Sky god of the indo-europeans

In astrology, the proto-European, pagan, spirituality, Zeus is associated with the planetary body of Jupiter.
The sun, later to become Jesus, is the salvation Deity. The one who brings light (Apollo), to man.

Electricity is a fundamental part of the universal dynamics, and so we have Zeus and his lightning bolts.

Zeus, Thor/Donner, Indra and Perun all related. Surely the connection go far back indeed.

Not sure about these etymologies, but Dumezil thought Tyr and Zeus were Functional cognates in his [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

The politics behind it:
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Thank you for the links. The continuing issue with these commentaries is their literal interpretation of the edda as a snapshot of actual Norse pagan belief. I believe it to only be echos of echos. To illustrate lets take the concept of Valhol

Our oldest source describing Valhall would be Grímnismál

21.
Þýtr Þund, /Thund howls
unir Þjóðvitnis /Thiodvitnir's fish
fiskr flóði í; /play in the stream
árstraumr þykkir /the current seems
ofmikill / too great
Valglaumni at vaða. /for the Val-happy (warriors) to wade

22.
Valgrind heitir, / Valgrind it is called
er stendr velli á / it stands on a plain
heilög fyr helgum dyrum; / it is holy before the doors
forn er sú grind, / this gate is ancient
en þat fáir vitu, / but only few know
hvé hon er í lás of lokin. / how to open it.

23.
Fimm hundruð dura / Five hundred doors
ok umb fjórum tögum, /and another forty
svá hygg ek á Valhöllu vera; / so many, I believe, Valhal has
átta hundruð Einherja / eight hundred Einherjar
ganga senn ór einum durum, / pass alone through one gate
þá er þeir fara við vitni at vega. / when they go to the slaughter.

24.
Fimm hundruð golfa / Five hundred floors
ok umb fjórum tögum, / and another forty
svá hygg ek Bilskirrni með bugum; /I believe the bowed Bilskirnir
ranna þeira, / has
er ek reft vita, / of all the houses I know
míns veit ek mest magar. / my son's is the biggest.

25.
Heiðrún heitir geit, / Heidrun the goat is called
er stendr höllu á / who stands on the hall
ok bítr af Læraðs limum; /and bites the leafs of Laerad
skapker fylla / buckets she fills
hon skal ins skíra mjaðar; /with the shining mead
kná-at sú veig vanask. / this drink never perishes.

This is typically interpreted to mean: before the gate to the realm of the dead there is a river with strong currents (a Styx-like boundary). Behind the gate there is a dwelling for the Einherjar, and it has 540 gates and 800 Einherjar can pass through at once. There is another dwelling belonging to 'my son' (it is Odin who speaks so 'my son' is interpreted as Thor -see Snorri) that has 540 rooms and it is the biggest place. On top of Valhall there is a goat that eats the leaves of Yggdrasill and produces nice mead for the Einherjar to drink.

Throw in stanza 18:

18.
Andhrímnir /Andhrimnir
lætr í Eldhrímni / lets Sæhrimnir
Sæhrímni soðinn, /cook in Eldhrimnir
fleska bezt; / the best pork
en þat fáir vitu, / but only few
við hvat einherjar alask. / know on what the Einherjar live.

And thus we know what the Einherjar live off ... pork ... uhm, according to Snorri in Gylfaginning at least.

But let's pick apart the images:

Stanza 18 is a word-play. Andhrimnir is a mythic eagle, særhrimnir is a mythic boar, eldhrimnir means 'fire'. Andhrimnir is a composite of 'spirit/air' and 'cooler', sæhrimnir means 'sea-cooler' and eldhrimnir means 'fire-cooler'. Either it has some meaning that is hardly understandable to us to day (and wasn't to Snorri in the 13th century) or it is a babbling word-play. And the stanza goes on to say that 'few' -as in no one- know what the einherjar live off. The einherjar, the 'lone fighers' are dead warriors. So, basically, this stanza says: there's air, sea and fire, and we don't know what dead people eat ...

