I’ve written before about how everyday events can serve as sources of inspiration. But such events don’t have to be unique to the writer. Sometimes, shared experiences, even ones as widespread as seasonal changes, can stimulate ideas.
Living in southern California in modern times, I sometimes forget that. It’s easy to not really notice the seasons when the changes are subtle. And, like most of us, I don’t grow and harvest my own food, unless you count the fruit trees in my backyard, which provide a small percentage of what I eat. Nor do I spend as much time in nature as I’d like, though I’ve tried to spend more in recent years.
For ancient people, life was different. They spent a lot more time outdoors. Even those who weren’t farmers were sensitive to issues like drought, which could spell widespread famine. They couldn’t ship large quantities of food from other areas in the same way we can. As time passed, they did develop some longer-range trade. For example, one of the principle Roman sources of grain was Egypt. But Rome still needed products to sell in order to pay for that grain, and a large part of Rome’s economy was still agricultural.
Ancient people also felt the weather more than we do. They had some heating through the use of fire. Air conditioning consisted of opening windows or doors. When they had to travel in the rain, they had no enclosed vehicles to shield them completely from getting wet.
We still fear some of the same things, like darkness, though as long as we can fend off the dark through electric lights, it’s not as frightening. Ancient people were closer to our primal ancestors, who instinctively feared the dark because predators could hide in it.
Ancient literature was shaped by the relatively closeness of the people to nature and by their various fears. Most of their surviving literature is in one way or another mythological—and myths are an important source of inspiration for modern fantasy writers, even those writing urban fantasy. But to take full advantage of that source, we need to appreciate the forces that inspired it.
Ancient people felt connected to the parts of their environment that they could most clearly perceive—the ground beneath their feet, the air they breathed, nearby bodies of water, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the various lifeforms with whom they shared this environment. In many cases, they developed the belief that all of these things were connected to each other. The expression, “As above, so below,” thought it first appeared in a longer form in the Eighth or Ninth Century CE and didn’t become popular until much later, is very much an ancient concept.
That brings us to spring, a time of new beginnings because it is the planting season for many crops. Though many of us celebrate the new year on January 1, that’s hardly universal. The Romans initially used March 1. Many places in the Middle East and Asia use dates connected with the beginning of spring, including Persian New Year, which corresponds to the spring equinox (March 20 or 21). Other cultures place the New Year elsewhere in spring because they calculate spring’s beginning differently.
Even those new year celebrations that fall outside spring still acknowledge the seasons. Some cultures use fall, probably because of its harvest associations. If harvest time ends a successful year, then it would follow that the period immediately after, even if it might be winter, would be the new beginning. Or perhaps harvest time begins a new year, which explains some of the September and October dates, such as Jewish New Year and the beginning of the liturgical year in many Christian calendars (though in the latter case, it isn’t called New Year).
Seasonal changed shaped far more than just the holiday calendar. They also raised questions in pre-scientific minds about why the seasons changed. And since early humans didn’t have much control over nature, their explanations of natural phenomena reflects both their fears and their (sometimes desperate) hopes.
This brings us to one of the most dramatic and high-stakes myths, so evocative that it is common to many cultures—the dying god. We use that label for convenience, even though not all the main characters involved are gods, and the main character doesn’t necessarily die.
Perhaps the oldest surviving version is found in ancient Sumerian culture, whose dying god myth features two deaths. Inanna, the goddess of love and war, among other things, descends into the underworld to see her sister, Ereshkigal, whose husband has recently deserted her. Along the way, Inanna must give up part of her clothing at each of seven gates, so that by the time she reaches Ereshkigal, Inanna is naked. (A modern writer might think of that sequence as symbolic of Inanna gradually surrendering to death.) In any case, Ereshkigal is angry with Inanna for not visiting sooner and strikes her dead.
Without going into all the details, Inanna’s father, Enki, sends two little beings animated from clay to rescue her. They resurrect her by giving her the food and water of life. But Ereshkigal will only allow Inanna to return to the world of the living if someone else will take her place. (Is this the origin of the idea that everything comes at a cost? It’s certainly an early example of it.)
Dumuzi, Inanna’s husband, sometimes described as a shepherd or the god of shepherds but also thought to be a god of vegetation, agrees to take her place, allowing her to return to the world of the living. Not able to bear such a total sacrifice, Inanna somehow arranges for Dumuzi to spend half the year with her. Not coincidentally, he returns to her arms at the beginning of spring each year.
Though not quite as neatly seasonal as the story of Dumuzi, the Egyptian Osiris story is definitely part of the dying god tradition. Osiris is murdered and then chopped to pieces by his envious brother, Set. His wife, Isis, is able to reassemble the pieces and resurrect him through her magical skill—but she can only do so briefly. She uses the time to become pregnant with their son, Horus, perhaps a metaphorical resurrection, as some writers have identified immortality with having living descendants.
Osiris, though technically remaining dead, goes on to rule the realm of the dead, so he clearly isn’t dead dead. Confusingly, he is also celebrated as a god of fertility and agriculture, among other things. These details suggest that parts of the story may have been lost over time.
Osiris became associated with the annual flooding of the Nile that begins in July (and is the basis for the July New Year celebration in Egypt). A myth that may have developed as part of the original Osiris story identities the reason for the flooding as the tears Isis shed for Osiris. Isis became identified with the star, Sirius, which appears in the heavens at about the same time as the Nile begins to flood. (This is a good illustration of the fact that myths are rarely static. They grow with time and continued infusions of imagination.)
