [2].
Dadhyanc is the ritual priest who holds the secret of the soma sacrifice. Essentially, Dadhyanc is a
controller of the suns energy paths; he allows the flow of rays from heaven to earth. The Divine Twins
the Avinslearn of his secret by substituting Dadhyancs priest-head with an Avin horse-head (a
third function, fertility-type head) [3]. Note that though the head-cuttingwhich we must associate
with Dumezils second or warrior functioncannot be averted, the Avins, representing the Dumezilian
third (fertility) function, can grow heads. Thus the warrior deity Indras bellicose activity is
integrated with the Avins generative dynamis [4].
The motif that lies behind the Dadhyanc references I have termed I-E homogenesis, for
according to this mytheme the power of the male sun is non-male but also non-hypostatic in the
sense that the suns power is not a personal actor in the story, but rather is an energy wielded by
mythic male actors. We have male Indra, male Dadhyanc, and male Avins, but life is grown
nonetheless, via solar energy. A primal male generates a son, an image of himself, usually with the only
sexual partner in sight being his male twin, who is overcome through the mediation of a female energy
[5]. The material manifestation of this female sophianic energy is either soma (in this context being
associated with reproductive fluid) or the male reproductive part, in the present case the limb of
Dadhyanc. This limb is a horse-head; in a passage from the Mrkandeya Purna, the Avins' father
Vivakarman pushes his seed into the nose of his wife, who has taken a horse form to avoid intercourse

with a man. The seed flies into her nose (bodily cavity other than the standard entrythis is in line
with the idea of the male-on-male reproduction, through a non-standard or non-sanctioned orifice) and
the Avins fly out of their mothers mouth. We have only to picture the touching together of the noses
of two horse-heads to get the right image: the touching is between two male organs represented by the
elongated equine heads [6]. The image is of two Tab As locking horns, with the second reproductive
cone being forced into the role of a Slot B.
In another Vedic passage, the arms of Dadhyanc are used by Indra to destroy the demons, who
obtain power by imitating the sun-watching of the stars and planets (the real watchers) [7]. It is
possible that we have here a distant source for the mysticism of light evidenced in Hellenistic
religions and philosophies, and also in later manifestations of western esotericism, and thus for the
aural eros found in the West from Platos Symposium and Phaedo, down through Augustino-Platonic
mysticism and Pietistic, Boehmenist Sophia theology. This theme of I-E homogenesis has also
become manifest in the Eastern Orthodox world in the heresy of Sophiology.
In any case, Dadhyancs horse-head is fiery and is associated with the Sun; thus the demons
ability to gain power by visually drinking its rays. But why are bones involved? And why skull-bones?
The skull of the primal man, to follow another I-E mythemethat of the macroanthropos purusais
the vault of the sky, where the seeds of divine energy are available; it is from this vault that the rays of
divine energy shine down [8]. The night time skys luminous bodies represent the fact that
discontinuities and imperfections in the sub-lunar sphere do not occlude the flow of divine solar energy,
for ritual actions and ascetic practices can bring the energy to earth even when the sun is below the
horizon. Thus, Dadhyancs horse-head is aflame like a detached sun, and it islike the real sun
below the ground, in this case beneath a lake's surface.
The Vedas present the horse-head of Dadhyanc as a bone that can be used to defeat demons.
Since the bone is situated in the Divine Twin mytheme, we find Dadhyancs head described as a twin
set of bonesthe limbs of Dadhyanc, [See note 7]used by Indra to kill demons. These arm-bones are
doubtless priapic, following a widespread tendency to substitute limb or thigh for male part in
mythic narratives [9]. This limb as phallus theme as an example of I-E homogenesis is evinced in
Norse myth:
Othin spake: Seventh answer me well, If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now: How begat
he children, the giant grim, who never a giantess knew? Vafthruthnir spake: They say
neath the arms of the giant of ice grew man-child and maid together; And foot with foot
did the wise one fashion / A son that six heads bore (Vafthruthnismol 32-33) [10].

