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Descent to the underworld
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The descent to the underworld is an archetypical mytheme present from the Religions of the Ancient Near East and continued into Christianity. The myth involves the death of a youthful god (a life-death-rebirth deity), mourned and then recovered from the underworld by his or her consort, lover or mother.
- Tammuz/Adonis is mourned and then recovered by his consort/mother Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite
- Egyptian Osiris (see also Egyptian Book of the Dead), Greek Dionysus and the Eleusinian Mysteries (see Osiris-Dionysus)
- Gilgamesh descends to the underworld to meet Utnapishtim in a quest for immortality.
- Persephone and Demeter
- the biblical story of Joseph is paralleled to the myth in Panbabylonism, notably in Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers.
- in Vedic religion, Ushas (dawn) is liberated from the Vala by Indra
- Lemminkäinen's rescue from Tuonela by his mother.
- Baldr
- Helreið Brynhildar.
- Mary's mourning of Jesus (pietà) and the latter's Harrowing of Hell
The myth is often associated with ancient fertility rites dating to the Neolithic revolution, surrounding the fact that it was necessary to sacrifice part of the harvest (sow it) and let it spend winter under ground before it is "reborn" as next year's harvest. This theme of a god sacrificing himself so that humanity may be saved is again found in Christianity, where it is recast into moral terms (the congregation is now saved from sin rather than starvation), with even a remnant ritual of eating of the sacrificed god (in the form of a cereal product) in the eucharist. The "breaking" of the "gates of hell" at the moment of escape from the underworld is associated with the breaking of the glume in threshing, "liberating" the grain by Janda (1998).
- Walter Burkert, Homo necans.
- Janda, M., Eleusis, das indogermanische Erbe der Mysterien (1998).
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