The ancient Greeks used the dying god motif more than once. Most of you are probably familiar with the story of Persephone, taken down to the Underworld by Hades. Zeus tries to free her, but she has already eaten something in the Underworld—six pomegranate seeds, to be precise. Thus, she is bound to stay in the Underworld for six months out of the year, returning to the world of the living each spring.
What you may not know is that Persephone plays a role in two other dying god stories.
When Aphrodite, looking for a foster mother for the orphaned infant Adonis, takes him to Persephone, the queen of the Underworld agrees to help., However, Adonis grows into an incredibly handsome man, and Persephone falls in love with him. When Aphrodite returns to take Adonis back to the world of the living, she also falls in love with him, but Persephone refuses to give him up. They eventually resolve their dispute by agreeing to share. Persephone will have Adonis for one third of the year, Aphrodite for another. The remaining third, Adonis may choose where he lives, and he decides to live with Aphrodite. (The story reflects an older, three-season division which sometimes also appears in the original Persephone story.)
In the version that has come down to us, Adonis is a mortal, not a god, but his alternation between life and death is meant as a reflection of the dying god myth. Some scholars see the story as an adaptation of the Inanna-Dumuzi story. After all, Inanna is a goddess of love, just like Aphrodite, and is associated with the planet Venus, also just like Aphrodite. As for Dumuzi, he is sometimes portrayed as a mortal, just as Adonis is. In any case, Adonis’s name is derived from a Canaanite word meaning lord. It’s related to the Hebrew word, Adonai, one of the titles of God. The name suggests that Adonis might have been a god in the oldest version of the story.
Persephone finds herself in a dying god story yet again when the Orphic tradition, whose believers thought they were following the teachings of Orpheus. found yet another dying god. In this version, Zeus loves Persephone more than Hera and finds the girl more beautiful than Aphrodite. Demeter houses Persephone in a place guarded by dragons to protect her from the gods’ untoward advances. (Versions differ as to whether this was before or after Hades kidnapped Persephone.) Either way, Zeus gets around Demeter’s precautions by transforming himself into a dragon, after which he makes love to Persephone.
The resulting child is named Zagreus and in some versions has horns (a symbol of power). He is the only one besides Zeus who can touch the thunderbolts, and his father plans to make Zagreus his heir once the boy is grown. In a departure from the traditional chronology, Hera gets the titans (who are usually supposed to be imprisoned by this time), to trick the child and then murder him.
Not wanting to do the job half way, the titans tear Zagreus to shreds and devour him. Zeus, unable to save him, slaughters the titans with thunderbolts. This part of the story is used to explain human nature. Mortals are made from the ashes and have in their nature both evil (from the titans) and good (from Zagreus, whom the titans had eaten).
However, Zagreus is not quite gone. Athena has rescued his heart, and Zeus uses it to impregnate Semele, a mortal woman. Hera once again intervenes, this time by tricking Semele into getting Zeus to swear to give her whatever she wants and then asking to see him in his full glory. Such a vision reduces Semele to ashes, but Zeus rescues the fetal god and carries him to term in his own thigh. Some of you will recognize this last part as the origin story for Dionysus—another agricultural god who, at least in the Orphic tradition, dies and is reborn, this time in a very literal sense.
Thus, Persephone is the dying god in one story, the lover of a dying god in the second, and the mother of a dying god in the third. If there is a story of her becoming the grandmother of a dying god, it hasn’t survived.
Although the story of Jesus is dramatically different from the earlier dying god stories, there is no doubt that a Greco-Roman audience hearing Christian preaching would spot some similarities. Jesus in some way connects the human and the divine, a little like the ambiguous natures of Dumuzi and Adonis. Jesus is born under unusual circumstances, and so is Adonis (born from a myrrh tree which was his transformed mother). (It is probably a coincidence that one of the gifts of the magi to the infant Jesus is myrrh.) Jesus dies, though in a different way from the earlier dying gods. Most important, he is resurrected in the spring. (True, he’s also crucified in the spring, but it’s easy to imagine someone connecting the three days Jesus is in the tomb with the three months of winter.)
Later Christians actually strengthened the links between Jesus and the earlier dying god myths, perhaps without meaning to do so. The selection of December 25 (thought at the time to be the winter solstice) for the birth of Jesus anchored his birth to the time when winter is at its height but is just about to fade—a first step toward the rebirth in the spring. The term, Easter, adopted from the Saxon spring festival, Eostre, likewise reinforces seasonal associations for the resurrection story.
Assuming a fantasy writer doesn’t want to novelize a myth or a biblical story, what other possibilities are available for this kind of material? Here are a few:
Use the dying god as a main character. He or she need not be overtly divine in order for this to work. Adonis fulfills the role without being a god prior to the splitting of his life. What would happen if the character realized he or she was to die but wasn’t all that sure about getting resurrected. In the gospels, Jesus accepts his role willingly, but what if a dying god didn’t? Would guilt over destroying the seasons pull the MC back into the expected role or not? There are a lot of complications to explore.
Use an antagonist who wants to stop the dying god from fulfilling the expected role. What would motivate such a person? What method would that person use? Make the dying god’s death permanent, or prevent the death in the first place?
Make the MC a well meaning altruist who wants to find a way to preserve world order and spare the dying god the necessity of death. All kinds of complications could grow from that kind of approach.
Make the MC an attention starved, unbalanced person who wants to be a substitute for the dying god. Would such scheme work, or would it throw the whole universe out of balance?
Those are probably more natural in epic fantasy, but I could see someone in a contemporary fantasy making use of them. Perhaps because fewer people are aware of the seasonal fluctuations tied to the dying god, it would be easier for a malefactor to sabotage them.
That’s only a few suggestions. If you put your mind to it, you could come up with a lot of possibilities.