Stanza 21 tells us that Thund howls. Thund is an Odin-name and it happens to be an approximation to an onomatopoeticon along the same lines as Thor. In so many words, it means 'the storm makes noise' -and the storm is 'war'. Thjodvitnir's fish a playing happily in the stream refers to war. Thjodvitnir means 'destroyer of nations', and his fish in a stream are swords in a battle clash. The battle clash is hard for the war-happy to wade is ... a no-brainer, really.

Stanza 22: Battle field gate is that gate called that stands on ... the battle field ... only few know how to open it. In other words: once you enter the battle field chances of return are slim.

Stanza 23: Fivehundred doors and another forty means: a whole f*cking lot to people who lived in settlements of maximally 800 people (that's the size of Hedeby). It simply means that there's a lot of einherjar, i.e. walking dead, who are either on the battle field or candidates for it.

Stanza 24: and there's room for much more!

Stanza 25: There's a goat standing on the hall, eating leaves from a tree ... where do goats normally stand around eating things? On a grassy pasture. So if the pasture is the roof a the hall of Valhall, it must mean that this place, described metaphorically as a battle field, is located under ground, under the pasture. Valhall is that place underneath our feet where we put dead people. The mead is what we drink when we drink minni to remember them.

As for Hel. The word Hel is derived from the same word as cellar and it is a direct cognate of such a fine old Germanic word as 'hollow'. It means 'under ground, hidden, away'. The word 'hall' is also a distant cousin of that word ... And the description of Hel is 13th century bogus. There is nothing like it in the oldest sources. Náströnd is a spectral of Völuspá that is incomparable with Hel and more shows affinity with images taken from the Gospel of John.

So, all in all, both places mean 'under ground' and they're the hall of the dead. There's really nothing more to it than that: people die and get buried -then who knows what happens?

Very different to how most people understand it yes?

This [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] will illustrate how diverse germanic paganism can be yet still in line with indo-european echoes.

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This thesis also sheds light onto how old Odin actually is.

Heathen, that was really good. Aren't the kennings of old so lively and metaphorically rich!

On the symbolism of the regenerating boar...

Quote :

"The Boar represented an early attempt to re-assign to a male the holy creative blood of life, the Goddess's menstruum.  As the pahllic god who gave his life for humanity, he was worshipped in conjunction with the Goddess by Germanic Aryans who, Tacitus said, "worship the mother of the gods, and wear as a religious symbol the device of the wild boar."
   
This Germanic boar-god became the doomsday-averting Savior and Lord of Death, in both human and porcine form, "born in the days of old... of the race of gods."  He was identified with Heimdall, born of the Earth-and-Sea mother, fathered by boar blood.  "He was made strong with the force of the earth, with the cold sea and the blood of the sacrificial boar."  That is, like most gods, in dying he begot himself again.
     
The boar-god was sacrificed especially at Yule, with an apple in his mouth, symbolizing his regenerated heart-soul, according to the Scandinavian belief that apples were resurrection charms.  Hence the traditional Yule pig roasted with an apple in its mouth.  There was a mystical meaning behind the pork-eating ritual.  "Valhalla's boar" was cooked in a cauldron, the regenerative womb-symbol, and the skalds said of it, "It's prime of pork, but few men know on what Valhalla's champions feed.

Myths of dying gods like Tammuz, Attis, and Adonis featured the boar, or boarskin-clad priest, who sacrificed the god in swine form.  Such gods were "gored in the groin" by the boar, an allegory of ritual castration.  As lovers of the Goddess, they were chosen from members of her priesthood.  The sacrificer of Adonis was another of the Goddess's lovers, Ares, wearer of the boarskin.  The sacrificer and castrater of Attis was his divine alter ego, a boar sent by Zeus, or by the same body. Attis was the dying Son, later resurrected as the Father who decreed his death in the first place.  Similarly, Vishnu the Boar decreed death for his boar-sons.  Some myths said Attis died in the same way as Adonis, being gored by a boar.  Others said Attis himself was the boar, a totemic sign of his kingship."

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Quote :

"One of the ancient books of India prescribes that when a sacrifice is offered for victory, the
earth out of which the altar is to be made should be taken from a place where a boar has been wallowing, since the strength of the boar will be in that earth." [Frazer, Golden Bough]

The above is nothing; profounder meanings are actually embedded in Shakespeare's works; this book is a gem:
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I'll just add here Cook's three volume series:

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