Here we see that two limbs/organs of one male frost giant copulate and produce a son, this unique allmale reproduction being the specific solution to the specific problem of how a male god can find a

mate in order to make another being in His image. The solution arrived at in the I-E homogenetic myth:
Males reproduce without females because the category of female is demoted from the level of
person or actor to the level of energy or act. The female represents the dynamism of the
male, but the active and passive partners must be male.
A parallel text in Tacitus presents Tuisto as a male god who produces a man (Mannus) out of his
own body (Germania 2)[11]. But Tuisto is no more a hermaphrodite than is Dadhyanc, and so we must
conclude that the maid on the Norse frost giants body is in fact the weaker Divine Twin from I-E
tradition. This weaker, more passive brother is overcome by the higher brother. The dominant brother
buries his effeminate counterpart in the earth; in the Edda version, this primal fratricide doubles as an
archetypal reproductive act: three brothers rise from the ground representing the I-E Three Functions.
Thus, the all-male birth of the first man is replicated when the first man bears sons without the services
of a female.
I believe the demons mentioned in the Vedic texts in conjunction with Indra and with
Dandhyancs bones are pseudo-stars or imposter luminaries that mimic the stars and the moon by
using (illicitly) the magic power of the sun. Perhaps we have non-Aryans who steal the soma or who
are perceived to be a threat to the order tenuously preserved by Brahmin ritualism.
Viewed in light of the I-E homogenesis mytheme, the pieces of Dadhyancs skull appear to be
analogous to the stars, which are either little white fragments of solar energy on the atmosphere, or
little holes in the purushal skullcap that let the divine rays of heaven stream down to humans.Ironically,
the I-E homogenetic myth originated in the skulls of males who viewed the cosmos as a huge male
skull. Howis order, virtue, and law to be maintained in such a world? Through violent rituals of malebonding that reproduce the original divine outpouring of eros.

Notes:
[1] On the moon as a water disc, see Syanas commentary on Rgveda 1.84.15 in Hindu Myths: A
Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit, translated by Wendy Doniger OFlaherty (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1975), 59.
[2] Syanas commentary on Rgveda 1.84.13, in OFlaherty, Hindu Myths, 58.
[3] atapatha Brhmana 14.1.1.18-24, in OFlaherty, Hindu Myths, 57.
[4] On Georges Dumezils notion of I-E trifunctionality, see C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative
Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumzil, 3rd edition (Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1982).
[5] I-E homogenesis may have influenced the Franks to believe that the filioque doctrinewith its Son-

father brotherhood and its shared dove of lovewas an essential tenet of Christian belief, despite the
Popes insistence that the interpolation be removed from the Frankish Churchs Creed and the Eastern
Churchs condemnation of it as a heresy. For an Eastern Orthodox critique of the filioque as the core of
Frankish Civilization, see John S. Romanides, The Filioque, accessed 8 November, 2014,
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.03.htm.
[6] Mrkandeya Purna 105, in OFlaherty, Hindu Myths, 69.
[7] RV 1.84.13; accessed 8 November, 2014, http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv01084.htm.
[8] RV 10.90.13-14; cit. in James L. Kelley, Doxaphysics: A Reassessment of the Ancient Doctrine of
the Soul, accessed 8 November, 2014, http://www.scribd.com/doc/165479521/Doxaphysics-Paper, 8.
On Dadhyancs bones and their association with the moon and stars, see R. Griffiths footnote to RV
1.16.12 in The Hymns of the Rgveda, 2 vols (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1963):
Dadhyanc may be the old moon whose bones when he dies, become the stars with which Indra slays
the fiends of darkness (1.53).
[9] Recall that the Greek god Dionysus was born from Zeuss thigh, which Carl A.P. Ruck interprets
as between his thighs, since Dionysus emblem is the phallus (Apples of Apollo: Pagan and
Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist [Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001]), 5.
[10] The Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1936), 77.
[11] Tacitus, Germania, translated by Lamberto Bozzi, accessed 6 November, 2014,
http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/De%20Origine%20Et%20Situ%20Germanorum.php.