Women in Mythology - Hausos the Dawn Goddess
Has anyone thought about how weird it is to have a deity for the dawn. The dawn isnât like the sun or the moon, you canât really see it. Itâs not an important everyday function like caring for the hearth. Itâs not a job like blacksmiths. It happens and itâs beautiful but itâs not physical. I googled âdawn definitionâ and the first thing that comes up is âthe first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise.â (The Google Dictionary). Itâs weird to deify a small period of time. Itâs probably why there are so little dawn deities. There are only two mythologies with dawn deity/spirits (maybe three but Tefnut is the goddess of the morning dew and moisture, thatâs not really the dawn) which are not from Indo-European cultures. These deities are the Shintoâs Ame-no-Uzume-no-mikoto and the Siouxâs Anpao (which btw has two faces and I love that fact, it makes a lot of sense to me). All other deities are from Indo-European countries. Which is why âDawn goddesses are crucial in Indo-European comparative mythologyâŚâ (Source 1 to an article about Eostre and Bede.) Dawn goddesses, lunar and solar chariots and Sky Fathers are the backbone of comparative Indo-European mythology studies. (I seriously considered doing something comparing Indra and Zeus but I was already looking up dawn goddesses for funsies. This whole thing was written for funsies tbh). Â
What is Indo-European Mythology? Short of it, so I can get to the comparing of deities, is that Indo-Europeans are a theorized people that that originated the Indo-European languages (English, French, Spanish, Sanskrit, Hindi, Hittite, Persian, Greek, etc.). There are also a few similarities between the mythologies. Which, you can explain as surrounding cultures influencing each other or if you a psychoanalyst you believe that the similarities between all of them is because of a deep shared self conscious or that they all originated from one original deity. Indo-European mythology exist because of the last mindset. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Using comparative mythology, we can assume some of the Indo-European Pantheon. Itâs a bottom down perspective. And I want to do this exercise, so letâs compare some Dawn Deities.Â
Was the original Indo-European Dawn Goddess really named Hausos? I can say with 99.9% certainty no. Hausos is scholarâs best educated guess
1. Auseklis - Latvian Mythology
Sadly, I canât find to much about him (or her, Auseklis is either one). Yeah, this is the god of the dawn and morning star (aka Venus). He is subordinate to the moon but also serves the sun. He is associated with marriages, bath-houses and birth.
2. AuĹĄrinÄ - Lithuanian Mythology
I can find more about her then I can about her Latvian counterpart. She had an affair with the Moon God, which caused Sun Goddess and the Moon God to basically divorce. AuĹĄrinÄ lived on sea-girt island where she takes cares of magical apples that will bring love to people who eats them. Also she had cows that made boiling milk (ummm) that will make you beautiful (sure). Also, sheâs connected to maidens, weaving, love, weddings and baptism (sheâs later connected with the Virgin Mary when Lithuania was Christinized). And there is a myth of a man falling in love with her after finding her golden hair in the water of a lagoon. She also makes the sunâs fire every morning (that makes a lot of sense).Â
3. Aurora - Roman Mythology
Sadly we donât have much from just Aurora and most stories with Aurora are actually stories about Eos. She gave sight to Orion.
She is the mother of the morning star, Lucifer. Itâs cool that the dawn and the morning star are separated.Â
4. Brigid - Irish Mythology
Every list of dawn goddesses has her or some articles will say that she comes from the original Indo-European dawn goddess. But they never explain why. In her list of what she is the goddess of, they never mention the dawn. Sheâs the blacksmith goddess, the goddess of the spring, the fertility goddess, the healing goddess, the poetry goddess.
My favourite quote from my research is âAbout Brigid there has been scant evident. (...) questions need to be asked about her origins, her functions, in early Irish society, and existing tradition (...)â (Mother Worship:There and Variations, source below)
Sure, spring and beautiful things are often associated with the dawn but that is not enough to convince me that she is a dawn goddess. Also, her name doesnât fit well, unlike Äostre.
Sheâs properly the goddess whoâve heard the most about, sheâs Greek. Sheâs the daughter of Hyperion (titan of light) and Theia (she was a titaness and probably had something to do with light, being also called wide-shining). Eos is the sister of Helios (the sun) and Selene (the moon). She is also married to Astraeus (dusk), but if you didnât know that, I donât blame you. Eos was well known for getting around a lot. She loved Orion, Tithonus, Cephalus, Cleitus and Ares. Tithonus is a pretty famous story, Eos asks Zeus for Tithonus to become immortal which Zeus does, but as the asshole he is, he didnât make Tithonus eternally youthful and Tithonus becomes dust. (Zeus it was in the subtext to make him eternally youthful.) When she has an affair with Ares, Aphrodite curses Eos to be constantly falling in love or just to have an unsatisfied sexual desire. Eos also had some children in the Trojan war, when he died, she cried which created the morning dew. And she was the mother of the anemoi (aka the winds).
