6
Storm and Stream
Sky and Earth, Sun, Dawn, Night: these make up the outer frame of the world
we live in. We now come to the more energetic and unpredictable elemental
powers that shape our environment, deities of rain and thunder, wind and
fire, river and flood.
THE GOD OF THUNDERApart from earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, which are liable to
occur only in certain specific regions of the world, there is no more frighten-
ing manifestation of nature than the thunderstorm. Amazing flashes of light
crackling out of darkened skies; menacing rumbles, building up to terrific
crashes; trees stricken and scorched; on occasion even instantaneous death
to humans. All this is readily ascribed to the fury of a supernatural being.
In most of the ancient pantheons of Indo-European peoples we can identify
a god whose province it was. The question is whether these storm-gods show
shared characteristics, apart from their command of thunder and lightning,
such as to mark them as heirs to a common Indo-European heritage.
For classicists it is natural to think of the storm function as belonging to
the great god of the sky, as it does to Zeus in Greece and to Jupiter at Rome.
But elsewhere we find a dedicated storm-god who is not identified with the
sky or the sky-god: the Hittite Tarh
̆
unna, the Indic Indra, the Slavonic Perun,
the Baltic Perkunas, the Germanic Donar or Thor, the Celtic Taranus or
Taranis. This is almost certainly the original situation. The Indo-European
*Dyeus was essentially the bright sky of day. We saw in Chapter 4 that his
Indic and Greek representatives could fertilize Earth with rain. But this peace-
ful conjugal relationship, of which we are the incidental offspring, is complete
in itself. Thunderous electrical rages directed (in most mythologies) against
demons or dragons cannot be considered an organic part of it. And the