She had the classic job of announcing the coming of her brother Helios. She seems like his assistant. She also rides her own chariot of Pegasi.
I love how she is constantly being called the rose finger goddess. I find that pretty. Â
6. Äostre/Ostara - Germanic Mythology
Sheâs more of a spring goddess then anything. But I keep seeing her on list (not just Wikipedia), so I have to add her. Though, Iâm more confident in adding her because she linguistically looks like she belongs. And I can see how the dawn goddess becomes a spring goddess (still very iffy on Brigid mainly due to linguistics). Spring announces summer, like dawn announces day (I have no proof of this, itâs just logically I can see how this can happen). Though, there are some scholars who believes that Äostre might have been an invention from Bede, because thatâs the first time they hear about her.
So, Äostre is associated with spring and fertility. Then there are tons of theories of how she very probably connected with Easter celebration, rabbits how she might just be a spring goddess and not a dawn goddess. She canât be both? She couldnât have started out as dawn goddess then became a spring goddess? Bede is writing in the 8th century, at the very least over a thousand of years after the Indo-Europeans migrated. Things change in a thousand years, especially without writing. Hell, Eos and Ushas changed even with writing.
7. Thesan - Etruscan Mythology
She was the dawn goddess and evoked in childbirth. All I could find about her.
8. Ushas - Vedic Hindu Mythology
For brevity sake, there are many different sects of Hinduism. Anyway, Ushas is found in the Rigveda which is one of the oldest texts written in an Indo-European language. In this text the three most important gods are Agni (fire), Soma (moon and plants) and Indra (the king of gods and the weather god). The most important goddess is Ushas, sheâs found in many hymns. Her sister is Ratri (night) and her brother is Chandra/Soma (moon) and sometimes she is married to Surya (sun). In her Vedic hymns she is considered the most beautiful of the goddess. She rides a chariot of either horses or cows so she could make way for Surya. She chases away demons and the dark. Interestingly, she is renewed or made young again everyday (reminding me of Raâs journey). She also breaths all life. Iâm very interested in the fact that in that sheâs all seeing much like Helios is in Greek Mythology. And, she is sometimes the sister of the twin horse gods Ashvins (and health and medicine gods too), which also are theorized to be originally Indo-European.
9. Zorya - Slavic Mythology
Hahahaha, who decided they would also be known as the Auroras. I have a feeling it was some Western European with classical knowledge decided that. Anyway, one is the dawn and the other is the dusk and one is midnight. The dawn Zorya, named Utrennyaya, has been described as Perunâs wife (Perun is the law and weather god) or both her sister and her were the wives of Jarylo, the god of springtime (interesting). Utrennyayaâs job is to open the gates for the sun every morning. She was the goddess of horses, protection, exorcism, and the planet Venus. I like how there job was guard a chained dog who wants to eat Ursa Minor, because if that happens the end of the world would start. Zoryas are also protectors of warriors where they would show up like maidens with veils and shields of their favourite battles. Â They also lived on a paradise island, much like AuĹĄrinÄ (though the two cultures are neighbours).
So, what educated guesses can we make about the Hausos? The dawn goddesses is beautiful (who would have guessed? Itâs not like sunrise is stereotypically the most beautiful time of the day? Sarcasm btw). Dawn goddesses usually have a story involving immortally and aging (see I didnât just mention Tithonus because it was famous). Many are either springtime goddesses or somehow connected to the deity of the spring. Hausos might have also been a love goddess, since the other dawn goddesses will either be love goddesses or have many lovers (of course there were the apples that made you fall in love too). I donât know where Wikipedia gets that she might be a weaving goddess. I get it. She weaves the the cloth like she weaves the day but I didnât see weaving as a theme in enough goddesses (only one) to be confident in making an educated guess that the Indo-European dawn goddess would have anything to do with weaving.
Women in Mythology Series: Previous Morgiana Â
Links to sources because I got lost in research a lot:Â
1. The Goddess Eostre: Bedeâs Text and Contemporary Pagan Tradition(s)
2. Indo-European Deities and the Rgveda
4. The Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons
5. SIGNS OF MORNING STAR AUĹ RINÄ IN THE BALTIC TRADITION: REGIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL FEATURESÂ
6. Encyclopedia of Goddesses and HeroinesÂ
7. Sun Myths in Lithuanian Folksongs
8. Mother Worship: Theme and VariationsÂ
10. Greek and Roman Mythology, A to ZÂ